On the Rotary rounds ... Taveuni , the garden island of Fiji

Bouma school kids singing in the rain. Below: Alan fishing - "it all helps"; Claire with the fishing family. Photos: Alan Eyes

CAFÉ PACIFIC publisher’s sister Claire and her husband, Alan Eyes, currently governor of Rotary District 9920 with a responsibility for the Pacific islands, are currently on a field trip to Fiji looking over a number of school and water aid projects. The trip has been a welcome eye opener. And they are now enthusiasts of the “Pacific Way”.

Some brief snippets from her diary:

August 24:
Bula, bula

We’re surviving the busy schedule … just! What an experience. We have been treated like royalty at the special water for life opening ceremonies and can now sit crossed-legged for almost an hour on the ceremonial mats … Have now downed many bilos of kava and been clapped by the elders. Cutting the ribbons and turning on the water taps in the villages is amazingly moving.

We met Sitiveni Sitivatu's mum in her village yesterday, and saw all that he has done for her. All Black No 11? But we see in the newspaper headlines today that he’s been left out of the World Cup team. She will be so disappointed.

Ni sa bula vinaka

PS: David, I met one of your ex-journalism students from USP - Emily Moli. She is a journalist still over here and has just joined the Suva Peninsula Rotary club. She says hi to you.

August 15:
The day starts sitting on Geoff’s covered outdoor deck under a coconut palm and looking out to the sea. Raining here in paradise this morning - a commodity needed to fill all those water tanks on the Rotary projects that Geoff is constantly finding funds for.

Also a cooling for the humid temperatures, so good for the group of us being shown the sights of Taveuni. Geoff is an inspiration and even at breakfast, provided for us by Joey, he is promoting Rotary and its projects as he maps out our morning.

We have been instructed that we will leave at 0815 sharp as we have a lot to see. The programme is very “light” today, Geoff says. We all bundle into his Toyota Prado, Joey, Alex Oehlmann, (an ambassadorial scholar from Germany currently studying in Auckland, and hosted by Auckland East Rotary Club), Alan and me, with Geoff driving.

Then we stop at the TovuTovu Resort, to pick up Ken and Angela who are over from Melbourne - Rotary club of Templestowe - promoting the ABCD -Art programme for schools. This Rotary initiative may join with Fiji clubs to create sponsorship for disadvantaged children to assist with education costs through this programme.

Off we set south, past Taveuni Airport, which is very close to where Geoff and Joey live. Then past “Tromoto” Restaurant on a cliff overhanging the sea where we shared a beautiful meal together on our first night. We pass first the Marist Training Centre/Waica Water Project which is currently under construction. Gradually the villages of Taveuni are being supplied with piped running water, a commodity we all take for granted. All these projects on Taveuni are possible thanks to Rotary clubs' financial and physical support, and the Rotary Foundation.
…
Next we head up the winding bumpy dirt track to the Buculevu Secondary School perched up on a hill and also overlooking the sea and surrounded by palm trees and gorgeous brightly coloured foliage. Here we view a working project with local village men learning on the job building skills overseen by Geoff … The Buculevu 40 bed girls dormitory will enable students from the final two years of schooling to have some more space and privacy.

Currently 140 female boarding students are housed in two small accommodation houses. We are privileged to view the dormitory which is nearing completion. Alex had contributed some time and energy painting the wall of the laundry area yesterday. Many local volunteers are also giving their time.

…
And still there is so much work to do on Taveuni …

PS: Later in the day, Alex and Alan were being taught how to fish from the beach with a Taveuni woman and her three sons. She couldn’t understand much English but when we mentioned Rotary, her eyes lit up. She beamed at us and said: “Rotary has done so much for us here."

All Pacific power to you, Claire and Alan.

Libya is no Iraq – this revolution is the real deal

Libyan rebels celebrate the capture of Muammar Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli. Photo: Hamza Turkia/XinHua

By Mohamed Salem via MediaMonitor

MUAMMAR GADDAFI and his sons are now on the run, fleeing from the Libyan people, yet already the doomsayers and prophets of disaster have lined up to tell the world it isn't worth it, that Libya is destined to go down the route of chaos and fragmentation. Libya will be another Iraq and Afghanistan, we are told.

