Pacific Report

French Polynesia’S Re-Building Effort

French Polynesia is setting up a special agency to handle reconstruction following its devastation by six cyclones in five months. The storms caused damage estimated at SUSI3O million, with the worst devastation caused by the most recent cyclone, Veena, which struck in April. The territory’s 30-member Territorial Assembly has created the new agency and given it a provisional budget of about $55 million to be provided through new taxes and funds from other budgetary sectors. The Vice- President of French Polynesia’s Government Council, Gaston Flosse, said the devastation presented the territory’s people with their biggest challenge in memory. (See also Postmark Papeete.)

Call For New Caledonia Census Boycott

New Caledonia’s Independence Front has called on its suppor ters not to participate in a census which got underway in the territory in April. In an open letter to French High Commissioner in Noumea Jacques Roynette, the Front claims that the category in the census concerning ethnic origin has been manipulated to establish the Kanaks as a minority in their own country. The census does not have a separate category for people of mixed race, who are included in the European category. The Inde pendence Front says this unfairly bolsters the number of so called Europeans in New Caledonia and decreases the Kanak percentage.

W. Samoa Gets First Samoan C.J.

The Western Samoan government has announced the appoint ment of a former minister of agriculture and minister of finance as the country’s new chief justice. Vaovasamanaia Filipo has said he will resign from parliament, his partnership in a law firm, and from several company directorships, to become the first Western Samoan to hold the post. Mr Vaovasamanaia has been in private practice as a lawyer since he graduated from a New Zealand university in 1953.

New Land Price Dispute On Tinian

Landowners on the island of Tinian, Northern Marianas, have rejected a cash offer for land which the U.S. Government wants for its armed forces. The landowners are asking the United Nations Trusteeship Council to help them get fair compensation.

They have rejected an offer of $lO a square metre. A few months ago the U.S. navy gave the Marianas government $33 million as payment for a lease on nearly one third of Tinian 17,000 acres. The 50-year lease may be doubled at no extra cost. Since then the Marianas government has been trying to reach an agreement with the 33 landowners who now say they will resume price talks once a Guam company they have engaged has valued their land. The landowners say they oppose government moves to place a fair market price on the land because a 15-year government moratorium on using it has artifically depressed development on Tinian.

Fiji Blast For France On N-Test

Fiji has strongly criticised France over an April nuclear test explosion at Moruroa, the first in the delayed 1983 testing program. Fiji’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mosese Qionibaravi, said that the test was a clear sign of France’s insensitivity to the feelings of Pacific Island people, and it was most regrettable that the French Government had decided to resume testing and he again urged them to stop.

Australian Aid Attitudes Reviewed

Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Bill Hayden said in April that his government is committed to maintaining the highest possible level of overseas aid. Speaking after attending the first meeting of a new committee set up to review Australia’s overseas aid program, Mr Hayden said Australia had spent more than $7OO million in aid last year. Mr Hayden said it was in Australia’s interest to support the economic and social future of developing countries, especially in the Pacific region. The minister said there had been serious flaws in Australia’s past approach to providing foreign aid. He said there had been instances of investment in projects chosen more for their political significance than their economic benefit. Mr Hayden

said Australian aid should be directed towards serving the interests of the poor and economically deprived.

BRITAIN TO PAY UP FOR SANTO DAMAGE Britain agreed late in April to meet a third of the bill resulting from damage caused by the unsuccessful Santo rebellion In Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Father Walter Uni said he had been informed by the British Government that it will accept responsibility for a third of the damage compensation claims.

Rebels on Santo blew up a copra mill, destroyed bridges, stole cars and looted warehouses, homes and businesses in the rebellion at the time of Vanuatu’s independence. After the rebellion had been put down by troops from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu proposed that the former joint rulers of the country Britain and France each pay one-third of the damages and the Vanuatu Government pay a third. Father Lini said he was grateful that the British Government had now agreed to pay its share of the compensation.

Irian Java Road Crosses Png Border

Indonesia said in April that a complaint from Papua New Guinea that a new Indonesian road crosses into its territory “might be justified’’ because the border with Irian Jaya is “badly marked out”. Papua New Guinea’s Foreign Minister, Rabbie Namaliu, had asked Indonesia to explain why the road crosses the border from Irian Jaya twice and runs inside PNG for a total of eight kilometres. The issue was later to be discussed by the two countries at a meeting of their border liaison committee at Merauke in Irian Jaya.

