Since seizing power in December 2006,Fiji's military regime has come under sustained attack from the media. Rather than accepting this as the price of governing in a free and democratic society, they have embarked on a program of intimidation, with journalists and editors dragged to camp to be threatened. Earlier this year, they deported Fiji Sun publisher Russell Hunter in the middle of the night because they didn't like his newspaper's investigation of corruption and tax-evasion by the quisling Minister of Finance Mahendra Chaudhary, and now they've done the same again. Last night, Fiji Times publisher Evan Hannah was seized from his home by police. Despite lawyers gaining a writ of Habeas Corpus requiring the regime to be produce him in court and explain why he had been detained, he was bundled onto a plane and deported to Korea. It's a clear attack on media freedom, not to mention the rule of law, but the regime doesn't care - and dictator Voreqe Bainimarama even issued a statement for World Media Freedom Day saying that media freedom was guaranteed by the constitution and that
[the media's] role as the public watchdog in keeping government and other public institutions fully accountable to the public is freely acknowledged and appreciated.Except I guess when they criticise him and his band of thugs.
Stuff has more here.
