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INTERNATIONAL TORTURE DAY should be a reminder to SODELPA that their BIBLE bashing torturer and political leader SITIVENI RABUKA is hiding behind IMMUNITY - immunity has denied justice to his VICTIMS

26/6/2017

12 Comments

 

AND the IMMUNITY he granted himself in the 1990 Constitution, carried forward in 1997 and 2013 Constitutions, is shielding him from charges of TREASON

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He is not alone on that list. We have Apisai Tora, Taniela Veitata, Ratu Meli Vesikula, Savenaca Dranidalo, to name but just a few. We may recall that I had stated earlier in a separate instalment that it was at Reverend Tomasi Raikivi’s place that Rabuka had met his other coup co-conspirators.
  
In his book, Rabuka: No Other Way, by two journalists, Stan Ritova and Eddie Dean, Rabuka claims that it was at Rakivi’s home that he first learnt of the Taueki group’s plan for massive ‘demonstrations and the possibility of widespread arson and possibly murder’. 
  
According to Ritova and Dean Rabuka (his words in italics) went to, ‘…what he understood was an ordinary ‘grog’ party at the Rev. Rakivi’s home, in suburban Suva. It was early evening, and he just walked in, as he normally would, throwing his ‘sevusevu’ [gift] of yagona towards the bowl where the ‘grog’ was being mixed. ‘I saw all these people sitting down, and realised it was some kind of a meeting. Some of the people greeted me, although I could not see everyone clearly, because it was fairly dark in the lounge room. Nobody asked me to leave.’ 

When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he discovered the gathering was ‘quite a formidable group’. He says it included Ratu Finau Mara, the son of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara; Ratu George Kadavulevu, son of the Paramount of Chief of Fiji, Ratu George Cakobau; Ratu Inoke Kubuabola; Ratu Keni Viuyasawa, the brother of Brigadier Nailatikau; Mr Filipe Bole, formerly a Minister in the Mara government; Ratu Jo Ritova, of Labasa; Ratu Jale Ratu; ‘Big Dan’ Veitata and the host Tomasi Rakivi…Another leading light at this meeting was Apisai Tora.’
 
Taniela Veitata

We may recall that when Sitiveni Rabuka and a group of 10 masked soldiers, cowardly hiding behind balaclavas and gas masks, took over Parliament and captured Dr Timoci Bavadra and his Government team on the morning of 14 May 1987, it was Veitata who was making his maiden speech as Opposition MP: ‘Peace is quite distinct, Mr Speaker, from the political philosophy of Mao Zedong where he said that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun. In Fiji, there is no gun…’

  
What he did not inform the House, the country, and the world was that he, Kubuabola, Bole and others had been plotting that coup moment in secrecy, waiting for Rabuka and his team to finish the job.

During that secret meeting at Raikivi’s house in Suva, according to Ritova and Dean, those allegedly God-fearing men, some of chiefly rank, exchanged opinions, and turned to God for help: ‘The link with God and Christianity surfaced here, too. At the end of the meeting, which was full of fire and brimstone talk about what to do with the Coalition and the ‘flawed’ [1970] Constitution, which had allowed the election of an Indian-dominated Government, they joined hands and prayed to God. Their prayer, in summary, was simple: ‘Save us, and save our land. You saved the Israelites when their land was taken away from them by foreigners. Dear God, please answer our prayer and do the same for us.’

  
There is no evidence that they also prayed to God to open up the National Bank of Fiji to them but it was not long afterwards that their ‘God’s Messenger on Earth’, in the form of Sitiveni Rabuka, decreed that the NBF grant “soft loans” to the “downtrodden” taukei population. 
  
Among them who made a run to the NBF was none other than Taniela Veitata, for he is listed among the doubtful debtors, to the tune of $25,323.

It seems Reverend Raikivi had forgotten, or chose not to read out to him Psalms 37: 21:

‘The wicked borroweth and payeth not’. 

 
Apisai Tora

As soon as Bavadra and his government were sworn in, the Taukei Movement, led by Tora and prominent Alliance personalities sprang up. Tora said the group had been formed to mobilize the Fijian people and give them a more unified voice on national affairs in their own country. He then announced a campaign of civil disobedience, and called for the 1970 Constitution to be changed so far to guarantee Fijian chiefly leadership in government permanently. 

