Fijians turned to blogs for information on political developments since the media crack down by Voreqe Bainimarama’s military regime this month. In the recent developments in the country, the military regime has repealed the constitution on April 10, sacked the judiciary and forced emergency regulations to control free speech.

The regime censors are preventive any mention about sensitive political stories in the media and nothing of them are published or broadcast right now. Most media are not publishing any news right now as a protest measure and the responsibility has been taken up by the blogs. Journalists, who have lost their traditional way of saying things, have moved to blogs.

Blogs played their parts in the political scene back in 2000 and 2006 coups. In the 2000 coup and again in 2006 when military chief Bainimarama toppled the elected government, blogs played the role of traditional media of reporting all the news to people about the situation.

“I think the Fiji journalists are enormously resilient and courageous and they have shown in the past they are very adaptable at dealing with oppressive regimes as they have with the previous three coups,” says Pacific journalist and academic David Robie.

The censorship was started on April 11 and the newspapers and broadcast media found their own ways of protesting. The television news bulletin was cancelled, the Fiji Times was published with blank columns written across them the line – “This story could not be published due to government restrictions.” Fiji Post tried something different; on the front page it wrote about what staff had for breakfast.

The regime was angered by the reactions and threatened to close down the offenders with such repeats. It also expelled three foreign journalists who arrived in Fiji for reporting on the political upheaval and detained two local journalists because they worked for foreign media.

Now the main media do not carry any political news and so blogs are continuing to fill the void. But the non co-operation from the traditional media has made Bainimarama unable to communicate effectively with Fijians. People believe that with time the restrictions are likely to ease.

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