They are wrong, because the post-conflict scenario in Libya differs from those two examples of failed Western intervention in several crucial aspects. Indeed if you study the indicators, Libya is poised to be the most complete and potentially most successful of any the Arab uprisings so far.

The roots of Iraq and Afghanistan's tragedy lie in the abrupt and imposed nature of change. It's easy to forget that Libya's organic and intense popular uprising preceded any international intervention. UN security council resolution 1973, which authorised the use of force to protect civilians, was only passed when it became clear that a massacre in the east was imminent. This is not Nato's revolution, not by a long way. The Libyan revolution remains very much the real deal.

The reason this matters is because it means no foreign power can now assert a moral right to meddle in Libya's future. Libya's destiny is now rightfully in the hands of its people, having been hijacked by Gaddafi and his cronies for almost 42 years. It also means the West must to a degree absolve itself of direct responsibility for what happens next in Libya and leave the planning to Libyans themselves.

The worst idea of all would be to send in foreign ground troops now, even under the peacekeeping banner. Not only would this be met with fierce opposition by the Libyan people, it would send the message that the West still feels that Arabs cannot be trusted to look after themselves.

Even without foreign bases on Libyan soil, some commentators have raised the spectre of a Ba'athist-style insurgency against the new Libyan government by regime loyalists. This prediction does not stand up to scrutiny either. The moment Gaddafi is captured or killed and his regime put to bed, there will be nothing left for his supporters to support.

There are no sectarian, ethnic or ideological cleavages to be exploited to foment unrest and violence. The onus is now on the Libyan people to show restraint and respect for the rule of law in dealing with regime officials and soldiers, and to refrain from vigilantism and retributive justice.

Mohamed Salem is the pen name of a British-Libyan journalist who writes for The Guardian.

• Read the full article at The Guardian
• Libyan intervention - two views from different camps
  

Religion and reality laid bare in Fiji

Flashback to when then Methodist Church president Laisiasa Ratabacaca, with glasses, led a delegation to offer moral support to deposed prime minister Laisenia Qarase. Photo: Fiji Times

By Dr Crosbie Walsh

THE DIFFICULTY for overseas readers in reading this story about the Fiji military clampdown is that they will equate the Methodist Church in Fiji with the Methodist Church (and other churches) in Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere. They do, of course, share similar spiritual roles and both are engaged in "politics".

But there the similarity ends.

"Politics" for overseas church leaders means working to promote social and moral issues for the perceived benefit of all the population. "Politics" for the Fiji Methodist leadership means advancing what they perceive to be the interests of indigenous Fijians (or, more precisely, perceived traditional relationships) with scant regard for other races, many of whom are neither Christian nor Methodist. Some 95 percent Fiji Methodists are ethnic Fijians. Some 43 percent of Fiji's population is not ethnic Fijian.

To better understand the situation one needs to trace its roots. The separation of spiritual and secular authority, and economic and political power, which emerged in the West as societies evolved from feudal to capitalist societies, was not evident in Fiji. And what was assumed to be traditional practice was left untouched by colonial authorities, who found it cheaper to administer ethnic Fijians indirectly, through their chiefs.

"Fijian 'collective consciousness' and 'identity' was — and is" — what a former, and more liberal, Church leader, the Rev. Ilaitia Tuwere, in 1997 called the "inseparable union of vanua (land), lotu (church) and matanitu (state). Their union is so complete that if one is affected, the whole is affected." [My emphasis.]

The Methodist Church assumed the mantle of lotu in this triumverate, and for this reason some of its leaders endorsed the 1997 Rabuka and 2000 Speight coups when ethnic Fijian hegemony — and control of the Fiji matanitu (state) — was seen to be threatened following elections which resulted in their "approved" political party losing power.

