Tiny Overseas Territory takes on Britain in legal battle
Thursday, October 14, 2004
LONDON, England (AFP): A legal challenge to
British jurisdiction over the Pacific island of Pitcairn has far-reaching,
albeit highly improbable implications for British territories in the
Caribbean. The challenge, which would
effectively create a new nation of 47 people, has limited chances of success,
an expert said Wednesday. Seven Pitcairn men
are currently being tried for a litany of alleged sexual offences dating back
decades on the tiny island, located halfway between New Zealand and South
America. Pitcairn is a British Overseas
Territory, a category covering only around a dozen tiny former colonies,
including several in the Caribbean, meaning the charges are officially being
brought by the British state. The accused
have mounted a challenge to the trial on the basis that London had no
authority over Pitcairn, which is populated by the descendants of Fletcher
Christian, who led a mutiny in 1789 against Captain William Bligh aboard HMS
Bounty. Their submission effectively argues
that Pitcairn, all two square miles of it, should be able to govern itself as
an independent entity.
In July, Pitcairn's own Court of Appeal, staffed by New Zealand judges, threw
out an earlier challenge, saying the island's ties to its former colonial
master 10,000 miles away were irrefutable.
"Effectively, the submission is that the United Kingdom has neither
sovereignty nor jurisdiction over Pitcairn Island, which is an independent
state, although one which has had and still has what was described as some
kind of special relationship with the United Kingdom," the judges ruled.
"The proposition is somewhat startling, when it is beyond question that the
United Kingdom has, without protest from any quarter until the present
challenge was mounted by these applicants on their own behalf, expressly
claimed Pitcairn Island as one of its possessions and exercised jurisdiction
and governance over it as such since, at the very latest, 1898."
Despite this reverse, the islanders were Monday granted leave to appeal to the
Privy Council's Judicial Committee, a tribunal of senior law lords in London
which form the ultimate legal authority for British Overseas Territories.
This case would be heard at a date yet to be decided in 2005, although in the
interim the trial would continue on Pitcairn, a spokesman for the council told
AFP. The islanders looked unlikely to have
any more success with the Privy Council than with their own appeal court, said
Iain Byrne, an expert on British Commonwealth law with Interrights, a group
which advises on human rights in international trials.
It was a "very arcane" area of law, he said, but one where the precedent
seemed clear. "I would tend to agree with the
Court of Appeal for Pitcairn -- just because a jurisdiction hasn't been used
for a long time that doesn't mean that the jurisdiction shouldn't lie," he
said. Were the challenge to succeed, the
implications would be far-reaching, said Derek O'Brien, an expert Commonwealth
and international law at Oxford Brookes University.
"It's like a unilateral declaration of independence," he said. "It's
reasonably fair to say that the odds are stacked against them"
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