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Fiji Censors, Bloggers And Free Expression

Fiji Censors, Bloggers And The Future Of Free Expression
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Café Pacific | Media freedom and transparency: Fiji censors, bloggers and the future of free expression


www.globalintegrity.org

SUVA (Global Integrity/Café Pacific/Pacific Media Watch): Eight days ago, Café Pacific made a New Year honours award to the University of the South Pacific's Wansolwara in the "independent newspaper" category. The academic staff person currently steering this journalism student publication is Shailendra Singh, a former editor of The Review news magazine. Global Integrity, an independent governance watchdog, recently caught up with him and interviewed him on his views over Fiji under the military censorship boot. An excerpt from the interview:

By Norah Mallaney of Global Integrity

In the South Pacific, I found a case study in modern censorship, as Fiji’s three-year-old military government collides with a once free local press, an emerging blogging culture and an ambivalent international community. Some basic facts are contested, but it is clear that free expression in Fiji is under intense pressure, in a sharp departure from Fijian cultural and political tradition. I talked over email with journalist and media academic Shailendra Singh, based in capital of Suva, about the future of free expression in Fiji.

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Despite increasing government control over print media, Shailendra is determined. Journalists get heat from all sides, as even reporting the government’s arguments for media regulation has become controversial. But Shailendra argues for free exchange over partisanship. “It is absurd to fight censorship with censorship” Shailendra told me.

Shailendra worked with Global Integrity as a lead journalist in 2008, writing the Corruption Notebook: Fiji. As a senior lecturer in journalism, Shailendra encourages his fellow journalists and students to pursue stories to the greatest extent possible under the current restrictions. Bainimarama’s government, who seized power in a 2006 coup d’etat, has clamped down on the media. In a 2006 radio address, Bainimarama advised pro-democracy advocates to "shut their mouth," lest the military "shut it for them". The arrest or deportation of prominent journalists followed.

This has never before been seen in the island nation, with the brief exception of a period during the 1987 coup staged by then military strongman, Sitiveni Rabuka. After the 1987 takeover, the media eventually regained full reporting rights. The future does not seem as certain now and Fijians turn to regional “parachute journalists” or anonymous bloggers for independent yet at times questionably reliable news. “In many cases the blogs are vitriolic and abusive,” Shailendra said. “On the other hand, some credible commentators who can no longer publish their articles in the local dailies have set up blogsites.”

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