When stepping off a plane on your once a year holiday to "paradise" we have a predisposition on what to expect for this week long adventure. Stepping off the plane into the Fijian Islands I have experience this bliss of paradise found, but behind the curtain of some beautiful things there is a darker force at work that would plunder all notions of paradise. The projection of Fiji instilled in every tourist's mind is of a sandy atoll with a palm fringed beach and beautifully dark melanesians with afros servicing you. I soon discovered after my time spent in Fiji what was behind this curtain... political injustice. Military Dictatorship... a military power running a country by force. This military dictatorship has recently stepped on some serious toes with their new "surfing decree" that has abolished all surfing rights to certain breaks. The obvious publicized issue at stake was the destruction of the exclusive rights Tavarua Resort had to surf Cloudbreak and Restaurants, but the problem that is overseen by the media is the economical factor that is now taken from those villages with the rights. Surf Resorts with these "exclusive rights" would pay and annual percentage of their income to the village that had the wave within their fishing territory, which is hundreds of years old. Now the villages after many years of relying on the economic source lost it all in one day that was never previously discussed because democracy has left this country. It is sad to see this happen to such beautiful people, but hopefully in the democratic elections of 2014 something will change....//
