Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup.

• Author: Teaiwa, Teresia
• Position: Book review

SPEIGHT OF VIOLENCE Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup Authors: Michael Field, Tupeni Baba and Unaisi Nabobo-Baba Published by: Reed, Auckland, 2005, 274pp, $34.99.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Fiji's first military coups. In May and September 1987, Sitiveni Rabuka (then a lieutenant-colonel) overthrew the elected government of Dr Timoci Bavadra first, and then ousted an interim government led by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. The coups of 1987 generated a significant body of documentary and analytical literature (for example Dean and Ritova 1988, Robertson and Tamanisan 1988, Scarr 1988, B. Lal 1988, Griffen 1989, V. Lal 1990, Suthetland 1992), and it was remarkable how rapidly much of it came off the press. Indeed, influential among the titles focusing on 1987 was Brij Lal's book Power and Prejudice: the making of the Fiji crisis, published by the NZIIA in 1988. But the rush to explain causes and justify positions evident in much of the literature may have entrenched unhelpful (for example racialised or face value) ways of interpreting contemporary political events in Fiji.

It is, therefore, somewhat of a relief to read an account of the subsequent civilian-led coup of 2000 that has afforded itself the benefit of some hindsight. Published in 2005, Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup will be interesting to readers concerned with Fiji, the Pacific, the political challenges faced by developing nations, or movements for indigenous rights. While it takes 2000 as its main focus, the narrative lightly tracks back to the 19th century, through the first seventeen years of independence, to the coups of 1987 and the general election of 1999, and accelerates forward to the 2002 and 2003 convictions by judicial ruling of perpetrators of the 2000 coup.

The book is authored jointly by New Zealand-based veteran journalist Michael Field, Fijian academic and former Fiji Labour Party politician Tupeni Baba, and Fijian academic Unaisi Nabobo-Baba. Although the majority of the text was penned by Field, Baba's and Nabobo-Baba's individual voices come through in clearly identified segments. The book thus offers an unusual combination of perspectives: those of Field reporting and commenting on events, those of Baba caught up as a hostage during the coup, and those of Nabobo-Baba trying to negotiate a minefield of information and emotions while her husband is captive and she is heavily pregnant.

Most of the time their accounts are retrospective, but both Baba...