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SOUTH PACIFIC: Fijian Deaths in Iraq Revive Mercenaries' Issue
By Kalinga Seneviratne
SYDNEY, Jun 12 (IPS) - The deaths of three Fijian security guards in a bomb blast in Iraq has revived concerns over private security agencies hiring former Fijian soldiers cheaply to work in the war-torn country and elsewhere.
The dead men were working for the London-based Armour Group which supplies security guards to some 40 countries. The ex-soldiers, believed to have experience serving in United Nations peacekeeping operations, were providing security cover to convoys carrying supplies to Iraq from Kuwait, when their vehicle hit an explosive device on Friday.
Their deaths bring the estimated death toll of Fiji citizens working in Iraq as security guards to 13, with the majority dying since April this year. Fijian non- government organisations (NGOs) claim that many Fijians recruited to work in Iraq are unaware of the real risks.
Following the latest deaths, the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC), a leading NGO has called upon the government to move quickly to set up legislative protection for Fijian citizens recruited in increasing numbers to serve in danger zones.
PCRC spokeswoman Ema Tagicakibau told ‘Fiji Times' that the deaths of three more Fijian security guards should be a wake-up call for the government, to prevent the exploitation of Fijian men as cheap labour, mercenaries or human shields by foreign companies. She called upon the government to introduce legislation to register private recruiting companies, devise a code of conduct for them and ensure proper work and pay conditions. "These must form the basis of a national policy or legislation on the regulation of the private security industry," she was quoted as saying by the newspaper on Saturday.
Labour Minister Krishna Datt was then reported in the media as saying, in response, that the Fiji government does scrutinise contracts signed by Fijian citizens with private companies before they leave the country, to ensure that they have proper insurance cover in case of accident or death, but not on other conditions of employment.
It is believed that there are some 1000 Fijians working as private security contractors in Iraq and Kuwait, and another 2000 ex-Fiji soldiers working for the British Army. These recruitments have been going on for a few years now.
In 2003, the British firm Global Risks Strategies established a branch in Fiji to recruit over 500 former and serving Fiji soldiers, to travel to Iraq and provide security for oil fields, installations and government buildings. In January 2005, Homeland Security Limited sent a recruiting team to Fiji, seeking 70 men from the police, army or prison service to work as security guards in Iraq. By mid-2005, the company had recruited 181 Fijians to work with the company in the Middle East, offering salaries of 1,700 dollars a month (ten times Fiji's estimated poverty line), according to a study by a Melbourne-based research institute.
Sakiusa Raivoce, the Fiji director of Global Risk, told ABC Radio that there are some unscrupulous security companies operating in the country, which are not providing potential recruits with the information they need to make an informed choice. "The guards I send to Iraq are well-briefed on the current situation on the ground and also where they're going to work in Iraq. And if they agree, they sign on the agreement that they're going to Iraq" he said. "Most of my guys are ex-servicemen and they've been to war-torn countries".
Nick McLellan of Melbourne's Nautilus Institute who recently published a research paper on the privatisation of Pacific Island security and Fiji soldiers in Iraq says that private companies with lucrative contracts to protect U.S. and British interests in Iraq, found in Fijian soldiers with Middle East experience, an ideal and willing pool.
"After the UNIFIL (First Fiji Infantry Regiment in Lebanon) commitment with UN peacekeepers came to an end in 2002, the soldiers were demobilised thus leaving a glut of highly-skilled, highly-trained soldiers doing nothing, despite being skilled in military duties. Many of them opted to join security companies on contract in Iraq and Kuwait," observed McLellan.
Jone Dakuvula, programmes director of the Citizens Constitutional Forum is opposed to ex-soldiers going overseas as private security guards, because he believes Fijians are been used as cheap labour. The government, he said, ‘'can discourage the recruitment. It can make a statement, a public statement, that it does not support this", he said in a radio interview.
But, for the cash-strapped government, Fijians working abroad is a foreign exchange earner. Fiji's Reserve Bank governor, Savenaca Narube, told Australia's Age newspaper that money sent home by Fijians serving abroad soared to 170 million US dollars in 2004 from 28 million dollars five years earlier. That did not include money brought home undeclared.
The government sees the deployment of Fijians in Iraq as a source of income for many families and believes that they should be allowed to exercise their constitutional right and freedom to travel and work anywhere.
McLellan pointed out, that when this issue was raised in January 2005, Fiji's then labour minister Kenneth Zinck responded by arguing that men leaving for Kuwait and Iraq was a good thing. ‘'It is one solution to the increasing unemployment rate in the country today,'' he quoted Zinck as saying. (END/2006)
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