Tropicalities

The sad fate

of Captain

Ang Tai-peng

There was a rare blend of high drama and black comedy in the affair of the 60 ft Taiwanese fishing vessel Kim Heng-sing which had Papua New Guinea agog for a couple of days in mid-September.

It all began on September 14, when the PNG Defence Force patrol ship Madang discovered the Kim Heng sing fishing within PNG’s 12-mile limit. It arrested the ship and was preparing to escort it to Wewak when it received an emergency medical call from the Ninigo Island group. The patrol ship made off for the Ninigos at top speed, leaving four of its crewmen armed aboard the Taiwanese vessel.

The Kim Heng-sing was told to maintain position. But when the patrol ship returned it was nowhere to be seen.

Fearing that the Taiwanese might have made a dash for freedom, carry ing the PNG military boarding party as hostages, the Defence Force mounted a massive air and sea search for the vessel.

A second patrol boat joined the Madang. Two Defence Force Dakotas searched the area. A RAAF Orion flew overnight from Edinburgh, South Australia, to join in. Co operation was requested from the USAAF station on Guam. Relatives of the boarding party personnel had, meanwhile, been notified of their dis appearance by telegram from the Defence Department.

The drama ended suddenly on the morning of September 16, when the Kim Heng-sing was discovered near Aitape, 230 km southwest of the point of its arrest. All four members of the boarding party were safe and well, and in full control of everything ex cept where the ship was heading.

As it turned out there had been nothing sinister about the ship’s dis

appearance at all: it was due to a com bination of primitive navigation equipment, a low-powered engine and strong currents. In a word, the unfor tunate skipper Ang Tai-peng couldn’t help it. He was an “involuntary fugitive”.

All this didn’t help him, however, when he fronted up in Wewak court on September 23, despite his plea that he simply didn’t know he was fishing in PNG waters, and his supporting statement that his navigation equip ment consisted of “a sextant, a ready reckoner and a dictionary to read the English words on the chart”, he was convicted, given four months’ gaol in which to reflect upon his fate, and had his ship and fishing gear confiscated.

His 12-man crew was permitted to live on board the ship in Wewak har bour pending arrangements for repatriation.

A later report said that the Kim Heng-sing may be allowed to return home, but only after being stripped of its fishing gear, refrigerators, winches and other equipment. Captain Ang stays in gaol.

Cheque-mate for

Suva City Council

Suva saw a recent interesting ex change with the Mayor Cr Len Usher, on one side and Fiji Finance Minister Charles Stinson on the other. Spec tators included trading banks, which had imposed a surcharge on cheques, and that set off a train of events. Cr Usher claimed that Suva City Council would lose $lO,OOO a year if it did not get people who made payments by cheque to pay an extra 4c a cheque to meet the surcharge.

“Illegal”, thundered Mr Stinson, after he had been told by Cr Usher that the council would continue to accept cheques without the 4c sur charge, but that the extra 4c would still appear as an extra charge on the consumer’s account.

“Not so”, replied Cr Usher, challenging Mr Stinson to point out which section of the law made it il legal to ask for the 4c surcharge.

Mr Stinson who, naturally enough, has a fairly close knowledge of the council’s workings after about 15 years as a councillor, including seven years as mayor, commented that the council would have grave problems if it had to handle cash instead of the 250,000 cheques it received from con sumers.

He claimed the council enjoyed the security and convenience of the cheque system and, like anybody else, had to pay for those services. It paid not more than $3 a year in the past for such services, which was a ridiculous ly low figure for the benefit it derived from the system. (Mr Stinson, of course, would have been the mayor when it paid that “ridiculously low figure”.) Mr Stinson said that if the council refused to relax its conditions, he could only suggest that consumers pay their accounts to the council in cash.

One irate consumer, in fact did do that, according to Cr Usher. It was Mr Robert Earland, general manager of the Central Monetary Authority, which got into an argument with the council before Mr Stinson. The authority in a newspaper advertise ment asked people, requested for the surcharge when paying accounts, to advise the authority.