Church leaders promoted and took part in the Speight coup which overthrew the legally elected government led by Mahendra Chaudhry. And they supported Qarase's SDL-led party that was ousted by Bainimarama in 2006. This is why they oppose the Bainimarama government, the People's Charter and early attempts at dialogue, and why their leadership refuse to comply with government's insistence that "politics" be kept out of the annual conference meetings.

Overseas Methodists do not tell their members to support a particular political party. The Fiji Methodist Church endorses one or another ethnic Fijian political party. This is a very important difference. "Politics" has a different meaning.

In the current standoff, the Fiji Church had the right to decide who would chair its meetings, even if asked not to do so by government. It chose to ignore government requests because its leaders were upholding their lotu role, handed down from an idealised and largely fossilised tradition that is under threat from social change — no less than from the Bainimarama government. They are part of the ethnic Fijian "establishment" (a role they share with the Great Council of Chiefs, the Fijian Affairs Board, the Native Lands Trust Board or Fiji Holdings Ltd) that has perverted democracy in Fiji for many years.

If Fiji is to move towards a more genuine and inclusive democracy, its institutional structures need to be modernised: with the role of the Great Council of Chiefs limited to ethnic Fijian matters and the Methodist Church limited to spiritual, social and political affairs — without party political strings attached. Fiji now belongs to all its people, not just the iTaukei, and governments must ensure it remains so.

One wonders what the Rev. Tuwere would advise. Would he have urged the Church to take the political step of defying government, or would he have recommended the Church adopt a more conciliatory position, with the intention of allowing the conference to proceed? And what would he have advised the government, whose answers to too many issues seem to rely on force rather than persuasion, no matter how many times the persuasion has failed?

This is what he said two years ago as reported on ABC's Pacific Beat:

"A former president of the Fiji Methodist Church has called for the controversial church conference next month to be cancelled to save the country from further unrest. Several top church leaders are now facing charges over their decision to go ahead with the annual conference in open defiance of the interim government's decision to ban it.

"Reverend Ilaitia Tuwere says blame for the standoff should be equally shared between the church and the interim government. The former church president says that the Methodist leadership should have dropped all political issues from its conference agenda, but the has government overreacted with its series of arrests. "

• Flashback: The Methodist Church caught in an imbroglio between religion and politics

Former University of the South Pacific professor Crosbie Walsh publishes a specialist blog on Fiji affairs.

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

Global battle for images and ideas - challenging the West's 'news duopoly'

Professor Daya Thussu speaking at AMIC 2011. Middle: PNG's Joys Eggins. Bottom: PMC's Dr David Robie. Top two photos: David Robie; bottom image: Manawwar Naqvi

ONE of the highlights of last month’s AMIC conference in Hyderabad, India, was a presentation about the US/UK news “duopoly” and the distortions and “injustices of information flows”. Presented by professor Daya Thussu of Westminster University, a former editor of Gemini News Service - one of the post-war pioneers of “independent news” - it was a compelling session. Thussu regards the rise of Al Jazeera English as a critical factor in creating a “news contra flow” to challenge the Western prism. “It was important to have the independent perspective on the Libyan civil war provided by Al Jazeera,” he said. “There is a global battle for images and ideas and Al Jazeera is an important counter to the BBC/CNN global news duopoly."

Undoubtedly, foreign policy has been enormously affected by WikiLeaks – “the greatest leaks in history”, he argues. And the information guerrillas are playing an important role too, in spite of the celebrated “Gay girl in Damascus” blog being exposed as a hoax, and blogger Amina Arraf being unmasked as a man - 40-year-old American student activist Tom MacMaster.

The four-day 20th Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) conference, with more than 400 participants and presenters, was a stimulating event, even if understandably very heavily focused on the host nation India. The “Pacific” contingent may have been tiny (just four from Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea), but the team profiled well.

