Fiji Coup on Race Issue Means a Paradise Lost

Here in the heart of the South Pacific, on an island of gentle breezes and eternal innocence, a noble experiment in democracy and multiracial harmony has met its severest challenge--and has failed.

For 17 years, ever since gaining its independence from Britain, this nation of 322 islands and 715,000 people was, as Pope John Paul II put it last November, “a symbol of hope in the world.” It was an oasis of stability in the turbulence of the Third World, peaceful and prosperous, a democratic outpost whose ethnic groups--Fijians, Indians, Chinese and Europeans--were guaranteed fair representation under the constitution.

“I think we learned to live together as well as any multiracial society in the world,” said Leonard Usher, 80, a former mayor of Suva. “I hope to God we can get back to that. But the terrible danger now is that we have been divided, that all that was accomplished has been swept away.”

Officer in Mufti

Sadly, it only took one man to destroy Fiji’s age of innocence. Last May 14, a month after an Indian-dominated coalition had beaten the ruling Alliance Party fair and square in an election, a Fijian army lieutenant colonel, Sitiveni Rabuka, took a seat in the gallery of Parliament during a routine debate. He was dressed in civilian clothes and his presence attracted hardly a second glance, even from Marita Dillery, the wife of the U.S. ambassador, seated not far away.

Rabuka, 38, a Methodist lay preacher who had served with distinction with Fijian troops that are part of the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, would later say he had acted independently, planning the coup d’etat even before the April election in the event an Indian-dominated government came to power. His goal, he said, was to prevent rumored Fijian attacks on Indians and to rewrite the constitution to ensure that native Fijians--who always have controlled the land and the army--never lose control of the government to the Indian plurality.

‘Keep Him Covered’

At the stroke of 10 a.m., as 10 officers, most of them former schoolmates of the colonel, walked into Parliament carrying pistols and wearing gas masks, Rabuka strode to the dais and said: “Please stay calm, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Prime Minister, please lead your team down to the right. Policemen, keep the passage clear. Stay down, remain calm. Mr. Prime Minister, sir, will you lead your team now. . . . Look out for that inspector. Keep him covered.”

Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, 52, a Fijian who had dismayed the West by saying he intended to make Fiji nonaligned and a nuclear-free zone and who had irked many Fijians by appointing seven Indians to his 12-member Cabinet, was spirited away at gunpoint, along with 27 members of the government.

Marita Dillery hurried the block and a half to the American Embassy where she told her startled husband, C. Edward Dillery, that the government had fallen. Fijians learned of the coup moments later on the nation’s only commercial radio station, FM 96, in a special broadcast by a reporter who had been in the press gallery.

Fijians Jubilant, Ashamed

Native Fijians reacted with both jubilation and shame upon learning of their race’s political ascent. When Rabuka telephoned Ratu (Chief) Kamisese Mara, with whom he had played golf the previous Sunday, to tell him of the coup and ask for his support, the Oxford-educated former prime minister told a friend after hanging up, “Twenty years of my life just went down the drain.”

But Mara, who had led Fiji for 17 years and was the most influential politician in the South Pacific islands until defeated by Bavadra, refused to condemn the conspiracy, thereby raising suspicions that he had been at least a willing accomplice from the start, a charge he denies.

For the Fijian Indians--and they are never referred to here as just Fijians--the coup stirred memories of the expulsion en masse of the Indian community in Uganda in the 1970s and the sacking of Indian shops in Kenya in the 1980s.

Visa Offices Swamped

In the aftermath of the overthrow and an attack on Indians by drunken young Fijian thugs in Suva, as many as 1,000 Indians a day have swamped the Australian and New Zealand high commissions seeking visas. Democracy, they said, apparently was only a facade, an institution the Fijians paid lip service to as long as they controlled it.

“If things keep going as they are, there is no political future for us here,” said an Indian jeweler. “I’m a fourth generation Fijian; I have no other home. All the money I’ve made has been invested back into Fiji, but I’d say on everyone’s mind today is one question--should I leave?”

