Quoting words of SODELPA member Mick Beddoes, Acting Prime Minister and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum outlined the hypocrisy and changing stance of people on ethnicity and protection of group rights.

While delivering his right of reply in Parliament on Friday, Mr Sayed-Khaiyum quoted Mr Beddoes from an interview he gave,  which is part of a documentary by Larry Thomas and is available at the University of the South Pacific library.

“Madam Speaker, there has been a lot of talk about ethnicity and protection of group rights.”

He goes on to quote Mr Beddoes: “Madam Speaker, Mick Beddoes, of course who now works for SODELPA, in the video that I talked about Honourable Bulanauca says “I think as far as I am concerned, indigenous rights as I see it really is a struggle of minority indigenous people, in countries where they have been marginalised and I feel that this particular situation does not necessarily apply to Fiji”.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum stressed that the whole purpose of ethnic politics is that when you homogenise people, you will always have those that will always head those ethnic groups and these are the elites and the privileged class.

“You will also neglect intra and inter-group injustices.”

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum while quoting a well-known sociologist Epeli Hau’ofa said: “As part of the process of integration in emergent and new societies, the privileged, who can afford to tell the poor to preserve their traditions but their perceptions of which traits of traditional culture to preserve are increasingly different from those of the poor because in the final analysis, Madam Speaker, it is the poor who have to live out their traditional culture. The privileged can merely talk about it and they are in a position to be selective about what trait they use or more correctly urge others to observe.”

Edited by Ranoba Baoa

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