French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has invited the United Nations Decolonisation Committee members to visit New Caledonia.

Controlled by France since 1853, New Caledonia was returned to the UN decolonisation list as prolonged political violence threatened in 1986 — 39 years after France had withdrawn it and its other major Pacific colony from the 19th century, French Polynesia, from the list.

France says it has complied with the UN decolonisation process and regularly exchanged with the UN about New Caledonia.

During a visit to the United States last week, Darmanin stopped at the UN in New York to discuss the aftermath of the three referendums on independence which France organised in New Caledonia between 2018 and 2021.

Darmanin, who as Interior Minister is also responsible for France’s overseas possessions, said he had a constructive exchange, without elaborating.

He said, however, he wondered how “to trigger this right to self-determination on the scale of one or two generations”.

Darmanin also told the committee that after the referendums, France was trying to negotiate with both the pro- and anti-independence camps to formulate a future status for New Caledonia.

What next for New Caledonia?
The outcome of the referendum process as outlined in the 1998 Noumea Accord is in dispute, with the pro-independence parties claiming the rejection of independence is illegitimate because of the low turn-out of the colonised Kanak people in the last vote.

France had gone ahead with the third referendum despite a plea by pro-independence parties to postpone it because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the Kanak population.

The pro-independence side refuses to recognise the result, saying that the referendum was not in the spirit of the 1998 Noumea Accord and the UN resolutions on the territory’s decolonisation.

It said the path of dialogue had been broken by the stubbornness of the French government, which was unable to reconcile its geostrategic interests in the Pacific with its obligation to decolonise New Caledonia.

The pro-independence camp has been lobbying for support to get the referendum outcome annulled.

However, a legal challenge in Paris last year by the customary Kanak Senate was unsuccessful while a further challenge of the referendum result filed with the International Court of Justice is pending.

New PIF chair taking ‘neutral’ position
This month, the Pacific Islands Forum said it would “not intrude” into New Caledonia’s affairs although a subgroup, the Melanesian Spearhead Group, had earlier backed calls for the UN to declare the result null and void.

Asked for the Forum’s view, its chair, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, said the “Forum respects the due process of each country”.

“It is not the Forum’s role to intrude into the domestic matters of countries as they determine their independence or their dependence on other countries,” Brown said.

The pro-independence side has refused to engage with the anti-independence side in discussions about any new statute. Instead, it has insisted on having bilateral talks with only the French government on a timetable to conclude the decolonisation process and restore New Caledonia’s sovereignty.

In March, Darmanin visited New Caledonia for talks with a cross-section of society, and last month New Caledonia’s political leaders were in Paris for more discussions.

None of these meetings have yielded a consensus on a way forward.

Audition cet après-midi à l’@ONU_fr par le C24, comité des Nations Unies en charge des sujets de décolonisation, afin de faire le point sur la Nouvelle-Calédonie.
Merci à la présidente du comité et aux pays membres pour cet échange riche et constructif. Au nom du Gouvernement,… pic.twitter.com/Ya5BY1k9Kc

— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) May 19, 2023

Next week, Darmanin is due back in Noumea in a renewed effort to advance discussions on New Caledonia’s future status.

The anti-independence parties want Paris to honour the referendum result and move towards reintegration of New Caledonia into France by abolishing the restricted rolls created with the Noumea Accord.

The push received support last week from the deputy leader of France’s Republicans François Xavier Bellamy who visited Noumea.

He said his side would support changes to the French constitution to allow for the rolls to be opened up — a move firmly resisted by the pro-independence side.

French Polynesia marks 10th reinscription anniversary

The ruling pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party in French Polynesia marked the 10th anniversary of the territory’s reinscription in Faa’a where the party founder and leader Oscar Temaru is mayor.

His decades-long campaign succeeded in 2013 when the UN General Assembly approved a resolution — sponsored by Solomon Islands — and re-inscribed French Polynesia on the world body’s decolonisation list.

The decision, which came in the dying days of the last government led by Temaru, was vehemently criticised by the Tahitian government, which succeeded his, as well as France, which labelled the UN decision an “interference”.

While France has refused to attend any UN discussion on French Polynesia, the pro-autonomy government of the past decade regularly sent delegates to the annual gathering in New York.

Marking the anniversary this year, Tavini’s youngest assembly member Tematai Le Gayic told Tahiti Nui TV he was disappointed that the “French state agrees to negotiate when there is bloodshed”, referring to New Caledonia’s unrest of the 1980s.

“But when it’s with respect of law and democracy, France denies the process,” he added.

The opposition Tapura’s Tepuaraurii Teriitahi said that it would be good “if France accepted once and for all, to avoid any controversy, that UN observers could come to French Polynesia”.

While viewing independence as a long-term goal, the newly elected President Moetai Brotherson has been critical of France shunning the UN process, having described it as a “bad look”.

At the event in Faa’a, Brotherson said they went to ask the UN “to give us the possibility of choice, with a neutral arbiter”.

He said it was then up to his party to awaken consciences so that an overwhelming majority would vote for independence, which he said was not an end in itself but an essential step to building a nation.

“We don’t want a 50 percent-plus-one-vote victory,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Mā’ohi Nui and the Pacific region has witnessed a historical moment at the Territorial Assembly when Oscar Temaru, leader of the pro-independence party Tavini Huira’atira, sat briefly in the most important chair of the chamber.

He presided over the election of the new Speaker (president) of the House.

This honour was his as the eldest member of the Territorial Assembly at the age of 78.

In his return to the Assembly, he was put in the highest seat of the House from which he had been axed as a member of Parliament in 2018 by a French court which convicted him of a “conflict of interest” in the Radio Tefana affair.

A sweet revenge for the once persona non grata politician in front of the High Commissioner representative of the French administration, along with the two pro-French senators —  and the entire autonomist political platform.

Another no less significant moment that took place when the ballots for the electing the Speaker were counted, 41 were for the only pro-independence candidate, Antony Geros, against 16 that abstained.

This might have come as a surprise to the autonomist alliance of édouard Fritch-Gaston Flosse to see the three non-aligned autonomist members of the assembly give their votes instead of abstaining.

Working with new administration
However, those non-aligned autonomist members have publicly announced that they would work with the new administration.

The other point about the three non-aligned members is the hope of being offered a ministerial position for one of their group, an answer will come when the newly elected President of the territory presents his cabinet in five days.

In his opening speech, Speaker Geros reminded the House about historical facts over the many political battles and strife that Tavini had had to go endure — mostly instigated by the French state.

He also said that the past 10 years had been a “journey in the desert” for the new local government.

When asked whether he was worried that his speech against the French administration could send the “wrong signal” to Paris, he said the young new Tavini members of the Assembly needed to know how they got to where they were and the sacrifices that were made by the forefathers of the independence party.

They needed to know the past of their party to understand the future of the country.

It has also been a happy reunion for Roch Wamytan, president of New Caledonia’s Congress and pro-independence leader, who came in person to congratulate and support his old friend Temaru for what he has achieved.

Brotherson’s new administration
Moetai Brotherson was elected president of Mā’ohi Nui with 38 votes ahead of the outgoing president Édouard Fritch (16 votes), and Nicole Sanquer from the non-aligned party — and the first woman to seek the presidency — (three votes) and Benoit Kautai from Flosse’s party, who quickly withdrew his name.

The majority premium won by the Tavini settled the outcome as already predicted.

Any member of the Assembly can stand as a presidential candidate and present their programme. Undoubtedly the autonomist candidates will reiterate their allegiance to the French Republic.

Moetai Brotherson will make his speech and continue to form his cabinet. He has already given the names of some of the members of his cabinet and to those already known, the following names could be added to his new cabinet.

He promised gender parity in his government with a hint of more women which he can still achieve. He is adding another woman called Manarii Galenon, who is likely to be Minister for Solidarity, Housing and Urban Development.

The Budget and Finance minister would be Tevaiti Pomare which is an interesting choice as he is known to be an A here ia Porinetia supporter.

Some negotiations must have gone on between Tavini and the A here ia Porinetia.
The last name that we are hearing of is Cedric Mercadal as Health Minister.

Most of the new ministers are of high calibre in terms of academic achievement but might be rather light on their political engagement and experience.

President Brotherson will need to find two more women to reach gender parity and stay under the number of 10 ministers that he announced previously.

Although he has five days to form his government, we should know all the ministers by Monday.

Priorities for new government
The biggest challenge for this government and Tavini Huira’atira party as a whole will be to work with the French administration whose financial help to the country is around 200 billion Pacific francs (NZ$3 billion) a year.

Despite the long and historically skewed relationship between the independence party and the French state, open discussions with other potential investors, especially China, should not put any strain between the new local and the French administrations.

It has becoming increasingly necessary for this new government to be close to all the mayors of Mā’ohi Nui which is what the French administration had already put in place around 30 years ago.

This relationship between municipalities and the French state has allowed the latter to have a direct communication with the representatives of the populations, be their only intermediary and to set up agreements of inter-dependence between the parties involved.

The new government will try to seek this close relationship, particularly with the mayors of the Marquesas archipelago since it is planning to use those islands as an essential lever to boost tourism.

The Marquesas archipelago is only a three-hour flight to Hawai’i which welcomes 8 million tourists a year and the new government believes that by offering the Marquesas as a new tourist destination, it will boost both the local and the whole of Mā’ohi Nui’s economies.

Managing to bring in 3 percent of this new market in search of authenticity would be a substantial financial addition and would more than double the number of tourists visiting the territory year to around 300,000.

Infrastructure objective
In anticipation of this, building the necessary infrastructure — such as airport, wharves, parks, hotels — to welcome this potential tourist mass could only be achieved by working with the mayors.

