EXPAT JOURNALIST BARRED FROM PACIFIC NATION HOME.
Former Ottawa man blames China coverage
After working through the first boom and bust of Ottawa’s high-tech industry, Dan Mcgarry came to a realization in the early 2000s: he’d had enough of “making billionaires richer.”
So the English major-turned-software developer volunteered for an aid group and ended up in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.
It was supposed to be a two-year stint helping civil-society groups with IT, until Mcgarry fell in love with the country and decided to stay, switching careers to journalism. But his transplanted homeland has suddenly uprooted him, and he blames China’s increasing presence in Vanuatu.
Mcgarry was abruptly barred Saturday from returning to the country — where his spouse and two children await him — after a visit to Australia last week, and believes his newspaper’s critical coverage of increasing Chinese influence in Vanuatu is behind the decision.
Mcgarry’s work permit was revoked this month after 16 years in the country, a few months after he was called in to an unusual meeting with Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai.
“He excoriated me,” the newspaper editor said in an interview from Brisbane. “He expressed his disappointment in my negative reporting. He didn’t cite any examples, but he went on at length and in the middle of it he said, ‘You know, if you don’t like it here, you can go home.’ And I said ‘This is my home.’”
With China working to extend its clout throughout the Pacific, his case has been taken up by media-freedom organizations, including Reporters without Borders.
“Make no mistake, this … is just a way of punishing a journalist whose investigative reporting annoyed the government,” Daniel Bastard, head of the group’s Asia-pacific desk, said in a recent statement.
But the government itself insists that Mcgarry’s plight has nothing to do with his journalism. Andrew Napuat, the internal affairs minister, said the Canadian expatriate was barred because he had continued working after his work permit expired. (McGarry said he had applied for a short-term permit renewal as he takes steps to become a joint Vanuatu citizen, but that the request was rejected this month.)
“His work permit refusal has nothing to do with his reporting with China, the government has already dealt with this and it is no longer an issue,” Napuat told reporters. “Vanuatu does not suppress media freedom. I hold regular press conferences and this ministry always responds to questions raised by journalists.”
In the meantime, Mcgarry is left in a predicament. As he stays with a friend in Brisbane, his partner and two children remain 1,900 kilometres away in Vanuatu, where they were all born and bred.
“They’re just ravaged, they’re gutted,” he said. “Saturday afternoon … we all did a Skype video call and the moment we saw each other’s faces, every single one of us burst out bawling.”
The Ottawa native said he wanted to be a writer since he was 12, and studied English and drama at the University of Ottawa, once staging a “very amateur” performance of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead with friend Samantha Bee, now star of Full Frontal, the TBS comedy news show.
But he ended up in the technology sector, working at Mitel Networks for a time and weathering the late-1990s dot-com bubble. McGarry said he wanted to be more “useful,” and quit to join Voluntary Services Overseas. The British development group offered him postings in Zambia or Vanuatu, population 300,000.
After deciding to stay, he made his way into journalism, becoming media director for the Daily Post, the country’s pre-eminent newspaper. When Vanuatu allowed joint citizenship in 2016, Mcgarry applied, though he says the process has been held up because of the Ontario government’s delay in sending him his birth certificate.
Meanwhile, China’s shadow has fallen increasingly over the island nation, like other Pacific countries, in recent years. The sale of passports for $150,000 each brings in more revenue for the government than its value-added tax, said Mcgarry. Almost all the buyers are wealthy Chinese, who use Vanuatu citizenship mostly to travel to Europe without needing a visa. China is also one of the country’s biggest donors, according to the Lowy Institute, refurbishing a sea port and redeveloping offices for the prime minister and other cabinet members. Chinese investors are building a huge resort development nicknamed Little Singapore.
“China has demonstrated that in one fell swoop they can cut off half of our national revenues in a day,” by barring its people from buying Vanuatu passports, Mcgarry said.
But the story that seemed to set off the country’s leadership — and preceded that meeting with the PM — was a Daily Post scoop in July. It detailed how local police and officers from China rounded up six ethnic Chinese suspected criminals — four of whom were Vanuatu citizens — imprisoned them without legal representation or court appearances, and spirited them off to China. It was like “extraordinary rendition in daylight,” Mcgarry said.
The Canadian said he has lawyers in Australia and Vanuatu fighting the ban and he’s confident it will eventually be overturned. In the meantime, the man who moved across the globe 16 years ago to help a developing country waits on the outside looking in at his adopted home.
“To be rootless, to be without a home, it’s soul-destroying,” Mcgarry said.
(CHINA) CAN CUT OFF HALF OF OUR NATIONAL REVENUES IN A DAY.