By Ryan L. Maness
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Editor, Oceania

SYDNEY, Australia — Relations between Fiji and Australia have been strained since the 2006 coup, but the tension has been palpable in recent days.  Since the Pacific Island Forum, the Australian government has placed pressure on Fiji to make substantial movement towards reestablishing democratic elections, going so far as to threaten to relocate Pacific Institutions currently housed in Fiji.  The Fijian government has responded by calling for its neighbors to allow Fiji to work through the problems underlying its “coup culture”. 

The back and forth has ascended to a new level with an accusation by the Fiji Human Rights Commission that the Australian Navy may have violated international law with their military activities in the lead up to the 2006 coup.  Specifically, Fiji Human Rights Commission Director Dr. Shaista Shameem has said that the presence of Australian war ships near Fijian waters and Special Air Service soldiers flying commercially into Fiji represented the early stages of a possible future invasion.  These forces, Shameem told Radio Australia, were assembled after now interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama first threatened to overtake the Qarase government. 

The Australian government claims that the vessels were not in place to invade Fiji, but merely to protect Australian citizens in the event that the coup should turn violent.  They also insist that at no time did the ships enter Fijian waters or make any signs of aggression.  Australian Foreign minister Stephen Smith explained that “The Australian military were effectively on standby so as to ensure the safety and welfare of Australian nationals should that have become necessary.” 

He also says that Australia has heard these “spurious” claims before and that Fiji is presenting them now to try to draw attention away from the lack of progress being made towards free and fair elections.  “The best thing that can happen in Fiji is not spurious suggestions about Australian activity but having an election, returning Fiji to democracy, respecting human rights and democracy and allowing a potentially very prosperous nation to get on with the job of providing for its citizens.”

For more information, please see:
Fiji Times — Concentrate on having an election: Smith — 03 April 2008

Fiji Broadcasting Corporation Limited — Report receives negative response — 03 April 2008

Radio New Zealand International — Australia’s foreign minister responds to Fiji’s Human Rights Commission — 02 April 2008

Australian Broadcasting Corporation — Smith rejects Fiji accusation — 02 April 2008

Radio New Zealand International — Fiji Human Rights Commission wants probe of Australia’s pre-coup role — 01 April 2008