PAPUAN MURDERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 February 1930, Page 7

PAPUAN MURDERS

GOVERNOR’S REPORT. ••The Papuan criminal (if he can be called a criminal who merely carries on his ancestral customs) is surely the greatest simpleton the world ever knew. Here is an instance reported by Mr. Flint, from Abau. A man kitl- . ef! a plantation labourer; the labourley’s body was not found, and he was I posted as a deserter. The murderer ‘ would certainly have escaped had he i rot donned the insignia of the assassin, and gone up and told a neighbouring village constable all about it. Of course, he was promptly arrested, and is now in gaol.” This extract from the annual report on the Territory of Papua, which was issued recently above the signature of the Lieutenant-Governor (Sir Hubert Murray), is eloquent in two ways, says the Adelaide “Observer. In a few words, it suggests, not only the extraordinary simplicity of the natives, but the sympathetic tolerance of the administration. Sir Hubert Murray likes to treat the Papuans with every consideration, and even with indulgence, but he frankly admits that he does not understand them. No white man, he thinks, will ever be able to get the Papuan point of view. If these children of Nature have a code of honour, no civilised man knows what it is. Sir Hubert quotes a case in relation to which it would be a. revelation to know something of the Papuan standard of ethics—the murder of the Kukukukus by the men of Uaripi: “The Uaripi men met their victims on the Murua River, and entered into friendly negotiations with them for lhe purchase of their bows and arrows, which they urged, hi this Age of Peace, must be quite useless to them. Then, when they had possession of the bows and arrows, they turned on their unarmed and defenceless victims and did them to death. Logically, their action in first getting hold of their bows and arrows was unassailable, but it does not appeal to a white man; it would be interesting to know whether the ordinary Papuan would applaud the conduct of lhe Uaripi man as an astute move to avoid all possible danger, or w'ould regard it as we would, as a dastardly piece of trickery. It would be interesting to know, but we shall never find out: we can only guess.” KILLED FOR BEING ALONE! It is appalling to a European to discover in what a light-hearted spirit a Papuan native will commit an atrocious murder.

There is the recent case of a man named Labu. who was not oven a “wild” Pap,uan, for lie had worked for years on a plantation. He and another man were arrested for murder, after 'they ‘had gone walk about bush to find a Wangiela man in his garden alone.”

They killed two natives. Lahn, asked why he had murdered his man, coultl give no better explanation than that “he was alone in his garden.” The other casual murderer said he had killed the second man because he would have felt ashamed of not being as strong as Labu. Even in this year of grace, some of the Papuan tribes still go head-hunt-ing. In the words of Mr. R. A. Vivian, assistant Resident Magistrate in the Rigo district, cowardly and cold blooded crimes are committed “simply for the sake of being able to possess and wear homicidal insignia.” “The murder of the Goaribari people,” says Sir Hubert. “ was a bad case. The Doriorno invited them to a dance, and then turned on them and cut off their heads. The Goaribari men then ‘paid back’ and removed several Doriorno heads. The Goaribari man were arrested, and I tried them at the Kikori station. There was a great number involved, and, as usual, all pleaded guilty; and they all were guilty, which in Papua, does not always follow from the plea. “I asked them in the usual way if they had anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon them, whereupon a young man stepped forward from among them, raised his hand dramatically, and said in the Motu language—‘The Doriorno had killed my brother, born of the same womb; was I to stay at home and wait for the Government?’ ‘Well,’ I could not help thinking, ‘you would have been rather a little rotter if you had.’ But the law must be administered, and I had to pass a sentence of imprisonment; but I passed it un-, willingly, and I trust that it was not too light.”

Although the Government does what it can to prevent and punish murder in Papua, it interferes as little as possible with the natives’ tribal customs and domestic affairs. In spite of this, a change is slowly coming over Papua. The Lieutenant-Governor discusses the symptoms with delightful good humour. He quotes the case of a woman who unravelled a dreadful matrimonial tangle by suddenly resolving to act for herself in defiance of her blood relations —an unheard of thing! “The incident has, I think, an interest, as it shows that the younger women are beginning to assert themselves in Papua, as, I am told, they do elsewhere. It is said that in the Port Moresby villages a young girl refuses to marry anyone but the man of her choice. A suitor may have the approval of her . parents, and may have paid the price in money or money’s worth; if she does not like him she will not marry him. 1 am sentimental enough to approve the change; but the Government cannot claim any credit for it. “A somewhat similar movement has been observed by Mr. Atkinson, Assistant Resident Magistrate, in the Baniara district. His attention was first drawn to it by meeting a. man with a black eye, which he had received from his wife. This, though, I believe, common enough in the higher culture, is rare to Papua, and Mr. Atkinson was encouraged to further inquiry, with the result that he found two more husbands who. seeking to beat their wives, had themselves very deservedly been beaten. “I have a sincere admiration for the work of anthropologists, and I trust that I fully recognise the desirability of maintaining native customs and the awful results that follow their neglect, but still I am glad that the women are beginning to hit back, and I think that I know some anthropologists who would agree with me.”