Natives’ Criminal Offences
p. 23 · Read in the full issue
How Many Are Due to Misunderstanding?
Letter to the Editor
ALLOW me to endorse the opinions expressed relative to criminal offences committed by natives of Papua and other parts, referred to in your recent issues.
During a number of years I was located close to one of the most Gilbertian jails in the Pacific. This afforded me an op portunity of observing prison life and its effect on the native prisoners, with whom I often conversed.
This jail we will call Bluffingata (the native name). It is a sort of sanitorium.
Here prisoners and their warders fatten and thrive, swim in the local stream, and sing to the ukelele. Relatives and friends see to it that the prisoners want for noth ing in the way of food—pork, fish, chic kens, and cooked delicacies, cakes and tobacco are taken in by the native war ders, who are not infrequently relatives of the prisoners.
It seems a pity that these native priso ners could not be instructed in making some useful commodity, such as hand made coir rope—say, so many yards per diem. This would offset the huge cost of upkeep of the jail. Certainly, the prisoners are part-time employed in planting taro roots, which helps to reduce the food cost.
But to call this “work” is absurd. “Cala boose” means rest, rather than punish ment, to these prisoners.
There is another “jail,” not a thousand miles from Port Moresby, where one may listen to the merry laughter and songs of the rogues who pass the time there. One of them whom I knew acted as a guide, during the daytime, to tourists.
In cases of criminal assault, such as shocked the residents of Papua recently, nothing will curb such tendencies so much as a flogging, administered publicly. This
shames the prisoner in the eyes of his relatives.
Many of the crimes committed by natives arise from wrongful impressions or misunderstandings, often due to their master’s ignorance of the native dialect or customs. It is very often the case that the master has to resort to the very unsatisfactory use of an interpreter.
Otherwise, he endeavours to make himself understood by means of the equally un satisfactory Pidgin English.
I have seen police boys thrashed, in the New Hebrides, for making slight mistakes after having said “Me savee,” when the orders given in “Pidgin” were not pro perly understood by the natives.
On a Crown estate in Samoa, a manager came upon a native worker smoking. The manager flew into a violent rage, and then, in the choicest English, he said: ’’You heliotrope blazes! If I catch you at that again, I’ll knock the life out of you.”
The native continued smoking, and was struck by a stone on the head. He then stood up and asked (in native), “What is the matter?” For this “insolence,” the native was arrested and put in jail. Had the manager only known how to say “Stop that smoking!” in the vernacular, he would have been obeyed. The native did not know English.
Misunderstandings between white men and the primitive native often end in a grudge developing against the white mas ter—unknown to him, of course—fre quently on account of punishment that is perhaps undeserved. Hence “crimes” are committed.
I am, etc.,
Jim Irish.
Apia, Samoa, April 28, 1934.
Dr. Leslie S. Duke, Government Medical Officer at Norfolk Island arrived in Sydney on furlough by the Morinda on June 25.
He returned to Norfolk Island by the July Morinda.
Teams representing- the 1st—19th Battalion (East and South Sydney Regiment) and the rifle clubs of Rabaul engaged in a home and home shooting match on June 23 and 24. It was the first occasion that there had been a sporting fixture between the Territory and Australia.