There's so much else going on, it's easy to ignore what's happening or not happening in Fiji.
At the end of last week, newspaper publisher Russell Hunter was deported, bundled out of his home in front of his partner and child, half belted up, mobile phone removed, shoved on a plane with no money in his pocket in the clothes he was wearing at home.
His sin was to raise in his newspaper, the Fiji Sun, allegations of financial corruption.
And there's talk of this confirming the "treachery of the regime of dictator Frank Bainimarama".
Now Bainimarama is an Army strongman who seized power in a coup in December 2006.
He promised to hold free and fair elections by the end of March next year.
But it's clear that journalists in Fiji are working under inordinate pressure from the Government and the police not to criticise the regime of Bainimarama, such that it's now being said that a genuinely democratic poll will be impossible.
Now the promise to hold an election in March next year was a direct consequence of sanctions being imposed by Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States after the coup in December 2006.
And of course the sanctions sent the Fijian economy into a tailspin, hence the promise by Bainimarama to hold elections.
Free and fair, by the end of March 2009.
The sanctions were eased on the condition that Bainimarama reach "benchmarks towards democracy".
It's now clear that the sanctions are going to have to be stepped up, including sporting sanctions which could well involve Australia not playing rugby with Fiji.
As in all of these things, it's the ordinary Fijians who suffer.
As one editorial comment argued correctly, "The treatment meted out to Mr Hunter (Russell Hunter, the deported newspaper publisher) ... is a sharp reminder of the tinpot dictatorship's disregard for the rule of law and at times its brutality".
Now there's talk that other Fijian journalists who've written stories that the Government didn't like have found carloads of soldiers parked outside their homes.
Last month, Roslyn Atkinson, the Queensland Supreme Court judge and an International Bar Association delegation were banned from entering Fiji.
They were going to examine the rule of law.
And you'll recall that after the coup of December 2006 the Australian Andy Hughes, the then Fijian Police Commissioner, was also bundled out of Suva because his upholding of the law didn't fit with the dictatorial behaviour of the Bainimarama regime.
And there's talk that even though the coup in 2006 was bloodless, opponents of it have since been detained, beaten and some have been killed.
This is Fiji. Ostensibly on the road to democracy.
And of course plenty of calls for new sanctions and economic pressure and those who suffer are not the elite, but the battlers.
And obviously Australia in the region with another role to play on top of Papua New Guinea, East Timor, the Solomon Islands.
And now Fiji.
We think of it as a lazy holiday paradise.
Not at the moment it's not.
