Tag: mental-health

• Fiji’s Silence is a Sentence: Why We Must Follow PNG’s Lead on the Porn Crisis

  We call ourselves the “Happiness Capital of the World,” yet behind our closed doors, a silent pandemic is devouring the innocence of our children. Fiji has a shameful, unspoken secret: a sexual abuse crisis so rampant that it has become normalized. And while we bury our heads in the sand, Papua New Guinea is actually doing something.

  PNG’s regulator has moved to block over 1,000 explicit websites. Love it or hate it, Port Moresby has admitted a truth Suva refuses to utter: that the fire hose of violent, hardcore pornography is fueling the epidemic of assault.

  Before we clutch our pearls about “freedom,” let’s look at the forensic evidence in our own police dockets. Just this week, “a teacher from a prominent boarding school has been convicted on six charges of rape involving students.” The court heard that he “lured them to his residence on various occasions and forced them to perform sexual acts.” This is not an outlier. This is a pattern. Year after year, the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre reports that the majority of rape victims are children. Children. Often abused by someone they trust.

  We wring our hands about discipline, about family breakdown, about alcohol. But we refuse to discuss the 24/7 online classroom teaching predators how to dehumanize, and teaching boys that violence is intimacy. Where did that teacher learn that his authority extended to his students’ bodies? We may never know. But we do know that in virtually every child sexual abuse material case prosecuted in the Pasifika, unlimited, unfiltered access to porn was the gateway. It normalizes the abnormal. It turns vulnerability into a genre.

  PNG’s move is not a silver bullet. Blocking websites is like locking a door while leaving the window open—determined users will use VPNs. And yes, the public supports it, but support is not a strategy.

  However, the courage of the move is what Fiji lacks. PNG is willing to look uncomfortable. Fiji, meanwhile, hides behind “tourism-friendly” optics and a culture of respect that too often silences victims to protect the powerful. Judge Justice Usaia Ratuvili found the complainants “to be credible witnesses” and ruled that “their evidence was consistent and reliable.” That a judge had to explicitly affirm the credibility of schoolchildren testifying against their teacher tells you everything about the wall of doubt victims face here.

  We cannot arrest our way out of this. We need prevention. And prevention means admitting that the pornography available to any Fijian child on a $50 smartphone. If a parent won’t sit their child down to talk about consent, the internet will. And the internet is teaching rape.

  It is time Fiji got serious. Not by blindly copying PNG, but by launching a national, multi-pronged war: digital literacy in every school, a public health campaign on porn’s neurological harm, and yes—regulating the digital sewage flooding our islands.

  Until we treat online explicit content as the public health hazard it is, we are not a happy country. We are a crime scene waiting to happen. The teacher from Tailevu is now a convict. How many more will follow, raised on a diet of virtual violence before committing the real thing?

  The question isn’t whether blocking 1,000 sites will save PNG. The question is: why hasn’t Fiji even tried to save one?

  2026.06.08

• Toxic by Default: Why Fiji Must Wake Up to our Social Media Crisis

  Acting DPP Nancy Tikoisuva delivered a sobering reality check this week: social media posts do not move the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. “We only respond to evidence – admissible evidence,” she said. Hearsay and online chatter do not count in a court of law.

  But beneath that legal clarity lies a deeper crisis. If social media is not a court, what is it becoming? For Fiji, the answer is alarming. Against a backdrop of escalating drugs, HIV and NCD crises, our online spaces have devolved into an “outlaw country”—a toxic swamp of hate, scams, and anonymous trolling. As one observer put it, “every person for himself and herself.” The question for the National Security Council (NSC): Should the digital realm be policed for our national sanity? The answer is my view is, yes.

  The unseen threat to national cohesion

  Prime Minister Rabuka rightly stated that national security now includes digital systems and psychological well‑being. Social media toxicity is not a nuisance—it is a security threat. Hate speech, doxxing and coordinated harassment erode our social fabric, traumatise individuals and substitute mob rule for the rule of law. The damage to our collective Pasifika psyche is as real as any drug bust.

