By Bevan Berg

Typical of the world today, it is often not possible to bring you the news because of what is not being said, or what is studiously being avoided

Tokelau is a different set of circumstances to NZ but comparisons can easily be drawn with the same ugly situation in New Zealand and their respective covid responses.

This Tokelau turmoil, according to reports from the Atolls, came to a grinding halt on Wednesday last week when the General Fono (like our parliament) tried to pass a government rule relating to covid mandates.

Don Higgins Tokelau Administrator

The Official outcome hasn’t been made available yet. MFAT NZ has been asked for their version of events (as this involved our NZ Administrator to Tokelau) but they haven’t responded.

The situation on the ground hasn’t changed. There are still covid prisoners under various forms of tunoa (house arrest or restricted movement) and while there is an argument over what to call this, those individuals affected are a prisoner by order of the local Taupalenga (Indivdual Island Council of each of the 3 populated Atolls).

If you are new to this story, there are a string of posts here relating to how this unfolded.

There is UN involvement, and in a much more visible way. Tokelau has its own relationship with the United Nations as a developing nation.

The UN is very much on the ground with locals who work directly with the UN.
Tokelau is a poster child product when it comes to UN climate change videos and how their Pacific home will be lost to the rising tide of civilised disaster.

WHO has been active in promoting its presence as their COVID-19 saviour, working with the European Union recently to ship an entire plane load of supplies to Samoa with a segment of that to be shipped on to Tokelau.

Looking at their two years of isolated “covid saturation” and that’s information only as there hasn’t been any covid in the country, the official response to the threat of the unvaccinated scurge has grown to dramatic and unrealistic proportions with unreasonable and unacceptable outcomes.

Borders are still closed but locals can’t wait to ship their children out of this madness to a safer environment in NZ where they might find some resemblance of the life they used to have and fear not getting back.

NZ still has its administrative responsibility to support our Tokelau Dependency and life goes on in that respect with both Administrator Don Higgins and Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio actively supporting ongoing projects.

The hope would appear to be that our Tokelau covid prisoners will return to the insignificant Pacific position that they recently climbed out of with the help of our NZ alternative media, and be conveniently forgotten about after we get over our own parliamentary bullying scandal.