Young and Brave: The student coverage of the George Speight coup in May 2000. Image: IPI Global Journalist
By Sean Ransom,compiled from reports by USP journalism coordinator David Robie and USP student journalists Christine Gounder and Tamani Nair
Fiji’s young media corps had a front-row seat to a strange coup in the Pacific Islands in 2000.
On May 19, businessman George Speight led a group of armed rebels into Fiji’s Parliament, took the multi-ethnic government hostage and then waited as the nation’s military and tribal leaders gave into his demands one by one.
The situation ended ended 10 weeks later, on July 26, when Speight and many of his followers were arrested by Fiji’s army.
Rebel leader George Speight (centre) adresses the media on talks with the military at the Fiji Parliament in Suva. A businessman and former government official, Speight had been scheduled for a court hearing the day of the coup to address corruption charges. Image: IPI Global Journalist
The military installed a new civilian government and called for elections in three years.
Covering this insurrection was a test for Fiji’s mostly young corps of journalists, who have an average age of 22, and average only 2.5 years of experience, according to University of the South Pacific journalism coordinator David Robie.
Robie writes that at first, some of them had trouble determining the legality of the would-be regime.
A few showed a too-swift readiness to give legitimacy to, and cozy up with Speight’s rebellion.
Fiji’s print media largely failed to give insightful and critical analysis.
Even when the media performed well, mob violence forced some shops to close their doors.
Ransom, Sean. (2000, Third Quarter). Young and brave: In Pacific island paradise, journalism students cover a strange coup attempt for course credit. IPI Global Journalist.
The Fijian crisis is not about the rights of ordinary people, says veteran Pacific affairs journalist David Robie, it is about ‘a Third World oligarchy which has failed its people’.
ByMark Revington
Sometimes power in Fiji doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun. All it takes is the threat.
During the first 10 days of the Fijian coup, some of the best reporting and analysis carne from the journalism students at the University of the South Pacific (USP), on their Pacific Journalism Online website. On the 11th day, the website was closed down.
The previous night, supporters of George Speight had trashed the studio and offices of Fiji Television, following criticism of Speight during a current-affairs show.
Pacific Journalism Online immediately posted a transcript of the programme, with its caustic criticism and political commentator Jone Dakuvula‘s observation that all the talk about indigenous rights was simply a smokescreen for a naked power grab. And vice-chancellor Esekia Solofa immediately closed it down “as a security measure” after threats were made against the university. (The website, which had been recording around 20,000 hits a day, was eventually put back in cyberspace, hosted by the journalism department of an Australian university.
Right there you had the paradox of coup-coup land (as Australian journalists have dubbed Fiji), encapsulating the two great “isms” — globalism and tribalism — sweeping the post-Cold War world, detailed by American scholar Benjamin Barber in his book Jihad v. McWorld. Look on the business pages of any paper, says Barber, and you would be convinced the world was increasingly united, that borders were increasingly porous. Look only at the front pages and you would be convinced of the opposite; that the world was increasingly riven by fratricide and civil war.
The forces driving the coup were a complex mix, including a class struggle, and a reaction against Mahendra Chaudhry‘s rollback of privatisation and its opportunities for personal power and lots of loot. Some of the businessmen said to be behind the coup, whose names are on lists circulating in Suva and by email through cyberspace, are all in favour of a free flow of capital as long as it ends up in their pockets.
Yet the coup leaders relied for their power base on an insular, tribal intolerance. It was a coup that combined primitive appeal to indigenous Fijians, with the media savvy of glib frontman Speight. And an echo of colonialism from a gun-toting band supposedly seeking to shake off the colonial shackles, (Threats and censorship are traditional weapons of heavy-handed colonial powers such as France to keep their Pacific colonies in line).
Although Speight obviously has little regard for democracy, he knows the value of a soundbite only too well, and used the media. In turn, they offered him a profile and credibility. “They fuelled the crisis and gave Speight a false idea of his importance and support,” says USP journalism coordinator David Robie.
Pulled in at the last minute as the great communicator, Speight communicated so well that there is a theory that he mounted a coup within a coup, using his new media profile to get his own way. “There is a feeling that events didn’t unfold the way some people had planned,” says Robie.
Trouble in cyberspace
Robie, who also coordinates Pacific Media Watch, a group dedicated to examining issues of ethics, censorship, and media freedom in the Pacific, had been through it before. In 1998, ministers in then Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s government had tried to close down Robie’s own media and politics website — Café Pacific — and revoke his work permit in what was seen as the first test of the 1997 Constitution’s freedom of expression clause. The prime mover was then Assistant Information Minister Ratu Josefa Dimuri, one of Speight’s key supporters. The politicians backed off after a two-week media controversy.
An award-winning journalist, and author if seven books, New Zealand-born Robie has been an impassioned chronicler of Pacific currents for decades, an interest developed while working as an editor and correspondent for Agence France-Presse news agency in Paris during the early 1970s. After returning to the Pacific in 1977, he began covering Pacific affairs as a freelancer.
Robie witnessed the bloody struggles for independence of the 1980s, and the attempts of independent Pacific nations to chart a nuclear-free course. He reported on the violence between France and Kanak activists in New Caledonia and the massacre of Kanak activists at Hienghène in 1984 that almost provoked a civil war. He was harassed by French secret service agents and arrested at gunpoint by the military in New Caledonia, was on board the Rainbow Warrior when it evacuated irradiated Rongelap Islanders from their atoll, leaving the ship one day before it was sunk in Auckland by French secret service agents. He was in Fiji when Labour Party leader Dr Timoci Bavadra was elected prime minister in 1987, and covered the subsequent coups.
