paralysis

Santo lawlessness follows official paralysis

Ken Hutton, Australian-born long-time resident and com munity leader, including Red Cross representative, on Santo, New Hebrides, in this report gives a first-hand account of the end-of-the-year troubles on the island. His description of the events, dealt with more briefly in RIM Jan (pi 4), vividly reflects the anger of citizens at official incapacity to deal firmly with trouble-makers.

The situation in Santo became

grim immediately after the

November 14 election results were announced. Firstly, threats were broadcast over the Na Griamel Radio Vanafo that people from islands except Santo would be attacked and beaten, and their homes and

possessions destroyed because

they had voted for the

Vanuaaku Party.

People who did not hear the Radio Vanafo broadcasts were

threatened by delegations from

Vanafo, including plantation

workers along the east coast.

Consequently, large groups of

people began to descend on the town to take refuge. Others left by ship or plane for their home islands. So much for the secret ballot. Those who ran were

obviously confessing that they

had voted VP. There were 30-odd people on board the Henry Bonneaud which was disabled due to engine trouble;

however, they took refuge

there in spite of the fact that the ship could not sail.

People were sleeping 20 to a room in houses on the British Paddock, with over 350 people crowded in there. The British School and Wai School class rooms and the Anglican Church were sheltering more than 400 people. We had a refugee problem. It was not so bad while the weather remained fine, but when it rained it was impossible to keep the classroom clean. The toilet facilities were seriously overstrained and it looked like developing into a serious

health problem.

There were shortages of food

as soon as the refugees’ immediate supplies ran out.

The Market ceased to function.

However, some stout hearts in South Santo brought in their utility trucks loaded with yams, taro and beef. Great credit goes to the organisers of this relief.

A lot of people were sheltering on various plantations on Aore Island.

As the representative of In ternational Red Cross I con stantly inspected the areas of refugee concentration to see if we could help. As food became short during the latter part of the week Vila Kiwanis voted me FNHSO 000 to buy food. It was decided to hand out this food (mainly tinned fish and rice) through the Women’s Club and to people who were going back to their homes so they would not go back to an empty larder. Peter Toa, Anna Tevi and others helped with the distribution.

Meantime the business sec tor of the town came to a grind ing halt simply because there was no staff. Burns Philp had lost 70 of their people; Barclays Bank lost most of theirs, and Chinese stores were operating with little or no staff.

The economic loss to the town due to this non-week can not accurately be gauged. BPs estimate a FNH4 000 000 loss of sales revenue; certainly other business houses suffered

proportionately. Naturally

these losses are never made up; they are irretrievable.

The Na Griamel people meantime came to town in numbers of up to 20 at a time, armed with sticks, clubs and

iron bars. There were no incidents within the town as far as I am aware, merely abuse and threats.

In the outer town area Mr Jack Ulas from Paama, a man with a bad heart condition, had the screws ripped off his house and was dragged out and threa tened with a bow fully stretched and an arrow at his throat. All good fun, but tragic if the arrow had accidentally slipped. Ezra William at Sarabou was also threatened and beaten. This invasion of private property, disregard of human dignity and threats of physical violence to citizens of the town are deplorable and the full arm of the law must be felt by the aggressors before we degenerate into a state of com

plete lawlessness.

The teachers and staff of the British School were abused when a mob of 200 marched through the grounds. As chair man of the board of manage ment I should like to pay a tribute to the headmaster and teaching staff for their stead fastness and courage in facing this mob, and for their assist ance rendered to the refugees during this very trying week.

A tour of the residential Sarakuta area of the town revealed that most homes were locked and shuttered with tem porary barriers across the

entrances. The pathetic thing

was that almost every house had a patient, faithful and no doubt hungry dog awaiting the return of the occupants.

The performance by the two administrations British and French during this emerg ency leaves some room for criticism. There apparently was no agreement to put a road block on the Vanafo road to prevent other than legitimate visits to the town by mobs of people. There was no effort to stop the townspeople who were

supplying transport and logis

tics to the Na Griamel. Doubt less if they had to march 32 kilometres to town to demon strate there would be few starters and fewer finishers.

It is unbelievable that certain business people of this town lent trucks and buses to trans port these demonstrators to town, and also to Palekula to disrupt the operations of the South Pacific Fishing

Company.

We were led to understate that the Police Mobile Unit - PMU, and less effective that Pick-Me-Up sauce wa arriving to reinforce the Santc

police. But apparently th«

French police who wen already on board the Alize I were withdrawn at 11 pm, a» hour before sailing, on order from the French resident comi missioner The Brits, foreve: playing cricket and not wantin] to act unilaterally, sub sequently also withdrew th<

Euphrosyne and their police.

One can imagine the feeling! of the innocent citizens ch Santo to realise they had be; come pawns in the eternaf game of British/French politii cal manipulating. Just wher commonsense seemed to pre: vail and badly needed re; inforcements were on the way we suddenly have the ruj pulled out from under our feet No wonder the metropolitan governments are fast losing

New Hebrides

their credibility in this arena; if it has not yet been lost it is cer tainly sadly tarnished as a re sult of this effort, or rather

non-effort.

Where do we stand now?

The town has not recovered from this debacle. Even the fes tival of arts and the normal Christmas shopping spree were not enough to wipe out the damage already done. The threat still hangs over us. Any time some misguided character announces over that illegal Vanafo radio that the attack is on again (the most recently quoted date was 28 December and it did not happen) what do we do? We demonstrably are not able to rely on the two metropolitan governments for protection of our fundamental freedoms. The New Hebrides Government does not control the internal security of the country. The police forces are worse than useless in their pre sent structure. The law has not I acted, or even been seen to act, after this latest wave of threats f of violence.

I Airfields are closed down. At

Big Bay, for example, there are

logs and trees making it unus able. A woman died of tetanus at Big Bay because she could not be evacuated by air that’s only one of the tragedies. A child died because she was

evacuated by the frightened

parents instead of being admit ted to hospital. And no one seems to give a damn the ad ministrators, the politicians, the police, the parsons are all guilty men because they have not the guts to face up to this deplorable situation which ! threatens lives, the livelihood, the economy, indeed the very future of this town. [ Chief Minister Walter Lini was to head a delegation of senior ministers to Paris in January where discussions were planned with the respon sible British and French minis ters. Messrs Blaker and Dijoud.

On the agenda for the talks were an exchange of views on the exact date of indepen dence. and the problems of future economic aid from the metropolitan powers to independent New Hebrides.

French and British delegations were expected to visit New Hebrides in this connection the end of January.