The world has had little reason to pay attention to the intensifying human rights meltdown in Fiji at the hands of the ruling military junta. After all, it hasn\u2019t affected the bottom line: foreign exploitation of the island nation\u2019s cheap natural resources or the discounted soldiers it supplies to the United Nations and American mercenary companies in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Fiji Water, one of the top imported bottled waters in the United States, still markets itself as an untarnished taste of paradise, while giving millions of dollars to the country\u2019s brutal dictatorship and hiring a military-led company to run its security. Even Gibson Guitar, the favorite of rock-stars which just became the new darling of the Tea Party<\/a> after federal raids on its imported wood, is busy courting the despotic regime for preferential access to Fiji\u2019s mahogany riches, which were behind the country\u2019s 2000 coup.<\/a><\/p>\n The draconian censorship of all media in Fiji means constant suppression of reports about the increasing surveillance, harassment, detentions, beatings, rape and murder of Fijian citizens at the hands of their dictatorship. International press has recently noticed that the junta is even censoring news of tourist deaths<\/a> on the island in order to maintain the facade of idyllic calm.<\/p>\n But in the past few months, the discontent simmering in Fijian society has come spilling out through several key fractures. There have been high-level defections, calls for global solidarity by labor unions and on-the-ground protests. For the first time since the junta took power in a 2006 coup, many Fijians have hope that the ingredients of a revolution are coming together.<\/p>\n Fiji\u2019s highest-profile defector yet, Lieutenant Colonel Ratu Tevita Mara, believes that Fiji is ripe for an Oceanic version of the Arab Spring. He was formerly the fourth highest-ranking member of Fiji\u2019s military and the army\u2019s chief of staff. In a recent interview, I spoke with Mara, about the junta, its vulnerabilities, and what he sees as its inevitable downfall.<\/p>\n Mara was initially a key supporting official of Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama\u2019s 2006 coup \u2014 the U.S. Embassy calls Mara a \u201ccoup ringleader\u201d in Wikileaks cables \u2014 but he has since described his government as a \u201cvicious and brutal illegal military junta\u201d run by a \u201cmafia of violent and corrupt terrorists.\u201d Mara\u2019s words carry additional weight with Fijians as he is the son of the founding father of modern Fiji, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara \u2014 the first prime minister of post-independence Fiji and later its president. He\u2019s also the brother-in-law of Fiji\u2019s current president, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, who answers to self-appointed Prime Minister Bainimarama. Mara was charged this spring with sedition and mutiny after a military officer reported him for making a critical comment about the regime.<\/p>\n Mara spoke to me from Australia, where he\u2019s a declared fugitive from Fiji after being picked up at sea by the Tongan navy in May. (Being related to Tonga\u2019s royal family, he was given citizenship there.) The junta has filed extradition papers for him all over the South Pacific, where he\u2019s been on a speaking tour airing their dirty laundry to regional governments and Fijian expatriate democracy groups. He has also put a series of videos on his website<\/a> in which he appeals directly to soldiers and police officers to end Bainimarama\u2019s reign, calling some out by name. According to Mara, Bainimarama\u2019s inner circle has become increasingly insular, and that it\u2019s this inside group of soldiers and bodyguards that has been behind the physical assaults on dissidents, including Fiji\u2019s infamous nighttime arson attacks on the homes of perceived critics. \u201cIt\u2019s not the whole of the military that\u2019s doing these atrocities in Fiji, it\u2019s only a select number of people under Bainimarama,\u201d Mara explained.<\/p>\n Recently-released Fijian Wikileaks cables<\/a> \u2014 explored in depth by the Australian press \u2014 document the torture, rape, and even murder of detainees that constitute the reign of Bainimarama\u2019s henchmen. A 2007 cable<\/a> reported that Bainimarama privately confirmed to EU diplomats that \u201cif someone insults the President or the RFMF [Republic of Fiji Military Forces], of course we must have them taken to the barracks and have them beaten up.\u201d In another 2007 cable<\/a>, the U.S. Embassy related Fijian human rights reports that Bainimarama himself had joined in the beating of a senior government official, barking \u201cdon\u2019t f*** with the military\u201d as he did. The U.S. Embassy also reported on an incident when the military had handed over the bruised, dead body of a detainee to the police.<\/p>\n Fijians are arrested not only for public statements against the junta, Mara explained, but are now even taken to barracks for comments made in private conversation \u2014 a tactic he described in one of his internet videos as \u201cmore like Nazi Germany and the Gestapo, or the Soviet Union and the KGB.