Associate professor Martin Hadlow of the University of Queensland and the Pacific’s representative at the UNESCO World Freedom Day event in New York in May, following his valiant efforts at getting last year’s UNESCO event staged in Brisbane last year, provided a global overview of development communication with a focus on the Pacific. He described how the Pacific, while being relatively underdeveloped in ICTs, had actually stolen a march over many developing countries with an innovative and rapid take up of mobile phones. He also talked about the region’s “heritage media” and radio was “still very much king” in the Pacific. He outlined the success of some new players like New Dawn FM in Bougainville, last year’s winners of a global communication and social change award sponsored by UOQ.

Papua New Guinea’s Joys Eggins, daughter of leading former EM TV journalist John Eggins and now doing her master’s degree at the University of Goroka, spoke about the Komunity Tok Piksa community video project in the Highlands. She outlined its success in producing visual messages on HIV/AIDS with local communities – “the dilemmas of collaboration, consent and ownership”.

Associate professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, outlined contrasting media campus-based media models with case studies of both Wansolwara at the University of the South Pacific that now publishes this newspaper in partnership with the Fiji Sun, and Pacific Scoop, a partnership between AUT University and New Zealand’s largest independent digital news media group Scoop Media Ltd. The paper assessed their “publishing profiles and contrasts their independent brands focused on education, environmental issues – particularly climate change and deforestation – human rights, resource development, social justice, culture and language with mainstream media”.

Unitec’s Munawwar Naqvi’s paper presented a critical perspective on communication with communities within development efforts at the grassroots level in central India. Two models, selective interaction and new involvement, were developed from the data collected from semi-structured interviews of different types of non-governmental development organisations.

Next year’s AMIC conference will be in Malaysia and organisers already have the Malaysian Tourism Board lined up as one of the key sponsors. Café Pacific hopes to be represented.

• AMIC conference 2011
• Earlier post-AMIC and media freedom reports:
• Gang members kidnap, rape Indian journalist's niece
• Shooting of top Indian investigative journalist - and "Pacific" quartet photo

Toxic media brand called Rupert Murdoch in free fall

Graphic: motivated.photos.com

A TOXIC BRAND. And each day the poison spreads. Michael Wolff, author of the The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch, a biography, had some riveting insights during an interview with Radio New Zealand’s Kim Hill at the weekend. Wolff noted the supreme irony of the mogul who had built the world’s largest media empire, ruled through fear and “reward or punishment”, was now taking his own medicine.

“Once the power has gone, many of the opponents rise to get rid of the despot,” he said. Wolff believes the fallout from the News of the World phone-hacking scandal will be devastating in the long run for the Murdoch empire.

The NOTW has been accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians and ordinary citizens - including a 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was abducted and murdered in Britain.

Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of NOTW, Britain’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper until it was sacrificed in an attempt to keep alive Murdoch’s takeover hopes to buy out the British pay TV giant BSkyB, finally resigned as News International head in Britain late last week. She has since been arrested by police for questioning and has been replaced at the helm by New Zealander Tom Mockbridge, formerly chief executive of Murdoch-owned satellite broadcaster Sky Italia.

Dow Jones chief executive Les Hinton resigned in New York and Murdoch himself has published several apologies in his various British titles in a desperate attempt at damage control.

But the biggest casualty so far has been the resignation of Britain’s top police officer Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson, head of London's Metropolitan Police Service, or Scotland Yard, who quit because of the alleged links between the police and the phone-hacking scandal. Stephenson cited the “ intense media scrutiny and the hiring of a former News Corporation tabloid editor to advise police on public relations” as a major reason for his resignation. The editor, Neil Wallis, was arrested in connection with the criminal investigation last week.

Rupert himself, at 80, should retire, and James Murdoch now has no credibility, argues Wolff. Somebody else should take the helm as soon as possible – “as long as his name is not Murdoch”.

Wolff also pointed to the “hypocrisy everywhere” over the saga: “Every week 2.7 million Britons read the salacious detail in the NOTW provided by phone hacking.”

A couple of days after the interview, Wolff reportedly claimed the Murdoch siblings were turning on each other, saying:

[T]he tycoon's daughter, Elisabeth, said her brother James had "f***ed the company".

