By Cindy Trinh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania
SUVA, Fiji – The United Nations is holding a workshop in Fiji to train human rights workers in the region in monitoring and documenting human rights.
The workshop follows as a result from human rights advocates raising concerns that the Fiji interim government’s new immunity and media decrees could allow further abuses to occur with impunity.
The draft Media Industry Development Decree provides for the establishment of a Media Development Authority and a tribunal with the power to fine news organizations and imprison journalists for up to 5 years.
It also restricts foreign ownership of news media to 10% with all company directors required to be citizens of Fiji.
Under the decree, media outlets may be fined up to $500,000 and individual editors, publishers, and journalists may be fined up to $100,000, and/or jailed if they do not comply with the “decree’s dictates.”
Reports from Fiji say the interim regime will consider further consultations about the proposed Media Decree.
Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says that the government is still working on the draft and no specific time frame has been set in terms of the implementation of the decree.
The interim regime said that once the media decree is in place, it will lift the emergency provisions, including the media censorship, which has been in place since April of 2009 when the regime abrogated the consultation after the appeals court ruled that the post-coup administration was illegal.
Amnesty International has described the proposed decree as the “deathnail for free media in Fiji which could enable further abuses to go unreported.”
The draft of the media law has sparked immediate protest by news groups, academics, and civil society movements. The draft decree has been described as “draconian.”
During the first consultation, about 50 media organizations and civil society groups were present and opposed the proposal.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the world’s largest body of newspeople, strongly condemned the regime for the “reinforcement of sweeping censorship.”
The general secretary of IFJ, Aidan White, stated: “The decree is clearly focused on the regime retaining control and entrenching its highly oppressive restrictions, not only on the media but on members of the public who might wish to express dissenting views.”
The director of the Pacific Media Centre, David Roble, stated that the decree was “ruthlessly chilling.” He wrote in his blog: “The regime is systematically destroying what has been traditionally one of the strongest media industries in the Pacific.”
Because of all the controversy over the media decree, the United Nations is holding a workshop in Fiji to train human rights workers to monitor and document human rights.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Regional Office for the Pacific says it cannot comment publicly on the issue because its strategy is to work to improve the situation in other ways.
The office’s regional representative, Matilda Bogner, says during the workshop they will talk with human rights workers about other approaches they can take to use the information they document in countries where media freedoms are restricted.
Bogner stated: “There are many strategies that can get information out. Not all advocacy has to be done publicly through the media. A lot of advocacy can be done behind closed doors with key people who are decision makers.”
Bogner further stated that there are forums other than traditional media to make the general community aware of human rights violations.
For more information, please see:
Radio New Zealand International – UN holds workshop in Fiji on documenting human rights – 15 April 2010
Radio New Zealand International – Fiji regime considers further media decree consultations – 15 April 2010
Pacific Scoop – Draconian Fiji draft media law triggers news group protests – 08 April 2010
