More than 300,000 Indo-Fijians - the South Pacific's biggest diaspora - will
try
to resettle in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States in the next
few years, an authority on the region predicted yesterday.
"There is just no place in Fiji now for Indo- Fijians," Professor
Brij Lal of the
Australian National University said.
"People will leave en masse and other nations that have received Indo-Fijians
would be well advised to be prepared for a diaspora of the twice dispossessed."
But it would not be an exodus of "boat people".
"That's not the way things work in the Pacific," Professor Lal said.
"So many Indo-Fijians have left Fiji over the years that there are families
scattered across the world.
"The latest lot to be forced to leave will attempt to migrate legally
under family
reunion provisions and the like to the nations that have taken their relatives
in the
past."
Professor Lal, the ANU historian of the Pacific who helped to write Fiji's
1997
Constitution, said about 80,000 Indo-Fijians had fled the country after the
two
coups in 1987. About 30,000 are believed to be living in Sydney.
He said he expected that New Zealand and Canada would take the bulk of any
exodus.
"In the past, those two nations and even the United States have been quite
accepting of people wanting to leave Fiji because of the racial problem there.
Australia has adopted a far more hardline attitude," Professor Lal said.
Meanwhile, Sydney's Indo-Fijian community is poised to establish the
infrastructure of a government-in-exile if the deposed prime minister, Mahendra
Chaudhry, or any of his ministers flee to Australia.
"I don't see how Mr Chaudhry can continue to operate in Fiji," the
president of
the Fijian/Indian Social and Cultural Association of Australia, Mr Govind Sami,
said. "We've got the infrastructure in place for a government-in-exile
if it is
needed."
Mr Sami said he would speak with Mr Chaudhry over the weekend, "when the
first fuss has died down", to plan moves for a government-in-exile based
in
Sydney.
A group of Indo-Fijians from around the world gathered at a little-publicised
conference in Fairfield two weeks ago and voted to establish the International
Congress of Fijian Indians.
"Communities here and overseas have been asked to fund a secretariat to
start
lobbying internationally to highlight the plight of our people in our homeland,"
Mr Sami said.
In Tailevu, a George Speight stronghold outside Suva, Indian families from
Danasamu and Lawaki complained yesterday of having been robbed of
everything they possessed, including their vehicles, and said they had been
forced to take shelter in another village.
Long lines, mainly of Indians, continued at Fiji's Department of Immigration
passport office in Suva, and it appeared that a mass exodus of the type that
had
seen 80,000 Indians leave the country after the 1987 coups, would be repeated.
An Indian chemist, approached for an interview, declined to be named for fear
of
repercussions but said: "The only future I can see for Indians is to burn
everything and go to the bush. We work and sweat to keep them [indigenous
Fijians]. Let us see how they get on without us."
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