SUVA, Fiji — Hostages released from 37 days in captivity in Fiji said Monday they were treated relatively well but that life inside the parliamentary building where they were held was an emotional seesaw of fear and hope.
"The rules of the house are that when the lights are out it's quiet time, but when you hear a gunshot you hit the deck and stay there until the all-clear signs are given," said Marieta Rigamoto, the deposed assistant agriculture minister.
Rigamoto was released Sunday along with the three other female hostages held at gunpoint inside Fiji's parliament. At a church Monday in the capital of Suva, Rigamoto and another freed hostage, Lavenia Wainiqolo Padarath, the former minister of women, culture and social welfare, offered tearful testimony of their ordeal.
When gunmen led by former insurance executive George Speight stormed parliament on May 19 and took the government hostage in the name of indigenous Fijian rights, Rigamoto said she "wasn't sure what was happening until one of them fired a gun and I said to myself 'this is real.' "
"My first reaction was to say a short prayer and ask God to keep me calm," she said.
That Friday, she said Speight's men handcuffed the male hostages, mostly members of the government of deposed Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, and proceeded to do the same to the women until Speight intervened and told them not to.
"So I said, well, that's a positive sign. At least they have the heart to spare us," Rigamoto said.
The women were not the first from the group to be freed. At least five people were released for various reasons, including three men who were let go days after parliament was stormed.
Negotiations to free the remaining 27 hostages were deadlocked on Monday, just three days after all the parties said a deal had been reached. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Filipo Tarakinikini said the rebels had come up with an 11th hour demand — that they be allowed to name a new president — that torpedoed the deal.
Padarath, who is married to an indigenous Fijian, hosted a quiet get-together of relatives and friends Monday night, but said she found it hard to celebrate.
"We can't stop our relatives, but at the same time we are still very mindful of our brothers who are still in captivity," she said.
At the celebration, indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians mixed happily. Meanwhile, Fijian TV showed footage of an Indo-Fijian hostage drinking kava — a mildly intoxicating drink made from a plant root — with some of his captors. "We're treated well," former lawmaker Vinod Mahara said, speaking in Fijian. "Our races have been separate too long."
Ten days after the May 19 raid on parliament, the army assumed control of the South Pacific nation in what they said was an attempt to keep Fiji from descending into anarchy.
Most of Speight's demands to disenfranchise Fiji's Indian minority have already been met, including the firing of Chaudhry, who was the country's first Indian prime minister, and the elimination of the country's 1997 multiracial constitution.
The standoff, now entering its sixth week, has pitted Fiji's poor Fijian majority against its relatively affluent Indian minority, whose ancestors were brought to Fiji by English colonialists over a century ago to work in the country's rich sugar cane fields.
Half the hostages are indigenous and half are Indian. The freed hostages, all of whom are indigenous, said the two groups have been separated in captivity and prohibited from speaking to each other.
Rigamoto made a plea Monday for greater tolerance.
"Because they are Christians," she said of her fellow Fijians, "they must have room for minority groups . . . and other races."
The freed women said they spent their days in captivity reading, playing cards and praying.
They were not given access to newspapers, but Rigamoto said they could tell how well the negotiations were going by how late in the evening Speight and other rebel leaders visited them.
"If by six o'clock they didn't come back to us, we knew the talks had failed," she said.