SUVA (Reuters) - Fiji’s military government deported the Australian publisher of Rupert Murdoch’s Fiji Times newspaper on Friday, after declaring him a threat to national security.

The move is the latest crackdown on the media in Fiji since military commander Frank Bainimarama seized power in a bloodless coup in late 2006, and comes amid growing international criticism of the slow progress in returning the island chain to democracy.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Evan Hannah’s deportation was “a reprehensible attack by the illegal Fiji interim government on human rights and freedom of speech.”

Hannah was escorted by a soldier onto a Korean Airline flight to Seoul, despite a court order that he attend an appeal hearing against the deportation order, the newspaper said.

The Fiji government issued a statement on Friday saying Hannah acted in “a manner prejudicial to the peace, defense, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, security or good governance of the Fiji Islands.”

National Security and Immigration Minister Ratu Epeli Ganilau said he wanted to explain Hannah’s offences, but his statement failed to mention any specific offences.

“The security interests of the Sovereign State of Fiji at this point in time are of paramount importance. Mr Hannah was previously cautioned of the implications of his actions. He, however, chose to ignore this,” said Ganilau.

Fiji Times Editor Netani Rika said Fijian journalists have been harassed by the government for 18 months and that the latest deportation was part of a campaign to silence media criticism.

“Our people have been under constant threat and intimidation for the last 18 months. Mr Hannah is not the first journalist to be removed from his home,” Rika told Australian radio.

“All I can think of right now, that it is an attempt to intimidate the media, yes,” he said.

The deportation comes after another Australian, Russell Hunter, publisher of the rival Fiji Sun newspaper, was deported in February for criticizing Bainimarama’s government.

“ANOTHER SORRY MILESTONE”

The U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report, released in March, said Fiji’s security forces and police arbitrarily detained and sometimes abused individuals, resulting in three deaths in 2007.

“The night-time abduction of Fiji Times publisher Evan Hannah marks yet another sorry milestone on the interim government’s road to disgrace,” said the Fiji Sun in an editorial on Friday.

“Make no mistake, these deportations are the precursors to stringent and punitive media controls ...,” it said.

“This will give the interim government what it has long craved: total control over what the people of Fiji are permitted to know and even discuss publicly. It will give the regime the power to act in secret.”

Bainimarama has promised to hold free and fair elections by early 2009, but South Pacific foreign ministers said in March that more work was needed to meet the election timetable.

Murdoch’s Australian publishing arm, News Ltd, has condemned Hannah’s deportation. Ganilau said Hannah was “escorted from home with courtesy” and that his deportation would not intended to undermine the owners or investors of the Fiji Times.

The Fiji Times’ editor said his newspaper had always been a watchdog on government policies regardless of who was in power and would not soften its stance despite the latest deportation.

“For us at the Fiji Times, it just means that we now know that the government will not take dissenting views lightly, but it also means that we have an even more important role to play to ensure that the views of all people in this country are made known, including the views of the government,” he said.

(Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by John Chalmers)