Submission from Kari Boye Young, Pitcairn
Island
My name is Kari Boye Young. I am a resident
of Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, one of your Overseas Territories,
and would like to inform you of the situation on the island, as
well as ask for assistance to spread information and political
awareness here. I am not a member of Council, only a private citizen,
but I am concerned about the lack of initiative and involvement
of the people on crucial issues.
Our community of about 50 inhabitants is at
the moment in the process of acquainting ourselves with the White
Paper—"partnership in progress and prosperity".
Though released in 1999, it has never been the object of information,
education, discussion and workshop activities on the island till
a couple of months ago. Thanks to Internet research we have had
confirmed that the other Overseas Territories have already spent
years going through the process of deciding their political future
according to UN article 73 for non-self-governing territories,
by consulting with HMG, discussing and problem-solving, their
Human Rights already a part of their constitution.
Pitcairn has been completely uninformed and
ignorant of these matters, though on the FCO web page it says
that
"In order to identify key human rights concerns
and priorities and to make recommendations on the way forward,
the consultants held a series of workshops and meetings throughout
the territories involving politicians, officials, religious and
community leaders, the private sector and the general public".
No FCO or DFID consultants ever came here to
focus on anything but the criminal proceedings of Operation Unique
and its aftermath. We did not know till the Pitcairn Supreme Court
decision in Auckland that Pitcairn got no Human Rights, unchallenged
when deputy prosecutor Christine Gordon stated this fact, stripping
the defendants of their human rights, the legal counsel of their
own choice, trial by a jury of peers.
In www.publications.parliament.uk we read from
29th March 2004 that
"In respect of Pitcairn, to date human rights
provisions have been taken as forming part of the territory's
law. The possible application of the UK Human Rights Act to Pitcairn
is currently one of the issues before the Pitcairn Supreme Court,
but no decision on the matter has yet been made".
According to the FCO website Pitcairn is the
only one of your overseas territories for which you have not ratified
the European Convention of Human Rights, and nobody has explained
why.
In May this year the Pitcairn Commissioner,
Mr Jaques, usually head of the Pitcairn Office in Auckland, New
Zealand, came here to reside for three months, and announced that
he and a newly returned Pitcairn woman were writing a local Human
Rights charter for the island as well as a new charter/constitution.
The people demanded consultation, volunteers provided information
on various Human Rights charters, and in a public workshop it
was decided to adopt the EHCR.
The locally written "constitution"
was then presented by Mr Jaques to our Council in a closed meeting,
unprecedented for a public issue (open, transparent and accountable
government?) and Council referred it to a public meeting. Members
of the community consulted overseas constitutional lawyers personally
and were told it was "at best a collection of ideas"..
Our constitution of 1970 was not touched upon at all, the White
Paper barely referred to. On the front page was the caption "Or,
this may be the last generation", which we perceived as negative
and threatening.
The UN General Assembly has declared that
"It is ultimately for those people to determine
freely their future political status, and in that connection we
call upon the administering powers in cooperation with the territorial
Governments, to facilitate education programs in the territories
to foster awareness of the right to self-determination, which
is also a fundamental human right. (GA/SPD/238)"
A modernised constitution would require consultation,
but first of all some political awakening on our island. We would
need to look at the Governor's role, he has the legislative, the
judicial and the executive power, and the right of veto to anything
the Council decides, and if that is to continue, there will be
no empowerment of the local Council, no steps toward self-determination.
Mr Jaques suggested a new 12 member Council, all with voting rights,
including the Commissioner himself, the residing Governor's Representative
and two other members appointed by the Governor. The present Council
has 10 members, and only the eight elected members have voting
rights.
We are not at all sure these are steps toward
self-determination. It was agreed in the public meeting that none
of us know enough about the issues, eg White Paper, UN regulations
article 73 and related documents, the options open to us (independence,
integration, free association), the possibilities and feasabilities
for Pitcairn, and the consequences. Mr Jaques did not profess
to be a lawyer with experience in setting up constitutions, and
the community felt it could not agree to the Commissioner's charter/constitution,
without being able to collect information on all issues involved,
by consulting with "outside" professionals. Our mayor
in 2001 was made aware of the White Paper, called public meetings
and sent letters to the Governor's office asking for information
and help to the people in the decision-making, but received no
response.
Pitcairn has through all times been a very non-assertive
colony/dependent territory/overseas territory, isolated from the
world and from world opinions. On the few occasions when we were
consulted in the past, we either agreed with the officials, realising
we didn't know enough about politics and Commonwealth relationships
and our own rights, or we disagreed, especially on legislation
issues, but were overruled by the Governor's veto anyway. Pitcairners
have been deeply suspicious and distrustful of the authorities
ever since, and with every single family on the island involved
in some way in the Pitcairn Trials 2004, four homes left struggling
on without the main breadwinner, the trauma is deep indeed. Some
people are not willing to "move forward" with Mr Jaques
until all the imprisoned men are home with their families, and
others are still too traumatised to make huge decisions for the
future.
Pitcairn needs time to work through the grief
and distrust,—the constitution issue ought not to be pushed.
It is not Pitcairn's fault that we have lagged behind in this
process, though we realise that FCO and UN both would like us
to catch up as rapidly as possible.
We need the political information and education
which was promised all overseas territories. The UN Special
Committe of 24 in 2003 presented a ten point action plan on Self-Determination,
designed to be carried out in four stages, public education and
dissemination of information were highlighted as critical to the
process. The local colonial authorities indicated that people
here do not have the capacity, if time and money and expertise
was invested in bringing representatives from UK, DFID or preferably
UN here to run workshops for the benefit of our political education.
I do agree people here have little political experience, but that
is through no fault of our own, and that fact should encourage
rather than discourage the authorities to invest in political
education programmes, which UK committed itself to in UN resolution
1541 of 1960 and UN resolution 2625 of 1970.
At the same seminar in 2003, Mr Osborne of FCO
assured delegates that
"the UK Government would permit the UN Special
Committee to carry out public education programmes in the OTs
regarding the options specified under the UN Charter".
Baroness Scotland at an Overseas Territories
conference in Wilton Park declared:
"There.must be full consideration and consultation
across political parties, and the community as a whole, as well
as with HMG . . ."
A UN press release (GA/COL/3096) from a decolonisation
seminar in May 2004 reads
"In his statement, the representative for
Pitcairn said the people of the Territory still did not fully
understand all the possibilities or the significance of the various
political futures that might be available to them. It appealed
to the Committee for support and understanding"
At that time, nobody on Pitcairn had been consulted
on the subject, as the Pitcairn Trials were right around the corner.
We also do not know who was representing Pitcairn at the meetings
of C24 and the Overseas Territories Consultative Council, neither
can any of the local Council members remember hearing about these
meetings, much less reading the reports. None of our people have
ever been invited to attend a UN or FCO meeting/seminar, but three
Pitcairners have in the past attended UN seminars on their own
initiative and at their own expense.
Though we are few, and most of us not used to
expressing ourselves, not even used to having an opinion, we do
ask that Pitcairn too will get the help it needs, not to be forever
on Budgetary Aid, but made able to understand how to manage on
our own, to make decisions for ourselves.
14 October 2007
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