Tahiti fighting French colonialism

This video from New Zealand says about itself:

Tahiti president welcomes Maori support for independence

29 August 2012

Tahiti President Oscar Te Maru is calling for Maori support in his fight for Tahitian independence from France. Prime Minister John Key says the fight should be left between Tahiti and France.

From Green Left Weekly in Australia:

TAHITI: Temaru’s support for independence upsets Paris

Norm Dixon

Since Oscar Temaru was elected president of Tahiti Nui (French Polynesia) in June 2004, he has infuriated the Pacific country’s colonial masters in Paris.

The furore over Temaru’s July 28 leaking of a letter confirming that the French government has systematically covered up the link between its atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific and Tahiti’s high cancer rates is just the latest confrontation.

It is Temaru’s unstinting support for Tahiti’s eventual independence that has Paris searching for ways to defeat him.

The French government has refused to accept Temaru’s shock 2004 victory over the unquestioningly pro-French Gaston Flosse, which abruptly ended his 20-year reign.

However, Temaru’s new Union for Democracy (UPLD) coalition government, which included several parties that support “autonomy” rather than full independence, did not call for a break with Paris. Rather, it called for taui (change).

According to Pacific scholar Lorenz Gonschor, writing in the Spring 2006 edition of the Contemporary Pacific, taui “implied a new cultural orientation, away from the French influence and back to the country’s Maohi (indigenous Polynesian) roots, as well as toward a more pan-Pacific perspective”.

Thousands of workers in Tahiti and other parts of French Polynesia joined what was originally called an “indefinite” general strike on February 15 against the government’s plan to raise the pension entitlement age from 60 to 62 by the year 2020 and increase employee contributions. The proposal also requires workers to contribute to social security for 38 years, up from the current 35, to receive a full pension: here.

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