Last week Elisabeth denied she had said something similar about the ousted News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks. But Wolff insisted on Twitter: "She said, 'James and Rebekah f***ed the company."'

Wolff said Elisabeth made the remark at a book launch for political analyst Philip Gould hosted by her husband, Matthew Freud, and the editor of the Times, James Harding.

Roy Greenslade, writing in The Guardian – the paper that exposed the phone hacking scandal and brought the empire to its knees, wrote:

Despite the decisiveness of his actions – most obviously closing the NOTW and withdrawing the BSkyB bid – a mute Murdoch no longer seemed to be master of his own fate. In a vacuum, journalists were bound to speculate, as he will have known. So the gossip swirled. And the most potent rumour was that he was about to dispose of News International itself. There was logic to the argument. If the NOTW was closed because it was toxic, then it followed that the whole division was toxic too.

Seen from the perspective of the US-based parent company, News Corporation, the Wapping outpost seemed both irrelevant and dangerous. Why not cut off the gangrenous limb to ensure the poison did not spread to News Corp's heart?

A weekend analysis by Associated Press writers Michael Liedtke and Ryan Nakashima related how the “tables have turned on Murdoch” . They wrote:

To his many enemies, Rupert Murdoch is getting his comeuppance. Murdoch's tabloid newspapers long have reveled in the misdeeds of others with salacious photos and pun-packed headlines. Now, one of the world's most powerful media executives is learning what it's like to be enveloped in his own scandal.

"There is a feeling that Murdoch has been king of the world for too long and it's about time that somebody brought him back to Earth," says Mungo MacCallum, a political journalist and commentator who once worked for a Murdoch-owned newspaper, The Australian.

But no one is calling press conferences to gloat about Murdoch's troubles. Even his bitterest media rivals are keeping quiet.

.....

CNN founder Ted Turner, who once challenged Murdoch to a boxing match in Las Vegas, was unavailable, according to a spokesman.

New York Daily News Publisher Mort Zuckerman, whose newspaper fights every day for front page dominance with the [Murdoch] Post for New York's tabloid audience also did not return a message seeking comment.

.....

But the British lawmakers who have traditionally supported Murdoch rather than risk being pilloried in the pages of his newspapers no longer seem to be in his corner because their fear of retaliation is fading. He will surely face tough questions Tuesday when he appears before a Parliament committee eager to grill him about the phone hacking and bribery allegations.

"All the powerful allies that used to help him, either publicly or behind the scenes, have faded to the sidelines," says Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media Matters, a liberal group that frequently criticises Fox News for what it says is biased and inaccurate reporting. "He is on his own, and he is in over his head."

Boehlert likens the crisis and widespread antipathy surrounding Murdoch to the unraveling of Richard Nixon's presidency in 1974 as details of the Watergate cover-up were revealed. Like Nixon then, Murdoch is in "free-fall mode. There is nothing he can do to stop this story," Boehlert says.

• Tables turn on Murdoch as scandal rocks his empire
• Rebekah Brooks arrested

Gang members kidnap, rape Indian journalist's niece

Indian troops guard the entrance to the AMIC media and globalisation conference in Hyderabad, India. Below: Assaults on the media in India featured on CBS-IBN. Photos: David Robie

BARELY had Café Pacific returned to its more tranquil Waitemata waters after the stimulating AMIC media and globalisation conference in Hyderabad, India, than Reporters Sans Frontières has issued another communique about a shocking development on the subcontinent. RSF reports that it is

... appalled to learn that the niece of a journalist based in Bulandshahr, in the northeastern state of Uttar Pradesh, was kidnapped for three days and raped by gang members, who mistook her for his daughter.

The police have arrested a member of the gang, which had reportedly threatened the journalist over his reporting and wanted to deter him from testifying in a murder case. The journalist, who reports for a TV news channel and edits a monthly called Jungsatta, has been identified only by the name of "Rizwan".

