Fiji regime says it will ease emergency controls

Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

• Fiji’s military government will move on Saturday to lift a state of emergency it imposed in 2009, as the country prepares to open consultation on a new constitution, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said in a New Year’s message.
• The Public Emergency Regulations gave police and the military extended powers, imposed tough censorship on the South Pacific nation’s media and tightly controlled public assembly.
• The military government of 2006 coup leader Commodore Bainimarama overturned the country’s Constitution in 2009, imposing emergency rule after the nation’s Court of Appeal ruled the military government was illegal.
• When he seized power in a bloodless coup, Mr. Bainimarama said Fiji’s ruling political classes were corrupt, and that the existing voting system was racially based to give indigenous Fijians greater voting power than the ethnic Indians who make up around 35 per cent of the nation’s 900,000 people.
• Relations between Fiji and many countries have soured since Mr. Bainimarama seized power, and he has remained under heavy pressure to return Fiji to democracy.
• Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions and financial penalties imposed on the government. Fiji remains suspended from the British-led Commonwealth grouping of 53 nations mainly former British colonies.