TAVUA – Authorities in Fiji believe a British army veteran has been overseeing secret military training in the tropical hinterlands as part of a plot to form a breakaway Christian state.

The allegations emerged as police charged about two dozen people with sedition and promoting a plot to overthrow the government this week.

The group has been accused of engaging in military training in the northern province of Ra, where a movement has reportedly been pushing to breakaway and declare a Ra Sovereign Christian State.

The Fiji Police Commissioner has described a group of men conducting military-style training in the hills of Ra as more like members of a cult who “pose no threat to national security”.

Twenty one people in three separate groups have appeared in court this week, facing charges such as sedition and inciting communal antagonism.

Commissioner Ben Groenewald said there was no indication the group is political in any way.

“This is more like a cult within the rural areas that has been used or misused and mesmerised to become part of the so-called military style training. There are kingpins, and those people have already been arrested.”

The commissioner said there was no confirmation the men had been training with weapons, rather he believes they may have had wooden replica guns.

According to the government-aligned Fiji Sun, the military-style training started about three months ago and has been overseen by “a former British Army soldier”.

The veteran reportedly conducted training for about 20 villagers in the hills around the Yaqara Valley, a remote tropical region best known as the source of Fiji Water, the internationally distributed bottled water.

Asked about the alleged involvement of a former British soldier, Ana Naisoro, a Fiji police spokeswoman, told ABC News: “Those are the allegations that were made. The investigations are continuing.”

The veteran has not been identified – and authorities have not confirmed his role – but large numbers of Fijian nationals serve with the British army. The archipelago was a British colony until 1970.

Fiji’s director of public prosecutions have released a list of the latest group of 16 people to be arrested. Prosecutors asked the court for the group to be held in jail “due to the seriousness of the charges and the ongoing police investigations”.

The group of 16 – who hid their faces as they entered the courtroom – will appear again in court on August 26.

Several others have been arrested on charges of sedition in the past week.

Fiji’s police said authorities had begun making arrests recently after receiving reports of “training of a seditious nature being conducted in the interior of Ra by certain groups”.

“The team continues their investigations on the ground as they try to establish the intent of the alleged seditious act,” said Police Commissioner Groenewald in a statement on Wednesday.

Authorities have reportedly been dispatched to Ra to try to persuade villagers not to support the separatists.

An expert on Melanesia, Jenny Hayward-Jones, from the Lowy Institute in Sydney, said the calls for a Christian state indicated the group were indigenous Fijians who rejected Prime MInister Voreqe Bainimarama’s plans for a “unified nation”.

“There is a background of indigenous Fijians who are not really interested in following a national agenda,” she said. “There have been stories of guns and former military being involved. When you hear pro-Christian statements, it is usually about Fijian nationalism and is anti-Indian.”