"We express our full support for Rizwan, his niece and his family," Reporters Sans Frontières said. "This barbaric violence must not go unpunished. In his reporting and the evidence he gave to the judicial authorities, he courageously fulfilled his journalistic and civic duties. The Indian authorities must now do their duty by bringing this wretched crime's perpetrators and instigators to justice and by providing the journalist and his family with effective protection."

The press freedom organisation added: "If the authorities take no measures to punish those responsible, other journalists will be afraid to continue covering criminal cases or any story remotely linked to the underworld and organised crime."

Yasin Bhatola, a known member of a Bulandshahr-based gang led by Mehboob Pandey, was arrested in New Delhi on July 1 on information provided by the Bulandshahr police. Police say Bhatola has admitted to being a member of Pandey's gang.

The Times of India quoted deputy police commissioner Arun Kampani as saying: "[Rizwan] was a witness in double murder case (. . .) in which Mehboob Pandey was an accused. Pandey and his associates threatened him with dire consequences if he continued to testify."

The abduction and rape was allegedly carried out by Pandey, Bhatola and three other members of Pandey's gang. Rizwan's family is reportedly now being protected by the Bulandshahr police.

The news of the Uttar Pradesh case has emerged just three weeks after Jyotirmoy Dey, an investigative reporter for the newspaper MidDay who specialised in covering organised crime, was gunned down by three men on 11 June in Mumbai.

This assassination was featured in the last report on Café Pacific.

After initially arresting a single suspect, police arrested seven more suspects on June 27. Mumbai joint police commissioner Himanshu Roy said they were hired by underworld don Chhota Rajan.

Dey was the second journalist to be killed this year in India. The first was Umesh Rajput, a reporter for the newspaper Nai Duniya, who was gunned down by two masked men on a motorcycle in the east-central state of Chhattisgarh on January 23.

Reporters Sans Frontières released a report on February 24 about global organised crime and the fact that it now poses one of the biggest threats to media freedom.

These events, of course, put things in perspective in the South Pacific where media freedom is a catchcry but where the risks are relatively mild in the global stakes apart from the occasional roughing up, such as in Vanuatu, and unsavoury state censorship, as in Fiji. (Incidentally, Café Pacific deplores the appalling non-sentence handed out to minister Harry Iauko for the recent assault on Daily Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones). It only takes a brief trip to India, Pakistan, Philippines - or across the border from Papua New Guinea into Indonesian-ruled West Papua - to get a rude awakening on the realities over media freedom.

Meanwhile, the global credibility of news media has taken a king hit with the closure of the 168-year-old News of the World amid the newspaper's phone hacking and alleged police corruption furore that is shaking the Murdoch media empire to its foundations. Café Pacific regards the collapse to the world's biggest selling Sunday as no real loss - it was a scurrilous rag anyway. But the ramifactions from this scandal for professional and ethical media globally is likely to be dire.

The British government insists that media self-regulation itself has "failed". Many other governments are bound to share that sentiment and use the NOTW debacle as an excuse for harsher media laws.

For those in the Pacific, it is sobering to reflect on the performance of another (then and albeit tiny) Murdoch paper, The Fiji Times, during the Coalition Labour government's one year in office in Fiji after a landslide election win in 1999 and the George Speight coup in May 2000. Allegations of bias and lack of professionalism were rife at the time and much has been written since.

Shooting of top Indian investigative journalist shocks nation

WHILE a leading Indian politician was railing against media sensationalism and lack of credibility and a major Asian communications conference was meeting in Hyderabad this week, police in Mumbai were crowing over the arrest of seven alleged assassins of a prominent investigative journalist in a case that has shocked the nation.

Veteran MiDDay crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey was gunned down in a street not far from his home on the outskirts of Mumbai in a daylight gangland style execution on June 11.

While police displayed the seven hooded suspects in a press conference after their arrest this week and showed off a .32 calibre American-made revolver and 20 rounds of “deadly and accurate” Czech-made extra long cartridges and five empty shells - which they claimed were used in the murder - no motive was revealed.

