THE Government of Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare yesterday refused to condemn outright the deportation of Fiji Sun publisher Russell Hunter.
Mr Hunter, who used to work as a senior journalist in PNG, was deported from Fiji on Feb 26 by the interim government, after his newspaper published a series of articles over alleged corruption by a senior member of the Fiji interim government.
The deportation was condemned by the Australian and New Zealand governments and journalists associations of PNG and Pacific island countries. They described it as an attack on free speech and democracy, and urged the Fiji government to reconsider its actions.
In an interview with The National yesterday, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Immigration Minister Sam Abal said PNG was taking a proactive approach to helping Fiji come out of its political woes and would not resort to ‘knee jerk’ reactions over such an issue, even though the Government will not condone such actions.
But Mr Abal said the Government of PNG had and will always uphold freedom of expression.
“Freedom of expression is one of the pillars of our democracy and we will always maintain and uphold that,” he said.
Mr Abal said the PNG Government had a duty and would continue to assist in Fiji’s road to installing a democratically elected government.
He said he cannot just make statements that do no good to the efforts the people of Fiji, their leaders and the interim government were doing to bring the island nation back to full democracy.
He said the Prime Minister, who has a close personnel relationship with Fijian leaders, and himself were aware of the concerns raised by the media fraternity but he said issues cannot be broken into peace meal basis and handled.
“What is happening in Fiji, as a brother Melanesian country, we are quite concerned. In fact, we are not just concerned but we feel for them and we want to be constructive in helping them. We don’t want to do or say anything that will worsen or inflame the situation,” Mr Abal said.