Group wants to put French out

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33959, 27 September 1975, Page 9

Group wants to put French out

New Caledonia’s The group staged a demonnative Kanak people are str^_ tion i? 1 Cathedral Square , , „ . . . —the I22nd anniversary of utterly fed up with French rule.

French colonial rule, and want to run their own affairs, according to a spokesman for the Christchurch Third World Action Group (Mr WiHiam Sutherland).

“We have every sympathy for the Kanak people who are demonstrating in Noumea,” Mr Sutherland said. The French administration was spending 25 million francs on a cultural festival called “Melanesia 2000,” claiming that it showed a genuine concern for Kanak culture. But. the Kanaks, who make up 40 per cent of the population, responded by saying that they had been culturally raped for 120 years, and I could not see how one cultural festival could indicate (genuine concern. Mr Sutherland said that the recent nuclear-free Pacific conference had decided to send a delegation of four indigenous persons from the Pacific to the United Nations Committee on Decolonisation. The committee told the delegation that it could not. take up its cause because New Caledonia was part of metropolitan France, with two representatives in the Assembly in Paris. “The Kanaks say that, if necessary, they are quite prepared to drop representation in the French Government,” Mr Sutherland said. “They only want to run their own affairs, but would look after the interests of Europeans, and immigrant Pacific peoples in New Caledonia.”