THE COOK ISLANDS

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 32, 8 February 1899, Page 2

THE COOK ISLANDS

BARBAROUS LAWS AND PRAC-

TICES.

PLAIN TALK BY JUDGE GL'DGEON,

A late issue of 'Te Torea,' the newspaper published at Karotonga, Cook Islands, contains an address delivered to the meeting of native chiefs and judges at the Parliament House, Rarotonga, on January 12, by Lieut. Col. W. E. Gudgeon, British Resident. In the course of his remarks to the arikis and judges Col. Gudgeon said:—'l have said that your laws are oppressive, and therefore bad; and, in so saying, I judge by the printed local laws. But the reports that I have received from sOme of the most reliable of traders and visitors show them in a still worse light. Women are followed and annoyed by the police, charged with offences, and bullied into confessions in order that monejr may be extorted from them, for the benefit of a few leading men. I am told that at Mangaia the police insist upon smelling the breath of those who land there in order to ascertain whether or not they had been drinking spirits. If these tales are true, and 1 have no reason to doubt them, then the whole system is a scandal to the whole world, for it is not so long ago that you tortured women to make them confess to offences against the moral laws of Mangaia. It would be interesting if we could ascertain how many of those charges were brought by the police out of revenge, and how many of this zealous police force ought themselves to have been punished for breaches of the same laws. That the laws under which these tilings have been done have been wrong- in existence is no argument in favour of their continuance. Bad and oppressive laws invariably fail to cure the evils at which they are aimed, and it is so in this case—for,, 3t3orally, the habits of the Cook Islanders are much what they were 160 years ago. I wish the people of Mangaia and Aitutaki to realise that some of their laws aro thft laughing- stock of the civilised world; and, therefore, I intend to bring in an Act next session to restrain either judges or police from interfering with or persecuting women, who nre neither children nor bound by the marriage tie. The so-called laws under which they now live a miserable existence wete enacted during the dark ages, and the time has now come when the y ought to be set aside, and those of civilised countries substituted."