Strange Silence of Vocal Women

It's unbelievable! Pacific Islands women's organisations are not jumping up and down enmasse in protest over discrimination against Pacific Islands women by the New Zealand Government.

Organisations which make much of their own advocacy work are staying silent.

Women's rights advocates who constantly travel the world to an endless round of conferences, workshops and seminars are staying silent. Women who make a living out of protesting the slightest hint of discrimination or ill-treatment by men and governments in their own countries are staying silent.

Why are they staying silent? Surely it can't be because of their reliance on New Zealand aid and the generous funding of their international travel by New Zealand sources. Or is it?

How else can the amazing lack of response to the following be explained?

Local news media throughout the Pacific Islands have reported how Pacific Islands women are being singled out for discrimination. This discrimination is by New Zealand immigration authorities. They have been demanding more than a few Pacific Islands women undergo pregnancy tests before they can get a visitor's visa for New Zealand.

It is part of a New Zealand crackdown on overseas women going to New Zealand to have their babies, and wrongly gaining the benefits this brings. There is no evidence to suggest Pacific Islands women are the problem. Yet they are being singled out most for these tests. Reports in the New Zealand and Pacific Islands news media have revealed this in detail.

Samoan and Fiji women are amongst those who have been affected. But Tonga seems to have been hardest hit by the heavy hand of official New Zealand discrimination.

Just recently two top Tongan government officials‹Governor of the Reserve Bank Joyce Cocker Masi and acting finance secretary Meleseini Lomu‹said they were asked to take such tests. So, incredibly, was a 70-year old grandmother.

Mrs Lomu was to have travelled to Rotorua to attend the June Pacific Islands Forum Economic Ministers Meeting. But she pulled out of the trip in protest.

She said this was after being told by New Zealand immigration officials that she would have to take a pregnancy test or undergo an interview about this to get a visa.

Prominent Tongan journalist Taina Kami-Enoka was amongst many other Tongan women asked to undergo a pregnancy test after lodging an application for a visa. Her case was amongst those highlighted in the New Zealand and Pacific Islands news media.

Yet many women's organisations and their leaders have stayed silent.

In Fiji, the women's umbrella organisation, the Fiji National Council of Women (FNCW), seemed almost unaware of the problem despite it being covered in the local media. "Why don't you fax me copies of the articles and we'll see what steps to take," one of its executives said when contacted.

Another regional activist‹who significantly wants to remain anonymous‹described the mandatory pregnancy test as "ridiculous, insulting and a violation of women's human rights".

She said, remaining anonymous because of her own position in an organisation which just happens to get some New Zealand funding: "New Zealand should know better because it is a signatory to the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)." In New Zealand, there have been embarrassed apologies and protests from local community groups.

But in the Pacific Islands there has largely been a resounding silence from the women who make a living and a reputation from promoting women's rights.

Where, for example, are all those who were so prominent in talking about regional women's solidarity in recent Commonwealth meetings in Fiji?

Where are so many of those women who have made their name and travelled the world under the banner of women's rights?

Are they really so dependent on New Zealand aid and opportunities to travel that they aren't prepared to tackle this blatant discrimination?

Could regional leaders like Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase be right?

Are some of the vocal non-government organisations of the region really so subservient to those non-Pacific Islands sources which are funding them?

You have to wonder after the strange silence by so many over the blatant discrimination revealed in this New Zealand pregnancy test scandal.