A human rights advocate in Fiji says the country should be ashamed of the exile of the now dead celebrated academic professor Brij Lal and his family.

Professor Lal was expelled from Fiji in 2009 after speaking out against coup leader Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s FijiFirst government.

Lal died at his home in Brisbane on Christmas Day. Tributes have been pouring in since.

Rights advocate Shamima Ali, coordinator of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre, said that while the region mourned Professor Lal’s death, people should not forget the injustice meted out to him and his wife.

Ali said the government disrespected academia and the contributions academics made to Fiji’s development.

In the case of the Lals, Ali said there had been a “miscarriage of justice and a gross violation of their basic human rights — the right to nationality and citizenship and to a fair trial”.

Ali said Lal’s “writings and utterances irked the government” so they banned him from Fiji.

‘Smacks of sexism’
“And Dr Padma Lal, along with her husband, was also banned from Fiji.

“This smacks of sexism and once again disregards Dr Lal’s illustrious career as an ecological economist and her work on the sugar industry and environment.

“I urge the Fiji Human Rights and Anti Discrimination Commission to step up and challenge this draconian decision of arbitrarily banning citizens and taking away their birthright.”

Lal’s legacy would live on as an upstanding human being and citizen of our country, Ali said.

“Shame on you, Fiji. Those who violated his and Padma’s rights will surely live in ignominy and infamy.

“There is still time for a change, to amend the wrongs, too late for Brij but not for his family.”

Sad day for Fiji, says Sodelpa
Fiji’s main opposition party said the death of Professor Lal in exile was a sad time for Fiji.

The Social Democratic Liberal Party said Lal had hoped that he would one day return to his homeland.

Fiji claimed to have democracy but it still has a very long way to go, said Sodelpa leader Viliame Gavoka.

“The news of Professor Brij Lal’s passing fills me with great pain,” he said.

“We all know about him, a favourite son of Fiji who was refused permission to return home.

“He lived and hoped that he would one day come home and many of us pleaded for his case.”

But Gavoka said now he had died in a foreign land, away from his people and loved ones.

“How can our hearts be so hardened that we denied someone the right to his homeland and all because he expressed views different from those at the helm of leadership.

“Professor Brij Lal was loved by many and his legacy will live on in Fiji.”

Fiji poorer with loss of academic, says NFP
Among historians and scholars, Professor Lal stood tall around the world, said the National Federation Party.

From a poor farming family in Tabia, Vanua Levu, NFP leader Professor Biman Prasad said Professor Lal rose to be an emeritus professor of Pacific and Asian history at the Australian National University, one of the world’s highest-ranked places of learning.

“He was an acknowledged expert on the Indian diaspora around the world.

He was recognised as the pre-eminent historian on the history of indenture and Girmitiya.”

In his obituary to Professor Lal, Dr Prasad said Fiji was poorer with the passing of the academic.

“Professor Brij Lal banished from the land of his birth by the Bainimarama government in November 2009 for championing democracy and barred from entering Fiji upon the orders of the prime minister, has died, 12 years after the draconian act of a heartless government,” Dr Prasad said.

“The sudden and shocking death of Professor Brij Lal at the age of 69 should create a moment for all Fiji citizens to pause and reflect, even while we are distracted by our many personal challenges brought on by the pandemic and our other deep national problems.”

Dr Prasad said Lal was “a giant on the international academic stage” who was banned by the Bainimarama and FijiFirst government from returning to the place of his birth.

“But the pettiness of our leaders will not take away Prof Lal’s towering achievements and scholarship, for which he will one day be fully recognised in the place he was born.

“All of us in Fiji are the poorer for his irreplaceable loss.”

Dr Prasad said the NFP had organised a condolence gathering to remember Professor Lal.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When the University of the South Pacific’s vice-chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, was hauled out of his Suva, Fiji, home this week and deported, it had nothing to do with his views on education or tertiary management.

With his wife and nursing lecturer Sandy Price they were driven across curfew-locked down Fiji to be put on a plane to Australia.

It was not an action designed to make USP a better place, or to improve life for Fiji’s young people.

It was bitterly personal.

“You have nailed it,” Professor Ahluwalia told Pacific Newsroom. “It is precisely a case of ‘let’s get rid of this man because he exposed too much corruption’.”

Professor Ahluwalia and Price were seized late last Wednesday and deported on Thursday morning to Brisbane where, due to covid-19, they are now in managed isolation until February 18.

