Fiji in limbo, as foreign media booted out

Published: 6:13PM Monday April 13, 2009 Source: ONE News

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Fiji remains in a state of limbo as it waits for the interim government to make its new judicial appointments.

And while all eyes are on the court system, the Fijian government is extending its media muzzle, deporting more foreign journalists.

Although it appears to be business as usual in Suva, Fiji's judicial system is at a standstill.

There are no judges or constitution and the military regime has no support from the Fijian Law Society.

It's called for the country's sacked judges to ignore their sacking, and turn up to work on Tuesday.

"We've asked the judges to abide by the 1997 constitution if they can continue to sit under that, but it might be a practical impossibility," says Dorsami Naidu President of the Fiji Law Society.

The law society is planning further action against the government, which it says is acting illegally.

And some lawyers in New Zealand say any imposed new judicial system will be a sham.

"The independence of the judiciary is the most important quality of all, and how can any person can become a judge, if that person is to agree to be a slave to a pirate government," says Peter Willams QC.

As the Fijian government tightens its grip on the legal system, its squeeze on the media has gotten tighter too.

The ABC's correspondent Sean Dorney is the latest foreign journalist to be booted out because the military regime didn't like his reports.

"Given the restrictions that they have placed upon the local media, I'm not surprised that they don't want foreign journalists here telling the rest of the world what you people aren't allowed to tell your own people," he says.

Former New Zealand Governor General Sir Paul Reeves was instrumental in shaping Fiji's dumped constitution, and he agrees.

"I feel badly for the people of Fiji, it seems to me that they have lost a rudder and an anchor and a sense of direction and now they are dependent every much upon the whim the edict of a military government," he says.

And it is becoming increasingly clear this is not a government that's prepared to back down.

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