Fiji Coup Robert Siegel speaks with Stephanie Lawson, a professor of international relations of the Asia-Pacific region at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. She provides background to the current political turmoil on the island nation of Fiji, population 800,000. Lawson's most recent book on Fiji is called Tradition Versus Democracy in the South Pacific: Fiji, Tonga, and Western Samoa, published by Cambridge University Press in 1996. Lawson was in Fiji during the 1987 coup, when an indigenous Fijian prime minister was successfully deposed. She says that, in the current overthrow of the ethnic-Indian PM Mahendra Chaudhry, the ethnic "card" is used to mask what is really opportunism by a small group of ethnic Fijians who want power. Lawson says the conflict could be disastrous for the small nation, which depends on tourism and sugar exports. Many sugar plantations, she says, are run or worked on by ethnic Indians.

All Things Considered

Fiji Coup

May 30, 200012:00 AM ET

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Fiji Coup

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Robert Siegel speaks with Stephanie Lawson, a professor of international relations of the Asia-Pacific region at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. She provides background to the current political turmoil on the island nation of Fiji, population 800,000. Lawson's most recent book on Fiji is called Tradition Versus Democracy in the South Pacific: Fiji, Tonga, and Western Samoa, published by Cambridge University Press in 1996. Lawson was in Fiji during the 1987 coup, when an indigenous Fijian prime minister was successfully deposed. She says that, in the current overthrow of the ethnic-Indian PM Mahendra Chaudhry, the ethnic "card" is used to mask what is really opportunism by a small group of ethnic Fijians who want power. Lawson says the conflict could be disastrous for the small nation, which depends on tourism and sugar exports. Many sugar plantations, she says, are run or worked on by ethnic Indians.