Rabi Island - History

History

Rabi was the first place in Fiji where Indian indentured labourers were employed. When the first Indians were brought to Fiji abroad the Leonidas in 1879, most European planters refused to employ them because of the extra cost involved. One planter who was sympathetic to Government policies was Captain J. Hill of Rabi Island, and he agreed to take 106 of indentured labourers as field workers.

Prior to the Banaban resettlement on Rabi, the island was owned and used as a copra plantation by the Lever’s Pacific Plantations Pty Ltd. At the beginning of World War II, the British government purchased the island with phosphate royalties from Banaba, in the quest to relocate the Banabans from Banaba.

At the end of World War II, Kiribati's (and Fiji's) British colonial rulers decided to resettle most of Banaba's population on Rabi Island, because of the ongoing devastation of Banaba caused by phosphate mining - or, as some would say, to get them out of the way of the mining. Some have since returned, but the majority have remained on Rabi or elsewhere in Fiji.

The Banabans came to Fiji in three major waves, with the first group of 703, including 318 children, arriving on the BPC vessel, Triona, on 15 December 1945. Accompanying them were 300 other I-Kiribati. The Banabans had been collected from Japanese internment camps on various islands; they were not given the option of returning to Banaba, on the grounds that the Japanese had destroyed their houses - this was not true. They were told that there were houses waiting for them on Rabi: in fact they were given tents to live in and food rations which lasted for only two months. It was the middle of the hurricane season, and they were still weak from years of Japanese imprisonment: 40 of the oldest Banabans died. They were joined by a second wave between 1975 and 1977, with a final wave arriving between 1981 and 1983, following the ending of phosphate mining in 1979. Recognizing the lack of opportunities for Banabans in their homeland, the Rabi Council assisted the remaining population to move to Rabi after 1981.

On 15 December 2005, sixty years to the day since the arrival of the first Banabans, more than 500 Rabi Islanders were granted citizenship at a ceremony led by Minister for Home Affairs Josefa Vosanibola and fellow-Cabinet Minister Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, who is also the Tui Cakau, or Paramount Chief of Cakaudrove and Tovata, to which Rabi belongs. These islanders, who had not previously been naturalized, came from the second and third waves of migration, which were technically illegal but tolerated by the Fijian government on humanitarian grounds.

A decision was made by the Fijian Cabinet in early 2005 to grant citizenship to the residents of Rabi and Kioa Islands, concluding a decade-long quest by the people of both islands for naturalization, which entitles the islanders to provincial and rural development assistance from the government of Fiji. Vosanibola said that although not all of the Rabi islanders had been granted citizenship until now, their contribution to Fiji was enormous, and the government had decided to waive F$1 million of citizenship application fees.