  
At meetings and demonstrations he charged that the Bavadra government was a front for Indo-Fijian interests and that their immediate objective was to rob Fijians of ownership and control of their land. Such words suggest that he was a revolutionary Fijian hero, but Tora was simply a turncoat. Since he crossed to Ratu Mara’s Alliance Party before the 1982 general election, he had acquired Ratu Mara’s respect and confidence and had finally become a Cabinet Minister. Previously, however, he was with the National Federation Party; in 1968 he had provided the prefix ‘National; to the Federation Party to form the NFP. 
  
As we know, Tora went on to play a major role in the downfall of the Bavadra government. Equally, when the NBF fell into the deep financial hole, Tora was listed, along with Veitata and others, to have defaulted his loan to the tune of $194,393.
 
Ratu Meli Vesikula

He was one of the foremost Taukei leaders. Vesikula who, as a former NCO in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in the British Army, had seen action in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Malaysia, said that in the light of his experience Rabuka’s military solution was the only option in then ethnic crisis.

  
But when Rabuka appointed Ratu Penaia Ganilau as President and Ratu Mara as Prime Minister after the second coup in September 1987, Vesikula led a breakaway Taukei faction, saying: ‘It’s more and more the Alliance team back in place. This is the old system being rammed down our throats again in a roundabout way – the backdoor. I would like the indigenous Fijian people to stand united and say, No, enough is enough’.

He went on to claim: ‘I see no chance at all of my two ratus here changing their outlook and their life and the running of the country in general…The Great Council of Chiefs had clearly stated that it will nominate the President, and the Prime Minister would be elected by secret ballot after the general elections. I’m sorry to say this but I feel Rabuka handed power back to a dictator on five December.’

  
In 1988, a group of army officers, in collusion with the splinter Taukei Movement entertained the possibility of seizing power from Mara and Ganilau, with Vesikula remarking: ‘Now that power has been given to the Tovata group, what is there to stop chiefs from other areas to go to the military camp and order their people to lay down their arms and join them.’
  
To Vesikula’s credit, he publicly admitted his mistakes when he came into spiritual contact with the international Moral Re-Armament Group (Initiative for Change). He confessed he was responsible for many acts of violence perpetrated against the Indo-Fijians after the 1987 coups: ‘But in 1988, the truth began to dawn on me that the coups were just part of a political power play by people who had lost their power at the ballot box in 1987.

In 1990 he publicly apologised to the Indo-Fijians at an MRA conference in Suva. 

  
However, in 1996, he was revealed, along with other 1987 coupists of owing to the NBF $8,000 loans that had been set aside to help ‘poor Fijians’.
 
Savenaca Draunidalo

He was Rabuka’s second-in-command on that fateful day on 14 May 1987 when Dr Timoci Bavadra was overthrown as Prime Minister of the FLP-NFP coalition government. Worse, he was the ex-husband of Adi Kuini Teimumu Vuikaba Bavadra, who herself had fought for reform of the chiefly system by insisting on standards of accountability for all chiefs. 

  
Like others in the Rabuka camp, Draunidalo was also listed on the NBF’s Debtors List in 1996; he was shown as owing to the bank $156,605.
 
Sotia Ponijiasi

He was the army captain who, along with five members of the RFMF, had abducted and tortured Dr Anirudh Singh, a lecturer in physics at the University of South Pacific in Fiji. Singh was abducted from his home on 24 October 1990, bundled into a car and driven off to secluded woodland outside Suva. He had bandages taped over his eyes and a hood tied down tight over his head. He was repeatedly beaten and interrogated about his fellow protestors, and about his contacts in Australia and London. 


They also retrieved a list of names and phone numbers that he always kept with him for ready reference (incidentally on that list of contacts was my own name, and soon afterwards I myself began to receive credible death threats for my opposition to the Rabuka coups).

At one point Singh’s hands were smashed against a root with a metal pipe and they also forcibly cut his hair and burnt him with cigarettes. But before they left him for dead, one of his captors lit a match and began burning the already-cut hair at the tips, some kind of pagan ceremony of humiliation. The whole ordeal lasted for eleven hours. Singh was finally set free, and had lived to tell his tale in his book Silent Warriors.
  