On the other hand, the more pressing matter for this government will be to visit and help the town of Te’ahupo’o located on the west coast of the main island of Tahiti that was hit by torrential rain and flooding 10 days ago.

It left about 60 households desperate to find somewhere to live.

Te’ahupo’o is also the town where the 2024 Paris Olympic Games surfing competition will take place.

Tackling urban delinquency and homelessness around the capital Pape’ete is also part of the new administration’s programme which ties up with the warm welcome that Ma’ohi Nui wants to offer visiting tourists.

The last word is for Oscar Temaru about concerns that the independence party might face a repeat of 2004 and the “politics of intimidation”.

He says the French administration is witnessing an increase in popularity of Tavini Huira’atira and will think twice about trying to “shut the taps”.

Paris is also aware that all the political institutions in Ma’ohi Nui — the Assembly and the government — and in France (the three deputies seated in France’s National Assembly) have independence members to represent the people.

It is Temaru’s wish to also win the senatorial elections in order to strengthen his claim to self-determination.

His only worry is whether Paris might change the constitution during their governance. But at the moment, Ma’ohi Nui is allowing “the young people to govern this country”.

Ena Manuireva is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based Tahitian doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology and a commentator on French politics in Ma’ohi Nui and the Pacific. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The French Polynesian economy has been given a positive assessment in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic by the body issuing the French Pacific franc.

The Overseas Emission Institute said it expected French Polynesia should return to its pre-crisis level of GDP in the first quarter of 2023.

It noted that tourism has rebounded, and hotels had restored their profitability.

Over the 2022 financial year, the overall turnover of the hotel industry reached US$540 million over US$289 million in 2021.

However, the report said inflation last year rose to 6.6 percent, with food prices alone going up by 12 percent.

Costs for housing rose 8.8 percent and for transport 8.2 percent, with fuel costs going up almost 28 percent.

Labour market picked up
The report also said the labour market had picked up again with a 5.1 percent increase in the workforce.

It said in the first 10 months of last year, the salary mass grew by seven percent.

It said sectors such as energy, transport and the hotel industry carried out large-scale projects requiring significant loans, which were up by almost 60 percent from 2021 to last year.

The report credits the investment to the government’s economic relaunch programme for the period 2021 to 2023.

The institute added that the territorial elections and the geopolitical risks in the Pacific constitute factors of uncertainty likely to weigh on the behaviour of economic actors.

Unions sceptical
However, the secretary-general of the main union group CSTP-FO doubts the figures are accurate.

Patrick Galenon told Tahiti-infos there were about 80,000 unemployed people.

“We are told that there is only nine percent unemployment and that people do not want to work. But that is not the situation,” he said.

Galenon added: “They want to work, unfortunately they can’t find any [jobs]. The extremists will say that many come from outside and that they find a job”.

He said what was needed was a real local employment law on which work had been done for 10 years.

“In the form of a joke, I said that when I go to Paris, I try to adapt to Paris. I put on a tie or a coat when I’m cold.

“If they come from outside, it’s not for our good looks but to earn money by setting up a business”, he said.

Galenon asked why none of the managers of the big hotels were Polynesian.

“We are also going to talk about land because it is linked: 80 percent of land is presumed to be state property.

“Where are the lands of the Polynesians? Afterwards, we are told, don’t worry, we are returning the land to the Polynesians.

“But we don’t give them anything back, it’s their land!,” he said.

He added that “on the other hand, we give back to people who are not the real owners. This will create even more problems”.

Galenon said home ownership had now slipped out of reach for many because almost US$500,000 was now needed to buy a house.

Election a “social revolution”
In his view, last month’s election victory of the Tavini Huira’atira wasn’t a vote for independence, likening the result instead to a “social revolution”.

In an interview with Tahiti Nui TV, Galenon said he was “convinced that there are many people who were not for independence or for the blue party [Tavini’s party colours] but who voted blue because socially, the country was going very badly.”

Galenon said it was inconceivable to have products that had increased in price by 35 to 40 percent.

Measuring against the figures in France, Galenon said the monthly minimum wage was US$1563 while in France it was US$1940.

“In France it’s 35 hours [a week], here it’s 39 hours and unfortunately life here is 40 percent more expensive. So, we have a real problem,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party has won the election for a new 57-member Territorial Assembly, paving the way for Moetai Brotherson to become president.

Unofficial final results show the party led by its founder Oscar Temaru won 44.3 percent, thereby repeating its win in the first round of voting two weeks ago.

The pro-autonomy coalition list formed 12 days ago between the ruling Tapura Huira’atira and the opposition Amuitahiraa came second with 38.5 percent while another autonomist party A Here Ia Porinetia secured 17.2 percent.

As the list winning most votes, the Tavini gets 19 of the 57 seats as a bonus, securing a total of 38 seats.

The Tapura-led list won 16 seats and A Here Ia Porinetia three.

The Tavini victory ends the 10-year dominance of the Assembly by the Tapura.

The new Assembly, which has been elected for a five-year term, is expected to meet in the next two weeks to elect a new assembly president and then a territorial President.

Majority of women
The Tavini candidate for the presidency Moetai Brotherson said he is likely to appoint a majority of women when he forms his government after confirming that Eliane Tevahitua will be the vice-president.

Temaru topped the Tavini list but decided before the election not to seek another term as president.

The Tapura leader and outgoing president Édouard Fritch said despite the Tavini victory, a majority of French Polynesians favour autonomy.

The Amuitahiraa leader, Gaston Flosse, said his coalition, which joined the Tapura for the second round, did not “lose” the election and denounced Temaru as a liar.

During the campaign, Fritch and Flosse warned of chaos should the Tavini come first.

Brotherson said the election results show people were not fooled, knowing that independence would not happen next week.

As president, Brotherson said he would represent all the people and seek a dialogue with France as a partner on the basis of mutual respect.

France refuses over UN
French Polynesia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 2013 but France has to date refused to acknowledge the UN decision and refuses to engage in a UN supervised process.

Observers said the Tapura lost support over displeasure with the government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Last year, Fritch and former vice-president Tearii Alpha were both fined for flouting covid rules they put in place.

Alpha, who was vice-president at the time, invited 300 people, including all cabinet members, to his wedding at the height of restrictions.

In what was a surprise last year, the Tavini candidates beat the Tapura candidates to win all three of French Polynesia’s seats in the French National Assembly.

The last pro-independence politician to hold the presidency was Temaru who held the post for a fifth time between 2011 and 2013.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Voting has started in French Polynesia in the second round to elect a new Territorial Assembly for a five-year term.

About 200,000 voters can choose among three lists of candidates vying for the assembly’s 57 seats.

The lists of the pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira, which won the first round two weeks ago, and of the autonomist A Here Ia Porinetia are unchanged.

For today’s run-off round, the ruling Tapura Huira’atira changed its list by adding four candidates of the opposition Amuitahiraa, which had been eliminated in the first round.

The list winning most votes today will get a third of all seats as a bonus, which will give it an absolute majority.

The remaining two thirds of the seats will then be distributed according to the lists’ relative strength.

To promote gender parity the lists must alternate male and female candidates.

Closing times of the polling stations vary, but unofficial results are expected by the end of the day.

Publishing any result before all stations are closed is prohibited and can incur a fine of US$80,000.

The elected assembly representatives will meet in mid-May to elect a new president.

The three candidates are Tavini’s Moetai Brotherson, the incumbent Édouard Fritch and the first ever woman seeking the top job, Nicole Sanquer of A Here Ia Porinetia.

Activist dies in accident
Meanwhile, a leading activist of the pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party and the anti-nuclear movement has died in an accident.

Media reports said Ralph Taaviri, who was an experienced hunter, disappeared in the Punaruu valley of Tahiti.

Searchers found his body at the bottom of a cliff and a helicopter was needed to recover it.

Taaviri was one of the co-founders of the environmental NGO Faatura te rahu a te Atua.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Politicians in French Polynesia have reacted with scorn over the ruling party’s hastily-convened electoral alliance with an opposition party, which has been eliminated from the territorial elections after failing to reach the 12.5 percent threshold.

Under the deal, President Édouard Fritch’s Tapura Huiraatira ceded four positions to Amuitahiraa on the list of candidates for next week’s run-off round.

Fritch warned of “chaos” should his party lose power to the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira, which won most votes in the first round a week ago.

The Tavini’s Moetai Brotherson, who wants to succeed Fritch in the top job, derided the arrangement, saying that Fritch and the Amuitahiraa leader Gaston Flosse were serving up the “same soup” by warning that white people would be chased away and independence would “usher in misery” if Tavini formed government.

Nuihau Laurey of A Here Ia Porinetia said while he also stood for continued autonomy, it was very hard to work with people who admitted that they had lied for 30 years, a reference to Fritch’s admission in 2018 that he had lied about the French weapons tests.

The Greens’ Jacky Bryant said that the hasty deal was serious as this way of doing politics contributed to voter apathy.

Coup for Fritch, Flosse?
He said Fritch and Flosse must “feel horror” if they believed they could be a uniting force, in particular since Flosse for years “vomited” over the Tapura.

Tauhiti Nena of Hau Māohi said it was a coup for Fritch and Flosse because if they managed to combine the two parties’ support from the first round, they would win.

In the first round of the territorial elections, Fritch’s Tapura party came second, winning 30 percent of the votes against Tavini’s 35 percent, with Amuitahiraa on 11 percent.

Flosse, who leads the party despite being ineligible because of corruption convictions, had been campaigning for French Polynesia becoming a sovereign state in association with France.

While in opposition, he claimed that Fritch was the worst president in the territory’s history.

In the last elections in 2018, the Tapura won two thirds of all seats.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the ballots were counted after the first day of voting in Mā’ohi Nui/French Polynesia territorial election first round, the “blue wave” of the pro-independence party Tavini Huira’atira led by Oscar Temaru topped the seven party lists competing.

