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FROM MASTER BOMB MAKER TO FACE ON BALLOT LIST: Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum’s fight for DEMOCRACY in 1987 to brutally holding Fiji down under FRANK Bainimarama’s DICTATORSHIP

14/9/2014

5 Comments

 
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BY VICTOR LAL
Fijileaks Guest Opinion Columnist

IN 1987 COUPS AIYAZ SAYED KHAIYUM WAS TO INDO-FIJIANS WHAT GEORGE SPEIGHT AND ILlESA DUVULOCO WERE TO FIJIANS IN 2000

After all, the 'Navy Boy' in charge of the joint police and military command center at the Central Police Station in Suva in 1987 was none other than Frank Bainimarama where the master bomb maker Khaiyum was held with 18 other pro-democracy activists
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"Suva will not be allowed to burn as it did in 2000 in one of the most disgraceful episodes in our nation’s history. You can be sure of it because we will make sure of it." Bainimarama to the business community. 

He should ask his own party general-secretary Aiyaz Khaiyum if he can really prevent it from happening.



Suva had been burned under Bainimarama's watch as army chief during the Speight coup


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AIYAZ SAYED KHAIYUM has come full circle. He first came to our attention in 1987, and later in 1988, notably as a member of The Democracy 18, a group of 18 (not all Indo-Fijians) who publicly defied coupster Sitiveni Rabuka's decrees and protested in Suva's Sukuna Party on 14 May 1988. He, along with the other protestors, was arrested and locked up at the Suva police station. The protestors were bailed the next day, Sunday, and on Monday fronted court. They were all subjected to degrading treatment when an old police truck was parked outside their cells and the engine revered so that smoke pumped into their police cells.

The Bomb-Maker of 10 Bakshi Street


On 14 May 1987 Rabuka and his racist henchmen (including two present Bainimarama/Khaiyum regime Cabinet Ministers Ratu Inoke Kubuaobla and Filipe Bole) had turned the lives of Indo-Fijians upside down; to be precise, the coup happened 108 years to the day when their Indian indentured labourer ancestors had arrived in Fiji on 14 May 1879. The young Khaiyum was then a trainee television producer at the Kerry Packer Channel Nine-owned Television Fiji office on Gordon Street.
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Unlike native Fijians who melted away after the 2006 coup, the Indo-Fijians and their sympathizers were a well-organized and determined group after the 1987 coups. It was agreed to take the fight to Rabuka and his regime, even if it meant bloodshed and violence on a large scale. We are well aware of the tons of weapons - The Guns of Lautoka - that was shipped to Fiji to overthrow the Rabuka government. Hardly anything is known about Khaiyum and his bombers.

During the early stages of the coup, the Indo-Fijian opponents of the coup needed a 'coalition of the willing', to borrow a political phrase used to describe collective participants who came together to topple dictator Saddam Hussein. Khaiyum came forward and took charge of making homemade bombs, from his garden shed at Bakshi Street in Suva. The Mango Chutney Professor Satendra Nandan, now all over the pages of Fiji Sun lauding the regime on Indo-Fijian rights, was one of many who had run away to Australia on his release from Parliament. He was the Minister of Health and Social Welfare on the month long Bavadra Government.

TO BE CONTINUED



5 Comments
Rabuka's Intelligence Officer
14/9/2014 02:02:50 am

Kaila

Yes, Victor Lal, you were one of those who with Mohammed Rafiq Khan shipped tons of weapons to kill us!

Reply
Jaati Bhai
14/9/2014 02:20:16 am

Victor, you comment on above is awaited .

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no intelligence link
14/9/2014 02:23:59 am

Rabuka was not guided by any intelligence. only fijian racism and political manipulation by the then entrenched Fijian elite.

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people first or power link
14/9/2014 03:56:21 pm

when one fights for democracy especially after a military coup he or she fights to put people above power. the rightful place of people in a free society. coups are mostly power grabs which degrade the place of people in society - often taking away their fundamental rights and freedoms. that is precisely what happened after the first Rabuka military coup of 1987. at that time it is true Aiyaz Saiyad Khaiyum was on the side of the people. In the Bainimarama military coup of 2006 Khaiyum did a volte face and sided with power. Khaiyum today is a man who is all about unfettered power and the privileges and the paisa that accompanies the holders of such power.
But Khaiyum must know from history (although a lot of lawyers know shit about history) that such power does not last forever. Remember what happened to Saddam Hussein and what happened to Col Mummar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak?
They were far more powerful men than Khaiyum can ever be but they all got phucked in the end.

Reply
and link
15/9/2014 01:41:58 am

and you forgot to mention ferdinand marcos the dictator who fled his country in the face of the "people power" revolution to overthrow his dictatorial rule wearing diapers to stop the leakage.

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