Judge urges halt to Fiji aid

Press, 25 August 1988, Page 2

Judge urges halt to Fiji aid

NZPA-AAP Sydney A former Fiji Supreme Court judge accused Australia and other countries of an “unholy rush to embrace” the island nation’s post-coups regime.

Mr Justice Govind, who moved to Australia after last year’s two military coups, said he would have expected “international moral indignation” at the coups and subsequent events to have continued.

He said opponents of the regime should gear themselves for a long campaign of protest, one aim being for countries such as Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Sri Lanka to halt aid to Fiji. His Honour was speaking to 60 guests at a dinner in Sydney organised by the Fiji Movement for Democracy to raise funds for Amelia Rokotuivuna, the organiser of the Fiji Coalition parties ousted in the first coup. The Judge, now working in Sydney, said the situation in Fiji had worsened, human rights being “decimated” by the strict internal security decree and by delays to the promulgation of a new Constitution and a conference of the Great Council of Chiefs. The Australian and other donor Governments should use aid as a tool to demonstrate to Fiji’s interim Government their concern for human rights and their desire for the restoration of democracy.

One exception to his criticism, the Judge said, was - the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr Lange.

As far as he was aware, Mr Lange was the only national leader to have condemned what he called the creation of the “first police State” in the South Pacific through the internal security decree.