Tavini was followed by the pro-French incumbent governing party Tapura Huira’atira of Édouard Fritch and the surprise alternative group led by a former finance minister under Fritch, Nuihau Laurey.

As for the other autonomist-leaning political parties who did not reach the 12.5 percent threshold required to enter the second round, they would probably encourage their followers to vote for autonomy.

In this first round, 56 percent of the population voted for the members of the Parliament, who will then elect the territory’s President.

This first result has come as no surprise to Oscar Temaru, giving him and his party a two-week campaign to entice the other 44 percent who did not vote in the first round to choose “blue” on April 30.

Undemocratic voting system
When I interviewed Oscar Temaru before the elections, he repeated to me that it should be one vote, one person and that’s the way democracy should work.

However, because France decides on the voting system, it also decides on the allocation of bonus seats (33 percent) for the party that wins most votes in the 57-seat chamber.

This extra bonus seat ploy appeared in 2004 under Gaston Flosse under the pretence of achieving political stability.

This strategy only favours big parties and is likely to keep the same party in power for a long time.

It is part of France’s responsibility to decide the type of vote, to dictate when to vote and how to organise the voting system.

The 33 percent bonus seats was geared to favour the autonomist parties but had the opposite effect in 2004 — despite all predictions — and put the UPLD (union for Democracy, which included Tavini) in power.

Temaru is hoping for a repeat of 2004. By the end of the second round on April 30, we will have the answer on who is going to govern Mā’ohi Nui for the next five years.

Temaru’s winning strategy
Riding on the back of their win at the last French national elections that saw all three seats allocated to Mā’ohi Nui/French Polynesia in the French Parliament won by pro-independence representatives, Temaru says it was a historic surprise for the French administration and for his people in Tahiti.

He knows that if he uses the same strategy for the territorial elections, he has a good chance of winning.

His approach is to concentrate on what he calls the “disillusioned youth”.

By applying the same approach, he is pitting youth against age because he noticed that the young people weren’t interested in the election because they were not given a voice.

When Oscar Temaru talks about young people, he means 18 to 35 years old — those who the governing administration do not see as potential voters and who rely on their “old guard” approach.

Temaru also talks about how the return of the Tahitian language during political meetings and rallies has had a huge influence on the Tahitian population that still represents about 75 percent of the electorate.

By giving the stage to young, committed and fluent speakers of both Tahitian and French, a whole new communication gap appears.

Fluent bilingual speakers
The pro-independence party offers a space for fluent bilingual speakers compared to the other sides’ representatives who are only fluent in French and speak hardly any Tahitian.

Temaru sees communication in politics as the winning formula.

If you control communication, you are in luck. That is what he did in the last elections in the capital city of Pape’ete for the first time and it was an important victory.

Temaru has also played on the generation gap that exists between the various candidates who are presenting themselves.

He cited veteran politician Gaston Flosse as the main example, emphasising that the future of the Mā’ohi people belongs to the young generation.

When Flosse presented himself in the last elections, he was 91 years old and the youngest lawmaker in the whole of the French Republic from Tavini was only 21 years old. There is a difference of more than three generations between these two candidates.

‘Disrespectful behaviour’
According to Oscar Temaru, the polls show that a huge number of people are against the Fritch government because of:

People now look to the idea of independence as an alternative. Winning these elections would give the Tavini a historic majority in both the Territorial Parliament and the French National Assembly as the only representatives of Mā’ohi Nui would be pro-independence.

Oscar Temaru sees both victories as a stronger mandate enabling Mā’ohi Nui to go to the United Nations and discuss the issue of independence.

He says that every time he talks about Mā’ohi Nui as an independent country, the representatives for France stand up and leave — they don’t want to discuss it.

President Édouard Fritch would go to the UN and say that the population supported their attachment to the French state.

So, this is why it’s really critical for Oscar Temaru to win these elections and change many things in this country.

Internal discords at the Tavini
Is there a tug war between factions of the Tavini Huira’atira after one of the party’s pillars, Eliane Tevaitua, was replaced by a newcomer?

“No. Everybody understands that we have to work together – the older generation and new generation, we need to mix them up,” Temaru says.

“The young generation understands that they need the experience of people who know what is going on. It’s very easy to make them quickly operational because they are smart young people and very interested in politics.”

When the long serving Tavini Huira’atira member of the Territorial Assembly was replaced, the online Tahiti Infos ran an article claiming that Tavini’s general secretary Vannina Ateo had offered her resignation to Oscar Temaru.

However, Ateo said she had never offered her resignation and this was a campaign of disinformation.

Tavini’s vision
Oscar Temaru: “If we win the territorial elections, we will be able to tell France, let’s sit around the table and talk about the future of our country in the presence of the UN as a referee.

“We will put on the table everything that concerns the people of this country. Let’s talk together step by step about agreements of cooperation in the different areas for the future.

“The UN will be the referee between us and France regarding those agreements.
“For us this will not be a repeat of the Noumea Accords because I am one of those who knew what happened exactly to the New Caledonia issue.

“In 1986 after the resolution was adopted by the UN to put New Caledonia on the list of countries to decolonise, there was no talk about going to Paris and meeting with the right-wing Jacques Lafleur.

“It was a decision taken by Jean-Marie Tjibaou and we knew after that the freemason people were the ones who worked behind the scenes to organise that meeting in Paris.

“So, it took more than 30 years from 1986 to 2008. And from 2008 until today the Noumea Accord has become a stalemate.

“We don’t want that kind of accord because while the Noumea Accord was being discussed, at the same time we have had a statute of autonomy which started in 1977 and is now 46 years.

“So, after the autonomy — call it as you like, autonomy management, autonomy intern, self-governance — no we don’t want any of those new titles for our country.

““We will not go through the nearly 40 years of negotiations that New Caledonia went through. For us the UN will fix the date for the referendum so maximum, let’s say 10 years.

“We want to put the economy of this country on the right track, to educate our people — that’s the main point, how to change the mindset of our people and that is a hard job.

“It won’t an easy discussion so we will need top people to go to the UN to talk to the French, because they don’t want to lose their stronghold on this country that is as huge and as big as Europe, with all the resources.

“So that’s why the French administration don’t want to lose it.

“Thanks to the UN for having adopted the last two resolutions in 2020 and 2021 which tell the French to respect our sovereign right and our rights on every resource on this country.

“If France loses this part of Ma’ohi Nui, it will lose everything and Noumea will follow suite when their turn comes again.”

In response to the last question, about Oscar Temaru himself — what is going to happen to him, he says “we will wait and see what God decides, aye!”

At the age of nearly 80, he still has the fighting spirit and he hopes that in five years’ time he will still be here.

“Maybe there will be a new leader for this country. I don’t know, but at the moment I am still fighting.”

Ena Manuireva is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based Tahitian doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology and a commentator on French politics in Ma’ohi Nui and the Pacific. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On the 61st anniversary of the first raising of West Papua’s symbol of independence — 1 December 1961 — the Morning Star flag:

We, the Indigenous caucus of the movement for self-determination, decolonisation, nuclear justice, and demilitarisation of the Pacific, call for coordinated action for key campaigns that impact the human rights, sovereignty, wellbeing and prosperity of Pacific peoples across our region.

As guardians of our Wansolwara (Tok Pisin term meaning “One Salt Water,” or “One Ocean, One People”), we are united in seeking the protection, genuine security and vitality for the spiritual, cultural and economic base for our lives, and we will defend it at all costs. We affirm the kōrero of the late Father Walter Lini, “No one is free, until everyone is free!”

We thank the mana whenua of Ōtepoti, Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre for Peace and Conflict and Kā Rakahau o Te Ao Tūroa Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago for their hospitality in welcoming us as their Pacific whānau to their unceded and sovereign lands of Aotearoa.

We acknowledge the genealogy of resistance we share with community activists who laid the mat in our shared struggles in the 1970s and 1980s. Our gathering comes 40 years after the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, hosted by the Pacific Peoples Anti Nuclear Action Committee (PPANAC) at Tātai Hono in Tamaki Makaurau.

Self-determination and decolonisation
We remain steadfast in our continuing solidarity with our sisters and brothers in West Papua, who are surviving from and resisting against the Indonesian genocidal regime, injustice and oppression. We bear witness for millions of West Papuans murdered by this brutal occupation. We will not be silent until the right to self-determination of West Papua is fully achieved.

We urge our Forum leaders to follow through with Indonesia to finalise the visit from the UN Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua, as agreed in the Leaders Communiqué 2019 resolution.

We are united in reaffirming the inalienable right of all Indigenous peoples to self-determination and demand the sovereignty of West Papua, Kanaky, Mā’ohi Nui, Bougainville, Hawai’i, Guåhan, the Northern Mariana Islands, Rapa Nui, Aotearoa, and First Nations of the lands now called Australia.

Of priority, we call on the French government to implement the United Nations self-governing protocols in Mā’ohi Nui and Kanaky. We urge France to comply with the resolution set forth on May 17th, 2013 which declared French Polynesia to be a non-self-governing territory, and the successive resolutions from 2013 to 2022. The “empty seat policy” that the administering power has been practising since 2013 and attempts to remove Mā’ohi Nui from the list of countries to be decolonised have to stop. We call on France to immediately resume its participation in the work of the C-24 and the 4th Commission of the United Nations.

Nuclear justice
We grieve for the survivors and victims who lost their lives to the nuclear violence caused by over 315 nuclear weapons detonated in Marshall Islands, Australia, Kiribati, Johnston Atoll and Mā’ohi Nui by the United States, United Kingdom/Australia and France. The legacy and ongoing nuclear violence in our region is unfinished business and calls for recognition, reconciliation and reparations to be made by nuclear colonisers are long overdue.

