Global Voices Online

Heavy police presence accompanied the launching of Fiji's Draft People's Charter, which among other things will reform the country's electoral system. It is also alleged that villagers were paid to attend the launching.

Recent Links also in Oceania

With Fiji’s government cracking down on outlets selling pirated DVDs, L. Cass pens a piece in Failed Paradise criticizing these “cheating” retailers but also lamenting their downfall

A second journalism school has opened in Fiji, this one at the Fiji Institute of Technology. But given “the climate of censorship and media paranoia in post-putsch Fiji,” media educator David Robie in his Café Pacific blog argues the standards of these new programs should face heavy scrutiny.

Jonathan, the writer of the blog Oceanic: User Experiences from the South Pacific reports on a consumer complaint against his Fiji-based advertising agency stating that his advert for a local ISP attempts to benefit from the Swine Flu epidemic (now called H1N1) by misleading consumers into thinking internet service “is like a prescription drug.” He wonders how people can protest against his work, while much of the local media prints “sensationalist” and “inaccurate” headlines about the flu scare.