Vendetta journalism and counterpropaganda, 'Fiji style'

Former USP journalism head Dr Marc Edge "on edge" at a Media and Democracy
symposium in Suva last September. Photo: Café Pacific

IN RECENT weeks, the Fiji blogosphere has run hot over attempts by the ousted former head of journalism of the University of the South Pacific, Dr Marc Edge, a self-styled “counterpropagandist”, to portray himself as some kind of martyr for the Fiji media freedom cause. His claims peaked with an allegation that he “feared my safety was in jeopardy” in a curiously lop-sided Radio Australia interview with journalist Bruce Hill.

However, Café Pacific today exposes another side of the story. It had been an open secret for months at USP and in media education circles around the Pacific that Dr Edge was on the way out after the shortest tenure ever of any expatriate journalism coordinator – barely serving half of a three-year contract. He was dumped after sustained and embarrassing complaints by students, colleagues and media academics in at least two other Pacific Islands Forum countries. The situation had become untenable for the Canadian lecturer as he was perceived to be “waging war” on his students. Initially, he was “relieved”  of his position as acting head of journalism with a humiliating public statement by USP management on November 14  and then he was gone from the faculty staff by Christmas.

Part of the USP statement about Dr Edge's "demotion" on November 14, 2012.

But there was no inkling of any of this in Bruce Hill’s Radio Australia interview on January 25. (Although Hill did ask Edge whether he had been dismissed or resigned and got a "cannot comment" reply). Nor did Hill put the obvious question to Edge about why he had used the Fiji Media Tribunal mechanism to file a controversial complaint against a local media organisation that he had been accusing of practising “self-censorship”  – conveniently using the very Media Industry Development Decree  he had been condemning for months. Edge blamed his demise at USP solely on the military-backed regime and Qorvis Communications, a US-based media spin company contracted to the Suva government, and ignored the journalism programme wreckage - his legacy:

PINA deconstructed ... peace, progress and propaganda

THANKS to Pacific Media Watch for the following item about the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), media freedom and truth in the Pacific media. But first, this gem of a picture above. PARTNERS AT PINA: Pictured while dining with Fiji regime leader Voreqe Bainimarama at the Lagoon Resort in Pacific Harbour are arch critic Lisa Williams-Lahari (International Federation of Journalists Pacific campaigner and coordinator of the Pacific Freedom Forum, just behind VB in striped blouse); Pitt Media Group director Shona Pitt; former PINA president  Fr John Lamani, managing director of the Solomon Star; and Moses Stevens of Vanuatu, recently reelected to a second two-year term as president of PINA. (Source: PINA Facebook. Lisa has promptly pointed out on the PIJO network and elsewhere that this photo is out of context and not what it seems. She says she was in the picture at the insistence of her Cook Islands colleague Shona.) Since these items below were broadcast or published, Fiji-born journalist Graham Davis has written a devastating critique about "off this planet" commentary and his original article about PINA has been published in The Australian.

Media view 1 (April 26):
Academic criticises PINA for stifling dissent at media summit

Dr Marc Edge (Canada): Author and Head of Journalism at the University of the South Pacific - first PINA conference after less than a year in the Pacific:

QUOTE (in a Radio Australia interview with reporter Bruce Hill):
 The PINA conference organisers have to be very happy but they've managed to keep a lid on all the dissension. That was largely because many of the dissenters were not there, and those who were dissenters were either trying to act as conciliators, or were not able to make their voices heard because it seems most of the decisions were made behind closed doors by a small group. USP is an associate member of PINA, and I have wanted to bring up certain issues and I just found that there was no opportunity. Like I said they managed to keep a lot of the dissension out of the conference, but that doesn't mean there's not dissension. I was not impressed at all with some of the speakers, a lot of the panellists were forced to confess from the outset that they had no expertise on the subject. It seems just that whoever donated money as a sponsor was given time on the program whether they knew anything about the subject or not. Most of the sponsors donated money so that they could give sessions on different topics which were largely propaganda; things like non-communicable diseases dominated the agenda. And certainly it's white propaganda because it's for a good cause, but it's propaganda nonetheless. They were paying to get a captive audience of journalists in one spot to get out their message. 
Listen to the full radio interview

Media view 2 (April 23):
Pacific media 'at peace' after bitter infighting over Fiji:

Graham Davis (Australia): Fiji-born award-winning television investigative journalist who has had a lifetime of Pacific experience:

QUOTE on the Grubsheet blog: The South Pacific media has been wracked by deep division over how journalists should respond to the 2006 Fiji coup and Frank Bainimarama’s continuing hold on power. The last gathering in Vanuatu three years ago of members of PINA – the Pacific Islands News Association – was marred by bitter infighting, so much so that a group of mainly Polynesian delegates broke away and set up a rival organisation, the Pacific Islands Media Association ( PasiMA). There were unprecedented scenes of acrimony at the conference venue in Port Vila. One prominent delegate threatened to kill another. And the then editor of The Fiji Times, Netani Rika, stormed out in protest at the presence of two representatives of Fiji’s Information Ministry, one of whom was reduced to tears by the vitriol aimed in her direction. It clearly wasn’t the most pacific of occasions. And many delegates expected more of the same at the 2012 PINA summit in Fiji – the cause of all the trouble in the first place. Yet three years on, the hand of sweet reason appears to have descended on the region’s media professionals, judging from events at Pacific Harbour, the rain-drenched summit venue. The deeply religious head of the PINA secretariat, Fiji’s Matai Akauola, cast it as the hand of God bringing peace to his fractured media flock. Either way, the 2012 PINA summit was notable for healing some of the deep divisions of the past.
Read the full article

Media view 3 (April 2):
Peacemaker Moala helps bury the PINA hatchet:

Dr David Robie (NZ): Journalist, author and director of the Pacific Media Centre. This was his third PINA conference (two of them - in Fiji and PNG - on the host organising committee, but is not and has never been a PINA member):

QUOTE on the Café Pacific blog: Whether it was the 21st birthday (as celebrated by the cake at a gala dinner) or 40th anniversary (as flagged by a former president in the opening speech notes), last week’s Fiji milestones for the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) were notable achievements. There was a convivial and relaxed atmosphere at the Pacific Harbour venue – in marked contrast to the tense last Pacific Media Summit in Port Vila more than two years ago. And an optimistic mood about the future. Instead of beating itself up over unresolved differences such as The Great Fiji Divide or the Tired Old Vanuatu Feud, PINA seems to be picking up the pieces and moving on. A more inclusive atmosphere characterised this summit and the boycott threats fell flat. The peacemaker was veteran Tongan publisher and media freedom campaigner Kalafi Moala, the only journalist to actually put his campaigning credentials on the line and be jailed for trumped up contempt of Parliament charges by his kingdom. Moala has perhaps mellowed these days, but believes strongly that it is up to Pacific media “elders” to bury their differences and build on their common goals. As deputy chair of the rival Apia-based Pacific Islands Media Association (PasiMA), one of the key organisations to call for a last-minute boycott of the PINA summit, Moala made an impassioned plea – in his private capacity as publisher of the Taimi Media Network – to “go forward” in unity and diversity.
Read the full article

Disclosure: David Robie was not funded by PINA or any donor organisation to be at the Pacific Media Summit. He was there in his capacity as director of the Pacific Media Centre and independently funded by his university.

