Tahiti police

Questions asked after Tahiti police crackdown on “rebels”

French security police, cracked down in August on the self styled Maohi Provisional Gov ernment in Tahiti only days after two key leaders flew back from New Zealand.

The pro-independence party which formed the four-month old “rebel” government, Te Tiamaraa a te Nunaa Maohi, was due to begin its annual congress on the island of Huahine with many of its leaders under arrest.

Among about 40 people seized when security police raided the Tiamaraa Party’s bungalow headquarters in suburban Papeete were “President” Tetua Mai and “Prime Minister” Tamatea Taero.

Mr Mai, 43, and Mr Taero, 32, had just returned from New Zealand after a South Pacific tour lobbying for support. They claim to have the backing of the Vanuatu Government.

Police said they stormed the house in the Farupiti quarter of Papeete after independence sup porters had taken two gendarmes hostage. But a party spokesman denied this.

“We have been expecting a crackdown against us for some time,” the spokesman said.

The party formed its provi

sional government a month be fore Tahiti’s May’territorial elec tion and drew up its own con stitution, passports and formed a militia.

In an interview with me just before they returned to Tahiti, Mr Mai and Mr Taero said they wanted Tahiti put on the United Nations de-colonisation list.

They claimed their party had rapidly growing support and said they planted to launch a pirate radio station soon to break the state-controlled media monopoly in Tahiti, blockade the tourist islands Moorea and Huahine and collect their own taxes.

“We need to shake up the people and make them more aware of what is happening,” said Mr Taero, a former trade consultant.

Tiamaraa is one of the smaller of the nine pro-independence parties in Tahiti, but Mr Taero claimed his party had 21,000 signatures on a petition support

ing the party’s aims.

The party polled only about 400 votes in the May election.

However, Mr Taero said the bal lot had been boycotted . . . “We don’t recognise French elections.”

French Polynesia’s new Gaul

list Government Council and French authorities have been tak ing a tough line on law and order issues. An earlier port strike in Papeete was crushed by security police with tear gas. David Robie in The New Zealand Times.

A PIM special correspondent in Papeete comments: Tetua Mai and his wife are certainly eccentric, and of course they attract others of their kind. But they’re also Polynesians, and this fact lends a touch of “folklore” to their faults.

Much could be said about this episode. Why were they allowed to go so far? Were they not in fact quietly encouraged and help ed? The desire on the part of the authorities to ridicule and scare

all independentists through let

ting these people go to inordinate lengths, and then making the affair as lurid and sensational, as

possible, is quite clear.

The fact that the mayor of Papeete was not informed of the events is proof that the so-called “municipal” police are no more under the control of elected local officials than are the gendarmerie or the secret police. Obviously, it’s the High Commissioner who’s in charge of law and order.

In a statement protesting about

being kept in ignorance of the

affair, Mr J. Juventin, Papeete’s mayor, while dissociating him self from the antics of Tetua Mai and his friends, said; “I greatly regret that the local government apparently saw no need to inform me of these events. If I had known of them I could have intervened at once to ensure that things were settled in a reason able way, without the kind of useless confrontation that occurr ed in which people were injured, beaten and maltreated.

“I deplore the fact that the excesses of some have been met with the excesses of others, while it would have been quite possible to settle the matter in a worthy, honourable manner.”