He is adamant that he remains vice-chancellor of the 12-nation regional USP and will keep managing the university.

Money was missing
Just over two years ago Professor Ahluwalia took over USP from vice-chancellor Professor Rajesh Chandra. He discovered much was wrong in the accounting department, and money was missing. A lot of money.

Professor Ahluwalia submitted a report to the USP Council and, in an abbreviated form, this led to the hiring of Auckland accountancy consultants BDO. When their damning report reached the university council, it was pretty much suppressed. Key details were kept from the public.

The BDO report was then leaked – not by Professor Ahluwalia or any USP staff – to Pacific Newsroom, prompting uproar.

As BDO linked corruption and missing millions efforts were begun to get Professor Ahluwalia fired.

These were mostly led by USP’s pro-chancellor, Winston Thompson. A Fijian, BDO’s report made it clear Thompson was acting for FijiFirst; not USP or its students.

Professor Ahluwalia said that until talking with Pacific Newsroom, he had not talked publicly about these connections. He was now because Pacific Newsroom had become a key influence in the debate in Fiji.

Getting rid of Professor Ahluwalia was part of that: “It’s as personal as that and Winston Thompson was Fiji’s ambassador to the United States, he is a diplomat and he has presided over several interesting, very interesting, downfalls of public institutions…”

‘The intimacies of politics’
Surely, it was put to Professor Ahluwalia, USP was bigger than just a couple of people. But that, he replied, was what it amounted to.

“It is really that, the intimacies of politics… the way these networks work, after all this is a very small country.”

Fiji refuses to accept BDO evidence, claiming their own Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) had found no corruption.

BDO had pointed clearly to corruption and both Professor Ahluwalia and Price say they were close to getting to the bottom of the operation behind it.

“The best evidence I can provide for all of this at the moment,” Professor Ahluwalia said, “is that I am close, but don’t have evidence yet.

“What I would say as evidence is that 2019 and 2020 we had to put a number of financial restrictions in place, but the fact that I returned, in 2020, a $28.3 million surplus on a university that did not receive grants from Fiji and Australia. That tells me how much they were leaching out of the system.”

Was it a basic kind of fraud, people helping themselves to cash: “That’s what it seems to me. The bit I cannot figure out is that these accounts are audited by auditors and how were they doing it?”

People complicit at USP
There were, Price suggested, a lot of people in USP that were complicit.

This week, as the Pacific Forum met in Zoom session to elect a new secretary-general, the Fiji government moved against Professor Ahluwalia and Price. He found it interesting that this was the week.

“There was a special council meeting (a Friday week ago) and at that meeting the President of Nauru (Lionel Aingimea, the current USP chancellor) raised my contract as an issue.”

He wanted it placed on the agenda because he was concerned about it. Both Thompson and the council’s Fiji representative, Mahmood Khan, expressed concern at having it on the agenda, saying there was no supporting paper to explain its presence.

They said they needed to know what the issue was.

“And Lionel gave them a hint, he said it’s about visa issues and then he said, well we will send a paper.”

It was drafted and it noted that the Fiji Sun, a pro-Bainimarama newspaper, had reported in a gossip section that someone from “a big school for big students” could be sacked.

‘Draconian barbaric act’
Professor Ahluwalia said as soon as that appeared, they knew they had to act: “On Wednesday they did this draconian barbaric act, trampling over our human rights.”

As to the Pacific Islands Forum Summit: “I wouldn’t put anything in Fiji as just a coincidence. They probably knew all the leaders were busy.

For himself, and the USP Council, Professor Ahluwalia is still the vice-chancellor. His contract remained valid and he had done nothing wrong: “I suppose it’s a wrongful dismissal which is what I am arguing… the employer still has a duty of responsibility even if the government chooses to deport you on fabricated charges.”

Given all the stresses, it would be understandable that Professor Ahluwalia and Price might want to cut their losses, but that is not so: “I was hired to lead USP and take it forward, I think it has a lot of potential, I don’t think it has to be just beholden to Fiji and one of the best things that would happen to the university is for the vice chancellor to operate from outside of Fiji and actually really lift the education of the rest of the region and give the region more attention while paying attention to Fiji as well.

“Covid has taught us that the university can be run from its other campuses. After all, the USP campuses are run from Laucala so the converse is absolutely possible,” he said.

“I have nothing against the people of Fiji and my students and staff in Fiji are the reason I have so much support so I want to make sure they are supported.”

