femLINKPacific — The fight for women’s rights in Fiji

Report from Peace Boat’s 68th Global Voyage:

March 29, 2010 femLINKPacific – The fight for women rights on Fiji’s airwaves

femLINK founder Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls (left) welcomed a small delegation of Peace Boat participants, to Suva, and invited them to a joint-press conference at the Fiji Museum. “Bula vinaka and welcome to femTALK 89.2 FM.” Women across Fiji can now hear this salutation, and their personal stories, in communities across the country thanks to a portable radio transmitter, called the suitcase radio, and the women of femLINKPacific. Women from the Fiji Islands until 2004 didn’t have much of a place in the country’s media, but that year femLINK – a women’s rights and security organisation – began capturing the voices of the female population, particularly in rural areas, and broadcasting them around the country on femTALK. “Radio for them was something that was in the capital city,” says femLINK director and founder Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls. “And, they never dreamt they would ever see radio, let alone talk on the radio (and) have their story heard.” It was such an emotional experience, she shares about those early shows. “We started the radio to do exactly that.”

The suitcase radio has changed accessibility to rural media for women in Fiji. femTALK’s community reporting is helping them to become an active part in closing the country’s gender divide. A Canadian-made mobile transmitting station makes this whole project possible. The suitcase radio is equipped with CD and cassette tape players, microphones, controls and the transmitter. The whole set up is easy to transport and fits on top of a small table. When set up in a rural community, people living within 10km can pick up the signal on radios in their homes. femTALK 89.2 is always on the air in the capital Suva – broadcasting women and human-security related programming from around the world when original shows aren’t on – but femLINK takes the suitcase radio to each of the communities it works in every three months for live radio shows. It wasn’t easy to get people to understand the concept of a radio station for women, Ms Bhagwan-Rolls says: “’Women’s media? What’s that? Community radio? Really?’” There were of course struggles in the early days, but femLINK gradually secured itself and grabbed the support of international organisations, such as UNIFEM and the International Women’s Development Agency.

Sulueti Waqa’s six-day voyage onboard Peace Boat was her first trip outside of Fiji. Ms Bhagwan-Rolls, in establishing this vital media outlet, has made certain that younger women get the opportunity to participate in the social change her organisation is bringing about. Generation Next is a femLINK initiative for young women to work in the field, reporting from the communities. It’s because of Generation Next that Peace Boat participants came to know femLINK and Sulueti Waqa (Sulu), who joined the 68th Global Voyage from Papeete (Tahiti) to Suva.

Reports Fijian Times – the country’s largest newspaper – and other media outlets were eager to hear Sulu’s experiences with Peace Boat and its participants. Two-and-a-half years ago Sulu’s mother told her about a femLINK workshop in their village, in the province of Ba –which, incidentally, is where femLINK had its first-ever remote broadcast in 2004. The soft-spoken, 23 year-old’s life changed completely after that. With Generation Next she moved to the capital, began reporting for femTALK and went on to study journalism and broadcasting. Now, she is one of femTALK’s full-time community media correspondents, interviewing women about their struggles and needs.

68th voyage participants joined Sulu for an informal chat, during her last day onboard, to discuss women’s rights around the world. The stories that have the biggest effect on Sulu are the comments from women at the markets, who travel hours from their villages into cities to sell whatever they can grow or make to earn a few dollars. “When you talk to them, they feel like their burdens lighten up and they can share something with someone,” she says, “what they’ve carried for a long time” “Mostly women are portrayed (in Fiji’s media) as victims, in a case of violence or rape, but to talk about women doing small business, we hardly see that. Normally, we have to bring out what women have done for their children to be successful.”

Peace Boat guests were very fortunate to be invited to participate in a live femTALK broadcast. Sulu shared with participants some of the progress femLINK and femTALK have made in the last six years for women in Fiji and beyond. The radio show is really only one component. femLINK uses all of the stories and accounts correspondents record, she explains, to create policy documents to present to decision-makers in government and at international conferences on peace and human security. These reports are also shared with the women through community newsletters. femLINK also has correspondents outside of Fiji, reporting, for the newsletters, in Honiara (Solomon Islands), Bougainville (Papua New Guinea) and Nuku’alofa (Tonga). She also pointed out femTALK’s respect for Fiji’s diversity, ensuring there are both Fijian and Indo-Fijian correspondents going out in the field together so interviewees don’t have to deal with language barriers. And, she adds, women with disabilities have found an outlet for their voices with femTALK’s Look At My Abilities (LAMA) programme.

UN SCr 1325, Ms Bhagwan-Rolls says, is “about broader civil society taking ownership and supporting women in advocating for their peace and security.” femLINK is a fervent promoter and supporter of the UN Security Council resolution 1325, which insists upon the “participation of women in the peace process” and for UN member states to “pay attention to the needs of women and girls in conflict, peace and security.” Ms Bhagwan-Rolls says she’s been elated to her the women femLINK interacts with now reference the resolution in discussions. femLINK formed in response to the Blue Ribbon Peace Vigil during the May 2000 coup against then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaundry – the country’s first Indo-Fijian leader – when the wives of cabinet ministers, being held hostage, gathered in a church for to pray for an end to the crisis. This event highlighted the role women have in Fiji’s internal conflicts and their part in the peacemaking. The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 in October that year.

“We should do this in Japan too,” Saito Ai told the femTalk audience. She added that the experience with femLINK was one more inspiration for her to work for a women’s rights organisation after returning home. Fiji’s government has endured four political coup d’états since 1987 – the most recent in December 2006: The military has controlled the nation since that time. The country’s current leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, enacted the Public Emergency Regulation in April of last year, forcing local media to abide by strict censorship rules and demanding officials approve all stories before going public. Foreign journalists also had to leave the country at that time, essentially cutting the citizens of the Fiji Islands off from editorially independent news. Anything critical of the government is sure to be censored, but, Ms Bhagwan-Rolls says, that hasn’t stopped the station from bringing women’s issues to the airwaves and the world. femLINK has grown to become such an important part of the peace movement, the organisation has since October 2009 served as the Pacific regional secretariat of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC): Peace Boat is GPPAC’s Northeast Asia secretariat. To learn more about the work of femLINKPacific please visit their website at www.femlinkpacific.org.fj *Bula – Hello. Vinaka – Thank you. (in Fijian)