Auckland lawyer jailed in Samoa

A South Auckland lawyer has been jailed and her New Zealand passport taken from her in Samoa.

Prison authorities also tried to strip search her in the presence of a group of men but she refused.

New Zealand citizen Iuni Sapolu, who was born in Samoa, told Fairfax Media today she had been in the country to help family over a dispute involving their freehold land.

The neighbouring village of Vaiala is trying to claim the land in a dispute which recently saw Mrs Sapolu's brother and sister beaten up. She said she was at the Apia Central Police station late last week making a complaint about the beating when police told her to go and get her brother from the property.

When she arrived there a group of men were on her property, including a pulenu'u or Vaiala village clerk.

"I believe I was set up," she said. She told the men to get off her land, saying they were trespassing. "I did not know they were civilian police officers."

They arrested her for drug possession, claiming they had found marijuana on the property. Instead it was found that a Vaiala village person was hiding in a mango tree seemingly planting evidence there.

The plain clothes police did not have any search warrant.

Police took her to the station and charged her but not with the drugs charge. She was booked on the minor charges of obstruction and swearing at a police officer and swearing at a pulenu'u.

That was the beginning of her ordeal.

"I have never felt so horribly abused," Mrs Sapolu said.

She was locked up at the police station before being taken to Samoa's grim prison.

The police tried putting her into a vehicle with 10 male prisoners. She refused to get in without a female escort.

After telling her she would be in prison for two weeks she was processed in a wire cage.

"You are in there like an animal," she said.

"They took me there with a young man, like in his late 20s, and there were a queue of police officers, 15 and 20. They were all looking in from one side of the cage. It looked like a gladiator set.

"I was scared, I had never seen anything like this in my life."

They told the man to strip.

"He was looking naked, I turned around and said 'What are you guys doing here?' They said this was an identification parade." They said they would do that to her to her.

"I was so angry. They said 'It is your turn.' I said, 'You can come and take me. I am not going to be degraded this way.'

"This is an abuse of human rights. You are laughing at him, passing sexual connotations about this young man¹s body."

She was not striped. She was held for 24 hours.

"I could not sleep the whole night."

There were cockroaches, no running water and she had a single mosquito coil for the whole time.

"It is a darned tough place."

She was then taken before a registrar and bailed, seizing her New Zealand passport. She has to appear on Wednesday.

"It is all a bid to drive us off the land, to intimidate us off the land, to pull customary land over freehold land, to rob us of the land we have had for more than a 100 years."

 

- © Fairfax NZ News