In the face of military aggression, we blog on

Today, May 14, is the 20^th anniversary since Fiji’s first coup, led by Sitiveni Rabuka.

Two decades on from that fateful day, Fiji continues to relive lessons that should have been learnt a long time ago – that military might is not the answer to national problems.

Fiji’s media continue to report the military’s efforts to shut us down citing various reasons: we are “destroying the peace”, we are “racist”, we are “deceitful” - the list goes on.

While some other blogs (namely Resistfrankscoup) could be termed “racist”, Intelligentsiya will never condone racism or violence. We therefore despise being put under the same label as other blogs that have called for violence and made racist comments. Notwithstanding the racist and “call-to-arms” comments on other blogs, we still passionately defend our right to raise our voices.

On the topic of blogs, we would invite the military to check out Loyal Fijian’s blog (we suspect the army already knows about it.) The last post made on April 11 (just one post in April and four in March!) threatens violence and even death to bloggers who are critical of the military junta.

See the red circles in the screen-grab on the right of Loyal Fijian’s irregular blog. (Click on the image to get a better view)

In contrast, Intelligentsiya has never called for violence of any kind (our motto is “Intelligent Resistance”), even against those we criticise.

Despite the assurances given by the junta’s “civilian” faces to the EU’s officials in Brussels last month where interim Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum tried his smart-talk only to be cut down by the chair of the meeting, the military is insistent on its “right” to take in anybody it suspects of being a blogger we are “threats to national security”.

The detention of several prominent people last week including businessman Ulaiasi Taoi, who was tortured as a blogging suspect, also goes against the word of self-proclaimed prime minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama on March 6 when he said soldiers would not “condone violence”.

“Following a meeting with senior officers on March 6, 2007, Commodore Bainimarama said the soldiers would only be involved in manning checkpoints, community work, and public relations,” Fijilive reported.

On radio reports today, army mouthpiece Major Neumi Leweni says the army’s IT officers are still trying to persuade FINTEL to shut down access to our blogs. We wonder what Cable and Wireless, FINTEL’s other owner thinks of this illegal pressure on the company.

While the army tries to kill our voice, we blog on regardless.