He could live in another USP member country: Samoa is already waving the welcome mat.
The university would survive.

Damage done to Fiji
“I think the damage is not being done to USP, the damage is to the Fiji government because of their actions in violating our human rights.”

This kind of passionate battle augurs well for USP: “Its international reputation is enhanced, that there are people in it with ethical people trying to clean it up.”

Ethics, integrity and good governance mattered.

“My message to the students is very clear. Come to USP, a great regional institution, committed staff, we are there, it remains the premier regional institution and when this vice-chancellor is back he will continue on the march to make sure USP becomes an even better institution and be ready as a university for the next 50 years.”

Michael Field, the New Zealand author and an independent journalist, has also been deported from Fiji on several occasions under different prime ministers and remains persona non grata. This article is republished from The Pacific Newsroom with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The deported head of the University of the South Pacific, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, says his expulsion from Fiji is “a classic case of beating the whistleblower up,” and he has vowed to continue in the role from Nauru.

In an interview with ABC Pacific Beat from Australia, Professor Pal Ahluwalia has detailed his sudden arrest and deportation, reports Pacnews.

He and his partner, Sandra Price, both Australian citizens, were detained in their home in the Fiji capital Suva by police and immigration officials around 11pm Wednesday night, and put on a plane bound for Brisbane yesterday morning.

“I said I need to know who you are before I open the door, and [the officer at the door] said, ‘if you don’t open this door within three seconds, and we’ll break the door down’.

“So we let him in,” he told Pacific Beat.

“I was trying to speak with the Australian High Commissioner and about four people manhandled me and grabbed my phone off me, and really sort of roughed me up.”

He said the officers later apologised.

In other developments today:

Still vice-chancellor
Professor Ahluwalia said he remained the vice-chancellor of USP, and has told the ABC he plans to fly to Nauru and will continue his administration of the regional body from there.

In a statement, the Fiji government claimed Professor Ahluwalia and Price were ordered to leave Fiji after continuous breaches of the Immigration Act.

“No foreigner is permitted to conduct themselves in a manner prejudicial to the peace, defence, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, security or good government of Fiji,” the statement said.

No specific details of the alleged breached were provided.

Professor Ahluwalia believes he was deported because he raised concerns about widespread mismanagement at the university under his predecessor.

“I don’t believe either Sandy or I have done anything wrong”.

“This is a classic case of beating the whistleblower up,” he said.

Victim of a witchhunt
Professor Ahluwalia has previously claimed he was the victim of a witchhunt, after raising concerns about governance issues and financial mismanagement at the university under the previous vice-chancellor.

In a confidential report that was later leaked to the media, he alleged widespread financial irregularities under his predecessor Professor Rajesh Chandra and the current pro-chancellor Winston Thompson, including massive salary increases, misappropriation of allowances and unearned promotions.

The report prompted an investigation by USP which substantiated some of his findings and called for stronger oversight by the University Council.

Despite that USP’s executive committee suspended him last year, a move which prompted protests from students and staff, and was later overturned by the council.

As the Council meeting has begun I am not allowed to join. Please keep praying. pic.twitter.com/azJw1AAAdt

— Professor Pal Ahluwalia, USP VC (@pal_vcp) February 4, 2021

On his Twitter feed today, Professor Ahluwalia said he and his wife Sandy were “overwhelmed by the support we have received from staff, students and globally”.

“We are humbled and inspired by your prayers,” he added.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

If there were any doubts about Jacinda Ardern’s ability to deliver the goods as a campaigner, then they were quashed by her masterful performance against Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday.

Ardern made what is being reported as a “stunning attack” on the Australian Government, while standing alongside the Australian PM in a highly-orchestrated press conference. She declared his Government were in the wrong for deporting people to New Zealand who have very little connection with our country. She said, “We have a simple request. Send back Kiwis, genuine Kiwis – do not deport your people and your problems.” And she concluded: “We will own our people. We ask that Australia stop exporting theirs.”

Ardern’s extraordinary attack, and the reaction, is well covered by the Herald here: NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lashes Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison – the reaction.

For a good report on the press conference, see Henry Cooke’s account: Extraordinary scene as Jacinda Ardern directly confronts Scott Morrison over deportations. He says the confrontation was highly unusual: “Ardern went for the jugular”, Morrison responded strongly, and “They didn’t just make their points and leave it at that – they directly argued with each other”.