Cr Usher said Mr Earland had gone to the council to pay an electrici ty account, but had refused to pay the 4c surcharge. Mr Earland had gone away and later returned and paid the bill with small coins, while other peo ple waited in a queue.

Two die

by ritual

Police believe two men, who were clubbed to death on a PNG island, were victims of a ritual tribal execu tion. Investigations indicated that the men father and son were sentenced to death by an illegal court which revived old tribal customs.

The killings, apparently, carried

out on the spot by tribal executioners, who used carved fighting sticks as clubs while the court watched, oc curred in September on Buka, north of Bougainville.

The scene was Hahalis village, once the site of the strange Hahalis baby farm cult which attempted to breed a super race, and even tried to bribe the Pope.

Police were told that Sikula Monge, 50, and his son Mathias Meksi, 24, had paid “a tribal penalty”. A court, constituted under “the laws of our forefathers”, had found the men responsible for the dis appearance of an elderly woman, and had punished them by ritual death.

The Hahalis cult which flourished 15 years ago was one of the biggest problem situations ever encountered by the Australian administration.

Village people established a welfare society to improve their conditions, but it rapidly became a hotbed of cultism ruled by “King John” and “Queen Elizabeth” John Teosin and his wife.

The cultists handed a basket of money to the Catholic Church on Buka, and told the priests to pay it to the Pope so that he would permit free and multiple marriage.

The cultists refused to recognise legal authority, including tax payments, and hundreds of arrests were eventually made after a week long police siege of the area.

Big pig money

on Kusaie

Six hundred and nine Kusaiean pig-owners received a total of $U5263,076 in compensation in September for stock slaughtered when an epidemic of hog cholera struck Kusaie in June.

According to Trust Territory agricultural authorities, 4,693 pigs were slaughtered on the island in the effort to stamp out the epidemic. In addition, 301 wild pigs were trapped and killed as a precautionary measure, but no cholera was found in them. • According to PlM’s electronic calculator the Kusaiean pig farmers received an average of 5U552.7 in compensation per pig lost (with the wild ones thrown in), and payments to the 609 pig farmers averaged out at SUS 432 each.

Fiji farmers’

broom boom

Fiji will harvest a record broom corn crop of 180,0001 b this year, and one local manufacturer will export brooms to the value of $F 130,000 to New Zealand alone.

Reporting the broom boom, Fiji’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forests says that broomcorn (com mon millet) is an increasingly popular crop with local farmers.

Growing time is three months and the farmer averages a net income of SFI7O an acre. With intensive care of the crop some farmers this year pulled in as much as SF3OO an acre for their broomcorn.

Three hundred farmers in the Sigatoka area grew the crop this year.

Thirty farmers in Nadi and 100 in the Labasa-Bua area planted it for the first time.

Just like the

United Nations!

Kimbe in PNG’s New Britain, once called “the little United Nations of the Pacific”, has lost its unity.

A flare-up of tribal tempers has reached such a peak that the Prime Minister, Mr Somare, ordered two of his ministers to go there for a personal investigation.

Two men died in mid-September, one from spear wounds and the other from an axe attack. More than 300 men, women and children, fearing for their lives, left their homes and sheltered in two church buildings in Kimbe, which is the site of a palm oil project. The blocks there were made available to settlers from all parts of PNG instead of only to local villagers.

The settlers formed a new type of integrated inter-tribal community something new in rural PNG.

A United Nations inspection mis sion which visited the area five years ago wrote a glowing report of the ex periment, calling Kimbe “a little United Nations”.

But the new tensions have brought tribal barriers into prominence again, involving particularly the Chimbu people, who migrated from the PNG Highlands, and the Tolai people from Rabaul.

Police said the first murder victim was a Chimbu and the second a Tolai.