Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has said LGBTI people in the Pacific island nation should go to Iceland and stay there.

Frank Bainimarama was responding to Shamima Ali, co-ordinator of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Center, who has called on the government to legalize gay marriage – which is banned in the country of 881,000 people.

‘Tell Shamima Ali, there will be no same-sex marriage in Fiji,’ he said in a televised interview on Tuesday (5 January).

‘Not in her lifetime and not in ours.’

Bainimarama said that if two women want to marry, ‘they should go and have it done in Iceland and stay and live there.’

‘Fiji does not need that rubbish,’ he added.

Ali condemned Bainimarama’s statements as ‘extreme homophobia.’

‘It’s extreme homophobia and really total disrespect for a community in Fiji,’ she told Radio New Zealand.

‘And it’s just not in keeping with statements that government has been making in terms of human rights, and violence against women, and our aspiration to be on the UN Human Rights Council in the near future.’

In 1997, Fiji became the second country in the world to explicitly protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation in its constitution. However, that constitution was scrapped two years later.

Gay sex was decriminalized in 2010, and the 2013 constitution reinstated protections for LGBTI people.