THE PRESS FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1988. No sanctions on Fiji

Press, 22 January 1988, Page 20

THE PRESS FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1988. No sanctions on Fiji

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, of which New Zealand’s Council of Trade Unions forms a part, has been wise to reject trade sanctions against Fiji. In the first place, such sanctions are not very successful instruments in bringing about changes in policies. They are most likely to inflict harm on those Fijians whose lot the Council of Trade Unions is keen to improve. However unappealing the snatching of power in Fiji might seem to the 1.C.F.T.U., which will discuss the issue again at its congress in Melbourne in March, further damage to Fiji’s economy is not going to help Fijians of any race. An attempt to destroy a country’s economy in the hope that, somehow, the country can be forced to democracy is more likely to condemn the country to anything but democracy. As the new Fiji administration has made clear, if traditional trading partners close their doors, Fiji will trade elsewhere. This could bring about changes in the South Pacific that none of the countries of the South Pacific would like to see. No-one in the region wants Fiji to drift off into a different world.

The president of the C.T.U., Mr Ken Douglas, has spoken of his concern for the

lower paid workers in Fiji, people who would be hit first and hit hardest if sanctions were successful. In economic hard times, the tension between Fiji’s two principal communities, Melanesian and Indian, will be heightened. Many indigenous Fijians regard the Fiji Indians as the cause of their present economic difficulties. The dominance of Fiji’s business life by Fiji Indians is used by the Taukei movement to further the nationalist and racialist sentiment of indigenous Fijians. If economic sanctions against Fiji had some bite, the increased hardship on indigenous Fijians would be seen, or at least, painted, as the fault of Fiji Indians on whose behalf the sanctions had been imposed. Thus the Fiji Indians would be doubly hit: sharing the economic hardship occasioned by the sanctions, and suffering reprisals from the Melanesian population for causing the trouble. The I.C.F.T.U. decision is in accord with the attitude of the New Zealand Government, which is one of careful disapproval of events in Fiji, stopping short of action that could inflame matters or reduce the chances for rapprochement. This is still the sensible course.