they are the Jesus cops

Hey, Fiji appears to be slipping under the control of the Prodiban:

Editor in Chief of the Fiji Times, Mr Netani Rika, addressed journalism and communications students at the University of Queensland yesterday, telling them of life under the illegal rule of interim Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

Mr Rika said police converts to the fundamentalist New Methodist Church had replaced military personnel as in-house censors in newsrooms.

He said the police and the Bainimarama regime were strong backers of the new church and aimed to draw popular support away from the more independent traditional churches such as the dominant Methodist Church.

…Police officers of all beliefs and ethnic backgrounds were being pressured to join the New Methodist Church to impose strict moral codes and behaviour on police officers and increasingly the general public.

"The strategy appears to be to convert all the police then they will make everyone else Christian creating what they think will be a peaceful society where we can all just follow our great leader," Mr Rika told students.

"They are the Jesus cops. Even the police phone answering message says "Praise the Lord. Can we help?"

And check this out: Ruggers for Jesus. And a fine collection of brick shithouses they are too. Via Bartholomew, who has much more.

Fiji wouldn’t be the first Methodist dictatorship, by the way.

Comments

[Splintered Sunrise]

Fiji is great for this sort of thing. I particularly enjoyed the TVNZ interview with Rabuka after the 1987 coup.

Interviewer: Why did you overthrow the government?

Steve: God told me to overthrow the government.

Interview: Umm, some people say this is a racist coup.

Steve: It was for the benefit of one race. So?

It seems a weird place, Fiji. And a success story for those Welsh missionaries who (at some risk to themselves) convinced the Fijians to abandon cannibalism for Methodism and rugby.

[ejh]

Talking of rugger, if there's been a more entertaining story all summer than the Great Harlequins Fake Blood Fraud, I'd like to know what it was.

[Alex]

I recall the Fijian elections of 1999; the streets were full of posters reading "666: LET'S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK! A VOTE FOR HIM IS A VOTE FOR SIN!!!" and a mixture of cops in khaki uniform skirts with red trim and military in more standard battledress.

A while later I wrote about it for a student paper, that sat on the piece so long that the next coup happened between writing it and it appearing.

That poster would no longer be quaint or surprising if it appeared in the US.

[ajay]

"Shortly after your birth, the King your father abandoned the creed of his ancestors and became a Wesleyan Methodist, of the most bigoted and persecuting type." -- "The Gondoliers"