Moresby
p. 153 · Read in the full issue
[?]Atter Of
[?]Ple Comparison
Justice in Port Moresby
JE afternoon not long ago a store executive in a big establishment in Port Moresby noticed a lorry g loaded, at a back door. Some g about the load puzzled him. waited and watched, and then jailed a policeman, le native driver took the lorry towards Ela Beach. The store Lager and the policeman fol id, unobtrusively, le lorry went to Koki. The jan began to load the goods into rge lakatoi, waiting there, le store executive and the jeman intervened. Who author this? le Papuan knew nothing. He he was merely carrying out the rs of the Tauhada, at the store. goods were loaded back i the lorry. (It was learned, rwards, that they were worth ,) The lorry was driven back town; and the Tauhada (a >pean storeman) interviewed. , first, the storeman protested he knew nothing about the ;er. The policeman took him to police station There, under •rogation, he broke down.
I’ve caught me this time,” he ; and he signed a confession, hen the store manager con ed said the goods were worth the thief protested. ‘‘He is ing them at retail rates,” he ed. “Their value should be dated on wholesale rates!” tis confessed thief, with the mce that he had been engaged ;ome time in deliberate stealing large scale, was brought before igistrate. The latter placed him :r a bond of £5O, to be of good viour for a period of months, tien a female teletypist in Port ?sby, acting as a newspaper jspondent, got her news sources fi. and sent to her newspaper ydney some information about Sepik murders which she had me aware of through her con itial work (and not through usual news channels), she was ged with a breach of the Official sts Act (or something like that) sentenced to three months’ im mment—the first time in history tiite woman had been sent to in the Territory. ie sentence (which was reduced 1 by a higher Court to six s) has been condemned ughout the Territory as a
strous miscarriage of justice,
ie Magistrate who imposed that mce was the same person who the self-confessed store thief nth a £5O good-behaviour bond.