Hi Graham, My mother was brought up in fiji, came to nz for high school and uni then had a family here, she's now back in fiji living there for the past few years. We certainly hold different political views on NZ politics and enjoy debating with each other (she barely ever storms out of my house and drives away without saying 'bye' anymore.)
So now that she's in fiji I'm more interested in the politics in the country and discuss the situation over there with her.
I recently sent her a link to this blog post: http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2010/05/fiji-backwards-to-barbarism.html
She emailed back saying it had been on the cover of the paper, she reckons it's not Bainimarama doing it, it's the local chiefs - and the flogging won't happen. She mentioned it could be that there is already a bit of violence over there anyway that that the threat of a flogging wasn't much of a threat at all!!
She said the part about the women not wearing shorts will happen, it's actually always been an unwritten rule of respect - all tourist have to wear sulus when they visit the villages - no shorts allowed as a sign of respect. She made the comment that often kiwis comment on these sort of issues without knowing the culture there. Village life is very traiditional and young girls "going out of the village learning city habits and taking them back to the village is not a good thing." She seemed to think things were actually getting better there, that there were new womens rights and laws in effect already.
I disagreed with many of her points but I believe strongly in democracy and human/womans/mens rights and am not that flexible in my opinion on these issues when people say "it's better than it was so it's ok to take these rights away from people"
I'm also surprised by how unconcerned people seem to be by the situation in Fiji. But then again, I think about all of the family, friends, strangers I talk to about the political issues in New Zealand and I am also just as surprised by the reaction, people seem concerned, but uneducated on the political issues here too.
I wish I knew how to change this...