The proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission will only focus on the political upheavals and coup-related events Fiji has gone through as a nation in the last 40 years.

This has been highlighted by its Steering Committee Chair Sashi Kiran.

Kiran says TRC is a way of acknowledging past events, and how Fiji can learn as a nation going forward in assuring the public that it will never be repeated.

She says that the proposed Commission will be an attempt to also look at the truth and healing process and unity across ethnic groups.

“Hopefully, this commission creates a space for people to be able to come and tell the truth, seek the truth, and put a closure. Now, with the amount of pain, physical, emotional, and mental, people have gone through, there is no way of ever being able to say, Well, if we did this, it will help you. Like, some of the emotions people carry will probably carry throughout their lives and generationally.”

Fiji Labour Party member Surendra Lal, who, in support of the proposed commission, made a submission urging the Republic of Fiji Military forces to make an attempt at reconciling with Indo-Fijian farming communities who were victims of past political coups.

“We never heard the military coming and telling us that they will be putting up a reconciliation with those who are victims of the past events because the military have been actively involved in sustaining our people, especially cane farmers and workers; they have been threatened, picked from town, and taken up to camp.”

In response, Kiran says that the whole purpose of the TRC commission is to directly look at issues as such at the national level, where communities and groups share what they have gone through with the proposed commission.

She says that RFMF is currently looking and working at reconciliation within the military since there have been a lot of events that have happened within the military, which will require an internal reconciliation process with former officers, soldiers, and their families.

Meanwhile, other submissions were made, including the confidentiality of information, court ruling authority over reconciliation, and involvement of other stakeholders in the truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The committee also looks forward to more consultation to allow a comprehensive bill before parliament.