Fiji military steps up action against critics

Dec 26, 2006, 18:56 GMT

Wellington - Fiji's military, ruling under a state of emergency after ousting the elected government this month, beat six pro-democracy campaigners in an apparent clampdown on opponents calling for a return to civilian rule, news reports from the capital, Suva, said Tuesday.

Soldiers took the six women who were vocal opponents of the December 5 coup to the central military barracks, beat them and then forced them to walk 10 kilometres in heavy rain to the site of a pro-democracy shrine they had set up, the Fiji Times reported.

A human-rights group, the Pacific Centre for Public Integrity, accused the troops of 'terror intimidation tactics' and 'cowardly and deplorable behaviour,' the newspaper said.

The women - including Virisila Buadromo, the leader of the Fiji Women's Rights Movement - were rounded up and taken to the barracks Saturday night, an unnamed source told the paper.

One woman who said she wanted to remain anonymous to protect her family told Radio New Zealand International that she and the five other women were interrogated and made to lie face down on a concrete cricket pitch where soldiers jumped on their backs.

She said she had to go to hospital later for treatment.

Coup leader Commodore Voreqe 'Frank' Bainimarama told a radio station talk show Friday that the military would resist any attempts to destabilize its so-called government clean-up campaign.

He named some of the women detained Saturday and said they were inciting civil unrest, the Fiji Times reported.