Liberty of learning arid thought on slender thread

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 21

Liberty of learning arid thought on slender thread

DAVID ROBIE

I 1 looks at the harassment and intimida-

tion faced by academics at the University of the South Pacific since last year’s military coup in Fiji. |

i Many intellectuals in Fiji believe the University of the iSouth Pacific, a unique regional institution, faces the gravest threat to its existence following last year's coups d’etat. Long troubled by financial troubles, the campus now faces a death sentence over academic freedom. A small group of "new wave” indigenous critical thinkers who have played a key role in (shaping the university's identity over the last seven years are nowgravely concerned about | their future.

“We are confronted with academic censorship,” says one university academic, who declines to be named. “The university faces the biggest threat in its 20year history.” A handful of lecturers helped

draw up the progressive reform policies of the multi-racial Fiji Labour Party. Others, while not involved politically, were still suspected by the conservative Fijian establishment of haying a hand in the party's spectacular rise to power last year. Among this radical elite is Dr Tupeni Baba, a former registrar at the University who became Education Minister in Prime Minister Dr Timoci Bavadrh’s Labour-led coalition government. An English lecturer. Dr Satendra Nandan, Ijecame Health Minister under Df Bavadra. Another is sociology lecturer Simione Duratalo, a vice-president in • the party, who is now on a fellowship in New York..

Some academics point to par-

allels with Jamaica in the early 1970 s when Michael Manly became a reformist Prime Minister and several radical staff from the University of the West Indies moved into key government posts. After Brigadier Sitiveni Rabuka seized power in the May 14

military coup, several "critical thinkers” were harassed and intimidated by police and troops at the Laucala Bay campus.! ■. J One, politics lecturer'; Dr William Sutherland, wlio ( has been a controversial choice by Dr Bavadra as permanent secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office, was forced to flee to New Zealand. He is now a lecturer at the Australian National University in Canberra. Another, sociology lecturer Vijay Naidu, who is also president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear! Group (Fang), was abducted from the campus after the second coup. Security forces arrested him in the middle of a meeting and jailed him for ai week without charge. !

For several days he was locked up in an old death row cell in Suva Prison, where he was severely beaten andi threatened.

Dr Baba was assaulted-outside the Great Council of | Chiefs. Another lecturer! was Clubbed with a rifle butt by soldiers on the campus. Other academics were detained. i

One academic staff member reportedly discovered in the university computer system’ a “hit list of critical lecturers.”! i The harassment came to a head late in February. 'A New Zealand senior history and politics lecturer, Dr Robert (Robertson, had to leave Fiji when his work permit was not renewed!

Regarded as a member of the “critical thinkers” group,(the 36-

year-old, Cljristchurch-born lecturer denied allegations of political involvement. Although he has co-authored a controversial book about the cpups, “The Fiji Report,” he be|ieves the regime did not know about it. He had a teacher in Fiji for nine years, and the university had just extended his contract for a three years. On the brigadier’s carders, the Immigration Department refused to grant him a renewed work permit. There was no right of appeal.

The Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff protested to Education Minister Filipe Bole over the “abrogation of academiq freedom.”

Some staff members believe that when tie British-born vicechancellor, Geoffrey Caston, retires from office this year, the curbs on academic freedom will take force. I Although p Pacific Islander is likely to be appointed, staff sources suggest the militarybacked Fiji Government will pressure the university council into appointing a political "puppet.” | Dr Caston recently told the university council that almost all the staff found it “naturally distaseful” to (live in an undemocratic society and felt threatened by any breakdown in law and order. | A threatening statement issued last November in the name of the Education Minister, Ratu Filimojie Ralogaivu (in the Taukei-dom nated Government),upset many academics. It also indicated an axe was about to

fall on academic freedom. While the statement stressed the Fiji “commitment” to the university, it said the time had come for "greater understanding to the needs of indigenous Fijians, both students and staff." | It alleged “intrigue and manipulation” to eliminate the Institute of Pacific Studies’ chair of Pacific studies, held by iDr Asesela Ravuvu, who is regarded as a strong supporter of the extremist • Taukei nationalist movement. It said that staff (appointments should not be influenced by "personal prejudice, professional jealousy and political bias” to exclude Pacific Islanders from jobs at a university which belonged to them. I Furthermore, "the university council will need tot begin now to look for an indigenous Pacific Islander to be the next . vicechancellor when the contract of the incumbent expires- shortly.” The permanent secretary Tor education, Hari Ram, spelled out the new policy to the university council in 'an ambiguous statement: “Staff and students of the university may continue to hold such meetings and (conduct such discussions - and related activities.” They could publish “such materials as are in conformity with the role of the university as an institution of higher education but which! do not have any disruptive influence or are of a subversive nature.’’

Applications for iwork permits for staff “will of ijecessity have

to be examined carefully” but would be I “processed expeditiously” to I lessen the disruption of teaching. The university, built on an old Royal New Zealand Air Force flying boat! base at Laucala Bay, was opened in 1968. It is jointly controlled by 11 countries — the Cook Islajnds, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Western .Samoa. It depends bn Fiji for about 70 per cent df its annual working budget, about $l3 million. Australia and! New Zealand also contribute, largely through scholarships for students. (The staff includes 60 different nationalities and there are 2000 full-time students with 7000 parttimers at laucala Bay. There is also a campus at Alafua, Western Samoa, and a centre in Port Vila, Vanuatu. | Apart frbm regional students, the university also accepts scholarship! students from Ethiopia, Hong Kong, the Maldives and Zimbabwe on Commonwealth grants. In the 19705, the university was mainlj dominated by lecturers with an academic background from the Australian National university, or other institutions in Australia and New Zealand. Pbst-graduates from the campus were barred from studying at other universities with specialised] Third World studies. “Probably on purpose,” says one staff | academic. “Just to make sure they didn’t develop too independent a perspective.” Howeveij, by the end of the decade many of the younger “critical lecturers” were gaining doctorates abroad and returning with a more radical analysis of dependency and alternative development! Their ideas were frequently nurtured at such “radical” Third

World institutions as the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, and the Hague’s Institute of Social Studies.

As they were! promoted into more senior positions, they replaced the previous academic leadership with their quite independent critiques i of island development — a (situation which caused resentment among the old guard, mainly! expatriates. The old guard [projected themselves as having ! come with a sense of mission; studying towards the perspective of

islanders. “While the rhetoric was laudable,” says one academic, “in practice, the reality was quite different. It took the new generation of indigenous thinkers to produce a real Pacific perspective.”

One of the new group, Simione Duratalo, was strongly critical of those academics he saw as trying to replace the “hegemony of colonialism” with the "hegemony of colonial elites,” such as the chiefs and the post-colonial bureaucracy.

“The university, particularly in the social sciences, was on an exciting new path of discovery," says the lecturer. "Its independent direction was far ahead of anything involving Pacific studies in other universities like the Australian National University.”

But now? “The era has finished. Many of! the intellectual spearhead group have left, and others have wanted to get out ever since the coups. U.S.P. has been set back a decade —

perhaps it will never recover.”