The media needs to step up and investigate rumours.

A letter to peterfirkin@gmail.com

Sir,

When the mainstream media cease to report or investigate anything controversial the rumour mill winds up and goes into overdrive. It is a quirk of our Fijian nature that rumours are treated as fact and passed on and added to with relish.

Recently we have been hearing new rumours of beatings and unreported detentions under PER.

One story had a shop owner at Nine Mile detained and beaten for being vocal in his opposition to the “Bainimarama Junta”.  I admit he was never slow at letting his opinion be known and his customers were under no illusions as to his opinions.  

In fact I was leaning towards believing this story as he was suddenly not serving in his store and his wife was evasive on his whereabouts.  

This story was in my mind as a fact when I ran into the gentleman concerned in Lami yesterday in the Hot Bread Shop.  He looked unmarked and greeted me effusively.

I raised the story of the beating with him and he sheepishly told me he had been caught out with a neighbour’s wife and had been kicked out of home. As his wife’s relatives had financed the store he had lost that also.  

His wife was obviously embarrassed and this showed as being evasive and helping the rumour along.

 Small facts apparently confirming the rumours become proof.

No investigative reporting by the media is making “facts” out of any and all claims that manage to get into the public arena.

We have a recent Coup 4.5 story claiming that Renee Lai was beaten by the military.

While we all accept beatings have happened in the past I have problems with the idea of paying a soldier $10,000 to beat someone up. This to me sounds farfetched.

But the part of the story that is believable to me is the use of a bottle of water as a club to beat her.

This is a tactic first used in the Sinai to extract confessions without leaving visible marks on the prisoner.  Our boys from the Sinai would know of this.

Small facts apparently confirming the rumours.

We urgently need the news media to step up and investigate such rumours even if they have to report that the military refuses to answer the queries. Find the person concerned. Ask them what happened.

I believe most of the rumours would go down the path of the Nine Mile shop owner and have a more mundane and logical answer.

No Name was offered