Moment of assassination of US President John F Kennedy, Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963. Photo credit: Obrag.org COLLECTIVE MEMORY Ni bula, Croz, e na vakatawase has left a new comment on your post "The Tongan Elections":
A great piece, Croz, and yet more evidence that the youthful naivete so prevalent in the island media is no substitute for the age and experience of an old hand like you. When you've been in these parts for nearly half a century, you're fully entitled to express whatever opinion you like, however much it offends the critics. Anyone who remembers the Tofua and the Matua, let alone sailed on them, or negotiated the raised centre aisle of a Fiji Airways De Havilland Heron deserves to be heard with respect.
A recent editorial by Fred Wesley in the Fiji Times reminded me of how little collective memory is brought to bear on current events. In a piece on someone who'd managed to reach the ripe old age on 101, Wesley wrote in apparent awe that there were still people in Fiji who could remember the assassination of John F, Kennedy, the British colonial era and Fiji's independence. I've yet to reach three score years and can remember all three! You go back a lot longer and have accumulated much more knowledge. As the old saying goes, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
But in the case of Fiji, it's the appalling general ignorance of the past that produces the same mistakes again and again. You've now got to be 23 years old to have even been born at the time of Rabuka's 1987 coup. And you've got to be 40 to have been born at Independence. Is it any wonder that these events are now regarded as ancient history and irrelevant to peoples' lives?
Yet the same racial, political and social pressures remain largely unresolved and blight what could and should have been the brightest of futures. With the Fiji media, it's a case of the blind leading the blind.. You, on the other hand, are able to shine a torch on history and relate it to the present. May your battery continue to hold out for many years to help light the path ahead. Happy New Year!
THE ABC INTERVIEW AND COUP4.5'S ANONYMOUS MR X
The ABC of getting it wrong has left a new comment on your post "PM's 2011 Message, Great Council of Chiefs Politic...":
Conventional practice in news and current affairs has it that interviewees should only have their identities concealed when there is a clear threat to their positions and the information being imparted is of such importance that there is a clear public interest in granting them anonymity.
The ABC would undoubtedly argue that one of the principals of Coup 4.5 deserves the cloak of anonymity because of the possibility of government retribution. But that's where any justification ends and even this depends on whether the person being interviewed was actually in Fiji and within striking distance of the alleged bully boys of the military.
Is he in danger on the streets of Auckland or Sydney? Not on the evidence thus far. Not only do regime critics thrive there but there's no indication whatsoever that Frank Bainimarama is a Saddam Hussein who orders death squads to pursue his opponents abroad. So how hazardous is this individual's position beyond being unmasked as a regime critic? Would he be captured, tortured and forced to reveal the secrets of 4.5? Maybe in Fiji in more fevered minds but nowhere else,
Where the ABC is really vulnerable to criticism and complaint is that this person's contribution to the debate was so pedestrian. Merely parroting the usual anti-regime line meant that nothing of what he said met the public interest test. There was no new information of such pressing urgency that the public benefited from hearing from the man with the mask.
Now, one might argue that I am anonymous in these columns. But this is comment, not news, an important distinction. And in any event, the whole world accepts that an entirely different set of conventions applies to the Bloggersphere. When it comes to news and information programs on a mainstream public broadcaster like the ABC, the audience clearly deserves better.
Yes, there are times when whistle-blowers deserve anonymity in the public interest, as well as their own, but this wasn't one of them. The whistle wasn't being blown on anything. Bruce Hill and his editors allowed a run-of-the-mill regime critic to sprout run-of-the-mill anti-regime criticism and in doing so, debased not just an importance convention but the credibility of the ABC.
4 comments:
One thing that stands tall in the whole debate about media coverage on Fiji is that the mainstream NZ and Aussie media in general and their respective national broadcasters, RNZ and ABC in particular, come under the microscope and we can see the rot, the stink and the infection- the watchdogs which degenerates into lapdogs. Thanks Croz for being that everlasting antiseptic that can see through this rot in our mainstream media.
Bula Croz, re. 'Collective Memory', I am so heartened to hear such similar sentiments to my own. As a 4th generation European, Fijian I see the sad lament that he tells every day here in Fiji. It is largely due, I believe, to our education system that doesn't include any in-depth modern history on Fiji. Every day I and quite a few like me I am sure, have to explain how we happen to be here in Fiji and in doing so give a short history of our colonial past. The exhausting thing is that we also have to do the same to our Australian and NZ visitors who are as equally ignorant of our history. Until our syllabus is updated to have a stronger emphasis on history and the arts, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over much like I have to explain my existence here over and over. LOL. Besides, opening up the curriculum will also improve employment opportunities. Vinaka.
@ Whistleblowers, anonymity, "incitement to rape" section 48 of the Crimes Decree and many other aspects of contemporaneous Fiji..
Where corruption flourishes as the result of years of impunity, dissolving the climate of impunity may be hazardous. When the Police Force themselves have been part of the reign of lawlessness and have failed to enforce Due Process, then there can be few institutions more vengeful and worthy of a wide-berth. However, sooner or later the cover must be blown and in the Courts much is revealed. Surely, this is why it is so disgraceful and so worthy of remark that the Courts in Fiji have not had the offices of trained, professional reporters? Would it not have been obvious to all and sundry that if the rule of law was failing and corruption was taking a grip that court reporting of high calibre was an absolute necessity? The Court Reporters would have needed to become investigative reporters, fearless and intrepid and ready to reveal any hint 'organised injustice' This did not happen. Neither the NZ Herald, the Sydney Morning Herald nor any other major metropolitan newspaper in the entire South Pacific Region picked up on this. Even less did: Russell Hunter, Evan Hannah, Netani Rika nor the erstwhile Fiji Police Mouthpiece, Mesake Koroi. Look closely at Communications Fiji and Fiji TELEVISION, and the FBC under previous leadership. All these people failed Fiji and failed us parlously leaving the ordinary people in the pathway of human wolves and vultures. Anyone who believes differently is mistaken, misguided and simply WAS NOT THERE. Not even Transparency International Fiji! Now, a landmark case comes into the High Court in Lautoka. It results from charges laid upon four young women who, allegedly, stood by and "incited rape". Rape of a young female visitor to one of Fiji's most renowned resorts. Where did we hear of such conduct before? Outside Parliament in Suva in the year 2000 where hundreds of women incited and participated in orgies, witchcraft and urged violence while hostages were held for fifty-six days. An on-going Act of Terrorism whose footprint survives to this very day. Speak to the parliamentary hostages and listen to their testimony. And we wonder why the rule of law is still so evasive? But these ignorant and shameless young women are now remanded in Suva Women's Prison where they rightly belong: hostages themselves to the indignity and cowardice they apparently exhibited so reminiscent of their sisters ten years ago at Parliament Reading again the Funeral Oration of Pericles at New Year, it was satisfying to reflect that democracy and its precepts may in no manner deserve such questionable acolytes: unworthy, ill-educated, of debatable formation and cowardly. A complete mental transformation is required if democracy shall ever survive again in Fiji. But the Crimes Decree 2009 is a start and it must now be enforced without let or hindrance 'pour mieux encourager les autres'?
Watch this space......
Is it in the public interest to reveal which diplomats engaged in the practices described by Walker Texas Ranger? Perhaps some of the contributors to this Blog might give an opinion? What would they think of a diplomat of third rank who was replaced, at the last minute, by the Head Honcho himself? Without any prior advice? Was this some kind of diplomatic game-playing? It happened and with the benefit of hindsight - it was scandalous and all that the Texas Ranger suggests.
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