FIJI’S coup history is complex and not uniform. The first three coups reaffirmed Indo–Fijians as continuing to be outsiders – vulagi and kai India they continue to be referred to derogatorily – despite their presence in the nation since the start of girmit in 1879, while the fourth constitution, however contested, redefined all as Fijians under the 2013 Constitution. Belonging must rest on guarantees, not apologies.
In Fiji’s fluid politics, dignity can vanish like a mirage in the next constitution, leaving Indo–Fijians identity and rights at the very mercy of the RFMF, the Methodist pulpit, the Great Council of Chiefs, business interests, nationalist zeal and even the mood swings of ordinary iTaukei citizens
The first three coups – 1987 (May 14), 1987 (September 25), and 2000 (May 19) – were coups of exclusion. They were staged and legitimised by ethno–nationalist fear, chiefly privilege and religious sanction. They tore at the nation’s fabric, deepened racial divides, and branded Indo-Fijians as vulagi – visitors – in the land their forebears had helped build since 1879, when the Leonidas landed the first indentured labourers. By the time indenture ended in 1916, thousands had endured contracts that trapped them in cycles of exploitation, carving farms from bushland they could never own, surviving poverty that made rebellion almost unthinkable.
In its original sense, the iTaukei term vulagi refers to a guest – someone welcomed, but not part of the nation or community. Over time, the term was politicised. For Indo-Fijians, being called vulagi carried connotations of exclusion, even though they were born in Fiji and saw it as home for over a century.
In iTaukei discourse, Indo-Fijians were also derogatorily called kai India – “from India”. Since Bainimarama’s 2010 decree that all citizens are legally “Fijians,” the use of kai India has declined, though it still surfaces informally.
Exclusion was not only spoken in words or staged in coups; it was carved into the desecration of temples. Across Fiji, Hindu temples were vandalised, idols smashed, sanctuaries burnt, graffiti scrawled – acts that went unchecked, with culprits rarely punished. These humiliations were deliberate rebukes of Indo-Fijian identity. To desecrate a temple was to declare that Indo-Fijians’ gods, culture and belonging were unwelcome. It was another theatre of exclusion, reminding families their faith could be trampled as easily as their votes, leases and livelihoods.
The third coup is often attributed to George Speight, real name Ilikimi Naitini. Though always labelled the 2000 coup maker, he had neither the ability nor following, but became famous as the front man after others “chickened out”. He was fully supported by rebel soldiers from the Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) Unit.
The 2000 coup turned Fiji’s Parliament into a hostage chamber for 56 days. A traumatic turning point in Fiji’s politics. Speight was convicted of treason in 2002, held on Nukulau Island and later at Naboro Correction Facility. He was released on September 18, 2024 after a presidential pardon recommended by the Mercy Commission under the Rabuka government. George Speight – Ilikimi Naitini – was less a coup maker than a coup mask. Yet his pardon in 2024 reminds Fiji that the shadows of 1987 still linger.
The fourth coup – December 5 2006 – broke the pattern. It was not staged to protect privilege, but to dismantle it: stripping the Great Council of Chiefs of political power, rejecting titles in Parliament, and insisting on “one person, one vote, equal value” and the equal distribution of lease and resource money to all iTaukei irrespective to lineage, title and age. To understand Fiji’s present and future, we must confront the stark differences between coups that entrenched exclusion and a coup that, however, controversially, sought inclusion – and reckon with the scars they left behind.
Rabuka coup May 14, 1987: A date weaponised, a nation wounded
Fiji’s first coup was staged on May 14, 1987, when Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka seized Parliament and toppled Dr Timoci Bavadra’s newly elected government. The choice of date was deliberate. May 14, 1879 was the day the Leonidas arrived with the first girmitiyas. By staging his coup on that anniversary, Rabuka weaponised history, humiliated Indo-Fijians, and reminded them their citizenship could be revoked at will.
Rabuka later admitted the coups were racially motivated, shaped by his “insulated upbringing” and the belief that Fiji was the land of chiefs, not immigrants. He confessed: “I opened the door to treason,” acknowledging that the Great Council of Chiefs and factions within the Methodist Church had endorsed exclusionary politics. The rhetoric was blunt: Fiji was “their country, their land,” and Indo-Fijians were vulagi – outsiders whose electoral victories could not be allowed to stand.
