SAMOAN DEPORTATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19832, 30 December 1927, Page 11

SAMOAN DEPORTATIONS.

GOVERNMENT CRITICISED.

ATTACK BY MR. HOLLAND.

[BY TELEGRAPH. —PRESS ASSOCIATION.] GREYMOUTH, Thursday.

Reference to the Samoan deportations was made by Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, who officially opened the Runanga Domain yesterday, in a speech at a banquet at Runanga last svening.

Mr. Holland characterised the Samoan deportations as a shocking administrative outrage that would make the name of New Zealand a byword throughout the civilised world. The men who were being deported were guilty of nothing more than constitutional opposition to the policy of the New Zealand administration in Samoa, and the Government could have no more justification for their deportation than it would have if it sought to deport members of the official opposition here. Mr. Nelson was one of the properly elected Parliamentary representatives of European people in Samoa and his deportation would stand for an intimation to both Europeans and Samoans that they must not expect to gain redress of their legitimate grievances through constitutional channels. Mr. Nelson was a native-born Samoan and the two other elected representatives who also were threatened with deportation had been long years in Samoa. Mr. Wcstbrook had been there for more than 50 years. The New Zealand Government had taken the worst of German ordinances, and had added to them in such a way as to clothe the administration with far greater tyrannical power than was ever possessed by the Imperial German Governor of Samoa, and now the predominant idea was that Samoa was to bo militaristically ruled and both whites and Samoans were tc be bludgeoned into compliance with tho wjll of the dictatorship. The New Zealand Government would not dare to impose tho same rule on the Maoris of the Dominion, nor would it dare to apply to the Europeans here the methods that it was applying to Europeans who were its political opponents in Samoa.