![Picture](/uploads/2/2/8/1/22812050/1378112187.jpg)
In 1982, the momentous legal racial battle for the right to stay in New Zealand, was the Samoan woman Falema’a Lesa, who won the legal right to become a New Zealand citizen. Prior to 1962, Samoans could legally live in New Zealand, which was administered in Western Samoa. However, when the Western Samoa gained its independence in 1962, the status of Samoans in New Zealand was unclear. This meant that the status of Falema’a Lesa’s citizenship was unclear, so she took her case to the highest legal authority, the Privy Council in London in 1982. They came to the conclusion that Western Samoans born between 1924 and 1948 and their descendants – 100,000 of them – were New Zealand citizens. The New Zealand government changed the relevant statutes and negotiating a compromise with the Western Samoan government, which was giving citizenship to the Western Samoans already living in New Zealand or who went for on to qualify for permanent residence. The Western Samoans felt that this agreement was a racist betrayal of their rights and not in the sprit of the 19622 Treaty of Friendship between New Zealand and Samoan. However, many Western Samoans felt that this racism was continuing from the case of Falema’a Lesa, and that something should be done. In 2003, a petition was signed by over 100,000 Samoans, in a bid to persuade the New Zealand government to repeal the Citizenship Act of 1982 and to return the law to its state as declared by the Privy Council of 1982. A Samoan rights group, Mau Sitiseni, filed a petition to the United Nations Human Rights Committee to consider the matter.