Campaigner worried

Press, 19 September 1985, Page 3

Campaigner worried

PA Hamilton The Maori rights campaigner, Eva Rickard, fears for the safety of a Tahitian independence leader, Oscar Temaru. after her dramatic visit to French Polynesia this week. Mrs Rickard was expelled from French Polynesia this week after she took part in a demonstration against French rule and nuclear testing and as a memorial for people killed in the Tahitians’ struggle against French rule. She was returning from a trade union study tour of Nicaragua. Mrs Rickard and her colleagues’ participation in the event drew considerable publicity in Tahiti. Mrs Rickard fears that press reports there made it look as if Mr Temaru had invited her party to French Polynesia to stir up anti-

French sentiment. She said it just happened that someone in her party knew of Mr Temaru and had asked him to help them arrange accommodation while they were in Tahiti. Mr Temaru, the mayor of a town near the capital, Papeete, welcomed the unionists at the airport before security forces took them aside and asked them to sign a paper promising not to engage in political activities.

“My main fear is for that mayor, because all those headlines are made to look like he jacked it all up,” Mrs Rickard said. Fourteen political prisoners were held by the French in French Polynesia, “and I believe he (Mr Temaru) will be the next one inside, because there is a strong movement now,”

she said. Mrs Rickard said that she would defy her expulsion order. The order meant nothing to her and she would return. “I will quite likely be held up in the airport, and perhaps not be allowed to even get off the plane. I do not know. It would be a good challenge to that Government,” she said. Mrs Rickard said that the affinity she felt for the Tahitian people and their land made her know she would return.