EDITORIAL: Millennium mayhem

Abstract

The Pacific has entered the third millennium after a tempestuous time in the final year of the 20th Century. All the recent events have had an impact on the region's media.The fragile peace in Bougainville has continued to experience hiccups; the state of emergency in the Solomon Islands over ethnic unrest and even the historic change of government in the Fiji Islands with the country's first Indo-Fijian prime minister. have unleashed tensions. But the major upheaval, of course, has been East Timor's devastating transition to independence from Indonesia and in the resurgence of West Papua ( recently "renamed" Papua from Irian Jaya by Jakarta's colonial authorities) as a news story.