Fiji ends policing agreement with China.
Fiji’s newly installed Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has scrapped a controversial policing agreement with China that saw Chinese police deployed in Fiji and Fijian officers trained in China, the Fiji Times reports. Rabuka said the decision was partly because the two countries’ democracy and justice systems were “so different.”
On Friday, the head of the Pacific island nation’s police force was suspended, as well as the supervisor of elections, on the advice of the Constitutional Offices Commission.
Rabuka’s narrow election victory in December 2022 over incumbent Frank Bainimarama marked the first change of power in 16 years. Under Bainimarama, Fiji grew closer to China, which has sought a larger presence in the strategically significant South Pacific, FMN previously reported.