We call for the United States, United Kingdom/Australia and France to deliver fair and just
compensation to Indigenous civilians, workers and servicemen for the health and environmental harms, including intergenerational trauma caused by nuclear testing programs (and subsequent illegal medical experiments in the Marshall Islands). The compensation schemes currently in place in all states constitute a grave political failure of these aforementioned nuclear testing states and serve to deceive the world that they are recognising their responsibility to address the nuclear legacy. We call for the United States, United Kingdom/Australia, and France to establish or otherwise significantly improve
accessible healthcare systems and develop and fund cancer facilities within the Marshall Islands, Kiribati/Australia and Mā’ohi Nui respectively, where alarming rates of cancers, birth defects and other related diseases continue to claim lives and cause socio-economic distress to those affected. The descendants of the thousands of dead and the thousands of sick are still waiting for real justice to be put in place with the supervision of the international community.

We demand that the French government take full responsibility for the racist genocidal health effects of nuclear testing on generations of Mā’ohi and provide full transparency, rapid assessment and urgent action for nuclear contamination risks. While the President of France boasts on the international stage of his major environmental and ecological transition projects, in the territory of Mā’ohi Nui, the French government’s instructions are to definitively “turn the page of nuclear history.” This is a white-washing and colonial gas-lighting attitude towards the citizens and now the mokopuna of Mā’ohi Nui. It is
imperative for France to produce the long-awaited report on the environmental, economic and sanitary consequences of its 193 nuclear tests conducted between 1966 and 1996.

We proclaim our commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and call all states of the Pacific region who have not done so to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), namely Australia, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. We urge Pacific nations along with the world’s governments to contribute to the international trust fund for victims of nuclear weapons implemented by the TPNW. We urge Aotearoa/New Zealand and other states who have ratified the TPNW to follow through on their commitment to nuclear survivors, and to create a world free from the threat and harm of nuclear weapons through the universalisation of the TPNW. There can be no peace without justice.

We oppose the despicable proposal of Japan and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to dump 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive wastewater next year in 2023, and support in solidarity with the citizens of Japan, East Asian states and Micronesian states who sit on the frontlines of this crisis. This is an act of trans-boundary harm upon the Pacific. We call on the New Zealand government and others to stay true to its commitment to a Nuclear Free Pacific and bring a case under the international tribunal for the Law of the Sea against the proposed radioactive release from TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi planned from 2023 to 2053.

Demilitarisation
We condemn the geopolitical order forced upon our nations by imperial powers, who claim to be our friends, yet treat our islands as collateral damage and use financial blackmail to bully us into submission. We demand that the United States remove and remediate all military bases, infrastructure, debris and nuclear and chemical waste from the Pacific. Of priority is the US-owned nuclear waste storage site of Runit Dome on Enewetak Atoll which threatens nuclear contamination of the ocean and marine-life, on which our lives depend. Furthermore, we call for all remaining American UXOs (unexploded ordnances) from World War II in the Solomon Islands, which cause the preventable deaths of more than 20 people every year to be removed immediately!

We support in solidarity with Kānaka Maoli and demand the immediate end to the biennial RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) exercises hosted in Honolulu, Hawai’i. We urge all the present participating militaries of RIMPAC to withdraw their participation in the desecration and plunder of Indigenous lands and seas. We support in solidarity with the Marianas and demand an end to munitions testing in the Northern Marianas and the development of new military bases. We rebuke the AUKUS trilateral military pact and the militarisation of unceded Aboriginal lands of the northern arc of Australia and are outraged at Australia’s plans to permit further military bases, six nuclear-capable B52s and eight nuclear-powered submarines to use our Pacific Ocean as a military playground and nuclear highway.

We call on all those committed to ending militarism in the Pacific to gather and organise in Hawai’i between 6-16 June 2024, during the Festival of the Pacific and bring these issues to the forefront to renew our regional solidarity and form a new coalition to build power to oppose all forms of military exercises (RIMPAC also returns in July -August 2024) and instead promote the genuine security of clean water, safe housing, healthcare and generative economies, rather than those of extraction and perpetual readiness for war.

We view colonial powers and their militaries to be the biggest contributors to the climate crisis, the continued extractive mining of our lands and seabeds and the exploitation of our resources. These exacerbate and are exacerbated by unjust structures of colonialism, militarism and geopolitical abuse. This environmental destruction shifts the costs to Pacific and Indigenous communities who are responsible for less than 1 percent of global climate emissions.

As Pacific peoples deeply familiar with the destruction of nuclear imperialism, we strongly disapprove of the new propaganda of nuclear industry lobbyists, attempting to sell nuclear power as the best solution for climate change. Similarly, we oppose the Deep Sea Mining (DSM) industry lobbyists that promote DSM as necessary for green technologies. We call for a Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty to be implemented by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and for safe and equitable transition to better energy solutions. We reject any military solution for the climate crisis!

We recognise the urgent need for a regional coordinator to be instituted to strategise collective grassroots movements for self-determination, decolonisation, nuclear justice and demilitarisation.

Our existence is our resistance.

We, the guardians of our Wansolwara, are determined to carry on the legacy and vision for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Following the publication of the book Toxic some 9 months ago and President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to French Polynesia last July, the response from the French administration has been to send French nuclear experts to Tahiti.

Their mission was to give clear and transparent answers about the state of former nuclear test sites among other topics. It was a way to counter the book’s anti-official version of the CEA’s (Centre d’Experimentation Atomique) claim of “clean and non-contaminating radioactivity” on both atolls.

The Commission of information created for those former sites of nuclear tests of the Pacific, was made up of 3 French civil servants involved in the controversial Paris roundtable — also called Reko Tika — organised by President Macron last July.

In a media conference, they talked about radiological and geo-mechanical surveillance of the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. They came with more scientific expertise and data that seemed to dispel the original idea of “clear and transparent answers”.

As far as the environment was concerned around those former nuclear sites, the conclusion was that the sites were much safer now after the presence of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope of caesium formed as one of the more common products of nuclear fission) was noticed to be less year by year in all parts of the environment.

To “prove” their case of an independent and transparent study, they took samples of beef meat, whole milk or coconut juice from both atolls and are readily available to the population and analysed those samples.

Their results showed that the levels of radioactive concentration were far less than the “maximum levels admissible” — or whatever that means for the Ma’ohi who are not versed in the scientific jargon.

Artificial radioactive fallout level ‘low’
As for the health of the population, they reassured the people from the atolls that the level of toxicity of artificial radioactive fallout measured from 2019 to 2020 was extremely low, according to the data collected by the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRNS).

They established that the overall efficient dose (external exposition, internal exposition by ingestion and inhalation) of radioactivity was evaluated at 1,4 mSv (the measure of radiation exposure) in Mā’ohi Nui — which is two times lower than in France.

An even stronger reassurance was offered to the media when the question of a possible collapse of the northern part of the atoll of Moruroa was mentioned. The French experts replied that such a disastrous scenario was extremely unlikely, because the geo-mechanical system Telsite 2 put in place in 2000, would detect signs of unusual activities weeks beforehand.

Notwithstanding their initial answer, they added that even in the worst-case scenario, preventative measures would be taken to evacuate the population of Moruroa, and Tureia would not be hit by this improbable landslide.

A reassurance that clearly leaves doubt on whether Moruroa is at all safe.

When asked by one of the local journalists, Vaite Pambrun, why the atolls were not “retroceded” (ceded back) to their people now that it is “safe”, the delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault was at pains to explain that it was not possible because plutonium was not buried deep enough under the coral layer, and for safety reasons the French state still needed to monitor the atolls.

A somehow contradictory response that does not surprise the people who are used to the rhetoric used by the French state for the last 50 years.

France seems to offer very reassuring measures and answers, but the populations have learnt in the past that the word of the French state must be taken with a lot of mistrust and scepticism especially when it comes to nuclear matters.

France trying to wipe out nuclear traces from Polynesian memory

Independence leader Oscar Temaru, and former president of Tahiti, was quick to organise a press conference where he criticised the conclusions reached by the nuclear experts who seemed to contradict their findings about the safety of the atolls that still needed more monitoring, hence the refusal to retrocede.

After the last Paris roundtable, Temaru accused the French state and the local government — which he calls the local “collabos” (alluding to the French who collaborated with the Germans during the Second World War) to try “to wipe out the last evidence and vestiges that constitute the history of nuclear colonisation by the army and the money”.

According to Temaru, there is a trust crisis against the local government of territorial President Eduard Fritch and the French state that is going to last for a long time.

Those strong words also came after the decision was taken to completely destroy the last nuclear concrete shelter on the atoll of Tureia, wiping out for ever any traces of nuclear presence.

This decision is reminiscent of the one taken by the same French state to raze to the ground the two nuclear shelters used by the army on Mangareva.

By the same occasion, the hangar with the flimsy protection of corrugated iron used for the local population during the nuclear tests was also demolished. All those structures were pulled down in the early 2000s.

Father Auguste Ube Carlson, president of the anti-nuclear lobby Association 193, has also denounced the rhetoric used by the French state which “pretends’ to bring some new answers that have a “sound of deja-vu and that do not fool any of the populations who have suffered through the nuclear era”.

According to one of the Association 193 spokespeople, France is telling local populations that all is well in the best of worlds and there is nothing to worry about.

A more mitigated reaction

Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault conceded that it has been a struggle to get the French state to give access to files that at one point were declassified and then re-classified to now be reopened to the public which he considers a victory.

He does not share the same stance taken by Oscar Temaru regarding the wiping out of the last atomic shelter in Tureia. According to the historian, the shelter is a hazard to the population of Tureia as it contains asbestos and therefore needs to be destroyed.