Singh’s crime was that he had led a group of demonstrators who publicly burned the overtly racist 1990 Constitution, which Ganilau and Mara said was needed ‘for the protection and enhancement of Fijian and Rotuman interests’. In reality, as I will be revealing one of these days, it was to enhance the Mara/Ganilau clan’s business interests with the likes of Ponijiasi following in their footsteps. 
  
In the NBF’s Debtors List of 1996, Ponijiasi is listed as owning to the bank $29,763.01.

So much for Rabuka’s much vaunted Holy Grail of affirmative action – to help the poor and economically disadvantaged taukei in Fiji.

Another Ponijiasi – Mere - owed $26,354.36.

In all, Rabuka’s 1987 above coupists  owed a combined total of $415,000 to the collapsed National Bank of Fiji, reward for supporting the 1987 Rabuka coups.


C4/5 Editor’s Note: We will continue to reveal debtors names, which includes those of high chiefs, politicians, Indo-Fijians, business houses, including individual supporters of the present illegal junta in Fiji.


Picture: Dr Anirudh Singh, who was tortured by Sotia Ponijiasi and five members of the RFMF.
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12 Comments
Welcome Home
26/6/2017 11:59:30 am

There is a time and a season for everything the Bible reminds us. Those who lived to recount the specific details of their torture during Home Invasions were spared we must believe in order to recount their suffering and trauma. They were at pains to ensure the details given were carefully specified because not a single Police Officer at either Nadi or Namaka Stations had been prepared to take their complaints in 2012 and 2013. These were quit obviously targeted and not opportunistic attacks. Some victims were resident civilians; others were Fijians with known ties to controversial persons or deemed opponents of the status quo. Innocent spouses and children or elderly dependants were not spared. Deaths might well have ensued from the instruments and modes of attack deployed : taping of an entire body with masking tape with only a gap around nostrils for passage of air, the mouth covered, hands and feet bound and driven away in an SUV for up to eight hours? A man and his wife in their mid-sixties..... They were advised to exit Fiji with alacrity and to immediately advise their Minister for Foreign Affairs after safe arrival in their Country of Origin. This case was just ONE of similar occurrence in 2012 and early 2013. No protection for these civilians nor Fiji Police professional support was provided and a death threat was received after they left the country. What term in the name of Providence do we give to this? The history of such horrific conduct is now firmly established. It is underwritten and reinforced by the consumate failure of relevant authorities to respond. But this behaviour is now entrenched and graphically recounted and recorded. Professor Yash Ghai will corroborate.

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Police Intelligence Level
26/6/2017 06:23:42 pm

ACP Biu,which is threatening more to the Public Order,the Peaceful protest on the International Day for the protest significance or BUSHMASTER.?
You know it very well but just fooling .
Bravo Police in Democracy mode.

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Welcome Home
26/6/2017 08:26:40 pm

Is it not tenable that torture is just as clearly evident in the deliberate rape of a less than two year old innocent child by its own grandfather than, say, by any agent of the State turning their back to a legitimate complaint requiring redress? Are they not equally guilty of brutality towards civilian citizens and so consequently must be held equally accountable under their failure to protect? This is the legacy we are left with and must endure until those responsible find a conscience and decide upon an honourable course of action. Do we know what honour is? Is the imagination up to the task? Because those dead young men and hundreds of suicide victims require redress. We are cursed by our desultory and insulting delay in facing up to what we have done over the past thirty years for spurious ends.

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Rajend Naidu
26/6/2017 09:19:05 pm

Editor
Perpetrators of Atrocities Against Their Own People Must Face Justice
In "ethnically motivated " political violence in the Kasai region in the DR Congo over 3000 civilians have been killed in brutal attacks involving shooting, mutilation, burning, rape...according to the Catholic Church ( aljazeera 21/6).
UN human rights chief Zeid Hussein said 42 mass graves have been discovered and there "may be many more". He has called for the deployment of UN in the DR Congo to carry out independent investigations and bring the perpetrators to justice. A DR Congo government spokesman objected to deployment of outside personnel saying it undermined their national sovereignty .
Rogue rulers have a habit of hiding behind sovereignty and immunity and the like.
We are familiar with that habit in post coup Fiji from 1987 onwards.
Sincerely
Rajend Naidu

