DeRoburt helped change Nauru's destiny

By Michael Held

As political leaders of the century go nobody quite touches Hammer Deßoburt for intrigue and mystery.

While he was tainted with corruption and frequently accused of gross mismanagement, Nauru owes its continued existence to the man who fought for their

independence.

He was born in 1923 when his country, just south of the Equator, was being destroyed by its new colonial masters, Britain, Australia and New Zealand who were secretly violating the League of Nation’s mandate they had been given over the former German colony.

Deßoburt got an education in Australia and became, for a time, part of the administration on the island until 1942 when the Japanese showed up.

The Japanese seemed to have a strange hatred of the Nauruans, subjecting them to a great deal of violence and insult - even while recognising that they were a

colonised people supposedly being

liberated from the West.

During the war 1200 Nauruans were taken off Nauru to Chuuk as slaves. By war’s end only 793 survived - including 23year-old Hammer Deßoburt.

In 1955, Deßoburt became the Head Chief of the Nauru Local Government Council, a position he was to never give up.

He, more than anybody else, led the charge for Nauru’s independence -and he had to deal the most with Australia which resisted him. At one point during negotiations Australia, anxious to hold onto

the phosphate riches, proposed moving the

Nauruans to Curtis Island off Queensland.

DeRoburt, observing it was rich in mosquitoes, dismissed the proposal saying it would mean the Nauruans would become like “another tribe of Aboriginals.”

He passionately argued his case before the UN Trusteeship Council, as noted in one of its reports.

“At its thirty-third session. Councillor Hammer DeRoburt, member of the Australian delegation and elected Head Chief of the Nauruan people, informed the Trusteeship Council that there was a very strong and earnest desire on the part of the Nauruan people to remain the people of a distinct small nation, which in a sense they were. No matter how small they were and how unimportant they may be to others, they wanted to be free to perpetuate their Continued next page

Continued from previous page homogeneity and to preserve themselves as a distinct people and nation. They wanted to shape their own destiny.”

In 1968 Nauru won its independence.

“In the end the people of Nauru had come to the conclusion that the island of Nauru, to which they had always belonged, must be their permanent homeland,”

Deßoburt said.

Hammer Deßoburt became president upon independence, serving from 1968 to 1976. He was returned to the presidency in 1978 and was re-elected in 1980, 1983, and 1987.

Deßoburt died in Melbourne in 1992.

He was a sinister man in many ways.

Unsmiling, short and aggressive, he surrounded himself with strange advisers.

He flew with a briefcase of money and turned Air Nauru into his personal carrier.

He was legendary for interfering in other countries, particularly the Cook Islands and Samoa. He was very secretive; Nauru would not belong to any international organisations under his leadership and government accounts was sparse at best.

History is coming to judge him as the father of his modern country but also the man who lost all the family silver. ■