Strife Over

Fiji Scholar In

P-Ng Research

Australian National University research scholar James Anthony,

32, said in Sydney in February

he would not go to Papua- New Guinea to work on his PhD thesis “under the present circumstances”. He said if he had known how impossible it was for him to do research in New Guinea he “wouldn’t have come to Australia”.

Mr, Anthony was born in Fiji, and was a militant union leader there before spending some years at the University of Hawaii, where he gained his BA and MA. He went to the ANU eight months ago on a scholarship to do his thesis on com parative politics, which would involve 12 months research in P-NG.

Last November he spent a month on preliminary work in the territory, after having signed an undertaking from the Department of Territories that during his visit he would con fine his activities “to those of a scholarly character” and would not address any public meetings “or “engage in any public or private activity in relation to political, in dustrial or social issues which may reasonably be regarded by the Administration as likely to have a disturbing or disruptive effect within the P-NG community or parts of that community”.

Protest

He said he signed the same agree ment in January and he had planned to leave for New Guinea on March 1, together with his Hawaiian-bom wife, who has been appointed a senior tutor with the P-NG Uni versity’s Department of English.

But on February 21 some Aus tralian newspapers published a report that a Port Moresby man, Mr. J.

G. Little, had protested in a letter to Federal Government and Opposition politicians about Mr. Anthony’s presence in the territory, saying he was an agitator.

On February 29 Mr. Anthony called a news conference at Sydney University (where he later addressed students on conditions in Fiji). He told newsmen that the circumstances of the publicity he had got now made

it impossible for him to do proper research in New Guinea . He could do research anywhere else in the Pacific, including Fiji. To a question, he said he was not responsible for starting the publicity, and had much to lose by it.

“I would like a PhD but I am not ready to sell my soul for it,” he said.

“I am not going to lick any white man’s boots for it.”

Mr. Anthony added he didn’t know what his next step was until he dis cussed the matter with his supervisors.

Mrs. Anthony said she would not go to P-NG without her husband; she had a young family to look after.

Fiji independence "soon"

At his news conference, Mr.

Anthony said he had recently returned from Fiji, where he had represented the Airport, Hotel and Catering Workers’ Union in an arbitration hear ing. Fiji was really a colony of Australia, run by Australian com merce.

He felt it wasn’t far off independ ence—it was his belief that Britain would give Fiji her independence by the 100th anniversary of Fiji’s cession to the Crown, in 1974.

James Anthony took time off to picket the Fiji Legislative Council last June en route from Honolulu to Canberra to take up his scholarship.