Banabans open fight for justice
p. 15 · Read in the full issue
justice and some back pay
By a staff writer
The 2,000 Banabans of Ocean Island have begun their two-pronged drive to secure what they say is justice. They are suing the British Government and the British Phosphate Com missioners for back royalties on phosphate and for damage done to the island in its extraction; they are also pressing both the Gilbert and Ellice Islanders and the British Government to grant Ocean Island independence from the GEIC.
The legal moves were begun in the High Court in London in February when the Banabans’ counsel, Mr John McDonald, asked that the Crown produce certain Crown docu ments, and the Crown claimed they were privileged.
In the court the Banabans are claiming more than £7 million for the back royalties and an unspecified amount for damage to the island.
Mr McDonald told Mr Justice Wal ton that from 1920 to 1966 the British Phosphate Commissioners (representing Britain. Australia and New Zealand) had sold phosphate in Australia at well below world prices, to the detriment of the Banaban royalty fund.
There are several separate actions involved in the Banabans legal moves but they are all interwoven.
Meanwhile in January at a special meeting on “neutral ground” on Nauru, a delegation of Banabans asked a delegation of Gilbert and Ellice Islanders for support for their application for independence for Ocean Island. They attempted to con vince the GEIC representatives that Ocean Island did not belong to the colony and that the Banabanas were not Gilbertese. The colony repre sentatives said they would discuss the arguments back at Tarawa, and in mid-February the Banabans were still awaiting a decision.
The Banabans have lived on Rabi, in the Fiji group, since the end of the Pacific War and are now Fiji citizens.
They say that if they are granted independence for Ocean Island they will seek an association with Fiji.
The Fiji Government has indicated it would not be opposed to such a move.
The Banabans argued at Nauru that the GEIC’s economic gap could be filled by support from Britain, Australia and New Zealand—the
countries which benefited from cheap Ocean Island phosphate for so many years.
On the question of past injustice, Mr Tekoti Rotan, leader of the Banaban delegation, told the Gilbert and Ellice delegation: “The history of our island has not been a happy history. For more than 70 years Ocean Island and the Banabans have been the victims of unjust, ruthless and sometimes savage exploitation.
“We had to leave our home. We became exiles. We suffered under the insensitive rule of men who knew little of our ways or our needs.”
He said that when the Europeans came to Ocean Island, “we Bana banas, unskilled in the ways of the western world, were gulled by rapacious businessmen into selling our birthright for a handful of coins.
For the convenience of our exploiters we were made part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. No one thought to ask us about this”.
The GEIC government is not able to approve independence for Ocean Island even if it wants to. This will be Britain’s decision. But the Bana bans know that if they can get the consent of the islanders Britain will be more sympathetic.
The trouble is that revenue from Ocean Island’s phosphate is used to support the colony which gets about 85 per cent of it. The GEIC House of Assembly only last November re jected “any claim by or on behalf of the landowners of Ocean Island for any change in the present status of their island which would make it separate and independent from the remainder of the Gilbert Islands”.
Three British MBs were to visit Ocean Island in February, and mem bers of the UN Committee on Colonialism were also invited to visit there by the Banabans.