BEHEADED IN PUBLIC

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 199, 24 August 1931, Page 10

BEHEADED IN PUBLIC

USE OF A GUILLOTINE “BARBAROUS AND GHASTLY” TRENCH ACT IN NEW HEBRIDES INDIGNATION OF THE BRITISH AUCKLAND, Aug. 20. Great indignation prevails among *he British residents of the New Hebrides over the public execution of six Chinese at Vila, last month, according to officers and passengers on the Melanesian Mission steamer Southern Cross, which returned yesterday from 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, Air R. Blandy. 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 bv a French Court to death, four to imprisonment for life and four to terms ranging from 7 to 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. Spectacle Outside Hospital. ‘•To carry ou‘ the death sentence the French authorities brought from Noumea a guillotine and set it up out-ide Vila, exactly opposite the French hospital, which contained many patients, both women and children. The condemned men were chained in a row and were beheaded bv a Japanese executioner brought from. Noumea, J vns

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 population, I thought it inconceivable that such an atrocity could be performed in a civilised community. “The British Vila have entered 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 BntI ish suffer with the French. Nothing, to 1 my mind, could demonstrate more emphatically the failure of the condominium. The Frcncn administration is entirely foreign to our ideas and is driving the British out of the islands. French Gaining Control. fi When I went there in 1923 all the big planters were British; now there are only IS British subjects in Vila, the French arc pouring into the islands from Noumea, and the French officials i 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 i will undoubtedly lose all control of the group. ’ ’ Officers of the Southern Cross stated that when the mission steamer arrived nt Vila on her return voyage to New Zealand on August 8 they found the British community highly incensed with > the French authorities over the execu tious. “We were told,” said one offi- , eer, “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 of the law, but the manner in which it was carried out made it simply a brutal spectacle for the idle. The British in Vila state that the guillotine was brought secretly from Noumea in charge of four gendarmes: h'td , they known of the intentions of the French authorities they would have pro- . tested sooner.’ ’