|
Church Involvement In Fiji Coups
Fiji's four coups in the past two decades have had church involvement. At the center of each coup lies the tension between the ethnic Fijians and Indian Fijians. Religion plays a significant role, as the majority of ethnic Fijians belong to the Methodist church while the majority of Indian Fijians are Hindu. In each of the four coups, one of the sides sought to reduce rights for Indian Fijians, whereas the other side sought to grant equality to Indian Fijians. The coup by Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka in 1987 led to a constitution that ensured Indian Fijians could only have less than half of all seats in parliament and banned Indians from the post of prime minister. The coup of 2000, by George Speight, removed the elected Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudry, who is a Hindu of Indian origin. Interference of Methodist Church in politics The powerful Methodist Church backed the past three coups, but has opposed the 2006 coup. The Church plays a major role in Fiji politics. Oftent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiji
Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about . The most outlying island group is Ono-i-Lau. About 87% of the total population of live on the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu's coasts: either in the capital city of Suva; or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi—where tourism is the major local industry; or in Lautoka, where the Sugarcane, sugar-cane industry is dominant. The interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited because of its terrain. The majority of Fiji's islands were formed by Volcano, volcanic activity starting around 150 million years ago. Some geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Bainimarama
Josaia Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama (Fijian: ʃoˈsɛia βoˈreŋɡe mbɛiniˈmarama born 27 April 1954) is a Fijian politician and former naval officer who served as the prime minister of Fiji from 2007 until 2022. A member of the FijiFirst party, which he founded in 2014, he began his career as an officer in the Fijian navy and commander of the Fijian military. He has been serving as the opposition leader since 24 December 2022. Bainimarama attended Marist Brothers High School, the Asian Institute of Technology and Dalhousie University. He joined the Fijian Navy in 1975 and rose through the ranks, becoming an Able Seaman and a Midshipman in 1976, an Ensign in 1977 and later promoted to a sub-lieutenant at the end of that year. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander in 1986 and became a commander in 1988. He later became captain in 1991. In 1997, Bainimarama was appointed Chief of Staff of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces. In 1998, he was promoted to a Commodore and l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religion And Politics
Religion in politics covers various topics related to the effects of religion on politics. Religion has been claimed to be "the source of some of the most remarkable political mobilizations of our times". Religious political doctrines Various political doctrines have been directly influenced or inspired by religions. Various strands of Political Islam exist, with most of them falling under 2 the umbrella term of Islamism. Graham Fuller has argued for a broader notion of Islamism as a form of identity politics, involving "support for uslimidentity, authenticity, broader regionalism, revivalism, ndrevitalization of the community." This may often take a socially conservative or reactionary from, as in wahhabism and salafism. Ideologies espousing Islamic modernism include Islamic socialism and Post-Islamism. Christian political movements range from Christian socialism, Christian communism, and Christian anarchism the left, to Christian democracy on the centre, to the Christian ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christianity In Fiji
Religiously, Fiji is a mixed society with most people being Christian (64.4% of the population), with a sizable Hindu (27.9%) and Muslim (6.3%) minority, according to the 2007 census. Religion tends to split along ethnic lines with most Indigenous Fijians being Christian and most Indo-Fijians being either Hindu or Muslim. Aboriginal Fijian religion could be classified in modern terms as forms of animism or shamanism, traditions utilizing various systems of divination which strongly affected every aspect of life. Fiji was Christianized in the 19th century. Today there are various Christian denominations in Fiji, the largest being the Methodist church. Hinduism and Islam arrived with the importation of large numbers of people from South Asia, most of them indentured, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Fiji has many public holidays as it acknowledges the special days held by the various belief systems, such as Easter and Christmas for the Christians, Diwali for the Hindus and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Fiji
The majority of Fiji's islands were formed through volcanic activity starting around 150 million years ago. Today, some geothermic activity still occurs on the is lands of Vanua Levu and Taveuni. Fiji was settled first by the Lapita culture, around 1,500–1,000 years BCE, followed by a large influx of people with predominantly Melanesian genetics about the time of the beginning of the Common Era. Europeans visited Fiji from the 17th century, and, after a brief period as an independent kingdom, the British established the Colony of Fiji in 1874. Fiji was a Crown colony until 1970, when it gained independence as the Dominion of Fiji. A republic was declared in 1987, following a series of coups d'état. In a coup in 2006, Commodore Frank Bainimarama seized power. When the High Court ruled in 2009 that the military leadership was unlawful, President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, whom the military had retained as the nominal Head of State, formally abrogated the Constitution and reappoint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religious Reaction To The Reconciliation, Tolerance, And Unity Bill
