‘Swaying palm trees, best wines on Hao’

Press, 9 July 1986, Page 1

‘Swaying palm trees, best wines on Hao’

The Government had been “taken for a ride” over the sending of the two French agents to Hao Atoll, said Dr Bengt Danielsson from Tahiti last evening.

The Swedish-born anthropologist and writer, who has made Tahiti his home, said that he had visited Hao many times and it was “a big joke” for anyone to say that Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur were being in any way penalised by being sent to Hao. There was no prison on the atoll. It was like a Club Med, with a beautiful lagoon, all sorts of conveniences and distractions, and pleasant weather. It had. swaying palm trees, constant trade winds, a restaurant and bars, and the best wines. “It is a perfect holiday village and they can practise their favourite sports, like diving,” said Dr Danielsson, who is an anti-nuclear-weapon campaigner and staunch ally of New Zealand nuclearfree activists.

The atoll had a regular air service linking it with Paris and he had heard on the Tahiti radio news that relatives would be allowed to visit the two agents.

“It would be very easy to travel in the opposite direction. Who will check whether they travel back to France? They will be as free as birds,” he said.

Hao was not near Mururoa, where the French exploded nuclear weapons underground.

“It would have been better to send them there, to clean up that atoll, because it is heavily contaminated,” said Dr Danielsson.

Another option might have been to send them to the prison in Papeete, Tahiti, where there were 300 inmates, several of them Polynesians fighting for political independence.

“There they sit in small, very hot cells in a big concrete building. That is where the agents should have been sent,” he said.

Dr Danielsson is 65. His only son was educated at Christ’s College in Christchurch.

A crew member of the Greenpeace vessel Vega which was detained by the French while on a protest voyage near Mururoa last October said that Hao was “by no means primitive” and he was sure the agents would find

it very comfortable compared with prison.

Mr Chris Robinson was arrested by the French during the protest and spent a short time on Hao.

"It is ridiculous to expect that they will be imprisoned," said Mr Robertson from Australia yesterday. "They are sure to receive first-class treatment — they are regarded as national heroes.” Mr Robinson said it was a bitter irony that the agents were going to the island that had been the destination of the Rainbow Warrior.

“They should at least have been held on neutral ground.” “Hao ain’t no prison,” said Mr Martine Gotje, a crew member of the protest vessel Fri which was taken there after the ship was seized near Mururoa in 1973, according to a Press Association report. He said the agents could look forward to a “nice tropical island with French food flown in.” The atoll was full of French people living in luxury. The crew later reported relaxing on a sandy beach sprinkled , with palm trees during the two-week imprisonment.

Reuters reported that the island has an open-air cinema, bars, and a nightclub.

A French airman told the agency that life was pleasant, there were lots of sports to practise —- sailing and diving in the lagoon — and the officers’ houses were particularly comfortable.

Mr Gotje said nuclear bombs used to be assembled on Hao before being tested at Mururoa. Hao was used as the main French base during atmospheric nuclear tests before 1975 when about 1500 military personnel were based there. The atoll has a 3330 m airstrip — which takes up about a third of the island.

Hao’s main village is Otepa, which has the military base. The atoll is not restricted to public access but it has no private hotel. Instead, the military runs a lodge at the base.

At the last census two years ago Hao’s population was 1300. Of those, 269 were military personnel, three Chinese traders, and the rest native Polynesians.

In 1903, almost the whole of Hao’s population was wiped out by a tidal wave.