PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY Australia A&^bu Cook Islands NZ$3.OO Fiji F 51.75 Hawaii Kiribati A 52.00 Nauru A 52,00 New Caledonia CFP2SO New Zealand NZ$3.OO Niue NZ$2.5O Norfolk Island A 52.00 Papua New Guinea K 2.00 Solomon Islands 552.00 Tahiti CFP3OO Tonga P 2.00 Tuvalu A 52.00 USA US$3.OO USTT and Guam US$2.5O Vanuatu VT2.00 Western Samoa T 2.75 ♦Recommended retail price only DECEMBER 1988 NZ Islands Affairs Minister Ousted 'Blood Feud' M in Hawaii Ml 'Voter Fatigue' ujj Hits Noumea M Industry Boost For Kiribati PNG's Coffee Industry in Trouble

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CITIZEN CITIZEN IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF CITIZEN WATCH CO, JAPAN FOR FURTHER INFORMATION. PLEASE CONTACT: Australia:Citizen Watches Australia Pty. Ltd., 122 Old Pittwater Road, Brookvale, NSW 2100.

Tel: 939 7077. Cable; Citizen Sydney.

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Fiji Islands: Tappoo Limited, P.O. Box, Sigatoka, Fiji. Tel; 50199. Telex: FJ4244.

New Zealand: Citizen Watches (N.Z.) Ltd., P.O. Box 9518, Auckland, New Zealand.

Tel: 543 393. Telex; 21429. Fax: 544177.

Tahiti: Morgan Vernex, Fare Lite B.P. 449, Tahiti.

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Papua New Guinea: Kara Pty. Limited, P.O. Box 392, Port Moresby. Tel 25 6044

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY Vol. 59 No. 12

Voice Of The Pacific

December, ’BB Cover Story 16 For the first time, the readers of Pacific Islands Monthly have been given the opportunity of choosing their Pacific Leader of the Year. They have responded by ‘electing’ Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, Rabbie Namaliu, citing his devotion to his country, his intellectual strengths . . . and, we suspect, the very contrast to PNG’s previous leaders, who appear to have judged policy as less electorally attractive than politicking. Frank Senge profiles the man and his political biography.

Cover Photograph: Oliver Strewe/Wildlight

ISLANDERS "ACCIDENTAL VICTIMS" IN NZ MINISTER'S FALL 9 Richard Prebble’s dismissal from Cabinet angers his Polynesian supporters

Palau Chooses A New Leader 10

Few surprises as the troubled territory elects a successor to Lazarus Salii FLNKS GAINS, NATIONAL FRONT LOOMS IN NEW CALEDONIA 12 The big loser in last month’s French referendum is RPCR leader Lafleur

A Deadly Legacy For America'S Pacific Paradise 14

Pesticides threaten Hawaii’s green and lovely environment HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE SPOTLIGHT TURNS ON THE PACIFIC 18 Amnesty International reports torture, execution and more

More Of The Same For Us Island Territories 20

Democrates and Republicans tie in Hawaii, Guam and American Samoa

Greed And Genetics Stir Opposition In Hawaii 22

Developers vs democracy and a new ‘Native Hawaiian’

Fringe Politics And Mental Health: Who Loses? 24

Radical Maori activists blasted in New Zealand

Bringing The Work Ethic To The Islands 26

Fiji employers seek to develop the West’s economic model

Keeping The Faith Far From Home 28

A photo-essay report on Sydney’s thriving Tongan community PEOPLE OF Ihl 31 Plastic surgery brings new hope to isolated communities

Development Or Disease For Png Coffee? 34

Market fluctuations, politics and rust threaten a boom industry

America Opens Doors To Island Migrants 36

But as US loopholes opens, Canada restricts entry

Pacific People: The Region

Finds Its Own Voice 42

Tongan author Epeli Hau’ofa amuses md scandalises

Arts Festival On Film 45

Townsville’s arts celebration now availihle on video Deputy Editor Carson Creagh Art Director Samantha Foster Editorial Adviser John Carter Contributors Robin Bromby Leonie von Hellmers John Hunter Stuart Inder Matthew McKee Rex Matthews Michael Moriarty David S North Ed Rampell David Robie Nicolas Rothwell Frank Senge Rovert Simms Rosalind Temariti Publisher and Managing Editor Geoffrey Hussey Advertising Sales Sydney & Melbourne Warren Grey (02) 288 3521 Fergus Maclagan (02) 412 3918; Brisbane Robert Walker (07) 3710533 Adelaide Hastwell Williamson Representations (08) 79 9522 Cover prices are recommended retail only Registered by Australia Post, publication No NBPI2IO Copyright Fiji Times Limited, Suva, Fiji Departments OPINION 7 PACIFIC REPORT 27 TRADE WINDS 38 TROPICALITIES 40 STAMPS 46 ISLAND PRESS 46 TRANSITION 47 BOOK REVIEWS 48

Shipping Schedules 50

OUT OF THE PAST 54 5 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988 A Fiji Times Limited Production.

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NBP 1210) is published monthly by Fiji Times Limited, a division of Nationwide News. 2 Holt St, Surry Hills, NSW 2010.

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OPINION Leader Of The Year Readers chose a young and dynamic leader whose country stands on the threshold of immense regional power.

FOR THE FIRST time in the 58-year history of Pacific Islands Monthly, the magazine’s many thousands of readers have been asked to select the man or woman they feel has best guided the destiny of a nation or an organisation. They have responded by ‘electing’ as 1988 Pacific Leader of the Year Papua New Guinea’s energetic and formidably intelligent young Prime Minister, Rabbie Namaliu.

Nominations for Rabbie Namaliu outnumbered those for other Pacific leaders by a comfortable margin; and they came not only from Papua New Guinea itself but from Australia, New Zealand, other island nations . . . even from the United States, Canada and Europe. In fact, there were more from PlM’s far-flung readers than there were from PNG a reflection, certainly, of that country’s understandable caution about a Prime Minister who came to power through a vote of no confidence, and one who manifestly lacks the charisma of his predecessor.

Instead, ‘voters’ from PNG as well as from other parts spoke of Mr Namaliu’s devotion to the task that lies ahead of him; of his intellect and powers of formulating policy; of his persistence; and, indeed, of his absence of political showmanship: his, they felt, is a talent that manifests itself in accomplishment rather than demagoguery.

Nevertheless, Rabbie Namaliu has yet to demonstrate that his accomplishments so far will last, and that they will be given the chance to bear fruit. He appears to have the co-operation of the Opposition in his plans to amend tne Constitution, to remove the potentially disastrous possibility of a no-confidence motion bringing down a Government before it has had time to find its feet. The Opposition, of course, has its own interests well in mind in this case: for wnat is good for today’s Government will stand tomorrow’s of whatever political stripe in equally good stead.

He has seen more of the world in which politicians and businessmen operate than many of his fellow parliamentarians. He knows there is no simple solution, but he recognises that even the most humble solution will not work unless and until the people of PNG are better educated.

No matter where the circle is entered, the course remains the same: better education means greater awareness of social responsibility; better education means awareness of social responsibility and identity on a national rather than village, regional or tribal scale; national awareness means a better appreciation of national opportunities rather than selfaggrandising policies. Realistic policies in turn mean an appreciation of wnat can be attained, over the longest possible time and for the benefit of the greatest number of people . . . and the realisation that such myopic policies will not be accepted by a better-educated electorate.

Despite his inexperience in the cut and thrust of contemporary PNG politics, it would appear Rabbie Namaliu has the vision to work for the good of his country by creating that circle. He has eschewed ‘development’ as a panacea; he has contracted the previous Government’s plans to flood the nation with schemes for income generation. Instead, he has grasped the difficult policy of providing a better standard of education not to hold out a promise of wealth and opportunity (a promise that cannot be met, and that will not be met for some time), but to make his countrymen aware of what they can achieve for themselves.

Fewer than 15 years after Independence, Papua New Guinea has discovered it possesses resource wealth that could make it the most powerful nation in Oceania. If the readers of Pacific Islands Monthly are proved right in their judgment, Papua New Guinea also possesses a resource of a richer kind: a leader who can use his country’s wealth in the service of enhancing its human potential. □ 7 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

(Formerly South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation [SPEC])

Forum Secretariat

Financial Controller

Applications are invited from citizens of member countries for the position of Financial Controller within the Forum Secretariat. The Secretariat, based in Suva, was established to encourage co-operation in the South Pacific not only between member states in the region, but also between island member states and more industrialised countries on all aspects of economic development, trade, transport, tourism, telecommunications and energy.

The appointee will be responsible for the efficient management of the Secretariat’s Finance & Accounting Division, including the development and maintenance of efficient accounting & financial management systems, financial reporting procedures and the preparation of the Secretariat’s annual Estimated Work Programme and Budget Applicants should possess an appropriate degree with a major in accounting from a recognised tertiary institution. The applicant must be a member of a recognised professional body with at least 8 years experience in accounting and financial activities, and exposure to general management and administration. Experience with computerised financial accounting systems is necessary and previous experience in a regional organisation would be advantageous.

This appointment will carry an attractive remuneration package, tax-free for non Fiji citizens and payable in Fiji dollars, including housing or housing allowance, education and chijd allowance, superannuation payments and medical, life and travel insurance benefits. The appointee will be based at the Secretariat’s Headquarters in Suva, Fiji, but may be required to undertake periodic duty travel.

Appointment would be for two years initially, renewable by mutual agreement.

Applications close on 31 January 1989. As it is intended to make the appointment as soon as possible, the successful applicant must be able to take up the position shortly afterwards. Applications should contain full information on education and career background and should list names, addresses and telephone numbers of at least three referees with whom the applicant has been associated in a professional capacity.

Applications should be addressed to: The Director Forum Secretariat GPO Box 856, Suva, Fiji.

Telephone: 312600; Telex 2229 FJ; Fax: 302204 All enquiries should be made to Mr Rene Wilson, Deputy Director, on 312600 extension 202.

A new Pacific profit motive?

Self-sufficiency can be gained through effort . . . but at what price?

THE PRINCIPAL employers of Fiji got together last month and in a review of where the Republic’s business community stands and where it may be going suggested that if the Government’s aim of lifting Fijian participation in business until a significant proportion of the national economy was in Fijian hands is to succeed, then Fijians would have to become much more selfish and individualistic.

Fiji is not alone in facing the choice between the islands idyll and a place in the world where only hard-heaaed business decisions, unclouded by past social principles and free of family fetters, can give the freedom to move an economy.

But Fiji has leapt into the spotlight, as it were, with the coups and the constitution drama, so that the choice is more starkly present for Fiji than for smaller Pacific countries. Let them not be smug about it, however: “be tough and be businesslike, or be nothing” is the way the world runs.

Major-General Rabuka wants to perpetuate not only Fijian hegemony but also some very admirable social Qualities: and one does not have to share the General’s personal religious outlook to appreciate the value of tne sabbath ne hopes to uphold. A day a week of thorough rest is a very healthy contribution to a life of balanced content.

That, however, is not the way to make millions.

Such values have to be left to the also-rans, who can indulge in ease and excuse themselves for not succeeding because the price was too high. And you can’t have too much common or community ownership of services or resources: Australia and New Zealand are discovering that if the government owns the railways or the port facilities they only lose money, so those nations are joining the world movement to put as much as possible into private hands.

The motive is to make every service pay (though quantifying the profitability of health, for example, or education, has so far eluded philosophers).

So, Fiji is being told, it is necessary to individualise land ownership so that, if not buying and selling land you can at least use it as collateral for a loan for your business. Nauru has already found that land can be portioned out in precise shares to all the traditional owners ... an adaptation of historical relationships the ancestors never envisaged.

Sadly, there’s no going back. Nostalgia is a luxury that can still be enjoyed, but the substance is gone and even if you aeplore the materialistic culture of these who arrive with plans for tourist development or resource exploitation, you have to meet them on terms of equal toughness if you’re going to retain your heritage and reed your people.

It is, as tne Pacific is discovering to its chagrin, a tough world. □ 8 OPINION PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

New Zealand

Island Affairs minister ousted Richard Prebble’sdismissal outrages islanders.

By Robin Bromby THE New Zealand Government has achieved political synergy in its approach to the South Pacific . . . by making the same minister responsible for both foreign and Pacific Island affairs. Given that New Zealand claims the Pacific has top priority in its overseas relations, the decision to give the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Russell Marshall, the Pacific Islands portfolio does make sense (associate minister Fran Wilde will also be involved in both: she will probably bear the brunt of the Pacific Islands work).

Marshall has taken on the job after former minister Richard Preoble said that Prime Minister David Lange was not making rational decisions, and was dismissed from Cabinet. The Pacific Island Affairs portfolio was an accidental victim; Prebble clashed with the PM over his administration of his major responsibility, the State-Owned Enterprises portfolio, because he had wanted to speed up the sale of government-owned assets. He ended up being NZ’s first Minister to be dismissed from office this century even Native Affairs Minister Sir Apirana Ngata was allowed to resign after financial irregularities were discovered in his department back in 1934.

The Prebble dismissal has upset many Pacific islanders resident in New Zealand, for whom the Pacific Island Affairs portfolio was established. And Richard Prebble was the ideal choice for the job: he is MP for Auckland central, where 64 per cent of the islanders resident in New Zealand live.

Russell Marshall, on the other hand, represents the provincial city of Wanganui, which has a large Maori population but few Pacific migrants.

Prebble supporters are reported to have circulated a petition seeking his reinstatement, their argument being that it was the State-owned Enterprises role and not the Pacific portfolio at the centre of the dispute with Prime Minister Lange. Just a few days after the dismissal, Mr Lange had been due to open the new Auckland office of the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs.

The opening was cancelled, apparently because it was feared island community leaders would have used the occasion to present their petition to him. The cancellation of the opening also angered island people in Auckland; the news came after a food had been ordered, cultural displays readied and singing groups had practised. About 1000 invitations had already been mailed.

Mr Marshall told Pacific Islands Monthly his initial reaction had been reluctance to take on more work. But he said he realised the sense of combining the two portfolios.

New Zealand’s most recent census shows 127,000 resident Pacific islanders, and it is expected the 1991 figure will be about 170,000 slightly more than the entire population of Western Samoa. About naif the islanders living in New Zealand are Samoan and roughly a quarter are of Cook Island origin, with large Niuean and Tongan communities. There are few Melanesians or Micronesians, reflecting New Zealand’s long connection with Polynesia.

The community has substantial problems, hence the setting up of a separate ministry to deal with their concerns: islanders populate the poorer inner city suburbs of Auckland (or the even more bleak suburban state housing estates), fill the more menial jobs and have problems adjusting to the language and cultural life in New Zealand. But island people can earn good money if employed, and their remittances are crucial to their homelands’ economies.

Russell Marshall admittd that he has a lot of work ahead to him before he can come to grips with the new portfolio; when Minister of Education he was familiar with the gigantic task of helping island children make their way in the New Zealand school system, but otherwise his contact with migrant communities has not been all that great. The Government is still placing great emphasis on Pacific preschooling to give these children a good start in the education system.

He also revealed that New Zealand will be making its relations with the Pacific states its “major foreign policy commitment”. Since Decoming Foreign Minister after the 1987 general election, Mr Marshall has made three trips through Polynesia as well as attending the recent Forum meeting in Tonga.

His immediate priorities are: a new diplomatic post in Kiribati; upgrading Radio New Zealand’s shortwave service to make the country heard once again in the region; and establishing a consulate in French Polynesia.

He has been “impressed” by the dominance of Radio Australia in the region, and is hoping the 1989 budget will allow spending on New Zealand’s shortwave service. While most international broadcasters use transmitters ranging in power from 100,000 to 500,000 watts, Radio New Zealand has two 7500 W transmitters that have been in service since the late 19405.

They can scarcely be heard in the South Pacific and even if reception is adequate, the programs rarely are; the shortwave service, having no budget of its own, mainly relays one of the domestic radio networks.

Radio Australia is now the most listened-to station in the region and its news and other programs are frequently relayed on island stations. The Foreign Minister said there is an obvious need to redress the communications rivalry more in New Zealand’s favour: “I am under no illusion of its importance in foreign affairs,” he said.

The importance the government in Wellington now attaches to the Pacific is markedly different from the policies of 20 years ago. In the late 19605, Fijian Prime Minister Ratu (later Sir) Kamisese Mara complained while on a visit to Wellington that his country felt rather neglected, adding: “I think New Zealand may get a pain in the neck looking always at Southeast Asia it should exercise it by turning its neck toward the Pacific.”

At the end of 1988, no one can now accuse New Zealand of overlooking its nearest neighbours. □ Dual Foreign Affairs and Pacific portfolios represent a huge workload for new incumbent Russell Marshall.

Matthew Mck Ee

9 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

PALAU Voters echo US caution More change equals more of the same.

By Ed Rampell COMPACT of Free Association advocate Governor Ngiratkel Etpison has emerged as the victor m tne Republic of Palau’s seven candidate presidential race . . . with a mere 39-vote win. With 2383 votes, Etpison edged past Governor Roman Tmetuchl’s tally of 2344 ballots to snatch victory from the reform element in Palauan politics, with the result of the Republic’s general elections a mirror of election results in the US.

With Etpison’s victory, the pro- Compact Ta Belau Party formerly led by late President Lazarus Salii retains control of the presidency, just as the Republicans retained their domination of the White House with George Bush. However, like President-elect Bush, President-elect Etpison is facing a national Congress with both Houses dominated by tne Opposition.

Furthermore, the Coalition for Open, Honest, and just Government succeeded in electing its candidate.

Senator Kuniwo Nakamura, to the Vice-Presidency (the President and Vice President do not run as an official team). Senator Nakamura is the brother of Supreme Court Chief justice Mamoru Nakamura, who has ruled against the Compact in favour of Palau’s nuclear-free constitution in historic court cases, and Tosiwo Nakamura, who introduced the framed rules’ anti-nuclear provisions at the 1979 Constitutional Convention.

Hence, with a split ticket and a Coalition-dominatea OEK (Senate and House of Delegates), Governor Etpison faces a deeply divided Palau.

It is this divisiveness that has characterised the Republic’s political life since ancient times, and which cost Governor Tmetuchl the 1988 election: the Airai State Governor came in second to late President Haruo Remeliik in the 1980 and 1984 presidential races. In the special election held after Remeliik’s assassination in june 1985, Tmeluchl’s son and nephew were framed for the murder, knocking the Opposition leader out of contention (the co-defendants were eventually exonerated by the ROP Supreme Court in 1987). With the creation of the broad-based Coalition, 1988 finally seemed to be the year for the long-term Compact critic.

The Coalition had been formed to protect Palauan civil libertires and human rights; Tmetuchl backed the call for a Special Prosecutor and auditor to look into political violence and corruption, and endorsed the continuing investigation by the United States Congress’s watchdog agency, the General Accounting Office, into Palau’s myriad problems. The former political status negotiator is also supported a renegotiation of the ties between Palau and its superpower ‘protector’, and Governor Tmetuchl and his Coalition enjoyed wide popularity.

Many Palauan politicians as well as the grass-roots anti-nuclear movement led In Roman Bedor also supported both the Coalition’s cause ana its candidates, but a Tmetuchl /Coalition victory was not to be largely thanks to the blunderings of three other candidates linked to Palau’s loosely aligned Opposition. The trio of spoilers evcntuallv finished fifth, sixth, and seventh in trie presidential sweepstakes, succeeding in defeating the Coalition’s campaign.

High Chief Ibedul Yutaka Gibbons, apparently not content with holding Palau’s highest traditional rank, came in a distant fifth place with 729 votes: Ibedul was hampered with allegations by the GAO that he took a $200,000 bribe from the IPS ECO power project that has effectively bankrupted Palau, and former Speaker of the House Santos Olikong, the last to toss his hat into the ring, polled out 475 voles.

The first candidate to enter the race, Governor Moses Uludong, finished next to last with 588 votes.

Uludong has been blasted by opponents as a ‘sold-out socialist’, a former anti-nuclear and pro-independence activist who, sensing that me winds have changed, now endorses commonwealth status which would territorially bind Palau to America forever. In addition to a rape-related course case brought against Uludong by an American attorney, the media has charged hin with misappropriation of public funds and has even Questioned his sanity. Like his brother Cisco Uludong who publicly advertises himself as ‘a Marxist tunica moneymaker' Moses Uludong epitomises what has bedeviled Palauan politics for decades by virtually guaranteeing a ‘progressive’ candidate cannot become president.

The pro-Compact bloc was also split, however, between three candidates all supporting the treaty that would phase out American administration of a United Nations Trusteeship with a new political status granting Palau limited nome rule and substantial US funding, while Washington assumed defence responsibilities. Interim President Thomas Remengesau finished third with 1761 votes, while Minister of State John O Ngiraked came in fourth with 764 votes: 4908 voters cast their ballots for Compact advocates while 4136 members of the electorate chose candidates who have been critical of the accord for years.

Nevertheless, the two-man Vice Presidential race illustrates the power of unity in Palauan politics. Unopposed by any other Opposition contenders and backed by the Coalition, Senator Nakamura was elected in a landslide over Delegate Frank Kazuo Asanuma (one of the central figures in the GAO investigations).

In a nation where two elected presidents have died violently, the presidential race was oddly crowded: one would think the Palau presidency would be least popular job m the Pacific. President-elect Etpison seems to have the dynamism and political strength for the job, Ngiratkel Etpison, 63, was born during the Japanese occupation of Micronesia, ana tnough he speaks fluent Palauan and apancsc he speaks no English. Etpison is, however, one of Palau’s most successful businessmen.

The President-elect is the Governor of Ngatpang State, which is located on the island of Babeldaob’s West Coast: he also holds Ngatpang’s highest chiefly title, Rekemesit. Like his rival Roman Tmetuchl, Etpison is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church and has also served as head of the Council of Governors, composed of the executive of Palau’s 16 stales.

Many regard Governor Etpison as a clean’ businessman and politician in the corruption-racked Republic: he has not, for example, been personally implicated in either the PEsCO scandal or presidential assassinations. But questions have been raised by the President-elect’s assumption of the Salii mantle and his association with Ta Belau Party, which includes a pro- Compact faction allegedly linked not only to IPSECO but to the violence that has plagued Palau. Some observers fear that the supposed secret society (known as ‘Panama’), which was responsible for crime and corruption in Palau, will also attempt to pull the strings of the new chief executive but tne Ta Belau Party’s rank and file and those who voted for it are honest citizens who support Free Association, as are a clear majority of Palauans. □ 10 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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New Caledonia

France reluctant to vote Prime Minister Rocard struggles to inspire his countrymen.

By Nicolas Rothwell M EW CALEDONIAN politics in the 1980 s seem ineluctably | marked by the rhythms of Frencn tragedy: disaster breeds hope, resolution gives way to enmity and revenge. So it was with the November b referendum held by France to provide a national imprimatur for the Malignon Accord for this August, brokered by Prime Minister Michel Rocard between the leaders of the two Caledonian communities for the Kanaks, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, for the Caldoches, Jacques Lafleur.

The script developed in mid-year by Mr Rocard, a tireless and imaginative politician, was breathtaking in its simplicity: agree to peace, consult the French people, bind the entire nation to the deal then let the plan mature for 10 years.

Unfortunately, the French people demonstrated their sublime indifference to this vision; barely one in three bothered to turn out for the referendum which was, unbelievably, the seventh major vote of the year. Participatory democracy is all very well, it seems, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

Most mainland French citizens showed little interest in the referendum campaign, despite an advertising blitz encouraging them to vote. Polls uncovered an almost hallucinatory ignorance on the part of the homme moyen as to the issues behind the referendum, the options of the ballot papers ... or even the geographical location of New Caledonia itself.

