Chinese Lose Nauru and Manus Cases

Manus Cases

IN early December, two cases involving Chinese labourers on Pacific Islands, were lost in Courts under Australian jurisdiction.

In Nauru Supreme Court, Agoko, a native policeman, was acquitted of a charge of having murdered a Chinese during riots last June. Judge Phillips, of the New Guinea Supreme Court, who had gone to Nauru specially to hear this case, found that the Chinese had died of bayonet wounds accidentally received.

On June 7, 1948, hundreds of Chinese labourers, employed by the BPC, rioted.

They were to be returned to China, their indentures having expired. They had armed themselves with knives, choppers, pick handles, bars of steel and poles.

Nauru police quelled the not. Two of the Chinese had died from peritonitis after Agoko had allegedly stabbed them in the stomach.

IN Sydney, on December 6, an appeal to the Full Bench of the High Court by two Chinese against a sentence imposed by Judge Phillips, failed. • August, two Chinese were con victed of an attack on a Manus Island native, Pondranei, on January 25, 1948.

It was stated that the Chinese had seized Pondranei, tied his hands behind him With wire, driven him along a road, then had taken him to a hut where they tied him to a roof with his toes just touching the ground. They left him there until he fainted. The Chinese stated that they believed that he had stolen cigarettes be longing to them.

The appeal was made to the High Court on the ground that the Supreme Court of New Guinea had no jurisdiction to try the charges because the offences were committed by members of an armed force of a friendly power. (The Chinese had been brought to Manus by the United States to help dismantle their former High c °urt held, how ever, that the Chinese were simply mem bers of a body of labourers.