FIJI’S MILITARY ruler, Commodore Frank (Voreqe) Bainimarama, declared martial law in early September, after deposed former Prime Minister Laisenia Quarase returned to Fiji, for the first time since the December 2006 coup. The state of emergency is set to last for a month.

Bainimarama, the head of the Armed Forces, launched the coup because he was against Quarase’s plan to take a soft line on the anti-Indian coup plotters of 2000 led by George Speight. This would have alienated Fiji’s Indian population (40 per cent of the total), a good proportion of which is part of the business class.

Historically, tension between Indigenous Fijians and Indians, imported by the British as indentured labourers, has been Fiji's fault-line.

The Australian colonies played an instrumental role in lobbying Britain to incorporate Fiji into its empire in 1874. Many Indian labourers worked on sugar plantations and mills owned by Australian company CSR.

The Australian trading company, Burns Philp, also made big profits by bringing Melanesian slaves from Vanuatu to Fiji. In 1869, slaves known as ‘Kanakas, were sold for £5 a head in Levuka market.

The British used divide-and-rule tactics in Fiji. They agitated among Fijians against the idea of Indians getting the right to vote. When Indian sugar-workers went on strike in 1920, the British recruited Fijians as special constables and deliberately used them in the frontline against Indian strikers.

Australia has a shameful history of meddling in Fijian affairs for its own regional interests. Australia’s role in the 1920 sugar-workers’ strike was to send 90 naval ratings, a gunboat and a light cruiser to help the British put down the strike at CSR. The company, for its part, even paid Fijian strike-breakers higher wages than Indian strikers.

Indians were granted the vote in 1928—but only for three seats, as opposed to the six ‘European’ seats. The next year Indians demanded that all seats be elected from a common roll, not the existing communal rolls. An Indian motion for a common roll was defeated by a combined European and Fijian vote.

In the 1930s, Indians had to endure an 11pm curfew in Suva and were banned from using swimming pools. They did not even have the right to trial by jury.

Divide-and-rule continued right up until 1970, when the British grudgingly accepted Fiji independence. They chose the Fijian Chiefs to rule Fiji, entrenching Indigenous Fijians over and discriminating against Indians. In 1974, there were still communal rolls, with 22

seats allocated to Indigenous Fijians, 22 to Indians and 8 seats for 'General Electors'.

Australia, the major investor in Fiji, did not object to this racist gerrymander.

Twenty years of instability

Fiji’s post independence, virtual one-party state fell apart in 1987, when the Indian-led Labour Party was elected. The first Fijian-led coup that year targeted the Labour

Party government—even though a significant minority of working class Indigenous Fijians also supported it.

The Labour Party was a political expression of the working class unity built up in the late 70s and early 80s, when Indian and Fijian workers went on strike, side by side. That unity

ultimately broke down the dominance of the Fijian Chiefs.

The next two coups, a second in 1987 and another in 2000, were attempts by the unaccountable Fijian Chiefs to impose their power by dividing workers along ethnic lines and thereby strengthening their position.

Bainimarama’s coup last year, the fourth in 20 years, was organised to seek an accommodation between Indian and Fijian elites. Bainimarama poses himself as a defender of Indian rights, even though the military leader is himself Indigenous.*

However, Bainimarma’s military-imposed solution can only reinforces the division of ethnic politics in Fiji. As Socialist Worker argued in March, “It reinforces the myth that the solution for either of the two groups is military force.”

The coup is not the road forward for Fijian Indians who are oppressed by the in-built, racist legacy left by British rule.

Bainimarama’s military regime named former Mahendra Chaudry, the Indian prime minister deposed by Speight in 2000, as its interim finance minister. But Chaudry then handed down a Budget in early March that cut public servants’ pay by five per cent and cut education and health spending.

So even though a whole section of the Indian business class has supported Bainimarama’s coup, working class Indians as well as Indigenous Fijians have continued to suffer under the new regime.

Speaking at the recent Fiji Employers Federation Annual General Meeting, Bainimarama assured its members, which represent 240 businesses employing 40,000 people, that, “your investments are absolutely safe and you should continue with your businesses with full confidence and trust in our beloved nation”.

A coup for capitalism

Predictably, the Australian and New Zealand governments condemned the September state of emergency. But they did not condemn the austerity measures announced by Chaudry in March. Nor did they support the nurses’ strike in August.

When the public sector unions threatened a national strike over the cuts in August, the military regime warned if the national strike went ahead the military would intervene as a matter of “national security”.

This was enough to scare many unions into backing down, such as the Public Service Association and the Teachers Union.

The interim cabinet warned that any government worker who stayed away from work for seven days without prior approval would be deemed to have resigned or be liable for termination. Fiji’s nurses went on strike in late July and August. But they were isolated and were defeated after 16 days.

Bainimarama’s coup and the state of emergency represent further blows to the whole country. However, we should not oppose these policies for same reasons as Howard and Downer. We do so because the only to stop the interference of imperialist powers and to end the legacy of colonial rule is to unite the struggle of Indigenous Fijian and Indian workers on a class basis.

By Tom Orsag

Further Reading:

• K Buckley & K Klugman, "The History of Burns Philp, Vol. 1"
• Edward W. Docker, "The Blackbirders: The Recruiting of South Seas Labour for Queensland, 1863-1907"
• Len Fox, "Multinationals Take Over", Chapter 34: Island Traders
• Deryck Scarr, "Fiji: A Short History"

*Bainimarama is ethnic Fijian, not Indian, as previously mistakenly reported by Socialist Worker