He wrote the book Blood on their Banner, published in 1989, a detailed analysis of the struggle of indigenous people around the Pacific against the remnants of colonialism. The epilogue is just as applicable today in Fiji. “The death of democracy in Fiji was a blow to many nationalists in the South Pacific, putting the struggle of the Kanaks and other liberation movements in jeopardy,” wrote Robie, who recorded how Rabuka went on a big military spend-up, forging closer ties with France and Indonesia, the two nations so adept at using force to put down indigenous populations in their Pacific colonies.
Thirteen years on and not much seems to have changed in Fiji, says Robie.
“Chauvinistic, nationalistic struggles of this kind, based on nepotism, racism, opportunistic crime, opportunities for corruption and suppression of the human rights of others, undermine genuine indigenous struggles such as the Kanak struggle for independence from France in New Caledonia. After all, Fiji has been independent since 1970. In that time it has had indigenous governments except for one month in 1987 when Dr Bavadra was prime minister, and one year in 1999-2000 with Chaudhry.
“What have they done in all this time for the underprivileged indigenous villager? Why are they blaming the Chaudhry government after three decades of failure by Mara and Rabuka and the chiefly oligarchy? This is about a Third World oligarchy which has failed its people.”
In another one of those ironies that constantly emerge, both Dr Bavadra’s government and that of Chaudhry wanted to help Fiji’s poor, often at the expense of cosy business arrangements. Chaudhry may have been too abrasive in his political style, but his heart appeared to be in the right place. His government gave priority to genuine policies to improve health, education and social development.
“It would be fair to say that the Chaudhry government achieved more in one year than the previous Rabuka government achieved in seven years,” says Robie. “The real problem, not the racial stereotyping which Speight insisted upon, was the rollback of privatisation and an emphasis on development for the poor.”
Rabuka’s former Finance Minister Jim Ah Koy, reputedly one of the richest men in Fiji, was hellbent on privatisation in Fiji, and is one of those rumoured to be behind the coup. The rumours were so strong that Ah Koy felt compelled to make a statement, denying any complicity and launching a vicious on Chaudhry. It was run as a full page in all three daily newspapers and read out in full on Fiji Television.
Speight’s dubious business dealings have been well-documented by The Sydney Morning Herald, notably in a piece by Marian Wilkinson headlined “Mahogany Row”, which laid out in detail how Speiught, as chairman of the government-backed Fiji Pine Ltd and the Fiji Hardwood Corporation, stood to make a lot of money from the sale of mahogany forests to US interests. Chaudhry’s government questioned the price Speight was prepared to accept, and the deal, and sacked him.
Speight also appeared to have been involved in pyramid selling in Queensland, where he spent eight years as an insurance and banking broker.
Fiji’s 2000 coup frontman George Speight . . . the forces driving the coup were a complex mix, including a class struggle, and a reaction against Labour prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry’s rollback of privatisation. Image: Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
Paying the price
Fiji, says Robie, is paying the price for years of failure in moral and professional leadership, and failure to develop cohesive, homegrown policies to cope with the impact of globalisation. “Years of corruption, blatant self-interest, short-term band-aid policies, and a neglect of the urdan and rural poor communities since independence have taken their toll. It is rare that politicians with vision and genuine selfless commitment to island development have emerged.”
Where to now? Anyone who knew Chaudhry would not have been taken in by his acceptance of kava and a whale’s tooth — the traditional Fiji peace offering — from his captors, says Robie. There are Australian and New Zealand judges on the bench in Fiji who are reported to be anticipating a challenge to any new government, not only on legal grounds but also on the grounds that the the coup was a violation of the constitutional rights of the Fijian people.
There is an interesting precedent, from Trinidad and Tobago, where the two main ethnic groups are descended from India and Africa. On July 27, 1990, a radical Muslim group took the Prime Minister and Parliament hostage at gunpoint, and stormed the state-run television. Their leader, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, declared on national television that he had overthrown the government and consigned them to history. Prime Minister Arthur Robinson was shot in the foot during the six days the government was held hostage, then released to add his authority to a settlement for the release of the hostages.
As soon as they were freed, he refused to honour the agreement, saying it had been signed under duress. Over the following months the rebels were arrested and jailed.
After being convicted of treason for leading the 2000 coup, George Speight is currently serving a sentence of life imprisonment in Fiji.
Revington, M. (2000, August 5). Guns and money.NZ Listener, 174(3143): 30-31.
[Profile of David Robie after the George Speight coup in Fiji, May 2000].
Fiji 2000 coup leader George Speight . . . an extraordinarily symbiotic character of the crisis was how the media turned, as the Melbourne Age's Tony Parkinson put it, "a two-bit terrorist into a celebrity". Image: Pacific Journalism Online/USP Journalism
Some reporters and news organisations were too ready to give legitimacy to George Speight’s “two bit” rebellion. The Fiji print media in particular failed to give insightful and critical analysis, writes David Robie.
By David Robie in Suva
It is too easy to generalise about the media or those who work in it, especially over coverage of the Fiji insurrection — the third attempted coup in 13 years.
Criticisms should differentiate between types of reports: contrasting those of the on-the-spot specialist — whether local stringer or regional specialist with long-term knowledge — with those of visiting “crisis” reporters, or “parachute journalists”.
It was astonishing how captive the journalists were to terrorist leader failed businessman George Speight. There was an extraordinary symbiotic relationship between them.
In a sense, the news media were hostages too, even providing a human shield at times of confrontation between the rebel group and the military at checkpoints.
Few journalists in the Fiji media industry, who have a median age of 22 and media experience of 2.5 years, had experienced the two successful military coups in 1987 staged by Sitiveni Rabuka. Nor did many have experience of covering other major political crises.
The media contingent in Fiji was mostly dominated by Australians and New Zealanders. However, there was a liberal sprinkling of Britons, two Japanese crews, a couple of Americans, a correspondent for Le Monde, and a handful of Filipinos.