• The who's who of Pacific media freedom groups
• Graham Davis on the "Edge of Reality"

Peacemaker Moala helps bury the hatchet over PINA tensions

The picture of the conference ... PINA manager Matai Akauola and Taimi Media Network publisher Kalafi Moala having a quiet word about the future. Photo: David Robie

WHETHER it was the 21st birthday (as celebrated by the cake at a gala dinner) or 40th anniversary (as flagged by a former president in the opening speech notes), last week’s Fiji milestones for the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) were notable achievements.

There was a convivial and relaxed atmosphere at the Pacific Harbour venue – in marked contrast to the tense last Pacific Media Summit in Port Vila two years ago.

And an optimistic mood about the future.

Instead of beating itself up over unresolved differences such as The Great Fiji Divide or the Tired Old Vanuatu Feud, PINA seems to be picking up the pieces and moving on.

A more inclusive atmosphere characterised this summit and the boycott threats fell flat.

The peacemaker was veteran Tongan publisher and media freedom campaigner Kalafi Moala, the only journalist to actually put his campaigning credentials on the line and be jailed for trumped up contempt of Parliament charges by his kingdom.

Moala has perhaps mellowed these days, but believes strongly that it is up to Pacific media “elders” to bury their differences and build on their common goals.

‘Go forward’ plea
As deputy chair of the rival Apia-based Pacific Islands Media Association (PasiMA), one of the key organisations to call for a last-minute boycott of the PINA summit, Moala made an impassioned plea – in his private capacity as publisher of the Taimi Media Network – to “go forward” in unity and diversity.

He advocated a need for a variety of organisations in the Pacific responding to specific briefs while perhaps one day being part of the PINA family “umbrella”.

In his speech during a panel discussion about “fragmentation” of Pacific media groups, he acknowledged PINA had always been a "quarrelsome family”.

He recalled how the PINA executive had in fact been split when he was jailed in 1996 and while several board members had actually supported his imprisonment, then president Monica Miller had backed him.

In Apia in 2003, when PINA and the former Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association (PIBA) were being merged, there had again been bitter in-fighting – “and the Bainimarama coup hadn’t even happened yet”.

Many delegates, particularly from Polynesia, wanted the PINA secretariat to move from Fiji to Samoa. Some PINA cynics saw this as a Polynesian and Melanesian split.

Hurtful snub
Moala said a delegation of 10 New Zealand-based Pacific Islanders had attended the PINA conference in Apia that year and were snubbed when they tried to become associate members.

“We were very hurt by that – after all we are all Pacific Islanders.”

There were also tensions in 2005 and again in Port Vila in 2009. “We never missed a chance to have a great quarrel about something,” Moala said.

In contrast, this year’s PINA summit “has been the best ever”.

Moala pointed out that any fragmentation that happened in Port Vila was not because of Fiji “but because of the issues that had been brewing for some time”.

He had expected the conference in Fiji to be the worst in view of the “troubled waters”.

Need to heal
“We need to heal and move forward. As long as we remain focused on Fiji alone, we’ll be blocked and there will be no going further.

PINA manager and training coordinator Matai Akauola noted how the summit had attracted several key outspoken critics of PINA and its refusal to move the secretariat from its “compromised” location - as seen by critics - in the capital of the Fiji military-backed regime.


Samoan government newspaper Savali editor and PM’s press adviser Tupuola Terry Tavita (pictured above being interviewed by Radio Djiido's Magalie Tingal for a USP documentary on media freedom), for example, has been running a series of bitter attacks on the Fiji regime leader, Voreqe Bainimarama.

But he was also caught up in the spirit of conciliation. Tupuola proposed Apia as the venue for the next PINA Pacific summit for 2014.

Although the Samoan offer still has to meet a new template of host conference conditions – to avoid this year’s Cook Islands debacle – it was a popular prospect as the venue.

“This will be a very significant year, especially if we have the conference just after the Fiji elections – if they happen,” Tupuola said.

“This will set our future directions.”

New executive
Neither Moala and Tupuola were elected to the incoming PINA executive – their organisations are apparently not financial members – but they were significant players in critical discussions in a conference that dodged sensitive issues.

Moses Stevens of Vanuatu was reelected as president for a further two years and Auckland-based Niue Star publisher, Michael “Original” Jackson, was voted in as vice-president.

Two new Fiji industry board members elected were Anish Chand of Fiji Television and Fiji Sun’s Cabenatabua.

The weeklong summit concluded with resolutions that included:

• A five-year training plan for PINA;
• Development of a health policy to include psychological counselling as well as better coverage of non-communicable diseases (NCDs),
• A research project on the worker conditions of media practitioners in the region;
• Audio/video content in PINA’s Pacnews service along with pictures;
• Training to include investigative journalism as well as technical skills;
• Journalism students being represented on the PINA board; and
• New media and journalism education groups being included as well as the industry categories on the PINA board.

Donor dependence
Pioneering Solomon Star publisher Father John Lamani warned Pacific media to reduce dependence on donors and to make more use of local experts for training.

He described donor “red tape” as a new form of media control in the Pacific and this was a threat to press freedom in the region.

“We all know some of these donors often impose very strict guidelines on how we should use the resources they give.”

Fiji-born investigative journalist Graham Davis urged journalists in a panel addressing media credibility and public trust to “get it right. Shame those who don’t”.

“There’s an old saying in Fiji when someone behaves inappropriately – ‘oilei. No shame.’

“No one has to explain the dictionary meaning of shame – the painful feeling arising from being conscious that something dishonourable has happened,” he said.

“I think we need to rediscover the power of shame when it comes to violations of basic journalistic practice … to feel shame ourselves when they’re breached and to collectively shame others who do the breaching.

“Shame could and should have prevented the Fiji Times, during the [former elected PM Laisenia] Qarase years, from running a story calling for Indians in Fiji to be ‘thinned out’. It was a humiliating slap in the face for more than one third of the country – and offended a large proportion of Fiji Times reader of all races, many of whom haven’t forgotten.”

Culture of silence
Of course, while the Fiji Sun published the comment by Davis, the Fiji Times didn’t report a word. A culture of silence.

Fiji Sun publishing manager Leone Cabenatabua castigated anonymous Fiji blogs for “disinformation”, especially Coup 4.5, which has been widely cited by New Zealand media as a “credible” source.

