Fiji ‘in need’ of commission

Press, 27 June 1987, Page 34

Fiji ‘in need’ of commission

By

CHRIS MOORE

The military coup in Fiji underlined the need to establish a South Pacific Human Rights Commission, said Mr Bruce Slane, an Auckland lawyer and New Zealand councillor for the AsianPacific legal organisation, Lawsia.

Writing in the New Zealand Law Society’s bulletin, “Lawtalk,” Mr Slane has urged New Zealand lawyers to promote the importance of democratic institutions “despite ignorant statements from those, who will take racial sides in any argument.” He also suggested that opponents of apartheid should oppose the racial domination which lay behind the recent coup in Fiji.

“The, overthrow of the lawful Government and Constitution of Fiji by force so close to home strengthens* the role of lawyers in emphasising the role of law and the

essential ingredient that the law must be fair to all.

“The coup lends considerable weight to the pleas of Lawsia at a symposium in Fiji in 1985 for the setting up of the South Pacific Human Rights Commission. It also shows the need to strengthen this regional organisation and to increase its resources.”

Lawsia represented 2000 lawyers and judges in Asia and the Pacific. Its secretary-general, Mr David Geddes, had already told the coup leader, Colonel Rabuka, to adhere to the Fijian Constitution and maintain an independent Judiciary.

Mr Slane said that the organisation should undertake projects to provide sound legal assistance to small nations on major constitutional, international and other issues.

“The naive attempts of Fijian chiefs to impose a

new law which they would require everybody to obey merely show how the democratic principles and the legal basis of our Western constitutional societies has not been absorbed,” he said.

The colonial administration had . been built on the power of the Fijian chiefs and the traditional community organisation. There was no Magna Carta and the chiefs had expected to continue to rule.

“When they found that the ordinary people had started to vote against the Alliance Party, they were not prepared to accept the result. Clearly they have never accepted democracy. They think that it is a racial matter, but it is their power they seek to retain and race is what they use to delude the ignorant. “They must have been worried to see ordinary Fijians voting for the Labour Party rather than

on ethnic lines,” Mr Slane said.

More conventional politics would develop unless racism took over and divided the two communities in Fiji. “Denial of rights in a unitary State may lead to demands for independence in the Western part of Fiji where support for the former Prime Minister, Dr Timoci Bavadra, is strong.

"Then the issue will be whether Fiji will head for the non-solution of Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka or stay with the Malaysian solution which offers positive discrimination in favour of the Malays and discrimination , against everybody else ... or Fiji will have the volatile politics of other nations with coup succeeding coup and militarism rampant Let us pray that it finds a democratic solution and again becomes a Pacific nation in a Pacific ocean.”