Fiji is an island country in Oceania, located about 1,100 nautical miles north-northeast of New Zealand.
History
Colonized by the British in 1874, Fiji were of relative importance for the British Empire, maintaining the native Melanesian population and society while bringing indentured labourers from India to exploit the sugarcane fields. Starting after the World War, Fiji began to make its first moves towards self-governance but the new context of the Greater Game meant that the archipelago took a new strategic importance to Great Britain, standing in the Pacific against the Sphere of Co-Prosperity. Even if Indo-Fijians had not contact with their homeland since the 19th Century and outnumbered native Fijians, the British, during a constitutional conference in London in 1965, began to tilt the balance towards ethnic Fijians, who feared for their lands and resources and were okay for continuing with British presence. The Indo-Fijians, who were pushing for immediate self-governance, were left frustrated and felt as victims of racism, being pointed by the British as a “Bharatavarshan fifth column”.
The situation was further exacerbated by two factors : radical Indo-Fijians started a guerilla, being funded by Bharatavarshans and Japanese, in 1970, that remained of low intensity but still led to the assassination of moderate leader Kamisese Mara in 1977. On the other hand, American objectivist-minded millionaires began to see Fiji’s isolation and prosperity as the perfect site to implement an objectivist utopia : starting in 1972, the Minerva Initiative led to massive investments in the archipelago, funding services, housing and purchasing private islands to implement their agenda. The massive influx of money benefitted primarily to the Natives while the uncontrolled rise of the cost of living impacted the urban Indo-Fijians, further causing a rift between the two communities. After a bloody hostage situation in 1982, as millionaires were beginning to move their residence to Fiji, the British, under high pressure, forced the two communities to an agreement over independence for 1990 and a guarantee of equality inscribed in the Constitution, with each inhabitant of Fiji being granted a right to vote, leading to a guerilla ceasefire. To placate the most radical elements, in 1987, a law offering subsidies for the Indo-Fijians that wished to return to their homeland was adopted, but it had only a limited impact, due to their lack of connection to India, the chronic instability of Bharatavarsha during these years resulting in the program’s abolition in 1992.
When Fiji became independent on 1 January 1990, the Japanese Empire had crumbled, erasing all strategic importance for the British but the Minerva Initiative had secured the economic future of the new country, allowing them to be prosperous, but the natives and Indo-Fijians were now irreconcilable communities, leading to massive race riots during the 1995 and 1996 general elections, leading Australia to send a peacekeeping force in 1997.
In 2000, ultranationalist ethnic Fijian businessman George Speight led a military coup. Supported by the objectivist millionaires and the military, the Speight regime persecuted perceived “Indo-Fijian infiltration”, enforcing segregation, forbidding Indo-Fijians to hold certain jobs or to attend their cults. Taking advantage of a minor crime committed by an Indo-Fijian youth gang, the Speight government launched a full-scale ethnic cleansing of the community : the Australian peacekeeping force was slaughetered in a surprise assault by the Fijian military, which then concentrated its efforts against the Indo-Fijian community, along with ethnic Fijian paramilitary groups ; the amounts of killings, rapes and looting against Indo-Fijians was overwhelming, wiping out half of the community, up to 220,000 people ; Australia finally got the approval from the World Council to send an intervention force that managed to overthrow Speight by August, but the damage had been already done. The 2005 Fijian massacres are now branded as a genocide by the Australian government.
After an Australian-led military administration that lasted for a year, a new Constitution was adopted in 2006, guaranteeing freedom of cult and forbidding discrimination based on race. The aftershock left the wounded country in tatters, allowing the Objectivists to push further their agenda in Fiji : after a failed nationalist coup in 2009, an Objectivist government was elected in 2014, leading to further reforms and, eventually, to the proclamation of a Fijian Republic on 8 October 2019, leaving the Commonwealth altogether.
Political situation
Since the adoption of its Constitution in 2019, Fiji is an unitary libertarian parliamentary republic, having abandoned the status of dominion inside the Commonwealth. Nevertheless inspired by the Westminster System, Fijian politics are focused on the unicameral Parliament, with the government being responsible towards it and the president occupying a ceremonial role. The Constitution guarantees “the equality of everyone regarding the state” and guarantees all freedoms; in a sidenote to try to heal the rift of the 2005 massacres, it is forbidden to discriminate anyone based on his ethnic origin, to launch parties representing only an ethnic group but also to refer to the massacres as a genocide.
