James Ah Koy

James Ah Koy is a Fijian businessman and politician. He is currently a Senator. He is known for his fundamentalist Christian views.

Maiden speech in the Senate, 8 December 2003 (excerpts)

• "Today, as I stand here in this august House at 67 years of age, this last November 30th ... culminates for me a journey and quest that has taken me most of my adult life, two decades in fact, to fulfil a vision and a dream that I, my mother and my maternal grandfather had regarding our entry into the Vola ni Kawa Bula (VKB) [1] and to be recognised finally by the Great Council of Chiefs.

• "The journey here was fraught with all kinds of opposition and venom. Through three courts, right upto the Court of Appeal to defend before three eminent judges my constitutional rights to be registered in the VKB; I struggled and I won."

• "Now to be endorsed unanimously to the Senate by the Great Council of Chiefs has been a crowning finale for me ... This last act of endorsement and certification by the august body of Chiefs ratifies and stamps once and for all for me my Fijianness and dispels any questions of my right to be considered an indigene."

[1] The Vola ni Kawa Bula (VKB), or Native Land Register, enrolls all who are considered to be indigenous Fijians for certain legal purposes.

Speech in the Senate, 26 August 2004 (excerpts)

• "How can we win the other half of our nation to Christ, when we do not show them the practical love of Jesus Christ in our daily interaction with Him? How can we help, as leaders, to convert them to Christianity when we practise division and separateness?"

• "The growth of Christian denominational churches in Fiji is phenomenal for such a small country as Fiji. But that growth ... is confined mainly to converts from one Christian denomination to another and not from non-Christian believers. This is not a paradox, it is a reality. We convert from left to right, but across the border, no."

• "The Indian community in Fiji have been here over 120 to 130 years and would be the largest potential field of harvest to proselytize in, but we have not a show because of our examples and behaviours towards them. We need to show them the love of Christ first ... before they can respond to Him."

• "I believe ... that this Government practises a Pacific form of revised apartheid against the Indian community and should be ashamed of calling itself Christian."

• "I believe that this nation will be continuously cursed, until the leadership of this Government changes its accursed policy of Pacific Revised Apartheid and of not supporting Israel."

Quoted by the Daily Star, 12 May 2005

• "Coups, murders, rapes, violence, brutality, burglaries, incest, rebellion, homosexuality and other forms of social ills and criminality are a product of a generational curse happening mostly in the indigenous Fijian community."