   |    |
FROM CANE FIELDS TO CORPORATE FIELDS: Displaced Farmers and Unequal Land Game
In Fiji today, three narratives are unfolding along the same fault line. They do not arise from a single transaction, nor do they share a common lineage. Yet, when read together, they illuminate a deeper and more troubling pattern in the governance of land, the country’s most sensitive and politically charged resource. At one end stand the displaced cane farmers of the north; at the other, a former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister engaged in global Indian diaspora discourse on “inclusive growth”; and threading through both, a corporate relationship between an iTaukei Minister and a convict that began not in a boardroom, but in a prison.
In the cane belts of Labasa and Seaqaqa, some forty farming families have been left without land following the non-renewal of their agricultural leases. These are not recent arrivals or speculative tenants. They are, in many cases, descendants of indentured Indian labourers whose families have cultivated the same plots for generations.
Their lives were built on the fragile but enduring expectation that, so long as they met their obligations, renewal would follow. They planted, harvested, paid rent, and sustained not only their own households but a substantial part of Fiji’s sugar economy. Yet when the leases expired, the system offered them neither continuity nor credible transition. Applications failed, processes stalled, and the land was no longer available. What remained was displacement, economic, social, and, for many, deeply personal.
At precisely the same moment, Fiji’s former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Biman Chand Prasad, was in Bengaluru, India, addressing the Indiaspora Conference. There he spoke of shared values, global partnerships, and the promise of inclusive growth. There is nothing inherently objectionable in such engagement. Indeed, the cultivation of diaspora networks is often prudent statecraft. But the geography of the moment cannot be ignored.
For this crisis is unfolding not in some distant or politically marginal district, but in Labasa, the very region from which Prasad’s own political journey began. The cane fields of the north were not incidental to his rise; they were foundational. They shaped his constituency, informed his public voice, and underwrote his passage into Parliament.
The contrast is therefore not merely political; it is biographical. While the former minister speaks abroad of inclusion, exclusion unfolds at home, on the very ground that once sustained his political credibility. There has been no sustained public reckoning with the lease non-renewals, no clear articulation of how the language of “inclusive growth” accommodates the sudden landlessness of long-settled farming communities. Silence, in this context, does not operate as neutrality. It becomes part of the structure through which these outcomes are normalised.
Running parallel to this is a third narrative, one that would strain credulity were it not so plainly recorded in the corporate register. Ifereimi Vasu, now Minister for iTaukei Affairs, was formerly Commissioner of Prisons. During his tenure, a Chinese national, Jason Zhong, was convicted and imprisoned in Fiji for serious offences involving drugs and sex trafficking. It was within that custodial setting that the two men became acquainted. Ordinarily, such a connection would end at the prison gate, bounded by the institutional logic of punishment and release. In this instance, it did not.
Following Zhong’s release, the relationship transitioned into commerce. Through Qera Mai Lagi Pte Ltd, the former prisoner and his former jailor became business partners in a land-linked enterprise, with Zhong holding a majority share and Vasu a significant minority, both serving as directors.
Over time, the structure evolved. Directors resigned, family members assumed positions, and an additional corporate layer was introduced through a related properties entity. Yet the essential association, the movement from incarceration to partnership, remained the central fact.
None of this, taken in isolation, necessarily breaches the letter of the law. A person who has served a sentence is entitled to reintegrate into society. Corporate partnerships, even between unlikely actors, are not per se unlawful. Lease non-renewal, under Fiji’s land tenure framework, is legally permissible. But legality, in such circumstances, is an incomplete measure. What matters is the pattern of outcomes the system produces.
Set side by side, these three narratives reveal a stark asymmetry. A man who entered Fiji’s prison system for trafficking offences emerges and participates in a land-based enterprise alongside a politically exposed figure. An Indo-Fijian leader from Labasa articulates a vision of inclusion and development on the international stage. Meanwhile, families whose connection to the land is measured not in years but in generations find themselves displaced, their livelihoods extinguished, their future uncertain.
This is not irony in the literary sense; it is inversion in the structural sense. The pathways that one might expect to be difficult - reintegration into economic life after serious criminal conviction - appear navigable when accompanied by proximity to power.
The pathways one might expect to be secure, continued occupation of land long cultivated and productively used, prove precarious, even untenable, in the absence of such proximity.
What emerges, then, is not a single scandal but a dual reality. In one Fiji, land is scarce, leases are fragile, and livelihoods are contingent upon decisions taken elsewhere. In another, land is accessible through corporate structuring, relationships, and the quiet reconfiguration of ownership and control. Both realities operate within the same legal framework. Only one of them consistently produces stability and opportunity.
The question that follows is unavoidable. How did Fiji arrive at a point where a former prisoner could find a pathway into land-based enterprise, an Indo-Fijian political leader could speak of inclusive growth abroad, and the very farmers who sustained that land for generations could be left without it?
