Fiji censorship reflected in dramatic media freedom fall
Updated
Fiji has plummeted 73 places on the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, dropping to number 152 of the 175 countries listed. Fiji's interim regime has imposed strict censorship of the press, placing officers in each newsroom to sub print, radio and TV stories before they are published.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Bob Dietz, Asia Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists
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DIETZ: Well I think what Reporters Without Borders saw was a real fall off in the political climate there and the disruption and the government's response to trying to suppress information and control the situation through trying to control the media. And frankly what we find most of all in situations in which we find a decline in media freedom is that it's usually tied to economic or political reasons, and in this case it seems it's clearly linked to the political climate in Fiji.
COUTTS: And what about, you're with the Committee to Protect Journalists, do you actually take an active hand in knowing exactly how journalists in Fiji are being treated?
DIETZ: We rely, I just met with there were two journalists from Fiji who came through New York last week, and we rely by and large on journalists organisations and when we have the direct contacts with the journalists themselves. The people with whom I met last week felt that they were fighting an uphill battle at this point; they didn't know really when it would turn around. I think you're most likely more aware of the political situation on a day-to-day basis and you could maybe tell me when or if you see this sort of pressures leveling off and some sort of political stability returning. But like I say we usually find declines in press freedom linked to political disruption, like we see in Fiji.
COUTTS: Well the journalists that you have had discussions with did they refer to the incidents that were well publicised, that journalists were being intimidated on a regular basis, some of them being invited to the barracks to be interviewed, and also physical threats, some of them having Molotov cocktails thrown at their houses?
DIETZ: Well I hadn't heard the Molotov cocktail story but we certainly know they told us that people were being called in, not terribly on a regular basis but it's become a frequent tactic. The questioning we were told is kind of general and not particularly aimed at anything so much as just really trying to intimidate people and make them back down from any criticisms that they might want to start writing.
COUTTS: In your knowledge how long does it take a country such as Fiji to recover from this? For instance if they hold elections in 2014, which is still some time off, how long does it take for a media to recover or is something like that lasting?
DIETZ: It really depends on who comes in. What we saw, it's always dangerous to think by analogy, but let's look at the Maldives for example, where there's a change of administration of I think we got to 20-25 year old government and moved on. We saw initially a positive change and one of the campaign issues was the freedom of press in the Maldives. And then we saw the government sort of trying to back away from that once they were in power and realised that there was a power to the media that they were not comfortable with. But I think inherent in most of these societies, even in less developed ones, is this understanding of the role of the press. And that there are journalists who are ready to resume a full role, and there's certainly an audience fully aware of how the media operates around the rest of the world that will always bring a pressure on a new government to kind of reach a certain minimal set of standards. Fiji right now I understand the political situation and I understand what it's going through, but I can't help but think that eventually what drives the change is demand from the media consuming audience itself.
