A little more than a week ago, I wrote to ask for your support for a new campaign. We were demanding that the government of Fiji drop all charges against trade union leaders, including Daniel Urai (pictured above).
As I wrote then, "the Fijian regime declared the strike illegal and arrested the leadership of the union ... Bail conditions for the arrested leaders include not repeating the "offence" of calling a strike, so that if negotiations do not resolve the dispute and the union decides to hold another strike before the case is heard (which could be months, as it often is in Fiji), their leaders will be carted off to jail forthwith."
But now the charges have been dropped and we've suspended our online campaign.
The Fiji Trades Union Congress has thanked all of us for our support. The International Union of Food Workers, which sponsored the LabourStart campaign and which ran a parallel campaign of its own, issued this statement. The British TUC which was very involved in launching this campaign ran this short article by Owen Tudor on its Stronger Unions blog. And of course there's lots more on LabourStart's own Fiji labour news page.
I want to thank every one of you, and especially the more than 7,500 of you who sent off messages to the government of Fiji.
Our voices were heard. Our campaign worked.
Solidarity forever!
Eric Lee - LabourStart
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