All three major international newsagencies — Agence France-Presse, Associated Press and Reuters — were reporting too. The media pack offered Speight a profile and credibility — it aided the rebel leader’s propaganda war.
Fuelled the crisis
The media, in fact, fuelled the crisis and gave Speight a false idea about his importance and support — it gave him “political fuel”. Some sectors of the foreign media did not grasp the complexities of the crisis, that this in fact was a power struggle embracing the indigenous Fijian community.
They reported it in terms of racial stereotyping, and assumed that the majority of indigenous Fijians supported the coup perpetrators.
“I don’t know where they got this idea that the majority of Fijians support this coup,” remarked political commentator Jone Dakuvula on the controversial Close-Up programme on Fiji Television. “We only have about a thousand people sitting at Parliament — there are about 400,000 Fijians”.
He added: “It’s very simplistic to use words like ‘majority’ or ‘minority’ because you can’t actually base it on any real knowledge about what people out there in the rural areas feel. Most ordinary people are just watching and observing what’s happening — they’re not active participants in this coup.”
On the other hand, there were many examples of insightful reporting on websites in the so-called “Internet coup” — analysis was generally available on some websites in the mainstream media, certainly in Fiji.
One disturbing feature of Fiji local coverage — and international coverage too — was the failure to fairly report the “civil society” and the range of views outside of the main protaganists.
An international audience could be forgiven for thinking that there were really only two major players in the Fiji crisis — Speight and the military. Not even the deposed elected government (those MPs who were free) was given much media coverage.
Indo-Fijian voices ‘frozen out’
Academic and independent analysis was barely touched. Indo-Fijian voices were largely “frozen out” by the media as if they did not exist.
Speight was the apparent coup leader — a kailoma (mixed race) and a failed businessman, who tore off his balaclava to reveal his identity after the seizure of Parliament on 19 May 2000 in what was billed by supporters and the news media as a “civil coup”.
In fact, his six accomplices were renegade soldiers of the élite Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit set up by Rabuka to protect himself and any indigenous government and a total of 39 military defectors eventually moved into the parliamentary compound.
By the end of five weeks it had emerged that Speight had been recruited for his exceptional communication skills just hours before the insurrection began. The real power was former British Special Air Services major Ilisoni Ligairi who had been recruited by Rabuka to set up the CRW unit.
In 1987, Rabuka staged both coups for “indigenous Fijian paramountcy”. In 2000, George Speight led the latest putsch for the same reason, arguing that Rabuka had betrayed the cause by supporting the 1997 Constitution which laid the foundation for a multiracial and democratic future for Fiji.
On 27 July 1998, the new Constitution came into force. It included cross-communal voting and established the first Human Rights Commission in the South Pacific. The country officially became known as Fiji Islands, and the people Fiji Islanders.
Mahendra Chaudhry, the country’s first Indo-Fijian prime minister whose Fiji Labour Party won the largest ever mandate in the May election to head a People’s Coalition government, was deposed by Speight, assaulted and threatened with a gun to his head.
Pugnacious political style
With an abrasive, pugnacious political style derived from his trade union background, Chaudhry was hated by some indigenous Fijians even though his administration had arguably done more in office during one year for both the rural and urban poor of both Fijians and Indo-Fijians than previous largely indigenous administrations.
However, the “race card”, as played out by Speight, his supporters and the news media, is “misleading and mischievous”.
George Speight . . . the “race card”, as played out by him, his supporters and the news media, was “misleading and mischievous”. Image: Pacific Journalism Online/USP Journalism
Chaudhry is not the problem, nor are the Indo-Fijian communities. As former University of the South Pacific politics lecturer Teresia Teaiwa adds: Fiji’s problem is Fijian. Increasingly problematic configurations of indigenous leadership in the country.
Fiji has a complex racial and religious mix in its population of about 800,000 with mainly
Christian indigenous Fijians (51 percent) slightly outnumbering Indo-Fijians (44 percent), both Hindu and Muslim, with the rest being mainly European and of mixed-race descent.
During the last coup period, the news media faced far more grave threats to their independence and integrity than during the Speight insurrection. On 14 May 1987, Rabuka assured news media executives that they could rely on a “censorship free press”, but he warned against inflammatory reporting.
Both The Fiji Times and the Fiji Sun bitterly condemned Rabuka and the coup in an editorial next morning.
Rabuka’s regime ordered the two newspapers to stop publishing indefinitely while armed troops and police occupied the two offices. The next day, May 16, became the first time (apart from once during a hurricane in January 1986) in more than a century that The Fiji Times was not published.
Purge of political critics
The military regime began a purge of political critics and opponents by arresting them without charge.
One newspaper, the Fiji Sun, remained defiant, championing democracy and the freedom of the press. Publisher Philip Harkness refused to be intimidated and would not agree to publishing after the coup until freedom was restored. Directors Miles Johnson and Jim Carney were detained without charge when the Fiji Sun was closed after the second coup.
In spite of the two previous coups, covering this insurrection was a testing challenge for Fiji’s mostly young journalists. While the journalists generally came out with flying colours, there were some flaws that ought to be examined.
One was the readiness of some reporters and news organisations to give legitimacy to Speight’s rebellion. Another was the failure of the print media, in spite of the piles of newsprint covering the event, to give insightful and critical analysis.
Reporting of a major crisis of this kind is generally accompanied by analysis in quality overseas media. It is the one advantage that print media has over radio and television — and is essential when news websites are providing this.
Initially, The Fiji Times had no doubt where it stood:
“Outrageous and criminal … We have witnessed how one moment of madness will set this country back by decades. This illegal takeover must end. The democratically elected People’s Coalition has to be restored.”
Sympathised with the rebels The Fiji Times never repeated that message and in fact later in the five weeks appeared to strongly sympathise with the rebels.
