Time to ask questions

Your June PIM interview with Barak Sope, General Secretary of the Vanuaaku Party makes one wonder if Father Walter Lini, Mr Sope, or, for that matter, your interviewer, has ever bothered to read Amnesty’s report on Libya, which documents an extreme abuse of human rights.

If the Vanuatu government truly admires Col Gaddafi, do they also admire the things he has boasted of, such as assassinating even his Libyan political opponents (“stray dogs”), at home and abroad as well?

Australian academics have returned from Tripoli and Benghazi sickened by having had to watch public executions of students take place at the universities where they have been working.

Chinese factory-workers, themselves hardly enjoying any very advanced forms of democracy, have in recent times been unable to contain their disgust at political conditions in Libya after spending 18 months there on contract.

If it is reactions of this kind to Libyan government policies that Mr Robert Crain (PIM August) means by his words “right wing” and “anti-independence”, then he seems to be using a language other than English. Newspeak perhaps.

Is it true that Vanuatu government leaders are not only very friendly with Libyan supporters of Gaddafi, but also with

Cuban supporters of Castro? Is the reason they express for this friendliness that Libya and Cuba exemplify the kind of independ ence they admire? Afghanistan too, perhaps? Vietnam? Poland? etc.

It is time that those who actually do strongly believe in the cause of democracy and national self-determination started asking questions not merely about coun tries like these, but also, for example, about the countries of Soviet Central Asia, about the Ukraine and about the Baltic states.

And of course about Russia itself.

Yes, Canberra’s complaining about Vanuatu’s acceptance of Libyan representa tion, and Canberra’s anxiety about Soviet fishing agreements, do indeed seem hypocritical. If the leaders of Vanuatu value independence and human rights, it is they who should be complaining to Canberra about Canberra’s continual hobnobbing within Soviet client-states, who are the world’s worst enemies of independence. It is Vanuatu who should be requesting Can berra to delay the granting of representa tion to Libya and such countries, at least until the Libyan people are free enough to elect their own government.

R. J. Beveridge

Monash University, Australia

Uranium sales

THE Australian Government has announced that it will re sume the sale of uranium to France.

As most people are aware, uranium is one of the materials necessary for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It seems quite strange that Australia, having signed the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty and as a member of the South Pacific Forum, will now be supplying France with nuclear materials.

Quite strange, indeed. With friends like these, why worry about the Russians?

Michael Lafreniere

Honiara, Solomon Islands