"Hang Them,'

New Guineans

Are Urging

• Both Fiji and the British Solomon Islands, in recent legislation, have suspended capital punishment for a trial period of five years. But the death penalty is still on the books in Papua-New Guinea, and there has in fact been recent agitation for the penalty to be carried out. This AAP-Reuter report from Port Moresby reviews the situation.

Citizens of Papua-New Guinea are calling for increased penalties for all types of crime but especially for murder.

MEMBERS of the multi-racial Goroka Local Government Council, for instance, urged at a recent meeting that wilful murder carry the penalty of death or life imprisonment. Some of the native councillors also suggested that con victed murderers should be publicly hanged.

The council has written to the Administrator asking for a judge to compile a full report on the number of murders and other crimes com mitted throughout the territory in recent years with a view to generally increased penalties.

The Goroka Council appeal is the latest in a long series of pleas, especially from prominent and in fluential New Guineans, for heavier criminal punishments.

Weak, Ineffective

New Guinean members of the House of Assembly as well as Local Government councillors have criticised the law as weak and in effective, advocating that court sentences should be so severe they will become real deterrents. They are also calling for prison life to be more rigorous than it is. Members of the police force and the legal profession have given these views their strong support.

The strongest demands for capital punishment, public hangings and generally harsher punishment for all crimes, have come from areas formerly under German control.

The German practice was to take a person convicted of wanton murder back to the place where he had committed the crime and hang him there. People from all nearby

villages were brought along to the spot to watch while a rope was set up in a tall tree and the man hanged.

There have been instances in recent years of native tribesmen taking the law into their own hands when they felt an accused had been let off too lightly in the “white man’s court”.

Several fierce villagers axed a man to death on the front steps of the Kundiawa Courthouse, in the Eastern Highlands, during an adjournment in his trial. At their own trial the villagers told the judge they thought the man was going to be let off.

One of the strongest demands for

the death sentence came during a pre-election campaign near Rabaul in January, 1964. Four candidates for election to the territory’s first House of Assembly were told by the large crowd the votes would go to the candidate who promised to advocate the reintroduction of hang ing and stiffer punishment for crime generally.

The spokesman for the crowd, Petet Tokaul, a local councillor, said his people could not understand the light sentences being handed out to murderers.

“We see a man who has killed for no reason and within four to six months he is back in the village

where the women and children go in fear of him,” he said.

The man thought and acted like a big man and people were afraid because they did not know who he would turn his attention to next.

“Many of us remember good German times when they dealt with murderers in a different fashion.”

Tokaul said.

Many of the advocates of harsher punishment have criticised the soft way prisoners are treated in gaol.

The Under-Secretary for Police, Pita

Simogen, told the House of Assembly that while prisoners received such good food and clothing while in gaol the crime rate would continue to increase. Often when a man was released he committed another crime so he could be sent back to gaol.

He said while a man was in gaol he should be made to work hard and pay for his crime. He should not be given good food and allowed to laze the days away.

But the Secretary for Law, Mr.

W. W. Watkins, is a strong opponent

of the death sentence —-especially for New Guineans.

“It would be extremely rare to have sufficient evidence against a native to justify a judge pronouncing the death sentence,” he said. “In Papua and New Guinea experience indicates that the circumstances surrounding the crime of wilful murder, committed by indigenous persons, almost invariably show that the death penalty is not warranted.”

Mr. Watkins said some of the extenuating circumstances could in clude the period of contact with Administration influence, the strength of a native custom which has motiva ted the crime, as well as the inability of the accused’s tribal group to comprehend the gravity of the offence under British law.

Territory judges still do have the right to pronounce the death sentence. Previously they also had the power to “record” the death sentence, but this was withdrawn by act of parliament last year.

When a judge “recorded” the death sentence it automatically became a recommendation for mercy before the Governor-General, and the re sponsibility for imposing sentence was taken out of the judge’s hands.

In some cases where the death sentence was “recorded” the prisoners were released after only six months.

The most unsatisfactory feature about this method of sentence was that neither the accused nor those present in court heard what real punishment was awarded.

Under the new legislation a judge must impose a term of imprison ment on the spot if he does not feel the death sentence is warranted.

Another officer of the Crown Law Department in Port Moresby said he favoured the reintroduction of hanging on a limited scale.

He said from his experience on court circuits to many parts of the territory, the people were in favour of hanging.

In the areas of New Guinea where the Germans had ruled there appeared to be a significantly lower crime rate—especially in the more serious crimes such as murder.

Another factor was that with light sentences witnesses were often afraid to give evidence against an accused person, knowing that if he was con victed he would be back in the village, able to take revenge on them, within a few months.

The officer said the majority of New Guinea leaders seemed strongly in favour of capital punishment.

“One thing is certain,” he said.

“Whether we reintroduce it or not, it will certainly be brought into force as soon as the New Guineans have control of their own affairs.”