Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"On two larger and over 100 smaller islands live just over 900,000 Fijians, of whom about 55 percent are Melanesians and 35 percent South Asians, the latter brought to Fiji from India during the British colonial occupation to work on the sugar plantations. When Fiji achieved independence in 1970, the indigenous Fijians owned most of the land and held political control, whereas the Indians were concentrated in the towns (chiefly Suva, the capital) and dominated commercial life. It was a recipe for trouble, which surfaced as soon as the British had departed. Nearly a half century of ethnic conflict and political malfunctioning has cast a long shadow across this country. In 2009, after some 40 years of strife and violations of democratic rule, Fiji was suspended from the British Commonwealth. The sugar industry was damaged by the nonrenewal of Indian-held leases by Fijian landowners, which also resulted in a substantial movement of Indians from the countryside to the towns, where unemployment is already high. Only after democratic elections were finally held in 2014 was Commonwealth status reinstated;" [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 482]