Fiji, 2000 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 2 November 2000 elite soldiers of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare unit mutinied at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Suva, Fiji, in a bloody attempt to depose the military commander Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the culmination of the turmoil that had convulsed Fiji since the May 2000 civilian coup. That earlier putsch, in which the businessman George Speight and CRW soldiers had stormed parliament and held Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage for 56 days, had been contained by the military, which took power and later charged Speight with treason. The November mutiny, led by Captain Shane Stevens and mounted by CRW members loyal to Speight and enraged by the treason charges, aimed to seize military headquarters and arrest Bainimarama, who narrowly escaped capture.
In the seven hour battle to retake the barracks, several loyal soldiers were killed, and in the brutal aftermath a number of captured rebels were tortured and beaten to death by loyalist troops. The mutiny failed; Bainimarama survived and consolidated his control, and the CRW unit was disbanded, though the underlying divisions would resurface in the 2006 coup.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
95011022000
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Commodore Frank Bainimarama survived the November 2000 CRW mutiny at Queen Elizabeth Barracks and consolidated control.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Wikipedia
Xinhua News Agency
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific - Political
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →