Opinio Juris

The NZ$420m ($319m) agreement transfers ownership of nine forests - covering 435,000 acres (176,000 hectares) of land - in the central North Island.

Hundreds of Maori, some in traditional dress, thronged parliament to witness the signing of the accord.

"It's a historic journey we are on," Prime Minister Helen Clark said.

"We came into politics to address injustice and seek reconciliation. Thank you for walking that road with us on this historic day," she added, according to AP news agency.

The settlement - the largest single deal between the government and Maori tribes - seeks to address grievances dating back to the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

The treaty guaranteed the indigenous Maori people use of their land and resources in return for ceding sovereignty to the British crown. But land seizures and ownership breaches followed.

The forests signed over are mainly large commercial pine plantations, generating about NZ$13m a year in rents.

The settlement also hands over rents that have accumulated on the land since 1989.

Between them, the seven tribes or iwi include more than 100,000 members. They will manage the land collectively, setting up a holding company structure and forestry management structure.

The Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand and the separate and independent Chiefs who have not become members of the Confederation cede to Her Majesty the Queen of England absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of Sovereignty which the said Confederation or Individual Chiefs respectively exercise or possess, or may be supposed to exercise or to possess over their respective Territories as the sole Sovereigns thereof.

Ko nga Rangatira o te Wakaminenga me nga Rangatira katoa hoki ki hai i uru ki taua wakaminenga ka tuku rawa atu ki te Kuini o Ingarani ake tonu atu-te Kawanatanga katoa o o ratou wenua.

The principle of government or the kawanatanga principle

Article 1 gives expression to the right of the Crown to make laws and its obligation to govern in accordance with constitutional process. This sovereignty is qualified by the promise to accord the Māori interests specified in article 2 an appropriate priority. This principle describes the balance between articles 1 and 2: the exchange of sovereignty by the Māori people for the protection of the Crown. It was emphasised in the context of this principle that ‘the Government has the right to govern and make laws’.

The principle of self-management (the rangatiratanga principle)

Article 2 guarantees to Māori hapū (tribes) the control and enjoyment of those resources and taonga that it is their wish to retain. The preservation of a resource base, restoration of tribal self-management, and the active protection of taonga, both material and cultural, are necessary elements of the Crown’s policy of recognising rangatiratanga. The Government also recognised the Court of Appeal’s description of active protection, but identified the key concept of this principle as a right for iwi to organise as iwi and, under the law, to control the resources they own.

The principle of equality

Article 3 constitutes a guarantee of legal equality between Māori and other citizens of New Zealand. This means that all New Zealand citizens are equal before the law. Furthermore, the common law system is selected by the Treaty as the basis for that equality, although human rights accepted under international law are also incorporated. Article 3 has an important social significance in the implicit assurance that social rights would be enjoyed equally by Māori with all New Zealand citizens of whatever origin. Special measures to attain that equal enjoyment of social benefits are allowed by international law.

The principle of reasonable cooperation

The Treaty is regarded by the Crown as establishing a fair basis for two peoples in one country. Duality and unity are both significant. Duality implies distinctive cultural development while unity implies common purpose and community. The relationship between community and distinctive development is governed by the requirement of cooperation, which is an obligation placed on both parties by the Treaty. Reasonable cooperation can only take place if there consultation on major issues of common concern and if good faith, balance, and common sense are shown on all sides. The outcome of reasonable cooperation will be partnership.

The principle of redress

The Crown accepts a responsibility to provide a process for the resolution of grievances arising from the Treaty. This process may involve courts, the Waitangi Tribunal, or direct negotiation. The provision of redress, where entitlement is established, must take account of its practical impact and of the need to avoid the creation of fresh injustice. If the Crown demonstrates commitment to this process of redress, it will expect reconciliation to result.

First, by and large, the R2P doctrine has been misunderstood or misrepresented in calls to "invade" Burma. R2P is often implied to boil down to a simple equation: if a government is unable or unwilling to adequately protect its citizens, then the international community has a right to forcibly intervene to protect these people. The first part of this conditional is accurate, but the second is a gross oversimplification. R2P does not prescribe invasion any more than the Constitution of the United States mandates impeachment. Military intervention is only one component of the R2P framework, and one of last resort, at that; it is only to be undertaken when a series of specific conditions are met, ensuring that intervention is justified, well-intentioned, practical, authorized by the proper authority (i.e., the UN Security Council), and will not cause more harm than good.

