Tropicalities

"Miscarriage" In Vila?

■ WRITE to put on record the fol lowing responses in respect to com ments made by Mr Stuart Little more concerning the recent trials of the former President of Vanuatu, Mr Ati George Sokomanu and members of his illegal interim Government.

Mr Littlemore’s comments were broadcast by Radio Australia on March 8, 1989.

The Government of Vanuatu chal lenges the statement that the trial har boured a “miscarriage of justice” and that the trial result is not a fair result”.

As an appeal was considered almost certain to be lodged a process which has since been confirmea the Judges consider it is unfortunate that Mr Littlemore chose to comment on the law itself.

The Judges are surprised that Mr Littlemore saw fit to comment on the actual result of the trial when he was only in Port Vila for five out of 10 davs of the trial.

Mr Littlemore was not in court to hear the evidence of the three accused who were acquitted. The assessors who made that decision were entitled to do so on the basis of their inter pretation of the evidence as it related to the mens res of the defendants.

Our courts in Vanuatu are open and public. Mr Littlemore’s report should have been limited to the way in which the trial was conducted rather than [containing] an expression of his personal views on the evidence.

Mr Littlemore has chosen to speak to the press giving his own personal interpretation of the evidence he was not in as good as a position as the assessors to do that, as they had heard the entire evidence.

Donald Kalpokas

Minister for Foreign Affairs and Judicial Services Port Vila, Vanuatu MR Kalapoka’s letter, which refers to radio comments by Sydney barrister and International Commission of Jur ists (Australian Section) sedition trial observer Mr Stuart Littlemore, de mands a response.

Pacific Islands Monthly has obtained a copy of the media release prepared by the ICJ, which sets out in skeletal terms the objections it has made to the conduct of the trial. However, there are further objections not referred to in the media release which must be given proper attention by the Govern ment and judiciary of the Republic of Vanuatu among them that the issue

of the aborted Chinese arms deal (see our report on Page 10 of this issue) was utterly irrelevant to the charges on which Mr Sope was being cross examined (and that the deal had been in fact instigated by Mr Sope under instructions from Father Lini); that the defendants’ counsel failed to draw the court’s attention to such irrelevant questioning; and that the direction of the trial did not adhere to established guidelines. It is expected these aspects will form part of the grounds on which the defendants will appeal against their convictions.

Reproduced below is the media re lease distributed by the ICJ: THE Executive Committee of the In ternational Commission of Jurists, Au stralian Section, has adopted the re port of its observer at the Vanuatu sedition trial, in which the trial is de scribed as a miscarriage of justice.

The former President of the Repub lic of Vanuatu, Ati George Sokomanu,

and three leading politicial figures

Barak Sope, Maxim Carlot and Willie Jimmy were convicted ... on counts of conspiracy to overthrow the Lini Government, incitement to

mutiny and unlawful oath-taking.

They were sentenced to prison terms from six to two years.

The report, made by member of the Council of the Australian Section of the ICJ [and] Sydney barrister Stuart Littlemore, says in attacking the out come of [the] Port Vila trial that: “Whatever convicted the four men, it certainly not was the evidence ten dered against them.”

Three men, two of whom were not politicians and the third of whom was a minor figure in Vanuatu politics, were acquitted on the same charges.

The ICJ report says that the convic tions, where the evidence was the same as that against the acquitted men, “defy logical analvsis” and that the evidence against all [the] accused was “identical and identically in

adequate. ”

The report calls the convictions “perverse’* and adds that there was, at the close of the case brought by Vanuatu’s Public Prosecutor, no case for any of the accused to answer.

“Irrespective of the final outcome of the trial,” the report says, “the judge was in error (when he declined to stop the trial and direct verdicts of not guilty on all counts) and the result was

a miscarriage of justice.”

An appeal against [the] convictions has been set down for the first week in April, at which the four men will be

represented by Sydney QC Mr Barry

Toomey. The Australian Section of the ICJ expects to make a further re port once the [outcome of the] appeal nas been determined.

Us Visas In Solomons

I WOULD like to point out an error in your December 1988 issue.

David North wrote in his article “US Islanders overcome passport tri bulations” that “the US Department of State issues visas in the former Trust Territories and in Suva and Port Moresby, but nowhere else in the Pacific”.

I would like to point out that the American Embassy in Honiara, Solo mon Islands, has been issuing visas for over a year to citizens and residents of Solomon Islands. In addition, citizens and residents of Vanuatu are able to apply by mail to the Embassy in Hon iara, with most receiving their visas by return mail (or pouched to their travel agent) in little over a week. Applicants from Vanuatu who require an in person interview are able to meet the consular officer on one of his regular consular visits to Port Vila.

