Pacific.Scoop
By Pacific Media Centre

A chorus of praise has greeted the Amnesty International report on alleged post-putsch human rights violations for “exposing the suffering” but the regime condemned the document as being based on “lies”.

The London-based global rights watchdog called on China to cooperate with the isolationist pressure on Fiji and urged Beijing to use its influence to defend human rights in the Pacific country.

“Well done Apolosi! You are a true hero to our people back home in Fiji,” wrote “Mike”, a Pacific Scoop correspondent, referring to the indigenous Pacific researcher Apolosi Bose, who conducted the fact-finding trip to Fiji in April.

“Thank you for exposing the puppet master [prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama]. Now the whole world can get a true perspective of the suffering this regime has inflicted on its citizens.”

In Australia, Asia-Pacific affairs writer Rowan Callick said the “Pacific-watching community” was “wringing its hands about what to do about recalcitrant Fiji”.

But he added that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was displaying no second thoughts – “he is going for the jugular”.

The Australian government has asked the United Nations to order a “progressive replacement of Fijian troops” in peacekeeping operations – which provide Fiji’s third-biggest source of national income after tourism and sugar.

In Fiji, the military regime has rejected the findings of the Amnesty report, claiming that the authorities are using systematic human rights violations to control the population.

The report, titled Fiji, Paradise Lost, claims the Public Emergency Regulations have allowed the Fiji government and the military to breach the international charter of human rights and “hide their actions” behind media censorship.

Ministry of Information spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Neumi Leweni said he thought most of what was written in the report was “based on lies”.

He told the Radio Australia Today programme that if the report’s author could provide specific examples of abuses – he could disprove most of them.

“Well if he can actually specify the time and place in which those incidents took place, then we totally refute the claim,” he said.

The 48-page report is very detailed and cites wide-ranging references.

However, former University of the South Pacific development studies professor Crosbie Walsh wrote on his Fiji blog that the Amnesty report was “disappointing”.

He said there was little content that was actually new although the report covered the “most troubled period” in Fiji the past six years.

“Its researcher and author is [an] ethnic Fijian Apolosi Bose,” he wrote.

“ Its methodology involved 80 interviews with journalists, lawyers and others, all hostile to the interim government, based largely on Bose’s visit to Fiji from 4-18 April, and 2008-2009 inputs from “activists in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and London. ”

He added that the report’s “introductory, anonymous and inaccurate quotation further indicates its unbalanced — and therefore questionable—research”.

David Robie’s Café Pacific blog noted the irony of the report coming out at a time when a number of influential Indo-Fijian journalists had attacked the credibility of New Zealand media covering Fiji affairs.