Fiji's military, ruling under a state of emergency after ousting the elected government this month, beat six pro-democracy campaigners in an apparent clampdown on opponents calling for a return to civilian rule, news reports from the capital, Suva, said yesterday.
Soldiers took the six women who were vocal opponents of the Dec. 5 coup to the central military barracks, beat them and then forced them to walk 10km in heavy rain to the site of a democracy shrine they had set up, the Fiji Times reported.
A human-rights group, the Pacific Center for Public Integrity, accused the troops of "terror intimidation tactics" and "cowardly and deplorable behaviour," the newspaper said.
The women -- including Virisila Buadromo, the leader of the Fiji Women's Rights Movement -- were rounded up and taken to the barracks on Saturday night, an unnamed source told the paper.
One woman who said she wanted to remain anonymous to protect her family told Radio New Zealand International that she and the five other women were interrogated and made to lie face down on a concrete cricket pitch where soldiers jumped on their backs.
"They started jumping on our backs, on our lower backs, and started hitting us and kicking us and punching our faces," she said.
Military commander Voreqe Bainimarama, who masterminded the Dec. 5 overthrow of the democratically-elected Fiji government, has warned that anyone who opposed the military would be dealt with. Bainimarama told a radio station talk show on Friday that the military would resist any attempts to undermine its work.
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