{"id":89,"date":"2015-03-01T01:19:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T01:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=89"},"modified":"2015-03-06T12:33:07","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T12:33:07","slug":"fiji-pm-frank-bainimarama-criticises-australias-regime-for-resettling-asylum-seekers-in-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"Fiji PM Frank Bainimarama criticises Australia’s regime for resettling asylum seekers in Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"banimara\"<\/a>Fiji’s prime minister Frank Bainimarama has taken a swipe at Australia’s practice of resettling asylum seekers in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of asylum seekers who arrived in Australia have been resettled in Pacific nations after having their claims processed in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.<\/p>\n

Mr Bainimarama has told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that Fiji wanted closer scrutiny of the practice.<\/p>\n

“If human rights are universal, no country should be able to contract out an obligation to respect them, especially when dealing with the displaced, the vulnerable and the children,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Fiji’s position is that the international community can no longer continue to turn a blind eye to what we consider to be one of the greatest human rights challenges in the Pacific.”<\/p>\n

Mr Bainimarama said Fiji was at a time of “momentous change” regarding its own human rights and pointed to the country’s democratic election last year.<\/p>\n

“That election took place on the basis of a new constitution that for the first time creates a secular state … reaffirms civil and political rights and also guarantees the Fijian people an unprecedented array of social and economic rights,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This includes the right to education, the right to adequate health care, adequate food and water, housing, sanitation, economic participation, a just minimum wage, social security and specific rights for people with disabilities and children.”<\/p>\n

He said every citizen in Fiji “enjoys substantive justice and opportunity”.<\/p>\n

“In stark contrast to other countries such as Australia and the US, for example, the colonial experience in Fiji was not one of large-scale dispossession of land and rights and marginalisation of the indigenous people,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Today, approximately 91 per cent of all land in Fiji is owned through customary ownership by the indigenous people and cannot be permanently alienated under any circumstances.<\/p>\n

“This has given the indigenous people a level of security that has been noticeably absent in other countries and has been central to their social and economic wellbeing.”<\/p>\n

In the speech, the prime minister was also critical of the world’s response to climate change and its effects in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

“The repeated failure of the industrialised nations to curb their carbon emissions is a direct threat to the human rights of people living in vulnerable small island states like Fiji, including the right to life.<\/p>\n

“The very existence of some of our neighbours is threatened.”<\/p>\n

Source: ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fiji’s prime minister Frank Bainimarama has taken a swipe at Australia’s practice of resettling asylum…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[17,5,9,14,10,6,19,33,2],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"large":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"enternews-featured":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"enternews-medium":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false],"enternews-thumbnail":["https:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/banimara.png",272,181,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}