N.Z. Rule Of Cook Is. Attacked By Residents

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30211, 16 August 1963, Page 8

N.Z. Rule Of Cook Is. Attacked By Residents

(N.ZJ’.A.-lUuttr— Oopvrt«M) NEW YORK, August 14. Two residents of the Cook Islands have alleged in petitions to the United Nations that New Zealand is deliberately keeping the Polynesian- inhabitants of the Pacific territoiy in a state of ignorance of the outside world, in order to delay independence.

The letters, from a European member of the islands’ Legislative Assembly, Mr Julian Dashwood, and from Mr Ronald Syme, a private resident, were addressed to the Special Committee on Colonialism.

Mr Dashwood said he had lived with his Polynesian wife in the Cook Islands for the last quarter century and was the only European in the assembly representing a native constituency. ‘ Writing, of an “apparent lack of urgency” on New Zealand's part to bring the islands to self-rule, he said that no country, "however benevolent and paternal its rule, has a right to exercise indefinite control over another, and it is only too easy, through ‘reserved areas' and other methods to create an effective form of neo-colonial-ism.”

The situation was not helped by the “apathetic attitude'' of the islanders themselves, “for whose almost total ignorance concerning

independence one must surely hold the admiinistraiion responsible.” "The consistent alignment of New Zealand's foreign and military policy with that of the American State Department may very well not necessarily prove to be consistently in the interests of these islands,” Mr Dashwood wrote.

Mr Syme asked the committee "tn spare a thought for these very charming and deserving Polynesians of the Cook Islands. “They have no-one to

speak far them., are barred from knowledge of the outside world, and are a>t present very poorly equipped, by circumstances utterly beyond their comtrol, to face selfgovernment.” He said that the "so-called Legislative Assembly” was merely a “face-saving gesture” and "an intimidated puppet organisation" set up to convey the impression that New Zealand intended to comply with the United Nations declaration on the independence of colonial oouninies and peoples