Until that question is answered, not with rhetoric, but with structural reform, the language of inclusion will remain precisely that: language. For the farmers of Labasa, it will offer neither land, nor livelihood, nor the security that has now been taken from them.
In Fiji today, three narratives are unfolding along the same fault line. They do not arise from a single transaction, nor do they share a common lineage. Yet, when read together, they illuminate a deeper and more troubling pattern in the governance of land, the country’s most sensitive and politically charged resource. At one end stand the displaced cane farmers of the north; at the other, a former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister engaged in global Indian diaspora discourse on “inclusive growth”; and threading through both, a corporate relationship between an iTaukei Minister and a convict that began not in a boardroom, but in a prison.
In the cane belts of Labasa and Seaqaqa, some forty farming families have been left without land following the non-renewal of their agricultural leases. These are not recent arrivals or speculative tenants. They are, in many cases, descendants of indentured Indian labourers whose families have cultivated the same plots for generations.
Their lives were built on the fragile but enduring expectation that, so long as they met their obligations, renewal would follow. They planted, harvested, paid rent, and sustained not only their own households but a substantial part of Fiji’s sugar economy. Yet when the leases expired, the system offered them neither continuity nor credible transition. Applications failed, processes stalled, and the land was no longer available. What remained was displacement, economic, social, and, for many, deeply personal.
At precisely the same moment, Fiji’s former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Biman Chand Prasad, was in Bengaluru, India, addressing the Indiaspora Conference. There he spoke of shared values, global partnerships, and the promise of inclusive growth. There is nothing inherently objectionable in such engagement. Indeed, the cultivation of diaspora networks is often prudent statecraft. But the geography of the moment cannot be ignored.
For this crisis is unfolding not in some distant or politically marginal district, but in Labasa, the very region from which Prasad’s own political journey began. The cane fields of the north were not incidental to his rise; they were foundational. They shaped his constituency, informed his public voice, and underwrote his passage into Parliament.
The contrast is therefore not merely political; it is biographical. While the former minister speaks abroad of inclusion, exclusion unfolds at home, on the very ground that once sustained his political credibility. There has been no sustained public reckoning with the lease non-renewals, no clear articulation of how the language of “inclusive growth” accommodates the sudden landlessness of long-settled farming communities. Silence, in this context, does not operate as neutrality. It becomes part of the structure through which these outcomes are normalised.
Running parallel to this is a third narrative, one that would strain credulity were it not so plainly recorded in the corporate register. Ifereimi Vasu, now Minister for iTaukei Affairs, was formerly Commissioner of Prisons. During his tenure, a Chinese national, Jason Zhong, was convicted and imprisoned in Fiji for serious offences involving drugs and sex trafficking. It was within that custodial setting that the two men became acquainted. Ordinarily, such a connection would end at the prison gate, bounded by the institutional logic of punishment and release. In this instance, it did not.
Following Zhong’s release, the relationship transitioned into commerce. Through Qera Mai Lagi Pte Ltd, the former prisoner and his former jailor became business partners in a land-linked enterprise, with Zhong holding a majority share and Vasu a significant minority, both serving as directors.
Over time, the structure evolved. Directors resigned, family members assumed positions, and an additional corporate layer was introduced through a related properties entity. Yet the essential association, the movement from incarceration to partnership, remained the central fact.
None of this, taken in isolation, necessarily breaches the letter of the law. A person who has served a sentence is entitled to reintegrate into society. Corporate partnerships, even between unlikely actors, are not per se unlawful. Lease non-renewal, under Fiji’s land tenure framework, is legally permissible. But legality, in such circumstances, is an incomplete measure. What matters is the pattern of outcomes the system produces.
Set side by side, these three narratives reveal a stark asymmetry. A man who entered Fiji’s prison system for trafficking offences emerges and participates in a land-based enterprise alongside a politically exposed figure. An Indo-Fijian leader from Labasa articulates a vision of inclusion and development on the international stage. Meanwhile, families whose connection to the land is measured not in years but in generations find themselves displaced, their livelihoods extinguished, their future uncertain.
This is not irony in the literary sense; it is inversion in the structural sense. The pathways that one might expect to be difficult - reintegration into economic life after serious criminal conviction - appear navigable when accompanied by proximity to power.
The pathways one might expect to be secure, continued occupation of land long cultivated and productively used, prove precarious, even untenable, in the absence of such proximity.
What emerges, then, is not a single scandal but a dual reality. In one Fiji, land is scarce, leases are fragile, and livelihoods are contingent upon decisions taken elsewhere. In another, land is accessible through corporate structuring, relationships, and the quiet reconfiguration of ownership and control. Both realities operate within the same legal framework. Only one of them consistently produces stability and opportunity.
