COMMENTARY: The Tongan government needs to respond immediately to reports that high school rugby players on Vava’u were beaten by their coach.
Kaniva News has contacted the Prime Minister, who is also the Minister for Education, for comment, but he has remained silent.
For years international bodies and researchers have been highlighting the appalling levels of violence against children in the Pacific.
Experts say corporal punishment is linked to poor outcomes for children, including child abuse. It is also linked with domestic violence. It affects early brain development.
However, the problem with eliminating corporal punishment is that it is a long-held tradition and people are often unhappy and resentful when the issue is raised. Some religious beliefs are also used to justify it.
According to UNICEF, rates of violence against children in Pacific Island Countries, including at school, are among the highest in the world.
Radio New Zealand has reported that students in Pacific Island countries face violence in schools at a higher rate than the global average. This includes corporal punishment. RNZ said more than half of students in Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu experienced bullying at school compared with a third of children globally.
The teacher and coach who whipped the players is a government teacher and Vava’u High School is a government school. This makes the incident the responsibility of the Minister.
However, the Prime Minister remains silent, which shows the low priority he has given this issue. The level of violence shown on the video is really serious and it needs the government’s immediate response. Hon. Hu’akavameiliku must front up and address the public on this serious issue. His silence and the lack of any statement from the police shows how weak the government is on this issue.
There is information shared on Facebook this week claiming to have come from the coach who flogged the players rendering an apology on his Facebook account. There is also a post saying the winning school which the coach targeted in his fit of rage has accepted an apology from the coach. The post asks the community to leave everything behind as they have sorted it out after 20 teachers arrived from the Vava’u High School and apologised and presented some money as a show of goodwill and expression of regret.
If police and the Minister of Education will not act responsibly and address this issue, it gives a wrong impression to the children that teachers’ violence against them is acceptable. Using the Tongan way of kole fakamolemole (asking apologies from the victims by presenting gifts and involving community leaders or high-ranking members of the victims’ family to speak and ask for apologies on behalf of the culprit) is a good deed. But the problem is that this Tongan way will continue to paint the wrong picture of violence against children because the kole fakamolemole way will always be there to save the teacher. In other words, violent teachers will not be punished to deter them from beating children.
We can see this happening here. The teachers gave money to the school because of the degrading comments the coach in question made against them. We should not be surprised if a similar incident happens again.
It can be debated whether the apology issued over the incident is enough. An apology is an expression of one’s regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another and that’s it. The coach did ask for forgiveness from the victims’ family and the community, but he went further and mentioned a number of achievements he had made in his years of coaching including naming former school players he trained who ended up playing in rugby teams overseas.
Some people might be tempted to interpret this as meaning those students did not complain when he was flogging them in an attempt to get the best out of them. This might be seen as an insult by some people to the players who had been just whipped recently and their family.
The Prime Minister and the police have a case to address. If not, the government could be seen as supporting violence against children.
The Tongan government has been presented with all the evidence it needs about the serious levels of violence experienced by Tongan children, including in school. It has also been made aware of many recommendations on how to tackle the issue.
In 2019 a study led by the UK’s Loughborough University uncovered systemic and cultural abuse and mistreatment of children in families and schools.
The study, which was funded by the European Research Council, was carried out in partnership with charity Ma’a Fafine mo e Famili (For Women and Families) and in partnership with the disability organisation Naunau ‘o ‘Alamaite Tonga (NATA).
Professor Jo Aldridge said routine violence experienced by six-to-17-year-olds included being hit with planks of wood and sticks, whipped, denied food and being forced to carry out tasks, as a form of discipline, by teachers and close family members.
Professor Aldridge said many young people accepted the abuse as part of their lives because it was seen as ‘traditional,’ even if caused them misery.
The report offered a number of recommendations to the Tongan government and organisations which work with children about how to end violence against children.
They included establishing new national policies and laws to address child abuse, based on the principles set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
The report also said there should be greater awareness in schools and among school staff that physically abusing pupils is against the law.
The government must simply admit that violence against children is wrong and should not be tolerated, especially when it occurs in government schools. It does not matter whether violence against children is seen by some people as ‘traditional.’ Traditions can be abandoned when they are proven to be wrong. The late ‘Akilisi Pohiva fought for years against the ‘tradition’ that Tonga should be ruled only by the royal family and a tiny group of Nobles. That ‘tradition’ was cast aside in 2010. It is high time the ‘tradition’ of violence against children went the same way.
