Fiji Facts
Country: 332 islands, about 100 of which are populated. The two main ones are Viti Levu and Vanua Levu.
Population: Estimated 905,000 in 2006
Makeup: Fijian 51 %, Indian 44 %, European, Chinese and other 5 %
Land area: 18,333 square kilometres (more than three Prince Edward Islands)
Geography: The bigger islands are volcanic mountains, while some of the smaller islands are coral. There are barrier reefs around many islands.
Languages: English and Fijian (both official); Hindustani
Economy: Tourism, agriculture and clothing.
Capital: Suva
History: Settled by Melanesians (with some Polynesian influences), Fiji was first reached by a European, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, in 1643. Europeans shunned the islands for many years because of the fear of cannibals. British sailors Captain James Cook and Captain William Bligh (Mutiny on the Bounty) brought Fiji to European attention in the late 1700s.
The arrival of missionaries in the 19th century led to the end of cannibalism, but Europeans also brought epidemics, which nearly wiped out the population. Fiji was ceded to Britian in 1874.
Fiji, an island republic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is a tropical paradise. Midway between the equator and the South Pole, about 2,800 kilometres from Sydney, Australia, its climate is hot and sunny. Its reefs, rainforests and beaches make it a popular tourist destination.
It also has a well-deserved reputation for political turmoil.
Since winning independence from Britain in 1970, it has gone through four coups, and the fundamental cause of the disputes continues to fester. The latest coup came in December 2006.
The discord arises from a racial split in the population, the result of Fiji's colonial past. Fiji became a British colony in 1874. Shortly after that, many Indians came to the country as indentured labourers to work on the sugar plantations.
Descendents of those labourers eventually came to represent a key part of the population and were seen as controlling the government, to the distress of native Fijians.
In 1987, just 17 years after independence, Col. Sitiveni Rabuka led two coups intended to establish the primacy of indigenous Melanesian Fijians. Fiji was declared a republic and a new constitution in 1990 gave the rural, native population control of the government.
Coup led by civilian
Many Indians left, causing economic problems, the CIA's World Factbook says. Indians now represent about 44 per cent of the population of 905,000, compared with 51 per cent indigenous.
Throughout the 1990s, Fiji increased the rights of its non-indigenous population. An Indo-Fijian, Mahendra Chaudhry, was elected the first Indian prime minister in the free and peaceful elections of 1999. But after just a year in office, Chaudhry was overthrown in an armed coup led by a civilian, George Speight.
He and about 10 armed men seized the parliament in the capital of Suva in May 2000, taking about 45 hostages, including Chaudhry and most of the cabinet. The rebels were angry about the economic and political dominance of the ethnic Indian minority.
Chaudhry was released after two months and the rebels were jailed. Another election was held in 2001, won by Laisenia Qarase.
A Fijian soldier mans a checkpoint in Suva in November 2006. (Rick Rycroft/Associated Press)
But in late 2006, Fiji's military, headed by Commodore Frank Bainimarama, overthrew Qarase's government. He said that he was seizing power to prevent legislation that favoured indigenous Fijians.
Earlier in the year, the government moved to pardon the conspirators from the 2000 coup — Speight was sentenced to death in 2002, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment — and has introduced two other bills that favour majority indigenous Fijians over the Indian minority.
Bainimarama assumed some powers of the president and named Dr. Jona Senilagakali, a military medic, as caretaker prime minister. He promised that an interim government would be appointed, then elections would be held in the future.
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