Yet Rabuka’s pretext – that Indo-Fijians would take away iTaukei land – was false. The 1970 constitution already safeguarded iTaukei land and chiefly authority. Chiefs held decisive power in the Senate, and no land or money Bills could pass without their consent. Customary land was inalienable, administered through the Native Land Trust Board. Rabuka’s claim was manipulative, exploiting fear among indigenous communities who had never read the constitution, let alone understood its protections.
The second coup was staged on September 25, 1987. After the Governor General attempted compromise, Rabuka again moved, declared Fiji a republic, and consolidated military supremacy. This was not a temporary correction, but a deliberate re–engineering of power. Institutions that should have defended democracy instead legitimised exclusion. The Great Council of Chiefs and church leaders lent their blessing, while Rabuka inserted authority into every negotiation, neutralising dissent.
The consequences were devastating. Shops were ransacked, Indo-Fijian businesses looted, women violated, families dispossessed. Tens of thousands emigrated, convinced Fiji had trampled their rights and scarred their future. Currency devaluations and economic shocks punished households already living hand to mouth. Indo-Fijians bore the brunt: families who had cleared forests and sustained the sugar economy were reminded they owned nothing, that their leases could be revoked, and that their rights were negotiable.
Rabuka’s later confessions underscore the intent: the coups were not accidents of history, but deliberate acts staged to restore chiefly control and suppress Indo-Fijian political ascendancy. The message of 1987 was unmistakable: multiethnic rule would not be allowed to stand.
George Speight coup 2000: Hostages, enforcers, and a nation terrorised
On May 19, 2000, George Speight and armed supporters stormed Parliament, seizing Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his 35 ministers, and held them hostage at the parliament complex for 56 days. The symbolism was brutal: Chaudhry was Fiji’s first Indo-Fijian prime minister, elected with a multiethnic mandate. Holding him hostage was not only an assault on democracy, but a direct message to Indo-Fijians that their leadership would be punished, their rights to land, waterways, and resources denied, and their citizenship reduced to tenancy.
Outside Parliament, authority collapsed. Shops were stripped bare, soldiers and radical elements in uniform perpetuated threats and violence, and Indo-Fijian businesses were targeted most. The coup was not confined to Parliament; it was a nationwide breakdown where intimidation was staged, and exclusion enforced with menace.
Families lived in fear. Women reported sexual assault and harassment, men were severely beaten, and communities paralysed by uncertainty. Mutinies claimed five soldiers’ lives, further shattering the credibility of the armed forces. For Indo-Fijians, the message was unmistakable: ballots could be nullified, rights trampled and belonging revoked by men with guns at will.
The media’s role was contested. Some outlets gave extraordinary access to hostage takers, framing events in ways that legitimised their theatre. Cameras trained on armed men blurred the line between reporting and complicity, raising hard questions about journalism’s role in breakdown.
Speight eventually pleaded guilty to treason, but the damage was done. The 2001 election brought Laisenia Qarase to power, entrenching divisions and signalling to Indo-Fijians that electoral victories could be dissolved by force. The legacy of 2000 was structural: it intensified militarisation, deepened distrust, and scarred communities who had believed ballots, not bullets, determined governments.
Together, the hostage crisis and collapse of order delivered a brutal lesson: Democracy could be suspended, rights stripped, and Indo-Fijians terrorised under the very uniforms meant to protect them.
Land and leases: Belonging denied, poverty entrenched
Land has always been Fiji’s political bedrock. Despite unconditional cession and surrender to all rights over land and sea of the nation to Britain in 1874, and returned to the citizens unconditionally in 1970, girmityas were not regarded as also part of the nation who should have also have similar ownership arrangements to land and resources, as they were also busy with nation building and part of Fijians society.
