PAGO PAGO (Samoa News/PINA) — A United Nations regional seminar to help review the status of 17 non-self-governing territories is to take place this month in Nadi, Fiji.
American Samoa is again set to stress it is not a colony but is part of the United States of America.
Gov. Tauese Sunia will attend the two-day seminar that starts on May 14, KHJ Radio News reported. According to the United Nations, “the regional seminar is to review the situation in non-self-governing territories under the second decade for the eradication of colonialism.”
Tauese addressed a similar seminar in Fiji more than six years ago giving the same message then that the American Samoa government still adheres to: American Samoa is not a colony but is an integral part of the United States.
The upcoming regional seminar takes place a year after a conference in Cuba. There Tauese, Congressman Faleomavaega Eni, D-American Samoa, and other local officials urged the United Nations Decolonization Committee to delist American Samoa as a colony.
The local delegation also presented a resolution from local residents signed after a town-hall meeting which also called for American Samoa to be delisted as a colony.
