Tahiti's David May Yet Sway

Struggle With Goliath

By Robert Langdon

Although he is now 73 and has been partially paralysed since suffering a stroke in January, Pouvanaa a Oopa, the Tahitian nationalist leader, may yet exert considerable influence on the movement towards internal self-government in French Polynesia.

Pouvanaa, who has been described as a “Tahitian David fighting the Goliath of French rule”, was par doned by President de Gaulle in November after serving more than nine years of a 15-year term of exile in France. He had spent three of his nine years of banishment in prison ( PIM, Dec., p. 37).

In French Polynesia, to which territory he has now returned (see front pages, this issue), Pouvanaa is known among the islanders as Te Metua (parent, or father) and is looked upon by many as an oracle.

He is a persuasive orator of fiercely radical views, and has been a thorn in the side of the French Administra tion in Tahiti for more than 20 years.

Pouvanaa’s long period of exile began in October, 1959, when he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment and 15 years’ banishment from Tahiti for having attempted to burn down the town of Papeete.

Arrested

He had been arrested a year earlier following a lively referendum on whether Tahiti and its dependencies should remain part of the French Union or become independent.

Pouvanaa had campaigned— almost successfully—on a platform of “Tahiti for the Tahitians, and the French into the sea”. At that time, he had been French Polynesia’s repre sentative in the French Chamber of Deputies for nearly 10 years.

Many Tahitians believe that Pouvanaa was not guilty of the charge of arson that was brought against him that he was the victim of a plot organised by his enemies to remove him from the Tahiti political scene.

Over the last couple of years, Tahiti’s current political leaders made numerous efforts to secure his return to his homeland; and they were in creasingly outspoken in expressing the view that he was not a criminal, but merely a political prisoner.

In recent months, the French Government was warned several times that serious repercussions might follow in Tahiti if Pouvanaa should die in exile.

Pouvanaa has served three terms of imprisonment and exile for his political activities, the last one being by far the longest.

His nationalist ideas for Tahiti seem to have developed after he served in the French Army in World War I. However, it was not until 1942 that he fell foul of the authori ties.

Accounts differ as to the cause of the trouble on that occasion. But the upshot was that he was exiled to a reef islet of his native Huahine.

Eventually he contrived to escape in a canoe to Bora Bora* then a major American base. There Pou vanaa seems to have expected the Americans to be sympathetic to his cause; but the Americans promptly handed him back to the French authorities in Tahiti, who saw to it that he did not get loose again until the war was over.

Pouvanaa, who then spoke only Tahitian (liberally sprinkled with Biblical allusions) was soon preach ing his nationalist ideas again.

Opposed landing

In February, 1947, he and a band of followers formed a Comite Pou vanaa, which soon began publishing a regular journal, Te Ara’tai. In this, the committee proclaimed that its aim was “to conduct Tahiti and its archipelagoes towards more political, economic, administrative and cultural freedom”’.

In June, 1947, the Pouvanaa com mittee led a huge crowd of demon strators to the Papeete waterfront to oppose the landing of three new French officials who had arrived from France in the liner Ville d’Amiens.

After succeeding in their objective

(Continued on p. 65)

Held in custody

for several days, Pouvanaa and his followers were outmanoeuvred by the Administration and arrested.

They were held in custody for five months before being brought to trial on charges involving a challenge to governmental authority. The trial took place in November, 1947, and ended after a week with Pouvanaa and his men being found innocent by the jury and acquitted.

By this time, Pouvanaa, in the eyes of many Tahitians, had become a martyred hero; and when elections were held in 1949 to choose a deputy to represent the territory in the French Parliament, Pouvanaa stood and had an easy victory. He was re-elected with impressive margins at two subsequent elections in 1951 and 1956.

Meanwhile, the Comite Pouvanaa had developed into a fully-fledged political party called Rassemblement Democratique d e s Populations Tahitiennes (RDPT), meaning Tahitian People’s Democratic Assembly.

The RDPT sponsored candidates in elections for the local Territorial Assembly in 1953 and 1957 and won a majority of seats each time. One of the successful candidates in 1957 was Pouvanaa himself, who thus entered the Assembly for the first time.

New constitution

A few months earlier, French Polynesia had been given a new con stitution which provided for a cabinet form of government in which local people were given ministerial posts.

Pouvanaa became Leader of Gov ernment Business in this new cabinet, which promptly introduced an income tax bill and announced plans to secede from France.

The conservative members of the Assembly, who were only slightly outnumbered by Pouvanaa’s ad herents, protested vigorously against the income tax plan and organised a shopkeepers’ demonstration against it.

Having mustered a mob which bombarded the Assembly building with stones, the conservatives were able to force the RDPT to back down on the tax bill; but the secession proposal was still unresolved when the French Government collapsed and General de Gaulle came out of retirement to take over the Presi dency.

One of President de Gaulle’s first

They didn't back him

acts was to announce referendums for the French territories throughout the world to see if those territories wished to remain French or become independent.

Pouvanaa, as Tahiti’s leading nationalist, campaigned fervently for independence. However, even some of his closest associates—who would have been happy with internal self government—did not back him in this, and Pouvanaa persuaded only 36 per cent, of the people to vote his way.

