A major prison disturbance that spread to Labasa in 1980, resulted in a rampage of destruction at Vaturekuka.
This was reported in the issue of The Fiji Times on Friday, January 4, 1980.
The Director of Criminal Investigations, Senior Superintendent Chandra Deo Sharma said three prisoners in a cell at Labasa Gaol became rowdy and noisy.
They smashed the glass windows and broke iron bars of the cell door, he said. Prison authorities later called the police who removed the prisoners into another cell.
The Fiji Times Labasa correspondent reported that police reinforcements from nearby places like Savusavu, Dreketi, Seaqaqa and Wainikoro, arrived at the prison early next morning .
“After breakfast some of the prisoners went on a rampage, breaking furniture, and smashing down the door of one of the dormitories,” SSP Sharma said.
He said 10 prisoners armed themselves with broken bottles, rocks and sticks gathered at the recreation hall. They refused to obey prison officials and one tried to free other prisoners by smashing the windows and doors of their cell blocks.
However, police managed to disperse the assembly although the prisoners “were very stubborn,” SSP Sharma said.
Later in the day the prisoners were still being difficult, but the police were “handling them skillfully and tactfully”.
The 10 prisoners later appeared in court charged with unlawful assembly, and four of them faced additional charges of damaging property.
One of the four also faced a third charge of trying to aid other prisoners to escape. All 10 pleaded not guilty and were remanded in custody. Of the 170 cells only 27 were left undamaged for the 145 prisoners currently held at Suva.
The Controller of Prisons, Mr Wally Smith, said there were 195 prisoners in the prison when the disturbances began on New Year’s Eve.
Fifty had disassociated themselves from the rioters and were removed to Naboro Prison, where the atmosphere was “normal”.
