During the late 1990s, Fiji witnessed a series of riots by radical native Fijians against Hindus (and other Indo-Fijians). In the spring of 2000, the democratically elected Fijian government led by Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry was held hostage by a group headed by George Speight. They demanded a segregated state exclusively for the native Fijians, thereby legally abolishing any human rights the Hindu inhabitants have. Hindu owned shops, Hindu schools and temples were destroyed, vandalized and looted. The Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma, and particularly Sitiveni Rabuka who led the 1987 coup in Fiji, called for the creation of a Christian State and endorsed forceful conversion of Hindus after a coup d'état in 1987. In 2012, Fiji Methodist Church's president, Tuikilakila Waqairatu, called for Fiji to officially declare Christianity as the state religion; the Hindu community leaders demanded that Fiji be a secular state where religion and state are separate.