  Consider the real‑world consequences. Young Fijians are self‑harming after online pile‑ons. Families are torn apart by viral lies. Witnesses to serious crimes refuse to come forward because they fear being named and shamed on Facebook before they ever reach a police station. The DPP’s office cannot act on a screenshot—but the damage is already done. This is not a moral panic; it is a public health and security emergency dressed in digital clothing.

  The Singapore solution: a blueprint for the Pasifika

  Australia and Indonesia have banned under‑16s from social media. But Fiji should study Singapore’s more comprehensive model. Singapore’s Protection from Harassment Act (POHA) criminalises online harassment, stalking and doxxing, with extraterritorial reach and penalties up to 12 months’ jail. Its Online Criminal Harms Act (OCHA) lets authorities swiftly disable criminal content.

  Most relevant is Singapore’s new Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Bill (OSRA) , launched this year. It creates an Online Safety Commission with real teeth: binding takedown orders, account restrictions, and the power to unmask anonymous abusers. Victims of deepfakes, doxxing and sexual harassment get a one‑stop agency. Platforms that refuse to comply face criminal sanctions. And statutory torts let victims sue abusers, group admins and platforms directly. Singapore removes anonymity as a shield and places legal duties on those who run online spaces.

  Why does this matter for Fiji? Because our current Online Safety Commission has publicly admitted it lacks the legal authority to remove harmful content or compel platforms to act. A victim can report a death threat, but the Commission’s hands are tied. Singapore showed that strong laws do not kill free speech—they kill impunity. In the three years since POHA was strengthened, Singapore saw no decline in legitimate expression, but a measurable drop in organised online harassment campaigns.

  A mandate for the National Security Council?

  Fiji is not starting from scratch. A taskforce aims to bar under‑16s by year’s end, and Minister Tabuya admits the current Online Safety Act lacks “teeth.” But a ban on children does nothing for today’s toxic adult spaces. The NSC must urgently study the Singapore model and recommend a multi‑layered approach:

  1. Empower the Online Safety Commission – binding takedown notices, fines for non‑compliant platforms, and investigative powers without waiting for police.

  2. Criminalise anonymity for abusers – compel platforms to reveal perpetrators’ identities upon reasonable suspicion of criminal harassment.

  3. Duty of care legislation – hold group and platform administrators legally liable if they knowingly allow hate speech to thrive.

  Concluding

  The DPP’s warning is stark: the court of public opinion is lawless. When we allow social media to become a toxic dumping ground without consequence, we undermine the police, the courts and the rule of law. Protecting the national psyche is now as vital as protecting our borders. Without urgent, enforceable laws along Singapore’s lines, Fiji’s digital future will remain a lawless frontier—damaging our collective soul one hateful post at a time. The National Security Council meets to address threats. It is time they recognised that the most pervasive threat today is not at the border. It is in the palm of every Fijian’s hand.

  2026.05.12

• The Conversations We Avoided, The Monsters We Created

  We were raised on the well-meaning but ultimately cowardly advice to avoid talking about politics, religion, and sex. This was not wisdom; it was intellectual disarmament. By silencing the conversations that matter most, we failed to build the muscles of civil discourse, leaving us unable to navigate disagreement with grace, to understand the faith of our neighbors, or to articulate the sacred boundaries of our own bodies with confidence.

  This vacuum of understanding has now been filled by its most toxic counterpart: the performative, often destructive, culture of social media, particularly embodied by a certain breed of Fijian TikTok ‘influencer’ we should all abhor.

  These digital performers are the grotesque product of our silence. Having never been taught how to have a difficult conversation, they instead master the art of the provocative spectacle. They trade in the currency of shame, scandal, and sensationalism because we never learned the value of substance. They reduce complex human beings to simplified caricatures and complex issues to inflammatory dares because we never cultivated a appetite for nuance.