By the end of polling day fewer than 14 million of Frances 38 million electors had turned out. More than 12 million of them actually expressed a preference, and exactly four in five of these backed the Rocard proposals.

But in the territory itself the result was a disturbing mirror image of the national verdict.

Turnout was heavy throughout New Caledonia: two in three electors voted there and, ominously, they split down racial lines. The Kanaks solidly supported the referendum proposals, which pave the way for a further 1998 self-determination vote. But the European population of the territory spurned tne lead offered by Mr Lafleur. They voted heavily against the French Government plans, which have now automatically passed into law despite their opposition.

New Caledonia, then, faces a future rather different from the harmonious progress glimpsed by Prime Minister Rocard: Tne Caldoche community has been consigned by an uninterested mainland French population to a decade of development toward an independence vote they fiercely oppose.

Their preferred political representatives (if the raw judgment of the November poll can be read in such terms) are no longer the leaders of the Gaullist offshoot on the territory, the RPCR. If the European community feels sympathy for any political grouping it would be the sole party that called for a ‘no’ vole, the right-wing National Front.

This referendum result marks a punctuation point in New Caledonia’s political evolution. For Kanak leader Tjibaou of the FLNKS, it represents the triumph of a strategy of restraint; the fruit of long years of political alliance with French President Francois Mitterrand, whose Socialist Party is now firmly in control of the French Government. Only in a few communes where breakaway Kanak parties (FULK and Palika) are strong did the blanket ‘yes’ vote across the northern and eastern regions waver.

For the RPCR’s Lafleur the Malignon Accord, signed in the wake of this year’s disastrous political violence, had sealed a startling political conversion.

A ‘loyalist’ and long-term public opponent of the FLNKS, Lafleur sought to deliver his European backers to the camp of peace and development even though independence lurked as the likely outcome in 1988. They felt betrayed . . . and voted with their feet.

Lafleur is in poor health; his resignation is widely canvassed in the French press, though he says he will stay on as RPCR leader to underline his “profound intimate conviction that these accords will bring peace to New Caledonia” and also keep the territory inside the French Republic. behind these referendum results lies a story of intense political manoeuvres, alliances forged and gainsaid, and the unfurling of emotive French political symbols. The longterm effect on France’s Pacific profile is uncertain, but PM Rocard and his advisers now face an urgent struggle to win the trust of the European population of New Caledonia: for the Caldoches have just given solid proof of their hostility to the Prime Minister’s own plans for the territory.

Lafleur today appears in new' guise that of a prophet without honour in his own land. His advisers confirm that he will probably remain at the helm of his party until next year’s municipal (March) and provincial (June) elections, but if his traditional electorate fails to support him then he will find it hard not to stand aside, though there is no-one of similar stature within the RPCR. Confusion and an intense struggle for political control in the European community of New Caledonia would be likely.

If the referendum served to strengthen Tjibaou and destabilise Lafleur Caldoche settlers fear independence; the result is that support for the Far Right grows in New Caledonia as it dissipates in France. 12 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

in the territory itself, its effects in France were equally disconcerting for the political establishment. The socialist Government of Michel Rocard, supported in a last-minute televised appeal to the nation by President Mitterrand, threw its weight behind the referendum proposals. The record abstention rate undoubtedly reflected the electorate’s disenchantment with French politics, its ‘voting fatigue’ and indifference to far-off New Caledonia’s fate. But the effect was also to damage Rocard’s prestige and even to cheapen the referendum procedure itself, once a keystone of tne Fifth Republic’s multi-layered democracy.

Though Rocard and Mitterrand had made plain this was a new style of referendum rather than the traditional ‘vote of confidence’ of the type de Gaulle used to great effect, Opposition politicians were swift to capitalise on the result, hinting broadly that both men should resign.

For the conservative Opposition, the referendum campaign posed equally serious problems. The two main strands in the centre-right coalition were split in their stands on the plebiscite: tne Gaullists of the Rassemblement pour la Republique (RPR), still led by Jacques Chirac, called for abstention on the grounds that they could not in all conscience either support or oppose the referendum proposals. Their political campaign was impressively marshalled by the party’s rising star, Alain Juppe.

Meanwhile the centrists of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) under Raymond Barre had called for a ‘yes’ vote, and general disarray was the order of the campaign among smaller centrist formations.

Thus the vote increased strains in the conservative camp; at the same lime, it effectively frayed the ties between the RPR and Lafleur’s local RPCR. Undoubtedly, Caldoche voters were confused by the spectacle of the RPR opposing Lafleur’s position.

On the hard right the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen waged an unremitting fight against the referendum proposals, calling for a flat ‘no’ vote. The Front’s efficient number two, Jean-Pierre Stibois, was killed in a car crash on the eve of the vote a development that may yet prove significant m mainland politics. But in New Caledonia itself the Front, led by Guy George and forcefully supported by a big gun from the mainland party, Roger Holleindre, enhanced its power.

Over the past year this party’s standing has sea-sawed, largely as a result of changes in the voting system.

It has gone from marginal status in New Caledonia and great strength in France itself to weakness on the mainland and startling potency among the European community of the territory.

The Rocard Government assiduously portrayed the referendum vote as a final mandate for its New Caledonia policy, despite the low turnout. Government spokesmen discounted suggestions from the RPR camp that the record level of abstentions would justify a future Gaullist Prime Minister revising crucial elements of the Matignon Accord package.

Imminent visits to the territory by both Prime Minister Rocard and Minister for Overseas Territories Louis Le Pensec will underline the Government’s determination to ensure the new laws are smoothly introduced.

The nuts and bolts are as follows: the territory is to be divided into three regions and a wide range of economic projects launched; a controversial political amnesty comes into force, covering all political offences committed in New Caledonia before the 20 August signing date of the Accords (murder alone excepted); and next June sees the elections for the three Caledonian provincial assemblies the North, with 15 members, the Loyalty Islands, with 7 members, and the South, with 32 members. The first two are certain to be controlled by the FLNKS while the southern region (centred on Noumea) will reflect a strong European majority. The regionalisation enters into force on July 14, 1989.

These three assemblies, whose members will serve six-year terms, are to act as local parliaments with independent budgets and administrations. Sitting together, they will make up the Congress of the territory under the direction of a president. Executive power will remain in the hands of the High Commissioner.

Mr Le Pensec, who will oversee the implementation of the New Caledonia statute, has a ticklish task ahead of him. Faced by the unavoidable facts of the vote ana the choice of six large European communities in the south of New Caledonia (Noumea, Dumbea, Mont-Dore, Bourail, La Foa, Parino) for the ‘no’ ballot in the referendum, the Minister admitted that “clearly the Caldoches did not want” the regionalisation called for by the Accords. “But insofar as violence is born from injustice,” he said, “it is up to us to ensure that equality of opportunity is a fact of life in New Caledonia.”

Jean-Marie Tjibaou of the FLNKS, with his customary 20-20 vision in matters political, summed up the referendum result: “Three parlies signed the Matignon Accord, and that Accord will be fulfilled by three parties. If any one party fails to fulfil the Accord, men that will be the end of the accord. With 57 per cent of New Caledonian voters voting ‘yes’, we can put the Accord into force. But the 42 per cent who voted ‘no’ are a signal for a great, great deal of vigilance the decade ahead will tell us whether a rejectionist front can ruin things; I hope not.”

For the Government in Paris, the task of establishing a harmonious political culture is also linked to a broader regional diplomacy. □ Noumea, right, has seen the bulk of development while Hienghene, below inspires FLNKS support because of its poverty. 13 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

HAWAII Pesticides in Paradise Michael Moriarty looks at the toxic legacy of agriculture in the Aloha State.

M AWAITS fine weather and benign climate are famous the world over: however, yearwarmth and the crowd it attracts produce some problems. A 1968 report by the Slate of Hawaii Department of Agriculture tilled Evaluation of Pesticide Problems in Hawaii concluded that Hawaii used pesticides at a rate fully 10 times higher than the national average.

Hawaii’s pesticide consumption is three and a half limes the per capita national average and six times than of its nearest neighbour, California a major agricultural state. Meanwhile, dry stream beds on Oahu are kept clear of weeds with herbicides and, as one visitor to the islands said recently, “I’ve never before seen a road gang spraying herbicide from a tanker . . . with a firehose!”

The almost unchanging climate in Hawaii means that there is no cleansing frost; pests are not killed or controlled by the rigours of winter, and breed happily all year around. Add six million visitors a year and an economy completely dependent on imports and you nave a situation where between 14 and 21 new species of insect pests are identified in Hawaii every year.

Seventy-two major landowners control approximately 95 per cent of Hawaii s land. The largest landowner.

Bishop Estate, owns nearly a fifth of Hawaii’s private land, and such a concentration of ownership together with a natural scarcity of land and Hawaii’s tourist and residential popularity makes land prices skyrocket.

The market for land in Hawaii is not primarily agricultural: development of subdivisions, resorts and retirement communities has long been competing with agricultural uses. The small group of major landowners naturally looks to its property for maximum return, so farmers arc paying premium prices, mortgage rates are high and the average young farmer cannot afford a large property.

Maintaining a market share is also a major consideration and if the small farmer fails to supply the ripe tomato or banana, Hawaiian merchants will look elsewhere. North American suppliers can readily satisfy the Hawaiian market through airfreight, with the result that Hawaii’s small farmers have to plant the same crop year after year to maintain their share of the market.

The net result is that many agricultural practices generally recognised as beneficial are being ignored as impractical: pushed by mortgage payments, it is economically impossible to let land lie fallow and the small farnier simply cannot rotate crops. There is no ‘back forty’ to rotate the crop to, and all available agricultural land must be used to produce crops.

With literally nowhere else to go, the pests and diseases attracted by a given crop can build up over successive plantings until they represent a truly serious threat and the Hawaiian farmers only desperate response is heavy spraying (once a week being the norm) which in turn drives up production expenses as both labour and pesticide costs increase.

With Hawaii’s population including people from a broad range of cultures, it is no surprise to find a similarly wide variety of vegetables cultivated . . . and the State’s farmers been quick to adapt modern chemical methods to weed, disease and insect control problems. But there is a further problem in many cases with the legality of their pest-control programs.

The United States has some tough laws relating to the use of the various chemicals unleashed on the world by modern technology. To be approved for use on any given crop, eadi chemical must be tested on that crop and then evaluated for residues. The prescribed tests are extensive and expensive, running into millions of dollars, and in some cases the total value of many of the crops in question is less than the cost of having a chemical cleared for legal use.

Add to this laws that make high dollar value per hectare crops more a liability than lower yield crops, and chemical companies shy away from clearing crops that otherwise might be worth their trouble. In this situation, it is unlikely many of Hawaii’s variety of special ethnic vegetables will ever be tested to determine which chemicals are really safe to use on them.

Hawaii’s large agricultural businesses also contribute to the pesticides problem. Sugarcane undergoes ‘close in’, when its leaves effectively shade the entire land area below the plants, preventing weed growth. But before this can happen, cane fields are sprayed with a variety of herbicides.

Of relatively recent introduction are cane varieties that require spraying with the herbicides Roundup or Mon 8000 to ripen’ them (‘ripening’ consists of arresting the plant’s actual growth while leaving it to continue photosynthesising, thus increasing sugar content. Without spraying, the sugar content of the new varieties is inadequate). However, the precision of application is frequently not all that could be desired. A colleague told me in horror of how a 300-gallon 350 litre planeload of Roundup had disappeared en route to the intended spray location. He knew the plane had been loaded, but when the pilot went to spray the cane fields . . . there was no herbicide in the tank. Where it all ended up between loading and its intended destination was a complete mystery.

On another occasion he learned a pilot had mistakenly spread rodenticide in a forest reserve. He did not like to speculate about the effects or retention of rodenticide in local pigs, which frequented cultivated fielcls as well as the adjacent reserve.

Perhaps more dangerous though dwindling in its extent is Hawaii’s famous pineapple industry. In the past, exemptions have been granted to pineapple growers regarding the use of pest control substances banned elsewhere in the US. At various times in recent years it has been discovered that drinking water sources have been tainted witn enough pesticides to cause restrictions on water use from wells in the area. One of the substances noted was used in pineapple fields to combat ants: interestingly, it had been out of use for a number of years when discovered . . . and today, purified bottled water is finding an increasing market throughout Hawaii.

Meanwhile, the closest office to Honolulu of the US Environmental Protection Agency is in San Francisco, and in the absence of the EPA the US Coast Guard is supposed to be deputised as the EPA s agent.

President Reagan has been under criticism by environmentalists who say he has essentially gutted the EPA and in Hawaii the Coast Guard garrison has also been whittled down.

There are no rescue facilities located on the islands of Kauai and Hawaii and volunteer auxiliaries are all that is left in their place. Undermanned for rescue and at the same time called upon to escalate the ‘war on drugs’ that the President has declared, the Coast Guard has perforce been absent from the enforcement of many of the environmental laws it is supposed to oversee in Hawaii. D 14 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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Pacific Leader Of The Year

For the first time, the readers of Pacific Islands Monthly have had the opportunity to make their own choice of the person who has done most to express the values of today's Pacific. The leader they have chosen despite his relative inexperience as a national leader is Papua New Guinea s Prime Minister. The overwhelming majority of nominations for Mr Namaliu spoke of his personal qualities: his fierce intelligence, his resolve to serve his country rather than have his country serve his ambitions; and his pragmatic and farsighted denial of political point-scoring in favour of gathering around him a team that is shaping policies to guide PNG into its 21st Century role as the first nation of Oceania. Frank Senge profiles the man and his career.

Rabbie Namaliu

Prime Minister Of Papua New Guinea

I N 1974, then-Chief Minister of 9 Papua New Guinea, Mr Michael So- | mare, invited a young university lecturer named Rabbie Namaliu to be his principal private secretary.

In 1982, Mr Somare appointed Mr Namaliu as PNG’s Foreign Minister.

Now the roles have been reversed: Mr Somare is Foreign Minister in a cabinet headed by Rabbie Namaliu.

Mr Namaliu, 41, of Kokopo, East New Britain Province, was elected PNG‘s fourth Prime Minister on July 4, 1988 in a vote of no confidence.

His election, though anticipated, came as a surprise. In a country where names such as Michael Somare, Sir Julius Chan and Paias Wingti were already legends, Mr Namaliu seemed to have blown in from the cold. But of course he hadn’t: he had only been living in the shadow of those names in particular that of Mr Somare.

At the same time he seemed to possess few of the characteristics that have distinguished PNG’s previous Prime Ministers: he possesses neither the charisma of Michael Somare and Paias Wingti nor the shrewdness of Sir Julius Chan. He is an introvert, downto-earth, honest and a good family man (qualities that, though rare in a PNG leader, are hot necessarily disadvantages in a Prime Minister).

Mr Namaliu, however, has two strengths few other Prime Ministers have shown. He is a great committee man, always willing to listen to the opinions of all his members; a quality he learned from Mr Somare. And he is one of the most intelligent and well educated members of PNG’s Parliament today. He makes up for lack of expertise in management oy his ability to conceptualise policies more clearly than his predecessors.

Mr Namaliu’s ascension to the Prime Ministership is the climax of a continuing success story. He was born on April 3, 1947, in Kokopo, East New Britain Province and spent a quiet childhood in his native village of Ralauna before embarking on a educational and career path filled with firsts. As one personal assistant puts it: “He represents part of a PNG historymaking generation.” He was among the first group of students to enrol at the University of Papua New Guinea when it opened in 1966. Two years later he became the founding president of the Pangu Pad branch at the University of PNG though he 16

Par.Lfin I.Qi And.B Mdmthi Y Dfcfmrer 1988

admits he hadn’t very much choice at that time. “It was the only party going that had clear, definite views on independence,” he recalls. “It was also in students at that time to be involved with a nationalist political movement.”

Stories are still told of how Rabbie Namaliu, Mekere Morauta (now Managing Director of the PNG Banking Corporation) and Tony Siaguru (former MP), walked into the ‘whites-only’ bars at both the Boroko Hotel and the Port Moresby Golf Club and demanded to be served. Nobody wanted to gainsay three very thirsty rugby union players . . . and a significant racial barrier was broken down.

A less savoury tale told about the three friends is when they took on the UPNG cooks. Arriving late from a rugby union game, they were refused service: Mr Namaliu pushed his friends back and dived at the cooks, fists swinging.

Later and somewhat mellowed he graduated from UPNG with a Bachelor of Arts in 1970, majoring in History and English, and was offered a Canadian Commonwealth scholarship to the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

He graduated from Columbia with a Master’s degree in History and Political Science m 1972, took up tutoring and lecturing at UPNG in 1973 but before the year was out, Michael Somare asked him to become his private secretary and the pressures to which the young academic was subjected (at a time when the drive was on to gain political independence from Australia) brought the first serious stirrings of political ambition.

He first thought of becoming a future Prime Minister in this period between 1973 and 1975. But it was no more than a dream. “With charismatic leaders such as Michael Somare, Sir Julius Chan and lambakey Okuk, it was hard to think of becoming Prime Minister over their heads. You looked up to them,” Mr Namaliu remembers.

“It wasn’t until I became a member that I became interested in the leadership question.”

After Independence in 1975, Mr Namaliu was appointed a District Commissioner to nis home province.

East New Britain. He played a leading role in establishing up the provincial government system there and took part in quelling the North Solomons secession uprising. He remains today a firm believer in the provincial government system, and as long as he is in any position of influence provincial governments will thrive.

At the end of 1976 he changed jobs again, being appointed chairman of the Public Service, and in 1978 married his wife, Margaret.

In 1979 he resigned from the Public Service. A year later Michael Somare was toppled in PNG’s first vote of no confidence, and Mr Namaliu went back to work for him. In 1981, however, he moved back to the academic world, accepting a lectureship in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at UPNG.

But politics continued to beckon; in July 1982 he was a Pangu candidate for Kokopo electorate in the general election, defeating a long time personal friend, Oscar Tamur. At that election Michael Somare regained government and appointed Mr Namaliu Foreign Affairs Minister: a post in which he distinguished himself, gaining a reputation as one of the best Foreign Ministers Papua New Guinea has ever seen.

Mr Namaliu saw his first chance at gaining the leadership of Pangu Pati m 1982, when succession and the deputy leadership of the party were discussed rather heatedly within party ranks. It was a testing time, with a variety of strong personalities and factions pulling the party in different directions. Paias Wingti. John Nilkare, Tony Siaguru, Rabbie Namaliu and Gabriel Ramoi were all beginning to talk about succession. In his usual way, Mr Somare managed them by letting the younger men fight among themselves without involving himself. When the fight became too personal, he stepped in as the peacemaker.

Regional interests began to exert themselves on considerations for leadership, too. Mr Siaguru, from the Sepik like Mr Somare, and Rabbie Namaliu from the New Guinea Islands region the smallest in terms of representation in Pangu could only to watch and wait their time.

The choice for the deputy leadership was between two Highlanders, Paias Wingti and John Nilkaro. Mr Namaliu threw his support behind Mr Wingti to help him secure the deputy leadership, but in March 1985 Paias Wingti pulled out of Pangu with 16 members and moved a vote of no confidence in Mr Somare. The motion failed, and the splinter group moved to the Opposition benches.

Later, four people led by Tony Siaguru and John Nilkare broke away from Pangu, rejoined and broke away again: thus weakened, Pangu lost government in a second vote of no confidence in November to Paias Wingti.

But the defeat actually worked to Mr Namaliu’s advantage, since Paias Wingti, Tony Siaguru, John Nilkare and Gabriel Ramoi his rivals for the leadership were gone.

Michael Somare did not offer the leadership to his protege on a plate, however, and on September 29 last year Rabbie Namaliu confronted The Chief in his office and asked his leader to step down.

Mr Namaliu was in time to lead Pangu in a second unsuccessful bid to form a grand coalition with PDM. Though he personally opposed the move, the party again voted in its favour and he was forced to go along with the majority.

Pangu Pati elected him leader on May 20, 1988. Only 45 days later he was elected Prime Minister by 58 votes to 51, dethroning Paias Wingti.

This month, the readers of Pacific Islands Monthly have elected Rabbie Namaliu as the magazine’s first Pacific Leader of the Year.

In the months since he became PM, Mr Namaliu has shifted the Wingti government’s emphasis on economic development back to the social sector, arguing that economic development will only come about when the population is able to live in peace and when it is educated. He has set up a fourpoint policy for his government: heading it are proposals for constitutional and legislative reforms.

Mr Namaliu proposes to amend sections of the Constitution that he believes have contributed to PNG’s fluid political atmosphere. In particular, he is seeking to amend Section 145, which allows for motions of no confidence in the Government every six months. Draft proposals now being circulated indicate that the grace period of six months will be extended to between 12 and 30 months.

Law and order is the second most important emphasis of the Namaliu Government. An eight-member ministerial committee headed by Justice Minister Bernard Narakobi was one of the first actions taken by the new PM.

KlO million has been allocated to the police department and a joint policedefence force special operation was launched to combat crime and tribal fighting in the Highlands, Morobe and Madang regions.

Education is Mr Namaliu’s third area of emphasis.

Initially, he has promised that substantial cuts to tertiary education and a national scholarship scheme adopted by the Wingti Government wilt be reinstated. The current Grade Six school-leaver system is being phased out and the Government plans to have universal education in the country within 10 years.

Though the economy forms the last part of Namaliu’s policy structure, it is nis greatest concern. The greatest problem for any government is the move toward economic independence and the management of the country’s rich resources, Mr Namaliu told PIM: “How any government initiates policies to distribute the benefits from the mineral wealth to benefit the majority of people will become a major task.

“I believe that if you are to become self-sufficient, you nave to have local expertise. We nave to have our own ► 17 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

trained, and trained quickly.

Otherwise we will continue to employ outsiders.”

In this regard, Mr Namaliu is looking to the Pacific nations for expertise.

The traditional recruiting grounds have been Australia, New Zealand and England, but the PM wants a manpower bureau to be set up with the South Pacific Forum where member countries can place their excess expertise at the disposal of fellow members.

On PNG’s role in the Pacific, Mr Namaliu would like to see the country have a say in regional matters. ‘PNG nas to respond to how the people of the Pacific see its role as the biggest of island nations,” he says. “Fiji was seen as a leader because it had been independent longer, had a stable leadership and had regional institutions ana more expertise.

“After the coups all that has changed. Fiji has to sort its own affairs, but in the meantime we can’t shy away from our responsibilities: we must help develop the Forum.” Mr Namaliu sees a Pacific of the future where citizens are able to travel throughout the region without the need for visas or passports. This idea has already been discussed within the Melanesian Spearhead Group of PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

Mr Namaliu also proposes to maintain the Spearhead, though Mr Somare was initially opposed to it. As a pressure group, the Spearhead has achieved its desired result in New Caledonia, Mr Namaliu says.

PNG will also maintain its observer status with ASEAN, and take a more active role in the United Nations by offering its soldiers to be employed in UN peacekeeping missions.

The people of Papua New Guinea are still cautious about their new leader and he is cautious about the implementation of his programs and ideas.

His most immediate problem is to emerge from the shadow of Mr Somare and establish his own identity with the people. “It is difficult to develop your own identity, especially when he [Somare], is still in Cabinet, he says. “But in other ways it’s important to have him around. In the initial stages; when you’re trying to find your own feet, you need a stabilising factor, and he has provided that.”

Hovering over political life in PNG is the constant threat of a vote of no confidence, but for the time being the spotlight is firmly on Rabbie Namaliu.

And he seems purposeful, if cautious, in the early, crucial months of his Prime Ministership. While he may lack the charismatic appeal of Paias Wingti, Rabbie Namaliu nas taken the deliberate step of not promising the people of ?NC the moon, but of moving with forethought through the nation’s second decade of self-determination. □

The Region

Human rights abuses grow Palau, Fiji, New Caledonia and Tahiti cited in an Amnesty International report.

