KEY POINTS:
After spending the night in a Fiji detention centre, Fairfax journalist Michael Field has this morning been put on a flight back to New Zealand.
Field was separated from other journalists arriving in Nadi last night and told he had been blacklisted.
Photographer John Selkirk, whom Field was
travelling with, was allowed through and is today at work there.
Fairfax group editor John Crowley told NZPA that Field was put on a flight at 8.45am, due to arrive in Auckland late this morning.
Field told the Dominion Post last night he was uncomfortable about being detained.
"They seem to have picked on me and I'm not happy about it."
He spent a number of hours being held at the airport, before being taken a nearby detention centre about 3am.
"He was kept under guard there during the night," Crowley said.
His travel documents and cellphone were taken off him, but he was allowed to keep his laptop.
Crowley said Field was not questioned "to any great extent" but it was made clear to him that the authorities were unhappy about some of the stories he had written recently about the situation in Fiji.
Field had initially been able to maintain contact with Fairfax through texting on his cellphone but that contact dried up once his phone was confiscated.
Crowley said he received a text from Field shortly after 6am and had talked several times since.
Field was "not in great shape", mainly because he had got little sleep during the night, and had found his detention "pretty unnerving".
While allowing Field to retain his laptop, guards appeared nervous about him using it, and checked on him every hour or so during the night.
Field had made at least two trips to Fiji since the coup led by military commander Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama in December, without any problem, Crowley said.
"He's now been told he's on a blacklist."
Crowley said no decision had been made yet on whether Fairfax would send another reporter to Fiji, but that it would be considered today, given that the company had a photographer working there.
Consideration would also be given to contacting Fijian authorities about Field's detention and his inclusion on a "blacklist".
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokeswoman Emma Reilly said officials had already spoken to Field this morning and would be likely to speak to him again after his return today.
"We'll be conveying concerns to the Fijian authorities over what's happened to him," she said.
"We're also following up indications from him that some of his personal documents may have been withheld. If that is the situation, we'll be pursuing getting them back."
Secretary of the Media Freedom Committee of the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) Lincoln Gould said the body was keeping international groups such as the World Association of Newspapers in Paris and the CPU's British counterpart informed: "Just in case there's any opportunity to help with international pressure."
- NZPA
