The last chapter of the Government’s 2017 sedition proceedings against The Fiji Times ended earlier this week when the Director of Public Prosecutions abandoned its appeal against the acquittal of The Fiji Times defendants.
In 2017 the office of the DPP charged The Fiji Times, editor-in-chief Fred Wesley, publisher Hank Arts and others with sedition over an article in the Na iLalakai, the iTaukei language newspaper published by The Fiji Times. The DPP claimed that an article by Josaia Waqabaca in the newspaper criticizing Muslim people had promoted hostility between different classes of the Fiji population.
The case attracted international attention and criticism.
In May 2018 the defendants, including Mr Waqabaca, were found not guilty by the trial assessors and acquitted by Justice Rajasinghe.
The DPP appealed against the acquittal later in the year, but the appeal had yet to be heard.
Wesley said that The Fiji Times’ lawyers had requested the ODPP to abandon the appeal as a matter of justice and the ODPP had agreed.
The DPP applied on Tuesday to Fiji Court of Appeal president Justice Isikeli Mataitoga to abandon the appeal and the application was granted on the same day.
Wesley said the DPP’s decision had ended an eight-year ordeal for The Fiji Times and many of its key staff.
“The article should never have appeared in Na iLalakai because it was distasteful in its negative comments on Muslim people,” he said.
“Had the Government brought this to our attention we would have dissociated ourselves from it and apologised. Instead, we were put to a legal contest with the decision to prosecute us.
“It was an act of vengeance by the Bainimarama government against The Fiji Times because they did not like us.
“We were put through months of pressure and fear of a long period of jail time, and it surely took a toll on us.”
Mr Arts died in 2024.
