14 January 2004.

Tongan Police raided village shops in Tonga last week confiscating copies of the Taimi 'o Tonga newspaper, and also seizing cash from shops that had sold newspapers.

The confiscations on January 7 open another ugly phase of the bad relationship between the Tongan government and the Tongan media, and particularly the Taimi 'o Tonga.

The Deputy Police Commander Taniela Faletau said that the police were carrying out their duty by enforcing the media laws, which came into force in November last year.

However, copies of the legislation were withheld from media organisations until Christmas (see earlier story), when Media organisations were given until January 30 to apply to the Tonga Government for licences to operate.

Mateni Tapueluelu, the Editor of the Taimi 'o Tonga, said that his organisation's understanding was that a decision on whether they would continue in operation or not, was to be made by the registrar of Newspaper Licences at the end of January. "At the moment we are awaiting the results of our application for two licences, a licence for a new newspaper to be published by a new company that we have registered, Lali Media, and another licence for Lali Media to distribute the Taimi 'o Tonga in Tonga."

Mateni believed that it was wrong for the police to confiscate the paper and to take the cash from the small village shops. "I have handed over the matter to our lawyer and we have put the paper on hold for the time being until we find out what is going on with government."

Mateni said they had lost a lot of money when the paper was banned in 2003 and now it had been confiscated, "and we may take legal action to reclaim our loss but for the meantime we are losing money."