Pacific Media Watch

3 February 2017

FIJI: Wadan Narsey: Are there two sets of prosecuting rules in Fiji?

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Fiji Times publisher Hank Arts (clockwise, from top left), editor-in-chief Fred Wesley, Nai Lalakai editor Anare Ravula and contributor Josaia Waqabaca outside the Suva Magistrates’ Court. Image: Newswire Fiji photo
PMW ID
9797

Analysis by Wadan Narsey
SUVA (Asia Pacific Report/Narsey on Fiji/Pacific Media Watch): In 2016, two of Fiji’s main media organisations, the privately owned Fiji Times and state-owned Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, came to public attention, for the wrong reasons — laws regarding ethnic sensibilities in multiracial Fiji.

The international community needs to note that taken together, they call into question the neutrality of Fiji’s prosecuting, regulating and defending institutions.

I make no statement on the neutrality of the judiciary presiding on the case currently — the public can make their own minds up when the judgments are given.

On the 27 April 2016, Nai Lalakai (the Fijian vernacular publication owned and published by The Fiji Times) printed an article by one Josaia Waqabaca who pointed out that a petition had been handed to Aiyaz Khaiyum (Fiji’s Attorney-General) to either engage in a “veisorosorovi” (a formal indigenous Fijian reconciliation) with indigenous Fijians or leave Fiji

Read Professor Narsey's full article at Asia Pacific Report
 

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