Religion plays an important role in Fijian society. Indigenous Fijians are overwhelmingly Christian, predominantly Methodist but with significant Roman Catholic, Assemblies of God, Seventh-day Adventist, and other Christian minorities; Indo-Fijians are mostly Hindu, with a large Muslim as well as a smaller Christian minority. Religious organizations and preachers have been vocal in their comments on the controversial legislation that seeks to establish a commission with the power to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the coup d'état which shook Fiji to its foundations in 2000. The Methodist Church has endorsed the bill (with a faction dissenting), Hindu organizations have opposed it, as has the Roman Catholic Church and a number of other religious groups. Several religious groups have taken more nuanced positions, calling for dialogue, negotiation, and good will. The Methodist Church The Methodist Church announced its support for the bill on 19 July, acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military–church Relations In Fiji
The Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) has always had a close relationship between the country's churches, particularly the Methodist Church, to which some two-thirds of indigenous Fijians belong. Relations became strained in 2005, however, over the church's support for the government's controversial Reconciliation and Unity Commission, which the Military strongly opposes. The Bill seeks to establish Commission empowered to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the ''coup d'état'' which deposed the elected government of Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry in May 2000. Infantry Day, 2005 In an Infantry Day speech at Mount Nakobalevu outside Suva on 23 June, Bainimarama told 400 infanteers that he expected political instability to continue, and that in the event of an upheaval, they should follow his orders and no one else's. He told soldiers to stay away from people who opposed the stance of the military on what he called matters of national interest, and to chan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Cases
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, nuns, Popes and other members of religious life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith,Tillich, P. (1957) ''Dynamics of faith''. Harper Perennial; (p. 1). a supernatural being or supernatural beings or "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life". Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human cultur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. There have been attempts to legitimize racist beliefs through scientific means, such as scientific racism, which have been overwhelmingly shown to be unfounded. In terms of political systems (e.g. apartheid) that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices or laws, racist ideology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reconciliation, Tolerance, And Unity Bill
The Reconciliation and Unity Commission was a proposed government body to be set up if the Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, which was introduced into the Fijian Parliament on 4 May 2005 was passed. The legislation proposed to empower the Commission to grant amnesty to perpetrators of the Fiji coup of 2000, and compensation to victims of it from 19 May 2000 through 15 March 2001. The Fijian President would retain a veto over the granting of amnesty. The Commission was to be appointed by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister, in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition. Its purported objectives were to promote reconciliation in a spirit of tolerance and unity. Attorney-General Qoriniasi Bale announced on 5 July that the bill was likely to be tabled in Parliament in September, but on 10 August, Manasa Tugia, the Chairman of Parliament's Justice, Law and Order Committee, announced that the date would be brought forward to mid-August. On 17 August the Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio New Zealand International
RNZ Pacific or Radio New Zealand Pacific, sometimes abbreviated to RNZP, is a division of Radio New Zealand and the official international broadcasting station of New Zealand. It broadcasts a variety of news, current affairs and sports programmes in English and news in seven Pacific languages. The station's mission statement requires it to promote and reflect New Zealand in the Pacific, and better relations between New Zealand and Pacific countries. As the only shortwave radio station in New Zealand, RNZ Pacific broadcasts to several island nations. It has studios in Radio New Zealand House, Wellington and a transmitter at Rangitaiki in the middle of the North Island. Its broadcasts cover from East Timor in the west across to French Polynesia in the east, covering all South Pacific countries in between. The station targets Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tonga during a 24-hour rotation. The signal can also be heard in Ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