This is perhaps not an earth shaking change, but Mr North should be aware that another or what he calls “barriers” to travel to the United States has been lowered.

Bill Warren

Charge d’Affaires, US Embassy Honiara

Treue Freunde Aus

Samoa?

I AM a 27-year-old female student from Germany in search of an En

glish-speaking penfriend from

Western Samoa. Would you please publish my name and address so that someone interested may write to me.

Alexandra Dittmar

Treburer Str 24 6000 Frankfurt 71 West Germany

Vanuatu Pioneer Sought

WOULD ANY of your readers have any information on a captain Ronald McLeod, an ancestor of mine who settled in the Vanuatu group during the 1860 s, ori finally as a planter on the island of anna.

Capt McLeod was born in Nova Sco tia and came to New Zealand with his

family about 1844. They settled as far mers but he was later ostracised by his relatives for supposedly dabbling in the slave-trade. Other information suggests that though he did recruit labour for his own use, he was well respected and liked by the natives whose “side he often took in matters of ill usage by the whites”.

It seems likely Capt McLeod settled on Tanna and grew maize, cotton and copra with mostly imported labour. As he is reported to have sailed to these islands aboard the vessel Woodstock, it is possible that he shipped his produce in the same vessel to Auckland and Noumea.

It was reported that he later set up a trading post on Efate and built a large home. He was bought out by the New Hebrides Company and later died of fever at Noumea. Available dates indicate this would have been in 1894 when the Captain was aged 50.

Any further information would be

much appreciated.

R Jenkins

Kanuka Rd Sandspit Warkworth North Auckland, NZ

Pacific Stickers Sought

THE WESTERN Australian Stick er Collectors’ Association is a non-profit group that exists to serve sticker collectors everywhere. We currently have more than 100 mem bers in Australia, New Zealand and the US. We are all keen sticker collec tors trying to collect as many stickers (also known as self-adhesive labels) as possible to add to our collections.

As we are a non-profit association we don’t buy stickers; our funds are used to pay our running costs. But as well as writing to companies and orga nisations all over the world requesting stickers, I also write back ana thank everyone that does send stickers to us, and I send one of our stickers to them, too.

If readers of Pacific Islands Monthly use stickers to advertise, have stickers for public relations purposes or just to label things, that’s what we’re after.

Naturally the more stickers the better, but even if they could only send us one sticker, this would be greatly appreciated. Of course, when we re ceive more stickers than we have members, spares are stockpiled for fu ture members.

I look forward to hearing from PIM reades and hope 1989 is shaping up to be a good year for all of them.

John Cohen, WASCA

PO Box 77 Brunswick Junction WA 6224

Fijians Or Not Fijians ...

AN OPINION page in your January issue included a sum mary of recent political events m Fiji.

This said: “ . . . the Melanesian population sought to throw off wjiat is perceived as the shackles of a colonial imbalance in opportunity.”

In view of the fact that Fiji became wholly independent some 17 years previously, I am puzzled by the use of the worn ‘colonial’ in describing the situation at the time of the 1987 coup.

But what particularly grieves me is to find Pacific Islands Monthly , with nearly 60 years of experience of the Pacific behind it, using ‘Melanesian’ instead of ‘Fijian’ to describe the in

digenous people of Fiji.

1 know that this has recently become common practice along a number of

overseas journalists.

There may be an excuse for some of them on the grounds of ignorance, but surely PIM should be well aware of the strong Polynesian admixture among the Fijian people, and that Melanesians’ is neitner a comprehen sive nor adequate synonym for Fi jians’.

Why should there be this sudden and unnecessary change? The word

Fijian’ is straightforwardly descriptive,

is enshrined in law and has the au thority of more than a century of reg ular use.

One group of people in Fiji who can certainly be classified properly as Melanesians are the members of the not inconsiderable Solomon Islands community. An illuminating feature of the draft Constitution now being dis cussed in Fiji is that people of Solo mon Islands descent have been re moved from the category of Fijians for voting purposes and are classified among the ‘others’ who are described as being neither Fijians nor Indians or Rotumans.

Sir Leonard Usher

Suva, Fiji

Making Contact ...

Ti HANK YOU very much for pub my address, which I sent in

seeking penpals. With your help I

have received letters from throughout the Pacific islands countries and I pas sed some of them on to my friends.

We are now receiving letters from our penpals and we are pleased to know all about their countries and to tell them about Papua New Guinea.

On behalf of my mates I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for

your help.

Herman Huafe

Lae, PNG