Fiji Times offices searched

FIJI – The main office of one of Fiji’s main newspapers, the Fiji Times, was searched by police this week in connection with an ongoing sedition case.

The newspaper and three of its senior staff have been charged with sedition relating to an article published in the Times’s iTaukei newspaper, Nai Lalakai, in April last year.

The staff, including publisher Hank Arts, editor-in-chief Fred Wesley, and Nai Lalakai editor Anare Ravula, were earlier charged with inciting communal antagonism, but that was changed last month.

RNZI has reported that officers from the police major crime unit arrived at the newspaper’s Suva headquarters on Thursday with a warrant seeking the employment contracts of the three men charges. Sources say the meeting was cordial, and the newspaper’s main newsroom was not searched.

However, the pursuit of the charges against the Fiji Times has been condemned by human rights groups this past week.