OUR CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS – Samoans marching in the streets of NZ to highlight their citizenship rights.
By Staff Writer
The HRPP opposition leader, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, is flying out this Sunday to lend his weight to the fight for Samoans citizenship rights in New Zealand.
Tuilaepa will appear before a NZ Parliament review committee to follow up on a written submission he made in support of the issue.
The citizenship challenge revives what started with a 1982 Privy Council ruling to grant New Zealand citizenship to Samoans born between 1925-1949.
The NZ government at the time did not accept the court ruling and rushed through an act allowing citizenship only to Samoans living in NZ on the 14 September 1982.
A New Zealand media report claimed “…many Samoans felt betrayed by the New Zealand government’s response.”
“The 1982 act remains a concern for Samoans in New Zealand who desire freedom of movement between the two countries,” the media report added.
Simmering discontent sparked as recent as in March 2003, a petition with 90,000 signatures calling for the law’s repeal presented to the NZ Parliament.
Leaders of the Samoan protest movement were in Samoa a few weeks ago to call on the home support for the cause.
Tuilaepa will be traveling with the HRPP deputy leader Lauofo Fonotoe and party secretary MP Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi as members of his official delegation.
“It is a basic human rights of the people to make their own citizenship decision,” Tuilaepa stated publicly on several occasions his position on the debate.
The former PM who held office for more than 20 years, asserted his full support for the citizenship rights of Samoans in an editorial write-up circulated widely by the local media recently, reprinted in full below :
Samoans have been well educated for 48 years by our former colonial master, the Government of New Zealand.
So well educated that we now fully embrace the application of the phrase, “The Rule of Law”.
Its most important meaning is that those who make the laws must be the first to honour them.
Legislation passed by the Parliament of New Zealand in the early 1920s, and again confirmed by the highest Court of Appeal of New Zealand in 1982, stipulated that Samoans born before 1949 are New Zealand citizens.
The National Government of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon and the New Zealand Parliament, however, negated the impact of the law and the appeal decision by creating a Protocol allowing 1100 Samoans to emigrate to New Zealand for citizenship per annum under certain conditions which in the end proved impossible to meet.
Indeed, even brief visits today by our people are made extremely difficult and very expensive for many.
The private member’s bill by one of the Green Party MPs to reopen the question of the protocol and end the injustice done to the Samoan people is a great initiative that all Samoans in Samoa are grateful for.
I was in New Zealand for 6 months in 1976 and witnessed the Muldoon Government’s use of dogs to arrest Samoans and other Pacific Islanders and send them back to their islands.
This harsh treatment of our people led to the Privy Council’s Appeal decision and the protocol being the subject of the proposed bill before the Parliament of New Zealand. “