Up Front

with the Editor

It is now 10 years since my wife Jo, 1 and our young family were enjoying a holiday in a beach cot tage at Korotoga, Fiji, when we had an unexpected visitor. He introduced himself as the Rev. Tebuke Rotan, a Banaban from the island of Rabi, in the Fiji group, and said he had come from Rabi especially to appeal to me to visit his island and talk to the people “so PIM can tell the world about our plight”.

He pleaded, “Come and write the truth about how our people have nothing, and live on unripe bread fruit and boiled bananas. Come and learn how we are the owners of a rich phosphate island, yet all the riches are given to people who have nothing to do with us!” 1 knew Rabi only as a small island out towards Taveuni, which had been settled by people from Ocean Island, in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. I didn’t know until then that they were called Banabans, after the native name of Ocean Island, Banaba. But all of us soon got to know a lot more about the Banabans, because our visitor was so insistent that I must pay them a visit that a few days later we packed our bags and took a bus to Suva, a plane to Savusavu, a rented car 2J hours up the Hibiscus High way to Buca Bay, and finally a launch five miles across the Georgia Channel to Rabi, high and wooded.

Never have I been received so warmly anywhere. The children, then at an impressionable age, ate their first octopus and breadfruit and saw their first “real” island dancing, at which they were guests of honour.

All of us made friendships which still endure. But the children were asleep, exhausted, the night the Rabi Island Council held a full council meeting in the main room of the comfortable house the council had generously provided us with, which went on into the early hours. At that meeting the islanders, led by Tebuke’s father, the impressive Ro tan Tito, then 62, left Jo and me in no doubt about the depth of their belief that the Banabans had been cheated of a rightful share of their

birthright by the British Government, and the British Phosphate Com missioners who mined the rich phosphate for Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Their resentment went right back to the beginning of mining on Ocean Island. One bitter aspect of it was that, in the words of Rotan Tito, they felt they were still “treated like primitive savages” by Britain, who refused even to have them pre sent at the occasional talks between the BPC and the GEIC Government on phosphate royalties and mining plans for the island.

In Suva 1 could find no officials who took the Banabans’ complaints seriously. They were dismissed as troublesome people who preferred to sit down and whine about alleged past injustices instead of helping themselves to build a better future.

It was true that they might have done more for themselves on Rabi, although I wonder how much in view of what the Japanese wartime occu pation of Ocean Island did to their numbers and consequently their morale. But none of this seemed to touch on the Banabans’ main griev ances about being cheated, so PIM told their story in some detail in October, 1965, and encouraged other media to take an interest in the for gotten Banabans.

A lot has happened in the inter vening 10 years. They have taken their rightful place at royalty talks, they have got more money and today the islanders are face to face with Britain in the British High Court, putting their case in detail.

Recently they have asked for Ocean Island’s independence from the GEIC, and are “occupying” their island as a gesture. The latest de velopments are reported on p. 9.

Meanwhile, the GEIC Govern ment complains that it, too, has a case, but nobody publicises it. The GEIC does have a case in this pan of scrambled eggs, but it can hardly protest about the publicity tide turn ing in the Banabans’ favour. The Banabans cried in vain in the wilder ness for many years before they fought their own way out.