Word: fijians
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...When Mahendra Chaudhry was taken hostage in 2000 along with members of his government, New Zealander Bruce Connew's eldest daughter was dating an Indian-Fijian; her sister was dating an indigenous Fijian. When the two young men spoke of Fiji, he recalls, "it was as if they were talking about two different countries." Connew, a documentary photographer, decided to put the unseen Fiji back in the picture...
...sugar district that first elected Chaudhry to Parliament. Lodging with cane grower Dharmen Kumar, Connew followed him and his neighbors as they cut cane; hauled it to the mill on old Ford trucks; tended cows, goats and grandchildren; made puja devotions; watched Hindu movies; and drank kava, the traditional Fijian narcotic. The result is Stopover, whose 60 superbly printed black-and-white photographs are on show in Wellington until...
...didn't take it seriously," says the Fijian social worker. "I thought it was just someone who disliked the government. It didn't stop me moving about the community." That was until he turned up for work and found the office of his NGO, the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy, smeared with excrement. "Then I started to realize I was putting my family in danger with this kind of work...
...vast squatter settlements. Out of sight of the tiny Pacific nation's internationally famous resorts with their manicured grounds, picture-postcard beaches and beaming staff, a swathe of desperate humanity resides in flimsy and illegally built shanties, without sewerage, running water, electricity or garbage disposal. This mainly Indo-Fijian underclass represents more than 10 per cent of the country's 900,000 population. A third of them have no income at all; four out of five lack the means to provide three meals a day for their families...
...improved living conditions is part of a global trend, but in Fiji the country's land-ownership policies have exacerbated the problem. Laws passed in the 1970s obliged non-indigenous farmers to take 30-year leases on the land they worked. As the leases expired, the Government encouraged indigenous Fijian landowners not to renew them, but instead to farm the land themselves. The non-indigenous farmers were given cash payouts to leave, but their workers received nothing...