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Zhivago
27/6/2017 05:52:50 am

Without condoning what Siti did (and he alone is responsible for the coup culture) and the immunity that he enjoys for treason, at least he later saw the light and the ways of his evil deeds, to genuinely work towards achieving consensus and took steps towards democracy. He has shown remorse for his actions and continues to do so. Let us accept his humility snd remorse. Let us in our anger not forget the biggest demon our history will ever experience.Frank's heinous crimes, torture and cruel and inhuman persecution of our people, men and women, and desecration of culture against Fijians, will remain the height of tyranny and decadence in our mired history. He continues in his autocratic behavior and practices deception with little regard for human or personal dignity. He has found another callous companion to think of new evil ideas and strategies to further subjugate our people. Frank and his co-accused should be of inteterest to the jurisdiction of the Intrrnational Criminal Court. That is the only place he can get justice. We have been reduced to frightened, timid and helpless people, fodder to the terrible duo. Our society is breaking. Who will Help?

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Chiku
27/6/2017 06:32:23 am

How is public order breached with one young citizen standing alone peacefully and silently with a placate against torture and with the names of the victims of torture ?
Are Fijians living in a Stalinist state or a Communist state instead of the " true democracy " they were told they'd be living under when Bainimarama and his mob from the Fiji military seized the government of Fiji?

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Chiku
27/6/2017 07:41:53 am

The police officer who took the lone anti- torture civilian activist for "breaching public order " does he know what the Fiji Police motto ' salus populi ' stands for? It means to put safety of the public first and to treat the welfare of the people as the supreme law . If the police officer knows his Police motto he'd know the activist is doing what the motto stands for. Torture goes against public safety and public welfare. The police needs to uphold its motto rather than act as the henchmen of the gang in power.

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Dekho
27/6/2017 08:34:38 am

Talk of " breaching public order " reminds me there was a lot of that happening after the Rabuka coup ( 1987 ) , the Speight coup ( 2000) and the Bainimarama coup ( 2006 ) and guess what ?
The police was often conspicuous by their absence!

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Samjoe
27/6/2017 09:24:37 am

The young man taken in by police for breaching public order is no terrorist, is he? I know there are terrorist in the Fiji military and government who have never been taken in for questioning by the police. But that's understandable. It's easier to round up a young man peacefully protesting torture than to go after known terrorist thugs whose backs have military protection.

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Welcome Home
27/6/2017 12:38:29 pm

The Dutch Peacekeeping Force in Srebrenica have been found partially responsible just yesterday 26 June 2017 for their part in failing to protect 300 Muslim young men from being brutally murdered in the war in Bosnia. It has taken almost a quarter of a century to come to this conclusion at ICC at The Hague. "The Muslim civilians were turned out from the base where they sought safety. The Serbian army mowed them down. "The Duty to Protect" must be enforceable. Immunity Clauses interfere with this obligation which is outside statutes of limitation even in war zones. The precedent is now set.

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Chiku
28/6/2017 12:58:51 am

The roll call of the terrorist thugs in Fiji comprise people from all walks of life. Tanilla Veitata and Tabu ( Union thugs ), Rev. raikivi and Ratu Inoke Kubuabola ( religious thugs ) , Sotia, Savenaca and Meli Veisikula ( military thugs ) Apisai Tora ( political thug ) Mataitoga ( legal thug )... The list is only a sample. The numbers are a whole lot more.

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Welcome Home
28/6/2017 09:40:56 pm

What these foolish, one eyed and blind leaders fail to comprehend is that essentially 'The Game is up': they are discovered and since 2009 any vestige of legitimacy is threadbare: the emperors are bare, naked in fact but The Valley of the Blind affords them a chink of continued efficacy. However, they can never now take comfort in the silence of the common people. Not in what further horrors may yet be gradually revealed. Human memory works in mysterious, miraculous ways and there can be no rest not peace for murderers and those who wantonly condone rape and orchestrated violence. Elie Wiesel's years of humane testimony serve as a beacon of Hope and Light: "Now there are things that MUST be said". Till death, we shall continue to say them so help us God!

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