Tears and fears on fleeing Fiji

By NAOMI LARKIN and FRANCESCA MOLD

Each day Parveen Nair prays that his 10-year-old son is still alive and will be able to leave Fiji for a safe life in New Zealand.

The Auckland hospital cleaner fears that his son, Yogesh, and his parents who look after the boy will become victims of the racial violence that has swept Fiji since the May 19 coup.

The family live in the predominantly Indian village of Cuvu near Sigatoka. Already neighbouring homes have been broken into and residents terrorised, said Mr Nair.

"I am so worried. If anything happened to my parents, my son would be alone. There is no family there."

Raids, theft, beatings and burning of homes have been occurring regularly in small Fiji Indian-dominated rural communities since coup leader George Speight and his gunmen stormed Parliament and took the elected Government hostage for 56 days.

Speight claimed that Fiji Indians had too much power and threatened the rights of indigenous Fijians. Although Speight has since been taken into custody awaiting trial for treason, his coup resulted in the suspension of Fiji's multiracial constitution.

Mr Nair first lodged an application for his son to be given New Zealand residency last October.

Attempts to contact Yogesh's mother, who had moved to Canada, initially delayed the application, but since May his application has become just one of thousands New Zealand Immigration Service staff, both here and in Fiji, are scrambling to process.

Kerry Greig, manager of the service's Suva branch, told the Herald that the office had been closed until last Friday because of concerns for staff safety. Only mail and courier applications had been handled.

The takeover of Monasavu dam in July by Speight supporters meant the office, like most other businesses, had been hit with lengthy power cuts, she said.

"Obviously we are far busier than usual and this is going to cause delays across the board."

Applications were also being sent to the service's staff in New Zealand to help speed processing.

In July, the Suva office posted out 3000 applications for tourist visas and 1505 resident application forms. For the same time last year, the figures were 500 and 45 respectively, said Ms Greig.

One family able to flee the unrest arrived on Saturday.

The Prasads had an emotional reunion with relatives when they arrived at Auckland Airport.

Gaya Prasad, wife Sushila Devi and children Shreeka Devi and Amar Prasad lived just hundreds of metres away from a school in the Suva suburb of Nasinu where Speight gathered regularly with his supporters during the coup.

Mr Prasad, who was a public servant for the former Mahendra Chaudhry-led Government, said his family lived in constant fear that they would be attacked.

Some nights Speight supporters pelted their home with rocks.

"We feared for our lives from the very beginning. We had to hide physically and also emotionally to survive," said Mr Prasad.

Hundreds of Speight supporters had gathered at the school each day until about two weeks ago when nine were arrested by the military and taken away in trucks.

Mr Prasad said his family would never return to Fiji.

When they had left their village, several hundred fellow Fiji Indians had come to farewell them.

"They pleaded with us to ask the New Zealand Government to relax immigration policies to allow Fijian Indians to escape.

"These people need the support of New Zealanders."

Mr Prasad said many Fiji Indian families were being forced off their land, had no money to rebuild their lives and were going without food as many factories had closed.

He said that Speight had to be heavily penalised for his actions so that a message would be sent to all Fijians that overthrowing the Government would have serious consequences.

"If the message is not clear, then this will continue to happen. There will be another George Speight," said Mr Prasad.

The Fijian Bureau of Statistics said that more than 900 people left Fiji in the two months to the end of June. More than 90 per cent of them were Fiji Indians, prompting fears of an exodus like that which followed the 1987 military coups.

About 67,000 Fiji Indians left then, creating a vacuum in business and bureaucratic leadership which took more than a decade to fill.

Almost a third of those who left in May and June held professional, managerial or supervisory jobs.