Diplomacy of Deceit

Press Release: From the Fiji Democracy Movement.

Sunday, 4 September 2011, 12:25 pm

Oh what a tangled web they weave when they set out to deceive, to coin a line from the Marmion (1808).

And that is exactly what the Military Junta did, through a propagandist when he spun a make-believe fairy tale to the Representatives of the Pacific Islands Developing States (PIDS) at their Meeting in Nadi on August 31, 2011.

According to the Fiji Sun, the propagandist, a Junta mouthpiece (with tooth decay), told PIDS representatives that their illegal and repressive regime “will lift the living standards of all Fijians.”

The junta has a peculiar way of showing it since, under its power and control, living standards are not being lifted but are spiraling downwards.

Some 45% of the Fiji people now live in poverty.

Hunger and starvation stalk the land.

The propagandist continued to spin more lies and deceit when he spoke of sustained economic growth.

The truth is that the national economy has had annual declines since the illegal Military Coup of 2006.

Not only that, but unemployment has skyrocketed, the cost of living has increased by 20%, and the National Debt is unsustainable. The economy is going down the drain, and so is Fiji.

More lies presented to the PIDS representatives include:

• The illegal regime’s stand against systemic corruption in the country. This is perhaps the biggest lie of all. The murderous commander Voreqe Bainimarama who, with his illegal Attorney-General, Aiyaz Khaiyum, pay themselves some $700,000 each annually. They keep their money in offshore bank accounts and refuse to disclose the amount to the people of Fiji.
  
  
• Corruption in the Fiji National Provident Fund (FNPF), by the murderer Bainimarama and Khaiyum regime, has left it in a state of collapse. The future of 10,000 pensioners is now questionable.
  
  
• Public Enterprises, including Air Pacific, administered by the junta and their incompetent Permanent Secretary, are collapsing. The motto in Fiji now is: join the illegal regime, fill your pockets, and open offshore bank accounts.
  
  
• Another big lie spun is the junta’s intention to create fundamental principles in a new Constitution.
  

It was the junta who, when Bainimarama’s coup took place, publicly announced that it fully supported the 1997 Constitution and that the Constitution would remain in force.

They lied.

Bainimarama abrogated the Constitution as soon as the Fiji Court of Appeal ruled, in 2009, that Bainimarama’s coup was illegal, the regime was illegal, and all acts by it are illegal.

This means that the Peoples Charter is illegal, the decrees are illegal, any new Constitution will be illegal, and the 2014 Elections will be illegal, pursuant to the ruling of the Court of Appeal. So how can anyone believe that free and fair elections will take place in 2014.

What the military junta did not tell you are these facts :

• Fundamental rights and freedoms of the people have been removed by the Public Emergency Regulations
• The Rule of Law no longer exists
• Mass media is muzzled and censored
• Many citizens, men and women, have been taken to Military Headquarters and beaten, tortured and the women raped
• There is a Decree and Order emasculating the Trade Union Movement
• The Methodist Church is being repressed
• Their acts to destroy the Indigenous Rights of the Fijian People through scrapping the Great Council of Chiefs and creating a Land Bank to steal ancestral Fijian Land.

What the illegal regime also failed to tell you is that there is now a popular movement internationally, in the region, and in Fiji itself, to remove the Fiji military junta and to restore democracy, parliamentary government, human rights and the rule of law.

In Australia and New Zealand, Freedom and Democracy Movements are operating.

In Fiji, a policy of passive resistance by the people, the Methodist Church, the Trade Union Movement and the Viti Revolutionary Force has begun The murderer Bainimarama and his illegal junta will fall and we, as a region, will need to work together.

So through this statement, we humbly request that the learned PIDS representatives take the time to analyse and assess the accuracy of ALL statements presented to them by the Fiji military junta and its representatives. The oppressed people of Fiji need you to know the truth, and the “truth” will help set them free!

ENDS