But he praised the “analytical pieces for us to ponder on” published in the independent blogs of professors David Robie (Café Pacific) and Croz Walsh (Fiji).

Former PINA president Johnson Honimae lamented that public trust had declined in some Pacific countries, but added that in spite of the challenge facing the media, he believed the industry was doing a “fair job”.

Access to hard-hitting programmes, such as Hard Talk on BBC World was uncompromising and probing and investigative journalism such as on the ABC’s Four Corners, had led to higher expectations by the Pacific Islands public for the local media to lift its game.

“When such investigative journalism is not dished out, our readers or viewers start to lose trust in us," Honimae told a panel on corruption.

He called for more Pacific countries to take the Cook Islands lead and introduce freedom of information legislation. The Fiji Sun took up his plea in an editorial.

Reporting corruption
“Many of the corrupt or illegal activities happening in the Pacific region continue to flourish because they are not reported,” said the Sun.

“Or when they are reported by the news media, vital information cannot be obtained.

“However, in saying that, we stress that this is not some special right for news media alone. It is a right for all people, including the news media.

“In this age of the fight against corruption and for better governance, it is also the right thing to do.”

Fiji regime head Bainimarama silenced his critics in the opening speech when he highlighted some embarrassing media home truths, challenging Pacific news groups to invest more in their journalists. There had never been a great investment, he scolded.

“But there needs to be one. Our journalists need to be well-informed. This is both the responsibility of the individual and organisations to ensure this.”

Bainimarama reminded publishers and owners many journalists were underpaid for their efforts and at times they were just “used, abused, untrained and unappreciated”.

“To have a media who [are] respected, whose analysis and opinion matter, reporters need to be nurtured,” Bainimarama said.

Election challenges
Pointing out that Fiji journalists faced a challenging time leading up to the 2014 elections, Bainimarama added: “Journalists and editors in this room in many ways represent the frontline of sharing what’s going on.”

But a spiral of silence enveloped many Fiji journalists and there was a pronounced reluctance by many local journalists, especially younger ones, to speak out on issues. The most outspoken were student journalists from the University of the South Pacific.

Fiji as an issue – or media freedom generally – rarely surfaced. The most sustained discussion about Fiji came when Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley described how his newspaper had often been accused of being “anti-government of pro-government”.

He insisted the Fiji Times was neither – merely “carrying out its role as a newspaper”.

Wesley picked up on the regime’s call for all media to be “pro-Fiji” to define this from a Fiji Times perspective as ensuring that all voices, regardless of race or religion, are heard.


He also highlighted the challenges being faced by the company, especially the brain drain, since the Murdoch Australian-based News Ltd had sold the paper to the Motibhai Group in Fiji to comply with the Media Decree 10 per cent ceiling on foreign ownership.

But when Graham Davis (pictured above with his Fiji Times "fan club") asked Wesley to compare the editorial stance of the Fiji Times between the Murdoch and post-Murdoch eras, he clammed up and refused to comment.

The culture of silence rolls on.

Article and pictures by David Robie. This was the first PINA convention that Robie, a critic of PINA in the 1980s-90s, was actually invited to and to give a presentation. He was on the host organising committee in 1999 (Suva) and 1995 (Port Moresby).

• See full reports on PINA 2012 on Pacific Scoop and Pacific Media Centre On line/Pacific Media Watch

When violence threatens - Grubsheet under attack

Fiji Sun March 14 front page.

By Graham Davis

GRUBSHEET'S burgeoning number of opinion pieces on Fiji are largely designed to counter what we regard as the continuing failure of the mainstream regional media to come to grips with the reality of events there. They’re especially aimed at an Australian audience, to highlight what we regard as the folly of Canberra having turned its back on Fiji since Frank Bainimarama’s coup five years ago.

A lot of these pieces are picked up by the mainstream media – The Australian and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, for instance – or disseminated to a wider regional and global audience through the Pacific Scoop service of the Auckland University of Technology and Pacific Islands Report from the East-West Centre in Hawaii. Some are written as news stories but most are shamelessly opinionated, strong expressions of our own views based not only on on a life-long association with Fiji but having reported political events there for the mainstream media since before the first coup in 1987.

The problem arises when these articles are picked up and republished in Fiji, a country where the separation of news and opinion in the mainstream media doesn’t have a strong tradition. And so it was last week, when the Fiji Sun published a Grubsheet opinion posting on its front page that would have looked very much like news to local eyes. It provoked a wave of outrage, not least from the subject of that article – Laisenia Qarase, the man Frank Bainimarama deposed in his 2006 coup.

As readers can see for themselves in our own comments section, Qarase has gone on the attack against Grubsheet, accusing us of distortion, disregarding the facts and attempting to “crucify” him and his party – the SDL. He’s particularly aggrieved that we’ve accused him of pursuing racist policies in government. As readers can also note for themselves, we stand by that accusation.

But we can also sympathise with Qarase that an article on a humble Australian blog site can so dramatically become part of the domestic political debate in Fiji. If any proof were needed of the power of the internet to amplify the smallest voice, then this is it.

Qarase is not only entitled to defend himself but Grubsheet is delighted that he can now do so fully in the Fiji media for the first time in a long time. The Bainimarama government has lifted censorship and a full-blown debate has erupted about the impending discussions on a new constitution and the unilateral abolition of the Great Council of Chiefs. This is how it should be. It’s also Grubsheet’s view that if Laisenia Qarase intends to stand in the promised elections in 2014, his record in government is also a legitimate subject for debate.

Against all evidence to the contrary, he’s now running the line that the SDL has always been a "multiracial party", didn’t disadvantage other citizens in government and that he’s never believed in indigenous paramountcy. Every village pig in Fiji has suddenly sprouted wings and set off over a moonlit lagoon. But again, Qarase is entitled to put his case. And we’re entitled to put ours.

What is not acceptable are the threats to Grubsheet’s personal safety by Qarase’s supporters. These have come via the main anti-government blog site, Coup 4.5, which has been in our sights before for publishing blatantly racist content against the Indo-Fijian minority. These are “journalists” based abroad who not only routinely censor comments they don’t agree with but now facilitate threats of violence against people they don’t agree with. Here’s the first instance, when Coup 4.5 reported Laisenia Qarase’s first press release in response to the original Grubsheet article ...

Read the attacks and response on the Grubsheet blog.

For Laisenia Qarase, the real enemy isn’t Grubsheet. The real enemy is the cancer of intimidation and racism in his own ranks.

Bainimarama condemns Anzac 'neglect' of Pacific

IN THE first extensive interview with Fiji regime leader Voreqe Bainimarama for the past 18 months or so, Fiji-born Australian journalist Graham Davis gives some insights into the commodore's current thinking. Davis highlights the US "open arms" policy in contrast to the Australian and NZ "isolationist" policy towards Fiji. Bainimarama also condemns the "neglect of the Pacific" by Canberra and Wellington in the 25min interview broadcast today on Sky News.

