Hard Talk on Fiji.

Radio New Zealand podcast interviews the N.Z Foreign Minister, Winston Peters regarding the highballed statistics of Human Rights abuses in Fiji. Similar accusations were also levied by Commonwealth Secretary General, Don McKinnon also covered by Radio NZ article. Ironically McKinnon had formerly occupied the office of New Zealand Foreign Minister and his comments could have well been 'ghost written' from Wellington, as far as Fiji's interim Attorney General is concerned.



New Zealand Television's video (featured above) analyzes the recent 'Vote of No Confidence'against the Labour Party. So it appears that Winston Peters' opinion of Fiji is not reflected by all New Zealanders.

Apparently, there is no shortage of people pissed off with the New Zealand Government and their policies; including the N.Z conventional media. This ticked off citizen journalist from New Zealand has unleashed his anger on a YouTube video

Warning: Language may be offensive.

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Tale of Two Standards.

Radio NZ International article reports that, Fiji Human Rights Commission(F.H.R.C) has dismissed the Eminent Person Group's(E.P.G) leaked report regarding the situation in Fiji.

F.H.R.C Director had also identified some irregularities with two members of the group, which undoubtedly compromised the integrity of the EPG and their report on Fiji.

Director Shameem highlighted the activities of an Australian member of ECG- General Peter Cosgrove, who was involved with the Norwegian vessel: Tampa and the affair with Afghan refugees-an episode demonstrating unethical behavior.

Australian Federal Court papers filed by Victoria Civil Liberties Inc. Vs Minister of Immigration & Multicultural affairs, outline the track record on the embarrasing series of events.

The court subsequently ruled against the Australian Government for illegally detaining the refugees, reported by WSWS article.



(Above Image: Afghan refugees from the sinking vessel OLONG, involved in [C.M.I] or Certain Maritime Incident)

Truth Overboard.com outlines the chronology of events.


(Above image: General Peter Cosgrove)

General Cosgrove's dangerous descent in the moral Netherlands, on the issue of Afghani refugees was the not the only controversy surrounding his vast resume. Apparently, the honorable General was also accused of misleading the Australian Senate Estimates on East Timor and Abu Gharib prison torture.

This is a micro excerpt of S.M.H article, questioning General Cosgrove about the involvement of Australia in Abu Gharib.

Persistent questioning by the media and the Opposition following the publication of the abuse photos at the end of April led Defence to conduct an inquiry – its first inquiry - into its state of knowledge of the abuses.

The results of that inquiry, which included a survey of 298 members of the Defence forces, were announced by the Chief of the Defence Force, General Cosgrove and the Secretary of Defence, Mr Ric Smith, on 28 May.

We were informed that “none of those surveyed were aware of abuse or serious mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners or detainees, of the nature of recent allegations, during their deployment” and “there were no reports about the abuse or serious mistreatment of prisoners or detainees of the nature of recent allegations made, either through the chain of command or informally.”

Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer's ad-nauseum harrangue on Fiji politics should be superimposed with Australia's own involvement with Abu Gharib scandal in Iraq covered in a 2004 article by SMH or the theft of East Timor oil covered by this article by ASAP.

This is the excerpt:

The tempest in the Timor Sea

Asia Times - April 24, 2004

Alan Boyd, Sydney --

Benefactor or bully?

Australia has been portrayed as both in its protracted standoff with tiny East Timor over US$30 billion worth of deep-sea oil and gas reserves. So uneven is the contest, between the richest and poorest nations on the southern rim of the Pacific, that Canberra was always going to come off worse in the public relations battle.

"It is, quite literally, a matter of life and death," Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri declared in one of the more excitable quotations to come from the latest negotiations, which ended inconclusively in Dili on Thursday. "Timor-Leste loses $1 million a day due to Australia's unlawful exploitation of resources in the disputed area. That is too many lost and wasted lives," he said.

Five years ago, Australia was hell-bent on saving those same lives when it intervened in the militia war between Indonesian special forces and Timorese guerrillas, using hard cash and military firepower to eventually secure independence for the eastern half of the island of Timor.

Latest developments on the issue from News.com is that, the East-Timor Parliament has agreed to a 50:50 division of royalities from the Sunrise oil fields, but delayed the debate on the oil field's permanent boundaries for 50 years.

Delayed negotiation also means delayed justice, a matter which undermines Australia's pillars of justice and fairplay in the region.

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Foreign Flower or Foreign Policy?

Fiji Sun published an interesting opinion article written by a local promoter of social issues, regarding the subject of Democracy and the remote cat-calls for Fiji to return to it, voiced by some egalitarian nations.

Democracy in many disguises-Sham or genuine, the demand for a quick return to democracy solution

By Aisake Casimira

One of the predominant, if not central demands made of the interim government since the military ousted the Qarase government on the 5th of December 2006, was the “quick return to democracy” and, in the same breath “show us the road map to democracy”.

This demand was made not only by some local NGOs, lawyers, political parties and ousted politicians, but also from governments, organisations and NGOs outside the border. From Fiji’s closest neighbours - the Australian and New Zealand governments - to the farthest of governments and organisations - the US, EU, the Commonwealth, and at least one Human Rights organisation in the US have being singing the same tune.

