Fiji's military government defied a High Court order and deported the Australian publisher of the South Pacific country's leading newspaper Friday, continuing a campaign of media intimidation it began within days of seizing power, the Associated Press (AP) has reported.
The coup-installed government said Fiji Times publisher Evan Hannah was a threat to national security who breached his work permit conditions, and put him on a Korean Air flight Friday to the South Korean capital, Seoul. Hannah was taken to the international airport from his home in the capital, Suva, Thursday night by immigration and security officials.
Some details from the AP report:
Officials from local airline Air Pacific declined to let Hannah aboard one of its planes after being shown a court order the paper obtained ordering the publisher to appear in court Friday, said editor Netani Rika. Ignoring the order, immigration officials put Hannah onto a Korean Air flight a short time later.
It was the second deportation of a senior media figure this year. In late February, Russell Hunter, the Australian-born publisher of The Sun, was deported for what Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama called "destabilizing" reporting.
Rika said the Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS), had "prickly and tenuous" relations with the government because of the paper's critical coverage of Bainimarama's December 2006 coup, Fiji's fourth in 20 years.
"This regime is by far the most difficult in terms of relations with the media," Rika told The Associated Press. "They are going to continue to intimidate us. I don't see them stopping, given they've gone this far."
The Fiji Times has a daily circulation of 40,000 among the country's 730,000 population, and 29,000 separate visitors to its Internet site daily.
Shortly after the coup, troops occupied some offices of newspapers and radio and television broadcasters, demanding the right to scrutinize reports before they were aired or published. Bainimarama regularly accuses the media of misrepresenting him.