By David Robie UNTIL last year the South Pacific was so peaceful it never rated a mention in the Amnesty International annual report on human rights abuses. But now, after a debut by New Caledonia, the world human rights organisation’s report this year has introduced an Asia- Pacific section that cites several Pacific countries for the first time: even Australia gets a notoriety listing.

The change began with a factfinding mission by a senior executive to island states last year, but the major concerns still remain on the fringe of the region in particular, the Indonesian-ruled territories of East Timor and Irian Jaya.

Incidents cited by the 1988 Amnesty International Report include: EAST TIMOR: Aleixo Gutteres and Vincent des Sousa were reportedly tortured in late 1986 and early 198/ during interrogation in the capital of Dili, in a house occupied by Indonesian military intelligence (KOTIS).

Gutteres was reportedly suspected of co-operating with Fretilin, which continued throughout the year to wage a guerilla war against the Indonesian government and in support of independence for East Timor. He was tried and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment early in the year.

NEW CALEDONIA: Seventeen proindependence activists were sentenced to prison terms of between six months ana two years in April, after conviction for stone-throwing. Their trial may have been politically motivated, arising from a violent clash in the eastern mining town of Thio in November 1986 between independence activists and supporters of French rule.

Stones were thrown, there were outbreaks of arson and one person died from gunshot wounds. Thirty three independence activists were arrested while none of the supporters of French rule was charged.

The trial of seven self-confessed killers who took part in the so-called Hienghene massacre of 10 unarmed Kanaxs in December 1984 ended in October with their acquittal on grounds of ‘self-defence’.

PALAU: Voters passed an amendment to the constitution in August that paved the way for a second vote in which the Compact of Free Association with the United States was approved. The amendment illegally removed a provision requiring a 75 per cent majority to overturn an antinuclear clause in the constitution, and was later rejected as unconstitutional by the Palau Supreme Court.

Roman Bedor, a lawyer who led moves to retain anti-nuclear provisions in the Constitution, was among several opponents of the constitutional changes who faced death threats. On September 7, his elderly father Bins Bedor was shot dead.

FIJI: Two military coups on May 14 and September 25 resulted in hundreds of arrests among them trade unionists, politicians ana journalists.

All were released after periods ranging from a few hours to a week.

Arrests continued after the second coup, and some of those held were reportedly beaten, immersed in sewage and subjected to other cruel or humiliating treatment.

IRIAN JAVA: In late January two young men, Paskalais Kawurim and Anakletus Bitip, were reportedly arrested and tortured by Indonesian soldiers in the village of Awayanka, Mindiptanah. They had failed to report to local authorities after returning from a refugee camp in Papua New Guinea and may have been suspected of being supporters of OPM, the Free Papua Movement, which has been waging an armed struggle for an independent state in Irian Jaya since the mid-19605. Both men were held in military detention for two months without charge, then released.

TAHITI: After the rioting in October of unemployed Tahitians in the capital of Papeete, a French judge ordered the arrest of Felix “Rara ’ Colombel, president of the Dockwqrkers Union, on charges of ‘complicity in violence and destruction of property’.

The riot was triggered off by the break-up of a dockers strike.

Other trade unionists were arrested; Colombel was released after two weeks in detention. D 18 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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United States

US islands split vote Republicans and Democrats score four wins each in elections in Guam, Hawaii and American Samoa. David S North reports from Washington.

US ISLAND voters like Americans generally split their ballots in the November elections, giving Republicans and Democrats four major victories each.

The main battle, the race to succeed Fofo Sunia as American Samoa’s delegate in Congress, was so close that a runoff was required before Eni Hunkin was confirmed (see opposite page).

The big Republican victories were: Peter Tab Coleman’s election to the American Samoa Governorship; Ben Blaz’s re-election as Guam’s delegate in Washington; Patricia Saiki’s reelection as member of Congress from the Honolulu district; and Frank Fasi’s re-election as mayor of America’s largest Pacific city, Honolulu.

Balancing them were four Democratic wins. Hawaii was one of a handful of states voting for Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis; in fact, Hawaii gave him a larger share of the vote (5o per cent) than any of the Mainland states, including his home state, Massachusetts.

Hawaii also re-elected Spark Matsunaga to the US Senate and re-elected Congressman Dan Akaka.

Guam gave the Democrats a 13-8 majority in the Territorial Senate.

Peter Coleman, American Samoa’s first elected Governor, had served for two terms but was barred from seeking a third consecutive term four years ago. Governor A P Lutali ran and won in 1984. This year the two governors clashed and Coleman was leading with all ‘on island’ votes counted by a margin of 5261 to 4344; 1800 absentee votes remained uncounted, but were highly unlikely to change matters. (That almost 20 per cent of the voters were absentees is remarkable by mainland standards; it reflects the extent of the outmigration from the island to Hawaii and the mainland.

Galea’i Poumele was Coleman’s running mate and will be the new Lieutenant Governor.

On Guam, Ben Blaz faced the toughest battle since he defeated veteran delegate Won Pat in 1984; this time Blaz beat former Governor Bordallo’s former chief of staff Ben Pangelinan by a margin of 16,696 to 13,4/7, a tighter margin than in 1986. (Governors in the islands serve fouryear terms, delegates and congressmen two-year terms, and the US Senators get a leisurely six years).

The other two major Republican island victories were in Honolulu, where Congresswoman Patricia Saiki, the first Republican ever elected to the House of Representatives from that state, won a second time. She defeated the well-connected Mary Bitterman, a one-time executive at the East-West Center. Similarly, Mayor Frank Fasi won another term in City Hall.

The majority for Dukakis in Hawaii won’t do anyone much good, but the solid re-election of the perhaps ailing Matsunaga keeps him and his seniority working for Hawaiian interests within the heavily Democratic US Senate.

Hawaii’s Democrats also saw the election of the other member of the House of Representatives, Dan Akaka, by a wide margin, while the traditionally Democratic state legislature stayed that way. (The Democratic Governor of Hawaii and the Republican Governor of Guam were not standing in elections this year.) Guam’s voters like everyone else split their tickets. In addition to voting in Blaz, they elected 13 Democratic and eight Republican Senators to the island legislature: the same margin the Democrats managed to achieve two years ago.

The most popular candidate of either party for any office on the island was Senator Madeleine Bordallo, wife of former Governor Ricky Bordallo, who recently won a major court victory overturning most of his earlier Peter Tali Coleman returns as American Samoa's Governor.

Guam's Ben Blaz won a hard-fought battle for his third term. 20 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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Senator Bordallo, a Democrat elected to fill a vacancy in the senate earlier this year, secured 20,262 votes for a full term, running 2500 more than runner-up (and family ally) Senator Edward Reyes, once Lieutenant Governor to Bordallo. Gordon Mailioux, a Democrat and a newcomer to the Senate, had the lowest total for a winner, 12,700 votes.

In the Guam system, each party nominates 21 candidates for the Senate. The most popular 21 of the 42 candidates then serve for two years.

Speculation was rife in Guam as to the forthcoming battle for the speakership of the Twentieth Guam Legislature. The Speaker following US mainland tradition is the leader of the body not the neutral presiding officer as in the Westminster system, The Bordallo faction will probably push Ms Bordallo for the job.

Another possibility is that this time, as in the past, an alliance will be formed between the Sunshine Democrats (anti-Bordallo) and the Republicans, with former speaker Carl Gutierrez as the coalition candidate. A possible compromise candidate would be the well-respected Reyes, who stayed clean during the scanaal-wracked Bordallo administration, Guam’s tradition of having a large percentage of women in the legistature continued, seven being elected this time around. (In addition to Ms Bordallo they were Democratic Pillar Lugan, Elizabeth Arriola and Herminia Dierking, and Republicans Martha Cruz Ruth, Doris Brooks and Marilyn Manibusan.) The tradition has been growing stronger lately; in mid-1986 there were four women in the legislature, by mid-1987 there were two more and Ms Bordallo made it seven earlier this year, American Samoa elected its Fono (legislature) in November as well, but this is not a partisan election. Seven sitting members were defeated for reelection, but the all-male composition of the House of Representatives was not changed. The Senate, to be elected later this year, is unlikely to have any women members either; it is the only US flag legislature in which for all practical purposes women are barred from voting. Matai do the voting for this body (see Pacific Islands Monthly, September 1986.) □ Hunkin wins 'runoff' Narrow victory for Samoan ‘patriot’.

By Ed Rampell JVk MAN who has been described as “the most adventurous congressional candidate since Davy Crockett” has been confirmed as American Samoa’s Delegate to the House of Representatives.

Faleomaveaga Eni F Hunkin, Jr intends to navigate a new course for the unincorporated US territory over his second two-year term. Close to the top of his agenda is the upgrading of Pago Pago’s political status with Washington, in an effort to end 88 years of what he calls “colonial abuse”.

Hunkin is seeking a status of free association between American Samoa and the United States, patterned on the Cook Islands-New Zealand partnership. He is also seeking an improved economic package from the US to provide Pago Pago with the infrastructure necessary for making the territory less dependent on Washington.

At 40, Hunkin (who is a strong family man with five children) is a part of the postwar generation of islanders conscious of their role as Pacific entities in a community of micro-nations.

In addition to his sailing exploits aboard Hokule’a the popular politician has excellent congressional credentials: in 1984 he was elected Lieutenant Governor of American Samoa after having served as Deputy Attorney General and, from 1973 to 1981, working for the US House of Representatives first as an administrative assistant to the then-Delegate from Pago Pago and later as staff council to the influential Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. A Vietnam veteran and Captain in the US Army Reserve, Hunkin has a law degree from Berkeley, a bachelor’s degree in political science from Brigham Young University, Utah, qualifications from the Church College of Hawaii . . . and the Samoan chiefly title of Faleomaveaga.

In addition, tne Hokule’a stalwart is, appropriately, a founder of the Tutila canoe club.

Democrat Hunkin faced stiff opposition in the November election.

Public Defender Aumoeualago Soli and local Senator Multiauaopele Ivi also tossed their hats into the ring, as did Senator Tufele Lia. Hunkin beat Tufele in the November 8 election but did not receive a majority, hence the November 22 runoff (which Hunkin won by a narrow margin). In addition to the congressional seat, the governorship and local legislature were also contested: former Governor Peter Tali Coleman beat Eni’s teammate, Governor Lutali, for that seat. A staunch patriot, Hunkin has asserted that: “1 am a Samoan first, an American second. You cannot serve two masters.” □ 21 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

HAWAII Democracy wins out over developers in beach battle Community action saves Oahu’s Sandy Beach.

By Ed Rampell JA CARTOON in 1970 s ‘new wave’ journalist Hunter S Thompson’s book on Hawaii depicts a pack of vultures sweeping down on an island, with the caption Real estate development in Oahu . On November 8 this year the ‘vultures’ received a clear anti-development message from the electorate with the triumph of the Save Sandy Beach initiative. When the Kaiser Development Company proposed a new residential development near Sandy Beach a popular surfing spot on one of Oahu’s last stretches of unspoiled coastline the people arose. Despite City Council approval, a media campaign and unclear ballot language, community activists defeated developers by 164,007 votes to 85,210.

Land near Sandy Beach has been zoned residential since the 19705, but in 1987 the Honolulu City Council approved a shoreline development permit by a slim margin; Kaiser planned to construct 171 nomes (each reportedly in the half-million dollar price range) at a proposed subdivision 000 metres away from the beach on land owned by the Bishop Estate, a private Hawaiian land trust.

From the moment the matter came before the City Council local residents and supporters from all over Hawaii were planning their opposition. The Save Sandy Beach Initiative Coalition emerged to do battle with the developers; to tilt against corporate windmills. Petitions attracted more than 39,000 signatories in only 10 weeks, enabling the issue to be placed on the State elections ballot. The Sandy Beachers sought to protect the property by ‘downzoning’ it, from residential to preservation.

The cause touched a responsive chord in Oahu people weary of developers, the Pentagon and others who have been alienating land since Statehood, transforming Hawaii into a paradise almost irretrievably lost. The Sandy Beachers found support in a community sick of high-rise eyesores, spiralling real estate prices Hawaii’s homes cost more tnan double the American national average Japanese speculation, increasing pollution and growing congestion . . . not to mention artillery practice. Hawaii’s Aloha Aina “love the land” sentiment and environmental awareness immediately came to the fore.

The movement, led by long-time environmentalist and community organiser Phil Estermann, became a populist revolt. Labour unions and artists’ associations spoke out and bipartisan endorsement was given by both mayoral contenders, Republican incumbent Frank Fasi (re-elected for his fifth term) and Democratic challenger Marilyn Bornhorst, US Congressional candidates, Republican incumbent Patricia Saiki (who was returned to office) and Democrat Mary Bitterman. Fortyfour members of the bicameral State Legislature and four City Council members, together with candidates for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, also endorsed the initiative.

The pro-development forces quickly launched a counter-offensive with the formation of People Who Vote Know on The Sandy Beach Initiative. The well-financed campaign concentrated on a media barrage on TV, radio and in the newspapers claiming that the housing would not affect Sandy Beach’s pristine splendour.

Some other Hawaiian groups, most notably the Bishop Estate, came out against the initiative, claiming that downzoning would lower the value of its lands, hence reducing revenues for its indigenous programs such as the 'Blood Feud' in Honolulu By Ed Rampell A HAWAII State agency has succeeded in its controversial quest to alter the legal definition of the ‘Native Hawaiian’. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) last month sponsored a controversial poll that advocated a ‘referendum on selfdetermination’ which opponents claimed was no more than an attempt to break a Hawaiian land trust.

In essence, all people of any amount of Hawaiian blood were asked to express their view on what constitutes a Native Hawaiian. Since 1920 the descendants of the Aloha State’s aboriginal inhabitants have been separated by the US Congress into two distinct categories: those of 50 per cent or more Hawaiian blood quantum, known as Native Hawaiians (the Hawaiian Homestead Act and the Statehood Admissions Act established a major land trust earmarked to benefit this class) and those of less than 50 per cent indigenous ancestry referred to as Hawaiians or part- Hawaiians. According to OHA information there are about 40,000 Natives and 160,000 part-Hawaiians living in the archipelago today.

OHA, a State agency created in 1978 ‘to better the living conditions of the Hawaiian people’, conducted a direct mail campaign on the lawful designation of Hawaiians, seeking a single definition of Hawaiian which it claims would enable all people of Hawaiian blood to partake of the trust fund presently set aside for the exclusive use of tnose with half or more Hawaiian ancestry. OHA contended that replacement of the two blood quantum categories with a single definition entitling all to benefit from the land trust would help unify and empower the Hawaiian people, and that the only way it could fulfill its agenda of taking control of Hawaiian lands and gaining political power was through the unification of the 50th State’s 200,000 people (out of a million) of Hawaiian background.

However, a number of the beneficiaries of this endowment are vigorously protesting in the form of Federal and State lawsuits and through other forms of dissent. Lieutenant Governor Ben Cayetano, the State’s election commissioner, ruled that it would be unconstitutional for OHA to place the issue on the ballot during last month’s US presidential and general elections. As a result, the decision-making process was through a direct mail campain: the Hawaiians registered to vote in OHA elections for Trustees received a ‘ballot’, which they had to mark and return in pre- 22 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

all-Hawaiian Kamehameha School.

The Estate further claimed that the downzoning was the first step in turning the trust’s private lands into public property, thereby taking the lands out of its control. (Estermann, however, insists that “according to polls, the ethnic groups most strongly opposed to developments such as Sandy Beach are the Hawaiians.”) Public suspicions were also aroused by what some claimed was “confusing” language on ballot papers: voters opposed to the development were asked to vote ‘Yes’, while those who favoured the construction were required to ‘No’. Estermann and others charged that Kaiser took advantage of this confusion “and deliberately ran an outrageous, deceptive, dishonest media campaign”.

Nevertheless, the initiative surged easily to victory on what local media characterised as a ‘tidal wave’ of opposition. Estermann estimates that “Kaiser and the Bishop Estate outspent us at least $3O to one. They spent between $300,000 and $400,000; we spent only $lO,OOO on the campaign. This makes our two-toone victory all the sweeter.”

However, despite the jubilation the outcome of the Sandy Beach vote is still subject to judicial rulings. An Oahu circuit court has already found the voter initiatives cannot change land-use ordinances, but the matters must be reviewed by the Hawaii Supreme Court. Furthermore, the City Council is considering two related bills, irrespective on tne high court ruling, that would condemn the land so it could be turned into a public park and that would rezone the land.

The Sandy Beach supporters, however, are only guaranteed four out of the nine votes on the Council.

More disappointing was the result of a second initiative: in a 23,455 to 18,186 vote, Japanese developers and their supporters beat environmentalists opposed to the construction of a 350-room luxury hotel near Hapuna Beach (see Pacific Islands Monthly, September). The hotel is the foundation for a $329 million resort, which would also include a golf course and 800 homes on 198 hectares. A coalition of business and labour groups stressing property rights and economic needs defeated the Save Hapuna Initiative Petitioners unlike Oahu, the Big Island was more concerned with jobs than with the environment.

The plebiscite process has a stormy history in Hawaii. In the early 1980 s a community movement Defeated Japanese real estate developers at Nukolii on Kauai through the ballot box. However, following the devastation of Hurricane Iwa and the ensuing depressed economy, a second initiative was passed overturning the result of the first and opening up the beach for a Hilton Hotel and condominiums.

The success of the first Sandy Beach initiative has nevertheless caught the State off guard. During the anti-Sandy Beach initiative drive, pro-business elements emphasised the importance of private land ownership, attempting to play on patriotism with the assertion that “there are no property rights in communist countries”. Estermann agrees he was “definitely being redbaited”, but points out that despite these tactics, ‘the initiative won in every voting district on Oahu”. □ pared envelopes by November 8. (Non-Hawaiians were not eligible to participate, while anyone with any indigenous blood could: out of a potential 100,000 Hawaiian voters, only about 60,000 are registered with OHA).

The outcome of the referendum represents a resounding victory for OHA. Of 63,452 ballots mailed there were 19,747 responses: 16,482 voters answered ‘Yes’ to a new definition of Native Hawaiian, 2981 ‘No’ and there were only 284 invalid responses.

OHA has thus been given what one trustee calls a mandate to change the definition, as 84 per cent of those w ho bothered to return ballots (55 per cent of respondents said they were of 50 per cent or more Hawaiian ancestry) supported the proposal. However, the outcome of the so-called ballot does not have the force of law', and merely expresses the will of the majority of those participating in the process.

OHA says it does plan to use the result to influence the appropriate lawmakers to alter the definition of Hawaiians, though critics claim the procedure is not a legitimate act of self-determination as expressed through a plebiscite, but merely a selfserving survey on the part of OHA.

The ‘ballot’ language which some contend was deliberately misleading reads; “Should every Native Hawaiian have the right to enjoy the benefits of the assets of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, as provided by policies adopted by the OHA Board of Trustees? The term ‘Native Hawaiian’ means all of the descendants of the indigenous people inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778”.

An optional identification was included on the ‘ballot’: “Are you 50 per cent or more Hawaiian blood?” Both questions required ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

Many so-called beneficiaries were confused and angered by what they perceive to be the breaking of their trust by its administrators: m fact, an OHA referendum’ forum at the Polynesian preserve of Nanakuli on Oahu had a low turnout, and frequent comments critical of OHA were met with rounds of applause. Trustee Frenchy De Soto stated that “it took a lot of guts” for the Board members to confront their constituency on the Waianae Coast, many of whom have 50 per cent Hawaiian heritage and live on Homestead land.

A number of related lawsuits against the State agency were threatened, and some were actually lodged. Hereditary Chief Maui Loa, spiritual leader of the Hou Hawaiians, filed a breach of trust suit in Federal court; four Native Hawaiians Jointly sued OHA’s Board of Trustees in State court, also for breach of trust, and even the Administrator and former Chairman of OHA announced their intention of suing the agency’s trustees. The traditionalist organisation Ka Lahui Hawaii (See PIM, November) actively urged Hawaiians to vote ‘No’ and to maintain the dual categories. Ka Lahui leader Mililani Trask a former OHA legal counsel also requested a f ederal probe of the agency.

Chief Loa, Ka Lahui and the four Native plaintiffs contended that the nine Trustees violated “their duty and loyalty to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries by using Native assets to dissolve their . . . land trust”. The Board purportedly breached its fiduciary duty and misapplied funds: Ka Lahui even alleges that by altering the blood quantum, OHA “is paving the way to break the Hawaiian Trust.

Critics also point out that Native Hawaiians are greatly outnumbered by part-Hawaiians even though Natives may be those with the most to lose in the ‘plebiscite’. Hence, nonbeneficiaries who outnumber beneficiaries were being asked whether they wanted to benefit from a trust fund set aside for others.

Ex-Chairman Moses Keale lost his position on August 30 as a result of this dispute. Trustee Keale claims to be a pure Hawaiian from the ‘forbidden island’ of Niihau, and though he said he favoured the ‘single definition Hawaiian’, he opposed the way OHA financed its referendum process.

While chairman, he secretly sought the legal opinion of the State Attorney General regarding OHA expenses for its referendum campaign and related matters: the AG concluded that OHA had improperly used funds derived from a trust set aside for the benefit of Natives for a campaign to dissolve their trust. This included paying for pro-referendum forums at a Honolulu restaurant as well as the balloting process itself.

The office of Hawaiian Affair’s movement for what supporters proclaim as solidarity has, it seems, actually unleashed dissent and division in the Hawaiian community. □ 23 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

New Zealand

Maoris split over Whare Paia The ‘hijack’ by radical Maori activists of a controversial project for indigenous psychiatric care has come unstuck.

By David Robie WHEN New Zealand medical authorities ordered the closure of Whare Paia a controversial Auckland psychiatric unit for treating indigenous patients in October, Maori nationalists immediately branded the move as “racist”; a dramatic example of oppression by the dominant Pakeha culture. Main mainstream Maori community leaders, however, disagreed.

According to the scenario outlined by Maori investigator Hiwi Tauroa, whose recommendations led to the shutdown, manipulation of Maori decision-making processes and intimidation of Pakcna workers through accusations of racism enabled a small group of radical Maori activists not recognised as leaders in their own culture to arrogate wide-ranging powers to themselves.

Supporters of Maori nationalist Titewnai Harawira who had already been suspended as coordinator of Maori health services at Auckland’s Carrington Psychiatric Hospital, pending a court hearing of assault charges have portrayed the struggle as an attempt to sabotage Maori self-determination in mental health. They have accused their Maori opponents of “selling out” to the Pakeha, and have pledged to fight on.

In fact, says Harayvira, her suspension and the closure of the $1.2 million unit responsible for treating some of the hospital’s most disturbed patients have far yvider implications for race relations in New Zealand. “It’s got nothing to do with the care of patients, nothing to do with the Whare Paia. It’s got a lot to do with the demolition of Maoris by this treacherous government,” she declared in a Television New Zealand inlervieyv before the shutdown. “They are using this whole issue as a smokescreen while they demolish the Department of Maori Affairs and move on to doing away with the four Maori seats in Parliament in preparalion for the 1990 Commonwealth Games where they will be able to say, 'Haven’t we done well, we’ve assimilated all those Maoris’. It’s not going to happen like that.

“VVhare Paia is a bicultural unit; it’s the beginning of what the country should look like. And the government is scared about that, too, because if it functions well every other department in this country is going to have to rethink its monocultural wavs.”

However, say many Maori elders, it isn’t as simple as that. There are several alternative views of how Maori self-determination can be achieved in health other than through the ill-fated Whare Paia model. At Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital, for example, the Whai Ora Maori health unit has been running successfully’ for two years . . . yvithout a political battle. Hiwi Tauroa’s report on the ward staffs 'Mickey Mouse accountability’ and alleged holding of patients hostage politically sealed the fate of the ward when it condemned the ‘excessive freedom’ given to Harawira.