The newspapers quickly referred to “self-proclaimed head of state” George Speight when clearly there was only one legitimate President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. Likewise, Ratu Timoci Silatolu was being called “interim prime minister”.
Just because the elected government was being held hostage, it did not mean that it was no longer the legal government.
The Fiji Times published the only profile about Speight’s pyramid sales and insurance career — written by a News Ltd journalist. (A Murdoch News Corporation subsidiary owns the Fiji Times.)
There was no in-depth local profile written, something matching a mahogany-and-Speight piece in The Sydney Morning Herald by Marian Wilkinson which exposed how the coup leader stood to gain a financial “killing” from an American timber resource company — until the Chaudhry government was swept to power and trashed the deal.
By day seven, the Fiji Sun was already calling the rebels the “Taukei civilian government”.
Criticism of the media was beginning to emerge. The fact is that some journalists had basked in the glow of coupmaster Speight — something that is hard to imagine in hostage situations in other countries. And this raises ethical questions about how “cosy” the media was with the terrorists.
Said one foreign journalist: “They [rebels] feed us, give us a bathroom and look after us. I like them.”
Fiji Television raid
But that was before the Fiji Television raid on May 28 after which many international journalists fled the country.
The big issue, never satisfactorily resolved, centred on whether journalists should place themselves under Speight’s unpredictable temperament by entering the parliamentary compound.
Other questions centred on the ethics of giving Speight a media platform, at will, to “sound off” only metres from where 30 MPs, some who had been assaulted with a gun put to their head, were being detained incommunicado.
Part of the extraordinarily symbiotic character of the crisis was how the media turned, as the Melbourne Age’s Tony Parkinson put it, “a two-bit terrorist into a celebrity”. More sobering still, it was a tale of how some journalists obsessed with putting themselves in the middle of the story, risked becoming “tools of Speight’s crusade to dismantle Fiji’s democracy”.
Added Parkinson: “We have seen a mass outbreak of this virulent strain of ego-journalism. It is not a pretty sight and it raises an awkward ethical question: to what extent have the visiting media in Suva become unwitting accomplices in George Speight’s brutal game of brinkmanship?
“Virtually from the moment the rebels seized control of Suva’s parliamentary compound, it wanted to be seen to parachute into the danger zone. This meant an obscene rush to get inside the compound and do on-the-spot reports on Speight, the megalomaniac of the moment.
“The media were in hot pursuit of images of masked men with guns, who would do insane things to achieve their aims. It was a heady and addictive brew. Some media organisations overdosed.”
Inside the compound
Reporters (admittedly mostly local) spent nights on end inside the compound trying to explore the innermost thoughts of Speight. They drank kava with his supporters. One journalist shared a pizza with Commander Jimmy, Speight’s brother. He always wore a balaclava so he had to filter his meal through the mask.
The souring of the rebels’ relationship with the media came only after Sydney newspapers ran banner headlines such as The Sydney Morning Herald’s THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE .
It was thanks to international media that local journalists became more detached in the reporting with the playback from abroad of terms like “coup”, “insurrection” and “rebellion”.
Whatever the pork-and-dalo carnival atmosphere in Parliament grounds, the issues needed to be faced honestly.
This was about an act of terrorism with hostages’ lives under threat. Indigenous chauvinism does not override human rights.
David Robie is senior lecturer and journalism coordinator at the University of the South Pacific. This article was first published by The Independent in New Zealand. It was abridged from a research paper, “Taukei Takeover: The Media Anatomy of a Coup”, that he presented as a keynote speaker at the Australia and New Zealand Communication Association Conference at Ballina, NSW, July 3-5. This paper was later published by Australian Journalism Review (22(2): 1-16).
2000 Fiji coup leader George Speight and media minder Jo Nata being questioned by the media at Parliament House. Image: USP Pacific Journalism Online
By David Robie in Suva
Ten government ministers and backbench MPs held hostage by gunnmen in Fiji’s Parliament in a self-styled “civil coup” were freed early today after being forced to resign from office.
They included Assistant Information Minister Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi and Assistant Housing and Transport Minister John Ali.
Explaining on a local radio station why he had given in to the pressure, Ali said: “Sometimes you have to use your sixth sense to avoid complications.”
They were freed about 4.30 am. One of the 10 freed captives was a bodyguard of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.
About 20 parliamentary staff were released earlier.
Chaudhry, held captive with his government since the gunmen seized the Parliament complex on Friday morning, was due to be seen by two doctors this morning after he reportedly collapsed last night and was treated by Red Cross officers.
His son, Rajendra Chaudhry, who is the prime minister’s private secretary, was also reported to have signed his resignation and was expected to be released soon.
Sported a black eye
Rajendra Chaudhry told a reporter he was “fine,” but he sported a black eye.
Journalists inside the Parliament complex reported that the self-proclaimed Head of State of the rebel government, businessman George Speight, had expected an overnight assault on Parliament by the country’s military forces which have vowed loyalty to the constitutional government.
However, an estimated 50 armed dissidents are inside Parliament, including younger members of an elite force from the military.
Yesterday, Sitiveni Rabuka, leader of two military coups in 1987, said he still hoped his “shuttle diplomacy” between the President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, and the rebel regime would defuse the hostage crisis.
But Speight has declared today a “rest day” from negotiations.
Ratu Mara, who has declared a state of emergency, appealed on nationwide television last night for the “terrorists” to end their two-day-old insurrection.
In an exclusive interview with Fiji Television, Rabuka said he hoped that those who “pepetrated this illegal and treasonous act” were brought to justice.
Two military coups
Rabuka staged two military coups in 1987 to depose an elected Fiji Labour Party-led coalition government in 1987, but he later played a key role in drafting the multiracial 1997 constitution which restored genuine democracy, and he has since been a Commonwealth peacemaker in the Solomon Islands ethnic conflict.
