Word: suva
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...fear of cultural amnesia - particularly of the region's traditional arts and crafts - that underlay the festival's inauguration in Suva, Fiji, in 1972. As "each and every one of our countries aspire to economic prosperity, we are all deeply conscious that the quality of life is what matters in the end," Fiji's then-Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, told delegates. In the 36 years since, the event has opened itself up to cross-cultural exchange (Townsville, 1988), contemporary art (Noumea, 2000) and, most recently, the arts of the northern Pacific (Palau, 2004), to become what the Secretariat...
...soon to be released research paper, Lingham has found that since 2003 the number of squatters has risen from just over 80,000 to the current 100,000, spread across about 125 settlements. He estimates that in the 30-km corridor between the nation's capital Suva and its satellite town of Nausori, 9,000 new homes are required now to cope with the 2,500 people currently facing eviction from existing settlements...
...Farming families like the Kumars, from the Nanuku squatter settlement on the coast near Suva, were among those who lost their farms and were driven into the city in the late 1990s. "My father and I went twice to the landowners to ask them to renew the lease," says Rohit Kumar. "But both times they refused. I was crying when I left. I was looking around seeing this place I had grown up farming, seeing the place where I used to play as a little boy." Today Kumar, his wife and four children are crammed into...
...court decision earlier this year appears to offer the squatters some hope. The Seventh Day Adventist church sought to remove residents from one of Fiji's oldest squatter settlements, on a steep hill and riverside land at Tamavua in Suva's northern suburbs. The church alleged it had legally purchased the squatters' home sites from local chiefs. But the squatters, known locally as "blackbirders" (Solomon Islanders brought to Fiji to work on plantations in the 1930s), argued that more than 40 years ago they were given permission by the chiefs to live on the land. Fiji High Court Justice Roger...
...Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, the decision to remove the government of Laisenia Qarase in a coup on Dec. 5 was painful but simple. "The racist policies of the past," he says, sipping coffee in his office at the Republic of Fiji Military Force Strategic HQ in Suva, "would have taken us to hell-and we would never have come back." For many observers in the outside world, most vocally Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Bainimarama's actions were an unacceptable interference in the democratic process, but the armed forces chief and now interim Prime Minister is unrepentant. "If you want...