An Australian based academic with close links to Fiji, says economics professor Wadan Narsey has been forced out of the University of the South Pacific after the interim Fiji government pressured the university administration.
It has not been possible to get comment from the USP but Dr Brij Lal says he's been assured by sources within the university that the interim regime threatened to withhold funding if professor Narsey wasn't removed.
He says Dr Narsey has been a trenchant critic of the regime's policies and they want him silenced.
"It is part of a larger pattern that has emerged over time, and that is that the regime will try and punish and destroy anyone whom it sees as its enemy. Who doesn't subscribe to the narrative being woven by those in power."
Dr Brij Lal of the Australian National University.
Dr Narsey is on a sabbatical in Japan and could not be reached.