DEPRAVITY AND DISEASE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 192, 3 November 1927, Page 11

DEPRAVITY AND DISEASE

REPORT ON NATIVE LIFE AT RABAUL EXTRAORDINARY DISCLOSURES MADE By Cable.— Press Association. — Copyright. Received 10.56 a.m. CANBERRA, To-day. nXTRAGRDINARY disclosures of revolting depravity and Ai disease among the natives of Rabaul are contained in the report of the conference of representatives of all missions, the Commissioner of Native Affairs and the Commonwealth Institute of Tropical Disease, which has been presented to the Hon. C. W. Marr, Secretary to the Federal Cabinet.

tpHE report, which goes into all phases of native life, states that homosexual practices are universal in the territory. The worst offenders are generally the best workers, the planters refusing to report them, as they do not desire to lose their best hands. The practice is not confined to the plantations, but is also found on the mission grounds themselves. The report recommends that the offenders, instead as at present, of being imprisoned, should be flogged, and emphasises the disproportion between the sexes in population. The figuges show that in Rabaul there are only three resident native women to every 100 men, and every native woman in Rabaul suffers from disease, with the result that men carry the disease back to the villages. Bigamy and polyandry also exist in districts long under effective control. More than half the first-born babies died at birth because the mothers were too young or worked too hard. The infant mortality was due also to wholesale infanticide.

The report also recommends strict limitation of native secret societies, which in most cases led to indecencies. They could not be violently suppressed, but could be confined within reasonable limits. The report recommends Government recognition of the native chiefs and councils, that certain officials be nominated by the natives, and that a commission consisting of these representatives of the missions and the Government should fix penalties, and deal with other matters in connection with the secret societies, which in many cases are used by natives for the extortion of blackmail, organised filth and insubordination.—-A. and N.Z. Australia governs New Guinea, under mandate of the League of Nations, dated December 17, 1920. The non-indigenous population of the last census, April 4, 1921, was 3,173, of which the British number 715, Chinese 1,402, Dutch 215, German 579, Japanese 87, United States 60. Brigadier-General E. A. Wisdom is Administrator of the territory, and the seat of administration is at Rabaul, on New Britain Island.