Human Rights in Fiji

[Fiji Truth]

Fiji, officially the Republic of the Fiji Islands, is an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean east of Vanuatu, west of Tonga and south of Tuvalu. The country occupies an archipelago of about 322 islands, of which 106 are permanently inhabited, and 522 islets. The two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, account for 87% of the population.

Politics and Law

Politics of Fiji normally take place in the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Fiji is the head of government, the President the head of state, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Parliament of Fiji. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.

Since independence there have been four coups in Fiji, two in 1987, one in 2000 and one in late 2006. The military has been either ruling directly, or heavily influencing governments since 1987.

See also:

2006 Fijian coup d'état... The Fijian coup d'état of December 2006

Government, Politics, Law... Information about government, politics, and law in Fiji

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Searching for the Truth, the real authentic Fiji Truth?

A letter to the President in Fiji as written by a Human Rights Watch group & blogged by a Fijian veteran blogger,
"Human Rights Watch letter to Josefa Iloilo
May 6, 2009

May 5, 2009

President of the Republic of the Fiji Islands
H.E. Ratu Josefa Iloilovatu Uluivuda, CF, MBE, KStJ, MSD, JP
Fiji Islands

Dear President Ratu Iloilo,

In February 2007, Human Rights Watch wrote to you detailing a number of grave human rights violations in Fiji stemming from the December 2006 military coup, including one death in military custody, arbitrary detentions of at least two dozen people, and the provision of immunity for military personnel involved in the coup. To date we have yet to receive a response.
We write again now to communicate urgent concerns regarding the recent developments in Fiji following the Court of Appeal decision in Qarase v. Bainimarama on April 9, 2009, and your subsequent announcement, with the backing of the army, “I hereby confirm I have abrogated the 1997 constitution and appointed myself as head of state in the new order.” Over the past three weeks, the Fiji government has engaged in serious violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly, among others, and abolished any pretence of an independent judiciary. These actions, in which the President has given himself near absolute powers, have made Fiji a dictatorship.

On April 9, 2009, the Fiji Court of Appeal declared the coup of December 5, 2006, unlawful and noted that it would be advisable for the President to appoint a distinguished person independent of the parties to the litigation as caretaker Prime Minister. That caretaker Prime Minister was to advise the dissolution of the Parliament and direct the issuance of writs for an election. The following day, you abrogated the Constitution, appointed yourself head of state, revoked the appointment of all judicial officers, and reappointed military commander Commodore Bainimarama as interim Prime Minister. Despite your promise, in your Address to the Nation at this time, that basic rights would be protected under the new legal order, the interim government and security forces have committed serious human rights violations.

Rule of law and the independence of the judiciary

Recent presidential actions have failed to uphold the rule of law and encroached on the independence of the judiciary. On April 10, 2009, you removed all judicial officers from office. On April 16, you issued the Administration of Justice Decree, which removes the President of the Law Society from the Judicial Services Commission and terminates all pending cases that challenge the actions of the interim administration since the coup. On April 20, you appointed, under this Decree, Ajmal Gulab Khan as Chief Magistrate and Faizal Koya as magistrate, together with seven others who were sitting magistrates prior to the abrogation. Ana Rokomokoti, the former military lawyer who was appointed a magistrate by the interim administration in May 2007, was appointed Chief Registrar on April 15 by the Public Service Commission, reconstituted under the State Services Decree 2009. Five magistrates, Amani Rokotinaviti, Josaia Waqavolavola, Vani Ravono, Laisa Laveti, and former Chief Magistrate Naomi Matanitobua, were not reappointed. All other judicial offices remain vacant. Since their removal, judges have been closely monitored by police and military officers and have been refused access to the court buildings.

Read more...

Fiji Coup 2006: Human Rights Abuse Escalate in Fiji

A Fijian blogger's view on current Fiji Types of governance:

8/26/2009 3:00 PM71 ViewsFrankeinstein PhilosophyFEUDALISM:
You have two cows. The lord of the manor takes some of the milk. And all the cream.
PURE SOCIALISM:
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM:
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM:
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM:
You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM:
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

DICTATORSHIP:
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

MILITARISM:
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY:
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate". The cows are set free.

