Subject: 'austraLasia' # 357

MELANESIAN MADNESS

(FIJI is MELANESIA, NOT POLYNESIA, AS SOME BELIEVE)

Julian Fox

(Note: this is a lengthy commentary interspersed with news of Salesians in the midst of the madness. Feel free to skim-read or ignore if you are not closely interested in the aftermath of the events of May 19th).

SUVA: 17th June -- "Fiji - the way the world ought be" reads the tattered tourist poster at the airport. Let me offer you a perspective from inside the Catholic conscience on all this, since the Salesians too have had to take some sort of stance in the light of the continuing standoff behind what is in fact the Catholic quarter of Suva.

THE SETTING

The Fiji Parliament building is a little distance away from the Seminary, the Catholic Teacher's College, the Marist College Residence, the Marist Sisters and the Missionary Sisters of Mary, and Stella Marist Primary School, the Columban Provincial House, the Columban Formation Centre - all just within a gunshot's sound or worse, as all these people and places discover daily here. It's not that there is vigorous shooting or all-out warfare; just stray shots. Two, three, four a day; exchanges between Speight's 'mob' inside and the army outside. And the burning of buildings continues in late night raids. Our favourite (well, not really my favourite, but..) little waterfront watering-hole (read 'restaurant') a hundred metres or so from the Seminary front gate was burnt three nights ago. Pity, that. So - that's the scene around the Catholic hub, and that's why there is no present possibility of any of those places resuming normal classes or community working procedures. Indeed, most of the Religious in that square kilometre have gone offshore internally - by which I mean to other islands. The army, who man the checkpoints all around that area, just won't allow anything normal to happen there anyway. As for the rest of Suva it carries on normally - minus 157 shops it used to have. And some 20,000 workers who have been laid off because of trade bans imposed largely from Australia. Which brings me to our Catholic conscience!

CATHOLIC/RELIGIOUS ACTION

My own role here was to draw up a statement which could be agreed upon by Religious living through all this with the people. Drawing it up wasn't so easy because getting agreement on what to say was not easy. I took the view that at least one statement could be directed by non-Fijian Religious to bodies outside the country. Another statement might be needed internally which to have credibility would have to be made by Fijian-born Religious. Eventually a statement went out to Religious in Australia, New Zealand, the US and PNG. And it also went to the Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Trade Union leaders of AUS and NZ....directly and personally. We know that because we at least got a reply! And it was gratifying to note one of our phrases on the lips of Mr. Downer (Australian Foreign Minister) a day or two later. We simply asked them to 'go easy on bans that would affect the innocent and the poor'. The bans are happening - Downer listened, but the Trade Unions didn't, and the Indo-Fijian dominated FTUC supported bans anyway. I notice one little side-effect - as an Australian I cannot catch a taxi here now; they won't carry me. If I may be allowed a humorous aside, a very very British and elderly woman friend of mine yesterday was refused by the driver she hailed on the basis that she looked like an Australian. When she remonstrated and said she was NOT Australian but British, the driver (Fijian) came straight back with "So you're one of those that brought the bastards here in the first place". Can't agree with the sentiments of course, but it was excellent repartee, was it not?

THE DAMAGE

Suva, despite the generally small voice of Fiji Catholicism, is an important Catholic Centre for the South Pacific. It is the headquarters of the Bishops Conference, the Provincial or Regional seat of most Pacific Religious communities. We had been planning a major gathering in July-August, not just of the annual gathering of Religious/Congregational Leaders, but also a first and probably once-off gathering of some 70 younger Religious from all over the Pacific, as far North as Pohnpei, West to Solomons, East to Tahiti, South to New Zealand. And the draw-card, amongst others, was none other than our Salesian Father Frank Moloney, currently Professor of New Testament at Catholic Unviersity of Washington. We have had to abandon both gatherings - our venue is virtually under siege (it wasn't parliament, but nearby), our participants from outside Fiji can't travel in - bans have stopped that - and our local minds are just not sufficiently focused anyway at the moment.

