FIJIAN FEMINIST WHO FOUGHT FOR PEACE, JUSTICE AND EQUALITY IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

Amelia Rokotuivuna
August 7, 1941 –June 2, 2005

Written by Anne S. Walker, AM, with excerpts from eulogies by Fiji Senator ‘Atu Emberson Bain and Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, Vice President of Fiji.

On June 2, 2005, a woman of extraordinary energy, passion and ability who dedicated her life to promoting peace, democracy and social justice, died in Suva, Fiji, at the age of 63.

Amelia Rokotuivuna was a community leader far ahead of her time, who grew up in the Fiji mining town of Vatukoula and went on to become head girl of Adi Cakobau School, Fiji’s most prestigious college for girls. She was a founder of the Fiji YWCA, joining Australians Ruth Lechte and Anne S. Walker in 1962 to begin the programmes of an activist organization that worked for peace and democracy in a multi-cultural Fiji. In 1967, she attained a diploma in social administration and development from the University of Swansea in Wales, returning to become General Secretary of the Fiji YWCA in 1973.

For the next two decades in this position, Amelia led the fight on issues such as equal rights for women, a nuclear-free Pacific, political reform and multi-culturalism. She advocated for those without a voice, reminding the great and powerful of their obligations to the poor and disadvantaged. Referring to her charismatic leadership of the Y during those years, Dr. Wadan Narsey, formerly an economics lecturer at the University of the South Pacific (USP) and regular columnist with the Fiji Times, wrote: “As an Indo-Fijian non-Christian male, I found myself on YWCA committees on issues such as economic justice, constitutional reform, the anti-nuclear movement and numerous other important issues of the time.”

In furtherance of her anti-nuclear beliefs, Amelia took centre stage at the non-governmental meeting held parallel to the first United Nations world conference on women in Mexico City, 1975, speaking out against nuclear testing and raising the awareness of the world regarding the continuing abuse of the Pacific and its peoples by nuclear powers.

The Fiji coups in May 1987 demonstrated the real character of Amelia. Never was her fearlessness and true grit more splendidly displayed. She defied many of her own people to commit to a multicultural, tolerant and caring vision of Fiji. Amelia, among others, was imprisoned briefly for her beliefs.

From 1992 to 1995, Amelia worked as Programme Secretary for Advocacy for the World YWCA in Geneva. At the time of her death she was President of the Fiji YWCA Board of Directors and a lecturer at USP.

Amelia leaves behind a son, Peceli, who continues her work as a community activist, brothers Apisalome (Mudu) and Sevuloni, sister Veniana and their families, and the family of sister Manaini (dec.). She will be sorely missed by family and friends alike, but her life spent in the search for peace, equality and justice in Fiji and the South Pacific will be forevercherished and celebrated.

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Tribute to Amelia Rokotuivuna
By Vanessa Griffen

It is a privilege to be here today to speak on behalf of what others have generously called Special Friends. We mean, partly, the group and individuals from USP who knew Amelia and were influenced by her, particularly in the early ‘70’s and ‘80’s when we met Amelia as students, graduates or lecturers. The special friends also include others from different backgrounds, who at different times, joined as friends, sharing and learning from Amelia’s political beliefs and activism.

I would like to list just some of the friends who have spent the last decades close to Amel in spirit and in work (although we flatter ourselves a little in saying this - not one of us can match Amelia’s breath of involvement and the interconnectedness of her principles and causes that she stood for all her life).

Some of the friends who were influenced by Amelia and remained her admirers and supporters over the years include: (in alphabetical order):
Atu Emberson Bain,
Jone Dakuvula,
Arlene Griffen,
Vanessa Griffen,
Bharat Jamnadas,
Vimal Madhavan,
Vijay Naidu,
Wadan Narsey,
Jayant Prakash,
Shaista Shameem,
Claire Slatter,
William and Helen Sutherland,
Joan Yee,
Makareta Waqavonovono.

There are many others, who were very special to Amel. We thank them for giving us this space to talk about her as a friend, activist, organizer, women’s rights advocate and leader of struggles in Fiji and Pacific, for women’s rights, social justice, peace, and democracy.

Amelia was a force in our lives, we would not be where we are today without meeting someone like her in our early days as students and being drawn into work on issues that, for us, could have always remained academic, without her leadership and noisy argumentative debate. It helped that she was fun, dynamic, sponsored dinners and half meals, in exchange for our writing and involvement in her committees. Our personal and professional development too, would have been very different, if we had not had the good fortune to meet this person, here in Suva, in the Young Women’s Christian Association (of all places), and to forever have our perspectives, book learning and understanding challenged by her. She provided us with practical experience, an organization to float in and out of, and her office was an extraordinary place enabling us to feel centred in our activism – whether it be on Fiji, or women’s rights, colonialism or nuclear testing.

