military regimes
This article examines the cultural, political, ethnic and economic forces that have shaped the evolution of media legislation in Fiji and the evident impacts on journalism and society. The article argues that despite Fiji’s British colonial heritage...
This case study involves issues of academic freedom and media freedom at the regional University of the South Pacific (USP) in a dispute between the senior administration of the university and two journalism lecturers over the impact of media...
Since attaining independence from Britain in 1970, Fiji enjoyed a period of ‘multiracial peace’ for 17 years under Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and this gave the country the utopian slogan: ‘Fiji―the way the world should be.’ But was this really so?...
Media freedom and the capacity for investigative journalism have been steadily eroded in the South Pacific in the past five years in the wake of an entrenched coup and censorship in Fiji. The muzzling of the Fiji press, for decades one of the...
Dr Tupeni Baba's speech at the relaunch of Pacific Journalism Review, 3 October 2003.
Without a Gun tells of the peace-keeping operations in the Papua New Guinean province of Bougainville, scene of a bitter civil war between 1988-1997. Some estimates out the death toll at between 15,000 and 20,00 and while the book, published by the...
Government by the Gun starts with a brief overview of the events of May 2000: the seizure of Parliament and government hostages; the military takeover, abrogation of Fiji's 1997 Constitution and dismissal of President Ratu Mara; weeks of tension, as...
'It is the way the Pacific's ancient régimes hold onto power. All journalists are under siege. In Fiji, it is an extraordinary assault, coloured by racism, that is tearing apart the media and political system.'
By and large, however, the press in democractic Asia is threated less by government action than by government inaction in the face of violent attacks against journalists. Seven Asian journalists were killed for their work in 2000, nearly all of them...
