Dispatches Archives
From July 2005 to late 2008, I was the Fiji correspondent for Hawaii-based Pacific Magazine tasked with keeping a finger on the national pulse for both the print edition and the magazine’s website. Sadly, Pacific Magazine is no longer publishing.
However, I have decided to repost some of the stories I filed for Pacific Magazine during those years, from the controversial legislation proposed by the Laisenia Qarase government to the 2006 election that brought him back into power, the threats against the Qarase’s government by army chief Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, the build-up to the December 2006 coup and its aftermath.
[Some posts have been edited from the original filings to correct mistakes or to add context and further explanatory material.]
Finding forgiveness in Fiji
By RICARDO MORRIS
[First published in the August 2005 edition of Pacific Magazine]
It’s perhaps a measure of Fiji’s precarious politics that no other piece of proposed legislation has provoked as much division, discord and anger – the exact opposite of what the Promotion of Reconciliation, Tolerance and Unity Bill is meant to achieve.
Five years after jailed traitor George Speight launched a bloody, drawn-out coup attempt that removed Fiji’s first ethnic Indian prime minister, the nation still struggles with how to achieve “reconciliation” – and on whose terms.
The bill Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase’s administration will push through parliament next month proposes, among other things, a commission with powers to recommend amnesties for those who confess to involvement in the 2000 crisis. The government line is that amnesties-for-confessions will enable the ghosts of Fiji’s coup past to be banished.
Attorney-General Qoriniasi Bale tells Pacific Magazine the government truly believes in what it’s doing.
“There are probably other ways to reconciliation but this is the way this government believes national reconciliation can be achieved,” says Bale.
“This is about unity – promoting unity. And the victims’ and the wrongdoers’ grievances and problems are only factored in because they will facilitate that process of unity.
“But the bill, the government’s detractors say, rather than being a genuine attempt at reconciliation is a stunt with a general election less than a year away. Provisions for amnesty and the redefining of some coup crimes as “politically-motivated” have many worried that it will undermine the rule of law.
Bale replies that, if anything, the fate of the government depends on the bill’s success: “If the bill goes down, the government goes down with it.”
Some say the government is trying to force forgiveness by pardoning those responsible for acts of terrorism while taking away the rights of victims to seek legal redress for their suffering.
Since Qarase unveiled the bill in May, there has been a national outcry and a firestorm of opinion that has engulfed daily life here ever since.
In the vanguard of the attack on the government is the opposition Fiji Labour Party (FLP), whose leader Mahendra Chaudhry was ousted by Speight. Labour members of parliament walked out of the lower house when the bill was first introduced and boycotted all parliamentary sector meetings examining the bill, saying they “did not want to legitimize the process”.
In a scathing open letter to Qarase published in a newspaper, Chaudhry labelled the bill “abhorrent” saying it was an invitation for more upheavals.
“Let there be no mistake. The bill can never create the basis for restorative justice,” Chaudhry wrote.
“It will only open the floodgates to more acts of terrorism. It will not build harmony but will sow the seeds of greater distrust and instability. It will not heal the wounds of 2000, but deepen them.”
Ema Tagicakibau of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre says the bill draws from a religious justification for amnesty, through forgiveness.
“Forgiveness is a personal, spiritual choice, which can never be forced upon everyone. It is the flip side of repentance when the offender has expressed remorse for wrongdoing,” she wrote in an opinion piece.
“This bill condones and justifies the illegal acts of May 2000 by calling for amnesty for perpetrators, yet expects victims to forgive. Where is the remorse in this?”
The most controversial section of the bill is that which allows amnesty for those who confess to a judicial commission about their coup crimes.
President of the Fiji Law Society Graham Leung tells Pacific Magazine the amnesty provision should be removed if the bill is to get the support of the legal fraternity.
“They are a recipe for further instability,” he says. “If the bill is legislated, it has the capacity to turn the rule of law on its head.”
Bale maintains the government is “listening very closely to the various voices” and that a sector committee is scrutinising the bill. This committee has asked for more time to complete its work, and Bale says they may finish in September after which the final bill will be tabled in parliament.
“Changes,” says Bale, “will be made if they are considered necessary and justified.” And whether those changes will include redrafting or removing the provisions for amnesty will be determined at the end of hearings.
