NZ: Top lawyers dismiss Fiji Human Rights Comm report
Updated
Three of New Zealand's top lawyers believe the Fiji Human Rights Commission report into the legality of the December coup can't be taken seriously. The President of the New Zealand Law Commission, Sir Geoffrey Palmer says the Fiji Human Rights Commission is also acting beyond its function and should not be producing reports supporting the events of December 2006.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speakers: Sir Geoffrey Palmer, President New Zealand Law Commission
PALMER: Well the report purports to say that there's been no breach of human rights in Fiji and that the coup was legal. Now the human rights commission in Fiji has no jurisdiction to determine that point. Under the constitution of the Republic of the Fiji Islands the jurisdiction to determine that is in the Fijian courts and nowhere else. So this analysis cannot be taken seriously, it is shot full of legal errors on factual inferences that can't be warranted, and indeed it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
COUTTS: Sir Geoffrey may I ask you to explain some of the factual errors that are in this report according to you?
PALMER: Well the difficulty about it is that once you get into the detail it takes so long to explain and I haven't got it in front of me as I speak, but the three of us sat down and spent several hours going through this and decided in the end that rather than write a what I would call a legal opinion about why it was wrong, we didn't want to encourage people to think that it could be taken seriously at all as a legal matter, and it can't.
COUTTS: And you also say along with your colleagues that the commission itself is acting beyond its determination and what it's actually there for and its purpose?
PALMER: Yes well because the purpose of the human rights commission in Fiji is to protect human rights, and it seems to us that they're doing the reverse, and we're worried about that. Two of my colleagues have a lot of connection with Fiji. One of them was involved in advising, she was the senior counsel advising the commission that led to the Fiji constitution. The other is a QC in New Zealand who has lived in Fiji and was educated there. And so there's quite a lot of knowledge of the situation, and the human rights commission in Fiji, the purpose of it is to protect and uphold human rights and we think ourselves that what has to happen is that it's the people of Fiji themselves who have to settle this, and there are constitutional means of doing that. If the constitution needs changing then it should be amended in the way in which the constitution provides for. So the answer to all this doesn't lie in any hands other than those of the people of Fiji. But what we feel is that the legal arguments that are made here are a giant smokescreen away from the real issues here.
COUTTS: And that is?
PALMER: The real issue is how to constitutionally govern Fiji in accordance with the rule of law under its constitution.
COUTTS: So the report fails in its attempt as you and your colleagues believe to provide a legal justification for the lawful seizure of power in Fiji?
PALMER: Absolutely.
