Category Archives: Fiji

‘Fight for our lives’: Fiji calls world leaders ‘selfish’ as it lays out climate crisis blueprint

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Minister says archipelago in grave situation through no fault of its own as he unveils plan for net zero emissions and village relocation

Fiji will introduce one of the world’s most ambitious legislative programs to tackle the climate crisis, and has labelled the global community’s decision to set aside the call for global heating to be capped at 1.5C “grossly irresponsible and selfish”.

In a speech to the Fijian parliament on Wednesday morning announcing the upcoming climate change act, Fiji’s attorney general and minister for economy and climate change, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, called global heating “a fight for our lives and our livelihoods”.

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Pacific nations are ‘victims’ of Australian and New Zealand appetite for drugs, experts say

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Australia urged to take action to stop cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking from Latin America through Pacific region

Australia and New Zealand have been urged to do more to fight the drug trade across the Pacific and take responsibility for the fact that the demand for drugs in cities such as Sydney and Auckland was having devastating effects on small Pacific nations.

Drug traffickers transport cocaine and methamphetamines through Pacific nations from the US and Latin America to Australia and New Zealand, where drug users pay the highest price per gram (about A$300 or £180) for cocaine and have the highest cocaine use per capita in the world.

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‘I’ve seen terrible, terrible violence’: cocaine and meth fuel crime and chaos in Fiji

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The Pacific island nation best known as a holiday destination is grappling with a growing drug problem

In the early hours of a Saturday morning in the city of Nadi, on the west coast of Fiji’s main island, Isaiah* is sitting in a Burger King drinking Fanta through a straw and explaining how he became a drug dealer.

He started five years ago, aged 13, selling cigarettes and marijuana. Now he sells cocaine and methamphetamines.

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The new drug highway: Pacific islands at centre of cocaine trafficking boom

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Explosion in number of boats carrying cocaine and meth from Latin America to Australia is causing havoc for islands on the way

• Cocaine used as washing powder: police struggle with Pacific drug influx

It is the drug route you’ve never heard of: a multibillion-dollar operation involving cocaine and methamphetamines being packed into the hulls of sailing boats in the US and Latin America and transported to Australia via South Pacific islands more often thought of as holiday destinations than narcotics hubs.

In the past five years there has been an explosion in the number of boats, sometimes carrying more than a tonne of cocaine, making the journey across the Pacific Ocean to feed Australia’s growing and very lucrative drug habit.

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Cocaine used as washing powder: police struggle with Pacific drug influx

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Under-resourced but undeterred, Fiji’s officers battle surge in trafficking – with just one boat

• The new drug highway: Pacific islands at centre of cocaine trafficking boom

Sitiveni Qiliho, Fiji’s police commissioner, says he doesn’t watch films any more because, since taking on Fiji police’s top job two years ago, his life has enough drama.

Over the past few months he has found himself scuba diving in search of multimillion-dollar stashes of cocaine stored in huge underwater nets, arresting drug traffickers on the high seas and informing remote islands communities that the mysterious packages washing up on their beaches are full of cocaine and shouldn’t be baked into cakes or put in tea.

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‘That’s where the dream ends’: the surfers who took on a development company in Fiji

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Jona Ratu has lived on Malolo Island his entire life. One day he walked down to the beach of the land he owns with two Australian surfers to find that diggers had arrived and a Chinese development company was tearing up the reef. Ratu and his two friends started a battle that would cost tens of thousands of dollars in order to save their land.

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Reef wipeout: surfers fight China-linked mega resort in Fiji

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Jona Ratu and his friends wanted to build an eco-lodge in their corner of paradise – then the diggers arrived

It was one of the most surreal days of Jona Ratu’s life. On a May morning in 2018 he strolled down to the palm-fringed beach on a parcel of land he owns on idyllic Malolo island to find a digger parked on the coral reef.

“They just dug, they kept digging, digging, digging,” Ratu remembers.

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Tonga begins cleanup while Fiji prepares for Cyclone Gita Source: AP

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Tonga began cleaning up Tuesday after a cyclone hit overnight, while some people in the nearby Pacific nation of Fiji began preparing for the storm to hit them. Cyclone Gita destroyed homes and churches in Tonga and caused widespread power outages after it tore through the island nation just south of the capital, Nuku'alofa.

Cyclone destroys Parliament House, homes on Tonga, Fiji next

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The Pacific nation of Tonga began cleaning up damage Tuesday from a cyclone that destroyed its Parliament House, as well as homes and churches, and was intensifying as it headed toward nearby Fiji. Cyclone Gita caused power outages after tearing through the island nation just south of the capital, Nuku'alofa, with winds exceeding 200 kilometers per hour at landfall.