Before serious dialogue could begin between Government House and the coup leaders, Rabuka said he had sought to persuade the gunmen to:
Free Prime Minister Chaudhry, the Fiji Labour Party-led coalition government and parliamentarians;
Lay down their arms; and
Leave the Parliament complex.
Police and the military yesterday and last night tightened security around Parliament and the central business district of the capital, Suva, which had been ravaged by widespread looting and arson on Friday afternoon.
Damage was estimated at more than F$30 million — 167 shops were looted and five shopping buildings gutted by fire.
Police reported more than 200 arrests and 39 men were yesterday charged in court with looting and damage to property. The Suva Magistrates Court will continue to hold special hearings over the weekend.
Coup leader Speight warned authorities not to try to take Parliament by force or he would not be responsible for fatalities.
Denied assault reports
He denied reports that Prime Minister Chaudhry had been physically assaulted and threatened with death.
He branded the reports as “scandalous and deserving to be treated with the utmost contempt”.
The “cabinet” lineup named by Speight last night was shaping up as a list of Taukei, or indigenous nationalist extremist identities and dissidents within Chaudhry’s coalition government partner parties.
Besides Speight as “prime minister,” other posts included “deputy prime minister” Ratu Timoci Silatolu, of the Fijian Association Party; “foreign affairs” Senator Berenado Vunibobo, former Finance and Foreign Affairs minister in Rabuka’s government; “national seurity” Savenaca Drunidalo, a former senior army officer; “Fijian affairs” Ratu Tu’uakitau Cokanauto, a Bau chief and Ratu Mara’s brother-in-law, “home affairs” Colonel Metuisela Mua, former head of the Fiji Secret Service.
A prominent journalist and publicist, Jo Nata, was named as an adviser to Speight.
Ratu Mara paid tribute to Rabuka’s attempts to resolve the hostage crisis and appealed for the attackers “who terrorise our nation and threaten the lives of its government” to give in peacefully.
In his television address, Ratu Mara described Rabuka as a “trusted and invaluable mediator between Government House and the terrorist group.”
“I wish to declare to the nation that I will use all the authority and resources at my command to bring about a just and peaceful solution to a tragic chapter in our history,” he said.
Ratu Mara added that he would not bow to threats and coercion.
This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald Online. David Robie is senior lecturer and coordinator of the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji.
Journalism schools and media freedom groups have protested to the University of the South Pacific for suspending its Pacific Journalism Online website, describing it as a violation of press freedom.
Appealing for the website to be reopened without delay, the critics have have cited the university’s duty to uphold and defend the twin principles of academic freedom and free speech during Fiji’s political crisis.
They have also appealed for the university to allow the award-winning training newspaper Wansolwara to be published freely.
A special edition of the paper, dealing with the Fiji crisis, was published early in June in spite of threats by some senior administrators to censor or prevent its distribution. But the online edition is still barred. [In 2023, the online edition is now published as Wansolwara News].
The media watchdog RSF noted that the website had been suspoended by the university authorities on May 29 for “security reasons” a day after Fiji Television was trashed by supporters of rebel leader George Speight.
“Gagging a website that merely publishes news, and in a professional manner, is a violation of press freedom.”
— Reporters Without Borders
RSF’s general secretary Robert Mènard said in a letter to USP’s vice-chancellor Esekia Solofa that “gagging a website that merely publishes news, and in a professional manner, is a violation of press freedom”.
‘Strike at heart of press freedom’
Professor John Henningham, head of the University of Queensland’s journalism department, said: “Such an action strikes at the heart of press and media freedom, and sends a very disturbing message to the fine group of students who in the midst of their study of journalism at USP are contributing to increased awareness of the Fiji coup.
“Suspension of a news and information-based website is equivalent to closing down a newspaper or television station, and clearly breaks the most fundamental principle of press freedom to which all journalists (and academics) are pledged.”
Associate professor Chris Nash, director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney, which is hosting an alternative website for the USP journalism students (www.journalism.uts.edu.au), expressed his “deep regret and profound concern” over the website closure.
“The academics, journalists and journalism students of Fiji are being watched by the rest of the world,” Nash said.
“There is a great deal of sympathy for their current plight, but nonetheless there are expectations of what appropriate professional behaviour would encompass in the current situation.
“These expectations are similar to those of hospitals, doctors and nurses in a civil conflict — they are expected to rise to the situation.
“The suggestion that journalism staff and students, and indeed any academics, might somehow desist from reporting, communicating and publishing on the current situation is akin to suggesting that doctors and nurses should turn their backs on wounded people in a conflict. It is unconscionable.”
‘Two flames of freedom’
Associate professor Mark Pearson, head of journalism at Bond University and a former president of Australia’s Journalism Education and Research Association (Jeraa), said: “Please let your [student] journalists do what they must: provide independent, objective reports of the crisis in their print, broadcast and online media. Please instruct your staff to allow Pacific Journalism Online and Wansolwara to publish freely with your blessing.
“Please show the world that two flames of freedom are burning brightly in the Pacific despite the recent political events: the flame of academic freedom and the flame of press freedom. Let history judge USP proudly.”
David Venables, president of JEANZ, said it was “important that media organisations and universities everywhere do not compromise freedom of speech or press freedom and cave into threats of violence.”
“We understand the students have petitioned you for reinstatement of the website. We urge you to accept their petition and reopen it,” he added.
Murray Burt, president of the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association, said: “I have watched [the students’] writing closely. For the most part it has been excellent — tempered, insightful, lawful and credible in its very closeness to the action. There has been a measure of bravery, too, which should not be forgotten when the dust settles.
“I have visited your beautiful campus. I hold your journalism programmes in high regard. It would be a shame if the respect won in the Commonwealth and South Pacific were sullied by an attack of bureaucratic timidity.”