Png: Judge Orders Jail Closure

A judge in Papua New Guinea has ordered the immediate closure of the maximum security division of Bomana Prison outside Port Moresby. Bomana’s “B“ division is the only maximum security prison division in PNG. The prison has been the centre of controversy for more than a year. Former inmates of “B” division at Bomana have repeatedly alleged that prison warders beat them up. Two judges who interviewed 28 prison ers at the jail late last year reported a common thread of complaints including assaults with baseball bats and electrical cords. Mr Justice Bredmeyer ordered in April that “B” division be closed immediately and that its 19 maximum security prisoners be moved back into other sections of the jail. He also ordered that “B” division remain closed until new regulations are drawn up governing prison officer behavior.

Scandal Hits Papeete Port Authority

After months of rumors of scandalous goings-on in the multi million dollar operations of Papeete’s Port Authority, its director Rodrigue Legayic was arrested and jailed on March 27. Joining him on the prison trail was prominent local businessman Philippe Chungall. The two men face charges of corruption and misuse of public funds in connection with harbor improvement works. In particular, it is alleged that Mr Legayic established a “front” company, Sopomat, which won tenders to do earth moving and embankment work around the harbor. Two other companies engaged in work for the authority, Sotrelec and Polyphone, are alleged to have won their tenders by corrupt means. Mr Chungall has links with all three companies. The local English-language weekly, Tahiti Sun Press, said that there was “speculation that the information thus far made public is only the tip of an iceberg of a major scandal involving several prominent persons.” Jean Juventin, Papeete’s mayor and one of French Polynesia’s two deputies to the National Assembly in Paris, publicly accused the Vice-President of the local Govern ment Council, Gaston Flosse, of pressuring one of Papeete’s two daily newspapers into withholding the story of the Port Authority scandal and the two arrests. Flosse replied by accusing Juventin of receiving the sum of CFP3O million (about $U5235,000) from the Port Authority a few days before the March municipal elections in the territory. Juventin claimed there was nothing illegal about the money, which had been owed by the Port Authority to the city under contract since 1981. After the territory has endured six cyclones in as many months, French

Polynesia’s political and business communities are now bracing themselves for a storm of another kind.

Hawaii Urges Stronger Islands Links

The Hawaii State Legislature in April adopted two resolutions designed to stimulate greater activity and interest by the US Senate and the Reagan administration on issues of concern to Pacific Islanders. The first urges the US Senate to “advise and consent to” the treaties with a number of Pacific Island countries which are now held up due to the opposition of a number of conservative senators, and, as the resolution states, to “misin formation published by such publications as The Washington Times which is owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s New World Communications, Inc.”. Countries concerned include the Cook Islands, Tokelau, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and American Samoa. The treaties essentially concern renunciation of US claims to Pacific territories under the Guano Act of 1856. The second resolution urges the appointment of two additional US ambassadors to Pacific Island nations and territories. It called for appointment of “an ambassador-at-large to the South Pacific island nations of Western Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Wallis/Futuna, and French Polynesia, who shall be headquartered in Pago Pago, American Samoa or in Hawaii; and an ambassador-at large to the Western and Central Pacific island nations of the Federated States of Micronesia. Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Nauru, who shall be headquartered in Agana, Guam or Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.” The resolution said appointment of the additional ambassadors “will further the understanding of Pacif ic problems and improve US policy in the area.” The two resolutions, which were adopted by the House of Representa tives on April 21 and the Senate on April 22, were proposed by Frederick W. Rohlfing, House Minority Leader and US Alternate Representative on the South Pacific Commission.

Fiji: Company, Govt., In Flour Fight

A row has broken out between the Fiji Government and a local company which owns the majority of shares in the company, Flour Mills of Fiji. The company, Punja and Sons, said it had been told by the Fiji Government to reduce its 56 per cent shareholding in Flour Mills of Fiji. Punja and Sons refused to do so and accused the Fiji government of victimisation, because it is a strong supporter of the opposition National Federation Party. The company says it has refused to reduce its sharehold ing but has offered to sell all its shares to the government. Punja and Sons is Fiji’s largest food processing company, and Flour Mills of Fiji is the country’s sole producer of flour.

Png: Unlucky Meeting With A Minister

Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Minerals and Energy Francis Pusal on May 1 personally confiscated the passports of four Australians and one Briton suspected of illegal gold mining in PNG’s Enga Province. Mr Pusal said he had gone to Porgera, an alluvial gold mining area, to look into the possibility of setting up a bank where people could take their gold. Locals told him there was a group of foreigners nearby looking for gold. Mr Pusal said: “I went down to see these people and they told me they had permission from the Minister for Minerals and Energy in Port Moresby. They didn’t know who I was. Then I said I was the Minister for Minerals and Energy, and ‘you haven’t seen me’.” He then confiscated the passports. Illegal gold buying and smuggling is at present under investigation by PNG’s National Intelligence Organisation.

