Charity leader's plea for Fiji coup's child victims

By CATHERINE MASTERS

When Irshad Ali talks about his homeland his eyes cannot hide the pain.

Fiji is in a terrible state, says the head of Save the Children Fiji, as he asks the New Zealand public and Government not to forget his country.

Mr Ali's biggest concern is for the children, who he believes are the real victims of George Speight's May coup.

They were growing up in a volatile, violent Pacific nation that was losing its tag of "paradise."

The aftermath had hit ijian and Fiji Indian children.

At least 5000 were not attending school - even the bus fare was too much for many families to afford in the economic slump that has reigned since the coup.

Unemployment is widespread, with 8000 people out of jobs in the formal sector and an unknown number of jobs gone in the informal sector - such as stall owners and traders.

Around 20,000 people are out of work in the tourism industry.

Mr Ali said this made it hard for parents to feed their children.

Rural children were luckier because they had crops and food from the sea, but in Suva the number of street kids was growing and it was not uncommon to see children scavenging.

Children aged 7 and younger had become aggressive petty thieves.

Violence had traumatised them, said Mr Ali: "They suffer the most and they are the first victims."

He said violence could erupt at any time, but was worse when Speight is brought to town for court appearances.

Mr Ali is a public figure in Fiji and was in New Zealand to raise awareness of the children's plight.

He said the frightening social implication of the violence was that children were submerged in it.

It became part of their reality, turning the country into a violent community.

Fiji Indians were still being evicted from their homes.

"This is often violent and very traumatic. The landlord will come along and push a family out. They are not allowed to take anything with them - they lose everything.

"Fiji has never seen this level of violence in its history. People are being driven from their homes, houses burned down, women raped, farms raided, property looted."

Racism had been around for a long time but became set during the 1987 coups, he said.

The leaders of the present coup were in school then.

"They have seen that one way of getting things done is through force. It has become cultured into these young people. It's become a way of life. Thirteen years later they go and take the Government and now they use guns.

"The same is happening in the school system now.

"They see this is a way of life now. They see being racially divided as a way of life for them."

Save the Children aimed to get as many children back into school as it could, believing that investment in education is the only way forward for the country.

It is running programmes such as a theatre group to go to schools and try to give children an understanding of what has happened.

Around $300,000 had been raised in Fiji but that money would be gone by next month, Mr Ali said.

The fact that a local one-day street appeal raised $78,000 showed that many Fijians still cared.

He urged New Zealanders to give money if they could and said he was disappointed with the size of the Government's $10,000 aid grant, which would go virtually nowhere.

On top of that, the Government had not looked seriously at ways of helping Fijian people who were suffering. He contrasted the Government's cash aid with that of Save the Children New Zealand, which had given $45,000.