The question that follows is unavoidable. How did Fiji arrive at a point where a former prisoner could find a pathway into land-based enterprise, an Indo-Fijian political leader could speak of inclusive growth abroad, and the very farmers who sustained that land for generations could be left without it?
Until that question is answered, not with rhetoric, but with structural reform, the language of inclusion will remain precisely that: language. For the farmers of Labasa, it will offer neither land, nor livelihood, nor the security that has now been taken from them.
  |   |
CHINESE WELCOME: After the 1987 racially motivated coups, Sitiveni Rabuka was happy to welcome Chinese farmers and businessmen into Fiji to replace the Indo-Fijians. They were to come from mainland China and Hong Kong.
'The Chinese would be the best substitute. They are hard workers and have no political ambitions,' he said. What about the Indo-Fijians?
'As far as I am concerned Indians (Indo-Fijians) are welcome to stay and make as much money as they like.'
From Fijileaks Archives
 |  |
 |  |
Statement by the Leader of the Opposition – Hon. Inia Seruiratu
I am deeply concerned by reports brought to my Office that more than 40 families in the Labasa and Seaqaqa areas are facing the non-renewal of their land leases by the iTaukei Land Trust Board (TLTB). The majority of those affected are hardworking farmers who have, for years, contributed meaningfully to the economic life of Vanua Levu.
These tenants are not idle occupants of land, they are the very individuals who cultivate it, who ensure productivity, who sustain supply chains and who support livelihoods not only for their own families but for the wider community. Their continued presence on the land is integral to food security, rural stability and economic development in the North.
It is therefore troubling that so many of these tenants now face uncertainty and possible displacement. Of equal concern are reports that many are being asked to pay premiums ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 as a condition for lease renewal. For ordinary farming families, such sums are simply beyond reach and risk effectively excluding them from continued access to the land they have long developed and depended upon.
I am particularly disappointed that the Government has not taken proactive steps to address this issue. There appears to be a clear lack of coordination between the Government and TLTB, as well as insufficient engagement with landowners to ensure that lease renewals are managed in a manner that is fair, transparent and beneficial to all parties.
Landowners must, of course, receive a fair return from their land. However, this must be balanced against the broader national interest of keeping productive land in use and supporting those who have demonstrated commitment to its development. Allowing leases to lapse without viable renewal pathways, or imposing prohibitive financial demands, undermines both economic stability and social cohesion.
I call on the Government to urgently intervene and work collaboratively with TLTB and landowners to find practical, equitable solutions. This includes reviewing the imposition of excessive premiums, improving coordination mechanisms, and ensuring that genuine, longstanding tenants are given a fair opportunity to continue their farming activities. The future of Vanua Levu’s agricultural sector depends on decisions made today. We cannot afford policies or practices that drive farmers off the land and leave productive areas idle.
My Office will continue to monitor this situation closely and advocate for the affected families.
I am deeply concerned by reports brought to my Office that more than 40 families in the Labasa and Seaqaqa areas are facing the non-renewal of their land leases by the iTaukei Land Trust Board (TLTB). The majority of those affected are hardworking farmers who have, for years, contributed meaningfully to the economic life of Vanua Levu.
These tenants are not idle occupants of land, they are the very individuals who cultivate it, who ensure productivity, who sustain supply chains and who support livelihoods not only for their own families but for the wider community. Their continued presence on the land is integral to food security, rural stability and economic development in the North.
It is therefore troubling that so many of these tenants now face uncertainty and possible displacement. Of equal concern are reports that many are being asked to pay premiums ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 as a condition for lease renewal. For ordinary farming families, such sums are simply beyond reach and risk effectively excluding them from continued access to the land they have long developed and depended upon.
I am particularly disappointed that the Government has not taken proactive steps to address this issue. There appears to be a clear lack of coordination between the Government and TLTB, as well as insufficient engagement with landowners to ensure that lease renewals are managed in a manner that is fair, transparent and beneficial to all parties.
Landowners must, of course, receive a fair return from their land. However, this must be balanced against the broader national interest of keeping productive land in use and supporting those who have demonstrated commitment to its development. Allowing leases to lapse without viable renewal pathways, or imposing prohibitive financial demands, undermines both economic stability and social cohesion.
I call on the Government to urgently intervene and work collaboratively with TLTB and landowners to find practical, equitable solutions. This includes reviewing the imposition of excessive premiums, improving coordination mechanisms, and ensuring that genuine, longstanding tenants are given a fair opportunity to continue their farming activities. The future of Vanua Levu’s agricultural sector depends on decisions made today. We cannot afford policies or practices that drive farmers off the land and leave productive areas idle.
My Office will continue to monitor this situation closely and advocate for the affected families.
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
