Fiji Media Coup – Dictating Censorship in Paradise

Foreign correspondents are being deported, police and military operatives have been stationed in newsrooms to enforce government censorship and the ABC’s Radio Australia transmitters were forcibly shutdown today as coup leaders sought to silence their opponents via ‘emergency regulations’ enforced under the cloak of Easter.

Coup leader: Frank Bainimarama (Image:AFP)

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has likened the media repression in Fiji to the situation in Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma. “…the draconian and reprehensible manner in which the military leadership is seeking to control information about highly significant events and issues in Fiji is comparable to the actions of other dictatorial regimes and closed societies” IFJ President Aiden White said.

Veteran ABC Pacific Correspondent Sean Dorney was expelled from Fiji on Easter Monday, along with a New Zealand TV news team, for coverage of the media clampdown. He was asked to leave voluntarily but refused, telling Fijian Immigration officials he had a valid passport and he had a reporting job to do. “I'm not surprised they don't want foreign journalists here telling the rest of the world what
you are not allowed to tell your own people," Dorney told the ABC as he awaited deportation. After spending 5 hours in custody while officials
reviewed his footage, Dorney arrived home on Tuesday, telling the ABC "The censorship at the moment is just absolutely extraordinary,
never in Fiji before has it been this tough, even after [Sitiveni] Rabuka's coup.

Sean Dorney (Image: ABC)

A defiant Fiji TV reporter, Edwin Nand, was jailed for 36 hours for reporting Dorney's detention and he’s been banned from returning to work.
Meantime, Fiji Law Society president, Dorsami Naidu, was jailed for 24 hours and threatened with sedition charges after telling the media
that foreign reporters were being gagged "They're the only outlet we have at the moment, these guys have changed the rules of the game”
he said

The media crackdown was dictated by the leader of the 2006 military Coup, Interim Prime Minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. The coup was declared illegal by the Fiji Court of Appeal last week, resulting in President Ratu Josefa Iloilo anointing himself head of state, abolishing the 1997 constitution, sacking the nation’s judges and re-instating Bainimarama on Friday.

In the aftermath, local reporters were ordered to submit copy to the government for ‘clearance’ prior to publication and military censors were stationed in newsrooms to enforce the crackdown. Several Fijian media outlets protested the censorship, leaving dead air and blank pages where news bulletins and headlines about the crackdown should have appeared. The Sunday Times left a whole page blank apart from this message: “The stories on this page could not be published due to government restrictions.”

However, the IFJ reports that most organisations are no longer carrying political news and a “climate of silence” has gripped some newsrooms. The Fiji Times (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd) is reported to have joined other outlets in agreeing not to run any further political stories. Self censorship is a disturbing bi-product of direct intervention, desired by dictators in a climate of fear. But it takes very brave journalists and publishers to put livelihoods and lives on the line - despite the total unacceptability of such deliberate and unjustifiable attacks on media freedom.



Today, Bainimarama told Radio New Zealand that journalists themselves were to blame for the crackdown and free speech was a problem: “We want to come up with these reforms and the last thing we want to do is have opposition to these reforms throughout. So that was the reason we've come up with emergency regulations." When asked if NZ reporters were free to travel to Fiji and report what they saw, he said “There’s no need. Ask me the questions and I’ll tell you.” According to Bainimarama, Fiji doesn’t need free and open public discussion about current issues and the world doesn’t need to witness them.

His next nail in the coffin of Fijian media freedom was the shutdown of Radio Australia’s Fijian transmitters. This act, carried out by local ABC technicians under the ‘supervision’ of officials from the Office of Information and soldiers, eliminated one of the country’s last remaining sources of unfettered news and information.



The IFJ has issued a statement in solidarity with the Australian Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the Pacific Media Centre and other organisations, demanding the Bainimarama regime “immediately end all restrictions on Fiji’s news media and allow local and foreign journalists to do their jobs in the public interest.”

Today I added my signature to a letter condemning the media purge, penned by Queensland journalism professor Alan Knight, on behalf of a collective of Australian journalists and journalism academics. This was our central message:

“Soldiers and police have no place in any newsroom. We oppose the Fiji dictatorship's attempts to control our colleagues by threats, intimidation and censorship. We call on our governments to seek to protect all Fiji journalists striving to perform their duties in these difficult circumstances. As journalists and educators we affirm Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”

Article 19 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Bainimarama's clampdown under the new regulations theoretically has a 30-day lifespan. But Fijian media history, recent highlights from which include bannings, deportations, shutdowns, and the fire-bombing of an editor's home, doesn't provide much cause for hope that this latest assault on Fijian journalism will be short lived.

This is an issue which demands the attention and activism of journalists, free speech activists and academics worldwide. It deserves to make the headlines. Headlines which Fijian journalists have the right to write.