Word: speight
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...South Pacific island of Fiji. But taking the prime minister hostage appears to be becoming less odd and more par for the course in some of Britain's former Pacific island colonies. With no end to the Fijian standoff in sight more than two weeks after coup leader George Speight and a handful of cronies first seized Mahendra Chaudry and 30 other civilians as hostages, the prime minister of the Solomon Islands on Monday found himself sharing his Fijian counterpart's fate. Gunmen from a tribal militia have taken Bartholomew Ulufa'alu hostage and forced him to announce his retirement...
...Speight has demanded that Fiji be ruled exclusively by indigenous Fijians, while the country's Indian community - the 49 percent of the 800,000 inhabitants whose ancestors were brought to Fiji by the British 100 years ago to pick sugar - must accept second-class citizenship. The gunman's toppling of the country's first ethnic-Indian leader appears to have captured the imagination of many indigenous Fijians, and prompted the Fijian army to seize power and nix the constitution. Still, Speight refuses to free his hostages until he and his cronies are given a direct role in ruling the country...