A Tahitian Trigger Sets Off A

Chain Reaction To The Bomb

From JAMES BOYACK IN Papeete.

If France is still seeking a “trigger” for its hydrogen bomb after seven years and 30 nuclear tests in the Pacific, the Tahitians who oppose such tests in French Polynesia no longer have a similar problem. Their “trigger” won’t help the French, however. In fact, it is an anti-missile device which gobbles multi-entry warheads like eggs for breakfast (allegedly).

Whether or not France is able to put its finger on the micro-technology of a miniaturised, deliverable H bomb, the Tahitian trigger has already set off a chain reaction. The power of the explosion will only become evident in coming days. Its fallout may be around for years.

The Polynesian trigger is a French journalist-politician. His military code-name Jean-Jacques Servan- Schreiber (JJSS). He is Tahiti’s autonomist National Assembly De puty Francis Sanford’s secret weapon and he arrived in Tahiti in mid-June to orchestrate the island’s first anti-bomb demonstration.

Servan-Schreiber is an unprece dented phenomenon in the French segment of local history. Although he represents only a splinter oppo sition group in the Paris parliament, his national role far exceeds his at tributed power. He has conquered the ears and eyes of France in his dual role of dynamic political gadfly and piquant journalist. In fact, journalism and politics are entwined in the dynamo which propels him to no less of a position than Prime Minister of France, his stated goal.

“I agitate for ideas,” he said in a locally-televised retrospective of his career. The idea which con sumes him today is that the “French nuclear enterprise is insane”. He comes here as one of eight activist representatives of “unofficial France” in what the group has termed “The Battalion of Peace”. Three of the eight members accompanied him to Tahiti where, in a television inter view, he promised “to debate the future of French Polynesia, of France and of all mankind”. From here, “the theatre of the folly”, he hopes to provoke a national decision against French nuclear tests in the Pacific.

The other four members of the

“Battalion of Peace” are somewhere in the Pacific trying to get to the nuclear test zone by boat to join other protest vessels there.

While Servan-Schreiber is the centre court player, those who have come here with him may have more effective impact on the local popu lation. The three are medical Dr Anne-Marie Fritsch, an assembly deputy, and two clergymen—Pastor George-Richard-Molard, of the French Reformed Church and the Dominican Rev Father Charles Avril. Missionary Christian Tahiti will not be able to ignore the church men, nor will it escape the emo tional plea of the woman, already televised, for France “to stop mort gaging the lives of unborn children”.

The two clergymen, while declar ing themselves political representa tives of only strong personal opinion, both reminded television viewers that all church groups in France, and most in the world, have voiced opposition to nuclear testing. Each is a high-ranking member of his own ecclesiastic community and both will wedge into the Polynesian com munion an unprecedented moral sensitivity to French nuclear tests.

It is a fact that no church organisa tion here has taken a public stand on those tests. (The Protestants did in ’63, but soon dropped the idea through lack of support, anywhere.) Servan-Schreiber and his battalion, if they accomplish nothing else (which can not be the case, at least locally), will have given the world its most well-organised, precise de monstration of the French nation’s feelings about its own bomb. Recent weeks have witnessed the protest occupation of Notre Dame Cathe dral and massive anti-bomb parades and meetings throughout France.

JJSS has set himself up in Tahiti as the spearhead of this movement.

His influence on the Tahitians, or on French Polynesia’s political ties with the Mere Patrie, has yet to be evidenced. His first days here have had an abstract, dumbfounding effect. He blazed in with his Bobby Kennedy-Suberfly auriole and to-date remains a distant, intimidating although politically welcome ally for Francis Sanford’s autonomie move ment. He arrived at 5 am and had

been film-interviewed by Tele-Tahiti at 10. At noon that interview of the four protesters had been transmitted by Radio Tahiti to all 120 islands.

During the evening Tahitian lan guage radio programme, most of that TV interview was translated into the one universal language of the islanders. Francis Sanford was impressed, gratified. He has been the leading political figure in French Polynesia for more than five years and he has had access to radio and TV not once (he gave a press con ference two weeks ago, it was filmed and a brief summary was played over his gesticulating lips—it was the first time he has seen himself on TV).

If Deputy Sanford had hoped to make the upcoming Papeete City Hall demonstration a political show case for his claimed autonomist majority, JJSS, and those accompany ing him made it immediately clear they did not share his ambition. “We belong to no political parties,” the clergymen ecumenically agreed. “We are evangelists of peace, witnesses of Christian morality.” JJSS: “Although we carry with us the moral, religious and political man dates of a nation, ours is not a par tisan enterprise, but a French en terprise.” He said, “No politics, please,” to the TV journalist asking for some.

Mr Sanford expects upwards of 8,000 for Tahiti’s first anti-bomb de monstration. He admits this is his greatest expectation. “It’s a poker game,” he told me. “We’ll have a few thousand, anyway. I hope it doesn’t rain.” He explained that party leaders all around Tahiti were beat ing the bush for bodies. Those in Moorea were doing the same. “But they’ll have to pay for their own transportation. We’re not organising anything on that end. They’ll have to walk, bicycle, take ‘Le truck’.”

And he confirmed that banners will aim only at the bomb. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass the clergy.

“The crowd will show the force of our movement,” he explained. He had resigned himself to the very high moral ground rules established by the JJSS party in its first hours here. No politics.