A Magical Mystery Tour

TAHITI, AUSTRALIA, SINGAPORE, KUALA LUMPUR ... AND BACK

Tahitians take a trip to nowhere. By Larry Writer

THE PACIFIC has long had good reason to be wary of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Intelligence networks have buzzed during the past few years with Libya’s destabilising efforts in PNG, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. But in April the spectre of the Mediterranean strongman descended on the Pacific once more and had its wings burned.

In a sensational, if bizarre, incident the Libyan threat to the region was made to seem more ludicrous than sinister. A del egation of Tahitians who may or may not have been taking up an offer to visit Libya was involved in a headline-grabbing, Asian-Pacific wild goose chase.

Colonel Gaddafi has declared that he wants to set up an “anti-imperialist” in ternational front because “the small na tions of the Pacific are in danger”. Libya, he said, would “shoulder the responsibil ity to provide a place where struggling forces could gather”.

So in the light of such largesse, an in trepid party of 11 pro-independence Ta hitians set out on April 3 from Papeete. In a detention area at Sydney Airport the men

would tell Australian police that they were innocent fishermen bound for a confer ence on fishing and agriculture in Malay sia. However, before the men’s plane had set down for its transit stop in Sydney, Australian authorities had been tipped off by French intelligence in Singapore that the Tahitians had links with the Pomare in dependence movement in French Poly nesia and that they were en route to Libya for terrorist training.

The “fishermen” protested their in nocence but were detained for question ing for 24 hours. The group told police that it had no connection with Gaddafi, Libya or the Libyan People’s Bureau in Kuala Lumpur, which is widely believed to be a staging point for visits to Tripoli by Pacific independence activists.

Australian police accepted the Tahi tians’ claims of innocence and allowed them to fly to Singapore. But the men’s tir ing and frustrating odyssey had just be gun. At Singapore’s Changi airport they were detained, questioned, denied entry and sent directly to Kuala Lumpur.

There they were also denied entry and

packed off on the long route home ... via Sydney. Exhausted and furious, they fi nally landed in Tahiti and were promptly barred by authorities from making any comment about their ordeal.

However, the men’s “fishing” alibi seemed to have been blown out of the water when a fellow Pomare member arrived at Papeete airport to meet the Tahitians and contradicted their story when he told pressmen the men had in fact been bound for Libya: not for terrorist training but to attend a conference on the dangers of nu clear explosions.

Authorities in Tahiti were considering laying charges against the Tahiti 11. □

The Tahitian “ fishermen” defy jetlag.