Tongans' newsroom hums as lawyers prepare to fight

By REBECCA WALSH

His newspaper may have been banned in Tonga, but for Auckland-based Kalafi Moala nothing has changed - there is still a paper to put out.

In a converted garage behind his Penrose home is a mini-newsroom where a staff of eight put together Taimi o Tonga (The Times of Tonga).

Stories from reporters in Tonga, Australia, Honolulu and New Zealand are edited and laid out here, printed down the road and distributed overseas.

But whether the paper will be read again in Tonga is now up to the country's Supreme Court.

Taimi o Tonga was last month labelled a prohibited import by the Government on the grounds that it was, among other things, seditious and a foreign paper with a political agenda. Officials also said the standard of journalism was unacceptable.

The paper is seeking a judicial review of the ban under the Tongan constitution, which promotes freedom of speech, and on Monday lawyers will fight it out in the Supreme Court.

At Penrose, Moala sits inside the reception area framed by a giant tapa cloth, scans the latest issue of the paper and says he is hopeful justice will be on his side.

"We have a pretty strong case legally ... but with Tonga you just never know," he says.

"Media freedom, some of the liberties you and I enjoy, are the first things to go in a country like Tonga where dissent, criticism, expressing personal views are just not something to do."

Moala set up the paper 14 years ago and says in that time its Tongan offices have been raided by police 12 times and staff have received threatening phone calls.

In 1996, Moala was jailed for 26 days for contempt of Parliament but released when the Supreme Court found he had been wrongfully imprisoned.

While in jail he managed to communicate with the outside world through his "toilet-paper letters".

He is not sure what prompted the ban, but one possibility is his book, Island Kingdom Fights Back, published last year. It outlines the newspaper's story and calls for Government reform.

But Moala says it is the minority, including Tonga's royal family, who feel threatened.

He and his staff have received a lot of support since the ban. The only ones "rejoicing", he says, are Government officials and the Tongan Media Association, comprising mostly media owned by the Government, church or royal family.

"The men in the street, in the villages, they are angry. We have had people crying over the phone, saying 'How could this happen?'

"The more the Government tries to stop us, the more people, even within the Government, are trying to give us information."