Tech Stream

Unrest in Fiji and blogging in the Pacific

15 April 2009

Our In The Loop program is starting a new segment looking at blogs and bloggers in the Pacific.  You can listen to the first interview that Clement and Isabelle have done with Dennis Tokunai from the tubuans and dukduks blog based in Papua New Guinea.  Follow this MP3 link to hear his thoughts on blogging about political and cultural issues, some of his own favourite blogs and how you can learn more about a place by reading the blogs created there. I’m looking forward to this as an ongoing series and if you run your own blog in the Pacific you should get in touch with the Loopers.

Radio Australia also has a lot of coverage at the moment around the political unrest in Fiji and Bruce Hill from our Pacific Beat program spoke earlier in the week with a Fiji-based blogger known as Fiji Black.  He says resistance to the Government is likely to become more outspoken now the constitution has been dumped and strict controls imposed on the country’s media.  You can listen to Bruce’s interview on the Pacific Beat website.

Blogging in Fiji isn’t the safest pass time at the moment with the interim government there vowing to track down and arrest bloggers who oppose them.  Fiji’s interim prime minister Frank Bainimarama told Radio New Zealand that freedom of speech causes trouble and is to blame for the country’s political turmoil.  The media in general has been muzzled in the country and Fiji’s media have launched a self-imposed news blackout in response to new censorship regulations.

Reports today suggest that civil servants have had their work internet cut and are being discouraged from accessing anti-government blogs at home.  Sotia Central, a popular Fiji social networking site using the web2.0 Ning platform, also went down over the weekend.  And we learnt this morning that Radio Australia’s two FM transmitters in the country have been shutdown.

I’ll be working toward covering some of these issues in relation to blogging, internet access and social networks in Fiji in the Tech Stream radio program this coming Friday.  But you can follow the major updates with Pacific Beat, Australia Network and Radio Australia News online.