D-Ng Natives Show Displeasure, Hack

The Long Process of Civilisation

Plane And Missionaries To Pieces

Full details of the killing in early December of two missionaries in the Wissel Lakes area of Dutch New Guinea, and the destruction of the plane in which they had flown in from the coast, were still not available on January 7.

NEWS reached Port Moresby early in December that a Cessna aircraft owned by the Christian Mission Alliance (an American organisation which operates in Australian and Dutch New Guinea on behalf of certain of the Protestant Missions) had flown into the Wissel Lakes carrying, as well as the pilot, one European missionary and two native missionaries. At its destination, the European missionary and the pilot had gone to the mission house, half an hour’s walk away, leaving the aircraft in charge of the native missionaries. On their return, they found that the missionaries had been murdered and the plane hacked about.

The report could not be confirmed in Port Moresby—as the event took place outside Australian territory (although the Civil Aviation Department must have certain jurisdiction over the aircraft operated therein by the Christian Mission Alliance).

Reports later from the Hague confirmed the destruction of the aircraft, and stated also that mission-houses had been burnt and Indicated that more than two missionaries had been killed.

The report said that police and Dutch Navy men had been flown in to take charge of the situation.

Official sources attribute the trouble to resentment against the Administration and missions for their interference with barbaric native customs such as killing wives suspected of adultery or shooting widows ter death with arrows. There has, also, been an outbreak of disease amongst local native pigs— which is also blamed on the Dutch.