Coup: Reflections on the Political Crisis in Fiji

May 19, 2000. Fiji's democratically elected multiracial government is hijacked by a group of armed gunmen led by George Speight, and held hostage for fifty days. Suva, the capital, is torched and looted as Speight's supporters gather on the lawns of the parliamentary complex, dancing, cooking food, celebrating the purported abrogation of the constitution that brought the Peoples' Coalition government to power. The country is plunged into darkness yet again, enduring the pain of three coups in a period of just thirteen years. This book gathers together a handful of memoirs of those tragic events in Fiji. They were written while the gun was still smoking; personal, anguished reactions of people from all walks of life, concerned about a country they all love but deeply distressed by the developments there. They are first reactions. They will in time become essential building blocks for a larger interpretive framework of academic analysis about origins, processes, and impacts. Straight from the heart, these memoirs will be remembered as the people from Fiji and their friends elsewhere contemplate the wreckage and ruin brought about by that act of madness in the month of May.Lal, Brij V. is the author of 'Coup: Reflections on the Political Crisis in Fiji' with ISBN 9781740760034 and ISBN 1740760034.