By Pesi Fonua

“We look forward to the day when the death penalty is removed from Tonga’s laws,” said a former Tongan Police officer Siueli ‘Eleni Mone, who was present at Tonga's last execution in 1982. On October 10 she joined a discussion with the Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners to Tonga who are encouraging modern states to abolish the death penalty.

October 10, 2019 is the 17^th World Day against the Death Penalty. The Australian High Commissioner, HE Mr Adrian Morrison invited guests to his residence to talk about abolishing capital punishment.

The 2019 World Day Against the Death Penalty, aims at raising awareness on the rights of children whose parents have been sentenced to death or executed.

Over a cup of tea, Mr Morrison, and the New Zealand High Commissioner to Tonga HE Ms Tiffany Babington, met with Siueli ‘Eleni Mone, a former Police Officer who was on duty when Tonga carried out its latest execution, by hanging in 1982, and Captain Sila Siufanga of the Salvation Army, who rehabilitates deportees in Tonga.

They shared their views of their respective countries, talked about the history of the death penalty,  and ‘Eleni shared her memory of Tonga’s latest execution in 1982.

Mr Morrison said that the last execution in Australia took place in Victoria in February 1967. Then all Jurisdictions in Australia abolished the death penalty by 1985, and later in 2010 the Federal Government passed a legislation prohibiting the reintroduction of death penalty.

Why is Australia against the death penalty?

Mr Morrison believed that the death penalty had no place in the modern world. “It is brutal, it is degrading and it is an affront to human dignity...”.

“What I would like you to take away from today is a commitment to work to remove the death penalty from Tonga’s statutes...for some of you that might seem a bridge too far, but I say to you look into your hearts, look into how you think we should behave to each other as human beings, look into what you believe is the responsibility of a state to its citizens.

“if you do that, if you examine our self truly, you will see that the death penalty has no place in a modern state.”

New Zealand, like Australia, had inherited the death penalty from English law, Ms Babington said.

But its abolition was initiated by New Zealand’s first Labour Government, in 1935, when it commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment.

However, the death penalty was reinstated in the 1950s and New Zealand's last execution took place in 1957 before the death penalty was finally abolished in 1961.

Then the 1989 Death Penalty Abolition Act abolished death penalty for all crimes.

Ms Babington expressed a conviction of her government that there was no conclusive evidence to support the argument that the death penalty had a deterrent effect.

“We reject ‘an eye for an eye’. Justice and compassion are not irreconcilable.

“We look forward to the day when the death penalty is removed from Tonga’s laws.”

Siueli ‘Eleni Mone, a former Tonga Police officer said that during the decade she was with the Ministry of Police, she worked with the Minister of Police, (Hon. ‘Akau’ola) who was also Minister for Prisons, and both the Prisons and the Police followed the law and protocol in carrying out the death penalty.

In her role as a police officer, she said that the preparation of equipment for the hanging of prisoners in 1982 was a meticulous one, in fact it was a preparation for a killing. “The rope the distance of the body falling was tested out prior to the event.”

She said that all week prior to the hanging, a Pastor spent time with the prisoners and final prayers took place at the scene of the hanging. Present during the hanging were a doctor a pastor and selected prisoners and police personnel.

'Eleni said that for all these years she had been able to carefully lock the event away in “my closed memories.”

“I do not want the traumatising memories I have borne these many past years on anyone else. I do not want the agonising effect on the Prison, its staff, their families or families of all involved reopening or revisiting the ugly unwanted impact or long lasting scars the death penalty brings.

“Let us get the death penalty out of our law books for good.”

Tonga and Papua New Guinea are the only two countries in the Pacific Region that have not yet formally abolished capital punishment.  Papua New Guinea last imposed death penalty in 1975 and Tonga in 1982.

The most recent countries in the Pacific to abolish capital punishment are Samoa in 2004, Fiji in 2015 and Nauru in 2016.

Worldwide in 2018 the top 10 executioners were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Iraq, Egypt, USA, Japan, Pakistan and Singapore.