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Fiji throws its heaviest book at dissenters
The Australian - January 12, 2010
Rowan Callick – Fiji's military government is pursuing a new strategy to silence critics: using the country's Independent Commission Against Corruption to prosecute adversaries for minor misdemeanours.
So said one of Fiji's best-known human rights lawyers, Imrana Jalal, after she was charged by the Fiji ICAC with seven counts of operating a takeaway restaurant business without a licence. She denied the charges.
The commission did not explain why it was prosecuting such a case, for which the maximum penalty is an $11 fine. Fiji Law society president Dorsami Naidu said the commission "should not have become involved. I can't call it corruption".
Suva Magistrates Court on Monday adjourned the matter until January 28, and directed that Ms Jalal and her husband and business partner Ratu Sakiusa Tuisolia not be allowed to travel overseas together.
Ms Jalal, a commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists, said that the restaurant of which she is a director, Hook and Chook, had applied for a licence but because of a delay in the Suva City Council's processing of the application, it had begun to trade – like many other businesses in the city.
The FICAC, established by the military government, is headed by Lieutenant Colonel George Langman, who said upon his appointment the commission was "drawing up a national strategy to refocus on the big issues of corruption".
Ms Jalal was served with the licence charges by ICAC officers while she was staying with friends at a private villa 200km west of Suva.
When her husband's case reached court two weeks ago, magistrate Mary Muir questioned why the ICAC and not the city council was pursuing so minor a misdemeanour. Last week, she and two other magistrates, Elsie Hudson and Eparama Rokoika, were sacked.
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