[HOT] [OSM-talk] Names for Fiji

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2016-02-26 10:38 GMT+01:00 Jean-Guilhem Cailton <jgc at arkemie.com>:

> Apparently your point of view about "ungoing colonization" is not shared
> by Fidjian officials, news media, nor by OSM mappers of Fiji so far.




I'm all but well informed about the current situation in Fiji (I just read
the Internet, haven't been there), still I am not at all surprised about
this. I wrote using English as primary name seemed to me kind of an act of
ongoing colonization / suppression by the west, and you reply: officials
and the official media don't share this view. Seriously?

Anyway, what I have learned in my short research was that using English
seems to be seen (or is advocated) as anti-suppression, because it is
neither Fijian nor Fiji Hindi but is foreign to either ethnicity and
therefor not privilegizing one of them, at least officially.

Have you had a look about the representation of the different ethnities
among the Fiji Officials and news media? Are you aware that there is very
low diffussion of media in general (3 daily newspapers and 2 weekly ones,
51 daily copies per 1000 inhabitants, tv since 1991 and just one tv station
which is operated by the government), 55.000 internet connections, 102.000
phone connections, 109.000 cell phones, 541.000 radios and 91.000 tv sets
for a population of 890.000 (numbers might be outdated, from Wikipedia:de).

I wonder if there is a climate in Fiji where you could agree to my view
without fear of suppression. I don't know how many OSM Mappers mapping in
Fiji are actually residents there, and to which ethnicity the belong to,
but you can see from international reports on the country, e.g. amnesty
international or freedomhouse, that it isn't easy to express opposition to
the official view, and that at least the traditional media can't write
whatever they like (e.g. "There were no confirmed reports of government
restrictions on private discussion on political matters or other sensitive
topics in 2014. Personal blogs and other forms of social media, both for
and against the interim government, operated with relative freedom, unlike
traditional media.", freedomhouse, 2015)

Anyway, I only asked to add English names with an "en" postfix, not to
refrain from adding them.

http://www.refworld.org/docid/54f07df26.html
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/fiji

cheers,
Martin
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