Pacific Freedom Forum has joined the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) in their condemnation actions by Fiji’s Interim Regime and the continuous attacks on media freedom in Fiji.

See first news release below:

Attacks on Fiji media a cause for regional concern

Media workers under the newly- formed Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF) are calling on civil societies and government leaders in the region to condemn continuing attacks on media freedom in Fiji in the strongest terms.

The PFF joins the Pacific Islands News Association in condemning these actions by Fiji’s Interim Regime.

A recent series of deportations and detentions are now viewed as “calculated strategy” of intimidation aimed at muzzling media coverage and any public criticism of the military regime.

Fiji-based media is again under threat as never before, with the detention of a pregnant Fiji Times reporter by eight Fiji police officers in the Northern town of Labasa a week ago being the most recent.

“We see this detention as the latest in a series of actions designed to intimidate journalists,” says Susuve Laumaea of the Pacific Freedom Forum, an e-forum set up this week by members of a private industry forum, Pacific Islands Journalism Online.

“We view with growing alarm signals coming out of Fiji, including one newspaper raising concern about a ‘consistent siege’ against media freedoms.

“Concern is growing that this and other detentions are not spontaneous, case-by-case reactions from an annoyed ‘interim’ government.

“They are more a calculated strategy using any excuse to breed fear amongst the media, the only institution maintaining freedoms of speech on a daily basis in the face of what is looking more and more like a military regime. Media freedom is also under threat in the Media Tribunal proposed by the regime with powers to fine journalists, editors and publishers,” reads the statement.

“This will act as a ‘court of review’ on adjudications of the Media Council Complaints Committee. Like so much else in the charter it risks being rigged. We don’t think the tribunal will do what the regime wants i.e. muzzle the media. So we fear the next step. Meanwhile the police force which has become little more than an arm of government is being used to threaten and harass journalists and others.”

In the days after the 2006 coup journalists, editors and publishers were threatened with violence by the military and in some cases assaulted. Since then, behind the headlines, behind the talking heads on television, across the region, threat of violence is never far from regional media thoughts.

The Pacific Media Forum was set up after months of online debate in Pacific Island Journos Online (PIJO), an off-the-record group, about the situation in Fiji. PIJO numbers 122 media workers, with 14 joining the Freedom Forum in less than 24 hours. Among them senior media workers from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Cook Islands, American Samoa, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Australia.