USP’s journalism coordinator David Robie said the suspension was an “unfortunate” decision and a “blow to the developing professionalism and enthusiasm” of student journalists.
“Any notion that journalism students shouldn’t do real journalism is absurd. This is what journalism education is all about — integrated theory and practice on the job.”
He said he had appealed to the university administration for a review of the decision to get the website reopened as soon as possible.
“It has been closed three weeks now and the longer it is left like that, it will have a damaging effect on the students’ education. Many of the teaching materials and links are online and now cannot be accessed by students,” Robie said.
University authorities have made no public comment since the closure.
The USP administration eventually relented after suspending the website on 29 May 2000 and reopened the website on 28 June 2000 and the following month the School of Humanities board of studies passed an unanimous resolution condemning the university for having closed it. In December that year, the USP students were awarded the Dr Charles Stuart Prize for the best publication — Pacific Journalism Online — in any medium and other awards, and treated to a standing ovation for their coup coverage at the annual Ossie Journalism awards of the Australian Journalism Education and Research Association (Jeraa).
First published by Campus Review (Australia), v10(24), June 28-July 4, 2000.
USP shuts down student journalism website, Fiji Daily Post, 21 June 2000. Image: Screenshot Daily Post
By Mithleshni Gurdayal
Journalism students at the University of the South Pacific have expressed dismay over the forced shutdown of their website, Pacific Journalism Online (PJO), by the university vice-chancellor Esekia Solofa.
Vice-chancellor Solofa instructed the website to be shut following the attack on Fiji Television by a mob on May 22.
The website is used by second year students for practical assignments and internet classes. The website also hosted Wansolwara, the newspaper put together by journalism students.
Online editor Christine Gounder said: “USP’s action was unacceptable and poses a serious threat to media and academic freedom.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists media watchdog’s protest over the violations of media freedom in Fiji during George Speight’s attempted coup in 2000. Image: CPJ/19 July 2000.
“It is disappointing and disturbing. It was a sudden decision made by the university and we, the journalism students, were not consulted on the matter,” she said.
Wansolwara editor Reggie Dutt also slammed the university’s decision, saying that the vice-chancellor had acted in haste.
“USP’s action is in violation of media freedom and portrays hypocrisy. It would have been better if the students and the lecturer were consulted before shutting us off.
“We were just gaining popularity but now we are cut off,” he said.
“The sad thing is that we are not even being given a formal explanation on the matter.”
International press agencies and journalism schools have also criticised the university’s decision to shut the website and most have described this action as “gagging media”.
Professor John Henningham, head of the University of Queensland journalism department, said such an act was a strike at the heart of press and media freedom.
“Suspension of a news and information-based website is equivalent to closing down a newspaper or TV station and clearly breaks the most fundamental principles of press freedom to which all journalists are pledged.”
David Venables, president of the Journalism Education Association of New Zealand, said it was important that media organisations and universities everywhere did not compromise freedom of speech or press freedom and cave into threats of violence.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the university administration that the vice-chancellor was “only taking precautions” [in view of the attempted coup situation in Fiji].
She said the VC was mindful not to be caught up in the crossfire during the political crisis.
USP journalism coordinator David Robie’s account of the website shutdown on 29 May 2000 and later reopening during the crisis as published in Pacific Journalism Review.
In years gone by these "parachute journalists" would have provided most of us with our only contact with the ongoing crisis. But the internet has changed all that.
By Jeremy Rose
The Fijians have taken to calling them “parachute journalists”. The reporters, that is, who drop in from around the globe to file stories on the island nation’s latest coup.
Lacking local contacts, unable to speak Fijian and with only a flimsy grasp of an incredibly complex society, the journalists’ reports have, in general, been strong on atmosphere and weak on analysis.
That lack of local knowledge has seen too many foreign correspondents allow George Speight and his gunmen to successfully reduce the coup to an ethnic-Fijian vs Fiji-Indian power struggle.
In years gone by these “parachute journalists” would have provided most of us with our only contact with the ongoing crisis.
But the internet has changed all that. Sites such as FijiLive.com not only provide up-to-the-minute news items on the crisis, they carry in-depth pieces of analysis by people who know what they’re talking about.
People such as Victoria University’s Pacific studies lecturer Dr Teresia Teaiwa who wrote a penetrating piece towards the beginning of the crisis whuch convincingly argued that the “race card was misleading and mischievous”.
Dr Teaiwa, a former history and politics lecturer at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, also signalled the possible secession of Fiji’s western provinces as a result of the coup — something not picked up by the mainstream media for another 10 days.
Then there are pieces by people such as Professor Brij V Lal, a member of the commission that drew up the 1997 constitution. Professor Lal, Like Dr Teaiwa, argues that the coup has more to do with “the restructuring of power within indigenous Fijian society” than race.
Political commentator Jone Dakuvula writes movingly about visiting Mahendra Chaudhry’s wife, Virmati, at their home in Suva. He describes sitting around the kitchen table with both indigenous and Indian Fijians discussing the current crisis.
USP student journalism best
Some of the best reporting has come from the University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme in Suva. The Journalism Programme’s website (www.usp.ac.fj/journ/) was a goldmine of information until it was shut down by the university . . . “for security reasons”.
The shutting down of the website followed its publication of a transcript of a television interview which was said to have led to the ransacking of Fiji Television by Speight supporters. The transcript would have been lost to cyberspace were it not for the quick work of Wellington’s Scoop (www.scoop.co.nz) which picked it up and republished it. It’s well worth a read.
Despite protests by the journalism programme coordinator David Robie that the closure of the site amounts to censorship, the university is sticking to its decision to close it down. It’s to be hoped that the work of the students finds its way into some of the other internet sites.