Cooke looks at the motivations of both sides: “There was no softening of positions on either side. Both prime ministers were clearly playing to domestic audiences. Morrison got to look tough on criminals while Ardern got to look like a leader unafraid to smash another politician in the face when needed. It was quite a show.”

I’ve written for the Guardian today about the political calculations behind the PM’s performance – see: Taking on Scott Morrison over deportees is a win-win strategy for Jacinda Ardern.

In one respect, the attack is clearly an attempt by the Government to deal with the Opposition’s strong push on law and order issues: “It’s election year and National started the year ramping up talk about criminal gangs in New Zealand. While that’s to be expected every election year, there is evidence that the Australian deportation policy has contributed not just to growth in criminal activity but, alarmingly, to the establishment of a whole new gang culture imported from Australia.”

I explain the PM couldn’t let the National own this issue: “Ardern needed to be seen to be doing something about it, and directly confronting Morrison on his home turf certainly got everyone’s attention. Making this stand on the international stage, in such a commanding fashion, also ensured that opposition leader Simon Bridges was overshadowed and left with few options to attack her on.”

This was a departure for Ardern, who has been relatively quiet in dealing with other world leaders recently over other big issues. For example, last year she met with Donald Trump but did not raise any contentious issues such as climate change – see my Guardian column at the time: Ardern was supposed to be the anti-Trump, but she failed to speak truth to power.

So, Ardern has answered her critics and shown she will stand up to bigger countries when necessary. As I argued in today’s Guardian column, “Her supporters want to see her ruffle feathers internationally on issues of principle and humanitarianism, especially at a time when critics say she has been too pragmatic. Compassion, particularly when it comes to migrants, is one of her defining political characteristics, and in Scott Morrison she has almost the perfect foil. Standing up for the rights of New Zealand citizens abroad is always a winner.”

For more background on the political threat the deportation issue poses for the Government, and why Ardern had to respond so strongly, see Luke Malpass’ PM Jacinda Ardern gets a win in ScoMo’s territory.

He explains that deportations are linked to concern about a rise in gang problems here, made even more galling by the fact that New Zealand doesn’t treat Australians in the same way. Malpass says the deportation move “has sparked a crime wave in New Zealand, boosted gang membership and introduced a whole new Australian gang, the Comancheros, to these shores. It is a fair gripe. Under New Zealand law, with few exceptions, if you’ve been on these shores for 10 years you are considered New Zealand’s problem.”

National has started to make political capital out of this, and have been campaigning hard on the need to reciprocate and deport Australians, and this is worrying Labour: “The fascinating thing domestically is how the gangs and deportations issue is clearly now starting to nip at Labour’s heels. It has not been the party of law and order for many decades”, but with Ardern’s response on Friday, “Law and order just became a bigger part of the election campaign.”

In terms of impressing supporters, the strategy worked. For example, Labour blogger Greg Presland wrote about how Ardern had effectively snookered Bridges and shown her toughness: “National with its latest tough on crime approach will be hating this. Not only has Jacinda again displayed a backbone of steel but she has again shown that she is one of the most remarkable International leaders. The justice of her argument is clear.  And she has trashed traditional notions of how New Zealand Australia relations are conducted when making her point” – see: Do not deport your people and your problems to New Zealand.

Even some of the more sceptical voices on the left watched Ardern’s performance with great appreciation. For example, blogger Martyn Bradbury says “Jacinda stepped up……she is just such a class act isn’t she? She has acted with real leadership… She’s just amazing” – see: Jacinda robs Simon Bridges of his Australian thunder.

Bradbury also sees the electoral strategy as very smart, saying “Last week I thought Bridges had made a break through moment by promising to deport Australian criminals back home to Australia”, but now “she makes Simon’s earlier announcement of reciprocity look blunt and desperate”.

Ardern’s strong attack on the Australian Government over deportations was justified, according to Guardian reporter Ben Doherty, who specialises in immigration issues. He says: “Australia is unambiguously in the wrong here, and it has been consistently for years” – see: Not much love actually: Jacinda Ardern was right to call out Australia’s ‘corrosive’ policies.

Doherty argues: “countries are responsible for the people they create…They are Australian, and they are Australia’s responsibility. Just as parents can’t spurn their children who behave badly, states can’t simply foist people they find difficult onto other countries. The Australian government mounts arguments around national security and safety, but they are spurious, and made for the hackneyed political gain of being seen as tough on crime, and harsh towards ‘others’.”

