To be or not to be

SHOULD Pitcairn, Palau, Tokelau, Guam and American Samoa be indepen dent? That was the question raised at the

United Nation’s Decolonization sub committee on small territories when it met during May and June.

Unnoticed by most of the world, this is the International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism. The work is in the hands of the Special Committee set up as a result of the 1960 UN Declaration on Decolonization (It actually has 25 mem bers now since Papua New Guinea joined). However, most of the 18 remain ing colonies are seen by many as minute and marginal. Ranging from Pitcairn to New Caledonia, between them, they can muster 1.5 million people.

The Western powers have seen the committee as a place where political hobby horses are put through their places in public. Each year resolutions would appear asserting the “inalienable rights,” to self determination of tiny territories which had evinced no such interest themselves. Last year for example, a

Minister from the British Virgin Islands asserted that they “would not be bullied, provoked, coerced or sweetmouthed into

independence”.

The sub-committee on small territories is now the busiest part of the Special Committee, and deals with places like Pitcairn Island, where 48 descendants of the mutineers from the Bounty live under the light hand of the British Governor who is based several thousand miles in New Zealand, where he doubles up as British Envoy to Auckland. In May a petitioner from Puerto Rico pushed their case for independence without a mandate from the islanders themselves.

In the case of American Samoa, American representative Shirin Tahir- Kheli told the committee that “Ameri can Samoa is proud to be under the American Flag and wishes to continue”, pointing out that 500 soldiers from the territory had fought in the Gulf. In addition federal grants to the territory had totalled USSBO million. Despite an intensive grilling by the Cuban delegate, there was no one from the territory to refute the US’s claims of satisfaction.

In May, a Chamorro, Hope Cristobal,

for the Organisation of People for Indigenous Rights, petitioned for recog nition of Guam’s right to independence.

A few years ago, her arguments might have appeared almost as pointless as the Pitcairn petitioner’s, but as Guam weighs the benefits of Japanese tourism against landhungry US bases, her points may be taken more seriously.

She complained that the “Guam Commonwealth Act was a document based on the choice of all US citizens including the military and their depen dents stationed in the territory. She compared the state of the Chamorros with that of the American Indians, and Eskimos, claiming that whereas Guam’s population was 90 per cent indigenous in 1940, it has since shrunk to about half, while she welcomed the Act’s involve ment of the Chamorros in their own affairs, she said it was only “a significant prelude” to the eventual exercise of self determination.

She asked for the committee to continue its annual reviews of the status of Guam since the US government finds objectionable the Chamorro self determi nation and mutual consent provision of the Commonwealth Act. She claimed there would be significant resistance by the Chamorros to any attempt to water down these provisions in the US Con gress.

As the Palauans, the last remaining clients of the Trusteeship Council, have demonstrated, having an international forum to vent ones problems, is indeed an effective way to press the administering powers for a better deal.

It is cases like these which make Norway feel there is a genuine role for it.

Its representative, Hans Lehne, has been instrumental in steering through sugges tions to reduce what some see as the ritualistic aspect of the committee’s work.

“I think the committee has lost a lot of its credibility in the last four years, because of extraneous matters being brought in like the Israeli occupied territories, and apartheid”, he told Pacific Islands Monthly. “Apart from that, I think that there is a real potential for the committee to do a good job, if it reforms itself. It may appear like a ritual to some, but is is very important to some of the people of these territories.” His suggestions, now adopted, call for one omnibus resolution to go from the committee, rather than the long series of

separate, repetitive resolutions which have traditionally cluttered the agenda of the General Assembly.

He has been supported in his reform efforts by Ambassador Renagi Lohia, of Papua New Guinea, who vigorously defends the Committee’s work on small territories . “ If the Pi tC airners are happy, they should say so, and we can take them D ff the list. The list is of territories where t here has not been a referendum on the

options, independence, association, or

integration, a decision has to be taken.”

The first draft omnibus resolution on a p the territories calls for self determi nation by the year 2000. With intrac table problems like East Timor and the Falklands, let alone New Caledonia, on its books, few expect the committee’s work to be completely finished by the end of the century! □