Regnault positions himself as a researcher who, like any other member of the public, will be able to write the history of the nuclear era thanks to all those thousands of documents now available to be consulted, unless classified as state secrets.

He sees the history of a nation not in terms of buildings but in terms of what can be written and taught to the younger generations. The destruction of the building does not equal the wiping-out of a nation’s memory.

He finds it remarkable that teachers will have the material to teach the history of the atomic tests in Mā’ohi Nui, which was one the tenants of the Tavini party when they were at the helm of the country in 2004.

It is up to the women and men of Ma’ohi Nui to realise their dreams of writing the history of their islands by consulting those archives, especially the military ones and not be forced to only hear one narrative, that of the French state.

There is a movement toward more transparency, according to Regnault.

What about the conclusions drawn by the book Toxic?
The Delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault, has been particularly dismissive of the book Toxic. He says that it is clear that the calculations based on the simulations are wrong and he rejected the deductions made by the book that the French state have played down the impacts of nuclear tests fallout on the Polynesians.

However, he admitted that 6 nuclear tests did not have favourable weather forecasts and generated radioactive fallout that led to doses “below the limit accepted by those working on the nuclear sites” but “higher than the doses accepted by the public”.

This is the reason why it is absolutely legitimate for people who have been contaminated to seek compensation.

He tells the press that the calculations and the investigation by Disclose wrongly contradict those made by the CEA in 2006 where the data and the mode of calculations were extremely technical and scientific and 450 pages long.

He suggested that those who were involved in the research and the publishing of Toxic were not versed enough in the technical jargon of the final document released by the CEA.
It is not enough to tell the truth but it must be accessible to the public, according to Bugault.

The book Toxic fails to explain in a clear and simple way how its calculations were carried out and achieved. He promised that in April 2022 the anti-Toxic book will be published by the CEA on Tahiti.

Ena Manuireva, born in Mangareva (Gambier islands) in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), is a language revitalisation researcher at Auckland University of Technology and is currently completing his doctorate on the Mangarevan language. He is also a campaigner for nuclear reparations justice from France over the 193 tests staged in Polynesia over three decades and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

About 35 people joined an Auckland rally last Sunday in solidarity with a Mā’ohi Nui Lives Matter demonstration by thousands of Tahitians happening in Pape’ete, the capital.

In solidarity and in sync with the Pape’ete event, the Mai te Paura Atōmī i te ti’amara’a: From Bomb Contamination to Self-determination rally was organised by Les Tahitiens de Nouvelle-Zélande (Tahitians of New Zealand) and hosted at Auckland University of Technology.

Ena Manuireva and colleague Tony Fala were the main organisers at AUT.

With the live feed from Tahiti in the background, the message was clear to those who attended:

• French nuclear tests were wrong, killed people, and destroyed the environment; and
• France must now pay reparations.

The organisers wanted to remind the audience about the important date of July 17, 1974, as the largest radioactive nuclear test named Centaur — a test that contaminated more than 100,00 people which was nearly the entire population of Mā’ohi Nui at the time.

Nine takeaways from the event

1. This rally is the start of more solidarity action for Mā’ohi Nui people. We hope to engage more members of the Mā’ohi Nui community living in Aotearoa in this work.
2. It is reassuring to have the support of rally speakers in Auckland who represent different peoples of Oceania.
3. The nuclear issue in Mā’ohi Nui is being commemorated in other ways in Aotearoa. The Auckland Museum launched an exhibition on Remembering Moruroa and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is celebrating the artistic vision of one of Aotearoa’s most significant artists, the late Ralph Hotere. His collection includes the Moruroa watercolours — which has a fitting title, Ātete! (to resist).
4. The organisers plan to have further meaningful discussions with the Green MPs concerning the Mā’ohi Nui issues. They hope to work with Green MPs to develop concrete proposals so that the issue of nuclear waste in Mā’ohi Nui can be tabled in Parliament.
5. The organisers intend to reach out to the Department of Disarmament and Arms Control. They plan to talk to Nuclear Disarmament Minister Phil Twyford about this issue.
6. In the same vein, the organisers will approach the Ministry of Education to propose changes to the new school curriculum emerging in 2022 — changes that would include the teaching of the history of the anti-nuclear stand that New Zealand took in Oceania.
7. Rally organisers Ena, David, James, Mua, and Tony acknowledge the support of Greenpeace, former members of NFIP, and Peace Movement Aotearoa.
8. The organisers thank Mahealani Coxhead, Tasha Dalton, Ma’ara Maeva, Sally Manuireva, and Jos Wheeler for their invaluable contributions to the rally.
9. The organisers thank the Auckland rally audience and express solidarity to Oscar Temaru over the continuing struggle in Mā’ohi Nui.

The MC and speakers

Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua is an activist, educator, and poet. He was the master of ceremonies for the rally and event co-organiser. He introduced all the speakers.

Ena Manuireva is a Mangarevan-Tahitian, Mā’ohi Nui activist whose story started back on his native island of Mangareva. Mangarevans were the first people in French-occupied Polynesia to be used as guinea pigs and contaminated during the first so-called “clean” French nuclear tests on July 2, 1966. Ena narrated the personal story of how his mother became sick and vomited as her lips bled after she unknowingly ate contaminated fish; of how his older sister had weak bones as a baby, and how she developed a vulnerable body that forced his family to flee to Tahiti to save her life and find refuge. Manuireva challenged France to restore truth and justice through reparations and to return independence to Mā’ohi Nui.

The generation that paved the path for activism in Aotearoa and around the Moana-Nui-a-Hiva:

Hilda Halkyard-Harawira is a distinguished Māori activist, community worker, educator, and founder of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement (NFIP). She shared some rich impressions regarding her work as a Māori activist working in the NFIP movement from 1980. Hilda told the moving story of travelling with Māori activists to Mā’ohi Nui in 1995; of witnessing the vibrant anti-nuclear struggle in Tahiti, and of meeting Mā’ohi anti-nuclear protest leaders Charlie Ching and Oscar Temaru. She read extracts from an important address she presented at a 1995 anti-nuclear activist gathering in Tahiti. Moreover, Hilda spoke of her great friendship with Oscar Temaru while expressing her abiding support for Mā’ohi Nui’s struggle for nuclear justice and for independence from France today. Hilda Halkyard-Harawira’s rich address reminded the audience of the profound whakapapa interlinking Māori activists with Mā’ohi Nui, the wider Pacific, and the NFIP Movement.

Maire Leadbeater is of Pākehā heritage. She is an activist, former Auckland city councillor, historian, and writer. Maire is a member of West Papua Action Auckland. Maire expressed solidarity with Mā’ohi Nui in her oration. She explained why West Papua is not on the United Nations list of territories to be decolonised. Maire provided an important update on the contemporary West Papua struggle. Maire Leadbeater’s speech allowed the rally audience space to consider the significance of the West Papua struggle alongside that of the noble Mā’ohi Nui resistance in wider Oceania.

Dr David Robie is a Pākehā environmental activist, editor of Asia Pacific Report, and retired founding director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre. He sees events during his career around the Pacific, including French-occupied Polynesia, as a “game changer”. Those events include the publication of the book Moruroa Mon Amour in the 1970s by Bengt and Marie-Therese Danielsson, Tahiti-based activists, describing their outrage regarding the use of Moruroa as the testing site, leading up to the recent publication of the book Toxic and its damning revelations about France’s persistent lies over the nuclear tests. He also mentioned his Blood On Their Banner on Pacific independence struggles, first published in Swedish in spite of censorship thanks to the Danielssons’ contacts, and his inspiration from meeting Oscar Temaru which contributed to his commitment to the Mā’ohi Nui cause. David demands compensation for the harm done by the nuclear tests, a formal apology to the Mā’ohi Nui people, and a return of their independence.

Political support to the cause shown by the Greens:

Teanau Tuiono is of Māori and Atiu heritage. He is a member of parliament for the Green Party and a long time indigenous environmental activist. Teanau articulated the story of the abiding relationships interconnecting the peoples of Atiu and Mā’ohi Nui. He spoke powerfully about the visits of Atiu men to Mā’ohi Nui to work in the phosphate industry in years gone by. Teanau affirmed Oceanian solidarity towards the peoples of Mā’ohi Nui in his korero. Further, he acknowledged that Oceania’s peoples are bound together by the twin whakapapa of both genealogy and shared struggle. Teanau narrated the story of how he marched in support of the Mā’ohi Nui people as a student activist in 1995. Moreover, he spoke of being part of the group who hosted Oscar Temaru at Waipapa Marae at the University of Auckland after the march. Tuiono’s oration provided the audience opportunity to understand the solidarity Māori and Pacific Island peoples have extended to Mā’ohi Nui in Aotearoa since the 1990s.

Golriz Ghahraman is of Iranian descent. She is a member of parliament for the Green Party, a lawyer, and a community advocate for migrants and refugees. Speaking as a former refugee to Aotearoa, Golriz extended her solidarity to Oscar and the Mā’ohi Nui people in her speech. She illuminated the connections between Mā’ohi Nui; struggles in the wider Pacific; refugees, and migrants. Golriz spoke of the importance of the Palestinian struggle in her labours. She provided the rally audience with the ability to reflect upon the interconnections between the Mā’ohi Nui struggle — and that of the Palestinian, refugee, and migrant communities within and beyond Oceania.

The emergence of the young generation of activists:

James Hita is a Māori Greenpeace activist and coordinator for Greenpeace Deep Sea Mining. His message was unequivocal: nuclear tests are not isolated threats; they are part of the many perils that are directly impacting our Ocean. Climate change, nuclear tests, and deep-sea mining all negatively impact upon our most important natural food supply, Te Moana-Nui-a-Hiva. His message was a constant call to awareness for all of us that we must stand united and fight together against the many wrongdoings inflicted upon our Moana-Nui-a-Hiva.

Anevili TS is a Samoan activist and media worker who represents Indigenous Pacific Uprising (IPU) and Te Ara Whatu activist organisations. A link for her oral presentation at the conference can be found here. Anevili critiqued French colonialism in Mā’ohi Nui. Further, she reminded her audience that the climate change and nuclear issues cannot be separated in Mā’ohi Nui or in wider Oceania. Anevili extended solidarity to Oscar and the Mā’ohi Nui people and invited the French to get out of the Pacific. Anevili’s powerful address articulated the message that younger people in the Moana in Aotearoa stand in solidarity with Mā’ohi Nui today.

India Logan-Riley is a Māori climate change activist, an Indigenous rights campaigner, and a member of Te Ara Whatu. She talked about the whakapapa (genealogy) that the Mā’ohi Nui people have with their land and how France is trying to steal and destroy the land. She highlighted the difficult position New Zealand occupies at the UN- New Zealand is in alliance with other colonial powers such as France. However, she commended the resilience of the Mā’ohi Nui population after more than a quarter of a century since the last nuclear tests were done. She reiterated her support for justice and reparations for the Mā’ohi Nui people. India’s talk reminded the audience of the immensely strong relationships between indigenous Pacific peoples and their lands.

The panel of speakers included young activists as the organisers wanted to acknowledge the increasingly vital role that young people will play in the future by standing up to all kinds of challenges — while acknowledging the vital role of our activist elders who have come before us.

Emerging young activists will be the ones to hold the New Zealand government to account for their lack of action on environmental issues.

Younger activists will also have to stand up and reprimand other countries when other nations’ actions threaten the people and the planet.

Acknowledgements
The Auckland rally was only one expression of solidarity for the Mā’ohi Nui people beyond Tahiti: Messages of solidarity from Fiji (Claire Slatter), Micronesia, and the wider ‘Sea of Islands’ were presented to the people of Mā’ohi Nui via video message and social media.

On behalf of all the organisers, Reverend Mua Strickson Pua:

• Acknowledged the kinship linkages connecting all of the peoples of Oceania.
• Affirmed the continuing struggles of the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, Australia, Hawai’i, Kanaky, Mā’ohi Nui, Micronesia, Rapa Nui, West Papua, and others.
• Upheld the work of tangata whenua protectors and supporters in Aotearoa in the struggles at Aotea Island, Ihumātao, Pūtiki, and Shelly Bay.
• Affirmed the interconnections between climate change, nuclear issues, and deep-sea mining as oceanic issues requiring collective responses from all peoples of the “Sea of Islands” together.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Year 2020 was the annus horribilis worldwide due to the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Recently the Fiji government expelled University of the South Pacific vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia after his claims in 2020 of financial mismanagement of the university by the former administration, close to the government.

It is still beyond belief that the government should interfere in the matters of an independent academic institution owned by 12 Pacific nations – not just the host country Fiji – and take such draconian and unjustified action against the vice-chancellor.

In New Zealand, across the road at the University of Auckland the management had its fair share of criticism for the purchase of a new house for vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater at an exorbitant amount, prompting the auditor-general to write that Auckland University broke own rule in purchase of $5 million house.

Here, at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), the investigation into allegations of bullying and sexual harassment started in July 2020 and its subsequent Davenport independent review report legitimately highlighted many shortcomings that the first university of the new millennium in 2000 has failed to address in a timely fashion.

It is clear that the main lesson to be learned was “to be kind” to others, as often heard throughout the covid-19 pandemic by “aunty” Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. The reply from AUT’s vice-chancellor Derek McCormack was even more powerful and along the lines of promising to do better.

We all hope that the issues will be dealt with as swiftly and as diplomatically as possible in order to reinstate the reputation of our youngest university in the Pacific.

Those three events are serious setbacks to the academic realm in our part of the world and whether their effects have been felt locally or globally, they have generated seriously unwanted publicity.

AUT and an on-going saga: the PMC future
Following the Davenport recommendations, a seminar was organised by the Pacific Media Centre about future directions – and to say their goodbyes to Professor David Robie, director of the PMC for 13 years, who retired in December.

A retired University of the South Pacific development studies emeritus professor, Dr Crosbie Walsh, penned a tribute to David, saying he “has lived in the Pacific, been involved in Pacific human rights and media freedom issues, or taught journalism to Pacific Islanders and others for 40 years. He will be a hard man to replace”.

But that tribute didn’t dispel apprehensions about lack of a succession plan in the School of Communication Studies and the continued questions over the future of PMC more than three months later.

A lot has been commented about the issue of the suddenly empty PMC office (Outcry over signs of upheaval at Pacific Media Centre). Comments and questions still pour in on social media from worried students, sympathisers, television presenters, and former colleagues of the PMC about the whereabouts of this vital repository of knowledge, their new “office” and the future of the PMC team.

Here are sample quotes from two former students:

John Pulu (Tagata Pasifika anchor, TV1): “I just want to say mālō ‘aupito/thank you to Professor David, Del and team for the last 13 years of service at the Pacific Media Centre, AUT University. I hope the great legacy of PMC will be continued from here to help the next lot of broadcasters, journalists and academics who will cover or have interest in the Pacific region.”

Matt Scott (a reporter at Newsroom, TV3): “David Robie and the PMC provided me some of my first opportunities to step into the role of a journalist. Without the PMC, I feel that there will be a void not just at AUT but in journalism as a whole in this part of the world. The centre provides a space and platform for journalists covering an under-reported region that is in dire need of people fighting for truth, fairness and transparency. Removing the centre is a big step backwards.”

We have also seen support and anger at the lack of transparency regarding the future of the centre on Facebook:

Is AUT as a platform for Pacific news broadcasts about to lose its audience?
An in-depth article from former New Zealand Herald editor-in-chief Gavin Ellis has magnified many of the issues regarding the relationship that the PMC has with the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies (DCT), or its School of Communication Studies (SCS).

One of the most salient issues has been the autonomous status of the PMC. Quoting the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI) which described the PMC as “the jewel in AUT’s crown”, it should enjoy its own independence, a condition that AUT might not want to ignore if they want to avoid the loss of the centre.

Or maybe the future of PMC should actually be to break away to survive, as Ellis advocates.

Similarly, a newly published article from Spinoff by Teuila Fuatai recounts the genesis of the issue from March 2020 to post Professor Robie’s retirement in December, highlighting the lack of transparency in this matter and the long awaited appointment of a new director.

For my part and based on the students’ outpouring of support, the worrying issues are twofold: First, is the “partnership” issue raised in an answer by Dr Rosser Johnson, head of the SCS, who presented a 100 percent commitment and the exponential work that would now be able to be accomplished in the new era of the partnership PMC-SCS.

What is missing is the idea of continuity that is being engulfed in what Professor Robie quotes as “regime change” with a determined effort to sideline those who had contributed so much to the development of the centre over the past 13 years.

In his view, this means “no continuity, no institutional memory or history and zero opportunities for the students”.

Second, from the students’ perspective: We have witnessed across New Zealand universities carrying out cost-cutting exercises triggered by the pandemic due to the lack of revenue usually brought in by the international students. However, it is not without legitimate suspicion that PMC might be one of those targets of this financial fix.

It is also the question posed by students who are at the centre of this issue: what about developing our Pacific people in media and journalism? Under representation of Pacific people (and Māori for that matter) who are experts in their communities in media spaces is well documented.

What the PMC has created is a pool of students and contributors who have an invaluable relationship to and inside knowledge of the geopolitical issues surrounding the Pacific basin and the Asian region.

This pool of “grassroots” contributors will certainly add a plus value to the overarching entity, be it a university or an independent institution, in terms of reporting facts.

Ena Manuireva, born in Mangareva (Gambier islands) in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), is a language revitalisation researcher at Auckland University of Technology and is currently completing his doctorate on the Mangarevan language. He is also a campaigner for nuclear reparations justice from France over the 193 tests staged in Polynesia over three decades.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Temaru requested this postponed date to enable him to prepare his defence against this press freedom case that involves:

• A judgment for the closure and a fine of NZ$1.25 million against the pro-independent Radio Tefana, the “voice for accountability” by the local and French governments;
• Seizure of nearly NZ$150,000 from Temaru’s personal account while the trial was still pending, “trampling on the presumption of innocence”;
• Location of the trial in New Caledonia during covid-19 lockdown where Temaru will not be able to travel to, restricting freedom of movement;
• A heavy financial strain on Temaru in preparing his defence team from Tahiti and being forced to campaign for public financial help.

READ MORE: The judgment of Tahiti’s Oscar Temaru – a neocolonial sense of déjà-vu
More Oscar Temaru articles

Facing up to injustice
Solidarity must stand in the face of injustice. From the annexation of Mā’ohi Nui in 1843 to the 30-year period of nuclear testing in the Pacific, followed by the mismanagement of covid-19, the Mā’ohi Nui people continue to endure French colonialism and imperialism.

Temaru’s struggle is the Mā’ohi Nui people’s struggle for freedom.

A solidarity campaign is being launched which includes:

• Organisers speaking on the issues of nuclear testing and climate change in Mā’ohi Nui and activist communities in Auckland in 2021;
• Plans for a Mā’ohi Nui education day at Auckland University of Technology’s marae in Auckland in early 2021 in close consultation with Oscar Temaru; and
• Temaru being invited to speak via Zoom from his base in Pape’ete and he will engage in a short talanoa with activists and students.

Invited to the gathering
Members of the Tahitian and Kanak communities living in Auckland will be invited to the gathering.

