Chaudhry’s

Letters

Chaudhry’s boycott

MAHENDRA Chaudhry’s sugarcane harvest boycott in Fiji was wrong. His demand was not just and the method he used was harsh and out of date. It was wrong of Chaudhry to use the farmers and let them suffer for a theoretical price which he made them believe he could win for them. He lured them into accepting the price and, being in a bad financial situation which was also created by Chaudhry in the 1990 boycott, they grabbed the price hook, line and sinker.

If Chaudhry really believed the money he talked about rightly belonged to the farmers and could prove to the nation that it was justly so, why make the farmers suffer for it? If Chaudhry was really sincere, smart and strong he could have left the farmers alone to harvest their cane, get the money which he claimed was there for them and arrange for its payment to them to supplement their full 1991 sugarcane money.

The money, sadly enough, has now been reduced through lack of sugar in the cane that should have been harvested but is still standing out there. Much more of it has been lost through fire.

It was wrong to use the farmers. Their being kept together was a draconian exercise of exploitation. It was also wrong to use the farmers to force any change in the Sugar Cane Growers’

Council. While there are weaknesses in ther council which need ratification, the existing one did not deprive the farmers any money. The boycott did. Any newly elected council in a newly-structured one should only be allowed to function with the newly-elected Government.

Now the boycott is lifted and Chaudhry has got the satisfaction he wanted, one asks; What about the farmers? Now they must tell Chaudhry to deliver the goods.

This year’s boycott was a face-saving exercise, an attempt to justify the 1990 boycott.

S Finau

Nausori, Fiji.

Domestic

violence

THE article Door opened on domestic violence by Robin Bromby in your January 1991 issue airs an issue that is increasingly important in Pacific societies, and all around the world, as Bromby notes.

Unfortunately, the article is flawed. To cite particulars, the work referred to is not a “... study just published by the Institute for Polynesian Studies” but is rather a special issue of volume 13 number 3 (1990) of the journal Pacific Studies for which I was guest editor. The volume is titled Domestic Violence in Oceania , and available as a book through the University Press of Hawaii. The cost

of the volume is US$ 10. This information may be of value to your readers and should have been mentioned in the article by Bromby. The author appears to have read the book carefully, and to feel that its appearance marks an import ant breakthrough in the work of anthro pologists in the region. The volume was the product of three years of discussion by the contributors at symposia held under the auspices of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. Finally, as not only guest editor of the work but as author of three of the pieces in it, some of which are quoted or paraphrased in Bromby’s article, it would have been appropriate for me to receive credit for my work.

The issue of domestic violence is important and Bromby has given it wider play than would have been the case otherwise. I appreciate the attention that PIM has given the book. Nevertheless, a book review should at least cite the work on which it draws and not give the appearance of being merely another news item. A large number of people, including the fine staff of Pacific Studies and the anthropologist contributors who dared to tackle a thorny and politically dangerous issue, worked very hard to bring this work into being. Good journal istic ethics require that they be recog nised.

Dorothy A. Counts

Professor and Chair, Dept of Anthropology University of Waterloo Ontario, Canada