Dr Ropate Qalo, a member of the National Council of Reconciliation and renowned academic is matter-of-fact about what he sees are the implications of the bill. He says the bill is “unnecessary” and would be a “curse” on ethnic Fijians. Its impact, he says, would be far greater than the coups.
Qalo also rejects the government notion that when it becomes law, the bill should put an end to Fiji’s coup culture. “I think that’s a monstrous nonsense,” says Qalo.
He says the only way for ethnic Fijians to maintain and consolidate political power is if they simply turn up to vote. Indigenous attitudes to voting and Fiji’s preferential polling system, he says, will mean that as long as they do not turn up in force to vote, they will never secure a numerical majority.
Jale Baba, national director of the ruling Sososoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT) party, says only a guarantee of amnesty can draw out the deeper truths about 2000.
“Amnesty is vital for several good reasons … [including] the promise that it will allow the people of Fiji to get to hear and come to terms [with] the truth of . May 2000 crisis,” says Baba, whose brother Dr Tupeni Baba was also held hostage as Chaudhry’s deputy for 56 days.
The Fiji Human Rights Commission officially indicated it “may have no option” but to sue the government to force a redraft because some sections of it were unconstitutional and breached international law.
Most people would agree much rests this month on the success or failure of this bill. Leung says the episode “will tell us something about our ability as a nation to confront the ghosts of the past.”
“It will also determine whether we fall in the category of civilised nations who respect the law or whether we will end up being a pariah in the international community.”
Captive dolphin plan foiled
By RICARDO MORRIS
[First published in the September 2005 edition of Pacific Magazine]
Away from the glare of media attention, international animal-rights activists achieved a quite victory in Fiji in July, where secretive plans were reportedly being hatched to set up a captive dolphin facility.
But a letter-writing campaign brought assurances from authorities that no approvals would be given for such programs.
The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) had written to the Director of Environment, Epeli Nasome in June alerting the department to a possible application from a controversial “dolphin-catching” consortium to establish a dolphin tourist attraction at an island resort.
WSPA Director General Peter Davies wrote that Fiji risked a scandal similar to that in the Solomon Islands where the same consortium was involved in the disastrous transfer of 30 live dolphins to Mexico in July 2003.
The consortium has been at the center of several scandals surrounding the capture, accidental killing and illegal exportation of dolphins in the Solomons in recent years, WSPA says.
The letter, which was also sent to the country’s foreign investment approvals body, the Fiji Trades and Investment Bureau (FTIB), must have worked.
In July WSPA released a statement saying their protests had been successful and that Fiji officials had replied assuring them “stringent measures” would be implemented to “curb such issues in future.”
WSPA quoted the Fiji officials as saying: “Now that you have brought up this issue we will make sure that stringent measures are undertaken to curb such issues in future.”
FTIB Chief Executive Officer Lailun Khan, in response to questions from Pacific Magazine, confirms receiving a letter from WSPA against the setting up of a captive dolphin program. However, Khan says no such proposal has been received yet by the bureau.
WSPA said the protest was prompted by a tip-off from the Fiji Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), a member society.
SPCA President Deepak Rathod tells Pacific Magazine the details of the proposed program remain difficult to confirm because of the ultra-secrecy surrounding it.
No one is quite certain which resort wanted approval from the government, but all reports agree it could be either of two resorts – one in the western division town of Nadi and the other close to the second city of Lautoka.
Rathod said SPCA members had been trying to confirm exactly which one it was.
“Not everybody is 100 per cent sure who is behind it,” Rathod says.
The secrecy extended to Fiji’s media which was embroiled in the feverish debate in July over a controversial amnesty bill and paid no attention to the international statements alerting the press about the proposed plans.
The resort that was pushing the plans has remained silent.
Rediscovering a fading cultural memory
By RICARDO MORRIS
[First published in the September 2005 edition of Pacific Magazine]
When anthropologist Guido Pigliasco and teachers of a tiny village school on Beqa Island – home to Fiji’s famous firewalkers – asked pupils at the end of 2004 to identify what they saw as important elements of their culture, they were shocked.
“The teachers invited the pupils to use the Christmas break to collect stories inside their households, writing them, or drawing them, but when the kids returned to school the pages of their books were alarmingly empty,” says Pigliasco of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
Pigliasco had been researching “cultural property and commodification of culture” for a doctorate but the startling discovery prompted him to undertake an urgent “remapping” and rediscovery of the cultural history of Beqa, a tiny island off the coast of Viti Levu about 60 kilometers southwest of the capital Suva.
