WELLINGTON (Radio Heritage Foundation / Pacific Media Watch): The Australian-based Fiji Freedom & Democracy Movement has launched a weekly one hour shortwave radio programme in Fijian targeted at Fiji, says the Radio Heritage Foundation www.radioheritage.com.
Broadcast at 8.30pm on Mondays [Fiji time] the program features news, information, interviews and music designed to reach local Fijian listeners and promote the FDFM vision of the restoration of a democratic Free Fiji under the 1997 constitution.
The shortwave radio broadcast is heard on 11565 kHz and the first broadcast this week was widely heard in Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, USA, Sweden, Finland and Germany. It apparently originates from a leased time privately owned transmitter located in the USA.
Local radio media in Fiji must operate under regulations including news censorship by the military government which came to power in a series of coups and which has, at times, closed down the local FM relay stations of both the BBC and Radio Australia.
Since the 1970s radio stations and programmes opposing Pacific governments have broadcast from a number of Melanesian states such as Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the autonomous region of Bougainville, and now Fiji.
Whether indigenous Fijian listeners have modern shortwave receivers capable of hearing FDFM Radio is questionable, as they already have access to a large variety of state and private local FM radio stations broadcasting popular programs in Fijian.
The Fiji Freedom & Democracy Movement is the same organisation that said it planned to broadcast from a pirate radio ship off the Fijian coast in 2010. It has clearly found that paying a few dollars to rent a shortwave transmitter thousands of kilometers away from Fiji for an hour each week is far less expensive.
Listeners can hear podcasts of the broadcasts and find out more information about FDFM Radio at https://sites.google.com/site/fijidemocracymovement, as well as an
email address to which reception reports and comments can be sent.
For more details about radio in Fiji, the Radio Heritage Foundation recommends the Pacific Asian Listener Radio Guide and Pacific Travellers Guides at
www.radioheritage.com. Features about the history of broadcasting in Fiji can also be found here.
Radio Heritage Foundation is a registered non-profit organisation connecting radio, popular culture, history and heritage and features and radio guides are available for free community use at www.radioheritage.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Watch