For some of us, milestones in our development were participating in the Y Public Affairs committee in Amelia’s time, and contributing to its position papers on taxation, a national lottery, abortion, women’s reproductive rights. Or later, being at the first ATOM Committee regional meeting and its aftermath, where Amelia was responsible for follow-up of some of the conference resolutions. We cut out teeth on these activities, with Amelia as the driving force behind them. She never acted alone though – her assumption was that activism required allies and workers for the cause.

The role of the YWCA and Amelia’s work there, in drawing us in, has to be mentioned. Claire Slatter brought me to meet Amel and others also. Wadan Narsey recollects that Amelia brought together many “like-minded people of all races”. He joined a Y committee, working on economic justice and inflation, for the Street Commission on constitutional reform. Many tributes from former university students, mention Amelia’s effect on them. She was inspiring, intimidating and challenging. She also was encouraging of involvement. She drew us in to be part of the Y’s activities because that was where she was. Jone Dakuvula recalls that Amelia got him and his friend Kalivati Bakani into the YWCA’s Women’s Training Programme before they were employed – an anecdote that I found so astonishing I almost rang him up to find out if it was true (they were my class mates at USP). Bharat Jamnadas remembers organizing musicians to perform folk music at the Friday night Coffee House sessions at the Old Town Hall, which was, to quote, a “great safe house for people, who otherwise would have walked around the town aimlessly”.

Amelia’s circle was always vastly expanding – she could meet and engage in talk with almost anyone. We will always be grateful that she drew us into her work, and that we worked with her. Anne Walker recalls in her tribute, the whole network of friends from ACS and other contacts, which Amel brought to the Y. Walking through the streets of Suva with her was a minefield of “hellos”. Shopkeepers, family members, friends were all greeted and talked to. If you asked who they were, you got a whole history.

We could go on about Amelia’s personality, and her strengths and weaknesses. Much has been said about her life – her family, her contributions to Fiji and to important movements for social change. Her schools friends have captured her place in their hearts and the YWCA has covered her work and contribution there. She was a leader in the Pacific region’s anti-nuclear and anti-colonial movement.

What I would like to do in this last tribute at her service, is to pick up the pieces of what might be overlooked, to acknowledge her and all her attributes and to express our appreciation of her - as a person, friend, mentor, critic, original thinker and analyst, and as a women’s rights advocate and a committed Christian. And then to say our thanks once more, for this life we were so privileged to share and be close to.

I would like to pay tribute to her great skill and accomplishments as an organizer. She was a great strategist, she ran a large building and programmes, and she organized regional or national meetings with attention to all the details. These skills were often taken for granted: but Amelia did not just speak about making things happen, she could organize so that they did. Working with her on the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific network’s actions, were lessons in lobbying, advocacy, reliable organization and financial accountability. As an NGO activist and fundraiser, she was meticulous in her decision making on the use of funds. She never deviated from being accountable to her organization or committee. Amelia never, even in the most private moments of decision making on funds or allocation of resources, by perhaps two or three of us, made an allocation that could not be justified; her financial accounting was legendary. It was later a total surprise to me to come across organizations or office bearers who lost their accountability, and made favourable decisions for themselves, or let resources they managed be liberally used for their own benefit. Her absolute honesty, in her speech, organizing, decision making and financial management, gave us a foundation we did not realize until much later, and it is a shock to hear when this is not always the norm amongst NGO organizers and leaders. Those of us who worked closely with her, learnt so much from her while not realizing it.

She disparaged personal gain or accolades for her actions – but only expected that whatever she did should lead to something better – a cause advanced, something accomplished. I have never encountered in Amelia, a thought that she was somebody because half of Suva knew her; or because she had made a rousing speech, or helped a Pacific lobbyist meet a government Minister or even Prime Minister. She pulled strings for causes, not for herself.

For all her work for a nuclear free and independent Pacific and for a multiracial and democratic Fiji, and for a society with equal social distribution, her prime focus was nevertheless for the advancement of women. Her early work in the Y and her first training overseas, gave her skills for community work, which she used for the empowerment of women. One forgets her solid foundation in social administration and development and that her own experience of communities oppressed by exploitative social and economic conditions in Vatukoula, the mining town where she grew up, guided her work.

Her convictions in training women for empowerment were expressed daily in her running programmes in the YWCA. But training women in skills for jobs that would inevitably be lowly paid, did not blind her to the fundamentally unequal structures and conditions faced by women everywhere. She was an advocate for women’s rights on many fronts, taking on issues of legislation and law reform, equal citizenship rights, employment opportunities and labour injustice, reproductive health and rights. She initiated critiques of legislation and policy impacts on women at a time when such analyses were not done. She continued to work for women’s rights in a range of ways – being Programme Secretary for Advocacy for the World YWCA, working at international level which included campaigns on violence against women, and organizing an international consultation on structural adjustment policies in Geneva; she attended and spoke at numerous of the UN World Conferences on Women; in Fiji, during her days as National Executive director (1973-77), she had a campaign for the equal treatment of Fiji citizen’s spouses’; a campaign on women’s reproductive rights and a programme on women’s health. I remember, only on reading her CV, a pap smear campaign to educate women on cervical cancer.

