Fiji Sun publisher and CEO Peter Lomas has today made it clear that the newspaper carefully considered the Fiji Women’s Crisis Center advertisement and has confirmed that it did not print it because it did not meet their current publishing standards.
This follows the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre raising concern that the two newspaper companies did not print their statement which raised concern on the appointment criteria of the Constituent Assembly, immunity, the non-negotiable principles and claiming that there is an environment that restricts full participation and debate in a constitution-making process.
Centre coordinator, Shamima Ali is claiming that with the two newspaper companies not running their statement as an advertisement shows that the media in the country is not free and is self censoring.
The statement released by the women’s NGOs about three weeks ago was covered extensively by Fijivillage, and Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama also responded to it, saying that Ali should not think that she is important because he said that she is not.
Ali now said with the media outlets not running their statement, the media is not free.
The statement from the NGO’s, the Women’s Crisis Centre, the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement and femlink went public on all CFL stations and fijivillage.com about three weeks ago.
Although this is not in Ali’s latest written statement sent out to media outlets in Fiji and abroad, Ali said it is in the statement.
We then asked Ali to justify her claims that the media are not free and are practicing self censorship.
Meanwhile, the Fiji Times Publisher’s office has referred all queries to Editor, Fred Wesley.
He is yet to comment.
Story by: Vijay Narayan & Gwen McGoon
