PM celebrates Girmit Day
THE arrival of the ship Leonidas started the Girmit era 143 years ago, and to mark the occasion recently, Girmit Day was commemorated with much fun and flare through visual displays and role-plays around the country.
While participating in the ceremony, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama relayed on how the indentured labourers were misled with false promises and had their hopes preyed on for a better life.
“They were systematically lied about the nature of work, the duration of work, and the likelihood that any indentured worker would ever return home,” PM Bainimarama said.
“Girmitya, as they came to be known, endured years of backbreaking labour under brutal conditions that meet the definition of slavery that we hold today,” he highlighted.
“They performed the hardest work of building the colonial economy, working cane fields, farming copra, laying brick, carving out roads, worked under the whip and lived under constant threat of abuse and sexual assault.”
“The conditions were so terrible that it was not uncommon for labourers to be driven to suicide,” he added.
Prime Minister Bainimarama said that Fiji became their home once the terms of their indenture ended and they made the best out of those circumstances through wonderful contributions to the nation in agriculture, education, medicine, and literature.
“But despite their making enormous contributions to the country, their struggle did not end with indenture, as the colonial government never accepted the girmitya as equal human beings, much less as full Fijians,” he said.
“The British colonial government maintained its power by drawing and deepening lines between different ethnic communities and to maintain the European position of prominence, they made a scapegoat of the Indo-Fijian population, painting them as outsiders who were undeserving of a full place in Fijian society.”
“No matter how much an individual achieved in a lifetime of work and study, they were always of lesser value because of their ethnicity and the injustice is almost impossible for us to comprehend in today’s Fiji,” he lamented.
“The history that began on this day, 143 years ago may be a history of injustice and brutality, but its totality over nearly a century and a half is a story of great hope, resilience and great capacity of human beings to overcome hardship and do great things,” he added.
PM Bainimarama adds that “there is no aspect of Fijian society today that the girmitya and their descendants have not made better in some fashion”.