Customary title was kept protected and later administered through the Native Land Trust Board, now the iTaukei Land Trust Board (TLTB). For iTaukei, land stewardship is cultural bedrock. For Indo-Fijians, the inability to own land became a permanent shackle and were destined to live on small leaded allotments, later moving into many temporary squatter settlements using informal arrangements to pay annual rents for small section of land marked by the iTaukei owner in tiny 100-200 square metre allotments.
Many of these squatters living in some section until the last 50 years have not received any formal lease and have been constantly exploited or threatened to be evicted if demands for extra ad hoc payments due to a death or ceremony in the iTaukei owner’s family, placed on them were refused.
Indo-Fijian adults and children who cleared forests and sustained the sugar economy relied on leases – time-limited, subject to rent increases and high compound interests on any arrears, remain until today vulnerable to repossession. A single non–renewal letter could uproot households, erase decades of labour, and push families into squatter settlements. One group owned, the other rented with rents reviewed every few years. Indo-Fijians often leased marginal land and coaxed life from it through relentless work. When leases lapsed, families who had invested decades were dispossessed overnight.
This was not just a legal asymmetry; it was lived reality. Indo–Fijians were denied ownership, trapped in poverty cycles, and reminded daily their belonging was conditional.
Economics of upheaval: When politics ravaged livelihoods
Coups do not only rewrite constitutions; they reprice livelihoods. Instability after 1987 triggered sharp currency devaluations and inflation that eroded savings, raised import costs, and punished households already living hand to mouth.
The sugar industry, once Fiji’s backbone, began a long decline. Production dropped, mills shut down, and climate stress compounded the crisis. Cane farmers faced rising costs, uncertain leases, and markets that no longer rewarded their labour. For Indo–Fijians, who had sustained the industry for generations, this was not just economic downturn, but betrayal.
Emigration accelerated. Skilled professionals, teachers, doctors, and entrepreneurs left in waves, convinced instability offered no future for their children. The “brain drain” hollowed out institutions, weakened schools and hospitals, and left gaps in industries that could not be easily filled. Families were split across continents, with remittances becoming lifelines.
Each coup carried its own economic shock. 1987 brought devaluations and capital flight. 2000 saw businesses looted and confidence shattered. 2006 triggered sanctions and international condemnation, constraining investment and aid. The cumulative effect was decades of lost growth, stunted development, and poverty entrenched by politics.
Economics became the silent casualty of upheaval. While leaders argued over constitutions and titles, households bore the cost: higher food prices, weaker wages, and futures mortgaged to instability. For Indo–Fijians, the message was cruelly consistent: their labour could sustain industries, but their rights and security could be stripped overnight.
Rabuka and Bainimarama: Two men, two motives, two legacies
Sitiveni Rabuka’s coups in 1987 entrenched exclusion. He admitted personal responsibility, saying he “opened the door” to treason against Her Majesty’s Government, and pointed to the Great Council of Chiefs and factions within the Methodist Church that endorsed his actions. That coalition of faith, tradition, and force converted a multiethnic mandate into a cautionary tale, sending Indo-Fijians the message their votes could be overturned and their belonging revoked. Rabuka’s method was clear: stage power, weaponise institutions, and consolidate hierarchy.
Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s 2006 coup, however contested, was staged under a different banner. He declared it a “clean–up campaign,” justified by ethnically biased politics, corruption, and the amnesty culture that followed earlier coups. His intervention dismantled the political veto of the Great Council of Chiefs, abolished titles in Parliament, and insisted on one person, one vote of equal value. The road from 2006 to 2009 was turbulent: constitutional crisis, international condemnation, decrees critics said stifled opposition and constrained media. Bainimarama suspended the 1997 constitution, removed judges, and curtailed the Great Council of Chiefs’ meetings, arguing only radical reform could reset Fiji’s trajectory.
The conflict is stark. Rabuka’s coups protected privilege by force; Bainimarama’s coup used force to dismantle privilege. Indo-Fijians felt the difference in their marrow: three coups reinforced exclusion, and one – however imperfectly – opened civic space by redefining all citizens as “Fijians” and insisting their votes carry equal value.
