**Sweeping new media controls announced by the military government of Fiji this week have drawn howls of protest from international media groups.**The decree provides for five-year jail sentences for journalists, heavy fines, and limits to foreign media ownership.
Fiji’s oldest paper, the Fiji Times, is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Editors of the Fiji Times and other journalists have been expelled repeatedly since Commodore Frank Bainimarama took power in a 2006 coup.
Entrenched position
The International Federation of Journalists said it was alarmed that the new media laws propose to invest all power of interpretation over the meaning of fair, balanced and quality journalism to officers appointed by the Bainimarama regime.
“The decree is clearly focused on the regime retaining control and entrenching its highly oppressive restrictions, not only on the media but on members of the public who might wish to express dissenting views,” said IFJ General Secretary Aidan White.
The draft decree allows for government officers to enter news rooms and media offices to seize any documentation, materials or equipment, even where no formal complaint has been laid.
In New Zealand, the Newspaper Publishers’ Association chief executive and NZ Media Freedom Committee secretary Tim Pankhurst said the new media decree is aimed at totally muzzling an already repressed media.
"It not only targets editors and their journalists. Any members of the public brave enough to express dissenting views are also in line for crippling fines, ill treatment and jail.
“Soldiers overseeing the media is a characteristic of a dictatorship,” Mr Pankhurst said.
Fiji Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum said all media outlets must pledge allegiance to Fiji.
He said the decree - announced on Wednesday and now subject to three days of compulsory consultations - would establish a media code of standards in ethics and practice.
Professor Ursula Cheer of Canterbury University, a New Zealand media law expert, said the draft decree does not mention freedom of expression.
“This appears to be all about control - control of ownership, control of content and control of just anything connected with publishing in Fiji,” Ms Cheer told Radio New Zealand International.
“This consultation will cover certain aspects of the media which will improve the relationship between the people and the media outlets,” Commodore Bainimarama said.This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.