Vanuatu Citizenship Office Hits Back At Tate Report
The Citizenship Office and Commission said Andrew Tate's application was considered genuine, based on clearances from the Financial Intelligence Unit, Interpol, and UK police. RNZ Pacific
The Vanuatu Citizenship Office and Commission has hit back at a report from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project on its golden passport scheme.
The OCCRP report focused on citizenship granted to self-described misogynist influencer Andrew Tate after it was revealed he allegedly received a Vanuatu passport.
A government spokesperson had told the ABC it was investigating the matter.
'We're definitely looking into it and once we have the files, definitely the processes will be in place to revoke his citizenship,' he said.
In response, the Vanuatu Citizenship Commission chairman, Charles Maniel, told the Vanuatu Daily Post it can't carry out any revocation until allegations are proven by a court of law.
Then, in a press statement responding to the OCCRP report, the Citizenship Office and Commission said Tate's application for Vanuatu citizenship was approved on 15 December 2022.
It said the application was considered genuine, based on clearances from the Financial Intelligence Unit, Interpol, and UK police, his country of origin, at the time citizenship was granted.
'The Vanuatu Citizenship Office and Commission reject the report issued by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which claims that Mr. Tate was under high-profile investigation in the United Kingdom when applying for Vanuatu citizenship,' the statement read.
But the Vanuatu Daily Post reported that a spokesperson from OCCRP stated the Vanuatu citizenship commission's response to OCCRP's reporting was factually inaccurate.
'Our reporting shows that Andrew Tate was granted Vanuatu citizenship while under criminal investigation by Romanian – not UK – authorities on rape and human trafficking charges,' the spokesperson said.
'His Vanuatu passport was issued while he was in detention in a Romanian jail. This was covered in global media at the time and was publicly accessible information in Vanuatu.'
The Citizenship Office and Commission reiterated that, at the time Tate applied for Vanuatu citizenship, he submitted a clear police record. The authorities also noted that their designated agency, NXT Citizen, has remained compliant with the Citizenship Act and related regulations for over five years.
But it said that 'if there is sufficient evidence that Mr Tate has been convicted by a court of law' , the Commission will revoke his Vanuatu citizenship without delay.
Report into citizenship scheme
Meanwhile, Vanuatu's opposition leader says the government must immediately release the report from the Commission of Inquiry into the country's Citizenship Programme.
The report was handed to the Justice Minister last week.
Former prime minister Ishmael Kalsakau told the Vanuatu Daily Post the people deserve to know what has been uncovered.
The Commission of inquiry, which ran for nearly a year, was investigating allegations of corrupt practices within the passport and citizenship schemes.
Under the Development Support Program, applicants can be granted citizenship for a minimum investment of $US$130,000.
Prime Minister Jotham Napat, through his public relations officer, said the standard procedure requires that the report must first be presented to the Council of Ministers.
The Daily Post contacted a government minister, who confirmed the report was set to be presented to the Council this week.
The passport programme has caused concern for some time.
It has affected its visa-free access to the UK and to the European Parliament's Schengen area.
The Daily Post reported the inquiry followed public outrage and claims of systemic abuse involving the sale of passports and misuse of the programme for personal and political gain.
