IWD: Women Reclaim the Night in Fiji

Women reclaim the night in Suva
By Ricardo Morris

“After a lapse of a year, Suva’s women “reclaimed the night” tonight (Friday, March 7) with a march through the city.

Some 150 women, men, youth and children held banners and candles calling for safer streets on the eve of International Women’s Day. They chanted, sang, cheered and blew whistles through the city, as curious
people looked on.

The march began at the Flea Market and snaked through the central business district and past nightclubs before ending at Government Buildings, in a symbolic call on Fiji’s military-led regime to put in more effort to curb the growing violence against women.

The march was jointly organized by the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre and the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement and were supported by other groups like the Soroptimists.

The annual Reclaim the Night march was cancelled last year because of a state of emergency imposed by the military after it seized power in December 2006.

One in every five women in Fiji is subjected to rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, according to the FWCC.

Earlier in the day, about 120 women, children and men marched through Fiji’s tourist town Nadi calling for women’s rights to be enforced and respected.

The march was led by Nadi Mayor Timoci Koroiqica and Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali. Marchers went through Main Street and congregated at the Nadi Civic Centre where Koroiqica urged men to step up and lead the change in their attitude against women.

He said he still honoured his marriage vows by helping his wife with the housework and cleaning up despite his position.

Shamima Ali said despite women calling for change for more than a century, still more needed to be done to realize real change in women’s status. She urged solidarity among women, regardless of ethnicity, political affiliation or sexual orientation.

Mayor Koroiqica is hoping to declare Nadi a town that enforces zero tolerance to violence against women. If Nadi is declared a “zero tolerance town”, it will become the first in the Pacific to have such a status.”