Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has clashed with Australia in the past, and has been criticized by human rights organization.  But now he’s blasting Oz for rejecting asylum seekers, processing them through Nauru and PNG, and resettling them in Pacific Nations.

“If human rights are universal, no country should be able to contract out an obligation to respect them, especially when dealing with the displaced, the vulnerable and the children," Bainimarama said before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.  “Fiji’s position is that the international community can no longer continue to turn a blind eye to what we consider to be one of the greatest human rights challenges in the Pacific.”

At the same time, Bainimarama mounted a vigorous defense of Fiji’s current human rights situation, noting that indigenous Fijians weren’t subject to “large-scale dispossession of land and rights”, as had happened in the United States and Australia.  He also said the new constitution ensures Fiji is a secular state where “the right to education, the right to adequate health care, adequate food and water, housing, sanitation, economic participation, a just minimum wage, social security and specific rights for people with disabilities and children” are maintained.

In 2014, Fiji emerged from almost 15 years of coups, counter-coups, and factional fighting – much of it between native Fijians and the descendants of South Asians who migrated to Fiji – with a new constitution and democratic elections.