A member of the Maori nationalist group Te Ahi Kaa (“Keepers of the Fire”), Harayvira helped pioneer protests for Maori rights under the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. She and four VVhare Paia staff members have been charged over an alleged assault of a patient yvho had allegedly raped a female staff member. The man was treated for injuries resulting from the assault.

Immediately after the Auckland Hospital Board announced the closure of tne clinic late in October, a Maori social yvorker reportedly threatened Tauroa with ‘necklacing’ a black South African method of killing collaborators by setting fire to a tyre filled with petrol around the neck of a bound victim. The social worker yvas suspended by the Maori Affairs Department and charged by police over the incident. Police also mounted guard outside Tauroa’s home.

Former race relations conciliator Tauroa, who was commissioned by the Auckland Hospital Board to carry out an inquiry into Whare Paia following a wave of alleged assaults, threats and accusations of the misuse of public funds, tabled a damning report. He detailed yvhat he termed the mechanics of manipulation’ for personal and ideological gain, and warned that in

Keepers Of The Flame

THE SMALL radical Maori nationalist froup Te Ahi Kaa “Keepers of the ire” gained a high public profile in New Zealand last year with statements supporting Major-General Sitiveni Raouka and the coups in Fiji. Newspaper headlines trumpeted the group’s plea to the coup leader to help them in what they called their fight for ‘independence’.

Te Ahi Kaa leaders have played a key role in the Maori health controversy. Titewhai Harawira, 54, then a member of the Waitangi Action Committee and Te Kotahitanga (a national group of Maori rights activists), was appointed Maori liaison officer for Auckland’s Carrington and Oaklay psychiatric hospitals m 1985.

When Oakley closed, she established Whare Paia . . . where untrained community workers, including Harawira’s son Arthur and daughter Hinewhare, staffed the unit as well as a handful of professional psychiatric staff.

Chairman of the Maori Regional Health Board and a fellow Te Ahi Kaa leader is Dr Pal Hohepa, a senior lecturer in the Auckland University Maori Studies department.

Hohepa’s wife Atareta Poananga, a former diplomat who upset New Zealand’s foreign Affairs Ministry with her outspoken views, is secretary of the board. Her denunciations of New Zealand race relations while on trips abroad sparked angry Pakeha attacks at home. Other at Ahi Kaa members involved in the Maori health furore include trade union official Syd Jackson and his partner Deidre Nehua, who is related to Harawira. □ Te Ahi Kaa leader Atareta Poananga: a keen exploiter of media attention.

Photograph by Phil Fogle, courtesy of Auckland Metro. 24 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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future recognised Maori leaders would need to be prepared to stand up and challenge false 'Maori views’.

After visits to many marae in the Auckland region, Tauroa became convinced most of the Maori leadership did not support Whare Paia in its present form. A fhey were most unhappy about the things that had been said and recorded about Maoridom in general,” he said, “much of which arose inevitably from the behaviour of those being promoted by the media as Maori leaders.”

Tauroa added that when meeting some of the Whare Paia staff, “1 found that when it suited them they would uphold Maori customs. When, however, it served them belter to trample on Maori tikanga , there was never any hesitation to do this. I have been present on numerous marae when tney have insulted tangata whenua (people of the land) usually under the banner of seeking a Waitangi Treaty solution, a take (subject for discussion) concerning which there will always be degrees of support.”

Tauroa also accused the New Zealand media of creating so-called spokespeople for Maoridom who “would not exist” without newspapers and television. Many of those mistakenly seen as leaders are sought out by the media because they are “deliberately controversial or offensive, and are prepared to sacrifice their people for personal motives”.

“instead tne ward had been hijacked bv racially preoccupied political radicals as a noisy and splotlit stage on which to promote Maori nationalism,” said the New Zealand Herald. “That public funds and the mentally ill have been so used required reproach for those involved, not least tne medical board that allowed the situation to develop and took so long to correct it”.

The Auckland Star agreed; “Far from being a racist act, the closure is necessary to protect the interests of the whole community, Maori included, and the welfare of patients, Maori in particular”.

However, the Star also noted that it hoped that Whare Paia might emerge again following a suitable cooling-off period, this time applying normal standards of accountability and professional care into an appropriate cultural context.

District Court Judge Kenneth Mason was called in to head an inquiry into psychiatric care in the country’s largest city last July, following a double murder by a patient on temporary release from Carrington Hospital. The inquiry’s report, recently made public, condemned medical authorities as having ‘disgraced psychialry’ and warned lack of security could cause a catastrophe. An injunction was filed to prevent blamed medical officials being named publicly but both Prime Minister David Lange and the Opposition called for their resignations. Mason also condemned Whare Paia staff who refused to meet him.

According to Tauroa’s report, Whare Paia patients were being drilled in support action for Maori nationalists employed on the staff and medical procedures for patients moving out of the hospital to public functions had been ignored. That practice suggested a danger to patients and public.

Threats and violence from ward staff had also raised concern. “That among persons threatening violence are the people in charge of a psychiatric unit makes a mocxery of patient care,” Tauroa’s report said.

Attempts to resolve the crisis peacefully at Whare Paia failed: stall refused to co-operate with the Maori health project manager for Carrington Hospital, Te Pere Curtis.

Tne row was not a Maori failure, he stressed: “Maoridom at large had fell the images arising out of the Carrington issues were destructive of the Maori people”. Tauroa appealed to the hospital board to press on with boosting Maori involvement in all levels of health care. □ 25 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

FIJI 'Profit is not a dirty word' That was the message to an employers' conference in Suva last month.

SENIOR management conference of the Fiji Employers i Consultative Association was held in Suva in November. Thirty senior representatives of member companies and statutory organisations attended. Sir Eric Neal, deputy chairman of the Westpac Banking Corporation, and Mr Rodney Cole, assistant executive director of the Centre for Development Studies of the Australian National University, were guest speakers. After discussion, delegates sent their observations and recommenations to the government and interested private sector groups.

Many of the conference pronouncements reflect the interests of established business in Fiji. There was a strong feeling, for example, that the Government should not discriminate against Fiji companies in matters of tax and investment concessions.

“Established companies in Fiji that had demonstrated tneir credibility and commitment should be eligible for the same concessions applying to foreign investors,” a communique said.

Self-interest was, in fact, high on the conference agenda: the meeting expressed cautious optimism on the part of the commercial sector and a hope for constitutional guarantees of basic individual rights that would promote business confidence. On the other hand, it saw that the traditional Fijian lifestyle focusing on communal values was unhelpful to the personal drive and ambition necessary to achieve the degree of business participation the Government is looking for on behalf of indigenous Fijians.

If the Government were to provide clear and consistent guidelines for commercial sector activity, the conference noted an investment boom is quite possible despite any political uncertainty that may remain. The meeting noted with approval that Government has taken a pro-business stance and appears ready to consult on directions. Foreign investmentis especially welcome in Fiji, and its application should enhance the private enterprise system and promote the healthy development or the profit motive.

The conference working group on confidence, stability and investment found itself beset with conflicting emotional reactions to the continuing political disruption of Fiji. “Most local business people thought a significant measure of confidence would be restored with the adoption of a constitution guaranteeing basic rights and freedoms, including those relating to the individual, religion, property ownership and security of business,” the group said. Mr Cole said business can thrive in spite of political upheavals so long as the needs and objectives of the country are spelt out clearly and administered firmly and fairly. Investors must be looked after to the extent they were not confronted with irrational changes in official policy, which tended to make them nervous.

The conference was also pleased by Mr Cole’s defence of trans-national corporations: “Certanly Fiji must have a mechanism for monitoring foreign investment,” he said, “to ensure that conditions attaching to concessions are met, that a genuine contribution is made to development and that local entrepreneurs are not displaced. At the same time, the contribution of foreign investors in bringing together skill, capital and foreign market access must receive unequivocal recognition for the benefits it can bring to small, resource-poor countries.

“Positive attitudes to foreign investment must be adopted at Doth the bureaucratic and political level. Commercial rates of return on high-risk capital that may have other investment options should not be looked on with suspicion, but welcomed within clear and unambiguous guidelines.

“Those invetors with too-high expectations should be treated warily and those requesting high levels of protection discouraged.”

The need for promoting greater understanding and awareness of profit and the profit motive also arose: delegates felt it was time for profit to come out of the closet’. Profit, they said, was not a dirty word.

The conference did its best to accommodate the need for greater participation by Fijians in the economy, but recognised some potent problems. Values and philosophy of life were different. Delegates noted “the difficulties of reconciling a culture that stressed communal obligations and sharing with a private enterprise culture that encouraged individualism and acquisition”.

Taxation came under the conference spotlight ... as well as how taxes were spent. The forms of tax used in Fiji were “not encouraging to individual enterprise” and government was “too large”. Many government enterprises could well be privatised or corporatised. The functions of the Ports Authority, National Marketing Authority, Air Pacific, Posts and Telecommunications, the Fiji Broadcasting, the Public Works Department and the Government Shipyard came in for mention.

Too few people in Fiji paid direct income tax, the deleates thought.

There was a need to broaden the base, , perhaps through the extension of turnover tax to a value-added type tax that would more equitably distribute the tax burden.

Throughout the conference there was constant reference to the need for the Government not to discriminate against existing businesses in Fiji in favour of newly-attracted overseas investors. Long-established companies could also help in the growth of the economy if trie following measures were implemented: abolition of dividend withholding tax on commissions paid to overseas agents; abolition of the advertising turnover tax on overseas promotion for Fiji products or services; removal of duty on imports of all raw materials and packaging materials to encourage exports; and removal of fringe benefits and other personal taxes. D Westpac deputy chairman Sir Eric Neal: now is the time for capitalism in Fiji to ‘come out of the closet'. 26 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Pacific Report ON March 1, 1954, the United States exploded a 17 megaton bomb 1300 times the destructive force of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Bikini Atoll. Codenamed Bravo, the explosion was one of 66 atmospheric tests conducted in the Marshall Islands by the Americans between 1946 and 1958, a crucial stepping-stone in the Cold War race for nuclear superiority, Rongelap Atoll was directly in the path of Bravo’s fallout; since 1954 its habitants have suffered a heavy legacy of radiation-linked ill health and were forced to abandon their homeland in May 1985.

Jane Dibblin, a former deputy editor of the Journal of European Nuclear Disarmament and a writer for Britain’s New Statesman, visited the Marshall Islands in 1986 to research her book Day Of Two Suns (Virago Press). She has produced a damning account of the American nuclear tests and the plight of thousands of displaced and suffering islanders.

It would be tempting to regard this book as being on the same level as the classic Moruroa, Mon Amour (and its sequel, Poisoned Reign, by Marie- Therese and Bengt Danielsson.

However, while Dibblin’s work is in general a welcome addition to the growing literature on nuclear colonialism in the Pacific, it is flawed in several respects.

First, there are serious doubts with regard to her research and, indeed, integrity; several primary sources dealing with the irradiated Marshall Islanders were not contacted directly by her, yet some of their copyright material has been included, sometimes out of context. For example, extensive interviews with Rongelap Islanders by American radiation researcher Glen Alcalay for his own book on the topic were included without his permission, Threatened with a court injunction over breach of copyright, the publisher has since includea a disclaimer in an attempt to make amends.

In addition Dibblin treats the authors of the only two books that have detailed first-hand accounts of the Rongelap evacuation on board Rambow Warrior rather shabbily. Copyright material from both Goodbye Rongelap, byjapanese photojournalist Hiromitsu Toyosaki, and my own account, Eyes of Fire, has been lifted without acknowledgement, permission or even citation in the bibliography, Some of my material is presented as an apparent interview’, while where Toyosaki’s book is mentioned both title and publisher are named incorrectly. And, though Australian filmmaker Dennis O’Rourke’s award-winning documentary Half Life heavily influenced Dibblm’s book, she relegates the only mention of the film to a footnote, wrongly describing it as a “Yorkshire TV documentary”.

Second, Dibblm’s work suffers from an unresolved tension between being an expose of nuclear colonialism in the Marshalls and a manual for Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement activists. While the chapters dealing specifically with the Marsnalls are well organised, the book begins to unravel by the time it tries to give potted accounts of other Pacific issues.

At the heart of the book is a moving chapter on island women as leaders in the struggle for independence, and an emphasis throughout on the women and children who were victims of nuclear ‘abuse’. Women politicians, elders, laywers, health workers and maids working for a pittance on Kwajalein speak out with emotive frankness.

Despite its flaws, Day of Two Suns is nevertheless a valuable resource and a challenge to (mainly white) peace movements to support Pacific islanders fighting for their cultural and social survival.

David Robie

□ Another Tuvalu Sea Saga

OVERTONES of the amazing survival of the four Tuvaluans who drifted for 51 days and fetched up in Futuna (see PIM, September) were sounded with the rescue of another Tuvaluan, 27 days adrift from Nauru.

In the case of 34-year-old Temou Teiti, however, rejoicing was mixed with sorrow both for him and his family because his cousin, 32-year-old Anania Tefeke, who had set out with him on a fishing trip on October 1, died before they were picked up. A Philippines fishing vessel found Temou with his cousin’s body in their aluminium dinghy drifting near Bougainville, and took him to Arawa.

The Filipino fishermen decided to sink the dinghy with Anania’s body, judging that authorities would not nave allowed it into PNG. At last report Temou was being put up at a notel awaiting repatriation to Nauru.

The two cousins’ fishing trip had been in preparation for the celebration of Tuvalu’s national anniversary.

“We had just caught 38 fish and decided to go home m very high spirits ”

Continued on Page 32 Above: Children from the radiationscarred atoll of Rongelap leave their homeland aboard Rainbow Warrior in 1985. Right: American radiation researcher Glen Alcalay.

David Robie

27 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Islanders keep the faith in Australia Far from their Polynesian home, Australia’s Tongan residents maintain links tradition and their strong commitment to religion in their own church. Photojournalist Matthew McKee spent a series of weekends at the Free Church of Tonga the Sydney suburb of Canterbury to chronicle the life, the colour and the sense of community that unites these ‘island expatriates’.

WITH the rapid growth of the Tongan population of Australia, especially in Sydney, the Free Church of Tonga has also flourished. A number of church buildings are shared with other denominations throughout Sydney such as the Uniting Church, but the Tongans now have a centre of their own.

The Church at Canterbury, a southwestern suburb of Sydney, was bought from the Anglican Church in 1987 for $300,000. It has a congregation numbering about 400 and is growing rapidly. There are plenty of children running round the Church and that is not something you see around the average church in Sydney these days.

Figures from the official census of Australian residents show that in 1976 there were 893 residents bom in Tonga.

In 1981 the figure had grown to 2616, and in there were 4477 official Tonganborn residents in Australia. Actual numbers may be much higher, because many children have been born to Tongan parents in Australia and the number of illegal residents is unknown.

There are separate congregations that meet in other areas of Sydney, each with its own choir, and these choirs perform in turn, singing hymns at the central service at Canterbury.

The wedding of Otolese Teaupa and Taniela Tui was the first held in this church. Some of the photographs here are from that service.

The Thanksgiving Service (Misinale) is held on a Saturday. It is a lighthearted affair: as can be seen on Page 28, Sione Ha’unga is trying to concentrate on conducting his choir while Lata Taukei’aho, who is standing behind with angels’ wings, and Ana Felemi do their best to distract him and to ‘hijack’ the choir.

Clockwise from top left: Tomasi Palu conducts the Marrickville choir. Kava, before church. Below: Preachers and ministers gather before service. Bride and groom resplendent in wedding clothes. Christening of baby Sione Tupou. Tongan girls begin to fidget in church. Former Anglican Church, now owned by the Free Church of Tonga.

Tongan women wearing the ceremonial version of the Ta’ovala, called ngafingafi, during a wedding. The Rev Filipe Mahe, the head minister of the church in Australia, taking Sunday School. The Rev Fakapelea Afu preaching during Sunday service the service starts at 11am and finishes around 1.30 pm. 28 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

29 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Clockwise from top left: Sasaia Kaloni Kaivelata and sons relax in the hall before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving service is marked by hijinks. Women preparing the wedding feast. George Sigg, ‘papalagi’ 11-year-old plays with Siupeli Kaivelata, age 2 at Thanksgiving. Children helping to cover the Thanksgiving feast tables to keep the flies away it was a 37 degree October heatwave in Sydney that day. Eseta Palu and her doll. Younger children socialise outside under supervision of older children while the adults are still in church or preparing the feast. 30 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

AUSTRALIA Medical aid on the move A team of Australian volunteer plastic surgeons is providing vital assistance to the islands.

By Robert Simms IMAGES of swaying palms and sandy beaches usually come to mind at tHe mention of the Pacific islands . . ut those islanders born with a cleft palate or badly burnt have a less idylic view of Oceania.

Plastic surgery in the Pacific Islands until 1983 was limited to major hospitals in Fiji and Papua New Guinea; and even there, lack of expertise meant only basic operations could be performed. But an organisation called Interplast Australia has now come to the aid of islanders in need.

Interplast Australia is an association of plastic surgeons based in Melbourne that co-ordinates small teams of surgeons, anaesthetists and nurses who travel throughout the Pacific region to carry out crucial plastic surgery on those with congenital and acquired deformities. Cleft lips and palates account for about 90 per cent of congenital problems, while burn scar contractures and scar revision create the greatest demand for the skills of the visiting specialists.

Interplast was conceived at Stanford University, Connecticut, in 1968: surgeons from Stanford had for years been treating congenital and burns cases from Mexico and South American countries. Because this was an expensive exercise that was limited to the most serious cases, they decided to take a team to the region to assess the viability of doing some of the work in the countries concerned. They found there was a huge demand for assistance in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru and Honduras, and since then have been totally committed in that area.

The Australian group was formed after Dr Leo Rozner, a specialist who had been visiting America, returned in 1982 and spoke enthusiastically of the work being performed by the Stanford surgeons. After consultation with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and initial funding from Rotary International District 980 in Melbourne, it was decided that a number of Australian specialists should join the American teams to see how the system worked.

Finally, in November 1983 Mr Donald Marshall, a prominent Melbourne plastic surgeon and at that time chairman of the Division of Plastic Surgeons within the College, led the first all-Australian team to Fiji and operated on 60 cases at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva.

The success of those operations led to requests for more help; it was evident the need for this service in the pacific was as great as in Central and South America, and Pacific countries including Tonga, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Western Samoa, Tuvalu, Kiribati and, more recently, the Cook Islands have since been included, As the demand increased, additional financial backing was sought from the Australian Government through the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau (AIDAB). Funding covering about 80 per cent of expenses has been made available, with additional help from Rotary International and general donations.

Donald Marshall, now vice-president of Interplast Australia, explains that the surgeons are volunteers. “All Interplast pays is the airfares and the cost of accommodation,” he says.

“Of course, all of these specialists are in private practice, so the main cost to them is their lack of earnings while away. This limits the length of the trips to two weeks for the majority of the surgeons.”

What, tnen, is the motivation for specialists who give their time freely, yet pay for the privilege? Dr Richard Barnett, a Sydney surgeon who has been to Labasa, Fiji, feels that though the surgery was generally routine, he receives a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction from the work.

“The children were the best patients that I’ve had,” he says. “They do exactly what’s asked of them! Tne enormous smiles of the parents and the amazing hospitality of the islanders made the trip memorable.”

Donald Marshall goes further, saying that the true plastic surgeon is very attracted to the roots of the profession to work for people who are genuinely disfigured. “In the western world,” he explains, “the origins of plastic surgery early this century in the ravages of war and disease nave become less of a dominant factor, while cosmetic surgery is now more prominent.” But while cosmetic surgery is intellectually stimulating and financially rewarding, surgery for those who need it is more fulfilling.

During the year to June 1987, more than 1200 consultations and almost ► Above: Interplast surgeons at work in Labasa, Fiji. Left: Fiji schoolteacher Tamo before and after surgery for burn scars. 31 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

he said. But their outboard motor died and they were soon swept away by strong winds and currents. They tried to make a sea anchor with their water-filled petrol tank, but it did not have any effect.

The fishermen did not worry unduly at first, thinking they would be rescued. “We ate the raw fish we had caught and drank urine mixed with seawater,” Temou said. “We saw three ships during the time we were adrift but they were too far away to notice us. Anania died on October 14.

“I felt lonely and very sorry for him, but I was very weak and could not do much for him. I could not throw him overboard because he was too heavy,” he said.

“It rained once and I could only collect water in a bottle. When that ran out, I went back to drinking seawater mixed with urine. I was weak and did not have very much hope of survival until I saw the fishing boat and started waving.”

□ Kiribati Constitution Decision

A DECISION of major constitutional significance was delivered by Mr Justice Topping at the High Court in Betio on November 18. An application by Opposition member Dr Harry Tong, seeking an order to restrain the Attorney General, Michael Tekabwebwe, from taking part in the proceedings of the Maneaba in Maungatabu (House of Parliament) was struck out for want of jurisdiction by the High Court.

The court held that the Maneaba in Maungatabu had the right to conduct its own proceedings without interference from the courts, and that this was an important part of political freedom. In his judgment, Mr Justice Topping said: “The basis of this Constitution is the separation of powers.

The Judiciary ought not to interfere in the running of the Legislature and vice versa: the Speaker and Parliament cannot be challenged in their legislative capacities. The Kiribati Constitution does not limit the power of Parliament as to privilege.”

The decision clarifies the question of parliamentary supremacy and reaffirms the principles of sovereignty of parliament upheld in most other countries.

□ New Role For France

FRANCE is poised to step into a breach between Australia and the small Pacific nations, according to the Paris newspaper Le Monde.

It said France’s reputation in the region was benefiting from the resentment many smaller nations felt towards Australia’s “police” role. “In the wake of the referendum on the future of New Caledonia, the influence of operations were carried out in Pacific countries, bringing the total number of operations to 2100 in the four years since the inception of Interplast Australia.

Apart from the transport costs to hospital for those who live on outlying islands, no payment is expected from the patients, yet their quality of life improves immeasurably. Donald Marshall recalls a particular patient, a teacher from Rakiraki in Fiji. “His name is Tamo, and he was so terribly burnt on his hands and face that he couldn’t even hold the chalk to draw on the blackboard,” Mr Marshall says.

It was decided that Tamo’s case was too complicated and time consuming to handle in Fiji, so he was transferred to a private hospital in Melbourne.

“I operated on him two or three times over a period of a few weeks to correct the problem; it was very rewarding to see photos of Tamo taken by a later team that went to Fiji. He was drawing on the blackboard and teaching the children how to sing and dance. It was lovely to see.”

In Tamo’s case, his hospital accommodation was provided free of charge, the operations were performed without cost and the travel and incidentals were met from Interplast funds.

He is now a useful member of the Fiji community, where he would have otherwise been a burden.

The efforts of Interplast are not only appreciated by the patients and their families but are also encouraged by the governments of the countries involved. The Fiji Government is enthusiastic about the Interplast project.

“We are delighted by the services that Interplast offer the people of Fiji,” a Government spokesman says. “It’s hoped the service will continue to expand and include more local doctors.”

It is especially important that local doctors be trained to carry out plastic surgery whenever possible, the spokesman said, though Pacific countries rely heavily on Interplast teams for the majority of plastic surgery operations at this stage.

Donald Marshall agrees that the training of local doctors is important, and a priority: “Our aim is first to create awareness of what can be done for congenital deformities, terrible burns and so on, so that local doctors can see that acceptable results can be produced,” he says. “Then a doctor who has shown interest in this type of surgery is asked to take part m the Interplast program.”