Wielding R2P as a Trojan horse for invasion and regime change, as Robert Kaplan seems to desire, is harmful to the integrity and future viability of the concept, as well as to the more pressing concern of alleviating the Burmese people's suffering.

Mr Rudd's pledge to say sorry to Aborigines was a radical departure from his predecessor John Howard, who during 11 years in power argued that contemporary Australians bore no responsibility for past wrongs.

It would be the first time that an Australian federal government had apologized to the country's 450,000 Aborigines, who after 220 years of white settlement suffer low life expectancy, poor health and high rates of joblessness and incarceration.

Mr Howard, whose humiliating defeat in Saturday's election signaled the end of a political era, regarded a formal apology as symptomatic of what he called the left-leaning, "black arm band" version of history.

But Labour leader Mr Rudd announced that he was determined to say sorry early on in his term of office. "We will frame it in a consultative fashion with communities and that may take some time," he said.

[snip]

Surveys show most Australians support the idea of an apology, which Aboriginal leaders regard more as a symbolic gesture than as a basis for launching huge compensation claims.

A coroner investigating the deaths of five Australia-based journalists in East Timor in 1975 concluded Friday that Indonesian troops deliberately shot or stabbed the men to death to hide Indonesia's invasion of the territory.

The finding is likely to stoke a long-running controversy surrounding the case by contradicting the Indonesian and Australian governments' official version of events: that the journalists were killed accidentally in crossfire between Indonesian troops and East Timorese defenders in the town of Balibo. It could also strain Australia-Indonesia diplomatic ties because it names three former senior officers of Indonesia's special military forces as likely having ordered the killings, and suggests they should face possible war crimes charges.

[snip]

New South Wales state deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch, who heard evidence from witnesses and viewed secret intelligence documents during a six-week inquest, rejected Indonesia's insistence for decades that the men were accidental victims of its attacking troops on Oct. 16, 1975. "The journalists were not incidental casualties in the fighting: they were captured then deliberately killed despite protesting their status," Ms. Pinch said.

Technically, Ms. Pinch only investigated the death of Brian Raymond Peters, a British-born cameraman who was among crews from two Australian television networks who went to Balibo to cover the anticipated Indonesian invasion of East Timor as it descended toward civil war following the end of Portuguese colonial rule. But she said it was impossible to investigate the death of one of the journalists without probing the others, and that her findings applied equally to all of them.

Ms. Pinch found that Mr. Peters was "shot and/or stabbed deliberately, and not in the heat of battle, by members of the Indonesian Special Forces ... to prevent him from revealing that Indonesian Special Forces had participated in the attack on Balibo." She said the journalists were killed on the orders of Yunus Yosfiah, who was then an Indonesian military captain and later a government minister. He has denied it.

There is "strong circumstantial evidence" that Mr. Yosfiah's orders to kill the journalists came down the chain of command from the then-head of Indonesian Special Forces, Maj. Gen. Benny Murdani, Ms. Pinch said. She said she believed the evidence supported possible war crimes charges, and that she would refer the case to the government to decide whether to pursue them. In Australia, a coroner does not have the power to file charges.

Attorney General Phillip Ruddock said he would forward Ms. Pinch's recommendations to police and prosecutors who have responsibility for investigating and compiling war crimes charges.

Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Legowo rejected Ms. Pinch's findings. "The verdict will not change our assertion on what happened in Balibo at the time, namely that those five journalists were killed in crossfire," Mr. Legowo said in Jakarta. "It is a closed case."

[snip]

Prime Minister John Howard said he would seek advice on what was an appropriate next step. Opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who opinion polls say is favored to become prime minister at elections next week, indicated he would follow up on the war crimes recommendation. "I believe this has to be taken through to its logical conclusion," he said. "I also believe that those responsible should be held to account."