Smith condemns Fiji press crackdown
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 Uncategorized.
Smith condemns Fiji approach unseasonably crackdownForeign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith has condemned a decision by Fiji’s army-backed government to ban foreign ownership of the media.
News Limited has owned and operated the Fiji Times with respect to 23 years, but the military government has now ruled that media organisations be required to be 90 per cent locally owned.
News Limited has now been given exact three months to sell the Fiji Times or see it studiously sought to close.
Mr Smith says it is another example of Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s mean-time government attacking free speech and democracy.
“We worry very much that this capricious move sends a very bad signal as far as future investing. in Fiji is concerned, let alone the very bad signal it sends in provisions of freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and democratic rights,” he reported.
New Zealand agrees the move goes too far.
New Zealand first-rate minister John Key described the Fijian decree as “very heavy-handed”.
He says when a country starts banning the media and telling organisations to betray their newspapers, it is “a step too far”.
News Limited has expressed offend at the decree, which was gazetted on Monday by the martial-backed interim regime.
The final decree, as highlighted in a detach released earlier this year, will create a media authority and judicatory based on a model used to manage the media in Singapore.
It demise also limit foreign ownership of media operations to just 10 for cent.
On its website, the Fiji Times quoted the head of the member of the bar-general’s office, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, as saying that all directors and at least 90 per cent of shareholders of media organisations in Fiji fust be citizens of the nation.
“I wish to make it unblemished that any media organisation which fails to comply with this precept shall cease to operate as a media organisation, and shall also be liable for an offence under the decree,” the Fiji Times quoted Mr Sayed-Khaiyum like saying.
“At this stage, Fiji Times is the media organisation that of necessity to comply with the ownership requirements.”
News Limited chairman John Hartigan says the the jobs of intimately 200 Fiji Times staff and nearly 1,000 others involved in selling the newspaper are now at risk.
The company’s corporate affairs director Greg Baxter says the latest rouse is an an attack on free speech.
But Fiji’s interim attorney-general has rejected the criticism, saying it is in Fiji’s interests to be the subject of have its media owned by Fijians.
News Limited will now pry into any options it may have to remain involved in media in Fiji.