The referendum took place on September 27, 1958. Fourteen days later, Pouvanaa and a number of his followers were arrested on a variety of charges, including having thrown “Molotov cocktails” in the streets of Papeete, and of having attempted to burn the town down.

Pouvanaa’s house, the government claimed, was found to be defended like a blockhouse and to contain a large stock of “Molotov cocktails” and other weapons.

Pouvanaa was held in gaol for just over a year before being brought to trial. After proceedings lasting three days, he received his sentence of eight years’ imprisonment and 15 years’ banishment from Tahiti, A short time later, Pouvanaa was spirited out of gaol in the dead of night, placed aboard a small French warship, and secretly transferred from there to a passenger liner bound for France.

"Ogre" lived on

However, the French had by no means killed the ogre of Pouvanaa.

When elections were held in June, 1960, to elect a replacement for him in the Chamber of Deputies, the RDPT sponsored his son Marcel as its candidate—and Tahitians who felt convinced that Pouvanaa had been “framed”, voted his son in with a comfortable majority.

After Marcel Pouvanaa died in Paris just over a year later following an operation, Tahiti’s torch in the French Parliament was taken over by John Teariki, a chief of Moorea, who proved almost as outspokenly pro-Tahitian as Pouvanaa.

It was while Teariki was in office that Pouvanaa, then an ailing man, was released from prison after hav ing served only three years of his eight-year term.

However, the French Government still feared the power of his political influence, for it immediately issued a proclamation forbidding him from

Unity among radicals

landing in any French territory in the Pacific—in addition to French Poly nesia.

Although Pouvanaa’s RDPT had lost a lot of its fire by this time and was split into two factions, all the members of it were united in urging that Pouvanaa should be allowed to return home.

This unity continued among the territory’s radical politicians even after President de Gaulle outlawed the RDPT in 1963 for protesting against the invasion of Tahiti by French troops to prepare the way for the nuclear tests in the Tuamotus.

One of the most vehement pleas ever made on Pouvanaa’s behalf was that submitted by John Teariki to de Gaulle in September, 1966, when the President visited Tahiti.

“The fate of our former deputy, Pouvanaa a Oopa, . . . still weighs heavily and bitterly in the hearts of Tahitians,” Teariki said. “Since his conviction, the events which have followed here—and elsewhere—have underlined the political character of the ‘affair’ which placed him in prison and exile.

“Pouvanaa a Oopa was no more an arsonist than Maurice Lenormand, deputy of New Caledonia [who was convicted of a charge involving sabotage] was a saboteur. Defenders of democratic freedom and territorial rights, both fell in the same way and in the same cause . .

Lack of courtesy

Teariki’s outspokenness no doubt made it impossible for the French Government to do anything about pardoning Pouvanaa for the time being, even if it had wished to do 60.

However, early this year, when Mr.

Francis Sanford (Teariki’s successor in the Chamber of Deputies) made yet another plea on Pouvanaa’s be half, the French Government showed an astonishing lack of courtesy, under standing and humanitarianism in deal ing with this matter.

In a letter to Prime Minister Pompidou, Mr. Sanford drew atten tion to the fact that Pouvanaa had just suffered a stroke and politely asked that he should be allowed to return to Tahiti.

This letter produced no reply; nor did a second letter from one of San ford’s political allies in the French Parliament.

In these circumstances, French Polynesia’s Territorial Assembly de cided to send a four-man mission to

Kept up pressure

Paris (a) to discuss internal self government with the Government, and (b) to seek Pouvanaa’s return home.

The mission, however, was treated with utter contempt —the then French Minister for Overseas Territories, General Billotte, refusing even to re ceive it.

Despite this rebuff, Tahiti’s poli ticians kept up the pressure for Pou vanaa’s release, and it seems likely that de Gaulle’s decision to allow him to return to Tahiti was influenced by a report from Mr. Michel Inchauspe, the present Minister for Overseas Territories, who visited Tahiti in Sep tember and could not have helped but notice the strong current of feel ing there on the Pouvanaa case.

In the nine years since he last saw his homeland, even the most radical of Tahiti’s political leaders have abandoned the idea of breaking com pletely from France and forming a Tahitian republic. Nowadays, they feel that their territory is too small and economically poor to become independent, and that the most they should aim for is internal self government of the Cook Islands variety.

It is in their struggle for this that Pouvanaa, despite his age and state of health, may yet play a significant role as a living symbol of martyrdom.

THE Rt. Rev. John Tristram Holland, Bishop of Waikato in New Zealand, has accepted the office of Bishop in Polynesia, succeeding Bishop John Charles Vockler, who resigned to enter a religious order.

Bishop Holland expects to arrive in Fiji, where he will be enthroned in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Suva, some time before Easter. He will be accompanied by his wife.

Born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Eng land, in 1912, he attended University College, Oxford, where he gained his BA and MA. He went to Westcott House, Cambridge, to study theology and was ordained deacon in 1935 and priest in 1936. After a curacy in Huddersfield, he became com missary to the Bishop of Wellington and during World War II served as a chaplain with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

He was Vicar of St. Peter’s, Upper Riccarton and Vicar of St. Mary’s, New Plymouth, before being con secrated Bishop of Waikato in St.

Peter’s Cathedral, Hamilton, on May 1. 1951