FIJI UPDATE, MAY 25, 2007: INTERIM GOVERNMENT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 SUVA 000287

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/24/2017
TAGS: PGOV MARR PHUM ASEC FJ
SUBJECT: FIJI UPDATE, MAY 25, 2007: INTERIM GOVERNMENT
REASSERTS THREE-YEAR ELECTION TIMEFRAME; HUMAN RIGHTS
VIOLATIONS ON THE UPSWING

REF: STATE 70355

Classified By: CDA Ted Mann, per 1.4 (B,D)

Summary
--------------

1. (C) During a visit to India, interim Finance Minister
Chaudhry repeatedly stressed that elections in Fiji would not
take place until 2010. Bainimarama echoed that view May 22,
stating it would be idiotic for the interim regime to take
Fiji to elections before it had achieved its goals. This
backtracking on the election timetable coincides with
backsliding on human rights as well. In recent weeks several
prominent individuals have been brought to the military
barracks for questioning; some have been beaten. Several
international organizations and countries, including the
United States, have expressed concern about these continuing
human rights violations. End summary.

Bainimarama, Chaudhry Still Talking Elections in 2010
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2. (U) During his current visit to India, interim Finance
Minister Chaudhry made several statements to the effect that
Fiji would not hold elections until 2010. According to an
interim government press release dated May 18, Chaudhry told
India's Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh that elections
could not take place for at least another three years.
According to the press release, PM Singh responded that this
is an internal matter best left for the authorities in Fiji
to decide. According to the Fiji Times, Chaudhry later told
reporters in India that the election would be held in June,
2010, noting it would take three years to conduct a census,
prepare election boundaries, educate voters, etc. Chaudhry
also reportedly thanked India for its understanding, and
expressed regret that some other nations are still pressing
for what he termed an unrealistic timetable for elections.
When asked by television news reporters about Chaudhry's
comments May 22, interim PM Bainimarama backed up his finance
minister. "We'd have to be idiots," he said to hold an
elections before the interim regime had completed its goals.
To do so, he said, would make the regime a "laughing stock"
of the whole world. The interim government will decide when
elections take place, he went on, not the EU or anyone else.

NZ Reacts to Comments; EU Takes "Wait and See" Stance
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3. (SBU) The spokesperson for New Zealand's foreign
ministry said on May 22 that the dates put forward by
Chaudhry were not acceptable and would put in jeopardy
hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the European
Union. The EU has not made any public comments about the
statements from Chaudhry and Bainimarama. The EU
representative in Fiji, Roberto Ridolfi, and the French
Ambassador to Fiji, Jean-Francois Bouffandeau. told a group
of representatives from foreign missions May 23 that the EU
is taking a wait and see stance. Policy pronouncements like
that offered by Chaudhry are not necessarily definitive, and
are often changed or clarified at a later date, he said.
Bouffandeau insisted that the EU does not want to make any
precipitous judgments about future interim government
actions. In time, he said, the actions would speak for
themselves.


4. (SBU) The New Zealand representative at the meeting
questioned whether this "wait and see" approach would work,
since there is every indication, he said, that the IG plans
to string the international community along for weeks or
months without making its intentions clear. In the meantime,
he said, foreign governments need to make decisions about
funding Fiji's elections office, etc. (Comment: The issue of
greatest urgency for the EU is the IG's upcoming decision
whether to lift the public safety regulations by the end of
May. As of this date, the IG's intentions remain unclear.)

Human Rights Violations Continue
--------------

5. (C) After some weeks of relative quiet, the RFMF has
again taken in several people and subjected them to
intimidation and mistreatment. Former minister of state in
deposed PM Qarase's office, Mrs. Losena Salabula, was
summoned to the military's Queen Elizabeth barracks May 8 to
be lectured by the head of the RFMF's main infantry regiment,
Lt. Col. Tevita Uluilakeba Mara. According to Salabula, Mara

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threatened her and other outspoken members of the former
government. She said he told her to warn PM Qarase and his
former Education Minister and high chief Ro Teimumu Kepa that
they should stop speaking out against the interim government.
The military could, he reportedly said, come and take them
out of their homes at any time. Salabula also said Mara
dismissed concerns that the military's actions could threaten
promised assistance from the EU, a point Mara subsequently
denied.


6. (C) The same week, the military took a prominent young
Fijian businessman into custody on suspicion he was behind an
anti-military Internet blog. According to Ulai Taoi,
president of the Fiji Indigenous Business Council, he was
taken to the military's Queen Elizabeth barracks,
interrogated by the same Lt. Col. Mara, left stripped in a
bar cell, beaten by a group of eight soldiers some of whom
were masked, and harangued and mistreated in his cell for
some 24 hours before being released. Taoi denies any
involvement with any of the Internet blogs that are
campaigning against the military and the interim government.
Ten days later, on May 21, former MP Ted Young, who is
currently acting national director of Qarase's SDL party, was
hauled up to the barracks. There, he said, a senior officer
struck him in the face without warning, reportedly because of
a press interview in which Young had said the military lacked
discipline. Interestingly, all three victims pointedly
declined to lodge formal complaints with Fiji's Human Rights
Commission. Taoi said the image of the Commission is now
tainted. Fiji Women's Right Movement Executive Director
Virisila Buadromo, speaking on behalf of a coalition of human
rights NGOs, demanded that these human rights violations
stop. "The coalition is disappointed," she said, "that the
interim government continues to insist that human rights are
still intact, despite the recent well-publicized cases of
gross human rights violations."

U.S., EPG Chair, Commonwealth, Express
Concern at Recent Developments
--------------

7. (U) Vanuatu Foreign Minister Sato Kilman, Chairperson of
the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Eminent Persons Group (EPG)
on Fiji, told reporters May 23 he was concerned about reports
of continued human rights abuses. According to Radio New
Zealand, Kilman said, "The Pacific Islands Forum was formed
to be able to work together, to stand together, and have one
voice in the international circuit. But if Fiji is not going
to play with the other group(s) in the region you start to
see, probably, the start of the disintegration of the PIF."
In another press interview, Kilman said that it appears the
IG "is not acting in good faith" to meet commitments it made
to the PIF. Bainimarama, characteristically, shot back, "He
(Kilman) should relax and not comment on things of no concern
to him." According to press reports, Commonwealth Secretary
General Don McKinnon also expressed "grave concern" about
recent human rights developments in Fiji. On May 24, the
Embassy delivered a letter from DAS Davies to interim Foreign
Minister Nailatikau expressing our continuing concern about
human rights abuses and stressing the need for a quick return
to democracy (reftel).





MANN