INDIAN DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. You worship them.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. You feed them sheep brains and they go mad. The government gives you compensation for your diseased cows, compensation for your lost income, a grant not to use your fields for anything else. And tells the public not to worry.

BUREAUCRACY:
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

ANARCHY:
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.

CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You lay one off, force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when it drops dead.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute an debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows.
The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Isands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company.
The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the Feng Shui is bad.

ENVIRONMENTALISM:
You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

TOTALITARIANISM:
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:
You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is an outdated symbol of your decadent, warmongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender. They get married and adopt a calf.

COUNTER CULTURE:
Wow, dude, there's like ... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

SURREALISM:
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

FIJI FRANKEINSTEINISM:

Me Myself and I. What Cows? I'm a Pig.
realfijinews's Xanga Site

Will Justice Nazhat Shameem uphold Lord Atkin’s spirit in Fiji?

Some of the great international legal minds that I have been in touch with since the Fiji Court of Appeal judgment and the subsequent trampling of the judiciary are feverishly watching the next move of one particular judge – Nazhat Shameem, who whisperers claim is being enticed to return to the Bench as President of the Fiji Court of Appeal by the illegal Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum.
But will she accept the bait or bark back at the illegality taking place around her? Given her deep-seated claim to constitutionalism and the rule of law in the country, if I were to bet my last nickel and dime, it would be that she will bark back, and in the process become a beacon and icon of judicial activism against dictatorship in Fiji – the female incarnate of the radical barrister John Cooke, who risked his own life to make tyranny a crime. He was the fearless barrister who sent Charles 1 to the Scaffold.
Detractors will remind me of my own scoop of the minutes of the Judicial Services Commission, which Justice Shameem had chaired, and which saw the appointment of Anthony Gates as acting Chief Justice. I would argue that Justice Shameem’s actions, although controversial at the time, had paved the way for the re-constitution of the judiciary, and had opened the avenue to Laisenia Qarase’s legal team to take their case to the Fiji High Court and subsequently to the Fiji Court of Appeal, which later ruled that the 2006 coup was illegal.
What took place after the ruling (the abrogation of the Constitution and the dismissal of the Judiciary) provided the litmus test for the judges to demonstrate whether they were for or against illegality in Fiji. Gates, Pathik, Byrne and others have now bared their fangs and are wearing the sulu of judicial traitors.
Many readers will recall my legal piece in the Fiji Sun on judges in revolutionary situations, where I had supported the actions of the judges who continued to sit on the Bench after the 2006 coup. Well, I had supported them because the 1997 Constitution was still intact and the judiciary had been left alone to police the rule of law and administer justice in Fiji. That position of mine no longer stands, for what took place after the Fiji Court of Appeal ruling is nothing but judicial thuggery.
And, it is now left to a few judges, to make one last stand against the illegal regime and against their traitorous fellow brother and sister judges who have returned to the Bench! The whole legal world is waiting and watching for Justice Shameem’s next move – will she follow in the path of the judicial traitor Gates or the brave Lord Atkin?
When the British House of Lords decided in 1942 that the Home Secretary had the right to detain refugees from Nazi Germany under Regulation 18B of the Defence (General) Regulations, despite the fact that no evidence whatsoever had been produced against them, Lord Atkin dissented vigorously. He accused his fellow judges of being “more executive minded than the executive”: “In this country, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which…we are now fighting, that the judges are no respecters of persons and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachment on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law. In this case I have listened to arguments which might have been addressed acceptable to the Court of King’s Bench in the time of Charles 1.”
We will know very soon – either Justice Shameem will become a judicial traitor or judicial “Atkinian” – history is on her side – Jai Ram Reddy resigned as president of the Fiji Court of Appeal to become a judge of the International Criminal Court – where most of the “illegals” in Fiji will end up in the end – including Justice Shameem’s fellow judges.
She is no longer facing a revolutionary situation or the doctrine of necessity – “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants”. In the words of Fieldsend A.J. A (Madzimbamuto v Lardener-Burke,1966), “A Court which derives its existence from a written constitution cannot give effect to anything which is not law when judged by that constitution”.
Will she violate her own judgement and ringing warning to coupists and traitors when she jailed them following George Speight’s 2000 coup? Justice Shameem, I am sure, is aware that her fellow judges recently took oath, not to uphold the 1997 Constitution (for how can they when it no longer exists), but to uphold treasonous decrees and the edict of President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, whose own actions following the 2006 coup had been ruled illegal by the now defunct Fiji Court of Appeal?
The international legal community is feverishly waiting and watching Justice Nazhat Shameem’s next course of action! If she dares to speak out against judicial tyranny in Fiji, who knows she will be served with a tyrannicide brief – to sit on the International Criminal Court, who continue to follow the judicial tradition she had set when she jailed the 2000 treasonous coupists.
Will she make history or just become part of the stained and scarred Fiji judiciary which has become a laughing stock in international legal circles?
Her barking back at the illegal Attorney- General Khaiyum will send a strong message to her fellow judges that she will not traitorously or maliciously conspire to sanction illegality in Fiji – it could deter the present and future tyrants from maltreating their own people.
There is no necessity which demands that she must return through the judicial gates and join the traitorous Chief Justice Anthony Gates to swear an illegal oath to implement illegal decrees.