Fiji's 2000 coup frontman George Speight . . . . Image: Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
By David Robie in Suva
Fiji’s Great Council of Chiefs is meeting at a military camp near Suva to decide how to respond to the attempted coup and hostage taking at Parliament.
The Council’s deliberations will determine the fate of three men: President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry who is being held captive with several of his MPs, and rebel leader George Speight.
The first two are well-known public figures and leaders. The third is a man who burst into the spotlight from out of nowhere last Friday morning.
He has been branded as a terrorist by both the country’s president and the leading daily newspaper, The Fiji Times.
But just five days ago he was a local timber industry businessman with a modest profile and reputedly an undischarged bankrupt.
Although rumours of an impending coup attempt had been rife in Fiji for weeks, few people took them seriously. And self-proclaimed rebel prime minister Speight, with shaved-head and measured voice, was not on the list of aspiring coup-makers.
Even though he regularly played golf with Sitiveni Rabuka, the man who staged Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 which ended with the country becoming a republic and ostracised by the Commonwealth, Speight’s armed takeover of Parliament was a surprise to the former military commander.
Cult figure
At first, Rabuka seemed an ideal mediator. He had been something of a cult figure among young indigenous Fijians after his early exploits and his first biography Rabuka: No Other Way. He was again a celebrity earlier this year with the publication of his life story in the book Rabuka of Fiji.
He had been the dominant political figure in Fiji for more than a decade. Ironically, he was also a key architect of the 1997 multiracial constitution, which led to his crushing defeat by Chaudhry’s Fiji Labour Party-led coalition a year ago this month.
However, after early “shuttle diplomacy” between President Ratu Mara, and Speight in several attempts to resolve the hostage crisis, Rabuka finally ran foul of the kidnappers.
Speight said he no longer trusted Rabuka.
The former coup leader was scathing about Speight and his fellow kidnappers in an exclusive interview with Fiji Television.
Rabuka scoffed at Speight’s claims to have seized Parliament on behalf of indigenous Fijians.
“I don’t know why he is claiming to be acting on behalf of indigenous rights like I did in 1987. I’m still waiting for him to say this in Fijian,” Rabuka said.
White settler descendant
Speight, a mixed-race fourth-generation descendant of a white settler in Fiji, is the son of Opposition parliamentarian Savenaca Tokainavo, who is among the hostages.
Tokainavo, a dairy farm farmer also known as Sam Speight, is reportedly depressed about his son’s actions in seizing Parliament.
George Speight’s paternal grandmother is from Naivicula village in Wainibuka, about 10km from Korovou in Tailevu, near Suva. His mother is from Ra in the western sugar cane belt of the main island of Viti Levu.
The family is popular over its local community development activities.
During last year’s election, Speight stood as a proxy candidate for his father on a ticket for Rabuka’s SVT party. Savenaca Tokainavo defeated nationalist Iliesa Duvuloco — now the “lands minister” in Speight’s rebel government — at the polls.
“Nobody thought Speight had this sort of fanatical streak,” said a colleague who declined to be named.
Last Monday, he pleaded not guilty on exchange rate and extortion charges in the High Court in Suva.
Surprised over brush with law
Rabuka said he was surprised by Speight’s earlier brush with the law.
According to The Fiji Times, Speight is also an undischarged bankrupt.
“He was director George Speight of the Wattle Group, an Australian investment company which siphoned millions of dollars from the Australian police, Fiji citizens and life savings,” alleged the newspaper.
Speight is seen by some associates as bearing a grudge against the Labour Party-led coalition and Prime Minister Chaudhry because he was dumped as chief executive from the Fiji Hardwood Corporation and also from the board of Fiji Pine Ltd.
The coalition’s Forests Minister, Poseci Bune, an indigenous Fijian, sacked him when the cabinet moved to halt privatisation policies of the Rabuka government.
Speight is understood to have earlier basked in the patronage of former Finance Minister Jim Ah Koy in Rabuka’s government.
He has no apologies for what is seen as an unashamedly racist and pro-Fijian stance.
‘Not apologising’
“We are not going to apologise to anybody and we are not going to step back, and we are not going to be daunted by accusations of racism, or one-sidedness,” Speight said early in the crisis.
“At the end of the day, it is [about] the supreme rights of our indigenous people in Fiji, the desire is that it be returned — wholesome and preserved for the future.”
Speight says people don’t need to have the “mind of an Albert Einstein” to understand the plight of indigenous Fijians. He believes expressed grievances had fallen on deaf ears.
The irony is that while many indigenous Fijians distrust the Labour-led government’s policies on land tenure for landless Indo-Fijian cane farmers, Chaudhry has initiated many far-reaching reforms for the benefit of all rural and urban poor Fiji Islanders and boosted education, health and welfare.
Asked whose coup was better planned and executed, Rabuka would not be drawn into comparisons with Speight, saying such judgements were best left to observers.
But he adds: “We went down a similar road in 1987. It led us nowhere. Speight should pull out of this treasonable act while there is still time.”
David Robie is senior lecturer and coordinator of the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. This article was published in The New Zealand Herald.
Fiji's 2000 coup frontman George Speight . . . . Image: Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
By David Robie in Suva
Civilian gunmen leader George Speight today defied mounting international condemnation of the kidnapping of Fiji’s elected cabinet, claiming that his regime was now the legal government of the Pacific nation.
His self-styled interim government named a list of “advisers” last night but at least three of them denied any involvement and condemned the attempted coup.
Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the country’s first Indo-Fijian prime minister, whose Fiji Labour Party was swept to a landslide victory in last year’s general election, his cabinet, and MPs have been detained under armed guard in Parliament since yesterday morning.
While the police and military forces appeared loyal to constitutional authority, Speight, a shaved-head timber industry businessman and undischarged bankrupt, claimed that indigenous Fijians supported the illegal regime.
He said that only the President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, and negotiator Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the two 1987 military coups and was ousted as prime minister by the Chaudhry coalition government, were not in support.