  When we avoid teaching our youth how to debate politics thoughtfully, they learn to substitute reason with rabid partisan trolling. When we avoid deep, theological discussions about faith, they exchange a mature spirituality for the hollow theater of religious performance, using scripture as a weapon rather than a guide for compassion. And when we fail to have honest, consent-based conversations about sex and touch, we create a environment where these topics are not explored with respect, but are exploited for clicks through sexualized dares and risky behavior, further blurring the lines of what is acceptable.

  These influencers are not the cause of our societal dysfunction; they are a symptom. They are the harvest of a culture that prized polite silence over honest, messy, and necessary dialogue. Our silence did not create peace; it created a void, and nature abhors a vacuum. Into that void rushed the loudest, crudest, and most attention-seeking voices.

  The path forward is not to scold them, but to out-compete them. We must consciously build a culture that values difficult conversations. We must teach our children—and ourselves—how to listen, how to question with respect, how to hold a conviction without dehumanizing the opposition, and how to use our platforms not for self-aggrandizement, but for genuine connection and understanding.

  We tried silence. It gave us a digital screaming match. It is time to find our voice.

  2025.10.10

• The Unforgivable Choice: My Struggle to See a Human Behind the Enemy

  I am writing this to myself, because the person I fear I’m becoming is watching closely.

  The news of Charlie Kirk’s death didn’t sadden me. My first reaction was colder, sharper—a quiet, unsettling sense of irony. It was the easy response, the one that required nothing of me but a cynical shrug. It felt like a victory for my side. And that is what terrified me.

  Because just a week earlier, a different death in the Pasifika, reflected my own hypocrisy back at me. In Fiji, Dr. Isireli Biumaitotoya—a beloved, controversial, and vibrant transgender known as Leli Darling—was murdered. The social media response was not grief, but a grotesque eruption of hate, a chorus of bigotry celebrating the silencing of a voice that dared to live openly.

  Two deaths. Two ideologies. One identical, chilling failure of humanity. And I felt it in myself.

  This is my uncomfortable truth: my initial instinct was not compassion. It was tribalism. It was to perform a crude calculus of grief, to measure the value of a life based on its political utility. To see a point on a scoreboard, not a shattered family.

  I am writing to fight that instinct. I am writing to choose the harder path.

  To the family and friends of Charlie Kirk: Your grief is real. To dismiss your pain as an acceptable casualty in a culture war would be to commit the very sin of dehumanization I claim to oppose. To love people who loved him means I must honor the weight you carry. I choose your humanity.

  To the memory of Leli Darling and her grieving mother: Your humanity was attacked twice—first by violence, then by a torrent of cruel words that shame our species. To remain silent in the face of that hatred would be a betrayal of everything I believe. I choose to condemn that poison unconditionally.

  This is the unforgivable choice we are forced to make in a broken world: to hold two crushing truths at once.

  1. Truth One: A complex, imperfect human being is gone, and a circle of love around them has been shattered.
  2. Truth Two: The ideas they championed have real and often devastating consequences.

  To ignore the first truth is to become the cold, cruel monster you oppose. To ignore the second is to be a naive bystander to harm. The only way through is to stand in the painful, dizzying space between them.

  So this is my challenge to you, and my note to my future self:

  The next time a polarizing figure falls, pause. Breathe. Before you share, before you comment, before you let that wave of tribal satisfaction wash over you, ask:

  • Do my words widen the rift or help stitch it closed?
  • Am I arguing against a deadly idea, or am I celebrating the death of a person?
  • Does my reaction make violence more or less likely?

  We are sliding into a world where our digital rage licenses real-world cruelty. We are becoming mirror images of our enemies, arguing against hate with hate.

  The world does not need more soldiers in this war. It needs healers. It needs people brave enough to do the hardest work: to see a human behind the label of “enemy,” and to choose empathy, not because it is easy, but because it is the only thing left that can save us from ourselves.

  I am trying to build a soul that is a refuge, not a weapon. This is the mirror I choose to look into.

  Which will you choose?

  2025.09.12