posted by VICTOR LAL

[luveiviti]

How does one tease out strong opinions [for & against] re 1987, 2000, 2006 & mini coup 2009?
It is evident Fiji is faced & embedded in a dangerous 'coup cycle' that must be broken. Fiji is on the verge of hopelessness.

How can its people break this cycle? Can the people dismantle Fiji's military? Can the people de-politicise Fiji's military? What model of social change can suit this coup-torn land?.

[luveiviti]

What happens when those with Guns in Fiji "Keeps Moving the Goal Post"?

Read an article below posted by a concerned Indigenous Fijian:
Dr Mere Samisoni.

Why is Fiji in this mess?I agree with the comments made by Apete on ' Interim Regime moving the goal posts' and I have also sent this comment to the Commonwealth for discussion and debate.

The reasons put forward by Bainimarama for carrying out his 2006 coup provide a good parallel of Fiji’s post-coup state of instability. His justifications have been wandering all over Fiji’s political landscape and represent the height of insincerity.

These started off in 2004 with:

(1) “national security” to get the military on side. Once that was “done” he moved on to

(2) “corruption”, to get the general public on side. Then when that did not work, he moved to

(3) “multi-ethnicity” or race, to at least keep his Indian-Fijian coup support intact. It then morphed over to

(4) the Role of the Military as he began to fill the 'civil' service with Military Officers for their loyalty. When the lies of 2006 and the treason of April 2009 began to cause rifts amongst the troops, he again re-invented the 2006 coup as

(5) the only “intervention” that could right the wrongs of the killing of loyalists in the November 2000 Mutiny. Meanwhile, the public rationale for the coup has now moved on to

(6) the need to fix the purported “damage” of the past 20 years of alleged “divide and rule” government policies (none of which has been named or explained).

The real reason for the 2006 coup is of course completely different, and is well known to people like former Police Commissioner Hughes who had the evidence to expose it in 2006, before soldiers were sent to arrest him.The problem for institutions like the Commonwealth is that they require honesty, legality, co-operation and good faith, to be able to achieve much. It is evident from the above that the Commonwealth is unlikely to get any such thing from the Fiji Regime whose interest in subjects other than its own survival and self-preservation, are easily expendable.

Dr. Mere Tuisalalo Samisoni legal elected member of Lami Open Consituency in 2006.Please also go to the following site to give you valued comment on the bottom line in the rape of our democratic rights under Fiji and he Commonwealth. Pick up the thread of what is right for Fiji. Many thanks for your time.
The Commonwealth Conversation