Mr Marshall explains that Interplast’s role will become more consultative as local surgeons are trained: the ultimate aim is to encourage Pacific countries to become self sufficient in this field of medicine.

An international co-operative of these organisations is now emerging, according to Donald Marshall. “We have been getting requests from places such as Bangladesh and countries in Africa to consider doing the same thing there. The only limiting factor is the manpower available. I’m sure funds could be raised from the Australian Government or Rotary.”

Meanwhile, Interplast programs in the Pacific continue.

The coups in Fiji last year curtailed operations there for some months, but Interplast teams are active again in Suva, Lautoka and Labasa, undertaking further programs of plastic and reconstructive surgery.

The existence and continuing growth of Interplast Australia stems from the enthusiasm and support of Rotary International District 980 and of Mr Keith Walter. Though Mr Walter has no medical qualifications, he saw the possibilities that Interplast presented after hearing Leo Rozner, and later encouraged Australian specialists to undertake volunteer work in the Pacific region. □ Below: Tamo has returned to his school in Rakiraki and is once more playing an active role in society. 32 From Page 27 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

France in the South Pacific is being seen in anew light,” a correspondent wrote. “Pilloried not long ago by those Melanesian countries most susceptible to the independence and nationalist movements, Paris is polishing up its international image.

“The setbacks of Australia whose role of regional police is challenged more and more openly play no small part in this change.”

The newspaper said this redistribution as power came as South Pacific nations were falling prey to unprecedented political tension, particularly in Melanesian states. With all the coups d’etat, riots and constitutional crises of 1987 and 1988, Melanesia had never before known so much turbulence, Lc Monde said. “Those events have revealed the fragility of these island states, which are economically dependent on the outside world and whose stability inherited from the colonial era is starting to crack,”

Citing opposition to Australia’s dispatch of anti-riot gear to Father Walter Lini’s Vanuatu Government earlier this year, the newspaper said political troubles in that country could lead to anew balance of power in the region.

Le Monde had also dismissed Father Lini’s criticism at the last South Pacific Forum of France’s peace plan for New Caledonia as “mere rhetoric designed for local consumption”.

□ Us Bans Vanuatu Tuna

THE UNITED States Government has banned the importation of yellowfm tuna caught in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean from countries that violate US laws protecting marine mammals. The ban is primarily to protect dolphins, which associate with schools of tuna and are often caught in the nets of large tuna vessels.

Strict regulations oblige the American tuna fleet to use special nets designed to prevent dolphins being trapped, to undertake rescue operations for dolphins that are caught in nets and not to fish after sunset, when rescue operations would be difficult. It is claimed this has reduced the number of dolphins killed by the US fishing fleet from a very conservative estimate of more than 100,000 in 1976 to around 20,000 in 1987.

Vanuatu is named as a noncomplier with the US rules, along with Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela. El Salvador and the Soviet Union are already under embargo for failure to meet US requirements.

Voice of America radio said that to sell their tuna catch in the United States, other nations do not have to meet the same strict requirements the US imposes on its own tuna fleet, but they do have to make a comparable effort to reduce marine mammal deaths associated with tuna fishing.

AUSTRALIA Raun Isi long Sydney PNG brings its arts to Australian children.

By Matthew McKee ONDI BEACH Public School, Sydney, tasted the culture of Papua New Guinea’s East Sepik province last month in the form of a visit from the Raun Isi Travelling Theatre. The red brick and sandstone school is just across the road from Australia’s most famous beach, and it has witnessed the growth of Sydney’s sun worship since it was built in 1923: indeed, there is abundant irony in the contrast of the ancient traditions of PNG being performed scant metres from a strip of sand, surf (and, nowadays, of sewage) that has become one of the sacred sites of modern Australian culture provided you can find two Australians who will agree on just what constitutes Australian culture.

The question didn’t seem to be worrying the students of Bondi Beach school as they sat entranced by Raun Isi performing a song of welcome, miming a comic tribute to the ‘infectious’ atmosphere of a doctor’s waiting room or dancing in celebration of the graceful flight of the seagull.

Raun Isi - whose name comes from a Pidgin term meaning a leisure trip, strolling about or ‘travelling easy’ - was in New South Wales for a fortnight of performances and social vists, beginning with a week in the central western NSW town of Wellington, sister city of the East Sepik provincial capital of Wewak. The troupe's visit had been arranged by Wellington businessman Lyall Agnew, and its members stayed with local families. 1 Raun Isi spent a second week in Sydney, sponsored by Australian business houses that have interests in PNG. The Sydney sponsors raised $lO,OOO to cover food, accommodation and transport costs, and arranged performances at Sydney schools, before lunchtime crowds in the city’s Martin Plaza pedestrian precinct, and at bicentennial celebrations for the City of Parramatta. The travelling theatre company was established by the East Sepik Provincial Government in 1980, and includes members from all parts of the province.

Cultural and linguistic diversity is also the norm at Bondi Beach Public School, whose enrolment includes students from 22 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Pacific (even including one student from PNG). Many of these students speak a second language in addition to English, and the school encourages a variety of multicultural activities to foster a sense of pride in every child’s heritage. Melise Fanning, an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at Bondi, explains that: “Because we have children from so many non English-speaking backgrounds in the school, we encourage them to keep up with their first language; to use it at home, to read in it even to write stories in it. Children with two languages,” she says, “seem to have a good approach to work and do well with their schooling.

“The kids really enjoyed Raun Isi,” she says. “They loved the music, and especially the item at the end of the performance where they all participated by wearing PNG clothing and playing traditional instruments.” □ Raun Isi performers Max Hangat (left) and Lucas Kou get the children of Bondi Public School on their feet and dancing to the beat of the kundu. 33 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Papua New Guinea

Bumpy ride ahead for coffee industry Robin Bromby looks at prospects for one of PNG’s most important export crops.

THE Papua New Guinea Government is still publicly insisting on local ownership of coffee exporting companies by October 1989, though many in the industry cannot see now local investors will come up with enough capital to make the policy work. Recently, the nationally owned coffee producer Eastern Highlands Development Corporation tried to buy the largely German-owned PNG Coffee Exports, only to find it could not meet trie K 8 million asking price.

One clue to the Government’s thinking is the reported statement of an unnamed official who said the Government could buy the shares and hold them in trust until it was possible for citizens to take up the stocks. It seems the only way out for the Government, unless it lets the deadline slide quietly by next October; but the problem is that coffee is such an emotional issue about 300,000 rural households are involved in its production that the Government may have painted itself into a corner.

The deadline was first set at the beginning of 1988 by former Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, Gai Duwabane. At that time, two of the 10 affected companies Angco and Kumul Kopi were cited as having met the Government’s guideline of all coffee exporting companies being at least 90 per cent locally owned; Mr Duwabane wanted farmers to be able to buy shares in them.

In January, the then minister said his department was writing to the export companies telling them to start selling their shares to Papua New Guinea nationals. He said those who refused to sell would face ‘consequences’, and there was the suggestion made that future allocations of export quotas would be decided in part by what proportion of each company’s shares was held by local people rather than by foreigners.

Mr Duwabane cited Angco Pty Ltd, the country’s largest exporter, which had decided to float K 5 million worth of shares, as showing localisation was possible. The problem was that the share float, as already reported in Pacific Islands Monthly, was a flop, with only about a third of the five million shares being taken up. The float coincided with poor returns for coffee and there was some sentiment that at K 1 per share the company was a little overvalued.

The companies that would have been most affected by the Governments included PNG Coffee Exports, Wahgi Mek, Nambusu, Coffee international, Kundu Coffee and the Carpenter’s operation.

With a world glut, this is hardly the time to be investing in coffee export companies. Furthermore, some of the companies spent heavily several years ago when the world quota on production exporting was lifted temporarily; there was a rush to buy up coffee crops and prices were forced up. The growers did well and there was plenty of spending in the Highlands in 1986/ 87, but the industry is currently in the doldrums. Coffee prices, after peaking at K 4900 a tonne in early 1986, have fallen steadly since and the reintroduction of the global Quota system in late 1987 also Fed to depressed Above: cultivation is labour-intensive, but quality control is good. Right: Goroka coffee could become a major export item if marketed properly.

Ccop/Sopac

Suva, Fiji

TEMPER

Audit Of Ccop/Sopac Financial Accounts

The CCOP/SOPAC Technical Secretariat invites tenders from suitably qualified auditors, from within the member countries of the Committee for Co-ordination of Offshore Prospecting in the South Pacific, to undertake the audit of the CCOP/SOPAC Annual Accounts for a contract period of 3-5 years at the discretion of the Committee.

Tenders will close on 20 February 1989 and should reach the CCOP/ SOPAC Technical Secretariat, c/o Mineral Resources Department, Private Mail Bag, Suva, Fiji, on or before this date. The lowest or any tender will not necessarily be accepted.

The successful tenderer will be notified before the end of March 1989.

For further information regarding the size and nature of audit, please contact CCOP/SOPAC’s Finance/Administrative Officer on telephone No. 381377, Suva, Fiji.

Member countries of CCOP/SOPAC are Australia Cook Islands Fiji Guam Kiribati New Zealand Western Samoa Vanuatu Tuvalu Tonga Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands prices in the international market.

The quota is imposed on the main exporting and importing countries that are members of the International Coffee Organisation. Papua New Guinea cannot export all the 1.3 million bags it will produce this year; the excess over the 750,000 bag export quota has to be stockpiled or can be sold to non-ICO members, which include China, the Eastern European countries and South Korea.

The big question each year is how well Brazil will do. A new element that some industry people believe may become important is the greenhouse effect. Brazilian coffee growers have traditionally worried about frosts ruining their crops. That has not occurred in recent years; instead, Brazil has been hit by droughts in 1985 and 1988 the country’s exports in 1986 were consequently down to about 12 million bags, then up to about 35 million in 1987 and the forecast total for this year is 20 million bags.

The Coffee Board in Papua New Guinea is now requiring only 75 per cent of each of tne exporting companies to be held locally, with the same deadline of October 31. The board’s executive officer has been reported as saying that there will be no change of mind.

Coffee exporters who spoke to PIM still insist tne plan is completely unrealistic; they say there is simply not the spare equity capital in the country to meet the cost of localisation. Depressed coffee prices combined with less than 12 months to meet the deadline would defeat the Government’s timetable. Apart from Angco’s float there has been little sign of Papua New Guinea being interested in acquiring shares, and the Eastern Highlands Development Corporation is reluctant to meet the quoted price.

Meanwhile, the coffee exporters are watching the Mt Hagen-based Panga Coffee company owned by Walter Perdacher. He plans to begin manufacturing instant coffee, and told PIM that ne planned to have the plant operating by the end of 1990; it will be capable of processing 15,000 tonnes, about a quarter of Papua New Guinea’s annual crop. He said the main export markets would be Western Europe and Arab countries.

While other companies view Perdacher’s plans skeptically, he has already received agreement in principle from the Coffee Board. The published cost of the plant is K 1.5 million and it was designed as a joint venture with West German interests; Panga has already shipped beans to West Germany for trial processing.

The success of the venture would rely on export markets in a highly competitive industry. Papua New Guineans rarely drink coffee, and the expatriates living in the country account for most of tne one per cent of the nation’s output consumed in PNG.

Coffee is the country’s third largest export after copra and gold: in the 1986/87 year, the crop earned the nation K 203 million.

Smallholders account for about 70 per cent of coffee production; the average family smallholding consists of about 600 trees covering 0.15 hectares and yielding an income of K4OO a year. Plantations range between 20 and 100 ha and generally produce higher quality beans due to better cultivation techniques.

The industry has faced problems in recent years with the outbreak of coffee leaf rust. If unchecked, the rust could reduce coffee output substantially: the Coffee Development Agency has estimated a decline in production from one million bags in 1987 to 300.000 bags in 1992 if the disease is not brought under control. Australia has donated K 3 million to the battle and by early 1988, 30,000 smallholder gardens had been rehabilitated, with 72.000 others being ‘attended to’.

The Coffee Research Institute has reported success with a new type of rust-resistant coffee it has been testing in the Highlands. Though trials are still at an early stage the catimor coffee strain imported from Kenya, Portugal and Queensland looks as though it might be the answer, an institute agronomist has been reported as saying. The catimor plant has other payoffs it is also more compact than the plants now grown in Papua New Guinea, so that smallholders would be able to increase the number of their trees. It is expected tests on catimor will be completed in 1992.

One export company manager, however, takes a more sanguine view.

He said that every country that has rust problems ends up with an increased crop. Fighting the rust problem, he said, leads to better husbandry and **gets the growers off their tails and growing bigger crops.” □ Urgent measures are needed to control coffee rust in PNG and save a K 203 million industry. 35 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

United States

US islanders overcome passport tribulations . . . But not, writes David S North, years of frustrating effort.

IN A series of separate acts over the past year, the United States Government has eased immigration restrictions for a number of Pacific Islanders while Canada has narrowed one. The US has: helped tourism by making it easier to visit Guam; granted citizenship to a perhaps thousand Marianas residents with Japanese ancestors; given National (citizenship) status to a number of once-stateless Samoans, and granted legal residence status to literally thousands of previously illegal Tongans in Hawaii and on the Mainland.

Tourists 99 per cent of whom are from Asia are important to Guam’s economy. The island’s hotels and government have long felt that if visitors did not need to obtain a visa from an overworked American embassy, there would be more tourists. (A Japanese citizen, for example, does not need a visa to enter the Northern Marianas).

The battle began several years ago, when the late Guam delegate Won Pat begin pulling strings in Congress for this goal; an effort carried on by his successor, Ben Blaz.

After years of pondering the list of nations whose citizens would be eligible for non-visa entry (see box), the US began admitting tourists without visas into Guam on October 1.

Meanwhile, in the second of these island-immigration decisions, the US Government dropped an unreasonable position it had taken earlier regarding a large group of mixed-ancestry residents of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).

The problem began with the Covenant between the Marianas and the Mainland, which ended some 40 years of trusteeship status; it said all residents of the island who had been citizens of the old Trust Territory would become citizens of the United States once the Covenant was approved, provided they were otherwise eligible.

No one paid much attention to the last provision until the US decided that anyone with a historical allegiance to another country would not be eligible for US citizenship. While it was presumably not intentional, this decision could be construed as having both racist and, oddly, sexist overtones because it fell heavily on one part of the island’s population, persons with at least one Japanese male ancestor. A few people of other ancestry were caught in the situation as well. (By way of background, the US has always taken a dim view of dual citizenship and requires each newly naturalised citizen to swear: “ . . . 1 absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance "and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”

After the Congress extended citizenship to the residents of the Marianas, the bureaucrats decided residents with prior allegiance to other nations would have to renounce and abjure it prior to the effective date of the Covenant, November 3, 1986.

There were, however, two problems; the Government did not make the announcement very effectively, and no one in the Marianas thought of themselves as having other allegiances. The Japanese occupation ended more than 44 years ago and virtually no resident of Saipan or the other islands used a Japanese passport.

The State Department which issues US passports was aware of Japanese citizenship law, however, and Knew that all descendants through the male line of Japanese citizens were regarded as Japanese citizens under Japanese law. The department therefore refused to issue US passports to descendants of unions of Japanese fathers and Chamorro mothers, though there were a lot of marriages and Babies born in the 30 years of Japanese control, from 1914 to 1944.

Several of those who had been denied US passports on the allegiance issue sued in US District Court lor the District of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The class action suit was won by the islanders, but for reasons hara to determine from this distance, the decision applied only to people under the age of 18. Other suits were then filed for Eeople over 18, and again the Justice ►epartment dragged its feet instead of accepting the precedent laid down for the youngsters.

Reason ultimately prevailed, however, and in August all parties agreed to a joint summary judgment that granted citizenship to islanders of mixed ancestry.

In reality this was more of a travel issue than a citizenship issue; the CNMI Government did not provide a different, lesser, legal status to the mixed-ancestry residents. But what the Mainland Government had done was to put about 1000 islanders into “passport purgatory”, to Quote Roger Stillwell of the CNMI Washington office.

The Mainland Government cancelled the old Trust Territory passports issued to residents of the Marianas and issued US passports, but not to those in the mixea-ancestry group.

The latter were stuck, and could not leave the islands.

The most glaring example of this policy hit a CNMI resident then serving in the US Army in Germany. He was ordered to report to a new duty station in the States and though he could travel on his military documents, the Government said it could not allow his family (which had the old Trust Territory passports) to land in the States! After some stormy phone calls, the decision was reversed.

Meanwhile, in the third of these developments another legislative battle (won by former delegate Fofo Sunia) began to bear fruit this year in American Samoa as the State Department began to implement his ‘one-parent National’ law. In years past American Samoans born in the Territory or in the States, or born to two American Samoan parents anywhere in the world, were US Nationals from birth. (The status of US National is unioue to Samoa, and is roughly eaual to US citizenship). But if the birth were to one US National and a citizen of another nation (principally births to one American Samoan parent and one Western Samoan parent in Western Samoa) and it took place outside US jurisdiction, the child was simply stateless. Sunia’s law allowed citizenship to be granted to such persons, but the State Department took a long time to implement the law. Among other things, it meant sending passport officials to Pago Pago from Hawaii. This year, however, the officials made a couple of trips to the islands and issued about 200 passports, the symbols of citizenship. 36 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

The fourth major change in immigration practices took place on the Mainland, in Hawaii and in Guam, and that it was helpful to thousands of islanders came as a total surprise to immigration specialists. The longdebated Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 created, among other things, an alien legalisation program for two classes of aliens: those who had been in the US illegally since 1982, and those who had been illegally in the states for a shorter period who had done some farm work. These amnesty provisions were designed primarily for former residents of Mexico, particularly Mexican farmworkers who are important to California’s powerful farm interests.

No one expected that close to 3000 Tongans would apply for legislation, but they did (bear in mind that Tonga is a long way from the United States, that there are only about 100,000 Tongans living in the homeland, that there are no direct flights to the States, and that a Tongan wanting a visa to the US must apply for it in Suva). Even more surprising to Mainland immigration officials was the fact that more than half of the Tongans applied as farmworkers. The agricultural program was an easier route to legal status that the other one, and was generally regarded as dogged by large numbers of fraudulent applications though there was no specific discussion of Tongan fraud as there had been by applicants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Haiti and Mexico.

The number of applicants for legalisation from South Pacific jurisaictions were as follows: Tonga 2921 Western Samoa 962 Australia 340 New Zealand 294 Fiji 246 Palau 117 Nauru 8 Papua New Guinea 7 French Polynesia 5 Solomon Islands 3 FSM 1 Kiribati 1 New Caledonia 1 Tuvalu 1 Vanuatu 1 Total 5913 Most of the applications from Tonga and from other islands were filed m California (particularly South Los Angeles) and in Hawaii.

While the US, sometimes unwittingly . . . and sometimes gracelessly, was opening various doors to islanders, Canada narrowed one. Unlike the United States, Canada allows citizens of many nations to enter without visas but has a list for which visas are required. Following the coups in Fiji, for example, that nation was added to the visa fist though Fiji continues to turn the other cheek, and Canadians do not need a visa to visit Fiji.

One other barrier continues to slow travel from the independent islands of the South Pacific to the United States: the number of the places where one can secure an American visa. The US Department of State issues visas in the former Trust Territories (FSM, Marshalls, Palau and CNMI) and in Suva and Port Moresby, but nowhere else in the Pacific not in any of the French territories, the Solomons, Vanuatu, Western Samoa or even in American Samoa (where they were formerly available).

When asked if visa issue would be restored in Pago Pago, one senior State Department official exploded “over my dead body”: it seems the Governors of American Samoa and the Panama Canal Zone and their designees could in the past issue tourist visas, but the American Immigration Service was soon complaining to the State Department about the strange parade of Iranians, Hong Kong Chinese and other non-Pacific and non-Latin American people who were showing up with unlikely tales . . . and Governor’s visas.

First, the Department tried to change the Pago Pago issue practices to no avail. Then it sought to encourage some agency to investigate the pattern, but found that no one was willing to take jurisdiction in such an odd arrangement: not the State Department’s internal investigations unit, not the Department of the Interior and not the FBI. State officials and Congressional staff finally used just about the most obscure legislative vehicle available to kill the practice they attached language to a private bill dealing with an individual immigrant, which allowed the immigrant into the State while taking the visa power away from the Governors, Though the US quietly took care of its P a go ? a go visa problem, one really outrageous immigration scam continues in the South Pacific: the sale of ‘Tonga Protected Persons’ passports.

These documents formerly cost about |USBOOO each, but now they are available for “a fee prescribed by His Majesty in Council in other words, a fee set by regulation . . . or, perhaps, by what the traffic will bear.

These passports’ are virtually worthless as travel documents among the many nations that do not accept them are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the United States and they do not guarantee the holder entrance into Tonga, either. However, it is said some Latin American nations have been known to accept them.

On the other hand, the documents are hardly worthless to the Kingdom of Tonga. According to a government publication quoted m The South Sea Digest (July 8, 1988) Tonga sold $U56,500,000 worth of ‘Tonga Protected Person’ passports between January 1986 and April 1988. No wonder Tonga, with minimal exports, enjoys a balance of payments surplus! □ Visa freedom... and regional ignorance PEOPLE from the following nations no longer require a visa to visit Guam: Brunei, Burma, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Solomons, United Kingdom (including Hong Kong), Vanuatu and Western Samoa.

The US Government made up the list by calculating the rate of visa denials by country of origin. Countries where visa denials are high such as the Philippines and Korea were eliminated no matter how much Guam pressed for their inclusion on the visa-waiver list.

Japanese, for example, only rarely overstay US visas, hence they were good candidates for the no-visa arrangement.

SOMETIMES Governments in North America need geography lessons, to wit: • For months the Uo Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) showed St Kitts, the former British Caribbean colony as a South Pacific Island in its statistical reports. • Canada’s instructions to its consular officers say the citizens of the Solomon Islands do not need a visa to enter Canada, but people from the ‘British Solomon Islands’ do need such a visa. • Similarly, Canada tells its consuls that citizens of American Samoa need a visa if they want to visit Canada, but that Nationals of the United States do not need visas; however, the only Nationals (as opposed to citizens) of the United States are American Samoans and US National status is the norm for residents of that territory. • Finally, the INS General Counsel felt it necessary to write ‘Western Samoa was and still is an independent country’ when he defined what was and what was not part of the United States for the purposes of its alien amnesty program. In that program aliens who had been illegally on US territory since January 1, 1982, could seek legal status. The General Counsel ruled that the program applied to Guam, but not to American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshalls or the Republic of Palau. □ 37 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Trade Winds Small-scale industry boost for Kiribati By Rosalind Temariti MO RE JOBS for the people of Kiribati will result from the establishment of four small scale industries, recently announced oL the Re P ubl . c s Government. About 200 people will be employed in the garment industry under a scheme to be owned and operated by the Government. In another development, syrup derived from over-boiled toddy will be marketed as anew export product; as well as its export value to Kiribati, the syrup is also in great demand in Tarawa.

Financial benefit will flow especially to the people of Kiribati’s outer islands, as they will produce toddy syrup and sell it to a central factory that will boil and reboil the syrup until it reaches a prescribed consistency, The syrup can then be stored for up to 10 years. It can be used for cooking and for drinks after being.

An idustrial estate is to oe set up in South Tarawa, to accommodate both small business employers and their employees who do not own land there: the general idea is to increase efficiency through economies of scale, by gathering the bulk of small businesses in one place. Kiribati’s biscuit factory has already been in operation for several years, producing coconut biscuits, today biscuits and plain biscuits: 10 people are employed in the factory at present, but when the Government’s plans are implemented more local workers will be needed.

The four projects have been approved by the Kiribati Development Co-ordinating Committee; all will be government-owned and managed, and are planned to begin production in 1989. The Government is hoping to reduce its dependence on imported goods through these small-scale industrial projects, though it recognises that materials and machinery will have to be imported.