Although Ardern is being widely celebrated for speaking out so strongly on Australia’s treatment of deportees, there are rumblings about her silence, so far, on controversial statements from one of her own ministers. On Saturday, NZ First’s Shane Jones went on Newshub Nation to say this about immigration: “If you want another million, 2 million, 3 million people, we should debate it and there should be a mandate, rather than opening up the options, unfettered, and everyone comes here from New Delhi. I don’t like that idea at all. I think the number of students that have come from India have ruined many of those institutions” – see Dan Satherley’s Shane Jones says Indian students have ‘ruined’ NZ academic institutions.

David Cormack suggests there is a clear mismatch between Ardern’s treatment of Morrison and her continued leniency towards Jones: “So as our Prime Minister was standing next to a man who has the leadership skills of a potato and telling him to change Australia’s domestic policy on deporting criminals, a man who sits in her Cabinet was back at home belching out vile racism. And will she say anything about it? I hope so, but I’m not holding my breath” – see: Jacinda Ardern’s deafening silence over Shane Jones ‘racist’ comments (paywalled).

Finally, comedian Oscar Kightley is impressed with Ardern’s press conference on Friday, saying it “felt like a turning point in terms of our relationship with Australia. Finally, a leader from here was willing to stand up and say what New Zealanders have been thinking since this discriminatory treatment started – see his broader outline of how this latest spat fits into the long-running relationship between the two countries: Jacinda Ardern’s shirtfront on ScoMo a turning point in trans-Tasman relations.

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

An Australian doctoral researcher whose honeymoon plans in Indonesia included a cultural festival in the insecure Papua region has been deported after Indonesian officials accused her of being a journalist, a news agency reports.

Belinda Lopez, a fluent Bahasa speaker, is back in Australia with a week left of her holiday but her plans ruined.

Her husband had already been barred from boarding the flight to Bali because his Dutch passport had less than six months validity. She was forced to fly alone.

READ MORE: Amnesty International report on West Papua

Lopez told the Jakarta correspondent of the US-based  Associated Press agency she had been detained on arrival in Bali on Friday and had been told she would be deported on a 10pm flight on Saturday.

She told of her ordeal at the weekend on social media, saying immigration officials wanted to know if she was a journalist and repeatedly asked her if she had “done something bad to Indonesia.”

Saturday’s Asia Pacific Report.

-Partners-

Almost a decade ago she was a subeditor for English-language newspapers in Jakarta and had produced podcasts for Australia’s state broadcaster ABC Radio National This Is About programme.

As a former journalist she was described on a website as having won awards as a producer for Radio Netherlands Worldwide in 2012 and 2013.

‘Emerging creators’
“As an educator and producer, she has worked with several not-for-profit organisations, encouraging emerging creators and local communities to tell their own stories,” the website said.

She is currently a PhD student at Sydney’s Macquarie University, researching the cultural experiences of migrants to Java, Indonesia’s most populous island.

Being deported is “devastating,” Lopez told AP.

“It’s the first place I moved to as an adult, have visited so many times since, to learn the language and to visit people who have become some of my best friends in the world,” she said in a WhatsApp message.

Her holiday plans included the Baliem festival in the Melanesian region of Papua that Indonesia strictly controls, including restricting foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers from visiting.

A pro-independence insurgency has continued in the Melanesian region since it was annexed by Indonesia in the early 1960s.

Indonesia’s police and military are frequently accused of human rights abuses in Papua, reports AP.

Unlawful killings
A recent Amnesty International report documented 95 unlawful killings by security forces in Papua since 2008.

Lopez told AP she had been refused a visa renewal two years ago in Papua because officials suspected she was a journalist. At that time they said she could not re-enter Indonesia for six months, according to Lopez.

The head of the Immigration Office at Ngurah Rai airport in Bali, Amran Aris, said Indonesia’s military had added Lopez to a government blacklist as a “covert journalist”.

He said he couldn’t give other details because it was a state secret.

“We only carry out the duties as her name is listed on the government’s blacklist, so we have to refuse her entry,” said Aris.

The Pacific Media Centre’s director Professor David Robie described the treatment given Lopez as “shameful”.

He said it was high time Indonesian authorities dropped its “paranoid” and “secretive” policy and allowed an open door with journalists and researchers freely visiting the two provinces of Papua and West Papua.

Dr Robie is convenor of the Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz