In this extract from her new memoir Be Brave, Barbara Dreaver recalls the night she was detained and locked up in Fiji.
‘You’re being denied entry.’ The Fijian immigration officer looked at me grimly and I felt my throat catch.
It was December 2008. I was in Fiji to report on the expulsion of New Zealand’s acting high commissioner, Caroline McDonald, by the Bainimarama government, which claimed she had been actively involved with people opposing the regime.
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Even before arriving in Nadi I’d had an uneasy feeling. Mike Field had been thrown out of Fiji on a previous trip and it made sense that I would also be on the military regime’s hit list. In the queue I had whispered to camera operator Chris Brown and satellite operator Justin Moore to go in front so they wouldn’t be associated with me. I told Chris that if something happened he should try to record it without being obvious.
An unpleasant sinking feeling hit me in the gut. I quickly rang my boss, news editor Paul Patrick. There was no time for niceties. ‘I’m being denied entry,’ I said and then, holding out the phone, asked the immigration officer what this meant. ‘She says they’re putting me in a detention centre until the first flight tomorrow,’ I reported.
Paul exploded. ‘Oh, for f***’s sake, let me talk to her.’ I passed over the phone and turned to Chris and Justin, who were lurking a couple of metres behind. Justin looked worried – this was his first overseas trip. Chris, who had worked in Europe and was very experienced, just nodded. ‘Gotcha,’ he said, discreetly switching on the camera he was holding by his side.
The immigration officer handed me back my phone. A more subdued Paul said, ‘Stay in touch if you can.’ They would, he said, set wheels in motion with the authorities.
Two immigration officers escorted me downstairs, collected my suitcase and took me to a car. Justin stayed with the luggage while Chris followed me, filming and throwing me questions. I answered them as the officer tried to push me into the car.
We drove off. It was dark and I couldn’t follow where we were, other than on the other side of the airport runway. I knew that when Mike had been refused entry he had been put into the one-star Kennedy Hotel, but when we got to our destination I realised it was not the Kennedy. A large metal gate opened electronically and as I got out of the car I saw guards drinking kava. I was led upstairs to my room. There were bars on the window and a pane of glass in the door. The window looked over the main gate.
As soon as the guards left I got on my phone, which I’d tucked into the waistband of my pants to avoid it being seized. I knew my safety depended on as many people as possible hearing about my detention, so one of my first calls was to friends at Fiji TV. It was reassuring to hear their voices. They had been through so much themselves – military threats and worse. I called some journalists in New Zealand, gave some interviews and heard the concern in their voice. I called my family, who did their best to be cheerful and reassuring. I didn’t want to hang up: their voices were a comforting link to the outside world.
I sat on the bed, thoughts whirring in my head. I could cope with immigration but what about the military? For the first time in my adult life I was being forcibly detained. I could roam around upstairs – where there were several rooms and a bathroom – but the door from the floor was locked.
My phone was starting to go flat and the plug in my room had no power. I looked around. There were no power points on the landing outside my room. I finally found one near the ceiling in a bathroom. Joy of joys, it worked. I pulled up a chair and stood on it for half an hour, holding the phone above my head, plugged into the charger. On the way back to my room I passed a young woman. She looked Korean and was earnestly talking, whether on a phone or just to herself I couldn’t make out.
One of my friends at Fiji TV phoned. ‘We’ve had a meeting,’ he said, ‘and we’ve decided we have to tell you. It’s probably going to be fine but we want you to know.’
They had rung Lieutenant Colonel Neumi Leweni, the military’s media contact, and said, ‘Come on, you know Barbara. What’s going on? Let her go.’ Leweni had been unsympathetic. ‘She deserves everything that’s coming to her tonight,’ he had responded. ‘She’ll be lucky if she’s able to get on the plane tomorrow.’
I took a deep breath. I had heard how people who went up against the regime were taken to a camp and tortured. Some were quiet after their ‘detention’. We knew it must have been bad. There were stories about women being made to strip and men having to run around a field until they collapsed. One man reportedly had had a board tied to his back while soldiers took turns jumping on it.
I knew I had to be prepared. For the next thirty minutes I practised taking off my clothes and putting them back on. Off and on, off and on. If I was told to strip I wanted to be able to look the soldiers in the eye and be strong. After a while I knew I could do this without flinching if I had to. I wouldn’t give Frank Bainimarama and his cronies any satisfaction.
I got my asthma inhaler and put it in my pants. No way was I going to die of an asthma attack. Then I sat on the bed and waited. I was thirsty but I knew if I drank from the tap I could expect to get a stomach bug, which was the last thing I needed. Every time I heard the metal gates opening I would run to the window, stand on tiptoe and peer out to see if it was a military car.
Later that night I heard muttering at my door. The young woman was pacing up and down outside. Her low guttural sounds were like something out of a horror movie. She seemed unbalanced. My door didn’t lock so I held my phone plug in my hand with the prongs pointing outwards. If she came in the door, I would slam her with it. Eventually she went back to her room. I thought how ironic it was that, for now, I was more worried about one woman than about the military.
I lay down on the bed in the dark. I must have snoozed but mostly I was awake and felt very alone. The stuff that went through my head I have never shared.
As the dawn broke I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe I would be put on the plane to New Zealand. After having a shower, I again stood on the chair in the bathroom and charged my phone. My fellow detainee was nowhere to be seen.
A woman appeared and asked if I wanted breakfast. No, I said, I wasn’t hungry. Two men arrived and told me to follow them. They loaded me and my suitcase into a car. When I asked them where they were taking me, they said the airport. When we started to drive towards the terminal, I felt a sense of relief. I could see Chris and Justin waiting outside the departures area. Fiji Television was there too, and an official from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Unbeknown to me, an official from the ministry who was overnighting in Nadi on his way to Suva had tried to see me but had been denied access. The official loudly berated the men who had driven me to the airport. The Fijian government, he told them, had breached the Geneva Convention. The men looked confused. They seemed to have no idea what he was talking about.
Chris asked me quietly if I was okay. I said I was. I did quick interviews for TVNZ and Fiji TV. The ministry man then took me aside. He was still fuming. Had I been mistreated, he asked.
The two men escorted me to the Fiji Airways’ check-in counter. A man, possibly the manager, appeared. ‘Ms Dreaver, we would like to upgrade you,’ he said and handed me a boarding pass. It was the first time I felt like crying; I knew this man was taking a huge risk. The two men then marched me through Customs and sat with me in the departure lounge before escorting me on to the plane amidst stares from the other passengers. I felt angry at myself for being embarrassed.
As the plane lifted off, there were a few quiet tears. It hit me that being on a banned list meant I could no longer cover a country I loved.
Extracted with permission from Be Brave: The Life of a Pacific Correspondent, by Barbara Dreaver (Awa Press).
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