FEATURE: Muffled speech

If Fiji is to return to democratic rule by 2014, as promised by the coup-installed military government, there was little indication of it in 2011.

The year saw possibly the strongest and most wide-ranging crackdown on civil society ever seen in the coup-prone nation.

Many aspects of society were affected, including the media - which is now completely censored.

Bruce Hill

Last Updated: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:55:00 +1100

Political instability has become all too familiar in Fiji, which suffered its first military coup in 1987, led by then Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka. After a slow process of returning to democratic rule, there was a second coup in 2000, led by businessman George Speight.

Five years ago came the latest coup, led by Fiji military commander Frank Bainimarama, who made his attitude towards opposition very clear when he declared his forces "will suppress very quickly any uprising against us" and urged his fellow citizens to concentrate on their daily lives.

The first task of any government that does not rest on the consent of the governed is to secure control of information.

To that end, Fiji's Ministry of Information has official censors placed in all newsrooms to ensure media outlets comply with the government's rules.

The ministry's acting deputy permanent secretary, Setaita Natai, says there is not much overt censorship of the media, and her staff have actually been able to help journalists in Fiji do a better job.

Ms Natai quotes ministers as saying media organisations "need not be pro-government, but to be pro-Fiji." Front-page stories have gone from crime to "issues that matter to Fiji", she says.

Chafing

But Stanley Simpson, news director of Fiji Broadcasting, says most journalists are chafing under the public emergency regulations, and want censorship to end as soon as possible.

"This industry is not designed for censorship," he says. "The government knows that we would like to see censorship removed."

The man who has the job of reviewing the functioning of Fiji's media says he hopes military censors can eventually be removed from the country's newsrooms. But Professor Subramani, head of the Media Industry Development Authority, says he cannot say when that might happen.

Professor Subramani says Fiji needs a media which is less focused on conflict.

"News is about conflict, but it's also about other things as well," he says.

Concentrating on communal conflict "can be detrimental to social cohesion" in what is a "very fragile democracy, a very fragile multi-racial society."

There was also an accusation this year that the general drift towards greater control of people's lives even extends to the village level.

Peter Waqavonovono, president of the Fiji Young People's Concerned Network, says the government recently abandoned the idea of introducing laws affecting the way people live in rural settlements, where many indigenous Fijians live.

Hairstyle

But he says some village authorities have become so concerned at the influence of western culture, especially on women and young people, that they are imposing their own regulations, which he says is an attempt to curtail people's personal freedom.

"Most of the village regulations are attempts to control women - how they behave and how they look," says Mr Waqavonovono. Traditional standards of hairstyle and dress are being made mandatory. Schoolchildren are even being issued rules to do their homework at a certain time.

However, the permanent secretary of Fiji's Ministry of i-Taukei Affairs, Savenaca Kaunisela, says: "It's really not laws. I term it as observance of traditional customs and culture.

"There is no penalty, there is no force used and it is not written."

Holding public meetings is tightly restricted by Fiji's Public Emergency Regulations, with permits required for any gathering.

But some non-government organisations have described application of those laws as arbitrary and confusing.

Earlier this year, police closed an internal planning meeting of the Fiji Womens Rights Movement at a resort in Pacific Harbour

The Fiji Womens Rights Movement itself had no comment about what happened, but Shamima Ali, coordinator of the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre, said the police action shows the ridiculous lengths some security personnel go to in applying the regulations.

"Some people use the powers that they have . . . in any way they wish to," she says.

Interfered

Perhaps the most serious allegation about the interim government this year was that it had interfered with the rule of law.

A former senior staffer with the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption claimed people had been prosecuted for political reasons.

Madhawa Tenakoon, a Sri Lankan lawyer who was manager: legal for FICAC, was one of three prosecutors dismissed from their jobs in Fiji.

He says that was because they objected to what they saw as political interference in the legal system.

When the issues were raised, he alleged, they were met by: "This is what the PM wants; this is what the AG (Attorney-General) wants".

Mr Tenakoon specifically mentioned the case against human rights activist and lawyer Imrana Jalan.

She was charged by the Independent Commission Against Corruption over not having a licence for her fried chicken restaurant - a charge which even if she was found guilty would only result in a $20 fine.

