Writ aimed to evict Fiji High Commission

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 9

Writ aimed to evict Fiji High Commission

PA Wellington The businessman, Mr Bob Jones, has filed a High Court writ aimed at evicting the Fiji High Commission from Robert Jones House in Wellington.

He also wants the Government to declare outright that the regime of the coup leader, Brigadier Sitiveni Rabuka, is Illegal.

The writ — to be heard at the High Court in Wellington on Monday — calls for a certificate from the Government either recognising or not recognising the Fiji Government. The purpose of this was to enable him to evict the high commission from his building, Mr Jones said.

If the Government did not recognise the Fiji

Government there was an international legal precedent allowing him to evict the high commission on the ground that the lease for its premises was not with the present regime but with the previous, ousted, one. The action would also force the Government to “get off the fence” and declare in court for all the world to hear that it considered the new regime illegal. “I disapprove of the sort of wild thuggish beasts who have seized power in Fiji and if I can do anything to make life unpleasent for them I will,” Mr Jones said. There was legal precedent for the type of action he had taken, and he was confident that it would succeed.