Independence Fighter Gaoled

Mana (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 4, 18 August 1977, Page 2

Independence Fighter Gaoled

Dewe Gorodey, a wellknown Melanesian advocate for an independent New 'Caledonia, has been gaoled without warning by the French authorities on the colony. A letter written just a few hours after her street arrest on July 21, was received in Suva on August 2 by sympathisers. Dewe explained that the official reason for her arrest was a sentence of 15 days imprisonment passed on her last November for “appeals to crime and murder”, which she had not served. The sentence was for having written a leaflet in January of 1976 during the Kamouda Affair, when a Melanesian youth was shot dead by French police in the heart of Noumea. The leaflet called for organised resistance. — violence if necessary(in the long-term) to the continued colonial domination of New Caledonia by the French government. Gorodey was planning to leave New Caledonia for a two-day seminar in Auckland, organised by the Labour

Youth Advisory Council, on July 30-31. The letter, written on a scrap of paper and smuggled out of prison, said that while walking in the street, Gorodey had been arrested without warning on the orders of the public prosecutor. Lacking official warning of the arrest, Gorodey resisted and was forcibly taken to the police Tieadquarters, where she refused to answer questions, but demanded to see the Commissioner of Police and to warn her family. She was refused both requests. Gorodey, one of the leaders

of PALIKA (the Parti de Liberation Kanoke),has long been a vocal opponent of France’s refusal to grant independence to her colonies, and has twice before, been gaoled for her political activities. In her attempts to present a Melanesian perspective of New Caledonia’s plight, she has travelled to the United Nations, the U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand, the New Hebrides and several times to Fiji, attending the Conference for a Nuclear Free Pacific in 1975, and the Pacific Women’s Conference in 1976.