"The Australian government should immediately impose the comprehensive sanctions on trade, shipping, travel, mail, banking and sporting links on Fiji called for by the Fiji Trades Union Congress. They should be maintained until the 1997 constitution is restored and the elected Fiji Labour Party-led People's Coalition government is reinstated", said John Percy, national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) in Australia.
Percy criticised the sanctions announced by foreign minister Alexander Downer on May 29 as "completely inadequate and tokenistic". Measures announced include the suspension of some aid projects, the banning of coup leader George Speight from entering Australia, the suspension of military exercises between the Australian and Fijian armed forces, a review of sporting contacts, including a possible ban on visits to Australia by Fiji's rugby team, and a recommendation that Fiji be suspended from the Commonwealth.
Percy rejected Downer's argument that general trade sanctions would only hurt the Fijian work force and have no impact on the alliance of Melanesian-Fijian landowners, corrupt politicians and businesspeople behind Speight's bid to restore a Melanesian supremacist regime.
"This argument is pretty rich coming from a government that has sacked 100,000 of its own employees over the last four years", Percy said. "Canberra is no more committed to saving the jobs of Fijian workers than it is to protecting the jobs of Australian workers."
Percy also rejected Downer's claim that trade bans would have a "wholly disproportionate impact" on Indian Fijians. "The same sort of excuse was used in the 1980s by the British government for not imposing comprehensive sanctions against apartheid South Africa when these were called for by the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
"British PM Margaret Thatcher argued they would 'disproportionally' hurt the victims of racial discrimination, but her real concern was to protect British business interests in South Africa.
"Howard and Downer's reluctance to agree to the Fijian people's request to impose comprehensive sanctions is motivated by their desire to protect the profits of Australian-owned businesses. Australian capital dominates every sector of the Fijian economy. Textile and clothing sweatshops in Fiji produce $400 million worth of exports, half of which are sold in Australia."
Percy welcomed federal Labor Party foreign affairs spokesperson Laurie Brereton's call for full sanctions to be imposed immediately. "Lesser measures are unlikely to apply the pressure required to see Fiji return to democratic constitutional rule", Brereton was quoted as saying by the May 30 Australian Financial Review.
"Brereton's absolutely right about that", Percy told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly. "But simply saying it won't force the Howard government to impose full sanctions immediately. What is needed is a campaign of mass protests like those that were organised by the working-class movement in Australia last year to defend democracy in East Timor.
"If the ALP was to take the initiative to organise mass street marches and rallies in defence of democracy in Fiji, that would exert far more pressure on Howard and Downer than any number of parliamentary speeches by Brereton and his colleagues."
Without such mass solidarity actions, Percy added, there is a danger that the ACTU's bans on airline flights, shipping and communications between Australia and Fiji would fail to gain sufficiently broad public support to counter the likely legal threats that would sooner or later be mounted by the employers and the Howard government.
BY MARK ABBERTON