(PINA/IFEX) – On 4 July 2000, “The Fiji Sun” photojournalist Sitiveni Moce was attacked and assaulted after going inside Fiji’s rebel-held parliamentary complex for a news conference, local news media reported. “The Fiji Times” said Moce was stopped by a group of rebel supporters who demanded his film and claimed he was taking pictures for […]
(PINA/IFEX) – On 4 July 2000, “The Fiji Sun” photojournalist Sitiveni Moce was attacked and assaulted after going inside Fiji’s rebel-held parliamentary complex for a news conference, local news media reported. “The Fiji Times” said Moce was stopped by a group of rebel supporters who demanded his film and claimed he was taking pictures for the police. When Moce denied this he was surrounded, beaten and kicked, “The Fiji Times” said. His wallet and camera were taken. “The Fiji Sun” said fellow journalist Leone Cabenatabua and a rebel soldier who tried to protect Moce were also hit. Rebel soldiers later escorted Moce and Cabenatabua from the complex, the newspaper said.
Moce was taken to Suva’s Colonial War Memorial Hospital for treatment. He later saw two of the men who attacked him brought into the hospital, wounded after being shot during a confrontation with Fiji Military Forces soldiers, “The Fiji Sun” said. “The Fiji Sun” publisher Tony Singh said the newspaper has provided fair and balanced coverage of the six-week-old coup and hostage crisis. He said he will not send his staff into the parliamentary complex again unless rebel leader George Speight assures the safety of journalists.
Background Information
On 29 June, rebels held sixteen local and foreign journalists for two hours, local newspapers reported. The rebels claimed the safety of the news crews could not be guaranteed outside the complex, “The Fiji Times” reported. The rebels, who launched an attempted coup on 19 May, denied they were holding the journalists hostage. The journalists had gone for a news conference by Speight, who still holds twenty-seven members of Fiji’s deposed government hostage inside the complex (see IFEX alert of 30 June 2000).
On 29 May, the Republic of Fiji Military Forces declared martial law and an interim military government. It came amidst growing lawlessness after the elected government, led by Fiji’s first ethnic Indian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, was seized in an attempted coup by Speight and armed gunmen, including some soldiers. Speight and his indigenous Fijian followers still hold Chaudhry, twenty-five other members of his government and his son, who was his private secretary, hostage.
The coup attempt by Speight and his supporters came amidst a march through Suva by indigenous Fijians protesting what they said are threats to their indigenous rights and land ownership. Indigenous Fijians then looted and burned shops and restaurants owned by ethnic Indians in downtown Suva.
Chaudhry won power in general elections in May 1999. His Fiji Labour Party formed a coalition government which included some indigenous Fijian parties. Fiji’s ethnic Indians are mainly descendants of indentured plantation labourers brought from India by the British colonial government in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
In 1987, following widespread unrest and growing violence after the election of what was seen as an Indian-dominated government, Sitiveni Rabuka, then a colonel, led two coups by the army. Fiji returned to parliamentary government in 1992 elections, with Rabuka voted into power as a civilian prime minister. Chaudhry’s government was elected under a new multiracial constitution adopted in 1997.