Already in progress are enterprises in metal work, production of exercise books, snack foods, ice-cream, a blackand-white photo studio, soap, oil and confectionery making. □

□ Loan For Western Samoa

THE ASIAN Development Bank has allocated about SUS 6 million as an interest-free loan to Western Samoa for the second Multiproject.

Repayable over 40 years with a 10year grace period, the loan will assist three sub-projects involving coconut oil refining, wood processing and forestry development.

Additional refining facilities to the existing mall near Apia, also provided from an ADB loan, will enable all crude natural coconut oil to be marketed as refined bleached oil, enhancing export income.

Natural forest timber is primarily used for home consumption. The wood processing sub-project will improve efficiency in timber production, and the forestry development subproject supports present efforts to maintain a renewable resource of timber from plantation forests.

Three technical assistance grants, co-funded by the United Nations, will back up the loan by providing consultant services to estaohsh a comprehensive database for land resource planning, assist the Treasury Department in project implementation and two of the implementing agencies in financial management. It will also assist the Government in determining a formula for fixing copra prices. □ HOW DO YOU DO IT?

OWNERS or managers of small to medium businesses in the Pacific are being offered a free service to help them with technological information.

The International Labour Organisation has established a databank that is intended to disseminate information on technological innovations for developing nations and to promote technological data exchange between countries.

The databank, codenamed IN- STEAD, can provide information on a wide range of subjects, including food processing (for example oil extraction, vegetable and fruit processing, fish smoking and so on), energy i[biogas digester, waste recycling and so on), agricultural tools ana implements (animal-drawn equipment, manual tools, water pumps), building materials (stabilised earthworks, roofing tiles, sanitation), or handicrafts (weaving, Palm nuts for toddy manufacture are still gathered in the traditional manner but government initiatives will increase villagers’ revenue 38 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

The Racific Islands Rely

On The Energy Of Boral

All through the Pacific Islands, people rely on Boral Speed-P-Gas LP Gas for their energy needs.

Boral has terminals throughout the area, and is proud to be a leading supplier.

Speed-E-Gas is clean, efficient and low in cost.

It’s the ideal energy source for cooking and water heating in homes, motels and hotels, and for a wide range of industrial uses.

So call Boral. We have the energy you’re looking for. a V ■hi SsSSi ■ Norfolk Island Norfolk Island 2419 Papua New Guinea Port Moresby 214248 Lae 42 2574 Rabaul 921225 Wewak 86 2125 Tonga Nukualofa 21388 Cook Islands Rarotonga 24460 American Samoa Pago Pago 6332170 Fiji Suva 24035 Lautoka 60088 Sigatoka 50578 Labasa 82973 BORAL GAS Vanuatu Santo 455 Port Vila 2046 Solomon Islands Honiara 21833 Boral Gas Limited, Bth Floor, IBM House, 168 Kent St., Sydney, NSW 2000. Tel: (02) 278512. pottery, footwearand leather tanning).

These are only examples of the variety of technological fields covered by the service. Requests for information can be addresesd to: The ILO Office for the South Pacific, PO Box 14500, Suva, Fiji (Fax 30 0248). INSTEAD promises that every effort wil be made to prepare an information package as complete as possible for each request.

This information package will be provided free of charge.

□ Power Loan For Kiribati

TFIE ASIAN Development Bank has lent the Government of Kiribati the equivalent of |US9OO,OOO on its standard concessional terms (repayment over 40 years, 10 years’ grace period) to extend the power distribution network in Tarawa. The project will bring electricity to about 1000 more homes and help the Government program of developing residential areas of North Tarawa.

The Government has embarked on a project to link the islands of North Tarawa with causeways and provide them with basic infrastructure.

□ Japan Helps Apia Port Growth

THE JAPANESE Government has announced a grant of 69 million yen (about $A650,000) to Western Samoa for the development of the port of Apia. The aid includes the improvement of the existing main wharf facilities and the supply of one tugboat.

Japan sees transport services as vital to Samoa’s economic and social development, and has already assisted with improving ferry port facilities at Mulifanua and Salelologa, construction of terminal buildings at Faleolo International Airport ana a ferry to run between Mulifanua and Salelologa to be delivered shortly. □ Western Samoa’s principal port of Apia will get expanded fad litis, thanks to Japanese aid.

Tropicalities

Institute “Not Critical”

I WRITE in relation to the article ■ ‘Nauruans dying of wealth’, published in the Dominion Sunday Times and reprinted in Pacific Islands Monthly, October 1988.

The article contains a number of inaccurate statement attributed to this Institute. None of these represents an accurate view of the Institute and I would like to provide your readers with a more balanced position regarding health problems not only in Nauru but in the whole Pacific region.

The Nauru Government has been concerned about the nation’s health problems, and the Government of President Hammer de Roburt has been working with this Institute for almost a decade to define the problem and to implement preventive measures. The Institute is not, as claimed by the writer, critical of the Nauru Government and its position has been seriously misrepresented.

The intrusion of Western people and their lifestyles into Pacific Island cultures, whether initiated by missionary zeal, commercial interests, political opportunism or even humanitarianism has inevitably led to considerable changes in the spectrum of disease. In a number of Pacific nations, so-called ‘Western’ diseases (heart disease, hypertension, strokes and diabetes) have now reached levels similar to or exceeding those seen in the European populations of Australia and New Zealand. Fragile island economies and health systems are ill-prepared to meet the cost of these chronic diseases.

Nauru appears to have suffered the greatest toll, but many other Micronesian and Polynesian nations are rapidly catching up. A health problem of similar magnitude exists within the New Zealand Maori and Australian Aboriginal communities.

The medical facts cited about Nauru in the article are correct and were presented by me at an open hearing of the Commission of Inquiry into the rehabilitation of the worTea-out phosphate lands in Nauru. My evidence was reported in a number of Australian newspapers, and there was no criticism of the Nauru Government.

In fact, criticism was directed at the major powers in the Pacific region for ignoring the social, cultural and health effects of their political and economic contact with both the islands and their own indigenous (Maori and Aboriginal) communities.

The Nauru Government has moved to take action in a number of areas including the establishment of a diabetes prevention and control clinic, the appointment of a dietitian, frequent visits to the island by consultants in diabetes and eye disorders, and the importation of certain dietary foods. Nauruans with complications from these diseases are provided with medical care in Australia if they cannot be managed in Nauru.

Nauruan patients are no different from those in Australia and New Zealand where compliance with recommended dietary and medical treatment is far from optimal.

The article in question has not provided a balanced picture of the problem one that now faces nearly every Pacific nation. I would therefore be grateful if you would give my reply equal prominence.

Professor Paul Zimmet Lios-Intemational Diabetes Institute Melbourne, Australia Pacific Islands Monthly is always glad to have balance. However, it appears Professor Zimmet has to educate not only us but his own staff: he disowns the assessment made by Dr Dowse, and we accept that the professor’s is the official view of the institute.

On the other hand, he does not go far to deny or disprove Dr Dowse’s assessment. That “the Government has moved to act” after 10 years is not exactly a lightning response to a problem that has surely been quite visible for most of that time.

Horrified By Png Attack

I WAS shocked to read in the October edition of the senseless, brutal attack on Mr Justice Barnett in Port Moresby on September 10. As with most news from PNG, no mention was made of this in the Australian press.

What is Papua New Guinea coming to when this sort of thing is becoming commonplace? Do they want such notoriety as is witnessed m South Africa? If so, they are fast heading in the right direction.

Tos Barnett is well known to me both professionally and as a friend.

Our association goes back to school days in Melbourne. He has devoted many years of his life to service to the people of PNG, and is generally very highly regarded. He certainly doesn’t deserve this sort of treatment.

H F Nankervis Prosperine Queensland, Australia

Festival Disappointment

AFTER eagerly travelling to Australia from Israel I was bitterly disappointed in the Festival of Pacific Arts held in Townsville. I agree wholeheartedly with Sina Powell s letter in Pacific Islands Monthly, October.

I had attended the truly magnificent original festival held in Suva m 1972, and it was with memories of that wonderful experience that I came to Australia this year.

At Townsville the groups that came from the island countries were all delightful, and the audiences were receptive. The disaster of this year’s festival was caused by the ineptitude and the indifference of the organisers and their selfish and callous concentration on their own political activities.

This was an unforgivable intrusion in an arts festival.

A Golberg Tel Aviv Israel

Pacific Journalism Defended

I WOULD like to respond to some of David Robie’s observations in his article, ‘Sope’s Desperate Gamble Falters’

Pacific Islands Monthly, September) especially since I was named.

It seems we now suffer the same cliches the South Pacific Islands have complained about for such a long time that is, we are all lumped together without distinction.

Nevertheless, David Robie’s criticism (and that of the Vanuatu Government) of sensationalist “war hungry” journalists cannot be dismissed. In fact it is a growing chorus in the region.

One observation is that Australian news organisations, especially television networks, are only beginning to see the significance of the region.

It is also true that the “deadlinedriven” approach to stories taken in Australia is not suited to a region vyhere national economies are so sensitive to the ebb and flow of tourists. At the same time, it is unreasonable to expect journalists not to report, for example, coups in Fiji or a constitutional crisis in Vanuatu.

But just as there are many different cultures and priorities in South Pacific countries, so too are there different types of journalism. I, and the vast majority of my colleagues, work long and hard to present as accurate and balanced a picture of regional events as possible. While we cannot change our deadlines, many of us are trying to acquire more local knowledge to help that process. 40 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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Sometimes we also must work within restrictions imposed on us by South Pacific governments. “Beating up” a story with mythical references to impending doom is not doing the job properly. It embarrasses us all.

The other point is: did David Robie see any of the stories on Vanuatu go to air on ABC TV? We pride ourselves on treating stories objectively: in fact, I have just been appointed a full-time diplomatic correspondent, It reflects our belief that the South Pacific is of prime importance and should not be seen as a hit-and-miss story only if there is trouble.

We are not “war hungry”. We are information hungry and if we do that well enough, Australian audiences will be better educated about the region’s emerging political and economic geography.

Finally, the contempt of court case against me followed a regrettable incident with over-zealous camera crews from the ABC and another TV network who were outside the courtroom while the rest of us were inside, Nevertheless, I took responsibility for the actions of the ABC crew for which I apologised sincerely to the court.

The only reason we were called back to court later in the week was because the judge was under the misapprehension that the ABC had broken an undertaking to the court, We hadn’t. It goes to show there can be misunderstanding on all sides.

Margot O’Neill Diplomatic Correspondent, ABC TV Parliament House Canberra, Australia

Vanuatu Bank Update

YOUR article on finance, banking and insurance (Pacific Islands Monthly, November) was of great interest; however, certain facts concerning the Vanuatu Co-operative Savings Bank (VCSB) are no longer accurate.

The VCSB was a division of the Vanuatu Co-operative Federation until December 1986, when a new company was formed and obtained a banldng licence. "

Prior to this the VCSB’s branch structure was rationalised, with the number of branches being reduced to 20 prior to the transfer of the business to the new company. The VCSB has since opened two new branches and we are examining potential sites as resources allow. We have also diversified our invetments away from other banks and towards government bonds and offshore investments. Our offshore investments, however, did not perform as well as those of the Bank of Kiribati or the National Bank of Tuvalu, being responsible for VT0.17 million of the VT0.23 million loss in 1987/88.

The problems we currently face are similar to quite a few banks in this region, and include an insufficient capital base, earning capacity reduced by imposition of Central Bank reserve requirements, lack of experienced staff, communications, and restricted internal investment opportunities. In the face of these difficulties the VCSB continues to operate and work toward being able to offer services requuired to customers and potential customers, David C. Whiskert Vanuatu Co-operative Savings Bank Port Vila

Pacific Ships Update

PRINTER’S ink is supposed to flc ,v in our veins but all too often it’s prim ter’s imps that cause problems for Pacific islands Monthly, as for all other publications. Due to a technical error, the address was accidentally left off Ms Vera Hatton’s letter in the November issue Pim .

All those Pacific history buffs who would like to help her in her quest for information should write to: Vera Hatton PO Box 634 Nowra, NSW Australia 2541 41 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Pacific People

Finding A New Voice Leonie Hdimers talks to Epeli Hau’ofa a Papua New Guinean-born Tongan who was educated in Fiji ,Tonga, PNG, Canada and Australia, and who now teaches in Fiji who has found a new way of bringing his witty and often shocking perceptions of Pacific life to an admiring international audience.

IF READERS are shocked by the hilarious and perceptive fiction of Epeli Hau’ofa, they should spare a ought for how Epeli himself felt after he had sent the manuscript of Kisses in the Nederends to a respectable publisher . . . which promptly agreed to publish. He had gone out of his way to be disrespectful, to use the earthiest humour, simply to see if he could get away with it. “It surprised me no end,” he says. “I thought, ‘the world has gone to the dogs’.”

Here is a Doctor of Philosophy in social Anthropology, head of the Sociology Department at the University of the South Pacific, author of several eminently respectable academic treaties on the anthropology of the Pacific, a former Deputy Private Secretary to His Majesty the King of Tonga . . . writing doors about indolence, anuses, flatulence and swearing.

Epeli Hau’ofa, is, however, very much a product of his time and of a great many places. Born of Tongan missionary parents in Papua New Guinea at the beginning of World War 11, he was schooled in PNG, Tonga, Fiji and Australia, went on to study at the University of New England, the University of NSW, McGul University, Montreal, and completed his PhD at ANU, Canberra.

He has since taught at the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific; first as a research fellow, in 1981 as the first director of the then new Rural Development Centre, based in Tonga, and since 1983 as Head of the Department of Sociology in Suva. His first work of fiction, Tales of the Tikongs, appeared in 1983. Set on the (fictitious) tiny island of Tiko, it is a collection of snort stories satirising development, work, Western and Pacific institutions, officials, notions and ways terribly out of step with each other.

Kisses in the Nederends, published last year, is a rude, witty, full-blooded . . . and full-winded . . . story about a VIP who can’t stop farting. Not even Dr Hau’ofa’s own profession is spared, as the following passage will indicate.

A local expert on the subject delivers a dissertation on various forms of farting, including the ‘lecturer fart’: If you breathe in the second-hand fart, it gets mixed up with your original proouct and the result is known as a double fart. Students at the university call it the “lecturer fart'\ for reasons known only to themselves. We shall call it that because it sounds intellectual.

Lecturer fart can lead to many problems. It can collect in the stomach and distend it .. . thafs why only fat people are called windbags. Lecturer fart can seep into the scrotum and

Matthew Mckee

42 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

blow it up to the size of a soccer ball.

That’s what most of our important people have. VIPs sit around and do no physical work, not because of their eminence as is generally assumed, but because they carry enormous soccer balls, which make them unable to work properly. They sit on chairs behind huge desks to hide their balloons. Tnafs why they’re so cranky and bossy . . .

While Epeli Hau’ofa can regard the human condition at this fundamental level, such an analysis is nevertheless no great insight into his own character. A big and gentle man, Epeli is somehow both commanding and shy at the same time, combining grace, charm and extreme politeness. ITiotos rarely do him justice it’s the quick changes in facial expressions that are so interesting. He makes outrageous statements straight-faced, waiting to see if his audience gets the joke: If he succeeds, he breaks into a sudden smoky, musical laugh.

Storytelling is important to Epeli as a person, as a writer and as a lecturer.

His gift obviously comes from deep in his past. “You gradually develop this ability to tell stories,” he explains, “depending on which kind of society you come from in the Pacific. In my time, story telling was very important before radio came still is. Radio didn’t break it down, it broadened all sorts of things. But video has got into the Pacific very very strongly, especially in the east; Fiji, Tonga, Samoa. Traditional culture was breaking down anyway, but what video is likely to affect is the way people talk.

“Instead of spending your evening with each other you’re glued, just like television elsewhere. I can foresee (but one cannot be categorical about this) the breakdown of that tradition of self-entertainment. Sitting down, telling stories to each other now families are just like families are anywhere there is television.

“You see, while we were growing up we were separated from girls at about the age of nine or 10, and we started telling stories to each other at night; everyone took turn telling stories and frightening each other. Then boys would drift off and you’d find yourself telling a story to yourself, then you’d drift off to sleep . . .

“In a place such as Tonga now, with video (which is very widespread) that sort of setting has been removed. The thing is with oral storytelling that you start from a very early age and progress. If you’re cut off there, the desire to tell stories will go. Maybe people will talk about video . . . and American things.

“Things change. As you grow older, say 16, 17, you hover on the periphery of the world of adult men telling stories, so you develop your skill there; you imitate them. By the time you’re 20 or 21 you get married, then you are in the kava circles with all the very skilled storytellers.

“Myths are a different thing; the storytelling I’m talking about is anecdotal, you must be on your mettle all the time. You have to compose on the spot there’s a competition. One of the most fascinating things is sitting around the kava bowl with me telling these stories; one bounces off another.

Tall stories, you see, and everyone enjoys it. It can go on all night.

“People of my generation, because they were raised in this, they still tell stories and enjoy it tremendously. It’s a hierarchial society, so what you have are groups of people of different ages telling stories to each other.

“In villages in many parts of the “I found it fun to write in a style and tone that is mine ... It is a distinctive voice I think it is very much a South Pacific voice”

South Pacific in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons grandmothers still tell children very frightful stories, horror stories. They tell them to entertain, but also to frighten kids. It keeps them under control; you tell them nasty things that happen around the bush so you don’t have to chase little kids: they just sit there and behave. Grandmothers tell stories about the nasty spirits that live in the big trees and the cliffs; so children just keep away because they are frightened, and in that way they are safe.

“As people grow up, their stories alter; close to puberty there are romantic stories, very clean ones. After puberty 13, 14, 15 that’s when dirty stories come in, told by older boys to younger ones really to test them and titillate them.

“Kisses in the Nederends is an example of a combination of those dirty stories and bad habits I acquired in Australia, being disrespectful of everything. I was here in the 1960 s and early 70s, when Australia went into a very interesting stage the biggest knockers around, some of the most gifted people emerging, people such as David Williamson (whose early plays knocked everyone left, right and centre), Michael Leunig had started [publishing] some of the best cartoons Eve ever read in my life. Australians everywhere were breaking out from the constraints of the 1950 s and early 60s. So that had an influence on this book; that plus the earthy sense of humour of Pacific islands people.

“Of course it’s one thing having it published: it’s a different thing altogether people buying it. It’s not very well liked in the islands.”

Academic writing is an area from which Epeli finds himself increasingly distanced. “Maybe when I retire and I’m useless for anything else, I’ll write more,” he muses. “My interest has shifted toward fiction; there’s a great deal more freedom in it. In academic writing you have to pay homage to your theoretical betters, your intellectul ancestors. With this you just go straight in. It’s more fun . . . especially if you have a twisted mind. You laugh and laugh as you write (which you don’t do with academic writing you never laugh, you get serious, you damn everyone). But with fiction you get an idea and you fall off your bed.”

IThe university’s main contribution to excellence was in the Held of creative gossip. Her academic sources also told her that the most heated cold war campaign in the university was waged within the School of Social and Economic Disintegration between the Departments of Sociology and History.

Sociologists had a guerrilla training camp, funded by the KGB and Colonel Gaddafi, located at one end of the university sewage pond. At the other extremity of the same mess historians, backed by the rest of the university and funded by the CIA and MOSSAD, supported a camp where budding assassins were trained in the science of the slow strangulation of their arch enemies, the sociologists.

The Department of Administrative Studies . . . provided recruits for the guerrilla and assassin camps, while Geography detailed charts of the pond and its environs and Economics laid down the campaign plans. Accounting procured funds ana arms for everyone, making themselves filthy rich.

The other schools tongue-fought themselves into a stupor and, not knowing what else to do, changed their names, believing that this would make them sound less awful. . .

When it comes to the roles that writing such as the above from Kisses in the Nederends can fulfil, there are as many different meanings as there are readers. Epeli says he writes to satisfy certain urges, “But when I rationalise this (which I don’t usually do), one of the aims is to open our ► 43 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

doors and let us breathe.

Our traditions are so strong. Places such as Fiji, Samoa, Tonga have powerful traditions that are very restrictive. And influences from abroad are also restricting, so you become intellectually claustrophobic. One of the things I’m doing is to tread on the areas of taboo. I know it’s shocking, but other people are doing it in all sorts of ways, particularly politically.”

Tradition in transition, and sometimes in tandem, is one of the recurrent themes in Epeli’s writing; and, he says, he worked at it. “I found it fun to write in a style and tone that is mine. I do not speak in the same way as an Australian or New Zealander does. I deliberately established a voice in my first book. It is a distinctive voice 1 think it is a South Pacific voice, which is developing in the same way that Australian has its own voice in English.

“When I do it I’m not conscious of it. What you’re conscious of is to bring out a voice of your own. And if you can’t bring out a voice of your own, you may as well go back to academic writing. That South Pacific voice is such only in that it is influenced by the environment, therefore it is identified with that. People who uphold the Pacific way are romanticists. It’s not that I dislike traditional culture I like it so much.

“I write poetry, it hurts . . . This writing also hurts, because I write from anger. I cannot write when I am happy. It comes out as funny because it’s the only way to do it: you see the erosion of so much of what is essentially beautiful, and the only way to handle those strong emotions is to write in this way.”

Throughout Tales of the Tikongs runs the character Manu, who singlehandedly wages war against the development of Tiko: ‘Religion and Education Destroy Original Wisdom ’ cry the letters on the oack of Manu’s shirt. ‘Over influenced’ says the front of the same garment . . . as for telling it like it is, Manu is the only teller of big truths in the realm.

This is not to suggest that our country comprises a nation of liars as some foreigners seem to think; far from it.

Truth comes in portions, some large, some small, but never whole ...

Spot the author in this passage And Manu shouted at the Doctor of Philosophy recently graduated from Australia. The good doctor works on Research for Development . . . The Doctor is an Expert, although he has never discovered what he is an expert of It doesn’t matter; in the balmy isles of Tiko, as long as one is Most Educated, one is Elite, an Expert, and a Wise Man to boot.

One starry evening the portly Doctor walked down a dusty street. He walked the walk of those who would build Tiko higher than the Tower of Babel. The good doctor walked loftily.

Then out of the blue, on this clear and starry night, a piercing voice sliced the stillness with, ‘WIiY ARE YOU DESTROYING MY COUN- TRY?’ It was Manu, who knows how to pierce . . .

Other characters are variously taken in, or take advantage themselves: And the University of the Southern Paradise, whose wise, wily leaders saw in the man a great kindred talent that matched their own, bestowed upon him honorary doctoral degrees in Economics, Divinity and Philosophy, although that learned institution had no philosophy of any kind, colour or creed . . .

With fame and honour to his name, Ole Pasifikiwei immersed himself totally in the supreme task of development through foreign aid, relishing the twists and turns of international funding games. He has since shelved his original sense of self respect and has assumed another, more attuned to his new, permanent role as a first-rate, expert beggar . . .

Tales of the Tikongs may well become a film. Epeli is currently working on it with a Sydney filmmaker, but suffers no illusions about its certainty.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, Epeli the storyteller stood at a formal dais in an international hotel and read publicly from his fiction for the first time. He had been nervous, this being a debut of sorts, but he took to the dais as to a pulpit and read with gusto first mocking a preacher, then a lecturer kindly as ever. He stole the show. He read about ‘lecturer farts’, too, and the audience laughed and looked shocked.

Then he introduced Blood in the Kava Bowl and with it, a witty, penetrating perception of the evolving South Pacific: In the Pacific, we have visitors, both outsiders and our people, who come and tell us what we are and what we should do . . . It’s very nice.

It is said that an American likes to walk tall even though he may he short, and that he occasionally tares a giant step or two for mankind even though mankind may not have asked him to.

