Last week, we followed how the Movement for Democracy in Fiji allowed a small group of likeminded people to operate on the fringes of the evolving legitimate international campaign for democracy in our besieged country to send out feelers for supporting an armed insurrection here. We highlighted how the focus was on funding as well as procurement of weapons. That clandestine campaign was successful resulting in at least four containers full of weapons one of which arrived at the Lautoka Wharf in May 1988. Here, we focus on how local law enforcement managed to get to what was in the container and some additional happenings around the fateful campaign for an armed insurrection in Fiji.
The origins of the weapons
WE highlighted earlier that the search for funds and weapons coincided with escalation of lawlessness and atrocities against Indo-Fijians in Fiji after the May 1987 coup. A clandestine cabal used the umbrella of the Movement for Democracy in Fiji to reach out to sympathetic individuals, organisations and government operatives. Feelers were also sent out to established reactionary organisations and governments with sympathetic dispositions towards armed struggles. After all, we were in the midst of an escalating Cold War that pitted two major political alignments against each other. This is what culminated in the procurement of a formidable arsenal of weapons for an armed insurrection in Fiji.
The exporting ship began its voyage from the port of Hodeidah in North Yemen and travelled through Sri Lanka and Singapore before arriving in Sydney. North Yemen has been a hotbed of conflict and armed uprisings since 1918 when the Ottoman Empire fell following the end of WW1. After the Yemenite War of 1972, North and South Yemen declared that unification would eventually occur. These plans were disrupted by the eruption of the Yemenite War of 1979; a war that was stopped by an Arab League intervention. It was a great relief when the goal of unity was reaffirmed during a summit meeting in Kuwait in March 1979.
What is important for our discussion here is that between 1978 and the late 1980s, power resided in the hands of a relatively progressive military elite that worked closely with a variety of civilians that included a large and growing group of technocrats, the major tribal leaders, and other traditional conservative notables. In other words, power was widely dispersed allowing Yemenis and other enterprising parties unrestricted border passage. There were providential loopholes in the administrative and security machinery in place in that war-ravaged country at the time. And there were weapons to be bought or commandeered from tribes and armed groups that were bedraggled and weary of unending bloody battles and skirmishes.
Coming back to the journey taken by the arms shipment, the significance of the stoppages in that voyage will be analysed and discussed later in this series because there were interesting, reported happenings in Singapore and Sydney. The stopover in Sri Lanka placed the deadly cargo in close proximity with the LTTE Tamil Tigers. We cannot confirm if any of the significant cache was sourced from the Tigers. However, the coincidence is difficult to ignore because Rafik Kahan had contacted the LTTE and its leader Prabhakaran for military assistance earlier. Let us now focus on what happened in Australia.
Australian authorities
In May 1988, a cache of submachine guns, automatic rifles, hand grenades, mortars and anti-tank mines were seized by Customs officers in Sydney, Australia. The official narrative was that after discovering irregularities in paperwork, the Customs officers decided to investigate the contents of a crate inside the container. In the crate officers discovered a cache of weapons that they said could have “started a small war in Fiji” (FT 1/6/1988).
The container, containing six crates, was unloaded at Port Botany in Sydney’s south and trucked to Darling Harbour where it was waiting to be loaded on to the ship Capitaine Cook III which made regular visits to Fiji then. This vessel was operated on the Australia-Fiji route by Sofrana Unilines (Aust) Pty Ltd as part of the larger Pacific Express Lines. It is interesting that the container had moved through official Customs from Port Botany to Darling Harbour to be onloaded for a further trip to Fiji. In other words, the container had passed Australian Customs inspection, but something prompted the authorities to take a closer look at its contents.
One insider revealed to me that conspirators based in Australia had chickened out and spilled the beans. The prospect of a bloody conflagration in their beloved Fiji had suddenly made some of the conspirators baulk. Also, a conspiracy of that magnitude would have always carried the possibility of leaks by irresolute participants. Thus, Australian authorities were obviously alerted by members of the clandestine cabal based in Australia. It needs to be noted that when this shipment was intercepted by Australian authorities the police got involved. This then became a matter for police co-operation across borders.
We know that Australian police informed their Fijian counterparts about the discovery, and they also said that a similar container could have already arrived in Fiji sometime in April that year. Ponipate Lesavua was vague about this part of the information from Australian authorities when he revealed that the information that a container load of weapons could have arrived in Fiji was received from Australia where the authorities had intercepted a container packed with arms and ammunition (FT 7/07/2015).
One of the highest-ranking lieutenants in the guns’ conspiracy is adamant that more than 65 tonnes of weapons was either procured or commandeered for the “Fiji Campaign”. We only got to hear about 15-18 tonnes depending on who was handling the press releases in Fiji at the time. I will get back to this darkly intriguing riddle about exactly how many tonnes of weapons were involved later on in this series. Here, based on the information received from authorities in Sydney, a major police investigation was carried out, starting from Lautoka where the container had arrived.
Very interestingly, Mohammed Rafik Kahan was staying in a Sydney hotel when Australian customs officers seized the Fiji-bound arms shipment on Monday of that fateful week in late May 1988. He was patiently waiting and biding his time to make the next move in Fiji as he was confident that the weapons were already in place. After all, he had personally supervised that part of the project.
Police reaction
Fiji Police swung into action after receiving the tip off from their counterparts in Australia in May 1988. We know that one container had arrived a month earlier in April; its contents were already cached in different locations in the western parts of Viti Levu. Mr Lesavua said military officers were based at the wharves after the May 14, 1987 coup to check and clear things for security reasons.
“But during our investigations, we learnt that this container had not been checked by the military officer because the receiver was a chief and the shipping documents said the container had used machinery. He trusted and respected the chief, so he didn’t check the container before it was cleared from the wharf” (FT 16/06/2015). The receiver in Fiji, according to shipping documents, was one Rafik Kahan.
Intense police investigations led them to Ba and then to Lautoka, where the police team found the container at a man’s compound along Tavakubu Rd in Lautoka, close to the former Governor General’s bure. The container was empty. The house owner was taken in for questioning and after about seven hours of interviewing (more likely interrogation), the man confessed and told police where the weapons were. This resulted in police carrying out raids in Lautoka, Nadi, Ba and Tavua, from where arms and ammunition were recovered, and some people arrested.
In the meantime, Detective Sergeant Ponipate Lesavua shared that “during the investigations, we learnt that Ralph Kahan was staying at a hotel in Nadi but when we went there, he had checked out and left the country” (FT 23/06/2015). Kahan was thus safely tucked tight in Australia away from the clutches of Fijian authorities when the frantic raids were being carried out in Fiji. We will continue from here next week. Sa moce toka mada valekaleka.
DR SUBHASH APPANNA is a senior USP academic who has been writing regularly on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed here are his and not necessarily shared by this newspaper or his employers.
There is no peace in Yemen as the Houthis continue to fight. The Port of Hodeidah is key to sabotaging international trade.
Picture: SUPPLIED
