JUSTICE IN SAMOA.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18930, 27 April 1933, Page 9

JUSTICE IN SAMOA.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —The attitude of the Press towards (be Soviet Government in respect to the trial of the Britishers in Moscow leads one to remember the saying in the Good Book, “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye but conslderest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Taking my own particular case, 1 say without fear of contradiction that if I had been given an open trial under the Soviet system I should never have been deported from my native country (Samoa), and if the British methods were what the Press now claims them to be I and others would long ere this have been reinstated and heavily Indemnified for the injustices done to us.

The Britishers received an open trial in Moscow, but we were not given a trial at all. Sympathy is offered to the accused because one is said to have been examined for 18 hours at a stretch, but I was examined and crossexamined for 11 days running by a Select Parliamentary Joint Committee in Wellington, and established every point I contended, and thoroughly upset all the allegations against me; the proceedings of that inquiry were held in camera, and publication was suppressed by order of the Government against the urgent protests of my counsel, the late Sir John Findlay, K.C. My colleagues and I were deported simply because “the Administrator was satisfied” that we had interfered with the proper functioning of his “administration."

Having served my full term of compulsory exile from my native country the Samoans and I have explored every avenue to plead Mth the Government to give us such assurances and guarantees that what happened before will not recur on my return home, but without avail. As I have always wished to go back to my home and my business, and contemplate doing so next month, it will not be under very reassuring conditions. What awaits me in my native country under New Zealand administration is in the lap of the' gods.—l am, etc., 0. F.' NELSON. Auckland, April 19, 1933.