Islanders Want Bigger Phosphate Share

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32130, 28 October 1969, Page 25

Islanders Want Bigger Phosphate Share |deep, bare gullies and stark coral pinnacles as the phosphate is removed.|The Banabans become unwilling growers of coconuts through the fortunes of war.|have acquired a colourful reputation among Fiji people for touchiness.

(By ROBERT TRUMBULL, Of the “New York Times," through N.Z.P.A.) NUKU RABI ISLAND (Fiji) Unconsoled by the paradise-like setting of their "exile” on this mountainous island, about 2000 displaced Micronesians are planning a new appeal to the United Nations for independence so that they can go home to morebarren shores. But the principal aim of the independence movement is to enlarge their present tiny share of the rich revenue from high-grade lime phosphate, a valuable ingredient of fertiliser, that is mined under British authority on Ocean Island, their original home. “We know that becoming independent is the only way for us to get the benefit of our phosphate,” said the leader of the group, Tito Rotan. Rotan is chairman of the Rabi Island Council. Unhappy Dwellers The unhappy dwellers on Rabi, who run their own affairs through the eight-man elected council, are called Banabans from the original name of Ocean Island, Banaba. The Banaban plea for independence received emphatic vocal support from Asian and African countries and the Soviet Union when it was heard in the United Nations Committee on Colonialism last year. "If current approaches to the British Government in London fail, we are sure to return to the United Nations," the elderly Banaban leader said. Meanwhile, giant excavating machines convert more of the once-luxuriant Banaban homeland into a desolate waste of

deep, bare gullies and stark coral pinnacles as the phosphate is removed. The mining is under direction of the British phosphate Commissioners, a governmental body representing Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Annexed By Britain Tiny Ocean Island, with an area of less than three square miles and shaped like a clam shell, was annexed by Britain after the discovery of the huge phosphate deposits in 1900. Later, the territory was incorporated into the British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, although it lies 240 miles west of that group.

As the acknowledged owners of the phosphate deposits, the Banabans receive royalties of about 77c a ton on the product, which sells for about $11.72 a ton. Payments in recent years have aggregated between $268,000 and $357,000 a year but taxes have taken about 85 per cent of the income, which the Banabans say "represents near expropriation by the British Government” of their revenue from the material However, official figures show that nearly $900,000 a year in direct phosphate revenue is allocated to the administration of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, constituting more than half the income of that impoverished group of sandy coral atolls. Two years ago, the British Phosphate Commissioners decided to increase the rate of extraction from 450,000 to 600,000 tons a year. The decision, which is expected to leave Ocean Island mostly barren and completely worked out as a phosphate source by 1975, was taken over the protests of the homesick Banabans. So, while their island approaches its death, the Banabans struggle with the unfamiliar demands of trying to rehabilitate a run-down coconut plantation, with overaged trees, handed them by the British in 1945.

The Banabans became unwilling “growers of coconuts through the fortunes of war. Occupied by Japanese Ocean Island was occupied early in World War II by the Japanese, who removed the Banabans—then numbering slightly more than 1000— to other Japanese-held islands where they were used as forced labour. After the war the British pqt the Banabans on Nuku Rabi, a 27-square-mile island in the Fiji group. The British had bought the island with about $111,000 saved from the Banabans’ own phosphate royalties. Britain offered last year to contribute about $171,000 to the Banabans in final settlement for all damage done to Ocean Island in the manyyears of ruinous phosphate digging. The Banabans declined. Meanwhile, over the years on Rabi Island, the Banabans

have acquired a colourful reputation among Fiji people for touchiness. One story concerns the explusion of a British representative from the island by furious Banabans wielding spears. Summary Justice The Banabans are known also for a system of summary justice dealt out by their council, which is said to obviate the need for policemen on the island. Swayed by British arguments that Ocean Island would soon be uninhabitable, most of the Banabans voted in May, 1947, to remain on Nuku Rabi. The Banabans now charge that the British used blackmail and intimidation to keep them from voting to return to their ancestral island, which is 1200 miles northwest of Nuku Rabi and just south of the equator.