Aisea Taoka

Aisea Taoka (born 1946) is a former Fijian civil servant and police officer, who served as the Commissioner of Prisons from 1996 to 2006, when he was dismissed by the military administration that seized power on 5 December that year. He had previously served for 31 years in the Police force.

Taoka hails from Ketei on the island of Totoya, in the Lau archipelago. Under the pretext of taking him to see an eye surgeon in Suva, his father Rupeni Raga smuggled him out of his village in January 1953, in order to educate him. (At that time, it was permitted to leave the village only for medical reasons). Living with relatives in Bagasau, he was educated at Suva Methodist Boys School and subsequently at Lelean Memorial School, graduating in 1964. During this time, his immediate family moved to Suva. On leaving high school, Taoka enlisted in the police training school.

Home Affairs Minister Paul Manueli appointed him to lead a Commission of Inquiry into an outbreak at Naboro prison in 1994. Two years later, he was appointed Prisons' Commissioner.

Taoka was a strong proponent of law and order and was unsympathetic to criticisms of prison conditions. In his submission on 14 February 2006 to the parliamentary committee studying the proposed Prisons and Corrections Bill, Taoka said that those in prison had never considered their victims' rights, so it was out of order for them to complain of their imprisonment conditions being a violation of their own rights. "These are the people who trample on the rights of law abiding citizens; their right to privacy, their right to ownership of property, their right to life ... these are the people who are charged with killing, and you want to read the human rights hand book to me," the Fiji Times quoted him as saying. The condition of prisons was what the government could afford, he said.

His comments drew a sharp response from Shaista Shameem, Director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission, who was quoted in the Times on 16 February that prisoners were human beings who had the right to live with dignity.

Taoka took a different position on the question of compulsory AIDS/HIV tests for prison inmates, however, saying that it would be an affront to their dignity. Patient confidentiality was as applicable in prison as anywhere else, the Fiji Times quoted him as saying on 20 February 2006.

Taoka is married to Margaret and has children.

Sources

Fiji Times 29 January 2006