• Earlier story on Pacific Scoop
  
  
  

Spirited ABC debate - Davis v Fraenkel on Fiji's future

Dr Jon Fraenkel (from left), Professor Brij Lal and Simione Kaitani at a Canberra meeting addressed by fugitive colonel Ratu Tevita Mara in Australia. Photo: Drum Pasifika

By Graham Davis

REGULAR readers of my Grubsheet blog will be aware of the occasional blows we trade with Jon Fraenkel – an academic who specialises in Melanesian affairs at the Australian National University. Well, here’s a chance to hear us go head-to-head on the ABC Radio National programme, National Interest. It’s a spirited debate on whether it’s in Australia’s national interest to maintain its policy of shunning the Bainimarama regime in Fiji to try to force it to hold an early election.

Dr Fraenkel is among the chief advocates of Australia and New Zealand continuing to refuse to engage with Bainimarama until he buckles. Grubsheet – on the other hand – argues that re-engagement is essential to try to influence events in Fiji and help Bainimarama keep his promise to hold elections in 2014. In this, Grubsheet has common cause with the likes of the Lowy Institute, which fears the strategic consequences of allowing Fiji to move ever closer to China, which has dramatically increased its presence in the Pacific.

Jon Fraenkel is part of a strong anti-regime cabal at the ANU, which includes the Indo-Fijian historian, Professor Brij Lal, and Frank Bainimarama’s former land forces commander, Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka. All three are active political players, despite – in the case of Fraenkel and Lal – allowing themselves to be portrayed as independent commentators in the regional media.

Dr Fraenkel is still to come up with any explanation of the circumstances of the photograph that Grubsheet published several weeks ago, showing him and Brij Lal at a Canberra gathering with Simione Kaitani, one of the principal figures of the 2000 George Speight coup. As listeners to the ABC program will hear, Fraenkel has no compunction in trying to smear Grubsheet as a “Bainimarama supporter” or a “supporter of the 2006 coup” when we’ve made it clear all along that our support is not for the dictator himself but his programme for a multiracial Fiji as opposed to the racism of the government he removed.

Yet here is Fraenkel in the company of a man – in Kaitani – who was a senior minister in that government, was at George Speight’s side throughout the events of 2000, has admitted publicly to committing sedition and insists that Fiji must always be led by indigenous Fijians.

We’ll leave listeners to make up their own minds as to who has the stronger argument.

Grubsheet: Heat and light on Fiji

Diplomatic double-speak over Fiji fugitive colonel

HYPOCRISY has become something of a cliché when referring to the political line taken by the Australian and New Zealand governments and their grab-bag of fellow traveller academics and gullible journalists. The latest circus over alleged human rights violations culprit and coup colonel Ratu Tevita Mara is yet another example. Both the Australian and NZ governments have thrown any semblance of credibility to the wind by breaching their own policies and granting Mara temporary visa rights to make propaganda visits to both countries. It is refreshing to have a handful of independent journalists to strip away the camouflage and remind us of the realities about Pacific politics.

Fiji under Laisenia Qarase, the leader deposed by the military coup in 2006, was no genuine “democracy” - it was an ethno-nationalist regime riding on the coat tails of the 2000 attempted coup. Perpetrator George Speight may be languishing in prison for treason, but his warped “vision” of indigenous supremacy for Fiji, instead of a multiethnic state, was echoed by the policies of the Qarase government.

Graham Davis has produced what he claims to be a “smoking gun” picture (above, Drum Pasifika) of Australian National University opponents of the Bainimarama military regime – Dr Jon Fraenkel and Professor Brij Lal – alongside one of Speight’s onetime supporters, Simione Kaitani. As well as being widely known to have been a backer of Speight (right below, Network 9) – although he was acquitted on a charge of treason due to lack of evidence that he had actually sworn an oath of allegiance to the Speight rebel "regime" - Kaitani was also a key man for Qarase (right bottom, TNN) and reportedly had a hand in promoting a bill aimed at releasing the coup leaders early, a move that eventually led to the 2006 coup.

Davis asks Fraenkel and Lal to explain this picture in his blog in a piece titled "Unholy alliance on Fiji":

Grubsheet has been at the receiving end of a stream of invective from Jon Fraenkel about our attempts to encourage Australia to engage with the Bainimarama regime and help it keep its pledge to hold one-man, one vote elections for the first time in Fiji in 2014. He’s castigated us as “coup supporters” – which we deny – yet is prepared to be photographed with a proven coup-maker in Simione Kaitani. So, Jon, let’s hear your explanation. You tout a blueprint for a return to democracy with someone like this by your side?

Meanwhile, Sanjay Ramesh offers this overview for Café Pacific on the Fiji quagmire:


The defection of Ratu Mara exposes lack of political direction on Fiji

By Dr Sanjay Ramesh

In February 2011, a new commanding officer of the Fiji Third Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Jone Kalouniwai, was appointed by the military. The appointment came following speculation that the former commanding officer, Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara was under investigation together with another senior military officer, Land Forces Commander Brigadier-General Pita Driti, for plotting the removal of Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama in 2010 (Fiji Village News, 4 February, 2011).

The news that senior members of the Fiji military who had earlier supported the coup had had a fall out with Bainimarama brought back memories of the mutiny in November 2000. In 2000, the rebel soldiers, with the support of the Naitasiri high chief Ratu Inoke Takiveikata, wanted to replace Bainimarama. Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini or Rusiate Koroivusere were the two names put forward by Captain Shane Stevens to replace Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama if they successfully took over Queen Elizabeth Barracks in 2000. During the trial of Ratu Inoke Takiveikata, state witness Maciu Turagacati said: “At Ratu Inoke Takiveikata's office at the Naitasiri Provincial Council, Captain Stevens, the rebel leader, informed the meeting that they would take over the military camp but needed some assistance like arms and handcuffs to be provided by the Qaranivalu and his group” (Fiji Village News, 18 February 2011).

Unlike the events of November 2000, this time members of the Fiji Military Forces notified Commander Voreqe Bainimarama that senior members of the military were conspiring to oust him from power and as a result both officers were sent on an indefinite leave. Following an investigation, on 4 May 2011, Pita Driti was charged with two counts of uttering seditious comments and one count of inciting mutiny, and Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara faced one count of uttering seditious comments under Section 67 of the Fiji Crimes Decree. Both former senior military officers were released on $F2000 bail. Ratu Tevita was ordered to surrender his passport to the police on May 5 and report on his whereabouts by 15 May 2011 and attend the court hearing on 30 May and 1 June 2011.

