For the first several hours of the attempted overthrow of the government of the South Pacific island of Fiji, one small website was feeding the world with news.
When it was inaccessible after that, fears were raised that the insurgents, led by coup leader George Speight, had cut access to fijilive.com.
As it turns out, it was probably a case of server overload. The site is back up, as is a mirror. Users must first register to access the material. "We were the main source of news to the world but since then overseas journalists have come in," Yashwant Gaunder, managing director of the company that manages fijilive.com, said in an email interview.
"We got over 50,000 visits in 12 hours. We were down for the second 12," Gaunder said. "In the second 24-hour period we have already had 100,000 visits plus."
Usually just two people work full time on the 14-month-old website, Gaunder said, but as the coup drama continues, six staff from a companion publication, The Review, are also working on fijilive.
Radio New Zealand's managing editor of news and current affairs, Lynne Snowdon, said her organization used the service to keep tabs on the coup while phone lines were down and while a reporter flew into Fiji.
The country also has an official site and an official government site.
On Friday, Fiji's president Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara declared a state of emergency after seven men armed with AK47s locked Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his ministers in the parliament building. By Monday, Speight was holding 15 people, including the prime minister, hostage.
Gunmen holding Chaudhry reportedly dragged him onto the lawn of the parliament building on Monday and held a gun to his head, witnesses said.
According to local media reports, Speight -- a failed businessman who says he is acting on behalf of indigenous Fijians -- wants to restore power to ethnic Fijians. He has threatened to shoot Chaudhry and other hostages if security forces attempt to retake parliament.
Chaudhry is the first Fijian Indian to hold the post. According to a New Zealand paper, Chaudhry has sought to amend the law that administers the 83 percent of Fiji's land owned by native Fijians.
Native Fijians see this as an attempt to loosen their control over this land. On the day of the coup, thousands were protesting at Chaudhry's Indian-dominated government. After the coup, on Friday afternoon and into Saturday, getting through by phone to Fiji was difficult.
It is not the first coup in Fiji: in May 1987 military leader Sitiveni Rabuka staged the first-ever political coup in the South Pacific, and then in October 1987 staged another, this time taking control of the government.
Rabuka now chairs the Great Council of Chiefs, a group of the most senior leaders in Fiji. Their meeting Tuesday, according to local news reports, is crucial to the outcome of the coup.
The chiefs must decide whether to back the coup leader George Speight or the president, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who declared a state of emergency after the coup.
Monday's drama involving the prime minister followed a security scare sparked by coup supporters scaling a fence. Mara said he could not guarantee he would retain the government of Chaudhry.
"I can't say that I will put back the government that caused all this problem," Mara told reporters.
"If Mr. Chaudhry wants to resign he can resign, but it must come from him," Mara told a news conference at Government House.
But he called again for Speight and his gunmen to lay down their arms.
"It is important that the armed terrorist group in parliament release all hostages, so that I can begin the process of consulting with the leaders of all political parties in parliament," Mara said in a statement read at the conference.
Several hundred people milled around the grounds of the parliament building on Monday, many of them supporters from Speight's home village of Lami, near Suva.
Earlier on Monday Speight spent 45 minutes touring looted areas of Suva in a borrowed police car. He was accompanied by a police officer and an armed member of his own group while other gunmen held Chaudhry and the other hostages.
Fiji Police Commissioner Isikia Savua warned Speight he would be arrested if he tried to leave the compound again. General dissatisfaction has grown steadily with the abrasive Chaudhry's style of government since he took power exactly a year ago last Friday.
Tension has also risen between ethnic Fijians, who make up the majority of Fiji's 800,000 population, and the economically powerful Indian community.
(Reuters contributed to this report.)
