Letters

Strange Bedfellows

IT IS MY duty to express concern about the visit to Fiji by the French Frigate Balny between January 24 and 28. The visit re flects closer links between Suva and Paris.

While Fiji’s trade links with the French via the European Economic Community are perhaps unavoidable, the post-May 1987 trend toward closer “friendly” ties with Paris are not essential and are likely to sour Fiji’s relations with her Melane sian neighbours. On a broader level, con nections with France (which systematically denies the right of self-determination to her colonies, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia) does not contribute to Fiji’s international image.

It is well known that the French have tested more than 80 nuclear bombs on Mururoa. These tests continue despite protests by Pacific nations and despite the call by the International Court of Justice at the Hague for the tests to be discontin ued. The Pacific Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches and the Pa cific Trade Union Council have all called for an end to these tests. Protests by Ta hitians, who are increasingly aware of the danger of the tests, are suppressed.

In the early 1970 s Fiji was involved with Australia and New Zealand in sponsoring a United Nations Resolution against the tests. More than a decade later, after hav ing resorted to terrorism in sinking the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, the French carry on their tests. They also send a warship to Fiji on a “goodwill” visit!

On the issue of self-determination for colonised people, the French are being stubborn. Calls for independence in New Caledonia and Tahiti have been forcefully resisted by the French. In New Caledonia, where the French have alienated 90 per cent of the land, Kanaks have been im prisoned, beaten up, shot at even killed for seeking national sovereignty.

It is unbecoming for Fiji, where the protection of indigenous rights was the pretext for the overthrow of the constitu tional and democratic process, to frater nise with a power that has for so long oppressed the native peoples of neigh bouring territories. Under normal demo cratic circumstances, supporters of a nuclear-free and independent Pacific would have organised peaceful protests against the visit by the French frigate to Suva. These would have shown our re gional neighbours and the world that not all the people of Fiji want closer ties with those who deny the wishes of a majority of Pacific peoples to live in freedom, with justice and peace.

Vijay Naidu Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group Suva, Fiji

Manuscripts Bureau Seeks Help

THE Pacific Manuscripts Bureau was es tablished in 1968 with the aim of locating unpublished or “semi-published” mate rial of current or potential value to re search workers involved in Pacific studies whether historical, literary or scientific.

The Bureau welcomes documents of all kinds and on all subjects: diaries, note books, genealogies and family records; unpublished novels, stories and plays; songs, music and drawings; newspapers and letters; records of plantation, mining, trading, business and shipping activities and any material that falls within the def inition of “unpublished” material. Even a brief personal letter could help future gen erations understand how people lived and thought in the islands.

As part of the Bureau’s activities, it has published an index covering the period 1930 to 1945 at present out of print, but possibly available in the future on micro film and one from 1945 to 1955. The 1945-55 index is available for SA2S plus postage from; Pacific Manuscripts Bureau GPO Box 4, Canberra ACT, Australia 2601.

I am writing to ask your readers not only to support the Pacific Manuscripts Bu reau through the loan of manuscript ma terial (which will be copied at no cost to its owners and returned with a microcopy, if requested), but to contact the Bureau at the address above to express their interest in-principle in our continuing to publish indexes of our collections. This would be of great help in assessing whether the in terest level is high enough to repay the large financial burden of their preparation and publication.

The Pacific Manuscript Bureau would be happy to send a brochure describing its aims and activities to any readers of Pa cific Islands Monthly , and invites them to contact the Bureau if they have material they feel would be of interest to us.

Bess Flores Executive Director Pacific Manuscripts Bureau Australian National University Canberra, Australia

Australia’S Role

AUSTRALIA’S shadow Foreign Minister John Spender is right. We should be pay ing as much, if not more, attention to events in our own backyard instead of poking our nose into the affairs of South Africa. Instability in PNG, poverty in the Torres Strait, Fiji still a powderkeg, and what about the Aboriginals? Let’s get our priorities in order, Mr Hayden.

Patricia Pawes Shrimpton Western Australia