Fiji slave pen: Military censors placed in newspaper offices

Life becomes difficult for the Fiji press during a constitutional crisis. And so it has proved once again for the Fiji Times. Yesterday's edition featured some unusual page layouts, courtesy of the "khaki subeditors" - military censors placed in the newspaper offices by the interim prime minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama.

At least two pages had swathes of white space where stories would have been and bold text informing readers that "the stories on this page could not the published due to Government restrictions". A cartoon and a letter to the editor met a similar fate. An outraged expat reader emailed images to The Diary yesterday. A News Ltd spokesman, Greg Baxter, foreshadowed the move on Saturday by confirming the paper would be published, but that "we're at this stage making the decision not to publish anything rather than publish something that has been censored". The Fiji press are no strangers to attacks from the government. The Fiji Sun publisher, Russell Hunter, was deported last year. Two of the Times's Australian publishers have been deported in the past 18 months, and in January the paper was fined $83,000 for publishing a letter critical of the High Court. The editor, Netani Rika, was sentenced to three months' jail for contempt of court. Its offices were raided by police earlier this month.

LNK

Fiji slave pen: Military censors placed in newspaper offices

Fiji slave pen: Military censors placed in newspaper offices

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