From their point of view, it makes ‘democratic’ sense to legitimately re-establish ‘overnight majority rule’. This will ensure the resumption of bilateral aid, the release of project grants, the restoration of investor confidence and, hence, hasten economic recovery.

But, in a developing country like Fiji, it is not as simple as what these governments and organisations assumed. The “quick return to democracy” solution, in the form of holding general elections, for example, barely one year after the 1987 and 2000 coups respectively, if any thing, did not solve much of Fiji’s governance problems.

Rather, it left many issues unattended, in particular, the assessment of whether it was wise to pursue democracy at the same time that it was adopting a free market economic model.

One thing to note in this regard, as Amy Chua (2004:195) says, is that none of the western countries, including Australia and New Zealand ever adopted or implemented democracy and the free market or laissez-faire economic model at the same time.

[Chua](ibid) added that what helped these countries to implement democracy gradually (and not overnight, although overnight democracy is what has been touted by the western countries around the world through conditions on aid, objectives of governmental funding agencies and through bilateral and multilateral trade agreements), was the strong social welfare system they had.

This helped to cushion the worst impacts of the free market. The argument of the interim government, however, is that once the tasks set before them by the President - to review the electoral system, conduct the national census, revive the economy, etc - are achieved, then general elections can then be held.

The intention to care for the worst off in our society, the low income earners and the needy may not only be a necessary policy choice but may also be a wise one. If, in the meantime ‘democracy’ is suspended so as to ensure a stronger ‘democratic’ foundation for the future, then pursuing free market policies as well as solidifying and expanding our social welfare schemes may make a lot of sense, than simply a “quick return to democracy” with little substance to the process, with a weak social welfare system to cushion the impact of the free market.

The triumphalism view of the governments of New Zealand, Australia and the EU about democracy and their near fanatic insistence on a “quick return to democracy” solution rests in part on a certain hypocrisy. If universal suffrage were a reality rather than a sham, one might wonder whether most of today’s professed free marketeers, foreign investors and international financial organisations would be supporting it.

Indeed, even today, there are many within these countries and international organisations who, at the first sign of a possible trade-off between the free market and genuine democracy, make it clear that their first commitment is to the former.

A clear example of this is the New Zealand government’s recent commitment to continue talks with Fiji on the free trade agenda. Moreover, as one US economist said just after Venezuela’s democratically elected president Hugo Chavez was deposed in a military coup (and before he was reinstated), “Democracy is not necessarily the most efficient form of government.

It is better to be an open advocate of the priorities of the free market, (note here New Zealand’s ‘no problem attitude’ on continuing free trade talks with Fiji), than to be a self-congratulatory advocate of sham democracy.”

The difficulty that Australia, New Zealand and the EU seem to have with a genuine commitment to majority rule in Fiji is that genuine democracy could produce anti-market results such as justice, fairness and the application of democratic principles to the conduct of free trade and the free market, and the engendering of ethnic harmony in countries that have experienced ethnic tensions and violence in the past such as Fiji.

Instead, one would suspect that what New Zealand and Australian governments, in particular, really want by their call for a ‘quick return to democracy’ is sham democracy. Far from committing themselves to helping and assisting Fiji (and the Pacific Island countries) develop a genuine democratisation process, they seem to advocate a kind of democracy that will not interfere with their free market agenda and one that encourages ethnic dislike.

Being Fiji’s closest western neighbours, one would expect that Australia and New Zealand governments would have learned the lessons of history and not promote overnight majority rule (a form of democracy that even they have repudiated a long time ago) by their demand for a “quick return to democracy”.

Their assessment should have taught them that what is needed is their help in assisting Fiji (and the Pacific Island countries) to rethink the democratisation process over the past 2 or 3 decades. If genuine democracy and the free market are to be peacefully sustained and mutually beneficial, the process of democratisation cannot be reduced to carting ballot boxes and voting in national elections.

It has to mean more than overnight democracy, majority rule or merely freedom to vote and elect governments, although these are necessary factors. These countries seem to forget that there are many different models of democracy, even among themselves. Democracy can vary along a large number of axes: for example, the U.S style presidentialism versus the U.K style parliamentarism; first past the post electoral systems versus proportional representation; bottom up democratisation (starting with local village elections) versus top-down democratisation (starting with national, presidential elections).

These different versions of democracy can have significantly different effects on how the Pacific Islands govern themselves and their politics. The western countries one-sided view of democracy is quite revealing in the case of China. While China is fundamentally autocratic at the national level and has a bad human rights record, it has, according to politics professor, Minxin Pei (1998:68), been undergoing political reforms since the 1980s that are not even known to most western countries.

These political reforms have far reaching effects. He went on to add that throughout China, there are semi-open local village elections, which despite their limitations, offered a nontrivial measure of political participation, and more critically, legitimate competitive elections as an important part of the political process (ibid).

But the reason, says Minxin Pei, why these and other reforms happening at the local and national levels went unnoticed by the western countries is because their “… politicians and news media measure the progress of political reforms in other countries against a single yardstick - the holding of free and open elections at the national level.” (ibid) Indeed, democracy comes in many guises and it maybe neither the pakeha nor the kaivalagi’s road map to democracy that Fiji needs but one that is born out of the learnings of her recent and past experiences, however limited and ‘un-western-like’ it may be.

Note: Aisake Casimira works at the Pacific Conference of Churches. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent the views of the organisation where he works.

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