KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark says Fiji's deportation of Fiji Times executive Evan Hannah is not conducive to it holding free and fair elections.
"This effort by the Fiji interim government to muzzle the media and close down free speech comes on top of the action taken earlier in the year to deport the editor of the Fiji Sun, Russell Hunter," Miss Clark said today.
Fiji's military government deported the Australian publisher of Rupert Murdoch's Fiji Times newspaper on Friday, after declaring him a threat to national security.
Mr Hannah was escorted by a soldier onto a Korean Airline flight to Seoul, despite a court order that he attend an appeal hearing against the deportation order issued on Thursday, the Fiji Times said.
The newspaper's editor Netani Rika said Fijian journalists had been harassed by the government for 18 months and that the latest deportation was part of a campaign to silence media criticism.
There has been a crackdown against the media since military commander Frank Bainimarama seized power in a bloodless coup in late 2006.
Miss Clark said the military regime clearly did not place a high value on freedom of the press as the action against Mr Hannah coincided with World Media Freedom Day.
It also suggested a disregard for the law. An injunction had been secured last night by Mr Hannah's lawyers to prevent his deportation, she said.
The injunction order was served on the relevent interim government authorities but they had proceeded to enforce Mr Hannah's departure anyway.
"The explusion will be viewed with significant regional and international concern," she said.
Pacific Islands Forum countries had been encouraging Fiji to return to constitutional government by holding elections no later than March 2009.
The interim government had provided assurances that would happen.
"Yet actions like today's deportation raise considerable doubts that it is genuinely prepared to relinquish power and allow elections to occur," Miss Clark said.
New Zealand's acting high commissioner in Suva Caroline McDonald was seeking an urgent explanation from the Fiji interim government as to the justification of Mr Hannah's removal.
No reasonable explanation had been given for Mr Hunter's explusion earlier in the year.
Mr Hunter was deported in February for criticising Cmdr Bainimarama's government.
- NZPA
