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, who was a Hindu, 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 held up until then. Hindu owned shops, Hindu schools and temples were destroyed, vandalized and looted.