Attacks On White Women

Alarming Incidents In Papua and the Solomons

disturbing reports of assaults on white women and children in the Mela nesian Islands have appeared recently in Australian and other newspapers, and have created a feeling of uneasiness regarding the safety of European dependants in the Territories concerned.

During the past month we have received details of very serious assaults com mitted in Papua and the Solomons.

THE five-years-old daughter of a Papuan official was very seriously assaulted in Port Moresby on December 12 by a native sergeant of police, named Mama deni. The child was gravely injured.

The native was before the Court in Port Moresby on January 15, and was sentenced to death. The Crown Prose cutor described the crime as of a particu larly horrible nature.

The occurrence caused a painful sen sation in Papua. There have been, on several occasions, complaints that Papuan natives were displaying a waning respect towards European women; but it was always thought that the finely disciplined native police were quite dependable. It is probable that, as a result of this assault, the Papuan Government will take stern measures to suppress every sign of evil tendencies on the part of natives. Critics, however, will say that this should have been done long ago. Signs that such action was necessary have been preva lent for some years.

The actual responsibility should be fixed, not upon the Papuan officials, but upon Australian politicians and namby pamby sentimentalists who have so often interfered between the Papuan officials and the native delinquents whom it is if their duty to punish.

Persons interested should read about the Solomon Islands case, reported here under, and should look back through the files of this journal for similar assaults reported in regard to other Melanesian territories. Then they should ask them selves if it is not time that the officials responsible for these Administrations were given complete freedom to deal with native offenders in accordance with their special knowledge and experience.

It is the deliberate opinion of the “Pacific Islands Monthly” that official weakness and procrastination are establishing con ditions of grave danger to European women in the Melanesian territories.

True, the assaults reported are few in numbers; but, little by little, year by year, "Europeanised” natives are developing a tendency to attack European women. The idiotic system—the word is used deliber ately—of telling these primitive creatures to be good little natives, otherwise they will be put in the calaboose, is ridiculous in itself and extremely dangerous and alarming in its potentialities. The only punishment that those natives under stand is corporeal punishment and the death penalty.

This thing must be dealt with by the authorities, and soon. Power must be given to the district officials to flog natives as punishment for petty offences; and the death sentence must be imposed whenever —as in the Solomon Islands case —it is clearly shown that a native ap proached a white woman with intent.

Officialdom should be warned that, unless common sense is allowed to rule in these matters, it is inevitable that planters and traders will protect their womanhood by taking the law into their own hands.

The system of trying accused natives in accordance with British court pro

cedure is ridiculous. The definite state ment of one white adult that a native has committed an offence should be suf ficient to convict that native. Forget the sentimentalists, and consider the proposi tion that it is better that a few innocent Kanakas possibly should suffer, rather than that one native who has put a hand improperly on a white woman, should escape punishment!

There have been ample warnings—and nothing has been done. Feeble, hand flapping officialdom in London and Can berra is directly responsible for the out rage on that little girl in Port Moresby, and the brutal assault on the young woman in the Solomons.

James Larkin, an educated man, with a good war record, flogged a native whose conduct was cheeky and men acing, and when the native died from injuries thus received, James Larkin was sent to an Australian gaol to serve ten years’ hard labor.

A Solomon Islands native brutally and determinedly attacked a delicately nurtured young European woman, and was only prevented from committing a major offence by the young woman’s desperate resistance. The native has been sentenced to five years in a Solo mon Islands calaboose —which the natives regard with something ap proaching indifference.

The contrast in the two cases, placed side by side, shows more clearly than anything could do the ridiculous stage that has been reached in the molly coddling of natives.