Shaista Shameem

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Shaista Shameem is a Fijian lawyer, journalist, and academic of Indian descent. She is best known as Director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission, and is known throughout the South Pacific region for her fervent human rights activism. On August 2004, she was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the use of mercenaries.

Shameem holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from New Zealand's University of Waikato and an LLM from the University of Auckland. She has worked as a journalist and has practiced law in Fiji, and has lectured in sociology at the University of Waikato.

Contents

[edit] 2006 coup d'état

Main article: 2006 Fijian coup d'état

Shameem refused to condemn the military coup which deposed the Qarase government on 5 December 2006. Early in January 2007, she sparked a storm of controversy when she released a Commission report stating that the government overthrown by the Republic of Fiji Military Forces was illegally constituted and unconstitutional, and was acting against the public interest in violation of public security and public safety protections in the Constitution [1]. She also said that the 2001 elections were unlawful, and that proper procedures had not been not followed in the 2006 general elections.

In December 2007, Dr. Shameem was criticised by the Fiji Times for her alleged lack of impartiality [2]. Shameem responded [3].

[edit] Personal life

Shameem's father was from Pakistan, while her mother is an Indo Fijian. Shameem is the sister of Fiji's first and only female Indo-Fijian judge, Nazhat Shameem and Raffat Shameem who is a doctor in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Nikhat Shameem [1] is the third sibling who is a lecturer in applied linguistics at Newcastle University in England.

[edit] Ombudsman

On 16 July 2007, Fiji’s Constitutional Offices Commission (COC) announced the appointment of Dr Shameem as Fiji's Ombudsman, which is an ex-officio position to the chairman of the Fiji Human Rights Commission.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ FHRC report on the December 2006 coup
  2. ^ "Get it straight, Shaista", Fiji Times editorial, December 11, 2007
  3. ^ Dr. Shameem's response to the Fiji Times’ editorial, December 11, 2007
  4. ^ "Dr Shameem is new Ombudsman", Fijilive, 16 July 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-16. 


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