Sources in Fiji confirmed Professor Lal was taken without reason late yesterday afternoon from his Suva Point home where his wife Dr Padma Lal resides. Dr Padma is based in Suva as the Chief Technical Advisor to the Oceania office of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It was not until 7pm that the military confirmation on her husband’s situation came when the Australian embassy received information that Professor Lal, a Fiji-born Australian citizen, would be deported on the next available flight.
Professor Lal becomes the first academic to be detained and deported from Fiji. Just hours before his detention, he was on ABC Radio being asked his views on the Fiji situation, after the military regime gave marching orders to the Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners
this week.
"We are saddened and shocked by reports that Professor Lal was abused and threatened. An internationally renowned academic whose life’s work has been the history of Fiji; is plucked from his home without reason and is subjected to abuse to the extent that his ‘signature’ glasses are smashed during a detention. One would expect his interrogating officers to have maintained a minimum standard of conduct when telling detainees their views are unpopular and unwelcome," says PFF chair Susuve Laumaea of Papua New Guinea.
"The military regime must know the world is watching in disgust as free speech is ripped, through acts such as this, from the heart of Fiji.""Free speech is a basic and universally acknowledged human right. Professor Lal gave an expert opinion and as a leading Pacific scholar, was well within his rights to do so," he says.