Kalsakau said making the findings public is essential for transparency and accountability.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
3 days ago
- RNZ News
Pacific news in brief for 30 July
Photo: Mark Rabago The state funeral for the late Northern Mariana Islands Governor Arnold Palācious is to be held Saturday morning, August 2nd, at the Pedro Multipurpose Center on Saipan. Elected leaders and visiting dignitaries from across the globe will be in attendance. The Governor's office says the general public will be able to pay their final respects during the memorial wake and funeral service at Mount Carmel Cathedral after the state funeral. A Mass of Christian burial and internment at the Marpi Public Cemetery will follow. An ocean-focused non-governmental organisation, the Waitte Institute, is contributing US$1 million for a fund to safely remove derelict fishing vessels from Fiji's Suva Harbour. The fund was named in honour of Captain Jonathan Smith, a mariner and ocean advocate, who died in 2021. In addition to the cleanup, the fund will work towards legal, policy, and institutional reforms. The Fiji government said Suva Harbour has become a graveyard for abandoned and sunken vessels. The Shefa Provincial Government Council must elect its new president and vice president on Wednesday or face possible intervention by the Minister of Internal Affairs. Since the council's first sitting on 24 July, the councillors have failed to agree on the province's leadership. The Vanuatu Daily Post reported the political deadlock has continued through several meetings, including the most recent one on Sunday. The deadlock stems from political divisions within the council, with opposing factions pushing for different leadership outcomes. Motu-Koita people in Papua New Guinea's National Capital District will have their own representative in Parliament in 2027. The National newspaper reported this is one of the six new electorates confirmed by Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai. Sinai said Motu-Koitabuans will have their own electorate, and it will be for the indigenous people to contest for the seat. Sinai, who is also the Electoral Boundaries Commission chairman, said this would take the total number of open seats in Parliament to 102. South Pentecost is celebrating the traditional circumcision of 14 boys using bamboo and the start of the yam harvest. More than 400 people from South Pentecost gathered at Lonesis village on Monday to mark the end of a traditional circumcision ceremony. Point Cross villager, Danstan Tate, told the Vanuatu Daily Post it is an annual custom that also marks the end of the Naghol season and the beginning of the yam harvest. Attendees brought yams and water taro as gifts for the boys to present to their aunties and uncles. South Pentecost is one of the few places in the country where traditional circumcision is still practised using bamboo.
NZ Herald
5 days ago
- NZ Herald
US farmers fear Trump immigration crackdown threatens food security
'There's a whole food chain involved,' from field workers to truck drivers to people working in packing houses and in sales. 'It's just, everybody's scared,' she said - even a multi-generational American like her. 'I'm nervous and I'm scared, because we're feeling like we're being attacked.' Other farmers contacted by AFP declined to speak to the media, saying they feared potential reprisals from the Trump administration. Worker shortages The agricultural sector has for years been trying to find permanent solutions for its perennial labour shortages, beyond issuing temporary permits for migrant workers. 'Some of the work we have is seasonal,' Tate says. 'But really, around here, we need workers that are year-round.' The number of government-certified positions for temporary agricultural workers practically tripled between 2014 and 2024, Department of Labour statistics show, underlining just how much American agriculture depends on foreign workers. On top of that, some 42% of farm workers are not authorised to work in the United States, according to a 2022 study by the Department of Agriculture. Those numbers line up with the struggles many farmers go through to find labour. They say US citizens are not interested in the physically demanding work, with its long days under extreme temperatures, rain and sun. Against that backdrop, Tate warns that removing people who are actually doing the work will cause immeasurable damage. Not only will it harm farms and ranches, which could take years to recover, it will also send food prices soaring, and even endanger US food security, possibly requiring the country to start importing provisions that may previously have been grown at home, she says. 'What we really need is some legislation that has the type of programme that we need, and that works for both the workers, that ensures their safety, it ensures a fair playing field when it comes to international trade, as well as domestic needs,' Tate said. 'Everyone loses' Some farmworkers agreed to speak to AFP on condition of not being fully identified, for fear of being arrested. 'All we do is work,' a worker named Silvia told AFP. She saw several friends arrested in a raid in Oxnard, about 16km west of Ventura. The 32-year-old Mexican lives in constant fear that she will be the next one picked up and, in the end, separated from her two US-born daughters. 'We're between a rock and a hard place. 'If we don't work, how will we pay our bills? 'And if we go out, we run the risk of running into them,' she said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. 'The way the government is working right now, everybody loses,' said Miguel, who has been working in the fields of southern California for three decades. The 54-year-old said that workers are losing jobs, farm owners are losing their labour, and as a result, the United States is losing its food. Miguel has worked in various agriculture sector jobs, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. All of them were 'very hard jobs,' he said. Now he feels like he has a target on his back. 'They should do a little research so they understand. The food they eat comes from the fields, right?' he said. 'So it would be good if they were more aware, and gave us an opportunity to contribute positively, and not send us into hiding.' - Agence France-Presse
1News
21-07-2025
- 1News
Online toxic masculinity is on the rise and it's not just damaging to women
Australian lecturer Kate Cantrell breaks down the contributing factors that make up the growing online ideologies of the manosphere. "Imagine her tenderly pressing her soft lips against yours," writes one incel on Reddit, before concluding, "you will never get to experience this because your skeleton is too small or the bones in your face are not the right shape". In his debut book, The Male Complaint, Simon Copland escorts his readers through the manosphere and into the minds of its inhabitants. He illustrates how boys and men who are "terrifyingly normal" become attracted to the manosphere's grim logic – and the cognitive distortions of anti-feminist influencers like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson. While mainstream debates often cite toxic masculinity as the cause of online misogyny, Copland, a writer and researcher at the Australian National University, shifts the blame to a deeper cultural malaise. It's caused, he argues, by the cruel optimism of the manosphere, the multiple social and economic crises of late-stage capitalism and a collective nihilistic misery in which complaint becomes futile and destruction "the only way out". Andrew Tate gestures, next to his brother Tristan, outside the Bucharest Tribunal in Bucharest, Romania in January, 2025. (Source: Associated Press) ADVERTISEMENT The manosphere is a network of loosely related blogs and forums devoted to "men's interests" – sites like The Rational Male, Game Global and the subreddits ForeverAlone, TheRedPill and MensRights. These online communities, separate in their specific beliefs, are united by their misogynistic ideas – and anti-women and anti-diversity sentiments. They're also united by the growing tendency of the men in these communities towards nihilistic violence: not only against others, but also against themselves. In The Male Complaint, Copland relays his dismay at discovering "a constant stream" of suicide notes on Reddit, including a subreddit, IncelGraveyard, which catalogues close to 100 suicide notes and letters posted by self-identified incels. "Since I was a kid I was fed up with 'Don't worry, it will get better', 'You will find someone' […] it's not even that I want a SO (significant other) anymore. Women are awful. People are awful. I have no friends." For Copland, the violence incels inflict on themselves is a form of passive nihilism. Incels "don't just express disgust and despair at the world, but in themselves – their looks, body, lives, personality, intelligence, and more". The morning's headlines in 90 seconds, Mama Hooch rapists appeal, Ukraine's new message to Russia, and Jason Momoa's plans here. (Source: Breakfast) ADVERTISEMENT Who's in the manosphere? The manosphere includes men's rights activists, pick-up artists and "Men Going Their Own Way" (male separatists who avoid contact with women altogether). And of course, incels: men who believe they are unable to find a romantic or sexual partner due to their perceived genetic inferiority and oppression. Incels also blame their problems on women's alleged hypergamy: the theory women seek out partners of higher social or economic status and therefore marry "up". Put another way, hypergamy, a concept rooted in evolutionary psychology, is the belief "women are hard-wired to be gold diggers". Rollo Tomassi, the so-called "godfather of the manosphere," complains on his blog that "women love opportunistically," while "men believe that love matters for the sake of it". According to Tomassi, the "cruel reality" of modern dating is that men are romantics who are "forced to be realists," while women are realists who use "romanticisms to effect their imperatives". Tomassi complains, "Our girlfriends, our wives, daughters and even our mothers are all incapable of idealised love […] By order of degrees, hypergamy will define who a woman loves and who she will not, depending upon her own opportunities and capacity to attract it". Ten years ago, these communities were largely regarded as fringe groups. Today, their ideology has infiltrated the mainstream. ADVERTISEMENT On Sunday, ABC TV's Compass reported that misogyny is on the rise in Australian classrooms, with female teachers sharing their experiences of sexual assault and harassment on school grounds – ranging from boys writing stories about gang raping their teachers to masturbating "over them" in the bathrooms. One student even pretended to stab his pregnant teacher as a "joke". (Source: A 2025 report published by UN Women shows 53% of women have experienced some form of technology-facilitated, gender-based violence. The dark side of digitalisation disproportionately affects young women aged between 18 and 24, LGBTQI+ women, women who are divorced or who live in the city, and women who participate in online gaming. 'Biologically bad'? Copland argues that simplified critiques of toxic masculinity minimise the problem of male violence. They fail to consider the context and history of gendered behaviour, assuming toxic traits are somehow innate and unique to men, rather than the product of social expectations and relations. This, in turn, promotes the idea that male violence derives from something "biologically bad" in the nature of masculinity itself. As Copland explains, "this is embedded in the term 'toxic', which makes it sound like men's bodies have become diseased or infected". Blaming toxic masculinity for digital misogyny also embraces a form of smug politics in which disaffected men are dismissed as degenerates who are fundamentally different to "us" (meaning the activist left and leftist elites). They are "cellar dwellers," "subhuman freaks," or "virgin losers" who need to be either enlightened or locked up. "We," on the other hand, are educated, progressive, superior. ADVERTISEMENT This kind of rhetoric, as Copland explains, is unhelpful. It does not create the conditions for changing the opinions, narratives and futures of manosphere men because it does not allow people to understand their complaints and where those concerns come from – even if we do not agree with them. Belittling attitudes and demeaning discourses alienate men who already feel socially isolated. This pushes those men further to the fringes – into the hands of "manfluencers" who claim to understand. 'Not having love becomes everything' The manosphere, Copland observes, is not "an aberration that is different and distinct from the rest of the world," nor is it a community that exists solely on the "dark corners of the web". Rather, the manosphere, as an echo chamber, enables and encourages what Copland calls "the male complaint": a sense of collective pain or "injury" so intrinsic to the group's identity, it cannot be redressed. As injured subjects who believe their problems are caused through no fault of their own, manosphere men cannot mend the "wound" they believe society has inflicted upon them. Their "marginalisation" and injured status are the lens through which they view themselves and the world. In the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) community, for example, some men talk about the movement as a hospital where "physicians of the male soul" use different "methods of healing" to treat the "illness of gynocentric-induced disease weighing them down". These methods include "self-improvement" strategies that are designed to build men's power and wealth: purchasing gym equipment, investing in the stock market, even abstaining from pornography and sex. ADVERTISEMENT Others in the MGTOW community are vocally anti-victim, "You can live an extraordinary life," one man says to another, "but you're wasting your time on complaints and negativity". Even when they disagree, though, manosphere men frame women and feminism as the enemy. In this way, the machinery of the manosphere capitalises on men's discontent, reflects that messaging back to them and displaces their anger and hurt onto an easy scapegoat. As Copland observes, it is easier for men to blame women for their unhappiness than it is to blame the complex systems of capitalism, "if love and sex is everything, then not having love becomes everything as well". Blackpilled incels, lookism and anonymity This preoccupation with intimacy is central to the incel community. It is exemplified by the various artefacts Copland embeds in his book – memes and posts from the manosphere itself. Blackpilled incels are a subgroup of incels who believe their access to romantic and sexual relationships is doomed because of "lookism", the belief women choose sexual partners based solely on their physical features. Blackpilled ideology attributes romantic failure to genetically unalterable aspects of the human body, such as one's height or skull shape. Some blackpilled incels, who call themselves wristcels, even blame their lack of sexual success on the width of their wrists. ADVERTISEMENT This logic is countered by research that demonstrates men, in fact, show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness than women, with women tending to prioritise education level and earning potential. (Source: The manosphere, however, amplifies this type of thinking and filters out information that challenges these ideas and opinions, increasing group polarisation. Despite its promise of solidarity, the manosphere isolates boys and men, and ultimately distances them from their wider community. This segregation results in a deep sense of alienation – these boys and men become stuck in a perpetual cycle of ideological reinforcement. The manosphere thrives on anonymity, writes Copland, which only reinforces the idea it is not designed to foster deep relationships or connections. No silver bullets The sense of community the manosphere claims to offer is a sham; its alienating structures do not offer boys and men genuine belonging and connection, or real solutions to their problems. "From one day to the next, the ability to communicate depends on the whims of hidden engineers," writes media studies professor Mark Andrejevic of online networks more broadly. The manosphere, like other virtual constructs, is subject to manipulation by those who control the infrastructure and the rules of engagement. ADVERTISEMENT More than this, the manosphere does not provide an alternative to complaint. When complaint is the only option, writes Copland, nihilism and violence are the inevitable result. "When nothing matters, there are no consequences to anything, including violence […] Manosphere men do not look to convince others, but rather seek their destruction. Destruction is the outlet they find to deal with their complaint." That's what makes the manosphere so dangerous. 'Popular boys must be punished' In 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, a British-American college student, embarked on an hours-long stabbing and shooting spree in the university town of Isla Vista, California, killing six and injuring 14. On the morning of May 23 – the "Day of Retribution" – Rodger emailed a 140-page "manifesto" to his family, friends and therapists. He also uploaded several YouTube videos in which he lamented his inability to find a girlfriend, the "hedonistic pleasures" of his peers and his painful existence of "loneliness, rejection, and unfilled desires". In his memoir-manifesto, Rodger – the supposed "patron saint of inceldom" – explains the motive for his violence. "I had nothing left to live for but revenge. Women must be punished for their crimes of rejecting such a magnificent gentleman as myself. All of those popular boys must be punished for enjoying heavenly lives and having sex with all the girls while I had to suffer in lonely virginity". Four years later, in April 2018, Alek Minassian, a self-described incel, drove a rented van onto a busy sidewalk in Toronto, killing 11 (nine of them women) and injuring many more. On Facebook, Minassian explained that his actions were part of the "incel rebellion" led by the "Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger". Later, Minassian told police, "I feel like I accomplished my mission". ADVERTISEMENT Rodger, too, ended his final YouTube video with a similar message, "If I can't have you girls, I will destroy you". In his book, Copland even draws a parallel between the Westfield Bondi Junction attack and the explanation for attacker Joel Cauchi's violence, put forward by his father just two days after the attack. "To you, he is a monster. To me, he was a very sick boy […] he wanted a girlfriend and he's got no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain". In fact, Cauchi suffered from treatment-resistant schizophrenia and had been unmedicated at the time of the attack, "after almost two decades of treatment, Cauchi had no regular psychiatrist, was not on any medications to treat his schizophrenia and had no family living nearby". The multifaceted causes of Cauchi's crime are more complex than misogynistic violence. Indeed, the pieces of the manosphere puzzle, when put together, reveal a sobering image of the male complaint. However, they demonstrate misogyny is bad for everyone – not just women and girls. As Copland concludes, "The manosphere promises men that it can make their lives better […] But it really cannot deliver. The promises it offers are not real, and in many cases make things worse […] This is how cruel optimism works, always offering, but never delivering". 'It's the combinations' Recent evidence suggests there is no single route to radicalisation, and no single cause of violent extremism. Rather, complex interactions between push, pull, and personal factors are the root causes of male violence. ADVERTISEMENT The Netflix sensation Adolescence – the harrowing story of a 13-year-old boy who is arrested and charged with murder – is powered by a single question: why did Jamie kill Katie? In attempting to answer this question, critics and fans have offered a range of explanations: bullying, low self-esteem, emotional dysregulation, obsession with love and sex, deprivation of love and sex, the manosphere. The real answer is less obvious and infinitely more complex. It can be found in a simple line of dialogue, spoken at the end of the series by Jamie's sister. "It's the combinations," Lisa says. "Combinations are everything." In this moment, Lisa is justifying her outfit to her parents as they await Jamie's trial. But subtextually, her statement doubles as the most likely explanation for his actions. And it's the closest explanation for why some boys and men commit extreme acts of violence: the combinations. Author: Kate Cantrell, Senior Lecturer – Writing, Editing, and Publishing, University of Southern Queensland This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.
