By Jason Jett, a New York-based journalist living part-time in Fiji with his Fijian son
Nadi, FIJI — 12 September 2023
The pressing issue is not whether Grace Road Church is a cult, or the police charges in South Korea that led to Interpol arrest warrants for its leaders. At issue is the rule of law and due process in Fiji.
Well short of sensationalist international headlines screaming “doomsday cult” and “a foreign enterprise taking over Fiji,” what really matters is about just us: Whether our immigration and police authorities continue to cast the nation as the “Banana” Republic of Fiji, or they adhere to constitutional law and international protocol.
What is clear is that the former FijiFirst government ignored or sat on the International Criminal Police Organization arrest warrants issued against leaders of Grace Road in 2018.
According to party member and government opposition leader Inia Seruiratu, no action was taken in part because South Korea had nullified the subjects’ passports. “Let me state very clearly that the Korean government pursued a lot of things then which we were not able to facilitate based on our laws, and conditions back then as well,” Seruiratu told Fiji Broadcast Corporation News last week.
There is no extradition treaty between Fiji and South Korea, but there have been bilateral relations since 1971, and there is a South Korean embassy and ministry of foreign affairs office in Suva. The Bainimarama government inaction was deliberate.
Despite the Interpol warrants the government continued its embrace of Grace Road Group, the church’s business arm, awarding its expansive business endeavors and issuing investment visas for residency to hundreds of individual church members.
There was much speculation on what would be the new coalition government’s response to Grace Road. There was controversy over both its expanding business empire and its label as a cult, albeit Christian, in a country with conservative, fundamentalist churches.
That government now has acted, and has done so with all the tact of a gestapo. Why suddenly detain and deport church members without a hearing?
Why does Immigration and Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua, a former military man and FijiFirst minister who in 2017 became president of the coalition member National Federation Party, embarrass the nation by taking action leading to a court injunction on its continuance because he had not allowed due process or followed constitutional and international law?
There had been hope the ruling coalition would produce change in a turgid, frayed government that had sat on taking necessary actions under former prime minister Frank Bainimarama.
What is clear is there is no evidence of change. I see, feel and know that personally. I have been both a witness and a victim.
I was in the High Court in Lautoka when Fiji Immigration and Prisons were found to have violated the rights of a Nigerian man detained 15 months without charges or a hearing simply for overstaying a tourist visa. The court awarded the man $20,000 as constitutional redress.
Why was Benjamin Okoro not promptly deported in 2018? Because Fiji officials took it upon themselves to punish him and other Nigerians using the country as a layover in trying to enter Australia? Likely.
And in an alliance with Fiji Airways, in which the government is the majority owner, the Immigration Department has a practice of making deportees pay for their own deportation. It is in violation of international protocol that holds the deporting country responsible if the deportee is unable to pay. Yet, when Okoro could not pay for his flight home, he was imprisoned.
I am a United States citizen, and have been deported twice without a hearing. Instead I was forced to try to explain my case to a lone immigration official who simultaneously was doing other tasks on both a phone and computer.
In the first case, in 2015, I arrived with a letter from the Fiji ambassador to the United States granting me re-entry to the country. On arrival about 5:30 a.m. from Los Angeles, I was detained with the assurance that as soon as the director arrived in his office and read the letter I would be released.
Instead I spent the day in immigration detention at the Grand Melanesian Hotel in Nadi. That night I heard knocks on the hotel room door locked from the outside, and was given five minutes to pack my bags and leave. I thought I finally was being freed. However, I was put on a plane and flown back to Los Angeles. My return ticket was applied to my deportation flight.
Months later I confronted the immigration director in his airport office and asked why I was deported despite the ambassador’s letter? The director said he had not seen the letter — and I had not been granted a hearing to formally present it.
Nothing has changed with the new government. I flew from Nadi to Hong Kong last April, and returned to Nadi from Tokyo in early July. It was essentially a round-trip, with me only changing the return from one city to another. However, I was barred re-entry because I did not have a return ticket to the United States.
I had spent three months traveling in Asia, and budgeted accordingly. On arrival at the airport I did not have funds to purchase a return ticket to the United States, and was detained. The next morning I purchased the return ticket, but still was told I could not re-enter Fiji — that I had to leave the country and then could come back with a return ticket to the United States.
The return ticket I had purchased, thinking it would allow me to stay in Fiji, was used to deport me to the United States. Immigration officials even attempted to force me to pay hotel expenses for the three days I was detained.
I had verbally protested against being detained at the airport in July, calling the officials incompetent and the system dysfunctional. At one point I explained I had a coexistence residency visa pending since April 2022, but the officials said they could not find it in their system.
I then realized that after an immigration official had emailed in July 2022 asking if I had written a news article that had been just published about the Okoro case, my three-year visa application had been summarily purged.
Who would not have complained, having to go through such processes — repeatedly. When I re-entered Fiji in late July I was again spirited to the immigration supervisor’s office for a check of my documents. There was a sign newly affixed to the wall stating: “Any misbehavior and verbal misconduct towards Immigration Supervisor on duty will result in police action or may lead to refusal of entry.”
I figured I was partially responsible for the signage, but also realized I must not be alone. All we who have been ushered into that office want is to be heard.
That essentially is what Grace Road is seeking.
Jason Jett is a 33-year career journalist: He has worked as an administrator, editor and reporter at The Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ. The metropolitan New York publication was the 12th-largest daily newspaper in the United States during his tenure. A copy editor at (Bloomberg) BusinessWeek. A contributor to Islands Business magazine (the South Pacific), Newsweek, Hickory Daily Record, City Sun (Brooklyn, NY) and the Jet Community Newspaper in Nadi, Fiji,
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