"China has always opposed those big, rich or strong countries bullying the small, poor or weak ones," Wu added.

According to blogger and journalist Graham Davis, while Wu was careful in his public comments not to mention any country by name, the message to Australia and NZ is blunt: Stop bullying Fiji. Stop isolating it. China will continue to try to persuade you to engage with Fiji in a constructive way and on an equal footing.

Guo Chunmei, an expert on Australian studies at China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said China's aid and support to the civic development and infrastructure of Pacificisland countries has been consistent and selfless.

She said the new agreements signed on Friday, including the planned favorable loans,answered Fiji's urgent need to develop its economy. Fiji's relations with Australia and NewZealand were strained after the two countries condemned the Pacific island nation's coup in 2006. Recently, the two countries began to show an interest in restoring diplomatic ties with Fiji.

"And different from other countries, China does not provide aid motivated by gains," Guo said.

Source

• ChinaDailyUSA
• Grubsheet
• China Daily
• Image: Xinhua

This announcement was made following a meeting in Sydney on Tuesday attended by New Zealand Foreign Minister Mr McCully, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Fijian Foreign Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola.

The decision has met with a mixed reaction. "Oceania's greatest power - Australia - has finally bowed to the inevitable. That five and-a-half-years of trying to destroy the Bainimarama Government in Fiji has failed. That one of its island satellites has thumbed its nose at its big neighbour and determined its own course in the world," says blogger and freelance journalest Graham Davis, a longtime commentator on Fiji Affairs .

"For all its economic and political power, Australia could not bring Fiji to heel. It ended in Sydney on Monday not with a bang but a whimper, with Australia being dragged reluctantly to the table by little New Zealand under the distant but relieved gaze of their giant ally, the United States. How humiliating. How unnecessary."

But a Fiji union leader, Felix Anthony, says there's much disappointment in Fiji over New Zealand, Australia and Fiji's decision to restore full diplomatic links.

Anthony, who is National Secretary of the Fiji Trades Union Congress, says Canberra and Wellington are jumping the gun as the Fiji regime has yet to prove the constitution review preceding elections is truly democratic.

"The decision was a bit hasty, premature, simply because we haven't seen anything concrete on the ground as yet in terms of improvement to human rights, trade union rights in this country and also there have been some serious concerns that have been raised by almost every organisation in this country which are concerned to see a return to democracy."

Last Friday Akuila Yabaki and his Citizens Constitutional Forum, appeared in the High Court in Suva charged with contempt of court. The charge relates to an article in Tutaka, CCF's quarterly newsletter which argued there was no rule of law in Fiji. They were remanded till October 5

On Tuesday the Suva High Court found the deposed prime minister, Laisenia Qarase, guilty of six charges of abuse of office, and three charges relating to discharge of duty as a public servant, for property in which he had a private interest. He is to be sentenced on Friday.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• Grubsheet
• Radio New Zealand International
• The Conversation
• Radio New Zealand International
• Image: Dawn.com/AFP

Two Fijian women have described how for months they worked seven-day weeks for $40 (US$30) in the home of the Wellington businesswoman who is charged with exploiting them.

"I was just like a slave to them. I did not feel free at all," one of the women said in a written statement, included in court committal papers obtained by The Dominion Post.

She was told that, if she didn't like her conditions, she could go to work at a strip club.

Her former boss faces 12 charges, including exploiting people not entitled to work in New Zealand by not paying the minimum wage or holiday allowances, providing false information to an immigration officer, and helping or procuring a breach of a visitor's visa.

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McCully said that if Fiji were to request that New Zealand should exempt new civilian appointees to the cabinet or to permanent secretary's roles coming in to replace military people currently occupying those roles, "then we'd certainly consider lifting the sanctions as far as those individuals were concerned."

New Zealand Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, has already broken ranks and begun to engage with Fiji. While New Zealand has maintained its travel sanctions on members of Frank Bainimarama's regime, McCully has, in a personal capacity, resumed direct contact with Fiji's foreign minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola.

Some thought that there may now be some softening on Australia's part as well. It was suggested that such a change in policy towards Fiji may have been announced after the newly appointed Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr and McCully met in Auckland last week. However after the meeting Carr said it was premature to flag any change in policy towards Fiji and he was seeking more information about the situation there.

"All I can say at this stage is that I am talking to colleagues about Fiji but at this stage, the statement from the Fiji government is something we will look at, it's interesting, but we wouldn't go beyond that at this time."

In his blog GrubSheet, Fiji Watcher Graham Davis, who was predicting a change in policy, say he thought that Carr has had to deal with a backlash to any suggestion of a change in policy towards Fiji on the part of the regime's critics in Australia, especially the trade unions.

"It's now clear that the ACTU has both the will and the power to maintain Australia's hard line stance on Fiji. Never mind the decision by the United States to re-engage with Fiji."

Source

• Croz Walsh's Blog
• GrubSheet
• Radio New Zealand International
• Image: Sky Australia

Davis asked, "In reporting in Fiji which version gets told the most? Which is the prevailing orthodoxy on events in Fiji? Bainimarama the torturer or Bainimarama the reformer?"

"On the evidence," he said, "demonising the dictator is the dominant narrative of much of the regional media, and especially a clique of so-called Pacific specialists in Australia and New Zealand."

Davis said that he thought much of what is said about Fiji in the international media is woefully short of integrity or judgment. "Indeed, we live in a truly parallel universe when it comes to media coverage … alleged versions of the truth so polarised that your ordinary reader, viewer or listener can be excused for having no idea what to believe."

"What disturbs me," he said "is that so many of my fellow journalists seem willing to embrace those agendas and portray the country in a way vastly at odds with reality."

Smith-Johns called on the media to act responsibly and to understand "that as a developing nation, we need to take in cultural and socio economic factors against the size of our population. The media must realize that for a developing country like ours, information given needs to take into consideration the socio-economic situation of the country. The media must also realize how influential they can be when citizens speak a variety of languages and messages can be interpreted through poor reporting and a race to get a front page story."

Source

• Croz Walsh's Blog - Graham Davis
• Croz Walsh's Blog - Sharon Smith-Johns
• Image: Matatauvavale

In the course of Britain's colonial rule so many Indians were imported to work in the cane fields, that by the time independence came around there were, in Fiji, almost equal numbers of indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians. They lived in separate communities, their children attended separate schools and they practised different religions. Their political system was organised on racial lines, so that no matter what the outcome of the election, one group felt excluded.

Read Denis O'Hagan's Blog

Denis O'Hagan is a Marist priest and one of the editors of the online e-newsletters CathNews New Zealand and CathNews Pacific.