But the police claimed the journalist had been killed under a supari (contract killing) order by a notorious gangland leader, Chhota Rajan.

Six of the accused had criminal records, including the alleged gunman Satish Kalya, who is already facing three murder cases.

Welcoming the breakthrough by the police who were under tremendous pressure to crack the crime, the national newspaper The Hindu said in an editorial that the assassination had been meticulously planned over 20 days.

Investigations were still under way and the “3000 emails in Dey’s in-box have to be examined for crucial evidence”. The newspaper added:

Having caught the suspects, the police have an even bigger challenge – unravelling the motive behind the brazen killing. Most crime reporters have excellent contacts with the underworld and a network of informers. Dey did not speak to anyone of a threat to his life or demand protection.

News reports said the suspects, while confessing to the murder, claimed they did not know Dey was a prominent journalist.

Dey, 56, had been investigating and writing on the oil mafia in India, underworld links with policemen and other issues. Journalist groups were branding his murder as an assault on the Fourth Estate of democracy. He is the third Indian journalist to have been murdered so far in 2011.

Reporters sans frontières called for a full investigation to be carried out by a federal agency to ensure impartiality by investigators. But the Mumbai High Court has ruled that local police can continue their investigation until a July 6 deadline and to produce a report.

As Indian media splashed reports about the arrest of the suspects, CNN-IBN was reporting on a new clampdown on the media by politicians, including assaults in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Its reports were billed with the speculative headline: “Is the media the new enemy of politicians?”

Ironically, The Hindu reported the leaders of various parties calling on the media not to sensationalise news and to maintain credibility in shaping public opinion.

Speaking at the launch of Jagruti Television news channel in Hyderabad last Sunday, government whip Y. Sivarami Reddy criticised some media for promoting a handful of politicians and the “street rowdy” instead of reporting on people who were “changing society for good”.
Chairman of the state’s Economic Programme, N. Tulasi Reddy said media was the lifeline for survival of democracy. But he warned that as media organisations were increasing in India, their credibility was decreasing. He praised Jagruti channel for striving to promote a society with moral and ethical values instead of pandering to sensationalism.

Meanwhile, a four-day Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) organised annual conference on “the challenges and opportunities of globalisation, new media and the rise of Asia” featured five speakers from the Pacific among the more than 400 participants. The Pacific “delegation” was AMIC board member associate professor Martin Hadlow of Australia’s University of Queensland; Joys Eggins of the University of Goroka in Papua New Guinea; associate professor David Robie, director of New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre; and Dr Munawwar Naqvi of Unitec in NZ.

Pictured: Top: The Hindu front page on June 28; left to right at AMIC 2011: Associate professor Martin Hadlow, Joys Eggins, associate professor David Robie and Dr Munawwar Naqvi.

• Mumbai High Court allows local police to continue investigation into reporter's murder

Memo to Mara: Inspire Fiji's 'jasmine revolution' and then face a treason trial

Samoan meddling? Fiji military renegades Jone Baledrokadroka (left) and Ratu Tevita Mara (centre) - now travelling on a Tongan passport - have a tête-à-tête with Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa'ilele in Canberra.

PHILIP RAMA of the Auckland-based Coalition for Democracy in Fiji has penned his protest against allowing a coup leader tainted with alleged human rights abuses to come to New Zealand. In an open letter, he says:

I am dismayed that John Key’s government is allowing [ex] Lieutenant-Colonel Tevita Mara to visit New Zealand.

Mara was a very senior military officer who was involved in the planning and staging of the coup of 2006. He was a member of the Military Council of Fiji that imposed the oppressive decrees in Fiji.

He was the commander of the largest unit of the army and his soldiers enforced those decrees arresting people who did not comply with the decrees.

Even if he did not torture those arrested, he knew what would happen to them when his soldiers handed them to Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama’s torturers.

He is guilty of serious crimes against the people of Fiji.

But for his falling-out with Commodore Bainimarama, he would have continued enforcing the oppressive military decrees.

