“The fact that you were made to feel unwelcome in your country of birth is the most shameful episode in our nation’s history.”
Those were the comments of Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama while speaking at Fiji Day Celebrations in Sydney today.
Bainimarama told the former Fiji citizens that he knows that many of them simply lost faith in Fiji, especially in the terrible aftermath of the events of 1987 and 2000.
He said apart from the anguish and despair they must have felt, they were some of Fiji’s best and brightest.
The Prime Minister said when Fiji lost them, we lost a precious resource that robbed Fiji of decades of development and anyone who doubts that should examine the similarities between Singapore and Fiji in the 1970’s and the differences between the two countries now in terms of development.
He said it was the Fijian family torn apart and today he wants to say sorry to those who suffered.
He added that many thousands were made to feel like strangers in their own country who felt obliged to seek new homes elsewhere.
Bainimarama then stated that he formally welcomes the former Fiji citizens back into the Fijian family, to perhaps build a house in Fiji, to invest in their country of birth and to help them build the new Fiji.
The Prime Minister also had a message for some 50,000 people of Fijian heritage now residing in Australia that it is easily one of his government’s greatest achievements – to forge a common identity for every Fijian citizen.
He said it used to be that only indigenous Fijians could call themselves Fijian and some of his political opponents still say the term belongs to them.
Bainimarama said this is nonsensical.
He added that the itaukei still have and own the communal ownership of their land, their unique customs, traditions and language, recognized and protected in the constitution for all time.
