By Belinda Begley.

‘The Coconut War’ was raging when I went to live in the New Hebrides in May 1980. The War was the final and violent manifestation of the Anglophone/Francophone divide that had been foisted on the small Pacific country of the New Hebrides by its two ruling colonial powers. The reason for the War was that many of the Francophone inhabitants of the island of Espiritu Santo wanted their island to secede from the New Hebrides before the incoming Anglophone government took unfettered control when the country became independent on 30 July 1980.

The fears of the people of Santo were valid because, as soon as the Independence celebrations were over, the Anglophone Vanuaaku Pati Government persuaded Papua New Guinea to send soldiers to Santo to forcibly put down the rebellion. In the following months the Government set about prosecuting all of the Francophone residents who had participated in the fracas. Because the French Parquet General refused to conduct these prosecutions, the Vanuaaku Pati Government put him on a plane to Paris and the Attorney General (a British barrister) doubled up as the Parquet/ Prosecutor. I was dragooned into becoming the Deputy Parquet/ Prosecutor to do the prosecutions.

My courtroom skills were zilch (until this point I had been a property lawyer in Melbourne), but this was not a hindrance as most of the Francophone New Hebrideans charged with offences were anxious to plead guilty and join their colleagues in jail. After all, jobs were scarce at the time and free accommodation with three meals a day – all paid for by the government – while playing hours of touch football in the sunshine with their friends was a pretty attractive proposition.

The Court personnel flew from Vila to Santo for the trials. An Anglophone policeman collected us from the airport and drove us, in a marked police truck, through the wide open streets of Santo to our accommodation. At a crossroads we met a truck filled with Francophone policemen. It refused to give way to us and actually tried to ram our vehicle as we drove by. Although the two police forces had been ‘unified’ shortly before Independence, this message had not been taken on board by the men on the beat.

When we reached the Santo Hotel we were allocated our rooms. I don’t know whether it was because the hotel was full or because the government wanted to save money, but all of the female personnel (the Registrar, interpreter and me) had to bunk in together. I ended up with the bed directly under the air conditioning unit that pumped freezing air onto my shoulder all night. Little wonder that I had muscular problems in that shoulder for the next few years; an ailment I called ‘my war wound’.

Hundreds of Francophones charged with offences such as guarding an illegal flag or manning an illegal roadblock were tried at the Santo courthouse over several days. The accused (all men, my recollection is that no women were charged) milled around outside the courthouse until their case was called. Inside the courtroom, the charge was read to the accused and he was asked to plead. After the accused pleaded guilty, I outlined the facts of the offence to the Court – the time and place that it occurred – and asked the accused to confirm them. The presiding judge then sentenced the offender to a jail term, usually of 3 to 6 months. The offender smiled broadly, thanked me and the judge and left the courtroom to wait outside with his mates until a truck came to take them all to the calaboose.

There is an old adage followed by all good trial lawyers – when questioning a witness in court do not ask a question to which you do not already know the answer. I should have adhered to that in one of the cases that came up in Santo. The usual procedure was followed, the accused pleaded guilty and then, when giving the facts, I asked the offender to confirm that he had guarded an illegal roadblock at a named place on a given day during the Coconut War.

To my consternation he agreed he had guarded an illegal roadblock at that location but said that he had done so two years earlier – during a period when the Vanuaaku Pati and its Anglophone supporters had been operating an illegal government and illegally blocking roads.

To bring an end to the confusion that followed, the presiding judge (Chief Justice Freddie Cooke) suggested that I might like to withdraw the charge; a suggestion I was happy to accede to. But not so the accused. He was very put out when the interpreter explained to him that he was now free to leave the court and go home and that he would not be spending the next several months in the jail with his mates.

© Belinda Begley 2015 All rights reserved.