By NAOMI LARKIN AND NZPA
SUVA - Forty tourists were yesterday detained at one of Fiji's top resorts after landowners took control of the hotel.
Elsewhere, civil unrest and protests racked the country
A spokesman for the landowners, Mavi Ratulevu, said the tourists had not been harmed, but were not being allowed to leave Turtle Island Resort in the Yasawa islands in northwest Fiji.
It was not known if New Zealanders were among them.
Ratulevu said the takeover was not related to the May 19 coup led by George Speight.
However, Fijians have in the past week used the coup to pursue longstanding land and other grievances, the strongest action centring on the shutdown of a dam which supplies electricity throughout the country.
Ratulevu said the group would negotiate with the manager of Turtle Lodge, Ross Besford, of Melbourne, today about being compensated for their land.
"All the tourists are safe - safe in their bures. We will give them a call to their families tomorrow."
He said the group would discuss with Besford evacuating the tourists.
The incident at the lodge is the first action to affect one of Fiji's tourist resorts since Speight's coup. Ratulevu argued tourism should not be affected by the landowners' actions.
"That's not our main purpose for doing this. The true factor is Turtle Lodge is for the land, it belongs to us."
Landowners throughout Fiji have been seeking compensation for various projects, which includes the flooding of land associated with the dam and for land now used by Nadi International Airport.
Speight has claimed the actions are a sign the vanua (people) of Fiji are rising up to support his coup.
Meanwhile, the hostages held in Fiji's Parliament were reunited yesterday for the first time since the Government was taken over at gunpoint two months ago.
The reunion came as Fijian Telecom workers held protests calling for the removal of their Fiji Indian managers and as civilian uprisings continued to plague the country.
The indigenous Fijian ministers were moved from the parliamentary chambers to the office building where former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his Fiji Indian ministers have been held captive.
Reuniting the group can be seen as a positive sign that the rebel leaders plan to keep their promise, made under Sunday's Muanikau Accord, to free the 27 hostages when the Great Council of Chiefs meets tomorrow to select the president and vice-president.
The accord, signed between the military and Speight, also includes amnesty for those involved in uprisings since May 19, and the return of weapons to the Army.
Malakai Veisamasama, one of three local journalists to see the hostages yesterday, said they looked exhausted. "It was an emotional scene; they were hugging each other."
About 50 Telecom workers yesterday held a sit-down strike in the carpark of the corporation's Suva headquarters in an attempt to have the general manager of network services and six other Fiji Indian managers ousted from their posts.
Telecom workers at the Labasa branch, on the island of Vanua Levu, staged a similar protest in support.
Civil unrest continued in other parts of Fiji, with the police station at Nalawa taken over by local landowners yesterday.
This brings to five the police stations taken over by civilians since Saturday.
Speight supporters last night continued to hold 16 police officers, nine soldiers and three civil servants hostage at Korovou police station.
Speight said yesterday that the best outcome of the crisis would be for him to be named prime minister by the chiefs.
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