Good luck to him, says Manu, and may he live long, what with the energy crisis, rising unemployment, falling Sky labs, policing human rights and carrying other heavy global responsibilities Defitting a member of the Greatest Nation on Earth.

A Tikong, on the other hand, tends to walk short even though he may be tall, and will not take even a dwarfish step if he can help it. He normally lives too long on account of his love for energy conservation, which he achieves with enviable success simply by doing as little as possible or by aoing nothing at all if he can. He does not nave to police human rights, even in his own village, since he’s never heard of such things. Moreover, he has no global responsibility, for he is a citizen of a tiny country ... o 44 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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Pacific Arts

Festival on film Memories of this year’s Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts can now be enjoyed on video, thanks to a Townsville media firm.

JR FILM archive of the Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts has been developed by a video production company in Townsville, Queensland.

Coral Sea Imagery filmed 25 hours of broadcast quality material at the festival using the latest LOK 90 Bosch camera and Betacam recorder.

The archive will include programs on the Tahitian fire-walk, Umu-Ti, performed for the first time outside French Polynesia; traditional navigation and the voyages of the Hokulea; and complete performances by delegations from the Cook Islands, Fiji, Easter Island, Federates States of Micronesia, Guam, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Northern Marianas, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, French Polynesia, Tuvalu, Torres Strait Islands, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna and Western Samoa.

The programs being developed for each of these nations will include interviews at the craft village and the cultural forum. The soundtrack will be provided by David Fanshawe, official sound recordist at the Festival.

The partners in Coral Sea Imagery are David Hannan and George Evatt, both graduates of the Swinbune Film School in Melbourne, and Douglas Cullen, a social scientist from Oxford Polytechnic in England.

Coral Sea Imagery has invested $20,000 in production costs and is looking for corporate sponsors to cover post-production and distribution costs so archive-quality documentaries can be presented to schools and museums throughout the Pacific. The company also plans to continue filming festivals and cultural events in the Pacific, and is interested to work with governments on educational films promoting the arts.

The archive material and individual programs are available for purchase; further information may be obtained from Douglas Cullen, Coral Sea Imagery, PO Box 2186, Townsville Australia 4810. □ Cultures clash as PNG Highlanders watch a guest tuck into Festival fare: one of the many insights captured by Coral Sea Imagery. 45 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Pacific Stamp Box Edited by John Hunter a large number of B stamps has been issued around the Pacific in recent month's. A nunber of issues relate to the Australian Bicentennary of 1988, and several others continue the theme of the Seoul Olympic Games. Nature gets a minor role and historical events are featured in some series.

KIRIBATI: July 30, Sydpex 88/Australian Bicentennial: 15c Australian assistance; 35c Captain James Cook; 2 x $1 se-tenant pair front and back of Australian $lO note; $2 the ship Logistic Ace.

A miniature sheet also commemorating the 150th anniversary of the first screw-driven steamship.

NAURU: July 29, 80th anniversary of the Nauru Post Office: 30c Marshall Islands stamp of 1901; 50c 1908 letter from Nauru; 70c Nauru Post Office.

August 1, String figures: 25c a mat; 40c the pursuer; 50c the sky; 80c a sword.

October 1: 100 years with the Universal Postal Union.

SOLOMON ISLANDS: July 30, Australian Bicentenary/Svdpex 88, Australian sea links with Solomon Islands: 35c MV Papuan Chief; 60c MV Nemos; 70c SS Malita; $1.30 SS Makambo. August 5, Olympic Games: 22c archery; 55c weightlifting; 70c athletics; 80c boxing; $2 Olympic stadium (miniature sheet).

TONGA: July 11, Australian Bicentennial: $5.04 miniature sheet a montage featuring Australian stamps, posters, photographs.

July 4, 70th birthday of King Taufa’ahau: 32s shipping; 42s commerce; 57s welfare; $1.50 communication. August 11, Olympic Games: 57s athletics; 75s yachting; 52 cycling; $3 tennis.

The Island Press Reports from the papers, compiled by John Carter IN HIS ruling on a dispute between the Fiji Public Service Association and the Suva Board of Fire Commissioners on the dismissal of a fire officer for alleged sexual misconduct, the Permanent Arbitrator, Mr Joseph Khanailal Maharaj said he was satisfied there was a romantic link.

“After all, the fact that he was found in Mrs A’s bed sleeping side-byside surely does not mean he was there for the purpose of telling her a story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” he said.

From Flotsam and Jetsam in The Fiji Times, Suva SIGATOKA Hospital is to have a new outpmients a nd ante-natal clinic. The dime will help ease congestion now faced by pregnant women and outpatients ‘ From The Fiji Times, Suva MEMBERS of the Association of Samoan Teachers (Socaiete a Faiaoga Samoan SFS) will boycott this month’s national examinations for students in Year 8, Year 9 and Year 10.

According to the decision announced yesterday this is because the teachers have no faith in the government’s examinations.

From the Samoa Times, Apia THE NATIONAL Restaurant Association is dissatisfied with operations and service from the governmentowned liquor store (bond).

A report from a Monday afternoon meeting attended by 14 of the 21 restaurants on Rarotonga said that there was “unanimous” dissatisfaction expressed because of the limited range m stock.

Apart from the limited choice for sale, the meeting found that stock on the shelves was too old.

From the Cook Islands News, Rarotonga EAST New Britain leaders are not happy with the type of education their young people are receiving. Premier Sir Ronald To Vue thinks too much emphasis is being given to “core subjects” such as English and mathematics and not enough to practical skills and agriculture something which will equip the young people to return to the community.

Sir Ronald said “too much” time was given to learning of the English language and he wants that cut.

Community school children have six hours on English followed by four on mathematics while science and social science get one to three hours a week.

The non-core subjects get less time.

Sir Ronald said English class hours should be cut in favour of practical lessons. “You don’t need to know English in order to beat a piece of metal into a beautifully shaped object.”

From the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, Port Moresby THE INFLUX of Space Invaders machines is proving to be a major concern, says the Probation and Juvenile Welfare Office.

Chief Probation and Welfare Officer Ben Nicholls says children spend so much time on Space Invaders, “quite often they are not turning up to school”.

From the Cook Islands News, Rarotonga

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Souvenir Videos

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ARTS Townsville 1988

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AUSTRALIA In August this year we, the indigenous people of Australia , hosted this International Event , held every four years in a different Pacific location , to promote a greater understanding and knowledge of the rich cultural heritage of Melanesia , Micronesia , Polynesia and Australia.

As the Official Documentors TAIMA, Townsville's Aboriginal and Islander Media Association has captured the essence of this event on two Souvenir Videos that bring to life the spectacle and brilliance of the Festival's ceremonies , performance , arts , crafts , music and dance.

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Appointed: Mr Terry Williams, as manager of the Victoria Parade, Suva, branch of the ANZ Bank. Some of Mr William’s 28 years with the bank were spent in appointments in Fiji and Honiara. Also appointed is Mr Indar Pal Singh, as manager of the ANZ Bank’s Branch at Labasa, Fiji. Previously accountant at the Naviti Street, Lautoka branch of the bank, Mr Singh has been with the ANZ for 14 years.

Died: Sister Mary Crescentia, aged 97 74 years after her arrival in PNG from her home in Germany in 1914 at the Tubiana Marist Sisters’ convent in Bougainville on October 26.

Sister Crescentia taught for many years in various Catholic schools, was interned from 1942 to 1945 in East New Britain, and spent two years after World War II being restored to health in Sydney.

A nun from Tubiana said: “Though she has never returned to Germany since her arrival on Bougainville, her family has always kept in touch with her.” Sister Crescentia suffered a dislocated hip in 1979, but was able to move about with the aid of a stick or the shoulder of a companion.

Died: Miss Lillian Charlton, educational pioneer and former principal of Adi Cakobau School, aged 81, at her home in South Africa, on October 10.

Miss Charlton took over the newly built school in 1948 and directed it until she went to teach in Tarawa in 1966. Many prominent Fijian women have been the products of her farsighted guidance.

Miss Charlton was awarded an MBE in 1966, and went to live with her sister in South Africa in 1984.

Appointed: Mr R Howard Stephenson, as chairman and chief executive of Bancorp Hawaii and its principal subsidiary, Bank of Hawaii, from March 1 1989. He succeeds retiring chairman Frank J Manaut, who has held that position since 1980.

Laurence M Johnson becomes president of both organisations in succession to Mr Stephenson.

Died: Mr Nemia Drauna, deputy general manager and chief estate officer of the Native Land Trust Board, in Suva on November 16. Mr Drauna, aged 48, had been with the Native Land Trust Board since 1964.

He was educated at the Provincial School Northern in Bucalevu, the Queen Victoria School, Suva Grammar School and the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester, England.

He is survived by his wife and three children.

Died: Mr Pius Malip, 28, Member of Parliament for Amounti/Drekikir in the Papua New Guinea House of Assembly, as the result of a motor vehicle accident in Port Moresby on November 21. Mr Malip was driving home from a parliamentary function about 11pm when his struck rocks by the road and the vehicle plunged into the sea.

He is survived by his wife. Parliament was adjourned for three days as a mark of respect, and Prime Minister Mr Rabbie Namaliu paid tribute to Mr Malip as “a young and capable leader the national can ill afford to lose”. □ Transition

Book Reviews LAST FRONTIERS: The explorations of Ivan Champion of Papua By James Sinclair. Pacific Press. RRPSBS (SUS 69) Reviewed by Dr lan Downs OF THE many books about exploration in Papua, Ivan Champion’s own book Across New Guinea from the Fly to the Sepik is in a class above the rest. Yet, by reconstructing that epic journey with a fresh eye and writing what amounts to a biography of Ivan Champion from his birth in Port Moresby in 1904 until the conclusion of World War 11, James Sinclair has produced a new classic in the historv of Papua.

Ivan Champion always wanted to be a naval officer. From a very early age he pursued his ambition, only to be denied the opportunity because he could not pass the strict Navy medical examination because he has always had to wear spectacles.

Ivan’s Champion’s love for the sea, shipping and naval affairs was not centred on uniforms or glory. His consuming interest was navigation. He belonged to the era before radar, pocket calculators, computers and satellites, and we learn that in his last year at the Southport School in Queensland, an extraordinary headmaster, James Dixon, was teaching an extraordinary pupil how to use a plane-table for mapping by triangulation. Ivan was already familiar with the use of a prismatic compass and correcting for magnetic variation.

With the help of ships’ masters visiting Port Moresby, Ivan learned how to use a sextant and how to use the observed positions of stars to calculate fixed positions at sea. He was soon to adapt his knowledge to the use of a theodolite on land or the use of sextant with a built-in artificial horizon.

Charles Karius was chosen by Lieutenant-Governor Sir Hubert Murray to lead what was to be called the ‘North-East Patrol’, an expedition to cross the island of New Guinea from south to north . . . and Karius chose Ivan Champion to accompany him.

There are two kinds of explorers: those who know where they are in terms of latitude and longitude, and those who do not. Many of the latter have not survived their experience.

Some who survived have dealt in fantasy to describe where they have been.

Ivan Champion always knew where he was when on patrol. Even on routine journeys he kept a perfect record and within the past few years the latest aerial photography has confirmed the accuracy of some of his important observations.

Ironically, the Navy accepted Ivan without testing his eyesight soon after the Japanese invasion of New Guinea in 1942. He served with great distinction rescuing Australian soldiers, transporting coastwatchers, piloting American ships and carrying out front-line hydrographic surveys.

Sinclair’s book is not just about exploration and patrolling. His vignettes of social life in parochial Port Moresby, where a dozen connected families did their best to uphold what amounted to British colonial traditions under the watchful eye of the aloof but parental Lieutenant-Governor living on the hill above the town, are fascinating. The quotes from Sinclair’s interviews with Ivan Champion bring the era to life.

Under parsimonious Australian governments, this outpost of Australian sovereignty barely managed to exist.

Unlike the then politically separate Mandated Territory of New yuinea, Papua lacked comparable fertile agricultural land, did not at that time share in large-scale mineral discoveries and there was little scope for Papuans to achieve economic development.

The policy of Sir Hubert Murray to protect the culture and traditions of the people against exploitation by foreigners was made possible only because Papua seemed in those days to have so little to offer. His ‘outside men’ administered law and justice in a manner reminiscent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (though the country was almost everywhere unsuitable for horses, and even if it had been, the government could not have afforced the cost of saddlery!). Field officers in Papua faced extraordinary hardships in pursuit of criminals, particularly murderers.

Time and again the routine of administration was interrupted when a murder or tribal fight in some remote area was reported.

Unencumbered by the constraints of preparing reports for the League of Nations or a significant local bureaucracy, the ‘outside men’, accompanied by a handful of Papuan Police, would do everything to get their man, even if this meant wading for days through swamps or risking personal injury by intervening in tribal fighting while the combatants were in action.

This is a book of great merit and historical importance. It is a magnificent production, with maps and photographs that are a credit to the author, to the publishers and to the printers (Boolarong of Brisbane). Each copy of this special commemorative edition of 1000 copies has been signed by the author and by Ivan Champion.

Pacific Books House is offering Last Frontiers to PIM readers at the prepublication price of SAS9 (SUSSO) plus postage (Australia SAS per copy, Asia/Oceania SAB, elsewhere $A10), for orders received with a copy of this review by January 14, 1989.

HIENGHENE, Le Desespoir Caledonien, by Lionel Duroy.

Barrault, 98FF; Le Dossier lien, by Jean-Paul Besset.

Cahiere Libres/Editions La Decouverte FFBS: Mourir a Ouvea, by Edwy Plenel and Alain Rollat.

Editions La Decouverte/La Mande, 89FF: Les Senders de L’Espoire by Claude Gabriel and Vincent Kernel.

Editions de la Breche. 70FF: Les Mysteres d’Ouvea, by Patrick Forestier. Editions filipacci, 95 FF.

NEW CALEDONIA’S political paroxysms have spawned a publishing boom, timed neatly to coincide with the aftermath of November’s crucial French referendum on the development of the territory. With the dispassionate commit- Papua New Guinea explorer Ivan Champion: a 1988 portrait by Chinese artist Huang Zhi-Bin. 48 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

TO Pacific Islands Monthly READERS Pacific Press announces the publication of LAST FRONTIERS:

The Explorations Of Ivan

Champion Of Papua

by james Sinclair Each copy of this limited and numbered edition of 1000 copies includes a commemorative bookplate signed by Ivan Champion, OBE, and james Sinclair. Published by Pacific Press, 17 Park Avenue, Broadbeach Waters, Queensland Australia 4128.

LAST FRONTIERS is available to P/M readers at a special reduced price until 31 January 1989. Instead of the regular price of SABS (SUS 72), P/M readers who enclose the review on Page 48 with their payment can purchase Last Frontiers for the pre-publication price of SA69 (SUSSB) plus postage and handling (Australia SAS; Asia/Oceania SAB or SUS 7; other countries SAIO or SUS 9).

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ment of medical researchers tracing the origins of some virulent tropical disease. French journalists have focused on New Caledonia’s agonies over the past decade, subjecting this sliver of Pacific territory to an intense political and social analysis.

Lionel Duroy went to Kanak independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou’s rock-girt redoubt of Hienghene, supported by the flower of French newsmagazines, LEvenement du Joudi : casting a cold eye on a hundred years of history, he produces a vivid, emblematic tale that reaches a climax with the ‘Hienghene massacre’ of 5 December 198 A, an attack in which two of Tjibaou’s brothers died.

The massacre has been seen in scores of reports as the nadir of New Caledonian violence, and in Lionel Durov’s account the tensions between the different communities of Grande Terre that formed the prologue to the killings, and set in motion an inexorable tragic progress, are well traced.

Le Dossier Caledonien, a thorough background briefing on France’s role in the Pacific territory, is explicitly designed as a handbook to the political fallout from the November referendum. The author, a journalist on the Paris radical journal Polids, is well qualified for his task; he was previously one of the key figures benind the Journal de Nouvelle-Caledonie, an impressive but short-lived independent Noumea newspaper known by its enthusiasts simply as the Journal Bleu’.

Jean-Paul Besset adopts an austere style, similar to that relayed by Jean- Marie Kohler in his recent overview of New Caledonian history.

He seeks to answer various questions a reasonable Martian might pose, on being acquainted with the realities of New Caledonia today: Is continued French status the only way to resolve the problems peacefully? Is independence a realistic option? What do the independentists want?

The actual result of the November referendum would clearly have startled Besset, who places Tjibaou and the leader of the European community on the territory, Jacques Lafleur, on his front cover, their hands amicably clasped. On voting day Tjibaou delivered his tribe in the name of the Matignon Accord brokered by Prime Minister Rocard: Lafleur did not.

In the wake of the result, New Caledonia’s political future seems as problematic as ever. Right-wing political formations are reportedly gaining force in Noumea; the glow of concord that suffused the territory as Besset was writing his book may yet evaporate, giving its helpful presentation of New Caledonian history and economics a poignant, ironic tone. Besset considers the lessons of the past century plain: one people has done violence to another, and the time has come for France to make reparations by preparing the way for independence. He even contends that only this future will allow France to maintain its high Pacific presence, for it would be clear “this presence was oriented toward peace and development”.

Edwy Plenel and Alain Rollat have previously collaborated on a politial biography of France’s ultra-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front. Le Pen’s political formation seems destined to play a significant role in New Caledonia's future, since its opposition to the legislation developed after the Matignon Accord was shared by a majority of the European community of the territory.

In Mourir a Ouvea, Plenel and Rollat provide far more than a “quickie” account of the extraordinary events on the northernmost of the Loyalty Islands this April. They offer a detailed reconstruction of the political response to the crisis posed, on the eve of the presidential elections, by the Kanak seizure of police hostages. By this chronology they aim to indict the Government of Gaullist Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and his Overseas Territories Minister, Bernard Pons.

The Ouvea crisis is presented as the turning-point that made possible the Matignon Accord and the authors highlight the parallels beween the conduct of the French State during this nightmare and during the 1985 Rambow Warrior affair, when there was a similar reluctance to investigate the behaviour of the military.

In the pages of Le Monde earlier this year, the authors broke the story that members of the Kanak commando of Ouvea died ater being taken alive by the military. Here they offer further testimony, suggesting these men were summarily executed. For French readers with long memories there are disturbing echoes of the worst excesses of the war in Algeria.

The key documents surroundings the Ouvea operation are printed as an appendix: the handwritten on the grotto of Gossanah, where the hostages were held; the “Legonus report” by the head of the French elite brigade involved; the military inquiry into the deaths of the Kanaks in captivity; and, as a coda, the full text of the Matignon Accord reached under the guidance of Michel Rocard the resolution of the tragedy of Ouvea.

Les Senders de L’Espoir is a newly published potted history by Claude Gabriel ana Vincent Kermel, journalists on the Trotskyist paper Rouge. At the other end of the spectrum is Patrick Forestier’s Les Mysteres d’Ouvea this Paris-Match journalist enthuses over the conduct of the police, those “soldiers-of-the-law”, during April’s tormented days on Ouvea. □

Shipping Schedules

Australia - New Caledonia

Fiji - Hawaii - North

AMERICA PACE Line (ACTA Shipping) operates a fully containerised service every 17 days from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Noumea, Suva and Lautoka. The vessels continue on to the North coast of America, calling at Hawaii at frequent intervals.

Details from ACTA Pty Ltd, Sydney (266 0633); Tlx AA121369; Fax 267 1148; Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, Rodwell Road, Suva (311 777); Tlx FJ2168; Fax 311 804; Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, Lautoka (60 777); Sato SA, Avenue James Cook BPC 2, Noumea, Cedex (281 122); Tlx 163 NM GATO. Fax 276 532.

AUSTRALIA - SAMOAS - TONGA Warner Pacific Lines operates a regular container service from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to Nukualofa, Pago Pago. Apia and Vava'u with transhipment to Rarotonga.

Details from Hetherington Westfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt St, Sydney (223 1600).

Australia New Caledonia

Fiji Samoas Tonga

Pacific Forum Line operates a fully containerised service (general, reefer and ro-ro) from Sydney to Noumea, Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago, Nuku’alofa, Sydney. Cargo centralised from Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane.

Details from Pacific Forum Line, PO Box 796 Auckland; Union Bulkships, 333 George St, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne; Union Co, Lautoka; Pacific Forum Line, Suva, Nuku’alofa; Pacific Forum Line, Apia; Polynesia Shipping, Pago Pago,

Australia - Kiribati

K. Asia Pacific operates a 5/6 weekly service from Melbourne and Sydney to Kiribati (Tarawa).

Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty Ltd, Goldfields House, 1 Alfred St, Circular Quay, Sydney (232 2277), Tlx 122143.

KAP New Guinea Lines calls Tarawa after PNG ports on a 35-day basis from Melbourne and Sydney/Brisbane.

Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty Ltd, Goldfields House, 1 Alfred St, Circular Quay, Sydney (232 2277), Tlx 122143.

Australia Tuvalu

K. Asia Pacific operates a direct service every second voyage to Tuvalu (Funafuti).

Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty Ltd, Goldfields House, 1 Alfred St, Circular Quay, Sydney (232 2277). Tlx 122143.

Australia Norfolk Island

Lord Howe Island

Norfolk Island Shipping Line operates a direct service every 5/6 weeks ex-Sydney.

Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty Ltd as managing agents for NISL, Goldfields House, 1 Alfred St, Circular Quay, Sydney (232 2277).

Australia - New Caledonia

VANUATU Norfolk Island Shipping Line operates a direct service every 5/6 weeks ex-Sydney.

Details from K. Asia Pacific Pty Ltd as managing agents for NISL Goldfields House, 1 Alfred St, Circular Quay, Sydney (232 2277), Campagnie Generale Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Noumea, Port Vila and Santo, for containerised and break-bulk cargo.

Details from Compagnie Generale Maritime 12 Castlereagh St, Sydney (231 3700).

Australia - Nauru

Nauru Pacific Line operates a regular cargo service from Melbourne to Nauru, passenger service to Nauru only.

Details from Nauru Pacific Line (Aust) Pty Ltd, Nauru House, 80 Collins St, Melbourne (653 5709), Nedlloyd Swire, 8 Spring St Sydney, (20 522).

Australia - Solomon

Islands - Vanuatu

NGAL/PNGL joint service operates a monthly service.

Details from Nedlloyd Swire Pty Ltd, 6 Spring St, Sydney (20 522).

Australia - New Zealand

The Australian National Line and the New Zealand Line operate a 10-day container service (TRANZTAS) between Sydney and Melbourne to Auckland, Wellington, Lyttleton and Port Chalmers.

Details from Australian National Shipping Agencies, 131-137 York St, Sydney (225 7333) and Australian National Shipping Agencies, "World Trade Centre", cnr Flinders and Spencer Sts, Melbourne (611 2323) or New Zealand Line, Pastoral House, 96 Lambion Quay, Wellington (72 2245).

AUSTRALIA - NZ - FIJI - VANUATU - NEW CALEDONIA -

Solomons - New Guinea

Sitmar Cruises operates a year-round cruise program from Sydney to include the better-known ports in the above countries plus a number of unspoilt, and largely unknown, island paradises.

Details from Sitmar Cruises, 39 Martin Place, Sydney (239 9000) for NSW; reservations and inquiries (008 42 2277); rest of Australia, reservations and enquiries (088 22 2277).

Australia - Nz Fiji

Tonga Vanuatu - New

CALEDONIA SOLOMONS -

Samoas Tahiti

P&O Liners call at Auckland, Bay of Islands, Honiara, Lautoka, Noumea, Nukualofa, Pago Pago, Papeete, Port Moresby, Santo, Savusavu, Suva, Vava’u and Vila on cruises from Australia.

