[DOWNLOAD] "Traditional Fijian Apology As a Political Strategy." by Oceania ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Traditional Fijian Apology As a Political Strategy.
- Author : Oceania
- Release Date : January 01, 2005
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 327 KB
Description
When the coup d'Etat took place on the 19th of May, 2000, more than thirty Fijian and Indo-Fijian members of parliament were taken hostage. They were released on the 13th of July. That day, around 6pm, the local radio station 96FM broadcast the event live from the occupied parliament building. His voice tinged with emotion, the Fijian journalist Malakai Veisamasama described the moment that people had been hoping for for nearly two months. Pinned to the radio in my apartment in Samabula, I was particularly intrigued when he spoke of the 'emotional moment' when Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry (1) drank a bowl of kava offered to him by George Speight, the apparent leader of the coup d'Etat, who had held him captive in the Fijian parliament. According to the radio report, at dusk on that day in July 2000 a yaqona ceremony was presented to the hostages before they were released as a sign of apology, and Mahendra Chaudhry was the first to drink from the cup. Three days later, the Fiji's Daily Post reported that the deposed Prime Minister had accepted a tabua (the tooth of a whale) and a bowl of kava, signifying that he forgave the man who had held him hostage for 56 days ('Fiji waits for axe to fall', Daily Post, July 16, 2000:4). Yet in an interview with the Fiji Sun in August, Poseci Bune, the former Minister for Agriculture, who had been one of the hostages, denied that any ceremony of apology had been presented by George Speight to the hostages:/p pre No, there wasn't any Fijian ceremony or any sort of matanigasau