On 9 May, Ratu Tevita was “extracted” by the Tongan Royal Navy patrol boat Savea from within Fiji's territorial waters after he was reportedly taken to the extraction point by Risto Harmat, an Estonian national who was charged and later bailed over his alleged part in assisting Ratu Tevita. On 23 May, the New Zealand Herald reported that two New Zealand nationals and Ratu Tevita’s friends, Anthony Fullman and Tim McBride, were questioned by Fiji police and a TV New Zealand crew was also questioned after attempting to interview Ratu Tevita’s wife in Suva (New Zealand Herald, 23 May 2011).

The regional leaders remained tight-lipped but were privately supporting what had transpired in Fiji. The Australian Parliamentary Secretary Richard Marles opined that tensions between Fiji and Tonga was a “bilateral issue” and the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully advised the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that the “situation in Fiji was becoming more challenging for the Fiji’s military leader” (Radio NZ, 18 May 2011).

In Tonga, the Forum Trade Ministers had gathered for a meeting on Forum trade but high on the agenda for discussion was not trade but how Australia, New Zealand, Samoa and Tonga could leverage Ratu Tevita’s defection. Tonga’s Chief Secretary, Busby Kautoke, told Pacnews that Ratu Tevita was a “man rescued at sea”. However, under the Tongan Extradition Act 1988, Fiji is one of the designated countries where an individual can be extradited back but Tonga had no such intention and instead issued a Tongan passport to Ratu Tevita as both Australia and New Zealand debated relaxing their travel ban on Ratu Tevita.

A Kiwi letter writer summed up his frustration with his government’s approach:

How cynical is our government?

While [the NZ] government has expelled law-abiding Martin Payne who brought his life savings here from Britain and set up a successful family business in Northland, Prime Minister Key is now offering or considering offering political asylum to a Fijian bail absconder.

The Fijian, Ratu Tevita Mara, has connections to the Tongan royal family, and is under the protection of the king of Tonga. He does not need asylum, he has it already.

The Key government is heartless towards a law-abiding person, but bending over backwards for a bail jumper because Mara can help "rub Fiji's nose in it''. How cynical is that? (The Press, 2 June 2011)

On 10 June 2011, Ratu Tevita was successful in securing a visa to Australia despite being on a travel blacklist by Canberra and much to the surprise of many indigenous Fijians who were refused political asylum, despite a sanctions regime in place on Fiji since December 2006.

Are Australia or New Zealand serious about democracy in Fiji? Tonga can be excused because it is hardly a model for democratic change in the region and Samoa has been engaged in hurling abuse at Commodore Voreqe Baininarama since the December 2006 coup.

Is the strategy for democratic change in Fiji focused too much on one person (Bainimarama) rather than working collaboratively towards a constitutional, institutional and an electoral system that will enable greater cross cultural discourse and political inclusion in Fiji.

Ratu Tevita has claimed on YouTube and on Television New Zealand that Bainimarama is a “puppet” of the Attorney-General Saiyed Khaiyum. Wasn’t a similar call was made by the Taukei Movement in April 1987, which accused late Dr Timoci Bavadra, the indigenous Fijian prime minister, of being a puppet of Jai Ram Reddy?

Commodore Bainimarama and Professor Crosbie Walsh have highlighted that the comments of Ratu Tevita against Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum were racist and possibly aimed at consolidating the support of the indigenous nationalists overseas.

The defection of Ratu Tevita has highlighted the lack of direction in the region in dealing with Fiji. Exceptions are made to policy positions based on political expediency rather than a determination to improve the social and the economic conditions of the people of Fiji.

Dr Sanjay Ramesh is an associate fellow in the Centre for Peace and Conflict at the University of Sydney.

• Unholy alliance on Fiji
• We don't want Fiji's loser
• Kaitani says he wasn't Speight's right-hand man
  

The strangely fishy story of the fugitive colonel

CHARGED ... Brigadier Driti - ESCAPED ... Ratu Mara

FUGITIVE colonel Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara has certainly tossed a proverbial cluster bomb in the kava bowl. His flight last week from Fiji to Tonga after being charged with sedition in the alleged mutiny plot on May 4 doesn’t check all the usual boxes of a human rights case.

Fishing trip gone wrong? Yeah right, Roko Ului. How come the so-called distress signal was picked up by the Tongans, but not by Maritime New Zealand, Fiji authorities or the patrol ship HMNZS Otago deployed near by?

And how come Roko Ului was seen staying at a Kadavu resort the evening before his "rescue"?

Escaping from the corrupt justice system under the “hateful dictatorship” that would not allow him to defend himself? Yeah right. That’s why he was in a civil court and freed on bail. Incidentally, why no court martial in this case? And why leave fellow accused Brigadier-General Pita Driti (charged with sedition and attempted mutiny) to face the music? The Otago Daily Times in the best editorial on the affair rightly honed in on the self-interested aspects of this case.

Roko Ului left Fiji without a shred of help? Yeah right, cyberspace solidarity.

No, this entire saga has all the hallmarks of a carefully orchestrated virtual internet coup. At least, of the propaganda kind. One virtual coupmaster getting one-upmanship over the grand coup master. Plus a touch of Indo-Fijian bashing with a racist attack on Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

But is it really as credible as it is being portrayed in the media? At least, the supporters of the SDL now have upper hand in the propaganda war, just when the initiative seemed to be slipping relentlessly towards military dictator Voreqe Bainimarama’s side of the stand-off with Australia and New Zealand.

The defection of Mara, the youngest son of Fiji's founding father Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who was ousted as president during the George Speight attempted coup in 2000, is a blow to the regime. The implications for the Military Council are serious.

A remarkable aspect is how long it took for this story to take off in the New Zealand media. Another Pacific reporting coup? Only two news outlets were carrying the story of Mara’s YouTube bitter attack on the regime and news of his “escape” to Tonga last Saturday evening – Fairfax's Stuff.co.nz and Pacific Scoop. It took the best part of another day – a Sunday, with skeleton staff on duty at many media outlets - before the news gained mainstream media traction after Bainimarama had branded the escape “despicable” and confirmed Mara was under investigation over an alleged $3 million missing from the Fiji Pine Board.

Mara’s three videos on YouTube calling for “justice to prevail”, one in Fijian aimed at priming his loyal soldiers for opposition to the regime, were a masterstroke and he replied directly to Bainimarama’s claim:

[Bainimnarama] has accused me of being under investigation for the disappearance of $3 million from the Fiji Pine Board. These are the desperate attempts by a mentally and morally bankrupt man to smear the Mara name. There is no truth to the allegations. In fact that money went missing long before I became chairman of the Fiji Pine Board. And it was under my chairmanship that the loss was discovered and it was I who made it known to the authorities. All of this is recorded in the minutes of the Fiji Pine Board.

