Calling Everyone Fijian Is Genocide, Claims SODELPA Candidate

Proposed SODELPA candidate Viliame Takayawa has made a startling claim that extending the word “Fijian” to all citizens amounts to genocide, during public consultations on the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2026 at the Suva Civic Centre this morning.

Addressing the Special Parliamentary Committee chaired by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, Takayawa claimed that allowing all citizens to identify as Fijians effectively erases the history and ancestry of indigenous Fijians.

“When you remove the word from us as indigenous, you are deleting our history, you are deleting our ancestors that was there with it. And this is technically genocide,” he said.

Takayawa then offered his own definition of genocide.

“You can have two types of genocide. One is removing the history of a group of people, or you actually kill off the people.”

However, his explanation bears little resemblance to the internationally recognised legal definition of genocide.

Under Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), genocide requires the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group through specified acts.

These include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing destructive living conditions, preventing births or forcibly transferring children.

Changing a national designation or extending the word “Fijian” to all citizens does not, by itself, constitute any of these acts.

Furthermore, there is no separate legal offence known as “technical genocide” under the Convention.