GROSS DEPRAVITY

Northern Advocate, 3 November 1927, Page 5

GROSS DEPRAVITY

RABAUL REPORT. WHOLESALE INFANTICIDE. AWFUL INDECENCIES. (Received 1.30 p.m.) CANBERRA, This Day. The report of the conference of representatives of all the missions at Rabaul, and the Commissioner of Native Affairs and the Commonwealth Institute of Tropical Diseases into all phases of native life, presented by Mr Marr, contains extraordinary disclosures of revolting depravity and disease among the natives. The report states that the practices are prevalent in the territory, the worst offenders being generally the best workers. The planters refuse to report them, as they do not desire to lose their best hands. The practices are not confined to the plantations, but are also found on the mission grounds themselves. The report recommends that offenders, instead of being imprisoned as at present, be flogged, and emphasises the disproportion between the sexes in the population figures. The report also states that in Rabaul there are only three resident native women to every 100 men, and every native woman suffers from venereal disease, with the result that the men carry it back to the villages. Bigamy and polygamy also exist in districts long under effective control. More than half the first-born babies died at birth, because the mothers were too young or worked too hard. The high infant mortality was due also to wholesale infanticide. The report also recommends strict limitatin of native secret soeietie,, which in most cases led to awful indecencies. They could not be violently suppressed, but could he confined within reasonable limits. The report recommends Government recognition of native chiefs and councils, that certain officials should be nominated by natives, and that a commission consisting of representatives of the mission . and the Government should fix penalties and deal with other matters in connection with secret societies, which in many cases are used by natives for extortion by blackmail, organised filth and insubordination.—A. and N.Z.