The Indians, slightly outnumbering the Fijian natives now, are descended from laborers recruited from Bengal and Bihar a century ago by the British to work on the Fiji sugar plantations as indentured servants. Because Fijian natives have rights to most of the land through a national trust and have held power through a complicated political system that falls short of one-man, one-vote, the Indians concentrated on business and now control an estimated 85% of the nation’s commercial sector.

“Room in Alice Springs’

In a region fearful of losing its land and culture to outsiders--as happened to the aborigines of Australia, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Kanaks of New Caledonia and the Hawaiians--the Hindu and Muslim Indians of Fiji have received little sympathy from other islanders.

“There’s plenty of room for them in Alice Springs,” said the prime minister of the Cook Islands, Thomas Davis, referring to Australia’s desolate outback town.

Lt. Col. Rabuka, nicknamed Rambo by foreign correspondents here, carried off his coup with military precision and an admirable degree of civility, yet he has since admitted he never understood what the repercussions would be. “If I had only known, I might have had second thoughts,” he said.

Tourism, the mainstay of the economy along with sugar cane, evaporated overnight, resulting in hotel closures and layoffs. Australia, New Zealand and the United States issued advisories against nonessential travel to Fiji. Maritime unions in Australia and New Zealand refused to load ships bound for Fiji. A $140-million hotel development at Saweni Beach was put on hold, as were other projects involving foreign capital.

‘Banana Republic Status’

Islands Business, a monthly magazine published here, said in an editorial, “The leaders of the coup . . . have relegated the hope of the world to banana republic status.”

Although it is not clear today who is running Fiji, the country has slowly taken on an air of normalcy. The kidnaped government officials were released after five days, the Fijian and Indian Cabinet members having joined hands to try to stay together when soldiers moved the Indians to a separate location. The soldiers for the most part have slipped back out of sight, the shops are open again, the two newspapers have been allowed to resume publication. The governor general, Ratu Penaia Ganilau, an independent Commonwealth figure representing Queen Elizabeth II, has dissolved Parliament and there is talk of new elections at an unspecified time.

In the meantime, a 19-member council of advisers, ostensibly answering to Ganilau, has taken control of daily affairs. Mara accepted the position as adviser on foreign affairs, but Bavadra, contending that he is still the legitimate prime minister and saying that Rabuka is guilty of treason, has rejected the seat offered him. Rabuka, who already has been pardoned for any crimes he may have committed, is the chief of security and the council serves at his pleasure.

‘Changed Forever’

“There is a lot of talk about when things get back to normal,” said a Western diplomat, “but the simple truth is, they never will. Fiji has been changed forever. The fragile shell around Fiji’s democracy has been broken.”

This week, Bavadra met with congressional leaders in Washington and asked for an investigation of the coup, suggesting that there was U.S. involvement. The U.S. Embassy in Fiji had dismissed similar allegations, but Bavadra’s remarks underscored rumors rife in Fiji.

Suspicion was raised by the visit of two U.S. Army officers to Fiji twice in the four days before the coup. They left two hours after Bavadra’s ouster. A U.S. Embassy spokesman denied knowing of their presence, although they told immigration officials that they were there on business. Other American officials and military men also visited in the 30 days before the coup.

Fiji traditionally has been a staunch American ally, but Bavadra’s government had planned to ban visits by U.S. warships carrying nuclear arms and had shown other indications of moving in a more nonaligned direction. Rabuka listed among his reasons for staging the coup his fear that Fiji was moving out of the Western orbit.

First Coup in Region

The coup was the first ever in the South Pacific, and it has left other island nations asking, if it could happen in Fiji, then why not here? Under Mara, Fiji was, along with Papua New Guinea, the leader of the strategically important South Pacific island nations. It was a moderate, pro-Western voice that advocated solving problems in the “Pacific way”--talk and talk and talk until consensus is reached and confrontation avoided.

Despite the cloud of uncertainty hanging over Fiji, the Visitors Bureau went ahead with its annual tourism convention early this month and brought 300 international travel agents and consultants to the country. The meeting had been planned as a celebration of what would have been a record year for the tourist industry. Instead, the subject was, how do you sell tourism on one of the world’s loveliest islands if travelers no longer believe the advertising posters that say, “Fiji, the way the rest of the world ought to be.”

“At least everyone in the world now knows where Fiji is,” said Nelson Delailomaloma, the convention general manager.