'Guests' of 120 years fear for their lives

By TONY WALL in Suva

The place of Indo-Fijians in Fijian society is becoming increasingly untenable in the wake of the gunpoint takeover of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry's Government and many are living in fear of further attacks.

The streets of the capital, Suva, were yesterday crowded with indigenous Fijians but there was hardly an Indian to be seen - most had locked themselves inside their homes.

Perhaps in anticipation of further riots, shopkeepers have boarded up their stores, while indigenous Fijian stallholders in the Suva markets have written Kai Viti (Fijian) on their shutters to protect them from looters.

"I don't write this, they're gonna burn it," one said.

In outlying villages there was further looting yesterday, with reports of a whole street full of Indian homes being stoned at Sawani, 20km from Suva. Many residents spent the night hiding in their homes in terror as angry mobs of hooligans rampaged outside.

There was also unrest in nearby Nakasi.

At Parliament, an Indian photographer working for the Fiji Sun was held by supporters of the armed rebels and harassed until police stepped in. The newspaper was told not to send an Indian staff member again.

The Herald yesterday spoke to a devastated supermarket manager in Suva whose store, one of the biggest in Fiji, was looted and burned on Friday.

Abhinesh Kumar, of Rajendra Prasad Brothers Foodtown Supermarket, estimates the cost of lost goods and damage at $6 million - making the company the single biggest insurance claimant.

The company lost bulk-food supplies worth up to $1 million and expensive machinery and three delivery trucks, which were set alight or vandalised. Three shipping containers full of food were broken open and stripped bare.

Mr Kumar said the company employed 128 people, both Indian and indigenous, who were now out of jobs.

He said the looters were hurting only themselves because the loss of his supermarket would force prices up and there could be food shortages.

"I am so disheartened, I don't have any words to describe this feeling," he said.

The chairman of the People's Organisation for Indo-Fijian Rights and Land Resolution, Dr Niraj Sumeshwar Yadav, told the Herald last night: "Virtually every Indian wants to leave the place now, they're so fed up with this.

"The message is clear now - we have no place here, we can take no part in administration or politics."

He said no matter how many times in future Indo-Fijian Governments were democratically elected, there would always be bitter opposition politicians agitating for overthrow, making the risk of coup constant.

Another member of the organisation, schoolteacher Asish Gurdayan, said indigenous Fijians simply did not want to be ruled by any other race.

It is a sad day for Indians to believe they could change the script.

The former Fiji Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, in an impromptu press conference at a downtown hotel, was asked whether he could ever see another Indo-Fijian Prime Minister after Chaudhry. He thought about it for a second, before shaking his head - no.

Dr Yadav said Indo-Fijians had always been treated like second-class citizens "and 120 years after we came here, they still call us 'vulagi' - guests."