And They Gave Me

"I Asked For Bread,

Stones," He Says

A crowd of more than 2,500 people was at Tahiti’s inter national airport at Faaa on Saturday, November 30, to wel come nationalist politician Pou vanaa a Oopa on his return to his homeland.

Pouvanaa reached Tahiti by the French airline UTA, via Los Angeles, after having served nine years of a 15-year term of exile in France, including three years in prison.

He was accompanied on his flight home by his sister and by Mr.

Francis Sanford, French Polynesia’s deputy in the French Parliament, who has battled hard in recent times for Pouvanaa’s release.

Pouvanaa, a 73-year-old veteran of World War I, was convicted in 1958 of having attempted to set fire to the town of Papeete (see p. 62 for details) after campaigning for a Tahitian republic.

He was pardoned by President de Gaulle in November on the 50th an niversary of the World War I armistice.

Pouvanaa, who suffered a stroke in January, looked old and tired after his long flight from France, and was restrained in a speech he made at the airport.

However, in a Press interview in Paris 24 hours before beginning his flight, Pouvanaa showed that he was still as outspoken and vivid in his turn of phrase as of old.

Asked about President de Gaulle’s decision to set him free, Pouvanaa said: “I have still not obtained what I want. I want the case against me to be reopened, but T have only been pardoned.

“I asked for bread, and they gave me stones.

“My affair is still not finished...”

Pouvanaa added that he still did not know whether he had been “rehabilitated” as nothing had ap peared in the Journal Officiel on that subject.

Footnote: The “rehabilitation” of a convicted person is a rarely-used device of the French legal system whereby such a person can have bis record “wiped clean” after paying what the authorities consider an ap propriate debt to society. No stigma attaches to such a person after his “rehabilitation”.