2023-11-13 09:09:47
The five archipelagos of French Polynesia are scattered over an area the size of Europe. They include 118 islands, 76 of which are inhabited. Except that of Tahiti, the largest, none has a fixed court. So, two to three times a year, magistrates and lawyers from Papeete take to the sea to deliver justice to the rest of the community.
The audience costumes, well packaged, are loaded into the holds of the boat which are usually used to store fish. A pill against seasickness swallowed, the mobile court can set out to meet these litigants deprived of court. He will settle down, as he wanders, for a few days or a few hours where there is space. In Polynesia, French justice renders its judgments sometimes in a school, sometimes in a village hall, sometimes in a town hall.
Judgments and advice
Between hearings, prosecutors, clerks, judges and lawyers find themselves traveling companions, fishing trips or surfing sessions on the beaches of the Marquesas Islands or Bora Bora. But once the dresses are put on, it is the return of a formality required in a court, however informal it may be.
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The cases pass by: criminal, family, civil status, guardianship… and land. These are the most popular. There is an attachment to the land in Polynesia. And private property arrived with European settlers. Justice must sometimes deal with local habits and customs: “An island is not a commune, it’s a world. »
Isabelle Curet’s report is testimony to a little-known normality that is important to discover. That of a French territory nestled in the south of the Pacific Ocean, more than 15,000 km from the mainland. The documentary filmmaker manages to very accurately show the extreme closeness between litigants and nomadic jurists, who come to judge, defend, condemn or, most often, to provide information.
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