THE FIJIAN RELIGIOUS DILEMMA

Our Fijian Religious - I mean our Fijian-born Religious - are caught up in the difficult issues at the heart of this coup, and this would include our Fijian-born Archbishop. We called a meeting of all Religious who were interested to hear their story of hurt and to seek how to respond. We Catholics are but 7% or so of the entire nation. We do not have a strong voice. Our Church here is not known for speaking up on anything very much at all. And Fijians, culturally, don't speak 'up' but 'around', and around and around - the kava bowl mainly. Anyone outside would find it hard to understand why a thug can hold 30 men at gunpoint for a month while every village chief in the nation comes along to parliament with his little group, sits down with the coup leader, and offers him a 'tabua' or whale's tooth as a gift, then begins to implore him to release the hostages (or keep them there if that too is their bent). It may take a week or two yet for all the chiefs to complete this stage of the exchange that is seen as necessary before any action is taken.

The Commonwealth Ministers Action Group arrived here for 24 hours yesterday to do some hard talking with top interest groups (except Speight with whom there was no truck). I sadly had to inform all our Religious in today's email that when they met with the Fiji Council of Churches, our Archbishop was not on the list of those allowed to enter the building - he is the head of the FCC or was when I last heard - and the Vicar General who turned up to be part of the meeting was politely refused entry since his name was not on the list either. CMAG met with the Methodists instead.

SO HOW DOES ONE ACT WHEN REDUCED TO POWERLESSNESS?

One Religious has taken it upon himself (he's a Marist from Tonga, an ex-journalist) to use his journalist's pass to get to parliament, talk to Speight's mob, then shuttle to the army commander's mob, Commodore Bainmarama, our interim head of state. That way we are kept informed of where things might be at - it's always 'might be' because, in other language, the goal-posts keep shifting. This is not Western philosophical discourse we are dealing with here.

The Columbans have a 'justice desk'. They discovered that 150 or so homes out of Suva, up the river a bit, owned by Indo-Fijian families, had been raided and destroyed in largely undocumented destruction. All those families have now moved to the West of the island and been set up in a refugee camp. Meanwhile, Fr. McEvoy and his group (he sent this off to The Tablet, I noted recently and they published it) have documented each family's situation and the nature of the damage and the personal attacks. That has gone off to Amnesty International (who, incidentally, should change their name, you think? Amnesty is a debased term these days, here at least).

The Fijian-born Religious have written a letter to the Archbishop thanking him for an earlier statement and imploring him to go again to parliament himself and convince someone he knew well enough before the coup to release the hostages, and to denounce the move to declare Fiji a Christian State...which would be a further slap in the face to 43% of the population. The Religious concerned have a meeting with the Archbishop next Wednesday to put this plea and their letter - that's the way it is done here, and we expect and hope that he will accept and act.

I have scored the task of keeping all the Religious informed of any and every development by means of email, fax or phone. There are many campaigns of disinformation around, rumours daily of marches and hurried exits from the city and closing down of businesses at the merest hint of rumour. So I act as a central post for receiving whatever from whoever - and it's amazing what information then begins to come ones way, including the deliberate misinformation. I received, today, an entire plan of 'Indian Colonization' for Fiji, purporting to be the hidden strategy of the Labour Government and therefore the reason why all this took place. It was no child's effort to put this several page plan and diagram to boot, together. I did not do the perpetrators the actual favour of emailing this around to the other Religious; just alerted them to its existence. They can have it if they want it.

AND OUR SALESIAN STUDENTS?

Our young Salesians here continue to be safe and active. They have used the four weeks unexpected break from classes well - two weeks of study in the mornings, free in the afternoon (usually spent mixing with the local kids who come along for games. Recent rain has made the quagmire barely usable however). This week and next we have declared holiday and encouraged a number to take up a village opportunity in rural areas far, far away from all this. They will be better for it. There's 299 other islands to choose from, after all! They mix equally well with all nationalities here.

The 23rd June is 'crunch' time for the Seminary. It must determine whether it is in a position to recall students from the other seven island nation dioceses, some of whom need a week to get back. If parliament on that day is still occupied by you know who, then second term will have to be abandoned in its entirety - we've lost four of nine weeks so far - and we then all have to work out how to proceed for those here in Fiji. If the area is declared safe (that will be an army judgement, not ours, we now hear), the seminary will resume on July 3rd and go straight through till the end of an extended academic year thus recovering the five, by then, lost weeks.

By the way - Corpus Christi Teacher's College has lost two of its staff through all this; one a New Zealand woman who was spooked by the 19th May events - she lived just down from parliament. The other a Canadian, retired Professor from Ottawa University who, and I agree, 'does not have to live out [his] final days under this kind of harassment'. There are just five of us left as lecturers there. Could there be a Maths Method or Ed. Psych person out there somewhere? Let me know, please.