Speight and his gunmen took Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and other politicians in the Fiji Labour Party–led government hostage in Parliament. A month and a half after the crisis began, Chaudhry and 26 others were still being held as Speight and the military continue to jockey for position on small questions while agreeing on the big ones, especially on the overthrow of the government.

Mohan Singh, 60, has worked his land his entire life. He is a supporter of the Labour Party, Fiji's only nonracial party, which was founded in 1985. In a June 18 phone interview from his farm, he explained that in 1987 he was detained and questioned by police for his outspoken opposition to the overthrow of the first Labour Party–led government, barely one month after it came to power.

Singh, whose family came from Punjab, India, 60 to 70 years ago, was the first to be born in Fiji. The farm is between Ba and Tavua in the Indo-Fijian village of Tagitagi on the northern coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's main island.

Most Fijian farmers, whether of Indian or indigenous descent, are tenants on long-term leases. Some 82 percent of the land is controlled by the Native Lands Trust Board, which in turn is controlled by and administered in the interests of the tiny number of wealthy chiefs who sit on the Great Council of Chiefs. Many indigenous Fijian farmers know the board doesn't represent their interests, "but the bulk of them won't say so openly," he said.

Singh is unusual among small-to-medium Fijian farmers because he owns 12 acres of freehold land. Small farmers lease anywhere from 5 to 10 acres. Most Indo-Fijian farmers are descended from indentured laborers who were brought to Fiji from India from 1879 to 1916 by the British colonial administration to work for Australian sugar giant CSR in segregated, near-slavery conditions.  
 
Many farmers work as cane cutters
Many producers are too impoverished to survive off the sale of their cane at harvest time, so many also work as cane cutters in gangs organized by foremen known as sardars. The gangs move from farm to farm cutting the cane with machetes and loading it on trucks that take it to the processing mills. There are three mills on Viti Levu and one on the island of Vanua Levu.

A member of the National Farmers Union, which counts both indigenous and Indo-Fijian farmers as members, Singh has "tried to convince people not to harvest." He summed up the initial view of many in the area as "Release the hostages and then we will cut cane." Many see the release of Chaudhry, who has an image as an uncompromising leader, as crucial to their ability to resist in a sustained and organized way.

The army presence is highly visible in the western part of Viti Levu--where opposition to both Speight's coup and the military government is widespread--and is "much heavier than in 1987, with roadblocks and checkpoints everywhere," Singh said. This repression has effectively intimidated many indigenous and Indo-Fijians from participating in protests planned for early June in the village of Veiseisei and the town of Lautoka.

"If it were possible, we would have gone to [the capital] Suva to protest," he said. Calling it a "campaign of intimidation," Singh angrily explained, "The military is obviously working with Speight."

"The people are scared," he said, "They know Chaudhry was beaten, [trade union leader] Felix Anthony was detained and beaten, and NFU leaders have been locked up and beaten too."

Singh described other pressure and intimidation to end the harvest boycott in the area around Ba, known as a stronghold of the Labour Party. Agents, known as columbars, of the government-owned Fiji Sugar Corporation are visiting farmers in their homes and threatening people with dire consequences if they don't begin harvesting, he said. And many sardars are telling their labor gangs they will lose their bonuses if they don't start cutting.  
 
Intimidation against farmers
He noted widespread stories from other parts of Fiji of people being burned out of their homes and women being raped by thugs. "Nothing like that is happening in this area," he said. But, he worried, "People in [nearby indigenous Fijian] Vadravadra village talk nicely now but I don't expect it will last. Until recently, I didn't feel my neighbors would find common ground with Speight."

Fluent in both the Fijian and Fiji Hindi languages, Singh noted that the Fijian-language radio has ominously been telling of the 1970s expulsion of all ethnic Indians from Uganda by the Idi Amin regime. As in Fiji, many had lived there for generations.

All these pressures had led the majority of farmers in the area to acquiesce to beginning the harvest on June 16, he noted with dismay. The Ba sugar mill was now working, but was the only one of the country's four mills doing so, he said.

Attitudes on whether to maintain the harvest boycott cut across party allegiances. For example, Jagnath Sami, a prominent cane farmer and a leader of the Fiji Cane Growers Association who stood unsuccessfully for the National Federation Party (NFP) in the 1999 election, has opposed harvesting, Singh explained. The NFP, which before the rise of the nonracial Labour Party traditionally claimed the allegiance of most Indo-Fijians across classes, did not win a single seat.

As for the overall situation, Singh noted that in the towns many shops were open, teachers were reporting for work even if no students had returned to classrooms, and "the Fiji Trades Union Federation has not put on a general stoppage" because of fears for the safety of the hostages. "So what can farmers do by ourselves? We are carrying the burden," he said.

Asked about the record of the now-deposed Labour-led government, Singh explained: "It was the best of all governments. Prices we received for our cane were at an all-time high. The Chaudhry government forgave $F27 million [$US12.4 million] in [emergency drought assistance] loans when it came into office. This was like a great burden being lifted" off small farmers, he said. Fertilizer prices came down too. Most of all, government dealings were "transparent," unlike the previous government of Sitiveni Rabuka, where corruption was rampant.

Doug Cooper is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.  
 
 
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