FIJI INDIAN PLIGHT
INDIA SHOULD SEEK UNITED NATIONS INTERVENTION TO SEND PEACE KEEPING FORCE TO FIJI TO PROTECT INDIAN LIVES, PROPERTY AND TO RESTORE DEMOCRACY
Dravida Peravai launched a campaign on 1.6.2000
After launching the campaign in a Memorandum to Union External Affairs Minister and Union Defense Minister , Dravida Peravai said:
Our party yesterday organized state level campaign in the Pondicherry enclave of the Union Territory of Pondicherry to draw the attention on the urgent need to exert diplomatic and other pressure on the current illegal and unconstitutional government by coup and coup within coup to secure the release of the duly elected Prime Minister of Fiji Mr. Mahendra Pal Choudry and fellow Parliamentarians and to ensure proper protection to the properties and lives of the people of Indian origin, whom it seems are fleeing to Australia and New Zealand as they did when the coup of Colonel Rabuka in 1987. our party through these 10 meetings had demanded India to take up this issue to United Nations, an institution created at the collective will of the nations of the democratic era, which cannot remain a silent spectator to the hijacking of the democracy by gun trotting groups.
Mahakavi Bharathiar, the only poet who penned a poem on the plight of Indian women in the year 1916-17 had narrated how on promising jobs Britishers took Indians as contract labour to Fiji and treated them worse than the animals. They were slaves working in sugarcane fields, the poet lamented. As a befitting tribute to this great poet, our campaign to highlight Fiji crisis started from his memorial. We have to note that certain vested interests here are trying to twist this as a fight between indigenous communities and Indian settlers, who have usurped. According to Mr.S.K.Bhutani, a retired Indian diplomat the "land titles are coming up for review and renewal very soon and the indigenous Fijians who own land want to ensure a better deal for themselves. The lands are owned by the Fijians while those of Indian origin cultivate them. Vast tracts are under sugarcane and with Indian hands" [ The Hindu dated 1.2.2000 page 14]
This makes the position clear. From the time Bharathi penned his poem, people of Indian origin by sheer hard work without ownership yet remaining as tenants of lands belonging to Fiji's indigenous people, have risen in life economically. As per the Constitution of Fiji Article 51:The House of representatives has proportionate electoral representation for Fijians, Indians and Rotumans. English, Fijian and Hindustani have equal status [Art;4(1)] So as per this constitution Mr.Mahendra Pal Choudry was chosen by the people to be the Prime Minister.
The Indian stand calling for restoration of this duly elected Government is the right step. We should also use diplomatic and other pressure to ensure that the 1997-98 Constitution should not be replaced by another which may disenfranchise people of Indian origin and upset the applecart.
We are not as one or two critics of our party say protecting Indian interests at the cost of indigenous peoples interest. We want Indian origin people to be equal citizens and not made second class citizens in the land of their living.
While Burma refugees came, India helplessly have to bear them. when plantation labour were driven out of Ceylon, our Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri went out of his way to accept them as stateless people by signing a pact with Srimavo Bandaranaike. Both morally and politically India buckled under during the Kenyan (1968), Ugandan (1972) and other crisis, including human rights violations by Americans, to convey the impression that Indians can be badly treated anywhere by anyone in the world with impunity and without remorse writes political commentator Rajiv Dhavan [ The Hindu 2.6.2000]. In our campaign yesterday much before we could read Dhavan's article, we took the same stand. We know that when Ugandan Chief Idi Amin wanted to marry a rich Gujarati girl, her family had to abandon all properties and run back to India. In Pondicherry also we have a sugar mill which was shifted from Uganda due to these anti-Indian tirades,
When globe had shrunk into a village, while settlers from Europe and Africa get amalgamated and are rulers of the destiny of America, if people of Indian origin could be made second class citizens and driven back by a tiny island of Fiji, what is the purpose in India claiming to be a nuclear super power, if it cannot verbally threaten Fiji. From May 19 till yesterday, the day when India dispatched an emissary the delayed response and silence of all with the exception of Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala is condemnable. Let Government hereafter be quick to defend people of Indian origin.
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