Invitations will be sent to academics, activists, journalists, Pacific community members, and students to debate the following topics:
• The Mā’ohi Nui road to independence as a key theme in the education day;
• The continuing legacy of nuclear testing upon the health of the Ma’ohi Nui people today;
• Climate Change in Mā’ohi Nui; and
• The indigenous response to covid 19 in Ma’ohi Nui today.

The organisers hope that a Mā’ohi Nui solidarity network in support of Temaru and the people in the five archipelagos of French Polynesia will emerge organically out of the education day.

This contemporary organising work proceeds is based on the understanding that other Moana communities have acted in solidarity with Oscar Temaru and his people since the 1970s.

Established bonds
Tangata whenua activists in Aotearoa established bonds of whakawhanaungatanga (making connections) with Oscar Temaru and the Mā’ohi Nui people since the 1970s.

So did Pacific peoples in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement who forged strong bonds of friendship and solidarity with Temaru and the Mā’ohi Nui people.

The late Jean-Marie Tjibaou of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) in New Caledonia worked closely with Temaru and the Ma’ohi Nui people in the struggle for independence.

The modest solidarity work evolving in Auckland today follows in the wake of earlier generations of Pakeha and Moana activists who fought for the health, wellbeing, and independence of the Mā’ohi Nui people and their long-serving fighter Oscar Temaru.

The co-authors, Ena Manuireva and Tony Fala, are doctoral candidates and researchers and are organisers of the solidarity groups. They can be contacted here for more information.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The unfolding in French Polynesia of the latest judiciary entanglements of pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru versus the French administration is being closely followed by members of the Tahitian community in Tahiti and in Aotearoa New Zealand.

There are undeniable similarities between Temaru’s upcoming trial on November 4 in Nouméa after many deferrals, and the expedient trial of Te metua – Pouvana’a a O’opa, the leading figure of the Ma’ohi people, 60 years ago.

Pouvana’a was accused of plotting to burn down Tahiti’s capital Pape’ete, but trumped up charges were made against him because of his fight for an independent Ma’ohi nation.

Exiled for 23 years to France after a mockery of a judgment, he was allowed back in Tahiti in 1968 after being pardoned.

Temaru’s judgment has all the makings of a déjà-vu. History is kind enough to remind us about the many disagreements and annoyances caused by Temaru to the French administration spanning more than 50 years:

• Temaru was arrested and jailed for protesting against the nuclear tests in Moruroa
• France’s military intervention in the French Polynesia presidential elections won by Temaru in 2004 for fear of social unrest
• Temaru put French Polynesia back on the UN decolonisation list in 2013, denouncing France’s non-commitment to decolonisation – the politics of the “empty chair” (1)

A string of anti-French actions that have displeased the Paris establishment and, to some extent, the local autonomist government.

So, what has been the straw that broke the camel’s back and why is this new trial so different that the French judicial machine felt justified in seizing money from Temaru’s personal bank account?

Background to the Radio Tefana affair
In June 2020, French prosecutor Herve Leroy seized NZ$145,000 from Temaru’s personal bank account after the former territorial president and current mayor of Faa’a was convicted of exercising undue influence because the court ruled that community Radio Tefana benefited his own pro-independence political party.

According to many lawyers in Tahiti and in France (the CNB – National Council of the Bar), this action suggested that Temaru had already already been pre-judged of having “committed a crime” and the presumption of innocence was simply discarded by prosecutor Leroy.

This trial can only be understood as a retaliation against Temaru’s decision in 2018 to take France’s living presidents to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity over the nuclear weapons tests between 1966 and 1996. This was clearly the last straw for the French political establishment.

Questions related to why the French judiciary could not perform its duty on Tahitian soil but prioritised first the High Council for the Judiciary in France before deciding to send the case to Kanaky New Caledonia remains enigmatic to say the least.

There is overwhelming support for Temaru from the local Tahitian population – from the religious, the social, the political even judicial corners.

As mayor of the most populated district in French Polynesia, he refuses to be intimidated and from our personal communication, he has vowed to take the fight to the highest authority nationally or internationally.

In Nouméa, “our brothers and sisters Kanak”, as he calls them, are ready to welcome us and they will be a tremendous support during the trial – both indigenous people are fighting for their independence from France.

According to a close family member, Temaru is holding on for a trial expected to last 3 days (November 4-7) and has carried out a hunger strike and fasting since his six month suspended sentence and a fine of NZ$66,000 for this affair in 2019 (2) – despite his age at 76.

His fast was also to teach the population a new way of fighting obesity and all the various diseases that it causes. He is not advocating violence and unrest, but he is fighting legally through the courts.

Temaru’s hopes about this trial
At a time when the media is being muzzled and reporters are being silenced worldwide, the voice of the pro-independence community Radio Tefana remains the only and last media platform calling for accountability from both the local Tahitian and French governments.

The hope for Temaru is for a not guilty verdict and for the court to allow the radio to perform its duty of providing public information, especially during this period of covid-19 that has heavily hit his airport town of Faa’a and the capital Pape’ete.

But Temaru questions French justice and will not back down even if it means requesting a meeting with New Zealand’s newly re-elected Prime Minister Jacinda Arden to assist a decolonisation programme that France has so far failed to discuss.

It is also at the back of Temaru’s mind that the decision to move the trial outside of Tahiti was designed and planned by the French judicial authorities to put yet another spanner in the works.

Financially, Temaru will need to meet the cost of an attorney to represent him; Temaru will not be physically able to be present at his own trial as New Caledonia is covid-19 free and has suspended all commercial flights until March 2021.

Popular sympathy might be less in New Caledonia with a bigger French proportion of the population (27 percent) than in French Polynesia (10 percent).

According to Temaru, France has not ceased “to put him on trial” and whatever the outcome this time, France will stick to the same agenda – and so will Temaru.

His fight for independence for the nuna’a Ma’ohi (Ma’ohi people) is a lifelong battle as he celebrates his birthday in Tahiti.

The last fighter of an era
The Tahitian pro-independence leader might be one of the last iconic figures of his generation who sits beside other political leaders, friends and sympathisers alive – or not – of the same era such as Jean-Marie Tjibaou (Kanaky New Caledonia), Walter Lini (Vanuatu), Henry Puna (Cook Islands).

Regardless of the verdict after the judgment, Temaru will be remembered as the force who will still stand up strong like Pouvana’a a O’opa against French neo-colonialism six decades ago.

Ena Manuireva is an Auckland University of Technology academic and PhD candidate who is from Mangareva, one of the French Polynesian islands most affected by the French nuclear tests for three decades until they ended in 1996. He wrote this article especially for the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report.

Notes:
1. France is never at its UN seat when the question of decolonising French Polynesia is on the agenda.
2. In 2019, the current territorial President Édouard Fritch was convicted and condemned for the same amount for arranging for the town administration of Pirae, where he was mayor, to pay for the water supply to the upmarket Erima neighbourhood, where longtime President Gaston Flosse lived.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Pacific Conference of Churches has called for justice in Mā’ohi (French Polynesia) and for Oscar Temaru, the activist mayor of Fa’aa and former territorial president.

In a message read at a protest march in Pape’ete at the weekend, PCC general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan called on France not to ignore Mā’ohi’s re-inscription to the United Nations Decolonisation list.

“Today, we note with concern that France has failed to hear the cry of the people and the voice of the United Nations,” Reverend Bhagwan said.

READ MORE: Oscar Temaru’s challenge over colonlai justice

“This refusal makes a mockery of France’s national motto – Liberté, égalité, fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity).”

Reverend Bhagwan said the recent arrest of “freedom fighter” Oscar Temaru appeared to be linked to his role in bringing about the re-inscription of Mā’ohi at the UN.

Mā’ohi was reinscripted seven years ago to the UN Decolonisation List after strong international advocacy aided by the PCC. The full PCC statement said:

PCC statement
“Justice For Mā’ohi , Justice for Temaru

“As the people of Mā’ohi (French Polynesia) remember the seventh year of their reinscription on the United Nations decolonisation list, the Pacific Conference of Churches calls on France to act with justice.

“France has ignored the wishes of the Mā’ohi people and the United Nations for their inalienable right to hold an act of self-determination.

“Seven years ago, the Pacific churches supported the Etaretia Porotetani Mā’ohi (Mā’ohi Protestant Church) in the process of re-inscription and has joined the EPM as a petitioner at both the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation (C-24) as well as the UN Special Political and Decolonisation Committee (Fourth Committee).

“Today, we note with concern that France has failed to hear the cry of the people and the voice of the United Nations. This refusal makes a mockery of France’s national motto – Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity).

“The Pacific churches also call on France to allow the people of Mā’ohi a voice on their political future by holding a referendum, similar to the political process in Kanaky (New Caledonia).’

“The recent arrest of freedom fighter, Oscar Temaru, appears to be linked to his role in bringing about the re-inscription of Mā’ohi at the UN.

“Temaru is in court over allegations on the misuse of public funds in Fa’aa where he is mayor. The courts have also ordered the seizure of US$100,000 of Temaru’s savings.

“The courts must never be used as a tool for political expediency or revenge against opponents. Our courts must act impartially as instruments of a legal system which is fair and just, not prejudiced and oppressive.

“We call for Temaru to be treated justly. We remind France that it has yet to bring about just reparation for the thousands of people – including French civilians and service personnel – crippled and debilitated by the fallout from nuclear tests at Fangataufa and Moruroa.

“And we call on the people of the Pacific to pray for the Mā’ohi church and justice for all in the region who face tyranny and injustice from their leaders.

“In the name of Christ and in the service of a just, peaceful and free Pacific.”

Reverend James S, Bhagwan
General Secretary
Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC)
Suva, Fiji

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In a show of support for the Kanak independence movement, Maohi leader Oscar Manutahi Temaru has joined the campaign trail in New Caledonia, urging voters to support a Yes vote in the country’s referendum on self-determination next month.

