RECRUITING LABOUR

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 58, 30 October 1931, Page 5

RECRUITING LABOUR

IN SOUTH SEA ISLANDS ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SYSTEM. GRAVE CHARGES. LONDON. Slavery in a .uew insidious form is being developed in the South Seas, writes a eorrespondent iit an American paper, the Los Angeles Examiner. Natives of the New Hebrides Islands are being carried oif to work on English and French plantations on other islands of this South Sea group, where they are reduced to primitive slavery. These ships, depopulating many villages, have struck terror in the hearts of the natives, who have named these ships "thief ships." Risled under Treaty. The New Hebrides group is under joint administration of English and French officials, as provided for by the Anglo-French Convention of 1906 and a protocol signed at London on August 6, 1914, and ratified in 1922. "In the New Hebrides," says the Rev. de Yoil, "in the Southern Paeific, at Port Vila, there reside two commissioners, one English and one French, and for certain legal offences coneerning both nationals there ^is a joint court, consisting of a British and a French judge, with a president who was nominated by the King of Spain. For other legal disputes each national is judged by his own court, or where two different nationals are concerned, in the court of the defendant. "But this is only for the white man. For purely native cases there are no courts and no recognised legal processes. "The chief product of the islands here is copra, and there are many plantations. "The native, through the bounty of nature, has no need to work hard for his own food, and has a constitutional dislike to continued heavy work. "To meet this there are definite regulations for the recruitment of native labour. Natives may be signed on for periods of six months to two years, but no native women may be employed without their free consent, and the consent of their husbands, or their guardians, if unmarried. "An express stipulation is that at the expiry of their serviees all natives are to be returned to the spot from which they were recruited. That is a stipulation which is seldom carried out. British in Mmority. "British planters are in the minority, and labour regulations are strictly enforced against them, but the reverse is true of French nationals. "The Southern Cross, the Melanesian Mission steamer, anchored at Port Vila recentily. Immediately the doctor had passed us, a native boarded, taking the bishop for a passage back to his home on one- of the islands, and, as we landed, there was a group of about thirty waiting with the same request. As we walked to the post office we passed groups of natives sitting by the roadside, poorly clothed, poorly fed and utterly disconsolate. "All these were people in the same plight. They were natives who had been brought down from their islands to work on French plantations, and on the expiry of their service had not been returned to their homes. "What is their position? There are no regular steamers plying among the islands — except one about every six weeks — even supposing they could afford a passage. They have not their families or friends, they have no homes and generally no money. For most of them there- is no other course open but to sign on again at some plantation. They are virtually tied to the land, and have no hope of escape — -though by law they should have been repatriated."