We need to come to terms with our history and record it in the books - Sayed-Khaiyum

Attorney General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says we as a nation need to come to terms with our history and our history needs to be recorded in the books.

While speaking at the Fiji Girmit 143rd anniversary celebration at the Suva Civic Centre, Sayed-Khaiyum says we need to come to terms with these hardcore facts and when we have a curriculum which is written during a colonized period, we will find that our history has been sanitized.

He says they like to clean history to present a particular view of what happened in Fiji.

The Attorney General says as a nation if we do not face the realities of what we went through historically, then it will have a huge impact on our present and the future.

Sayed-Khaiyum says there were women who worked in the field and the overseers wanted to use them for sexual activity.

He says this part of history is not talked about a lot because it was seen as something which is shameful and something they did not want to bring to the public space.

Sayed-Khaiyum says we need to understand and appreciate that because it was part of the Girmit experience.

He adds it is very important for that part of history to be inked out because it has subsequent effects and has an impact on our political and constitutional history.

The Attorney General also says the Girmit experience was one of deceit, disease, violence and death, and the conditions the indentured labourers went through was terrible.

Sayed-Khaiyum says there was deceit because many labourers did not know where they were going and they were lured into the ships.

He adds these people had to do backbreaking work for 5 years.