PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Russell Hunter

APIA, Samoa (Samoa Observer, April 14, 2009) - The drive from Fiji’s capital city Suva to the international airport at Nadi in the west is considered something of a chore.

The road is badly potholed, farm animals roam around especially at night and other road users are not always the most careful.

But for me, at least, the drive to Nadi from my home in Suva on the night of February 25 last year was more than the usual nuisance. It was terrifying.

I arrived home from work at about 8:30 p.m. and was sitting with my wife and 13-year-old daughter when a man in the uniform of the Immigration Department arrived at the door. He wanted to talk to me about some "small problem" and needed to see my passport which I found for him.

He then asked to see the passports of my wife (a Papua New Guinea citizen) and my daughter (an Australian). I knew something was badly wrong when he returned those but kept mine in a manila folder.

"Now I have some news for you," he said and handed me a slip of green paper with the government crest and signed by the permanent secretary in the Department of Immigration.

This document gave me seven days to leave the country. It did not give a reason.

I said I would comply but the immigration officer wanted me to go with him there and then "to complete the formalities" as he put it. When I asked what these formalities might be he began a careful scrutiny of his shoes.

He again said I should go with him. I declined.

It was then that I thought I should contact the company lawyer which I did via my mobile phone.

Immediately four or five men whom I knew to be soldiers emerged from a twin-cab parked outside, broke open the electric gate and stormed into the compound shouting "Move!", "Let’s go right now!" and "Just get in the vehicle."

One held my left arm and another my right shoulder as they propelled me towards the waiting twin-cab. At the behest of our lawyer who was still on the phone I asked for their names which they refused to divulge. I then asked where they were taking me and was told we were going to the departmental office in central Suva.

I was placed in the back seat of the twin cab between two soldiers as my wife and child watched, plainly terrified, by the roadside. I told my wife to contact the Australian High Commission and tell them what had happened.

As the twin-cab drove off into the night it quickly became apparent that we were going nowhere the central Suva area. And I knew enough Fijian to tell from my captors’ conversation that we were going to Nadi. I became aware that I was being deported.

The soldiers took my mobile phone from me. I could hear it ring repeatedly and knew then that I was completely in these people’s power. Nobody, not my family, my friends or my workmates, had the slightest clue as to where I might be and what might be happening to me.

Already the army had tortured opponents. At least two men had died in military custody.

I could imagine what my family was going through but could do nothing to reassure them that I was unharmed – at least so far.

One of my captors tried to make conversation as if this were some everyday occurrence or a pleasant drive through the countryside. I ignored him.

I was taken to a private residence in the industrial area of Nadi which I gathered was where I was to spend the night. But in time-tested military fashion, nobody had a key to the locked gate.

We went on to Nadi airport where I endured another wait while the search for the keys or for somewhere to keep me overnight (it was now 1 a.m.) continued. There is a police holding cell at the airport but I gathered the key for that could not be located either.

So we went back to town. By this time a key had been found. I was shown to an upstairs room with a bed. It was basic but clean and I was told this was where I would spend the night.

Meanwhile, the lawyer and the Australian High Commission had been active – as had the staff of the Fiji Sun most of whom had gathered at our home in a show of support for my family, despite the constant and slightly menacing patrols of unmarked vehicles containing what were very obviously soldiers.

A senior staff member had been able to confirm that my name was on the passenger list for Air Pacific flight FJ911 leaving Nadi for Sydney at 8:15 later that morning. Soon the news was out.

High Commissioner James Batley had demanded consular access to me only to be told by the minister concerned, former army commander and failed election candidate Ratu Epeli Ganuilau, that he had no knowledge of my whereabouts.

Meanwhile another group of soldiers took me in a different twin-cab through the service entrance to Nadi International Airport where I was taken to the departure lounge and made to sit facing a wall.

But Fiji is a small place and it was inevitable that I would be seen there. So it proved to be. So while Ganilau stuck to his story of no knowledge, the whole of Fiji knew exactly where I was and what was happening to me. The following day, Ganilau finally felt obliged to admit that he had authorized and ordered the deportation.

What was not generally known was that our lawyer had early that morning obtained a High Court order preventing the regime from removing me from the country. The junta was later to claim that the order had not been served.

However, the plain clothes army captain who escorted me to the aircraft after all other passengers had boarded was approached by a civil servant with an open manila folder.

"Don’t turn around," Captain Savenaca of the Third Fiji Infantry Regiment barked at me and being a journalist I of course turned around to see him glance at the proffered document and then wave it away. I learned later it was the faxed court order preventing my removal.

Finally I boarded the flight and was promptly upgraded to business class by the wonderfully supportive cabin crew who must have known that they were taking a risk by even talking to me. These are the real people of Fiji – not the uniformed thugs who have illegally taken control of that wonderful country and are now doing their utmost to ruin it.

Now, having been declared illegal by the Court of Appeal Bainimarama and his puppet cabinet have used the aged and ailing president to abrogate the constitution (which he has no powers to do) just so that they can cling to power. And the judges who made the "wrong" decision have been sacked along with the rest of the judiciary.

The "right" judges will be reinstated and the "wrong" ones replaced by those considered more "reliable" while the regime will trumpet its commitment to an independent judiciary.

But Frank’s coup now has the smell of death about it. The Appeals Court decision declaring it all illegal has forced his original intention into the open – to grab power and keep it. That same decision marks the beginning of the end for the coup makers, the collaborators and the hangers-on.

The junta’s paranoia over the media is therefore understandable. The last thing it wants is for the truth to be known, hence the clampdown of the days since the illegal reinstatement of an illegal regime.

But it can’t last. The economy is headed for the abyss and the squaddies that now purport to run it have not the faintest clue how to turn it around.

Frank’s regime will collapse under the weight of its own incompetence – but many more innocent Fiji Islanders are going to suffer before that happens.

The Pacific Islands Forum and the wider world should by now understand that the Fiji junta has no intention of handing back power. All its statements to the contrary are no more than smokescreens to hide its lust for total control.

But everybody in Fiji hopes that the forum and the world will be there to help clean up the mess that Frank and his cronies are going to leave behind.

It will be a long and arduous task.

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