EXECUTIONS IN PUBLIC

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1931, Page 5

EXECUTIONS IN PUBLIC

“BARBAROUS AND GHASTLY.”. FRENCH ACT IN NEW HERBRIDES Great indignation prevails among th* British residents of the New Heuridee over the public executive of six Chinese at Vila, last month, according to officers and passengers on the Melanesian mission steamer Southern Cross, which is visiting Auckland after a cruise of the mission field. The execution was carried out by the French authorities with a guillotine brought from Noumea. It is stated that protests have been sent, to the British and French Foreign Offices by the Acting-British Resident Commissioner, Mr. R. Blandy. “Fourteen Chinese were arrested for the murder of a French planter named Chevalier,” said Mr. Arthur Grove, who arrived by the steamer after eight years’ residence in the New Hebrides. “Six of the men were sentenced by a French Court to death, four to imprisonment for life and four to terms ranging from 7to 12 years. Under the Condominium a crime against a Frenchman is tried by a French Court, a crime against a British subject by a British Court, and where subjects of both nations are concerned by a joint Court. “To carry out the death sentence the French authorities brought from Noumea a guillotine and set it up outside Vila, exactly opposite the French hospital, which contained many patients, both women and children. The condemned men were chained in a row and were bet headed by a Japanese executioner brought from Noumea. I was unfortunate enough to witness the spectacle, which was too barbarous and ghastly to be described in words; There were several hundred people present, including natives and the entire French pogu- - lation. I thought it inconceivable that such an atrocity could be performed in a civilised community. “The British people in Vila have en- ® tered a strong protest against the public character of the execution and its barbarous details. It has had an exceedingly harmful effect on the prestige of the white people, and the British suffer with the French. Nothing, to my mind, could demonstrate more emphatically the failure of the Condominium. The French administration is entirely foreign to our ideas, and is driving the British out of the islands. “When I went there in 1923 all the big planters were 'British; now there are only 18 British subjects in Vila, the French are pouring into the islands from Noumea, and the French officials outnumber the British officials by five to one. In my opinion a mandate should be granted to New Zealand as soon as possible; failing that, Britain will undoubtedly lose all control of the group. Officers of the Southern Gross stated that when the mission steamer arrived at Vila on her return voyage to New Zealand on August 8 they found the British community highly incensed with the French authorities over the executions. “We were told,” said, one officer, “that the executions were witnessed by hundreds of people, including a large number of French women and children. It was intended to be a vindication or the law, but the manner in which it was carried out made it simply » spectacle for the idle. .The British m Vila state that the guillotine was brought secretly from Noumea m charge of four gendarmes; had they known o the intentions of the French authorities they would have protested sooner.