Former Prime Minister and Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry has hailed today’s Thanksgiving and Reconciliation Service as a historic and momentous occasion in the history of our nation.

This as Chaudhry accepted the apology of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Methodist Church of Fiji President Reverend Ili Vunisuwai for roles they and the Church played in the coups of 1987 and 2000.

“The Fiji Labour Party was a victim of these coups and its leaders, supporters and their families were subjected to violence on three different occasions. The people of Indian origin were targeted, innocent people persecuted for their ethnicity and deprived of their rights and status as citizens of the very nation they had readily accepted and worked hard to build.”

He says those were traumatic times and thousands of people were forced to leave to seek safer and more secure futures elsewhere.

“I honestly believe an apology is owed to the entire nation, not just to the girmitiya community. Everyone suffered from this misguided and unlawful treasonous actions of the extremists who chose to take the law into their own hands. Be they members of the elected government, the business community, the workers, the farmers or the poor. No matter what race or creed, they all suffered. The entire nation suffered.”

Chaudhry says the country must take concrete steps to prevent such acts from wrecking our nation and destroying our national harmony.

“We are a multiracial country. There will always be elements that will seek to upset the equilibrium in the pursuit of their own vested interests by playing on the fears and emotions of the vulnerable in society.”

Apologies were also heard from Marama Roko Tui Dreketi Ro Teimumu Kepa and representatives of the Turaga na Vunivalu na Tui Kaba Ratu Epenisa Cakobau and Turaga na Tui Cakau Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu for the roles their people played in the coups of 1987 and 2000.

The FLP leader says he accepts the apologies and utterances of remorse are part of the healing process and thus necessary but it must not end here.

“We must look into the future and take concrete measures to prevent coups and other forms of political violence from ever again destroying the fabric of our society.”

Chaudhry says today is a great day for the nation and will go down in the annals of our history and we must build on it.