The influential New Zealand Herald seemingly never bothered to have one of its staff cover the biggest South Pacific story of the year so far when it first unfolded. Instead, a workmanlike like downpage story was published on page 3 in Monday’s paper from the German newsagency DPA reporting from Wellington. While deputy political editor Claire Trevett did eventually get in the act with a story for Tuesday morning’s paper, she cited the anti-regime blog coupfourpointfive, which has little credibility as a source and was this week exposed for its “outlandish” smear tactics against leading academics and journalists whose commentaries it doesn’t like.

Today Trevett followed up with a story describing Professor Crosbie Walsh, a usually well-informed publisher of an independent blog specialising in Fiji affairs, as a “qualified supporter of Commodore Frank Bainimarama's stated goals for Fiji”.

Hello? Roughly 90 percent of commentators and sources about Fiji used in the New Zealand media are pro-SDL or supported the old corrupt “democratic” regime of Qarase, or are plain biased. And yet their lack of neutrality is never “labelled”.

It was worse in The Australian, where the not-so-neutral Dr Jon Fraenkel, a research fellow at the Australian National University, described Fiji-born journalist Graham Davis as “an Australian-based supporter of Bainimarama's government”. This prompted Davis to reply:

Jon Fraenkel is entitled - like anyone else - to oppose any resumption of Australia’s ties with Fiji. But he is not entitled to misrepresent those who oppose his own hard-line stance. To cast me as “an Australian-based supporter of the Bainimarama regime” is clearly designed to discredit me by casting me as an activist and polemicist rather than as an independent journalist and commentator.

The record shows that I have variously described Frank Bainimarama as “wilful”, "obstinate" and "intolerant of dissent" , criticised his suppression of the media, the continuing state of emergency and the reappointment of his brother-in-law as head of the navy. Hardly unqualified support.

What I have done, quite legitimately, is to point out Bainimarama’s multiracial agenda as opposed to the racism of the government he deposed and his pledge to hold truly democratic elections in 2014. I have argued for a resumption of Australian links to Fiji to help achieve those goals and to forestall its growing links with China and the threat that poses to the geopolitical balance in the region. That is also the basis of the Lowy Institute's change of heart on Fiji, so I am hardly alone.

The Fiji propaganda wars are as murky as ever. But when the dust finally clears from the Mara storm, extradition or no extradition from Tonga, some of Bainimarama’s domestic support will certainly have eroded.

'Radio Free Fiji' - radio plan or pipedream?

MEDIA reports in the past few days have featured the idea of a pirate radio to breach Fiji's news media blackout. Usaia Waqatairewa of the Australian-based Fiji Democracy and Freedom Movement has floated the idea of broadcasting "uncensored" news and music programmes to Fijian radio listeners from the safety of a 'pirate radio' ship anchored in international waters near Fiji.

According to the Radio Heritage Foundation - which maintains an extensive database of Pacific radio broadcasters believes - this is the first proposed "pirate radio" station in the South Pacific since landbased Radio Tanafo and Radio Vemerama hit the headlines from Vanuatu several decades ago.

Ironically, this news has just come when Voreqe Bainimarama has been claiming a huge "egg on their face" PR coup over Australia and New Zealand with his "engagement with the Pacific" summit in Natadola - featured in the exclusive print and video reports by Fiji-born investigative journalist Graham Davis in The Australian.

Interviewed on Radio Australia's Pacific Beat programme and also reported in The Australian newspaper this week, Waqatairewa says that starting such a new radio station would help Fijians obtain a different perspective on events in Fiji where a recent media decree has tightened restrictions on media ownership and cemented ongoing censorship of news reporting and the broadcast of some banned pop songs.

Recent reports have discussions underway with the owners of a Dutch radio ship that could be repositioned to the South Pacific to broadcast on AM and FM to the scattered islands of Fiji.

Floating signal
Waqatairewa says: "Sure, the dictatorship might try to jam us, but we would certainly move frequencies. The ship need only be a floating transmitter because we could send the signal from Australia on a live stream over the net. It would not be difficult to do."

A review of Fiji news websites, including Radio Fiji, Communications Fiji, Fiji Times, Fiji Sun, Fiji Daily Post and www.fijilive.com reveals no reference to the remarks by Waqatairewa.

However, the personal Facebook page for Commodore Bainimarama, the Fijian government leader is more revealing on the subject.

Not only is the pirate radio proposal mentioned, there is even a direct link to Radio Australia's Pacific Beat interview with Waqatairewa.

A revealing comment is also attributed to Commodore Bainimarama himself - "our favourite former resident Usaia Waqatairewa wants to set up a pirate radio station in international waters around Fiji and play banned pop music".

The Facebook page includes a range of responses from readers such as "Just another project that will go bust"......."We've got more than enough radio stations here in Fiji"....."Sounds like a brilliant idea but wrong time, wrong situation"......."What a waste of money. Any investors must be mad"....and chillingly, "I wonder how his kin folks are feeling for they could be classified as persons of interest to our security personnel".

Media contact
Waqatairewa is the former deputy director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission and now resides in Sydney where he is president of the Fiji Democracy and Freedom Movement.

He claims his organisation has been in contact with News Limited which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the global media billionaire and which also owns the Fiji Times newspaper which is now for sale to comply with a recent media ownership decree.

Pro-democracy blog Fijitoday has a recent headline "When Will Murdoch Bring His Big Guns to Bear" and observes "It's not just the media he owns. It's billions of dollars he has at his disposal and the human resources he can muster and deploy to make things happen."

Fijian radio listeners will know in the weeks and months ahead whether Murdoch will use some of those dollars and human resources to bankroll the floating pirate radio station that Waqatairewa's organisation is suggesting.

In the meantime, the Fiji government has since announced a new decree requiring the registration of every telephone in the country within the next 30 days or owners face fines of up to F$10,000 or six months in jail.

Many Fijians now use mobile phones for cheap local calls, phone banking, and, of course, listening to the many popular local FM radio stations currently on the air.

If a "Radio Free Fiji" does float onto the Fijian airwaves, there may be many listeners nervous about tuning in with their mobile phone FM receivers if the state has their photo ID, date-of-birth, home address and name on a central database.

For now, Fijians wanting to know about the pirate radio plans can reportedly still listen to Radio Australia news on state-run Radio Fiji, have access to local FM relays of the BBC in Suva and Nadi, can tune to many Australian and New Zealand AM signals at nighttime, and, of course, read Commodore Bainimarama's Facebook page. - Radio Heritage Foundation

• Fiji's new 'brotherhood'
• Pirate radio station for uncensored Fiji news
• Video feeds to the Bainimarama interview

Media freedom and dealing with the Fiji regime's gag

THE EXPECTED fallout from PINA 2009 has been fast flowing since the two-yearly regional media circus. Many rifts were on show long before the conference began in Port Vila late last month - for example, the criticisms of PINA's recent lukewarm actions over regional media freedom and the founding of the successful upstart Pacific Freedom Forum by PINA dissidents; the hostility between the conference hosts, Media Asosiesen blong Vanuatu (MAV) and the country's main newspaper, Vanuatu Daily Post, and publisher Marc Neil-Jones; and the calls for PINA and Pacnews to be relocated outside of Fiji as a protest against the regime's media censorship. The election of MAV president Moses Stevens as PINA president only served to fuel the animosity. Stevens was elected ahead of talented Stanley Simpson of Fiji's Mai TV, an innovative graduate of the University of the South Pacific, to take the regional body forward for the next two years. He cited training for young journalists as a policy priority and also hinted at the possibility of Australian and NZ media groups being allowed to fully join PINA. Reflecting on the conference's results, Matangi Tonga editor Pesi Fonua wrote:

What appeared to be a sincere intention by the former PINA board to turn its biannual convention into a Pacific Media Summit under the theme "Breaking Barriers - Access to Information'" did not live up to expectations.

