Inquiry Demanded By

Telefomin Murders

Parents

jTVN their arrival in Port

Moresby in August, Mr.

and Mrs. E. H. Harris, parents

of Patrol-Officer Geoffrey Harris,

who was murdered near Tele

fomin. New Guinea, last Novem

ber, demanded a public inquiry

into the events leading up to the

tragedy.

Mr. and Mrs. Harris were on their way to visit their son’s grave it Wewak.

Mrs. Harris said that she would ‘never forgive” the Administration for what they did to her son; nor should she forgive the Minister and those Territory officials who had said that the murders of Harris and Patrol-Officer Gerald Szarka (who was killed at the same time) were partly their own fault because they had split up, instead of patrol ling together.

She said that her son had been left in the bush for 10 hours to Dleed to death.

Mr. Harris said that the parents )f Szarka were equally bitter about lis death. Mr. Szarka had told him ;hat he had letters from his son in which he had said that “patrol nen” who had been in the area Defore had interfered with native women, and that Mr. Szarka, Snr., Delieved that this was the cause of ;he murders.

In an interview with a Sydney lewspaper in August, Mrs. Szarka, ;he mother of Gerald Szarka, said ;hat her son had “lived and died i saint” and that the murders would lot have happened if it had not Deen for faulty administration. She ;aid she had letters from her son n which he had said that many latives in the area were without f ood and had been kept in prison ;oo long so that they could not grow ;rops for their families. (See comment on page 35 this ssue ),

Equipment for

servicing flying boats is now be ing provided in Lae, NG. A slip way is being con structed at the sea end of the Lae air-strip; and when the flying boats are thus re moved from the water, facilities are available by which they can be pulled into the workshops ad joining the air strip.

Reid-Colardeau

Wedding

A charming photo graph of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Colardeau and two small attendants after their marriage on July 31 at the Catholic Church, Vila, New Hebrides.

The bride was Miss Yvette Reid, eldest daughter of Mr. E- Reid. Mr. Colardeau recently returned from France to join his family in the Hebrides where they have planting interests. —Photo by Fung Kuei.

Comment: THE article follows the usual Party political line—which if repeated c loud enough and often enough will not want for believers.

I To our knowledge, none of the projects introduced by the Labour Government went “by the board for purely political reasons, any how. Some of the violent socialistic ideas introduced by Minister Eddie Ward in 1945-46 were well-watered down or abandoned as impractical bv the end of his feign in 1949. In the closing years of the Edwardian era, as everyone knows, Ward was so busy presenting himself before Royal Commissions, etc., that he had little time to devote to the personal supervision of his Depart ment or his policy.

The Menzies Governnient has carried on the policy as it found it in 1949—more is the pity. It would have been better all round for the Territory if it had made the changes it was believed it would make —or Labour unions in Australia appar ently think it has made. We would like from Mr. Schmella a list of the projects he believes have been abandoned by the present Govern ment. And the “enormous timber tracts, mineral deposits and possible oilfields” were all well taken care or before the Chifley Government was voted out of office.

The hysteria behind the Telefomin Affair seems to stem from a belief that the natives committed the dual murders in revenge for ill-treat ment at the hands of Administra tion officers who were in the area before Harris and Szarka got there. (See article elsewhere this issue).

We do not know which officials were in Telefomin before Harris and Szarka, or on what the belief is based—although there are indica tions that it is founded on letters

to the patrol-officers’ parents.

These hints have gone so far and have been repeated so often now, that the sensible thing would be to hold a public inquiry; it is unlikely that the NG Administration would lose anything by it, whereas they have already lost something at the hands of public mischief-makers.

All the hints and semi-accusa tions that have seen the light of print in Australia are based on the premise that the “simple, prim itive natives” could not possibly have murdered anyone unless some European had provoked them.

As everyone who has ever lived in the outports in P-NG knows, this is far from correct. It is true that some Europeans have been murdered by natives because of the conduct of others of their kind; but these cases have been far out numbered by those where natives have killed for no reason that holds good in our own society. Primitive natives are frequently unpredict able, and men who know P-NG never forget that fact and govern their acts and conduct accordingly.

It could be that Harris and Szarka were insufficiently trained

for the job that was required of them —in which event the Depart ment of District Services must take some blame for their deaths. But it could be equally true that they were simply unfortunate in meet ing one of the hazards that Dis trict Services men must expect to meet in carrying out their duty.

Like a lone voice crying in the wilderness has been one letter to an Australian newspaper. Signed “Patrol Officer,” the letter says that evidence showed that the murders had been deliberately planned for five years and therefore could not be dismissed as the sudden whim of frightened natives; that a life for a life was the rule in this prim itive community, and that the people concerned would expect this penalty

to be exacted. The murderers should be hanged, he said—otherwise all of the Telefomin people would simply believe that the Adminis tration was composed of a set of weaklings.

Although we do not necessarily agree with him in all respects, there is a great deal of realism and sense in his remarks.

Weights and measures in Fiji are likely to be a little less casual in future if the advice of a Technical Officer of the Weights and Measures Office in New Zealand is imple mented. Mr. H, Schofield, OBE, DFC, FIM, visited Suva in July at the invitation of the Fiji Govern met to advise on laws governing weights and measures in the Colony.