Summary Fijian justice upheld

Press, 21 January 1982, Page 19

Summary Fijian justice upheld

NZPA Suva A caning administered by a Fijian village chief to five young men who beat up another man on Boxing Day is a civilised way of avoiding a potentially explosive situation. Fiji’s Chief Justice (Sir Timoci Tuivaga) has ruled.

He set aside a decision in which a British Magistrate imposed nine-month deferred jail sentences and LFiji6o (SNZB3) fines on the men after convicting them of beating up a man from another village they found in a lonely spot with a girl from their village. By the time the police went to the island of Matuku, 222 km east of Suva, to arrest the five men, village justice had been dispensed. The chief of the village the men came from had given each of them three strokes

with a cane and, in the traditional practice to make amends and complete reconciliation, there had been exchanges of whale teeth between the two villages concerned.

The British Magistrate. Mr Gordon Ward, told the five men they would have gone to jail but' for the caning. He said it was possible that the village chief himself might be guilty of assault by carrying out the caning. In his ruling, the Chief Justice said the Magistrate had failed to “give sufficient credit" to Fijian customs. The trouble at Matuku had “been taken care of appropriately in the Fijian customary way.” “One could not wish for a more civilised way to sort out a potentially explosive situation,” he said.