She was deeply committed to implementation of the Women’s Convention or CEDAW (the Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women), which excited and interested her. In 1992, in collaboration with the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, the Women’s Crisis Center, and the Women’s Wing of the Fiji Trade Union Congress, the Fiji YWCA ran the first Fiji national workshop on CEDAW. She was also Pacific co-coordinator for the International Gender and Trade Network, a Trustee of DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era), formerly a member of the Ministry of Women’s Task Force on the National Plan of Action.

But her impact on women was simply in being herself. In some of the tributes received, women remark on the impact she had on them, when they first met her. Also her kindness and interest in them. Young women had a guide, if they would follow; someone remarked that Amelia Rokotuivuna was an icon for young women – they knew her name and her reputation for fearlessness. Women particularly, can be in no doubt of her support for women’s rights. She was unequivocal over that.

Amelia made contributions internationally and brought back perspectives and analyses from the meetings of the World Council of Churches and the World YWCA, as well as other gatherings on trade and development. She had a worldview that was clear and which she constantly would relate to the state of Fiji. She followed her principles, based on these influences and on her own workings through of what these universal principles and international experiences meant for Fiji, for a multiracial society, and for women. But on Fiji, she was supremely knowledgeable. She could cite history and genealogy, and make perceptive analyses that were insightful and significant. The difficulty of capturing Amelia’s thought is that she spoke so much of it, eloquently and passionately, in Fijian or English, but less is written down. But that was her influence and her contribution – this ability to think clearly and present issues to the public, whether men or women, and passionately explain the positions she stood for. She was a thinker who influenced others; nothing was a given. She could be tedious in debate, but also profoundly perceptive and forward thinking, so that one knew more at the end than the debate that started it.

One of her last pieces of work, at USP, was to write a course book and tutor for a Certificate in Community Work. For someone who generally hated writing, it’s a beautiful book, full of all the connections that Amelia has made all her life: the connections between international and national processes, organizations and structures (on globalization and its impact); on communities, and the practicalities of community organizing. Only she could describe the global economy in a simple way and put in solid chapters on office filing and accounting!

Others have said that part of Amelia’s impact was that it was amazing to them that an indigenous Fijian woman was saying and doing the things she did. I know she or her views, often appeared outrageous to those who did not want to hear what she was ranting about; she was, at times in her life, shunned by those, even friends, seeking to safely distance themselves from her; she could be publicly or privately disparaged and was considered a loudmouth, for her views. I saw once, as she was loudly leading a small demonstration of students and others up to the French consulate office, to protest an event in Kanaky (New Caledonia), a Fijian passerby raise his hand to his head and twirl it around, indicating she was mad. Amel did not care for public opinion in a place where passers-by are friends or family, and behaviour is still controlled by public opinion. As a Fijian woman she would have had more than her share of disparagement; her worst moments came from family or friends who deserted her, or showed a keen interest in her being shut up or shoved out of the way. She missed jobs on occasions, or other economic opportunities, due to her reputation for having strongly held beliefs. These were not easy moments or years; their result often affected her life considerably.

These are some of the spontaneous responses of friends, in remembering Amelia:

-“I remember her passion for the causes she was championing, her warmth as a person, her generosity and liveliness, her multiracialism. She never wavered in her convictions and her fight for justice”.
- “She was a Fijian socialist, feminist, radical and supporter of multiracialism in a society driven by patriarchal communalism and capitalism”
-She was “ a committed socialist who participated in labour movements but refused to blindly follow leaders who fell short of her democratic and co-operative ideals”.
-“ She was a human rights activist in the days when “human rights’ was considered legalistic and academic.
-“Amelia was a ‘movement’ all by herself”.
-“She was a national treasure”.

She had deeply thought through convictions as a social worker, Christian, executive director, Fijian, woman, citizen - on the society she lived in, her community, her country, the region, the world. She stood for ideas, and conveyed them in public. Her principles were to support processes for equalizing society, not entrenching poverty and domination. She did not believe in ongoing oppression – whether it be colonial domination, gender inequality, racism or ethnic discrimination. She was outspoken on all these issues, when she could have courted approval or accepted the status quo.

She was a committed Christian, something she would sometimes remind us of, matter-of- factly. She did not follow just the forms of her religion or practices institutionalized as orthodox or devout. As in all things, Amelia believed in practicing the principles of Christianity where she was, rather than preaching about them. She was a Christian all her life, in her actions and her beliefs.

Friends have remembered how grief stricken she was over the coup in Fiji in 1987. Many know of the principles she stood for then and now. Her voice, which she lent to so many movements and which she used to assist women to believe in their equality, will be sorely missed. She was like no other in Fiji.

We were privileged to be her friends, to work with her and learn from her. We loved her dearly. Her courage and her consistency have been constants in Fiji in all the years we have known her. This is the gift she gave us all our lives: the security of knowing that this one bright star would shine clear and clean, to the end.

Vanessa Griffen

Suva.
8th June 2005