By RUSSELL HUNTER
Fiji's dictator can rail all he likes about foreign media stories. But the distortion comes from him and not the journalists he's targeting.
To claim, as Frank Bainimarama did, that journalists who report fairly on Fiji are welcome is typical nonsense.
I don't think I have reported unfairly. I don't think Victor Lal has. And I don't think Sean Dorney has.
Bainimarama evidently differs. But his idea of free and fair reporting - as the Fiji journalists who still have regard to accuracy and balance will tell you in private - extends to reportage that praises him and his cronies.
Anything short of adulation is not permitted.
And those same journalists will tell you this only in private because to say so publicly exposes them to massive fines and even jail (not to mention the inevitable late night visit by gangs of thugs out of uniform).
They dare not even ask questions that might be seen by the regime as unwelcome.
All this is known to New Zealand Prime Minister John Key whose visit to Fiji seeks and fails to legitimise thugs and criminals.
So the beatings, torture, lies, corruption and even deaths are "water under the bridge", then, Mr Key?
A seemingly decent man, Mr Key would have had to overcome his revulsion to feed the hunger of an agitating NZ business community that feels it is being denied access to contracts in Fiji and to acknowledge the need to suck up to China.
One can only imagine the man's true feelings at having to listen to the Bainimarama bombast and not flinch.
Then again he's by now well accustomed to the insults to his country routinely offered by that particular rear admiral.
Why does the New Zealand Prime Minister have to swallow this bile?
Politics, we have to suppose.
Fiji's dictator can rail all he likes about foreign media stories. But the distortion comes from him and not the journalists he's targeting.
To claim, as Frank Bainimarama did, that journalists who report fairly on Fiji are welcome is typical nonsense.
I don't think I have reported unfairly. I don't think Victor Lal has. And I don't think Sean Dorney has.
Bainimarama evidently differs. But his idea of free and fair reporting - as the Fiji journalists who still have regard to accuracy and balance will tell you in private - extends to reportage that praises him and his cronies.
Anything short of adulation is not permitted.
And those same journalists will tell you this only in private because to say so publicly exposes them to massive fines and even jail (not to mention the inevitable late night visit by gangs of thugs out of uniform).
They dare not even ask questions that might be seen by the regime as unwelcome.
All this is known to New Zealand Prime Minister John Key whose visit to Fiji seeks and fails to legitimise thugs and criminals.
So the beatings, torture, lies, corruption and even deaths are "water under the bridge", then, Mr Key?
A seemingly decent man, Mr Key would have had to overcome his revulsion to feed the hunger of an agitating NZ business community that feels it is being denied access to contracts in Fiji and to acknowledge the need to suck up to China.
One can only imagine the man's true feelings at having to listen to the Bainimarama bombast and not flinch.
Then again he's by now well accustomed to the insults to his country routinely offered by that particular rear admiral.
Why does the New Zealand Prime Minister have to swallow this bile?
Politics, we have to suppose.
