1Political Violence in the South Pacific: Women after the Coups in Fiji

“If you ask most women in Fiji what defines them most, they will say in response it is our race first then our gender... How can you mobilize as women around gender/feminist issues when you are so torn apart by race issues?”1 For many people, to the extent they ever think about the islands of the Pacific, it is as a destination tourism location, a place for dream vacations and romantic holidays. In fact, while some of the Pacific Island Countries2 may be peaceful places, they are not, and have never been, immune to the trends of violence and militarization happening around the world. In recent years, the effects of globalization, uneven development and environmental pressures such as sea-level rise have been added to the legacies of colonization, including the aftermath of nuclear testing and resource exploitation/depletion.3 These factors have contributed to an increase in armed violence including, for example, three coups in Fiji（May 1987, September 1987 and May 2000）, a bloody ten-year conflict in which more than 12,000 people lost their lives on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea（1989-1998）, and internal armed conflict in the Solomon Islands（1998, 2000）which has resulted in more than 200 deaths and 15,000-20,000 internally displaced people.4 These conflicts are played out against a background of economic and political change, and of dissatisfaction with western models of governance and‘development’ which have brought increased wealth to some, but have also brought a breakdown in social systems, marginalization and environmental degradation. They fall into a category popularly referred to as‘ethnic conflicts’and they do in fact use ethnic symbols and slogans. Yet they are about far more than ethnic differences. While ethnicity matters,“the major source of crisis in the islands is not‘ethnic violence’bu