SUVA, June 19 - A cargo handling ban announced by New Zealand unions has upset
Fiji's military rulers, although they say
Fiji will find the means to survive.
Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini said he would have expected
New Zealand and Australia to understand Fiji
better at a time of political crisis.
Fiji has been under martial law for three weeks after rebel leader George Speight
led an armed coup on Parliament on May 19.
Speight has been holding deposed prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry and 30 others
hostage ever since.
Tarakinikini has said he hopes a resolution to the crisis, and the freeing
of the hostages, will be achieved in the next few days.
But he was critical of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, which has followed
its Australian counterpart by urging unions
not to handle cargo to and from Fiji.
While Australia's ban is unlimited, the New Zealand ban - which starts tomorrow
- will be reviewed after a week.
Tarakinikini said already the people Speight claimed to be supporting were
suffering after losing jobs or having their working hours cut.
"We are extremely disappointed they have gone down that path as well,
but come what may we will survive under this present crisis," he said.
"We will find ways and means to survive."
"But we are disappointed that those who must understand us better at a
time like this are giving us this kind of treatment."
Tarakinikini said Speight was causing the people he represented pain just so
he or his men could get into an interim administration.
Speight had nominated people for the military's interim government, which would
be named when the hostages had been freed, and Tarakinikini said some people
were acceptable to the military. Those people were not members of any political
party and did not have political allegiances, he said.
However, he also said in a small country such as Fiji there was a limited pool
of people who could serve on an interim government.
Speight's people would serve on a constitution review committee that would
decide whether the document, to replace the abrogated 1997 multi racial constitution,
would be fair to all races.
Speight and the Great Council of Chiefs had already said they wanted the law
to state only an indigenous Fijian could be prime minister.
Apart from the cargo bans, Fiji was also struggling with the harvest in its
second biggest industry, sugar production.
Unions had instructed their members not to harvest their crops, but the military
was insisting mills must begin crushing soon.
Union leaders had complained troops had threatened farmers and workers to ensure
harvesting starts, but the military had denied this.
Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) general secretary Felix Anthony was detained
by the military last week when he tried to reach mill workers in west Fiji to
speak to them.
Troops had been sent to the canefields, which Tarakinikini said was to provide
protection for workers if needed.
At the weekend, he raised one of the bitter memories of Fiji's past - the 1943
cane workers strike.
"Fijians are very conscious that in the Second World War they went off
to fight and our Indian brothers back here were in a sugar strike trying to
bring the economy down.
"These are the memories that can come back when people become irresponsible
at a time like this, and it drives a wedge
further into our racial divide."
The FTUC supported the Australian and New Zealand bans, saying people must
be prepared to make sacrifices to try to bring
about the release of the hostages.
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