By Angela Marie Watkins
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

SUVA, Fiji – The European Commission canceled a grant worth more than $32.6 million to Fiji in a sign of growing international impatience at the military regime’s refusal to hold elections.

A statement from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade indicated that the cancellation “is the inevitable result of the interim government’s failure to return Fiji to democracy.” The statement went on to say that “Fiji and its people continue to bear the consequences of the interim government’s intransigent attitude.”

The United States and Fiji’s most affluent neighbors, Australia and New Zealand, have also imposed targeted sanctions.

The sugar industry is Fiji’s second-largest after tourism and contributes between six and eighth percent of the country’s total gross domestic product.

In early 2007, the European Union found that interim regime’s military coup of Fiji’s democratically elected government in 2006 had violated the Cotonau Agreement. Under that agreement, sugar produced by developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific are given subsidized and preferential access to European markets. The EU announced in October 2007 that subsidies would be tied to progress toward democracy.

The military government says it will not hold elections before 2014. Recently, it has imposed a state of emergency under which the media is censored.

Last month, the military regime tightened its grip on power leading to its suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum, a regional bloc that represents the common interests of regional island nations.

For more information, please see:
Bloomberg – EU Cancel Substantial Aid to Fiji – 20 May 2009

Radio Austrailia – Australia Backs EU’s ‘Firm Line’ Canceling Sugar Aid to Fiji – 20 May 2009

AFP – EU cancels 2009 Fiji sugar assistance – 20 May 2009