THE CAUSES UNDERLYING THE FIJI TROUBLE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10546, 24 March 1920, Page 2

THE CAUSES UNDERLYING THE FIJI TROUBLE

(To the Editor "N.Z. Timeß.") | Sir,—Your readers are well aware of the unrest in Fiji, but few know the accumulated evils arising out'of the indenture system but recently terminated I there. Any that have read . Tiiomaa Carlyle on the "•French. Revolution" and the state of the people prior to the outbreak, are likely to conclude that a violent upheaval could be the only outcome of such repression. So also with Russia. Kindly let me call youtf attention to some of the horrible things preceding- tho Fiji trouble, I shall not deal with the industrial injustice, they are better known. , ■ In rfiu article written a year ago by the Rev. O. Fi Andrews in the "Modern Review/' he draws an urgly picture of the moral condition in the "coolie lines" of Fiji. The coolie lines are continuous rows, of small huts. "In many of the larger 'coolie lines' (especially those near the mills) the -vicious atmosphere seems to have reached the point of saturation. Bach new family that comes out from India and enters this atmosphere seems to catch the disease. Tho husband is told that' he must allow his wife to be used for-immoral purposes because of the number of men who are wifeless." "It is the Fiji dustoor." "If, at first, the man vehemently objects (as is usually the case), he as told that this place is not India, but Fiji, and in Fiji the dustoor is such and such." The Fiji Government Council paper, No. 54, passed and sanctioned for publication by tlie Legislative Council, states that, "When one indentured Indian wo•man has to serve tlrree indentured men as well ns various outsiders, the results as regards syphilis and gonnorrhoea cannot be in doubt." To this is tho cost of cheap indentured labour and the outcome we are familiar with, through the accounts of outbreaks. Yet the Indians are well knoivn as mild, peace-loving and loyal subjects. Yet our sapient legislators have- endorsed—for the present—the indenture system in. Samoa. J. GRIFFITHS. Johnsonville.