Back in May a group of armed rebels, led by George Speight, over-ran the parliament building and held hostage the Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudry, and other members of his administration. With the intervention of the army, a deal was done and after 56 days the hostages were released. Speight may be jailed, but he has many sympathisers George Speight now languishes in jail, but his influence is still very much at large. Earlier this month, the elite troops who stormed parliament with him mutinied, taking officers hostage and killing two soldiers before order was restored. So the underlying problems are very far from being resolved.
Land is the fundamental cause of the tension.
When the British first arrived here they found an island where white planters were trying to grab large amounts of land. They tried to ensure that land could not be bought and sold but remained under indigenous tenure. As the sugar industry expanded the problem of getting hold of lease lands from the indigenous Fijians became ever more pressing. Fiji's leading twentieth century chief, Ratu Sukuna, tried to develop an agency, the Native Land Trust Board, that would act as a trustee for the landowners and that would supervise the process of renting land to the Indian population. As far as Fijians are concerned, land is basically the fundamental basis of their valua , of their very being.