Fiji, 2006 — military coup
Event Summary
On 5 December 2006 Commodore Frank Bainimarama, commander of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, seized power from Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, the culmination of a long confrontation between the military and the elected government. The crisis grew from bills the Qarase government had advanced, most contentiously a Reconciliation, Tolerance and Unity Bill that would have granted amnesty to participants in Fiji's 2000 coup, along with measures expanding indigenous Fijian control over coastal resources and land, which Bainimarama said would reignite ethnic conflict and reward the perpetrators of 2000. After a drawn out standoff and a set of demands the government did not fully meet, the military set up checkpoints in Suva, and on 5 December Bainimarama announced that he had assumed executive authority and removed Qarase from office.
Parliament was dissolved, the cabinet dismissed, and Qarase and some officials were placed under house arrest before he was escorted to his home island. A military doctor was briefly installed as interim prime minister. On 4 January 2007 Bainimarama returned executive authority to President Iloilo, who then appointed Bainimarama himself as interim prime minister.
Fiji's courts later ruled the removal unlawful, but the military government continued.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Military
- How long it took
- Under a day — resolved within 24 hours
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
- Seizure of broadcasters / coup declaration on state media
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
95012052006- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-950-2006-12-05
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, dismissed and placed under house arrest, then confined to his home island.
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; placed under house arrest. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Powell and Thyne
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Fijian_coup_d%27%C 3%A 9 tat
The Globe and Mail
Irish Times
The Christian Science Monitor
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 →