Despite the great effort to attract as many participants as possible to attend the Vanuatu PINA inaugural summit, their contributions did not see the light of day, because most participants were not permitted to attend the AGM, and so some serious observations made by working journalists and media people were not translated into the decision-making process.

Café Pacific's correspondents report that the meeting became quite tense when it was realised that two military censors - both women - had been invited and were present. The mood was becoming ugly, with some people questioning why the censors were there - how dare PINA invite them?

Cook Islands News editor John Woods (elected vice-president as the Cook Islands is hosting the next conference) was a particularly strong critic. He wanted the pair to be barred from the meeting. He said their presence would have a chilling effect on Fiji journalists and discourage them from speaking their minds. Woods described their presence there as "despicable". However, some journalists thought the whole issue rather over-dramatised and that it was important to get an insight into the thinking of the Fiji censors - one of them even a former journalist.

One leading regional journalism educator, Shalendra Singh, is head of journalism and media at the University of the South Pacific. He is a former news magazine editor and is committed to all sides of the story. He defended the women's right to speak as representatives of Fiji's Ministry of Information (a PINA member, although there was some doubt over whether the Minfo was actually paid up).

"Talk about shooting the messenger! The irony is staggering," Singh said later. He said the women should be allowed to speak. The conference should not do to the women what the regime administration in Fiji had done in gagging the media. Singh also mentioned that journalism was about balance and getting all sides of the story. It was an opportunity to put the regime representatives under the spotlight and question them. He said journalists should practise freedom of expression, not just preach it. Singh also described how Fiji was facing draconian censorship and there was a danger that people might become used to the status quo.

Some views changed then and other people present, such as Lisa Williams-Lahari, founding coordinator of the Pacific Freedom Forum, spoke in favour of the women speaking but only in a session about censorship under a military regime, not this one devoted to regional stories of media freedom under fire. She also strongly asked the censors during the Q and A whether they felt Minfo should withdraw as a PINA member without waiting for PINA expulsion. Another panellist, Fiji Times editor-in-chief Netani Rika, walked out in protest at the presence of the censors after his presentation. (He was awarded the region's media freedom prize).

Only one journalist - Dev Nadkarni, a former USP journalism coordinator - commenting on this contentious issue noted the fact that one of the regime's representatives, Lance Corporal Talei Tora, was in fact educated on the USP regional journalism programme and herself a former broadcaster. Tora was well-trained in rigorous journalism skills and freedom of speech. But now as a soldier - one of Fiji's pioneering women officer cadet recruits - she follows military orders. Her elder sister, Luisa Tora, is also an award-winning journalist and long a free speech advocate.

Corporal Tora raised issues of media bias in Fiji, of media paying journalists badly and exploiting them, and other shortcomings - but these issues were not discussed at all. Media in the Pacific does not like to discuss criticism that is leveled at it - as Café Pacific has noted often in the past. There is no critical self-scrutiny as there should be at such meetings - or as happens in many other countries that have challenging "media watch" style radio and television programmes, such as Media 7 in New Zealand. Pacific media too often just plays the victim.

Café Pacific understands that some mention of Pacific Media Centre director associate professor David Robie's past research on Fiji media at the time of the Speight coup was cited - the detailed findings were published in his 2004 USP book Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education. In Nadkarni's review of freedom of speech issues at the PINA convention, he wrote:

[Corporal Tora] said she was a civil servant and had a job to do and pointed to a number of cases of inaccurate reporting (for which several of the media outlets have since apologised).

The questions flew thick and fast: Would she and her colleague be reporting the proceedings to their military bosses? Would the emergency regulations apply to Fiji journalists now they were in a different country? Would they be liable to action? Tora stood her ground and answered questions with confidence, although she used her comparatively junior rank to express inability to comment on the more sensitive matters.

Freedom of speech cuts both ways. If media bleatings over the gagging of Fiji news organisations are to be taken seriously in global contexts, then a major effort needs to be taken by the region's journalists to be fully informed about the complexities of Fiji politics and to report with more insight and balance and to defend open dialogue. Ironically, two of the best reports to come out of Fiji in recent times have not been from Pacific media at all but by Australian-based investigative journalists Graham Davis and Mark Davis for their attempts to give the "other side of the story" of Bainimarama's claimed plan for genuine democracy shorn free of racism.

Pictured: Fiji Times editor Netani Rika speaking at the PINA convention - he was awarded the PINA media freedom award for his defence of free speech in Fiji; Moses Stevens. Photos: Fiji Times; MAV.

• Media Asosiesen blong Vanuatu
• Media management at PIF - Sean Dorney
  
• PINA fails to stand up for media freedom - Pesi Fonua
• Fiji's isolation and PINA - Dev Nadkarni
• Fiji's Frank Bainimarama - Graham Davis
• Perfectly Frank - Mark Davis
• Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education - Amazon Books | USP, Fiji
• Pacific Media Watch
  

Rabuka’s legacy and the seduction of Bainimarama

ROBBIE ROBERTSON, author of two books on Fiji’s coups and a former professor in governance at the University of the South Pacific, isn’t too impressed with Graham Davis. The Fiji-born journalist’s controversial article about “dealing with the dictator” has won a lot of traction in some quarters. At the very least, it balances much of the weight of media coverage in Australia and New Zealand, which has been so simplistic. But while New Zealand seems to be softening its stance towards the regime, at least to possibly open the door to some future dialogue, Robertson warns against being seduced by regime leader Voreqe Bainimarama merely “because of what he promises”. In a message to Café Pacific, he says: “I fear that even if he delivers, the result may not be what we wish for.” Robertson, who co-authored Shattered Coups about 1987 with his wife Akosita Tamanisau, and co-wrote Fiji: Government by the Gun in the wake of George Speight in 2000, has been so troubled that he penned a letter to The Australian. Here is his reply to Davis:

Fiji’s political kingmaker
GRAHAM Davis ("Dealing with the dictator", Features, 16/4) exhibits a very common fallacy about Commodore Frank Bainimarama's reconstituted coup. Bainimarama's goal of instituting a non-racial system of voting may be a very laudable objective in a country whose recent history has been riven by racial division. But the means chosen to implement that goal is entirely inappropriate.

Many people thought that Sitiveni Rabuka's 1987 coups (and that of George Speight in 2000) had similarly laudable objectives. They were designed to uphold the rights of indigenous Fijians who feared being swamped by Indo-Fijians. In fact, as Davis rightly points out, this was largely a myth perpetuated for more mercenary goals.

The consequence for Fiji was a political storm far worse than today's, but within 10 years it had retreated from ethno-centrism and introduced a new Constitution in 1997 that it could rightly be proud of. Speight in 2000 was a bloody reminder of the danger the Rabuka path would always hold for Fiji if institutions succumbed to its logic.

Fiji emerged from those political storms stronger than ever, with a hugely sophisticated and active civil society, a dynamic free media and a strong legal system. Yes, the old Fijian nationalist Laisenia Qarase was not as wise as he should have been when in office, but his rule was no dictatorship. He eventually agreed to a power-sharing arrangement with the opposition Labour Party as the Constitution required, and that decision was popular. If allowed to continue, it might have transformed Fiji's politics and helped to break down the racial divisions both leading parties still reflect.

In other words, change was already in the air, not least because the purported threat Indo-Fijians posed to Fijian dominance has dissipated. Indo-Fijians comprised nearly half the population in 1987; by 2006 only 37 per cent. It is estimated that their proportion may fall to under 25 per cent by 2020. Under these circumstances, electoral systems will have to change, and such change was already being publicly debated before Bainimarama chose to overthrow the recently elected parliament in which power was being shared for the first time among the representatives of 80 percent of the population.

The danger Bainimarama poses lies not in what he says he will do but what he does. Here is a man who claims he and the military forces he represents have the right to interfere in the political process whenever they, and they alone, choose. This is the Rabuka legacy, and if Bainimarama succeeds in recreating Fiji's democracy in five years' time, he will have confirmed for all time the role of the military as Fiji's political kingmaker.
Robbie Robertson

Meanwhile, seasoned Australian Pacific affairs journalist Sean Dorney has wowed students at Queensland University of Technology. According to Alan Knight's blog DatelineHK, Dorney says the Fiji media are being forced "to buckle under" and censorship is being branded as the “journalism of hope". In New Zealand, the Television New Zealand Maori affairs programme Marae has featured Bainimarama’s elder brother, Sefanaia. Others on the panel were former Fiji Broadcasting Corporation Ltd chief executive Sireli Kini and Nik Naidu, spokesperson for the Coalition for Democracy in Fiji.

Pacific Media Centre news blog has posted an insightful backgrounder about Fiji's woes by advocate against poverty Fr Kevin Barr, who explains the People's Charter process. Also, Violet Cho offers a roundup of reaction. A new media blog, Fijiuncensored.wordpress.com , is focused on Fiji.

• Media freedom groups keep up pressure
• The Fiji crisis - behind the headlines
• Marae on Fiji (@10min)
• QUT student report on Sean Dorney’s expulsion
• Dealing with the dictator

Tyrant or crusader against corrupt democracry?

AFTER THE bula welcome this week for "approved" journalists, Liz Jamieson of the London Times has filed a piece from Suva about "terror and threats" at the hands of a tyrant. This should give the sulu censors a choke or two around the yaqona bowl. She describes the recent molotov cocktail season.

“We are afraid for our lives,” one of the victims, who would not be named, told The Times. "My wife and I don’t sleep at night, we are always wondering when the next bomb will come or when they will come for us with their guns. I have been imprisoned and beaten all over my body and face; they told me that the next time they come for me my wife can pick up my body from the morgue.” This is not Zimbabwe or Burma. This is Fiji, the tourist jewel of the South Pacific and, until recently, the most sophisticated of the island nations in this region.

A world away from the Fiji described a couple of days earlier by the Fiji-born Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist Graham Davis. Previously working with the Nine Network’s Sunday programme, Davis, 56, is now a principal of Grubstreet Media. His article, "Dealing with the dictator", in The Australian had far greater depth and insight. As you would expect with a journalist with much better grasp of the root causes of Fiji’s despair. Most journalists are reporting the crisis as if it is something that just brewed a couple of weeks ago, or at the most a couple of years or so ago – when Voreqe Bainimarama staged the first round of his coup and ousted the “democratic” prime minister Laisenia Qarase in December 2006. No sense of the history of the past two decades, or indeed the deep structural political problems and injustice bequeathed to Fiji by the British at independence in 1970. Davis challenged Australian (and other?) media to interrogate the “good guy, bad guy” narrative in a country that under Qarase turned two-fifths of its population into second class citizens.

The bad guys, of course, are held to be Bainimarama and his patron, Fiji's octogenarian President, Josefa Iloilo, who have defied the courts by ruling out any popular vote until they can change the electoral system. The good guys are those calling for an immediate election: a coalition of lawyers, human-rights activists and elements of the local media, plus the man Bainimarama deposed at gunpoint in 2006, former prime minister Laisenia Qarase. It's time to dispense with this simplistic premise because a compelling argument can be made that, in fact, the reverse is true; that Bainimarama and Iloilo, for all their flaws, are embarked on the more worthy crusade. Or certainly more worthy than they're being given credit for by their burgeoning number of foreign opponents. The Fiji saga, by its very nature, defies simplicity, yet stripped to its bare essentials presents the international community with a stark choice between upholding the principle of democracy now and sacrificing racial equality in the process. Wait five years - maybe less if some international agreement could be brokered - and we might get both.

His article won applause from Fiji’s chief information manipulator, Major Neumi Leweni, so it’s probably the kiss of death for Davis. In fact, he immediately copped abusive flak from some of the more rabid Fiji blogs. But it is refreshing to have this perspective from Davis, given that most media have not been giving the full story as partially aired on Media 7 and Shine TV this week. Croz Walsh's blog is still the most useful for a running analysis without all the vitriol.

One of the most bizarre events of this week of paranoia and the crushing of free speech was the spectre of the man who started Fiji's coup culture, Sitiveni Rabuka, calling for a free media. Rabuka - who staged both of the original coups in 1987 and then was elected prime minister twice – also called for the regime to relax its crackdown and open the door for foreign journalists. However, to his credit, after the rough times he dealt the press in the barracks' year zero, he mellowed and his charismatic style and openness was genuinely liked by most media people. A contrast to Bainimarama.

Ironically, his military boss (and chief) whom he ousted as a commoner (unthinkable then) in the double coup in May 1987, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, is now Vice-President of the Easter regime.

• Media 7 on Fiji censorship
• Shine TV on Fiji troubles
• Dealing with the dictator
• Terror and threats as Fiji suffers under the hands of a tyrant