Details from P&O Booking Centre, Thomas Cook Pty Ltd, 33 Bligh St, Sydney (237 0333).

AUSTRALIA - PNG -

Solomons Vanuatu

A consortium of NGAL/PNG and CONPAC/NEL has four vessels operating a joint service from east coast Australian ports to Port Moresby, Lae Alotau, Madang, Wewak, Rabaul, Kavieng-Kimbe, Kieta, Honiara, Vila, Santo.

Details from Burns Philp & Co Ltd, PO Box R 124, Royal Exchange, Sydney (20 547); Nedlloyd Swire, 8 Spring St, Sydney (20 522); New Guinea Express Lines, 37 Pitt St, Sydney (241 3991); Vila Agents PO Box 27, Port Vila (2456), Tlx NHIOII.

New Guinea Express Lines operates a weekly container service from Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane to Port Moresby, Lae, Alotau, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta, Honiara, Kavieng, Madang, Wewak, Santo, Vila.

Details from New Guinea Express Lines, PO Box R 73, Royal Exchange Sydney (241 3991); 127 Creek St, Brisbane (221 9333); 84 William St, Melbourne (602 5544); Port Moresby (21 4572); Steamships Trading (agent), flabaul (92 1400); Bougainville Agencies Pty Ltd Kieta, (95 6089); Steamships Trading Co, Madang (82 2446); Graumut Enterprises, Wewak (86 2106); Burns Philp (PNG) Ltd, Kavieng (94 2133); Alotau Stevedoring and Transport, Alotau (61 1318); Ngatia Wholesalers Pty Ltd, Kimbe (93 5102) and Tradco Shipping, Mandana Avenue, Honiara (22 588); Vila Agents Ltd, PC Box 971, Vila, Vanuatu (2490); John Lum & Associates, PC Box 65, Santo, Vanuatu (329).

Europe - Tahiti - New

Caledonia - Vanuatu

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hamburg, Bramen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Papeete, Noumea, Port Vila and Santo.

Details from The Bank Line (A'asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688). Tlx; AA24063, Columbus Line, Lae (423466), Tlx; NE44171; Ets A.M. Fare DTE, Papeete, Ets Ballande, Noumea and other local agents.

Europe - Png - Solomons

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hamburg, Bramen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara and on inducement to Yandina.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St. Sydney (251 6688). Tlx; AA24066.

Columbus Line, Lae (423466), Tlx: NE44171; or lines' local agents.

Europe W. Samoa - Tonga

- FIJI The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hamburg, Breman, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Apia, Nukualofa, Suva and Lautoka.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688). Tlx: AA24063, Columbus Line, Lae (423466), Tlx; NE44111; or lines' local agents.

Singapore Hong Kong

Fiji Islands Ports

Kyowa Shipping Co Ltd operates a monthly containerised and break-bulk cargo service from Hong Kong to Lautoka, Suva and then to island ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Private Mail Bag, GPO Suva, Fiji (31 2244); Fax: (679)301 572. Tlx FJ2199.

Far East - Fiji - New

ZEALAND New Zealand Unit Express (NZUE) operates a monthly service accepting containerised and break-bulk cargo from Manila, Keelung, Kaohsiung and Hong Kong to Lautoka, Suva and thence to New Zealand ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Private Mail Bag, GPO Suva, Fiji (312 2244), Fax: (679) 311 572; Tlx FJ2199; Burns Philp, Suva (311 777); New Zealand Unit Express, Maritime Building, 2-10 Customhouse Quay, PC Box 890, Wellington (727 865), Cables ENZUEMAN WELLINGTON, Tlx NZ31340, NEDLNZ, or Nedlloyd Swire Pty Ltd. Sydney (20 522).

Far East - Mid South Pacific

China Navigation’s New Guinea Pacific Line operates a regular container and Break Bulk-Heavy Lift service from Hong Kong, Taiwan Manila, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand to Port W* 50 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Your Direct European Connection

ur s ■ ■

Europe-South Pacific Joint Service

The South Pacific Specialists offer facilities for shipment of: Containers (FCL/LCL) and Breakbulk Cargo plus reefer space and deeptanks for carriage of vegetable oils and other liquid bulk cargo.

Carriers also accept heavy lifts, overlength and cumbersome parcels.

Ports of Service: Loading; Papeete, Apia, Suva, Lautoka, Noumea, Port Vila, Santo, Honiara, Port Moresby, Lae,Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta, Darwin.

For: Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Hull, Dunkirk, Le Havre.

Additional ports on enquiry.

- Round The World Service

Please contact our regional offices for further information: The Bank Line (Australasia) Pty. Ltd.

Suite 701, 51 Pitt Street Sydney N.S.W. 2000 Phone: 251 6688 Telex: 24063 Columbus Line Reederei GmbH P.O. Box 1667 Lae/Papua New Guinea Phone: 42 3466/42 3287 A.H. 42 2481 Telex: Colline NE 44 171

The Bank Line Ltd London

Columbus Line Reederei Gmbh Hamburg

C0L0024

TONGA KIRIBATI VANUATU

Cook Island

Solomon Islands

New Caledonia

U.S. SAMOA

Western Samoa

French Polynesia

Japan . Korea

YOU’LL FIND IT,

Where The Sky Meets

THE SEA &

Roro. Container &

B.Bulk Shipping

BALI

Hai Service

AGENTS and PHONE SUVA:Burns Philp(B P) 311 777 Carpenter Shipping (C.S) 31 2244 LAUTOKA:B P 60777 C S 63988 APIA:B P 22611 PAGOPAGO :Polynesia Shipping Services Ltd 633-1211 PAPEETE.Compagnie Maritime Polynesienne 42 84 02 NOUMEA:Etablissements Ballande 687-283384 VILA:B P 2456 SANTO:B P 230 HONlARArSullivans (Solomon Islands) Ltd 21645 TARAWA:Shipping Corporation of Kiribati 26195 NUKUALOFA:B P 21500 BUSANitor general cargo Young Chang Shipping Co., Ltd 753-0451 for vehicle Pan Continental Shipping Co , Ltd 778-7680 Soyang Shipping Co , Ltd 752-7755 JAPANdor general cargo Swire 03-230-9245 for vehicle NYK Lines 03-284-5506 Mitsui O S K 03-587-7123 Moresby, Lae, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara with 18 days frequency. Wewak and Madang will receive four direct calls a year or more on inducement. A T/Service via Lae to these and other PNG ports connecting with monthly sailings is available at cost. Cargo from the same Eastern ports to the South Pacific ports of Noumea, Santo, Vila, Papeete, Pago Pago, Apia, Nukualofa, Rarotonga and Tarawa will be shipped via Japan or Busan on the monthly Bali Hai service.

Details from Steamships Shipping, PO Box 634 Port Moresby (220 283 or 220 289).

Kyowa Shipping Ltd operates monthly services from Japan to Guam, Saipan, Solomons, New Caledonia, Fiji, Western and American Samoa, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu.

Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt St, Sydney (223 1600); Carpenters Shipping, Suva (312 244) Tlx FJ2199

Guam Northern Marianas

Saipan Shipping Co operates a weekly service via barge carrying containers and conventional cargo between Guam and Saipan and Tinian.

Details from Saipan Shipping Co, Inc. PO Box 8. Saipan CM 96950 (322 9706 or 322 9707). Tlx 783619; Fax (670)322 3183; Guam agents Maritime Agencies of the Pacific Ltd

Hawaii Samoas Tonga

Cook Islands

Hawaii-Pacific Lines operates a monthly container service between Honolulu, Pago Pago, Apia, Nukualofa and Avatiu (Rarotonga).

Details from Hawaii-Pacific Maritime, Inc., PO Box 3264, Honolulu HI (9680)-32641 (808 531 4841) Details from Morris Hedstrom Samoa Ltd, PO Box 189, Apia, Western Samoa (21 355, 22 722).

Tlx 224 MORISHED SX), Fax 24 279; Union Citco Travel Ltd, Rarotonga, Cook Islands (682 21 780); Tlx 62024 (UTRAV G); Fax (682) 20 859; Kneubuhl Maritime Services, PO Box 39, Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799 (684 633 5121); Tlx 782505; Fax (684)633 5100; Union Maritime Services Ltd, PO Box 4 Nukualofa, Tonga (21 644/5); Tlx 6627, Fax (676) 21 645.

Japan Fiji Island Ports

Kyowa Shipping Co-operates a monthly containerised service from main ports of Japan to Suva, Lautoka, thence to island ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Neptune House, 3/4 Floor, Tofua St, Walu Bay, Suva (31 2244), Fax (679) 301 572 Tlx FJ2199.

Japan Micronesia

The NYK Shipping Line operates a monthly cargo service from Japan to Micronesia, calling at Yoko, Nagoya, Kobe, Guam, Saipan, Truk, Ponape and Majuro, returning via Yoko, Naq’ova and Kobe.

Details from Burns Philp & Co Ltd. 51 Pitt St Sydney (259 1000).

Saipan Shipping Co operates a monthly service from Japan to Saipan, Guam, Truk, Ponape, Majuro (Kosrae and Ebeye on inducement).

Details from Saipan Shipping Co, PO Box 8 Saipan, CM 96960 (322 9706 or 322 9707), Tlx 783619, Fax (670)322 3183.

Japan agents Kyowa Shipping Company Ltd: Guam Agents Maritime Agencies of the Pacific Ltd.

Japan Korea Png

Paradise Service

Mitsui OSK Lines operates a monthly service from main ports in japan, Wewak, Lae, Rabaul, Kieta, Port Moresby.

Details from Robert Laurie Company (PNG) Ltd PO Box 1032, Lae (42 3642, 42 3811) Contact: W 0 Hackenberg, Group Shippino Manager.

Japan Korea Png

Paradise Service

Mitsui OSK Lines in joint service with NYK Lines operates a monthly service from main ports in Japan and Busan in Korea to PNG ports of Wewak, Rabaul, Kieta, Lae, Port Moresby, Kavieng, Kimbe, Madang and Oro Bay.

Details from Robert Laurie Company Pty Ltd, PO Box 1032, Lae (direct: 423 642 or a switch: 423 811). Contact W 0 Hackenberg, Group Shipping Manager & Marketing; Tlx NE 42508 Fax 423 801.

JAPAN - KOREA - FIJI -

Island Ports

Bali Hai Service operates a monthly and general cargo and vehicle service from main Japanese ports and Korea to Suva, Lautoka, Apia, Pago Pago, Papeete, Nukualofa, Noumea, Vila, Santo and Honiara.

Details from John Swire and Sons (Japan) Ltd, 14 Ichibancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo (03) 230 9220); Tlx J 22248, Fax (03) 230 9288.

Png - Inter-Mainport

Papua New Guinea Lines offers scheduled 10-20 day coastal liner services linking all PNG major ports with containerisation, reefer, heavy lift and trans-shipment facilities.

Details from PNG Line, Box 543, Port Moresby (211 174), Tlx 22269. 52 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Png - Taiwan - Hong Hong

- Singapore - Indonesia

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operates a regular joint cargo service from PNG Ports to Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta & Surabaya.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466); Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Png - Uk/Continent

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint service from Port Moresby, Oro Bay, Kieta, Rabaul, Kimbe, Madang and Lae to Hull, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466); Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Solomons Uk/Continent

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Honiara to Hull, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466); Tlx NE44171; or lines' local agents.

Solomons Uk/Continent

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Honiara to Hull, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466); Tlx NE44171; Tradco Shipping Ltd., Honiara (22 588); Tlx 66 313.

NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIA -

Png Solomon Islands

Pacific Forum Line operates a containerised and ro-ro service from Lyttleton, Napier and Auckland to Brisbane, Port Moresby, Lae, Honiara, Brisbane then to New Zealand.

Details from Pacific Forum, Auckland, Christchurch; Union Bulkships, Brisbane; Steamships Shipping, Port Moresby and Lae Sullivan Ltd, Honiara; Seabridge, Wellington.

New Zealand Cook Islands

TAHITI New Zealand Line operates cargo services based on pallets and similar units from Auckland to Cook Islands and Tahiti.

Details from NZ Shipping Agencies International Ltd, PO Box 3420, Auckland (392 650), Waterfront Commission, PO Box 61, Rarotonga, Cook Islands; Shipping Office, Govt of Niue, PC Box 107, Niue Island: Compagnie Maritime Polynesienne, PO Box 36, Papeete, Tahiti.

New Zealand - Fiji

Reef operates a regular 18-day service from Auckland to Suva and Lautoka. Also passenger accommodation.

Details from Reef Shipping Agencies PO Box 3382, Auckland (771 2213), Tlx 60633; MV Fijian (31? 056) A9encioS Ltd ’ Private Ba 9. Suva Pacific Line with one ship operates a three-weekly ro-ro cargo service New Zealand, Lautoka, Suva. No passengers.

Details Sofrana Unilines, 18 Customs St Auckland (773 279); PO Box 3614, Tlx NZ2313 Carpenters Shipping, Neptune House Tofua St’

Walu Bay, Suva (25 141), Tlx FJ2199.

New Zealand Fiji North

America (Wc)

Blue Star Line Ltd Pacific Coast container services: only direct service to and from New Zealand. Blue Star vessels call at Suva and Honolulu on NZ-US West Coast voyages.

Details from Blueport ACT (NZ) Ltd, PO Box 192, Wellington (739 029); Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, GPO Box 355, Suva (311 777), Tlx FJ2168 Burnship.

New Zealand Fiji Samoas

- TONGA Pacific Forum Line operates a containerised and ro-ro 21 day service from Auckland to Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago and Nukualofa.

Details from Pacific Forum Line, Auckland, Christchurch, Suva and Apia, Union Maritime, Lautoka, and Nukualofa, Polynesian Shipping Pago Pago.

New Zealand Tonga

SAMOAS Warner Pacific Line Services from Auckland to Nukualofa, Vava’u, Apia, Pago Pago monthly carrying general and freezer cargoes and FCL Dry Freezer.

Details from McKay Shipping Ltd, 2nd Floor, Ferry Bldg, Ouay St., Auckland PO Box 3 (390 229). Cables MACSHIP, Tlx NZ2554f; Warner Pacific Line, Box 93, Nuku'alofa, Tonga; Mealelel (Western Samoa Ltd) Private Bag, Apia, Western Samoa; Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, PO Box 129, Pago Pago, American Samoa (633 2709), Burnsouth SB.

NZ COOK ISLANDS -

Aitutaki - Niue

Cook Islands Line services Auckland, Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Niue monthly carrying general and freezer cargoes.

Details from McKay Shipping Ltd, 2nd Floor, Ferry Bldg, Guay St., Auckland/PO Box 3, Auckland (390 229). Cables MACSHIP, Tlx NZ2554; Fax 32 931.

South East Asia Fiji

Nedlloyd Lines (NZEAS) Service operates regular fast cargo service from Surabaya, Jakarta, Port Kelang, Bangkok and Singapore via New Zealand to Suva and Lautoka. Details from Carpenters Shipping, Neptune House, 3/4 Floor, Tofua St., Walu Bay, Suva (312 244). Fax: (679)301 572. Tlx: FJ2199,

Tahiti New Caledonia

Vanuatu - Solomon

Islands New Zealand

Png Singapore - Europe

Polish Ocean Lines operates semi-container type vessels to the following ports: from Pappete, Noumea, Santo, Vila, Yandina, Honiara, Auckland, Singapore, Port Kielang, Penang then to Meditearranean ports and Europe via the Suez Canal (other New Zealand ports subject to inducement), Details from Universal Shipping Agencies Ltd, 7th Floor, 14 Emily PI, Auckland 1 (390 931, 390 727, 32 104), Tlx 21 517.

Taiwan Hong Kong

Singapore Indonesia

PNG The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Surabaya to Papua New Guinea Ports.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688), Tlx: AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466); Tlx: NE 44171; or lines’ local agents.

Europe - Tahiti - W Samoa

Fiji New Caledonia

Compagnie Generale Maritime operates services from Europe and Meditarranean ports to Papeete and Noumea using three ro-ro and multi-purpose vessels thus ensuring a bi-monthly sailing to and from.

Details from Compagnie Generale Maritime, 12 Castlereagh St, Sydney (231 3700).

Europe Tahiti New

Caledonia New Zealand

Vanuatu - Solomons Png

- EUROPE Polish Ocean Lines offers regular monthly sailings for containerised and break-bulk cargo, also conventional reefer space and reefer containers from Hamburg, Rotterdam, Dunkirk, Le Havre to Papeete, Noumea, Auckland, Santo, Honiara, Rabaul, Lae, Singapore, returning to Europe via Suez. Other ports in the South Pacific can be served directly with inducement or otherwise via transhipment.

Details from Sotama, BP 9170, Papeete (42 7805), Tlx Sotama 373FP; SATO; BP, 02 Noumea Cedex (27 2094), Tlx 163 NM; Universal Shipping Agencies, PO Box 2282 Auckland (30 930), Tlx 21517; Vanua Navigation, PO Box 44, Vila (2027), Tlx 1033; Melan Chine Shipping Co, PO Box 71, Honiara (21 678). Tlx 66335; Steamships Trading Co Ltd, PO Box 85, Lae (42 4666), Tlx 4243; Union Steamship Co NZ Ltd, PO Box 50, Apia (21 781); Tlx 226; Warner Pacific Line, PO Box 93, Nukualofa (22 088), Tlx 66219; Fiji Agents TBA.

Europe Tahiti New

CALEDONIA Nedlloyd offers regular cargo services from Continental ports to Papeete, Apia, Fiji and New Caledonia.

Details Nedlloyd (Aust) Pty Ltd, Spring St., Sydney (27 3801); Carpenters Shipping, Ist Floor, Harbour Centre Bldg, 100 Thomson St., Suva (31 2244), Tlx 2199FJ and Vetari St., Lautoka (63 988), Tlx 5215FJ.

UK W SAMOA TONGA - FIJI The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull, to Apia, Nukualofa, Suva and Lautoka.

Details from The bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd., 51 Pitt St., Sydney (251 6688), Tlx: AA24063; Columbus Line,Lee (423466), Tlx: NE 44171; or lines local agents.

Uk Png Solomons

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull to Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara and on inducement to Yandina.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd., 51 Pitt St., Sydney (251 6688); Tlx: AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466); Tlx: NE44171; or lines' local agents.

Uk Tahiti New Caledonia

VANUATU The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull, to Papeete, Noumea, Port-Vila and Santo.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St., Sydney (251 6688); Tlx: AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423466); Tlx: NE 44171; Ets A.M. Fare UTE, Papeete; Ets Ballande, Noumea and other local agents.

Us Hawaii Micronesia

PNG PM&O Lines operate two fully self-contained container vessels on a sailing frquency of every 30 days between the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Majuro, Ebeye, Kosrae, Ponape, Truk, Saipan, Yap, Palau, Cebu, Davao, Manila, Lae, Kieta and Rabaul.

Details from PM&O Lines, 353 Sacramento St., San Francisco, California 94111 (415 421 5400); Tlx: 278016 PMC UR; Owner’s Representative, PO Box 803, Saipan, NMI 96950 (234 8819); Tlx 783605 CMCAA, 53 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

Out Of The Past

A Christmas ghost story Stuart Inder recalls a chilling tale of murder and haunting from Rotuma.

HUGH Hastings Romilly may have made his mark as a notable administrator in the Britmial Pacific had he lived longer but by 1892 he was dead from fever, at the age of 36.

He left us, however, with several books, including A True Story of the Western PaciTic, published in 1882.

Fondon-born, Oxford-educated Romilly arrived in Fiji in 1879 at the age of 23 to join the staff of Sir Arthur Gordon, Governor of Fiji and British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. He then went on to become Deputy Commissioner of a variety of Pacific territories before succumbing to tropical illnesses.

Romilly’s first visit to Rotuma followed a request made by the island’s three most powerful chiefs in October 1879, for British annexation of their islands. While the petition was sent to London for a decision, Gordon sent a relative, Mr Arthur Gordon, and Romilly to Rotuma as advisers. An Australian half-caste, Thomas Simpson, went as interpreter.

On Christmas Eve 1879, Romilly and Gordon spent the night in the house of one of the chiefs, Alipati.

The next day Alipati reported with excitement that one of his men had been attacked with a large knife while he slept, his head being nearly cut in half, yet he was still alive. Alipate, under repeated questioning said, “Tom, he Kill him.”

Romilly and Gordon visited the wounded man, Tom Simpson accompanying them without hesitation: Romilly and Gordon decided to suspend judgment on Tom’s alleged involvement until they could come up with better evidence. The victim s head was bandaged with cloth, secured by strips of banana leaves tied in what Romilly described as “a peculiar fashion”. The man was unable to talk, and soon died. But in the next day or two it became obvious the whole of Rotuma was in no doubt that Tom was the attacker. He had entered several houses that night, lifting mosquito nets to find out who was beneath then passing on to the next house. Tom was seen with the knife entering the victim’s house, his footprints were found inside and he had been out all Christmas Eve.

There was nothing for it but to arrest Tom and take him to Fiji for trial. Romilly set off with him in February in the Thistle , a cutter that had called at Rotuma en route to Fiji via the Wallis and Futuna islands.

What was supposed to have been a three-week trip to Fiji took nearly three months, for the master, Evans, turned out to be a notorious character who had no certificate, couldn’t navigate and ill-treated his islander crew.

One regular punishment was to suspend a culprit from the rigging by a rope around his neck. By long practice Evans had ascertained the exact amount of strangulation a man could bear without dying.

When finally Thistle made the harbour of Fiji’s old capital, Levuka, Evans was dead of opium poisoning within a week and Romilly was told it was impossible to try Tom without witnesses. In May 1880, Tom was tried in Rotuma by Fiji’s Chief justice and sentenced to death, later commuted to 21 years in prison. The motive for the murder turned out to be theft: Tom had stolen money from Gordon and hidden it in the dead man’s house, but the man had discovered it.

When the Queen agreed to the petition for annexation, Romilly was sent back to Rotuma that September as Deputy Commissioner to make arrangements for the hoisting of the flag ny the Governor the following May. Two days before Christmas, however, Alipati and other Rotumans told Romilly of their fear. “Dead man he walks,’ said Alipati. “What dead man?” asked Romilly. “Kimueli the man Tom killed,’’ was the answer.

The reports grew. People said Kimueli had been seen in a number of houses, his head tied in banana leaves and his face covered in blood, but nobody had heard him speak. Romilly thought it possible that “some madman was impersonating Kimueli” and announced his intention of sitting outside Alipati’s house that night, Qiristmas Eve, and watching for the ‘ghost’.

“I also told Alipati that I would bring a rifle and have a shot if I saw the ghost,” Romilly recorded.

That day Alipate was very nervous.

He, Romilly and another white man, W L Allardyce, a linguist who later became Governor of the Falklands, sat for two hours on the verandah watching. Then Alipati suddenly clutched Romilly’s elbow, pointed and whispered “Kimueli”. The figure of a man was walking from the bush.

A recollection of having seen that figure was forcing itself on Romilly’s mind when suddenly he saw clearly that it was the murdered man he and Gordon had visited the same face covered with blood, the dirty cloth kept in place by the banana leaves, all tied knot for knot in the same fashion.

He jumped up and with Allardyce gave chase. Despite the bight moonfight they could find no trace of him, and Romilly retreated with feelings of consternation and annoyance. He watched again the next night, but without result.

“The fact of its being Christmas Day [when we saw him]; the anniversary of Tom’s attack on Kimueli, made it still more remarkable,” Romilly wrote. “I can offer no explanation for this story.

“I am not a believer in ghosts. I believe a natural explanation of the story to exist, but the reader must find it for himself.” n Who knows that spectres walk among the headstones of Rotuma’s tiny cemetery? 54 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY DECEMBER 1988

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