If Mara wants to end the military rule, as he is reported to said, he should go back to Lau and from there inspire the Fijian people to rise up against the military government in a Fijian-style “jasmine revolution”.

And when the revolution succeeds, Mara should be tried for treason along with Bainimarama and the others behind the 2006 coup. NZ should not allow Mara or any other person involved in the 2006 coup to come here.

In an earlier letter in the New Zealand Herald on 18 June 2011, he wrote:

John Key and Murray McCully mistakenly think allowing the likes of Mara to visit here will hasten the collapse of the military regime in Fiji.

If anything, it will strengthen the resolve of Commodore Frank Bainimarama and those around him to maintain their grip on power. That is the only way they can preserve themselves.

And when Mara tells us how bad the situation is in Fiji, what will NZ do that it has not already done.? Nothing will change in Fiji unless the indigenous people act.

They came out in support of the coups staged by Sitiveni Rabuka and George Speight. They stood silently during the ousting of a democratically elected Prime Minister and the removal of people and institutions that criticised Bainimarama.

This is where Mara needs to begin is he wants to overthrow the military government.

He will need to convince Fijians and those in the army that they must respect the values of democracy and democratic institutions, uphold the constitution and the rule of law.

And the army must be subservient to the democratically elected civilian government.

• Tuilaepa's protocol breach over Fiji

Mara, Kaitani and the charade of Fiji democracy

ANOTHER "SMOKING GUN" picture? This time George Speight's former "Minister of Disinformation" Simione Kaitani is pictured with an armed Speight rebel and "well-wishers" on 25 May 2000 - just six days after Mahendra Chaudhry's elected government was taken captive at gunpoint in Parliament. The Fiji Times caption said at the time:

Lomaiviti parliamentarian Simione Kaitani with well-wishers and a rebel trooper (right), who stormed Parliament on Friday.

The picture comes from the archives of former Fiji Daily Post publisher and columnist Thakur Ranjit Singh who has other similar images in his collection. Not to mention the controversial Fiji Television Close-up programme featuring Kaitani and an alleged "incitement" incident. Kaitani later also had the Information portfolio in the Laisenia Qarase government for a period.

Kaitani was among the supporters for Fiji military renegade Ratu Tevita Mara at a public anti-regime meeting in Queanbeyan, near Canberra, last weekend. Mara is currently in Australia on a Tongan passport (he is a cousin of the king of Tonga as well as being youngest son of Fiji's founding prime minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara) drumming up support. He is expected to visit New Zealand on a restricted two-day visa next week.

According to Singh in the Fiji Sun yesterday:

Mere elections do not deliver democracy. One that does not grant freedom, equality and social justice to all its citizens is not worth defending.

A seminar was organised by the Coalition for Democracy in Fiji in late December 2006, in Auckland, just weeks after Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama ousted Laisenia Qarase’s supposedly democratic government. This author presented a paper and accused New Zealand and Australian governments of hypocrisy, double standards and being ungrateful and blinkered neighbours because of their lack of understanding and appreciation about Fiji’s fundamental ills.

NZ mainstream media, which lacks diversity in its newsrooms, was also not spared for its inability to analyse the real truth about Fiji, and appeared to be singing from the same hymn sheet of their government’s dogmatic foreign policy on Fiji’s faltering democracy and governance issues.

It appears nothing much has changed in those last four and a half years. Australia granted a visa to the renegade military man Ratu Tevita Mara, aka Roko Ului, to address the so-called democracy movement in exile near Canberra during the weekend.

It is interesting to see the makeup of this dubious forum: SDL, Vanua, Church, the nationalists, unions and the flotsam and jetsam of Qarase’s SDL stalwarts who were off-loaded from the racist gravy train. Among other things, they wish to bring back the hegemony of the unelected and unrepresentative Great Council of Chiefs, which has been an obstacle to real Westminster type of democracy in Fiji.

• Mara's charade of democracy - Fiji Sun
• Kaitani's denial in reply to the Graham Davis article
• The camera doesn't lie - Grubsheet
  

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