{"id":73788,"date":"2025-09-02T09:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T00:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/sep\/02\/marshall-islands-picks-up-pieces-after-fire-destroys-parliament-nitijela"},"modified":"2025-09-02T09:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T00:50:10","slug":"marshall-islands-picks-up-the-pieces-after-fire-destroys-its-heart-of-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=73788","title":{"rendered":"Marshall Islands picks up the pieces after fire destroys its \u2018heart of democracy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The slow process to rebuild parliament, the Nitijela, begins as the Pacific nation confronts the loss of a vital cultural landmark<\/p>\n<p>In Majuro, a day after fire ravaged the national parliament, the full devastation became clear. The building <a href=\"https:\/\/rmiparliament.org\/cms\/\">known as Nitijela<\/a> had been reduced to a blackened shell, littered with debris.<strong> <\/strong>Among the objects lost to the fire were archive documents, original journal transcripts of daily sessions going back decades, and artworks that once adorned the walls.<\/p>\n<p>Flames had engulfed the building by the time the only functioning fire engine in the Marshall Islands arrived to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/26\/marshall-islands-parliament-fire-burns-down\">fight the blaze on 26 August<\/a>. Firefighters were joined by residents and government officials, furiously trying to extinguish the flames and salvage any hard drives storing digital documents, including a copy of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.int\/marshallislands\/marshallislands\/country-facts\">country\u2019s constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/sep\/02\/marshall-islands-picks-up-pieces-after-fire-destroys-parliament-nitijela\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The slow process to rebuild parliament, the Nitijela, begins as the Pacific nation confronts the loss of a vital cultural landmarkIn Majuro, a day after fire ravaged the national parliament, the full devastation became clear. The building known as Niti&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2065,"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":[41,602,874,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-marshall-islands","category-pacific-islands","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\/73788","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\/2065"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73789,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73788\/revisions\/73789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}