The project ran alongside his main research, which is on-going, into the firewalking rituals of the island.
That research had pointed to the possibility the ritual was probably not performed for cannibal feasts but as thanksgiving for a harvest. The ritual has also been altered to suit tourist-focused ceremonies: instead of the hot stones being inside a pit, some “fake firewalkers” who are not of the originally gifted tribes lay the stones on top of the ground.
But while this discovery was astonishing enough, Pigliasco decided some immediate action was needed to rescue the island’s apparently diminishing cultural memory as demonstrated by the pupils of Sawau District School.
The task was to create a visual and oral history of the Sawau tribe – as part of a wider cultural conservation effort – that would allow both current and future generations to “add and secure” information about the tribe
“From oral histories and historical accounts emerging from my interviews in Beqa, I realized that indigenous knowledge and culture is scattered in the minds of many members of a community, but rarely collated in the form of a map, hence quite difficult to visualize.”
Pigliasco along with the help of Ratu Felix Colatanavanua, a documentary producer who had returned after 15 years of living abroad, and his mother Bulou Ro Mereani together with the people of the Sawau tribe, created a “cultural map” that linked stories, images and legends with locations on the island, something that had never been done before.
To accomplish what they dubbed the “Sawau Project”, they settled on producing an interactive DVD, the ubiquitous multi-media format, to record oral histories and recollections.
This way, the project will remain open-ended and can be added to, says Guido. He reports that the first edition of the Sawau Project received rave reviews on its first screening in Beqa in late July.
The DVD will be used as an educational tool and at national and regional level workshops.
Dateline Dispatch 
Thank you for sharing your info. I truly appreciate your efforts and
I will be waiting for your next post thanks once again.
Heeya i am for the first time here. I came across this board and I in
finding It really helpful & it helped me out much.
I hope to present something back and help others such as you helped
me.
You could certainly see your skills in the article you
write. The arena hopes for even more passionate writers like you who are not afraid to mention how they believe.
All the time follow your heart.
Thanks for your marvelous posting! I certainly enjoyed reading it,
you can be a great author.I will always bookmark your blog and will eventually come back in the foreseeable future.
I want to encourage that you continue your great work, have a nice holiday weekend!
It’s remarkable designed for me to have a website, which is useful for my
experience. thanks admin
Fastidious replies in return of this matter with genuine arguments and explaining
everything regarding that.
I blog frequently and I seriously thank you for your information. This great article
has truly peaked my interest. I am going to book mark your website
and keep checking for new details about once per week.
I opted in for your RSS feed as well.
I am in fact happy to glance at this webpage posts
which includes tons of helpful facts, thanks for providing these
information.
It’s very trouble-free to find out any matter on web as compared to
books, as I found this paragraph at this site.
I am no longer positive where you’re getting your information, but good topic.
I must spend some time finding out much more or understanding more.
Thanks for wonderful info I used to be in search of this info for my mission.
Thanks for ones marvelous posting! I truly enjoyed reading
it, you’re a great author.I will be sure to bookmark your blog and definitely will come
back someday. I want to encourage that you continue your great work, have a
nice morning!
Thanks in support of sharing such a good thinking, post is pleasant,
thats why i have read it fully
Hi, after reading this amazing article i
am also happy to share my experience here with colleagues.
When used correctly, by someone with maturity, they can help to thin the veil between us and Spirit,
to connect to what many call God. But the sorry fact is
that there is so much more to be said about this.
Kim began dating Miles Austin in July 2010 but
the pair ended up things for good in September after just a few months together.
I have been exploring for a little bit for any high-quality articles or blog posts in this kind of space .
Exploring in Yahoo I finally stumbled upon this site. Reading this info So i’m satisfied to show that I have
a very good uncanny feeling I found out exactly what I needed.
I so much indisputably will make certain to do not overlook this site and give it a glance on a continuing basis.
The deal is: most men just want to marry someone who is nice to them.
Now after the transition as a normal actress, has been given some minor roles and is seriously trying to become
a good actress. What is it that makes these young girls aspire more to porn stardom
rather than contributing value to their communities as doctors, entrepreneurs or business women.