Identity and language: Words that scar citizenship
Language has long been a weapon in Fiji’s politics. Terms like kai India, vulagi, and coolie were not casual insults; they were instruments of hierarchy. They scarred Indo-Fijians, silenced dignity, and reasserted exclusion even after generations of toil. These words reminded them their belonging was conditional, that citizenship could be trampled by rhetoric as easily as by rifles.
Public theatre reinforced exclusion. In 2000, while leaders sat captive inside Parliament, crowds outside danced and celebrated, turning humiliation into spectacle. Marches fused grievance with scapegoating, vilifying Indo-Fijians as outsiders in the very country they had sustained. For children told to “go back to India” decades after indenture ended, the message was clear. History was being rewritten to erase their claim to home.
Media narratives sometimes amplified exclusion, giving hostage takers airtime and framing events in ways that legitimised coercion. Journalism became a battleground: either fortifying democracy or eroding it. Fiji has lived both possibilities, and the costs are written into departures of skilled citizens, distrust between communities, and volatility of public life. Words scar as deeply as weapons. Language can revoke citizenship as surely as coups, and Fiji’s history shows how rhetoric became a tool of exclusion.
Apologies without repair: Contrition versus guarantees
Apologies without names, dates, and remedies are thin ice. Rabuka admitted he “opened the door” to treason in 1987 and acknowledged weaponised faith played a role. These admissions matter for truth–telling, but they do not repair dispossession, reverse emigration, or restore livelihoods destroyed by coups.
Contrition cannot substitute for guarantees. Equal suffrage, depoliticised religion, secure leases, transparent finance, and a free press are the structures that protect citizens when power changes hands. Without them, apologies remain performance. Indo-Fijians were exploited; they were not colonisers. They did not steal land or wealth. Many were kidnapped, forced, tricked or lured with false hopes for another chapter in their lives.
The promised prosperity, happiness, longevity and a hope for their children never eventuated. Almost all were unable to even afford funds after their 5-year indenture period ended, to go back home and were stuck in this land. Going through slavery and savage like treatment, with women forced to work even when pregnant – it was a life against all odd and a struggle for survival. They built lives on leases, kept industries running, and were still treated as guests.
Rabuka’s later apologies, however sincere, were undermined by the absence of institutional reform. Bainimarama’s reforms, however contested, at least attempted to codify guarantees into law. The lesson is clear: reconciliation cannot be left to personalities. It must be anchored in durable institutions that outlast leaders, pulpits, and uniforms.
Conclusion: Naming the difference, choosing dignity
Fiji’s coups were not all the same. The first three – 1987 (May 14), 1987 (September 25), and 2000 (May 19) – entrenched exclusion, humiliating Indo-Fijians and weaponising institutions of faith and tradition. The fourth – 2006 (December 5) – however contested, dismantled privilege and insisted on equal votes.
This distinction matters. Three coups for supremacy, one for equality – to the scars of families dispossessed, businesses looted, and communities terrorised. It is the difference between coups that silenced belonging and one that, however imperfectly, declared all citizens “Fijians” under the 2013 Constitution.
But Fiji’s reckoning is larger than politics. Coups expose how greed and racism, corrupts institutions meant to heal, how leaders cloak exclusion in tradition, and how communities are taught to fear neighbours. They also remind us dignity is only possible when institutions are rebuilt on guarantees: equal suffrage, depoliticised religion, secure leases, transparent finance, and a free press.
Apologies without guarantees are empty, and institutions without integrity are dangerous. The feeling of being classed as outcasts, or outsiders – kai India or vulagi – is a shameful indictment of the hurt endured by the girmitiyas and their descendants. Calling the girmitiyas Fijians does not grant them equal access to land, sea, forestry, or mineral resources, nor association with provinces, nor lease payments.
These are all reserved for the indigenous, who own 93 per cent of the land. This disparity will continue to divide the nation in perpetuity. Fiji now needs a true statesman or woman to rise, restore soul and spirit, and lead a nation wounded since 1987 out of the dismal wilderness of our national journey and map out our future destinies honestly, fairly and equability – giving full regard to the contributions of the girmityas to Fiji’s development. This issue once settled, will neutralise the coup culture prevalent and as part of new normal in Fiji.
