SUVA, Fiji — Fiji’s government has decided to take action after a political and media campaign that sensationalized the issue of access to adult material in the island nation, and has announced a forthcoming “task force” aiming to reduce porn viewership among its citizens.
“Fiji has one of the highest rates of internet use in the Pacific and this digital revolution is causing a problem for its government — unfettered access to porn,” reported Australia’s The ABC network, which covers regional issues in the South Pacific.
The government effort is being spearheaded by Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Communications Manoa Kamikamica.
Although he warned that the campaign will spark “privacy, freedom of expression, security, censorship, technological and individual liberty considerations,” Kamikamica also expressed his belief that there is a “complex relationship” between pornography and “an increase in sexual-related crimes.” The ABC reported. Such supposed connection — a controversial, tendentious theory which does not account for the difference between correlation and causation — is also currently being advanced by anti-porn crusaders in politics and the media in Italy and Spain.
Kamikamica also claims to have data from an unnamed internet service provider supposedly showing the sensationally sounding statistic that “626.13 terabytes of internet traffic was used to view porn in Fiji last quarter.”
“To put this into context, 626 terabytes of data is approximately equal to the amount of data stored in 100 million books,” Kamikamica explained, without distinguishing between downloading, uploading and streaming, or explaining how “porn” was defined to reach such a number.
Kamikamica also alleged Fiji “ranked in the top 10 countries of the provider’s network for internet traffic to porn websites.”
The data repeats a claim made three years ago, during the COVID pandemic, by Fiji’s Minister for Women Children and Poverty Lynda Tabuya who also publicized supposed Google Trends figures ranking the country in the top 10 of locations searching for “porn” and “pornography”.
The campaign is also being promoted by the religiously inspired the Free Fiji from Porn organization, mostly active in churches and on Facebook. The group’s mission is “speaking openly and honestly about pornography addiction,” a perceived neurological ailment that has not be corroborated by scientists beyond the standard category of compulsion.
Kamikamica obtained bipartisan support for creating his government task force which aims to “reduce high volumes of porn-related internet traffic” — which he termed “a social ill” — and will focus “on education around consent and healthy relationships.”
The task force will launch in early 2024.
Main Image: Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica at “Safer Internet Day” 2023 (Photo: Fiji Ministry of Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport)