\u201d A more contemporary comparison, however, would be China, where Fiji\u2019s chief censor \u2014 the secretary of the Ministry of Information \u2014is attending workshops on how to control the flow of information <\/a>to the public.<\/p>\n Mara confirmed to me that \u201cthe mobile phones are tapped, the landlines are tapped.\u201d He also confirmed that the internet is indeed monitored \u2014 a fact that I discovered on my own in 2009<\/a> after my emails were intercepted by Fiji police at an internet cafe and I was arrested for them.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is control on the internet, they control that. The internet monitoring is done by the internet company Connect,\u201d which the government owns, said Mara. \u201cI\u2019ve sat in meetings where transcripts of conversations have been brought up to Bainimarama. Civil servants have even been sent from their jobs for phone conversations criticizing the government.\u201d People who appear to be civilians are paid by the military to monitor their neighbors: \u201cReserve soldiers, they get put on the payroll. They remain in civil society, continue their normal civilian jobs, and send information back to military headquarters.\u201d Mara recalled taxi drivers calling military headquarters with tips about seditious passengers.<\/p>\n The surveillance apparatus, the censorship of media \u2014 which the regime has dubbed the \u201cjournalism of hope\u201d \u2014 and a climate of fear around public protest have led many Fijians to use anonymous methods to communicate to each other and to the world that they\u2019ve had enough. The capital city of Suva and other parts of the main island were recently tagged in the middle of the night<\/a> with graffiti like \u201cPM MURDERER,\u201d \u201cBAINIMARAMA U EVIL LEADER,\u201d and \u201cPM YOUR TIME IS OVER \u2013 NEW GOV\u2019T SOON,\u201d followed by the torching of police huts. A group calling itself the Viti Revolutionary Forces emerged to take credit, and managed to send out a nationwide text message urging Fijians to \u201cstart passive resistance now.\u201d The military has started to arrest suspects, and five men appeared in court this month to plead not guilty to charges of sedition.<\/p>\n Anti-regime blogs<\/a> by well-connected dissidents have flourished<\/a>, and are becoming the go-to drops for whistleblowers with inside scoops about the junta. Satirical accounts masquerading as the regime have been created on social media, such as a junta Twitter account<\/a> which tweets at unsuspecting foreigners who\u2019ve made comments about Fiji (\u201cAs long as you do not criticise us you are welcome to stay. Smile for the men with the guns.\u201d) A former Fijian government minister was arrested, and says he was beaten, for distributing an anti-regime DVD to villagers<\/a>. Fijians abroad have started displaying upside-down Fijian flags<\/a> at public events, as they\u2019ve been doing at this month\u2019s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. (Rugby is Fiji\u2019s national sport.)<\/p>\n But perhaps the most critical mass of resistance comes from Fiji\u2019s trade unions, whose leaders have been repeatedly arrested and beaten by the military. They\u2019re now taking the risk of being publicly quoted by Australian and New Zealand press<\/a> about their ordeals, while the unions are persecuted for holding public meetings due to Fiji\u2019s martial law forbidding unpermitted gatherings.<\/p>\n International trade unions have raised the alarm about the junta\u2019s abuses and called for global solidarity. As a result, the Australian Transport Workers Union, along with their New Zealand counterparts, have even considered shutting down flights to Fiji.<\/p>\n The regime escalated its war against Fiji\u2019s workers last month with the release of its Essential National Industries Decree, a hugely controversial law designed to shred workers\u2019 rights. An Air Pacific pilot was just arrested and charged with cyber-crimes<\/a> for releasing internal documents to an anti-regime blog showing that the airline, which is nearly half-owned by the Australian giant Qantas, had helped to draft the decree and paid a New York law firm tens of thousands of dollars to consult on it.<\/p>\n While workers continue to step up their resistance in the face of repression, there are signs that the military is losing its moral authority. This developing situation \u2014 to be discussed in part two of this series \u2014 has heightened prospects of a popular uprising. As Secretary General of Amnesty International Salil Shetty told regional press<\/a> this month, \u201cIn all these places, we are talking currently about Syria, Yemen, I don\u2019t see how Fiji is such an exception. If this level of violation of human rights continues and if people don\u2019t have a voice and if they have no basic freedoms, in my view it\u2019s a matter of time.\u201d<\/p>\n ________________________<\/p>\n Anna Lenzer is a freelance journalist living in New York City. Her work has appeared in outlets such as <\/em>Mother Jones, City Limits<\/em>, and Wayne Barrett’s book <\/em>Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9\/11.<\/em><\/p>\n