Kiribati Buys Back Some Land

After negotiations spread over several years, Burns, Philp & Co.

Ltd. of Sydney (Australia) and the Kiribati Government have agreed on the purchase by Kiribati for SAI.S million of the freehold land on the island of Tabuaeran (Fanning) and all the island of Teraina (Washington) in the Line Islands of Kiribati.

They had been owned by the Burns Philp subsidiary, Fanning Island Plantations Ltd. since 1936. Teraina is completely covered with coconut palms, about 200,000 of them. The company owned most of Tabuaeran, which is an atoll.

Waterfront Strike In Moresby, Lae

Waterside workers in Papua New Guinea’s two major cities, Port Moresby and Lae, staged a four-day strike in April. They walked off in protest at an arbitration tribunal’s dismissal of

almost all their claims for better pay and conditions. Among other things they have been seeking a trebling of overtime pay, increased leave bonuses and accumulated sick leave. The only claim granted was a recommendation that the waterside work ers should get more variety in their meals than tinned fish, tinned meat and rice.

Money Needed For Jesus Centre

A special school named the Jesus Centre being built at Morata, Port Moresby, may fail through lack of money. The school, the idea of a Christian religious group, will cater for reformed, ex members of the many gangs roaming the towns of Papua New Guinea and will have a classroom, carpentry and mechanical workshops, a sports oval, and land for agricultural pursuits. The project needs KlO,OOO ($A13,000) to complete it.

Oz Cyclone Aid To Tahiti, Moorea

Australia has given $lOO,OOO in humanitarian aid to victims of the April Cyclone Veena on Tahiti and Moorea islands in French Polynesia. Cyclone Veena caused widespread damage, particu larly to housing. Australia was providing urgently needed roofing materials and fasteners for the building of temporary shelters.

‘I’M Not Going Yet Somare

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Michael Somare moved in late April to quash speculation that he is about to retire. Mr Somare announced that he will lead the Pangu Party into the next elections in 1987. In a statement clarifying earlier com ments he had made about retirement, the prime minister said he would be around for a lot longer than most people expected. Mr Somare, 47, is one of the oldest politicians in the PNG Parliament, but he said he was still young by international standards. Mr Somare’s statement that he would lead Pangu into the next elections differed from earlier statements he had made about getting out of politics before the elections. There is no clear successor to Mr Somare and groups have been developing in the party around several possible candidates.

Good News In Copra Price Movements

Recent movements in the world price of copra have benefited copra growers in the South Pacific who have been suffering from poor prices for two years. The price for Philippines copra shipped to Europe has risen 17 per cent in recent months. The Philippines price is used as a world guide, and stood at $371 a tonne in April. For copra producers in countries that followed the recent devaluation of the Australian dollar, the improvement in copra prices is even more dramatic.

Former Png Minister Jailed For Rape

A former cabinet minister in Papua New Guinea has been jailed for four years for rape. John Jaminan, still an MP, was convicted in the national court at Mount Hagen on four counts of rape committed against a 16-year-old girl. He had denied having raped the girl at a hotel in Mount Hagen in October 1981. In 1980, Mr Jaminan was health minister in Sir Julius Chan’s government. He was also head of PNG’s National Intelligence Organisation during its formation. Mr Jaminan is now a member of the parliamentary opposition, but he will lose his seat unless his prison sentence is overthrown on appeal. Under the PNG constitution, anyone sentenced to more than nine months in prison cannot sit in parliament.

Tonga S First Air Fatality?

A plane crash in Tonga in April killed one man and slightly injured five others. It is thought to be Tonga’s first air fatality. The crash, involving a twin-engined Piper Aztec of Tonga Air, happened at Fuaamotu Airport outside Nukualofa. The plane, with five passengers and the pilot aboard, developed landing gear problems during a flight from the main island of Tongatapu to Niuatoputapu to the north. The plane crashed and turned over as the pilot tried to land after returning to Fuaamotu Airport. The dead man was 46-year-old Paula Vivili, a Tongan national. The pilot and the other passengers were treated for slight injuries in hospital. Tongan aviation officials asked New Zealand’s civil aviation authority to send investigators to look into the crash. (See also Deaths of Islands People.)

Fiji Opens New Zealand Consulate

Fiji opened its first consulate in Auckland, New Zealand, in May.

A former first secretary at the Fiji High Commission in Welling ton, lliatia Damu, has been appointed to the Auckland post.