No Recommendation To Make Concerning Those In Detention Camps

Northern Advocate, 1 December 1944, Page 3

No Recommendation To Make Concerning Those In Detention Camps

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Mr. A. S. Richards (Govt.-Roskill), on behalf of the Public Petitions A to L Committee, reported in the House of Representatives yesterday on the petitions of L. A. W. Efford and 56 others from Christchurch and A. Baxter and 4880 others from Auckland. The first three petitions sought amendment of the National Service Emergency Regulations to bring them into line with the British regulations where they affected conscientious objectors. The fourth petition asked for the immediate release of persons in detention camps and also persons serving prison sentences as a result of offences against camp regulations.' Alternatively, the petitioners asked that such persons be discharged after the maximum two years’ detention.

Mi'. Richards said the committee’s report was that as the petitions involved matters of Government policy, it had no recommendation to make.

Mr. W. T. Anderton (Govt.-Eden), speaking as the member who had presented the largest petition, said he wondered if members of the committee were believers in .an indeterminate sentence such as has been imposed on inmates of the detention camps. He had no complaint concerning the camps—as far as he knew the camp 9 had been conducted very well—but some of the occupants had been confined for a long time and the committee’s recommendation seemed, in effect, to mean that their sentence was indeterminable. Mr. Anderton said he knew of no other Allied country which had imposed an indefinite sentence on conscientious objecters/ He was not a conscientious objector himself, nor had he ever been.

Opposition voices: Nor are these men. They are defaulters. Conscientious objectors are free. Mr. Anderton regretted that the committee had not found it possible to recommend to the Government a policy similar to that followed in Britain where the individual had the right to appeal to a properly constituted judicial body. Mr. Clyde Carr (Govt.-Timaru) said he understood that some members of the committee had not heard the evidence, but attended the meeting which decided on the recommendation now made to the House. It was' therefore possible that the uninformed vote of these committee members who had not heard the evidence had helped to determine the committee’s recommendation.

Mr Clyde Carr said the camps had been there a long time. An Opposition voice: Some of our boys at the war have been there a long time, too. More Tolerant Attitude

Mr. Clyde Carr: I don’t need to be reminded of that, but some, of the boys who have been fighting have a more tolerant attitude on this matter. I am not belittling our gallant boys. Mr. Clyde Carr said that during the Japanese threat he himself had put on uniform. He would have fired a shot and struck a blow to defend his home as readily as any man. He claimed that some of the resolutions concerning defaulters allegedly coming from the R.S.A. were really only the views of a few men on small executives—a few old men from the last war, whereas those fighting for freedom in the present struggle respected the freedom of conscience and scruples of conscientious objectors, even though they disagreed with them. Some of the men in detention had been in solitary confinement. Mr. A. S. Sutherland (Oppn.-Hau-raki): And that was coming to them.

Mr. Richards said the committee’s decision was not a unanimous decision. The thing which troubled the committee was that even supposing that some recommendation had been possible, if some form ol’ appeal tribunal had been recommended, how could anything like 100 per cent, justice have been done to those already out of the country? The war had been going on for five years now, and that made all the difference between possibilities and impossibilities. Mr. Richards said he thought that if 10 men from any part of the country were taken and asked to consider this matter, in view of the difficult circumstances, he doubted if any other verdict could have been brought in. The committee’s report was adopted.