Petition to the Premier of New Zealand.
By People Suffering Religious Persecution in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. The following copy of a petition to the premier of New Zealand, by natives of Raratonga, an island of the Cook group, has been sent us by Dr. J. E. Caldwell, who is in charge of the Medical Mission established there by the Seventh-day Adventists. It is a plea for such aid as the New Zealand premier can render by his influence as a high official under the British crown, in relieving a people suffering religious persecution at the hands of other people under British authority. Since it was prepared a great and calamitous change has, if reports be true, come over the situation in the island; peace has given place to war, with its accompaniments of murder and destruction. How far this terrible change may have resulted from the persecution inflicted upon the natives, as the petition sets forth, we cannot yet say; but it is directly traceable to the recent innovation of establishing Sunday by law in the place of the seventh day, contrary to the preferences and life-long custom of the people. And most certainly also this armed resistance by the natives has been altogether contrary to the teaching and counsel of those who have stood by the natives in their adherence to seventh-day observance:— To the Rt. Hon. Richard Seddon, Premier of New Zealand: Sir:—In my possession are a few facts familiar to the people dwelling on Raratonga, to which I am ready to call your attention, in behalf of humanity, for so far as I am aware they have never been reported outside of Raratonga either in official dispatches or by newspaper correspondents. I have the honor to be a representative of the Seventh-day Adventist Mission established in the Cook Islands six years ago. I came here in response to an invitation of the Parliament of Cook Islands extended in 1893 to our society to send to this group a physician. I have no personal grievances which I care to mention to you,—no political ambition to serve,—and the religious principles which I hold in common with those of nearly every member of the society which I represent are such that I cannot take an active part in any political agitation either for or against the present administration. But Saint Peter tells us in his first general epistle that governments are instituted in the providence of God for the “punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.” In my opinion, this government is not accomplishing that end for the natives, therefore, in order that the people generally, and our fostering government in particular, may not be in ignorance of real conditions prevailing in this dependency, and hoping that, being known, the evils may in some way be corrected, I deem it my duty to inform you that for nearly six months shocking intimidations and religious persecutions have been practiced on this island to such an extent as to make it a discredit—even a cause for shame—to the protectorate, in the eyes of those who know the facts. I will here attempt to mention only a few isolated facts as they have come to my notice. A house of worship erected by natives independent of any society, on land owned by an Ariki who was in sympathy with those who built it, was condemned by another Ariki, threatened to be burned down, and afterward had its doors nailed up by the police, as it remains at the present time, depriving its owners of its use. Six deacons and one native missionary belonging to the London Missionary Society’s church were fined for their refusal to attend the meetings of that church in its regular worship, and for meeting for worship instead in their own home district prayer meeting houses on a day different from that of the L. M. S. meetings. These services were entirely independent of the services of any rival society. That this was religious persecution may be seen from the fact that the court discriminated between the deacons and the native pastor, fining the deacons four pounds sterling each, and the native pastor five pounds, for the same offense. Between thirty and forty individuals were assembled in a group by court summons and fined one pound ten each, while a deacon in the same group was fined two pounds ten, all for a similar offense to that above described. Two mataiapos (high chiefs) were fined one pound ten each for giving sympathy and aid to a movement to build a house of worship independent of the L. M. Society’s authority, though at that time they were entirely independent of any rival society. When one of the two yielded and agreed to follow the Ariki in matters of religion, his fine was remitted. After several weeks the other one was excused from paying his fine upon his yielding to the continued demand of his high chiefs to forsake the assembly of those who continued to worship according to the long established custom of the people of the group. Three mataiapos were berated by an Ariki not their own (some say that this was without precedent among natives) under the charge of having trampled441in their Ariki, when the only particular in which they are known to have offended was in their failure to attend the religious services of the L. M. S. when invited to do so by the Ariki. More than a score of natives of all ranks were called up by their Ariki by means of the police, and harangued for more than half an hour with threats, and slanders, and false statements against members of a rival society. The threats were that if they, the auditors, there assembled by the police, did not cease to attend the regular services of the rival society mentioned, they would be prosecuted, fined, banished to Manuae or to a foreign country, or evicted from their own houses, which of course stand on tribal lands. There are four missionary societies now at work on the Cook Islands. The controversy which was the occasion of the above described persecutions was the change of the weekly rest day. In May, 1899, the local committee of the L. M. S. in meeting assembled at Tereora (so says the Karere, the local organ of that society), decided to recommend a change of their regular weekly services from the seventh to the first day of the week. This, of course, they had a right to do. The movement was not popular among the natives of the group. Probably more than 90 per cent of them objected to the change, many from conscientious scruples, for the native Bibles declare that the seventh day is the Sabbath (Exod. 20:10). Being encouraged by a law which Parliament passed at its last session (it is said that there was difficulty in persuading the members to pass it), that society effected the change named after Christmas, 1899, and since that time has held its regular services on the first day of the week instead of the seventh, as before; but for the first few weeks—until the authority of the courts could have time to produce an effect—the number attending in most villages was very small, indeed. I have never heard it charged that the natives who suffer persecution have broken any law. They have simply claimed the right—and still claim it—to rest and worship on the seventh day in harmony with their understanding of their Bibles, and their practice also for more than seventy-five years under the leadership of the same society to which all their persecutors now belong. Apparently every effort of their former teachers to persuade them that the new way is the better has only confirmed them in the belief that the change rests wholly upon human authority. A great majority of them have never enjoyed the privilege of receiving Bible instruction from the teachers of any other society. Thus it is seen that what amounts to a new religion has been brought to the island and its dogmas are being enforced by law contrary to the will of the people; and that the new religion includes both a new practice and respect for a new source of authority in the realm of religion, not before taught the natives; for until their confidence is established in some human right and power to change God’s law they cannot be easily induced to abandon that law as taught them for more than three quarters of a century, and which seems so plain to them as they read it in their native Bibles. All they ask for is relief from persecution. I have briefly stated facts as I have observed them. Should additional witnesses be desired to establish the above statements they can be furnished in abundance if the witnesses are guaranteed immunity from punishment and annoyances for testifying against their Arikis. Under the present system of land tenure the people hold their property at the pleasure of their Arikis. Many of them have told me privately in confidence that they greatly desire freedom from the serfdom they now suffer, by the introduction of English laws, that they may enjoy civil and religious liberty as it is enjoyed by the English-speaking people and Maoris of New Zealand, and this wholly without my introducing the subject or suggesting such a change. Without a guarantee of protection it would require great boldness for them to testify publicly to any facts which would compromise their Arikis. I once knew a number of them to be prosecuted for signing a petition to His Excellency the Governor of New Zealand, because their Arikis were then under an influence which did not favor the petition. At that time the sentence was suspended, and remains suspended to this day, with the warning that if they ever dare to do so again their punishment will be severe. Though the Arikis are directly responsible for these persecutions, I beg leave to say that I have much sympathy for them, thinking it probable that since they have neither literature nor a knowledge of history, they have no proper conception of the enormity of the wrongs they are doing their people, having been induced, possibly, to adopt that policy from outside influences. Hoping you may have a pleasant voyage and reach your home again with renewed strength, I have the honor, sir, to be Superintendent of Raratonga Medical Mission of Seventh-day Adventists.