15 December 2019 | The Adventist Church in Fiji is actively evicting residents from land owned by the denomination in the Tamavua-I-Wai area in the Rewa province of the nation.

The pre-Christmas eviction is targeting residents that have lived illegally on freehold (privately owned) land belonging to the church. 

The Adventist Church has defended its actions, saying that those living on the land had been ordered to leave by the High Court of Fiji on October 7, 2016.

According to a December 12 article in The Sun, the church claims that those enforcing the eviction have been threatened by violence. It says it had given those living on the land three years to leave. The church claims that the unofficial dwellers had received hospitality from the denomination for a long time.

According to The Sun, a team of men guarded by police is now dismantling houses in which remaining residents live. Some residents claim that they were not given advance warning of the dismantling and that they have no place to go.

According to the denomination’s Office of Archives, Statistics and Research, there were 26,558 Adventist members in the Fiji Mission on June 30, 2018.

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