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Cook Islands News
Wed, 17 Mar 2010
RAOROTNGA, Cook Islands ---- Tauatomo Mairau, Prince Royal of Tahaa and heir to the Tahitian crown, visited with the House of Ariki this week to establish relations between the traditional rulers of his country and those of the Cook Islands.
Mairau is engaged in a legal battle that will restore his God-given right to the monarchy in Tahiti, he said, and will allow him to inherit land France is occupying with neither title nor rights.
He visited with Cook Islands News to explain the recent history of French occupation in Tahiti and to discuss the landmark lawsuit in which he and his family are presently engaged.
Mairau, clad in a pareu shirt and a baseball cap, relayed his story through translator Francis Garnier and supported his case with genealogical evidence and a stack of official court documents.
In 2004, after a decade-long struggle, Mairau was recognised by Attorney General Belloli as the Prince Royal of Tahaa.
The push for legal recognition started with a 1993 disclosure that the French government was illegally holding and taxing 52 million square kilometres of royal land.
This month, Mairau’s daughter Marie-laure Vaiatea Mairau, a lawyer at the barre of France, will go to court to lay claim to the land and title that belong to Prince Mairau of Tahaa as the successor to the throne.
If he assumes ownership rights, he will also acquire the Crown of gold that authenticates all banking transactions between France and the Tahitian government.
The history of his present lawsuit dates back to 1880, the year that the last of the Pomare kings left his throne vacant for want of a successor.
However, his line never technically died out. According to French custom and history, beheading signifies the death of a dynasty. Pomare V was never beheaded, so in legal and symbolic terms, his dynasty is still alive and available to an heir.
Tauatomo Mairau, as a fourth-degree descendent of Ariipeu, or the brother of the husband of Queen Pomare IV, is that heir.
On June 29, 1880, France took over the Crown and the Kingdom of Tahiti. Pomare V signed a treaty bestowing on the French government the power to rule Tahiti, but only on the condition that it respect and obey Tahitian customs.
Six months later, the president of the French Republic illegally amended the treaty, effectively colonising Tahiti.
The French government then took the liberty of selling off the assets that technically belonged to the Queen’s brother, Ariipeu a Mairau of Tahaa.
The government divided 52 million square kilometres of Crown land into three blocks, and advertised it on June 14, 1889, for the price of a meagre 4600 francs on average.
As Mairau would later discover, the sale was neither legal nor legitimate, as it never belonged to the French government in the first place.
After the Second World War, a debt-ridden France surrendered the chunk of land to the banks – an illegal transfer of ownership rights, by Mairau’s account.
It was mortgaged and placed in the custody of the Credit Foncier de France, the Bank of France, which went about collecting the revenue it generated.
“He’s fighting to remove the mortgage and have the land surrendered,” Garnier said of Mairau. “Every notary act concerning this land in Tahiti and its islands is illegal and wrong.”
In 1993, the Chief Registrar of the court, Daniel Salmon, uncovered a document revealing the illegitimacy of French land tenure.
It was revealed that, under the original treaty of 1880, Crown land could never be sold or used by the French government. The land, then, was still a possession of the Tahitian monarchy.
Shortly thereafter, Mairau stepped forward to claim what he believes belongs to him.
Represented by his daughter, Princess Vaiatea, Mairau has asked that the government validate his succession to the land.
“The banks will freeze all assets because they’re sitting on illegal grounds,” Garnier predicted. “There will be a panic but the land [rights] will just have to be changed from the government to the royalty and then business can continue.”
He has also requested that the French government restore the islands of Mororua and Fangataufa, which were damaged in nuclear bomb tests conducted by the French. The islands, he argues, belong to the Crown.
“And for the first time in history, Olivier Almot, the President of the First Appeal Court of France, stood up and walked away leaving no final decision, giving up on his right to settle the matter,” Garnier said. “Everybody was puzzled.”
Mairau has forbidden the government to evict or expel “squatters” from Crown land, whose tribes have links to the property in question.
He’s currently fighting a legal battle to restore land rights to “squatters” from the tribe of Amo who have laid claim to land in Papara.
The trial will conclude in May. If the judge rules in Mairau’s favour, he will have proved himself as rightful owner.
“I would just like to see the indigenous people have the full benefit of their land, the sky and the sea, so I’m fighting for that,” Mairau said through Garnier.
The Prince Royal of Tahaa flies back to Tahiti on Tuesday but has left an “Iorana” with his brothers and sisters in the Cook Islands.
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