President Mara declared a state of emergency last night and the armed forces called up all reservists in the greater Suva area.
Speight claimed at a press conference that the 1997 constitution had been revoked: “There is now no longer the office of the president.”
Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon joined the Australian, New Zealand and United States governments in condemning the attempted coup and calling on the kidnappers to abandon their action.
McKinnon warned on BBC Television that Fiji could face the fate of Pakistan in being excluded from the Commonwealth if the coup succeeded.
He said there was total Commonwealth support for constitutional rule, adding: “The police and army must stay on side with the elected government.”
On Radio Fiji this morning, McKinnon added that he was “sad and angry” over the attempt to overthrow the elected government.
“I am very concerned and and very saddened by this,” he said. “But I am also very angry because this was not necessary and it will set Fiji back a long way. This will not help Fiji’s international reputation at all.”
McKinnon said that he had been in touch with Mara and said the Commonwealth supported the president’s attempts to reassert constitutional government.
The Fiji Citizens’ Constitutional Forum (CCF), a community-based group which played a key role in the establishment of the multiracial 1997 constitution, strongly condemned the kidnapping of the government and the looting and violence.
“We call especially on our international partners who have contributed to the long process of democratisation in Fiji which culminated in our 1997 Constitution – governments, churches, NGOs and committed individuals – to join us in this chorus of condemnation against this ‘civil coup’,” said executive director Rev Akuila Yabaki.
“The group of seven armed men who have carried out these acts of violence are made up of unpopular politicians and discredited businessmen. Anyone who thinks that the ethnic Fijian community can benefit from this coup is living in a fool’s paradise.
“The majority of Fiji’s citizens voted overwhelming in support for constitutional democracy in the last election in May 1997 – including a majority of ethnic Fijians. This violence is not about protecting Fijian rights. It is about the interests of a few at all of our expense.
“The leaders of this so-called coup have no legitimacy and do not represent the breadth of Fijian support for constitutional democracy.”
About 48 per cent of the country’s 800,000 population are indigenous Fijians; 46 per cent are Indo-Fijians, and the rest are mixed-race or ethnic minorities.
The Fiji Times, the only one of the country’s three daily newspapers to publish today, declared in an editorial that “the madness must end.”
“It is wrong and dishonourable to back protests with guns and violence. Threatening people’s lives and putting their safety at risk is inexcusable,” the paper said.
“We have again witnessed how one moment of madness will set this country back by decades. Everything we have worked hard to put right and goals we have set for the nation have been ruined.”
Police declared the central city zone of the capital Suva a “no go” zone and said they were treating the entire central business district as a crime scene after scores of looters smashed their way into stores and set one shopping block, adjoining a newspaper office, ablaze yesterday afternoon.
An unnamed police office told Radio Fiji that 167 shops had been looted and 5 shops burned.
Police barricades were thrown up on the main roads into the city.
The attempted coup leader, George Speight, is son of the Opposition MP Savenaca Tokainavo. Last Monday, he pleaded not guilty to exchange rate charges and extortion in the High Court in Suva.
He is a descendant of a fourth generation white colonist and is reputed not to be a fluent Fijian speaker.
Speight was installed by former Finance Minister Jim Ah Koy (in the Rabuka government) as head of the Fiji Hardwood Corporation, a multimillion dollar company which was been at the centre of controversy in recent months.
He said he had no apologies for what seizing control of the country.
“We are not going to apologise to anybody and we are not going to step back, and we are not going to be daunted by accusations of racism, or one-sidedness,” Speight said.
“At the end of the day, it is [about] the supreme rights of our indigenous people in Fiji, the desire is that it be returned — wholesome and preserved for the future.”
David Robie, a New Zealander, is senior lecturer and coordinator of the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. This article was published by The New Zealand Herald.
The Fiji 2000 coup archive of the University of the South Pacific journalism students at the University of Technology Sydney.
Crisis coverage by University of the South Pacific journalism students
An archive of the exclusive University of the South Pacific journalism programme coverage of the Fiji coup by George Speight in May-August 2000. This was published by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) after the students’ own website was closed by the USP administration.
David Robie and journalism students at the University of the South Pacific reported the George Speight coup in Fiji on their website Pacific Journalism Online [now Wansolwara Online].
The original site was closed down by the University of the South Pacific (USP) administration on 29 May 2000 in response to threats, and new stories about the Fiji crisis were not permitted to be published on the Fiji site.
For three months, University of Technology, Sydney, journalists Fran Molloy and Kate MacDonald published stories and photographs from Fiji journalism students and USP staff on the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) website — now zip file archived in the UTS Library.
Frontline Reporters: USP student reportage of the 2000 Fiji coup Video: USP Journalism 2000
The site was designed and set up within hours by Fran Molloy, and with the support of ACIJ director Chris Nash and head of the journalism department Wendy Bacon, the USP journalism students were able to have their stories published shortly after they were filed.
The USP students subsequently won several awards for their online (and print) coverage of the coup in the annual Journalism Education Association (JEA) Ossie Awards 2000, including best regular publication in the Australia/NZ and Pacific region.
Awards went to Pacific Journalism Online and the students working on Wansolwara.
David Robie is an award-winning New Zealand investigative journalist who has reported on the 1987 coups and many other issues and events in the Pacific. He was then running the USP journalism programme.
He is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review and a graduate of the UTS Master of Arts (Journalism) programme.
Broadcaster Pat Craddock, then with the USP Media Centre, was also a key leader of efforts by the journalism team to communicate the coup to the outside world.
The Pacific Journalism Online site was restored, and remained a successful South Pacific news site until March 2007. It later became Wansolwara Online. A mirror of the Wansolwara special coup online edition of the newspaper established by former USP design lecturer Mara Fulmer in the US.