Temaru is a former President of French Polynesia and long-time leader of the Maohi independence movement Tavini Huiraatira no Te Ao Maohi. He was joined in New Caledonia by Moetai Brotherson, an elected member of the local Assembly in Tahiti and one of French Polynesia’s representatives in the French National Assembly in Paris.

In New Caledonia, the Tahitian delegates faced a punishing schedule of speaking engagements around the country in the lead up to the referendum vote on November 4.

READ MORE: Special reports on New Caledonia/Kanaky by Dr Lee Duffield

Brotherson was welcomed at a public meeting at the University of New Caledonia in Noumea, and then travelled to the rural towns of Foha (La Foa), Waa Wi Lûû (Houailou) and Pwäräiriwa (Ponerihouen).

Speaking at community meetings in each location, he highlighted the longstanding support of Tavini Huiraatira for the Kanak struggle, and called on people to mobilise for the referendum on self-determination.

At a festival in the east coast town of Ponerihouen, Oscar Temaru said he had travelled to New Caledonia to support the independence movement Front de Liberation National Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS).

“I am here to support them – to show that the international community is here to watch what will happen in New Caledonia,” he said. “We are sure that the accession of New Caledonia to independence and sovereignty will also mean self-determination for our country Maohi Nui.”

Long history
The Maohi independence leader highlighted the long history that links independence movements across the French-speaking Pacific, from Vanuatu to Kanaky-New Caledonia and Maohi Nui-French Polynesia.

In 1977, there were significant challenges to French colonialism across the region. Under the leadership of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, New Caledonia’s main political party Union Calédonienne adopted a position in favour of independence from France instead of autonomy.

In the Anglo-French condominium of New Hebrides, Father Walter Lini joined other leaders to launch a boycott of the 1977 elections, transforming the New Hebrides National Party into the Vanua’aku Pati and ultimately serving as the first Prime Minister of independent Vanuatu.

In 1977, Oscar Temaru also established the Front de Libération de Polynésie (FLP – Polynesian Liberation Front) in Tahiti. The following year, he travelled to the United Nations in New York for the first time, to call for the right to self-determination and an end to nuclear testing on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.

“For more than 40 years, we’ve been fighting together to get our independence back,” Temaru said. “Over all those years, so many things have happened: the former leaders of the FLNKS got killed, they’ve had the Matignon Accords and the Noumea Accord. But on November 4, they have the right to decide to decide their future.”

Oscar Temaru highlighted the importance of international scrutiny of the self-determination process, and welcomed the arrival of a United Nations mission to monitor the vote.

While the French government has supported its involvement in recent years, the UN’s role has been contested over many decades.

Refused authority
From 1947, soon after the United Nations was created, France refused to accept UN authority over decolonisation and the right to self-determination. New Caledonia was only reinscribed on the UN list of non-self-governing territories in December 1986, as members of the Pacific Islands Forum supported the FLNKS to successfully lobby for UN General Assembly resolution 41/41.

It took another 27 years for French Polynesia to be similarly re-inscribed with the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation. In 2013, a UN General Assembly resolution on French Polynesia, sponsored by Solomon Islands, Nauru and Tuvalu, was adopted by the 193-member body without a vote.

Moetai Brotherson told a public meeting in La Foa that the FLNKS had achieved more recognition than the Maohi independence movement.

“You’re a bit ahead of us on the path to independence, so we’re watching what is happening with great attention,” he said. “Oscar Temaru was in New York with Jean-Marie Tjibaou in 1986 when New Caledonia was re-inscribed on the list of non-self-governing territories at the United Nations.

“Our re-inscription, however, only came in 2013. You have advanced along the path. You have made agreements with the French State, you have welcome UN special missions, all of this leading to the decision on November 4. But for us, we’re not there yet.”

He noted fundamental legal differences between the three French Pacific dependencies, which all hold a different constitutional status within the French Republic. The 1998 Noumea Accord is entrenched as a sui generis section within the French Constitution, unlike French Polynesia’s 2004 autonomy statute and the 1961 statute for Wallis and Futuna.

The Noumea Accord creates a clear, legally binding pathway for up to three referendums on self‐determination in New Caledonia. In contrast, French Polynesia has no such path to a referendum.

Constitutional difference
Moetai Brotherson explained: ”There is a difference between the constitutional situation of our two countries. Today, Kanaky-New Caledonia is the only territory of the French Republic to have a specific section in the Constitution.

“You, the Kanak people are the only ‘people’, apart from the French people, recognised in the French Constitution. Apart from that reference, there are no overseas peoples, just ‘populations’.

“You’ve achieved this higher level within the laws of the French Republic,” he said. “For us in Maohi Nui – or French Polynesia as they call it – we only have a population, not a people. This is unacceptable for us.”

For Oscar Temaru, international monitoring of November’s referendum is vital, given France’s ongoing refusal to organise a decolonisation process in his own country.

“Re-inscription in 2013 was very important,” he said. “The resolution that has been adopted by the UN General Assembly was very clear. It reminds the administering power of the right of the Maohi people to self-determination, our right to all our resources of our country and also calls for France to answer to the international community on thirty years of nuclear testing.”

However, Brotherson stressed that the French government refuses to acknowledge any role for the United Nations over self-determination in French Polynesia, failing to meet its obligations as an administering power. Each year, under Article 73e of the UN Charter, colonial powers are required to submit information to the United Nations relating to economic, social and political conditions in their territories.

In recent years, France has formally submitted information about New Caledonia, but refused to submit similar information on French Polynesia.

‘Schizophrenic situation’
Brotherson noted: “We’re in this schizophrenic situation where France has two territories listed at the United Nations. In the case of New Caledonia, France collaborates completely with the United Nations. But in our case, they’re in denial about our re-inscription.

“Every time we’re at the UN Decolonisation Committee, the French representative is in the room when the question of New Caledonia is raised, but as soon as they announce discussion of the question of French Polynesia, he leaves.”

In June 2017, Brotherson defeated Patrick Howell of the governing party Tapura Huiraatira, in the election for French Polynesia’s third constituency in the French National Assembly. Today, as a member of the Republican Democratic Left parliamentary group, Brotherson serves on the French parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission and overseas delegation.

New Caledonia is currently represented in the French National Assembly by Philippe Gomes and Philippe Dunoyer of the anti-independence Calédonie ensemble party. Brotherson told the FLNKS meeting in Ponerihouen: “When I arrived in Paris, I was saddened to see that there were no Kanak brothers in the National Assembly.

“If in coming times, there are still no Kanak deputies in the Parliament, you will still have a voice there. To ensure that your message will be heard in Paris, you can count on me.”

He pledged support for the Kanak people in the French Parliament in the aftermath of November’s referendum: “I hope that – if there is a Yes vote – the current loyalist deputies in the National Assembly will have the intelligence to serve as dignified representatives of the New Caledonian nation that will be born from this referendum.

“But if that’s not the case, I reiterate my commitment – with the approval of your leaders – to act as a spokesperson for your cause within the French parliament.”

Campaigning for Yes
On October 20, more than 2000 people gathered at the major FLNKS festival in Ponerihouen, which marked the end of referendum campaigning in the Kanak customary region of Ajie-Aro. They were joined by the leaders of three major independence parties – Daniel Goa of Union Calédonienne (UC), Paul Neaoutyine of the Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika) and Victor Tutugoro of Union Progressiste Mélanesienne (UPM).

Temaru and Brotherson joined FLNKS representatives and two Corsican independence activists, Francois Benedetti and Alain Mosconi, for a roundtable on sovereignty and decolonisation.

Just as Scotland is debating independence from the United Kingdom and Catalan nationalists want independence for their region in Spain, there is a strong autonomist movement in Corsica. In a significant breakthrough in December last year, Gilles Simeoni led the nationalist alliance Pè a Corsica to victory in the Corsican Assembly, uniting the autonomist party Femu a Corsica and the pro-independence Corsica Libera.

Three months before travelling to New Caledonia for his first visit last May, French President Emmanuel Macron also visited the French-controlled Mediterranean island. Macron, however, refused the nationalists’ longstanding call to recognise Corsican as an official language.

Congratulating the work of the Academy of Kanak Languages (ALK) and the teaching of local indigenous languages in New Caledonian schools, Corsica Libera’s Alain Mosconi noted: “For decades, the French government has hindered the use of dialects, of patois, regional languages and our language in Corsica.

“They’ve promoted French as the official language. This is a lamentable situation. That’s why we call for our national rights and support the Kanak right to nationhood.”

Tavini Huiraatira’s Moetai Brotherson highlighted the common cause of independence movements across the Pacific.

‘We share many things’
“We share many things – we share the same colonial power and the same colonial history,” he said.

“At a time of resistance to colonial rule in Maohi Nui, the resisters were exiled here to New Caledonia. The high chiefs on Raiatea resisted annexation for many years in the Leeward Islands, but were sent here as exiles.

“At the same time, many of your resisters were exiled to the Marquesas Islands, in our homeland.

“Today, colonisation is symbolised by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few – always the same few – and by a totally inequitable distribution of that wealth. In both our countries, there is wealth enough, but it’s concentrated in a few hands, That’s the challenge of decolonisation, sovereignty and independence.”

Polynesians from Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia make up 10 per cent of the population of New Caledonia, so Brotherson called on the Kanak people to mobilise for a Yes vote, but to maintain their welcome for people from other lands.

“The Yes must be an inclusive Yes, not one that excludes people, not a Yes that turns people against each other,” he said. “On November 5, everyone must have their place in Kanaky-New Caledonia. You have a chance that we don’t – to have your say about the future through this referendum. You must seize this moment.”

Nic Maclellan is a journalist and researcher specialising in Pacific island affairs. This article was first published in Islands Business.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz