{"id":17596,"date":"2020-04-27T13:46:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T04:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/apr\/27\/fijian-military-leader-defends-governments-right-to-stifle-press-during-covid-crisis"},"modified":"2020-04-27T13:46:52","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T04:46:52","slug":"fijian-military-leader-defends-governments-right-to-stifle-press-during-covid-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=17596","title":{"rendered":"Fijian military leader defends government’s right to ‘stifle’ press during Covid crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Concerns have also been raised about Vanuatu, where it is illegal to publish stories on coronavirus without government approval<\/p>\n

A Fijian military leader has said the government was justified in \u201cstifling criticism\u201d of its policies by the press during the Covid-19 outbreak, prompting warnings that Pacific leaders should not use the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to quell press freedom.<\/p>\n

The comments have been condemned by press freedom advocates as the \u201ckind of behaviour [that] is the prerogative of authoritative military dictatorships.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concerns have also been raised about Vanuatu, where it is illegal to publish stories on coronavirus without government approvalA Fijian military leader has said the government was justified in \u201cstifling criticism\u201d of its policies by the press during th…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,436,238,671,672,874,54,282,323,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-fiji","category-media","category-newspapers","category-newspapers-magazines","category-pacific-islands","category-press-freedom","category-south-pacific","category-vanuatu","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17597,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17596\/revisions\/17597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}