Mr Tenakoon says that charge was brought for political rather than legal reasons. Imrana Jalal backs the claim that she had been targeted by the interim government because of her politics.

"It makes me realise that the whole (idea) of the coup in Fiji happening in order to eradicate corruption and to alleviate the poverty of the people is a complete illusion," she says.

Animosities

"It was never about that. It was about personal animosities, personal victimisation and so on."

Fiji's Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, strongly denied claims about political interference in the legal system.

The top law officer said Mr Tenakoon was "aggrieved party", having been "dismissed only recently for lack of performance."

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said: "The bottom line is that the justice system works in Fiji, the judiciary is independent."

But a senior figure in Fiji's legal fraternity said the claims that people have been prosecuted for political rather than legal reasons are correct, yet lawyers are too afraid speak about it.

That person - who asked to be unidentified and whose voice was electronically disguised at their request when they spoke to Radio Australia - said the interim government did not need to actually win cases against its opponents. The legal process itself was the punishment.

There was a significant crackdown on Fiji's influential Methodist Church at the end of August, with the last-minute cancellation of its annual conference.

The interim government demanded that three of the church's top leaders not be permitted to speak at the gathering, but that order was refused,

Bruce Mullen, assistant director of church solidarity in the Pacific for the Uniting Church in Australia, was in Suva for the meeting and says the conditions imposed on the Methodist Church by the military authorities were crippling.

All committees, all meetings - including those attended overseas - were to be cancelled, Mr Mullen said. He said the Fiji church had worked very hard to be conciliatory to the authorities. But governments were not entitled to tell a church who its leaders would be.

Although the Methodist Church as an institution has kept a low profile since that incident, one of its most senior figures, former church president and army chaplain, Reverend Josateki Koroi, issued a letter urging the country's soldiers not to obey the military government.

Obliged

Reverend Koroi said soldiers are obliged to obey a legal government, but he did not believe the present one fitted that description.

A contradictory stand came from Nik Naidu, from the New Zealand-based Coalition for Democracy in Fiji, who said Mr Koroi's appeal, while personally brave, was hypocritical given what he alleged was the Methodist Church's support for previous coups that served its interests.

Along with the Methodist Church and the legal profession, there were claims the academic world was also targeted for pressure by the Fiji interim government.

Former University of the South Pacific economist Professor Wadan Narsey says he was forced to leave his post because of pressure from the military government on the university administration.

Towards the end of the year, it was the turn of the trade union movement to attract the military government's attention.

An Essential Industries Decree was drawn up that would severely curtail the rights of unions to organise.

Despite the reluctance of interim Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum to discuss a leaked copy of the law, the essential industries decree did exist, and trade unionists were angry about it.

Prominent leaders like the Fiji Trades Union Congress President, Daniel Urai, and secretary, Felix Anthony, travelled overseas several times to persuade their fellow unionists to start an international campaign against the Essential Industries Decree.

As part of that campaign, the encouraged their overseas compatriots, mainly in Australia and New Zealand, to launch a program aimed at persuading tourists not to visit Fiji or buy garments manufactured there.

Sedition charge

Mr Urai was eventually charged with sedition, which he says he found difficult to take seriously as he had stuck to the law.

Even a former Fiji cabinet minister claimed he had been forced to flee the country. Kenneth Zinck is applying for a protection visa to stay in Australia.

Mr Zinck, a trade unionist and former Minister of Labour in the deposed government of former prime minister Laisenia Qarase, claims he managed to escape from soldiers who were trying to apprehend him.

He says he realised he had to get out of Fiji when he managed to evade attempts by the military to detain him.

"I was taken up to the camp three times and tortured as well," he said.

Those claims have been met with bafflement by the Fiji interim government. Permanent secretary of information, Sharon Smith-Johns, insists that no one was ever after Mr Zinck, and no one in the government can understand why he left Fiji.

The Bainimarama government has promised elections will be held in 2014, after previously reneging on a promise to hold them earlier.

But many of the elements of Fiji society needed for a democratic system to function have been affected by the interim government's apparent crackdown this year.

The media, the legal system, the church, academia and non-government organisations might perhaps question if simply holding an election is enough to make Fiji once again a democratic society.