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Issue No: 789; 23 May 2001
Female Members of Parliament held hostage by the terrorists last year were sexually intimidated. Revealing for the first time their ordeals as hostages, the Women and Culture Minister Lavenia Padarath stated that they were video taped daily even when they were asleep. She said: "Once I remember it was two o'clock in the morning and I saw one CRW soldier filming us asleep." Padarath also stated: "It was hard for us to visit the washroom because people were just moving around the parliament complex freely and passing comments". She added that they had no privacy and were like animals. "We were like monkeys in the zoo," she said. She said it was particularly bad in the beginning and they were being videotaped till the very last day. Padarath and 3 other female parliamentarians, all ethnic Fijians of which one was also of the chiefly family, were held hostage for 40 days by terrorists who claimed to champion indigenous rights, culture and tradition. The hostages belonged to the People's Coalition Government. |
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People's Coalition Government - Fiji Islands |
