Bad company alert: Fiji Water

Bottled water is bad but Fiji bottled water is particularly odious. For starters, the country’s military regime monitors internet usage at internet cafes in real-time for information about the popular bottled water brand:

I sat down and sent out a few emails — filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. “It will just be a few minutes,” one of the clerks said. Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafes. Then I saw them coming toward me. “We’re going to take you in for questioning about the emails you’ve been writing,” they said.

Then the cops threatened the reporter with prison rape. The rest of the story isn’t much better.

Update: From Fiji Water’s official response to the article:

We strongly disagree with the author’s premise that because we are in business in Fiji somehow that legitimizes a military dictatorship.

(thx, mason)

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