The current President, having succeeded the Governor-General as head of state, is Biman Prasad, who was Prime Minister from his election on 17 September 2014 to the proclamation of the republic on 8 October 2019. An Indo-Fijian economist and former college professor, Prasad returned from his work in Australia to pursue a political career in order to “further heal the nation”, forming a large coalition under the Fijian Objectivist League, an objectivist movement heavily funded by the Minerva Initiative. For Prasad, the proclamation of the republic was needed to help rebuild the country. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by Tupou Draunidalo, an ethnic Fijian lawyer, who was serving as Minister of the Interior un the Prasad administration ; she has served as Prime Minister ever since and also comes for the Fijian Objectivist League.
Social situation, population
British colonial policy and ethnic cleansing define the Fijian population to this day. The indigenous population, mostly of Melanesian origin, forms now the majority and owns most of the land, business and political ownership, becoming quite wealthy in an ever densely populated 300-island archipelago, with 87% living in the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. On the contrary, the Indo-Fijian community was denied the opportunity to ride upon the Minerva Initiative’s cornucopia, fell below thé poverty line and was reduced by half by the Massacres and has to choose between poverty and emigration. Fiji also counts a growing Chinese population, devoted to labor and a very small percentage of objectivist millionaires, mostly American, who decided to take Fijian citizenship.
Fiji, in spite of its small population, enjoys one of the highest standards of living in Oceania, besides Australia and Aotearoa, with guaranteed personal freedoms and access to infrastructure, education, médical care and housing : but with an ever-inflating currency, these resources are getting more and more expansive, corruption is everywhere and the inequality gap widens even more.
Economy
Mostly focused on sugarcane exploitation during the early 20th century, Fiji nowadays is among the most developed economies among the Pacific Islands, relying on importation for its subsistence and benefitting from gold, silver, copper and petroleum deposits. A tax haven since its independence in 1990, with its currency, the Fijian dollar, being indexed on the American one, Fiji successfully transitioned to a service economy, offering large tax loopholes to companies that would accept to install offices in Fiji. To this day, the capital of Fiji, Suva, holds the record for the number of businesses domiciled there, mostly in finance and Internetz, is among the most expansive (in terms of housing and food prizes) in the world.
The reason for this prosperity in the Minerva Initiative, an Objectivist project created in 1972 by American businessmen in response to the McGovern administration to enforce an objectivist independent area in the Pacific : first considered for the Minerva Reefs in the Tonga Islands, the Minerva Initiative saw billions invested in the Fiji archipelago, encouraging the emergence of a strong service economy and petitioned the British authorities for the abolition of taxes, so as to attract more investors. After the upheavals of the Speight regime, the businessmen already settled in Fiji managed to influence local politics, resulting in the election of Biman Prasad and the implementation of a far-reaching objectivist agenda, resulting in the decriminalization of abortion, drugs, gun control and prostitution and providing huge blank checks for entrepreneurs who would settle in the archipelago. Nevertheless, members of the Minerva Initiative do not mingle with the Fijian population, having purchased various islands, all heavily guarded, to host their villas : according to rumour, recluse and very discreet inhabitants of the Fiji count Jeff Yass, Jeffrey Epstein and Jimmy Wales.
Military
The Fijian Army, that was one of the smallest in the world, was officially abolished after the Australian intervention in 2005, as one of the main perpetrators of the Indo-Fijian Massacres ; since, a small Australian force assures the territorial defense of the archipelago while law enforcement is assured by the Fijian police. Nevertheless, gun control is now non existent and various private militias exist, either maintained by business, wealthy Fijians and recluse millionaires.
Culture
Thanks to its gorgeous landscapes and amenable climate (but also its absence of taxes), Fiji gets most of its revenue from tourism, even more as China and Australia became wealthier. Yet the conscious tourist will see that Fiji hasn’t healed yet from the 2005 massacres : if peaceful today, the native and Indian communities are remaining separate, not mixing in any way, the Indo-Fijians being deprived of any recognition of a genocide and electing to migrate to Australia or Britain. Rugby, the national sport, is the only thing giving unity to the archipelago. The tourist would also see heavily guarded private islands and villas, inhabited by wealthy and objectivist foreigners, and fellow visitors being drawn to Fiji’s very lax laws on drugs and prostitution.