Media
Moala Returns To Tonga To Fight Ban
‘This is a battle for freedom’
Tami o’Tonga publisher Kalafi Moala returned to the unhappy hunting ground of Nuku’alofa on March 22 after the Tongan government declared his Auckland-based newspaper a prohibited import and banned it from the kingdom. With public opinion on his side, he was hoping to convince the Tongan Supreme Court to lift the sanction and overturn a Privy Council ruling backing the ban.
Despite having won at the Supreme Court a few months ago, when in November he, his Tongan manager Filokalafi ‘Akau’ola and pro-democracy MP ‘Akilisi Pohiva were awarded a combined US$26,000 for wrongful imprisonment in 1996, Moala knew the battle before him wasn’t going to be won by one court case alone. For him there were wider issues to deal with and a bigger battle to fight.
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Speaking to an Auckland audience before his return to Tonga, he said the larger issue in the kingdom was “about freedom of speech and freedom of expression. It’s not a fight for Taimi ‘o Tonga alone. Taimi ‘o Tonga could close down tomorrow. But this is a battle for freedom. It’s a battle for justice. It is a battle for equity in our friendly islands.’’
Moala launched Taimi ‘o Tonga 14 years ago and moved its base to Auckland to overcome printing difficulties in Tonga and find a broader market.
He succeeded in both with the twice-weekly Tongan-language newspaper now selling in New Zealand, Australia and the United States, and Tonga before the ban. His stable has gone bigger too with the additions of Samoa International, The Indian Tribune and Cook Islands Star. But Moala’s success is not a matter for celebration in Tonga where the Government of King Taufa’ahau Tupou regards Moala a foreigner and would rather see him disappear somewhere far away.
The ban came as no surprise. It was the only way the kingdom could strike back against a publication that has become the cause of much embarrassment to its ruling elite.
Moala makes no apologies for that, knowing fully well he walks a fine line with his paper’s strong stand against Tonga’s lopsided political system.
His paper’s role as a watchdog in the kingdom and a forum for public debate has kept him on the wrong side of the government for a long time, which, according to him, has wanted to shut him down for 14 years. “We’ve been sued numerous times, we have been imprisoned, our trading licence suspended, and now the newspaper has been banned,’’ he said when reacting to the latest attack.
As expected, regional and international media organisations immediately condemned the ban, with the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists calling on Prime Minister Prince ‘Ulukalala Lavaka Ata to reverse the decision as the ban is an attack on press freedom and it deprives people their right to independent media.
In New Zealand, Foreign Minister Phil Goff told Radio New Zealand International the New Zealand High Commissioner in Nuku’alofa has expressed New Zealand’s views on press freedom to the Tongan government.
“We certainly would want to see freedom of expression protected in Tonga and elsewhere,” said Goff, also New Zealand’s Minister for Justice.
“There are matters, of course, regarding inaccuracies, lack of balance that from time to time are problems in the media. But it’s better to address those problems under the law governing libel and defamation, if indeed the paper is guilty of either of these things.”
The Tongan government, which imposed the ban on March 26, regards Taimi’s coverage as seditious. It justifies the ban on the grounds the paper “is a foreign paper, owned and published by a foreigner (Moala holds an American passport); is a foreign concern with a political agenda” and views its standard of journalism unacceptable, a claim based on the paper’s refusal to join the Tonga Media Association.
A statement posted on the official Tongan government website accuses the paper of having “ruthlessly campaigned for the overthrow of Tonga’s Constitutional Government. With strong cultural insensitivity, it has incited disaffection among the people of Tonga ... no foreign-owned publication with such an agenda has a right of entry into any sovereign state.”
It says Taimi, for example, “focuses on the politicians whom it favours, and presents them in the best of light. The other politicians do not receive similar treatment. The actual issues of discussion do not receive professional treatment either.
“This unprofessionalism has long robbed the people of Tonga of their right to correct unbiased, and balanced information about the work of their Parliament.
Mike Field, the Auckland-based Agence France Press correspondence who’s been banned from Tonga, told Islands Business the ban “is an appallingly oppressive act which reflects on the immature and intellectual failings of those who launched it; the Tongan Government’s prime media problem is its inability to express its own point of view.”
Clearly, a decision by Tonga’s Supreme Court will not help bridge the gap between the Tongan government and the kingdom’s most successful privately owned media group. For the government a ruling for or against it will end another chapter in the war to silence Kalafi Moala. For Moala, while a ruling in favour of Taimi will allow the paper to resume normal business in Tonga, it will not remove the bitterness in a relationship forever gone sour. For him, the Tongan government has ensured the kingdom remains an unhappy hunting ground.
