Approximately two years ago, the Fiji Times reprinted a story from New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times in which a soccer official questioned the ethical soundness of Fiji’s judiciary. The military dictator who runs Fiji as his personal fiefdom did not take kindly to such an insinuation, even though even a casual observer of the island […]
Tags:censorship·dictatorship·Fiji·Fiji Times·Frank Bainimarama·journalism·New Zealand·newspapers
It’s no secret that myriad small Pacific nations are having problems with First World diseases, especially those related to obesity. Fiji’s dictatorial government believes that its citizens’ expanding waistlines are due not only to food consumption, but also to overindulgence in yaqona, a mild intoxicant you may know better as kava: Fiji’s all-time favourite pastime, […]
In most corners of the world, graffiti artists operate in fear of being nabbed for vandalism. In totalitarian Fiji, they face far more serious charges, at least if their scrawled messages carry the whiff of the political: A New Zealand businessman is in custody in Fiji along with four others who have been arrested over […]
Tags:civil rights·dictatorship·Fiji·Frank Bainimarama·graffiti·law·sedition
An otherwise innocuous story about Fiji’s efforts to combat littering reveals this golden information nugget about law enforcement in Papua New Guinea: “We did some relative studies and found that in Papua New Guinea if you are found littering – you are asked by the authority to do push-ups. For us here we tell them […]
Tags:Fiji·law·Papua New Guinea·police·Stanford Prison Experiment
In April, Fiji’s government declared a public emergency that has led to total media censorship, a ban on political meetings, and the sacking of judges. It’s increasingly clear that Commodore Frank Bainimarama, Fiji’s prime minister, intends for martial law to become permanent. Fortunately, journalists are routing around the emergency rules on Coup Four and a […]
Perhaps the most intriguing part of this chart is realizing that the United States remains a Puritanical outlier. The only other non-Muslim nations that adhere to the 21-across-the-board rule are Fiji, Palau, and Micronesia. Yet if any American politician dare utter a peep about lowering the drinking age, they’re shouted down as if they’d come […]
Tags:alcohol·Fiji·Micronesia·Palau·politics
