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Armed protesters hold prime minister in parliament |
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May 20, 2000
SUVA, Fiji, MAY 19 (AP) - In an apparent coup, armed protesters stormed Fiji's parliament Friday and locked Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and seven Cabinet ministers in an upstairs room, Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio and local media reported.
At least two shots were fired inside the building during the attack by seven masked men wearing civilian clothes, which began at about 10 a.m. (2200 GMT Thursday), New Zealand's National Radio reported from Suva.
Nobody was reported injured in the attack, but local media reported that mobs of youths later began rampaging through Suva's street and looting shops.
Tension has been building for months in Fiji between minority ethnic Indians, who make up about 44 percent of the island nation's 813,000 population, and the majority Fijians, who account for 51 percent of the population.
Fijian nationalists accuse Chaudhry, an ethnic Indian, of pushing through policies favoring Indians, including controversial attempts to persuade Fijian landowners to renew expiring leases on farm land held by thousands of ethnic Indian tenants who are the core of his political support.
The attack came on the first anniversary of the election of Chaudhry's ethnically Indian-dominated government.
However, the cause of Friday's violence was not immediately known.
Sitiveni Rabuka, a former army colonel who led two coups in 1987, was in parliament negotiating with the gunmen, the New Zealand Foreign Affairs ministry said. Rabuka, who held power in Fiji for 12 years after the coups, was accompanied by senior army and police officials, an apparent indication that the initial attack had no military backing.
All phone lines into Fiji appeared to have been cut, as they were following the 1987 coups.
Local news reports identified the coup leader as businessman George Speight, son of opposition Tailevu lawmaker, Sam Speight.
Parliament was sitting at the time of the attack, and New Zealand's National Radio said it appeared that all 52 governing party lawmakers were being held. Opposition lawmakers and a group of about 70 students who had been in parliament were released unharmed.
Shortly after the storming, stores in Suva and throughout the country began shutting and boarding their windows and workers headed for home. Local radio stations were broadcasting regular updates on the situation in Fijian, English and Hindi.
Speaking from Fiji, Australian David Pitt, finance manager with the Air Fiji airline, said some foreigners were preparing to leave the country.
"I've got a couple of expats here who are getting ready to leave. At this stage I've no plans to leave. But if it gets worse, of course, we probably will," he said.
Observers said unrest had been building to a head recently on the island group.
Babu Guyan Singh, leader of a New Zealand-based Hindu religious group dominated by Fijian Indians, said he was told a coup was in the works. "I was in Fiji about a week ago and I was told by the Fijian people that May 19 will be the day," Singh told ABC Radio.
Earlier this month, Chaudhry's government banned protest marches, saying police had warned they might not be able to cope with large-scale demonstrations.
On April 28, several thousand Fijians rallied against the Chaudhry government in a march organized by opposition politicians of the former ruling Fijian Political Party, which Chaudhry's Labor Party defeated in a May 1999 general election under a new constitution. Chaudhry's government allowed the protest to continue.
Since the election, there has been a groundswell of Fijian nationalist opposition to Chaudhry.
Criticism centers mainly on attempts by Chaudhry, who is of Indian descent, to persuade Fijian landowners to renew expiring leases on farm land held by thousands of ethnic Indian tenants who are the core of his political support.
Opposition leader Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, a key figure behind two 1987 army coups that toppled a government in which Chaudhry was finance minister, earlier said the protest ban was "asking people to take the law into their own hands."
The government "must be ready to face the anger of the people, an anger they created by their insensitivity and arrogance, and an anger that grows by the day," he said.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff said he was extremely concerned by the violence Friday. Australia's department of foreign affairs and trade also was monitoring the situation closely but said Australians in Fiji did not appear to be in immediate danger.
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