Attack on Another Vanuatu Journalist

There has been another attack on another Vanuatu journalist, also a staff of the country's Daily Post.

According to the report by Vanuatu Daily Post, the newspaper has lodged the second official complaint to the police on Monday morning immediately after the attack on one of its freelance reporters, Esther Tinning.

Ms. Tinning was attacked by a young man, Collen Litch, about whom the newspaper had run a story. Litch had complained that he did not like the story being written about him even though the story was a positive one about his growing skills as a builder.

'His demands for a rectification sounded strange to the editor who said in his career this was the first case ever of its kind where someone did not like being portrayed in a positive light'.

'Daily Post was not aware of his construction project but his own sister who works at Habitat had approached our reporter and asked her to write the story and who provided the details of the project and took the pictures the newspaper used in the story
According to the report, Litch's sister saw nothing wrong with providing the reporter the information 'because she was understood to have secured funding for the project and saw it as a chance to use her brother's skills to help him and other school leavers do something positive to help the community'.

Litch had waited for Ms. Tinning on Monday morning as she was walking her children to catch the bus to school and he 'was reported to have approached her from behind and slapped and punched her head and face and kicked her in the back'.
Ms. Tinning 'ran into a Correctional Services Officer's home to avoid any further assault'.

According to the Daily Post, it will not 'tolerate any further attacks on its staff and urges the police to investigate the case as soon as possible and have the attacker arrested'.

'He has threatened to attack our reporter again and again each time his story appears in the media'.

Ms. Tinning is the second member of staff to be attacked after the newspaper's publisher, Marc Neil-Jones, was attacked in his office by members of the Correctional Service two weeks ago.