‘BAN THE WITNESSES’

All this progress did not sit well with our opposers. From 1960 onward, the combined forces of Christendom’s churches, the Returned Services League (RSL), and the local media launched an orchestrated campaign to vilify and ban Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Matters came to a head when a pamphlet explaining our position on blood transfusions was distributed to selected doctors, clergymen, and government officials. Typically, Christendom’s clergy were the first to react. On August 30, 1960, the South Pacific Post trumpeted the headline “Churches Angry on Blood Question.” In the accompanying article, church leaders denounced the Witnesses as “anti-Christ [and] an enemy of the Church.”

Subsequent articles lyingly claimed that Jehovah’s Witnesses were subversive and that their teachings promoted school truancy, nonpayment of taxes, cargo cults, and even poor hygiene. Other reports falsely accused them of using an imminent solar eclipse to whip up fear and “gain control of primitive native minds.” One editorial even berated the Witnesses for “living, eating, and working with villagers.” The South Pacific Post criticized them for teaching that “all men are equal” and claimed that the Witnesses were “a menace greater than Communism.”

Finally, on March 25, 1962, the RSL called on the colonial authorities to ban the Witnesses. The Australian government, however, publically rejected the request. “This announcement had a good effect throughout the country,” says Don Fielder. “Fair-minded people could see that the claims of our opposers were simply not true.”

On the heels of the prospectors came Christendom’s missionaries. “When the missionaries heard that we were coming, they ordered the villagers not to listen to us,” relates Rowena. “But their warning proved to be good advertising. The highland people​—curious by nature—​were eagerly waiting for us to arrive.”

Tom and Rowena established a small store at Wabag, 50 miles [80 km] northwest of the town of Mount Hagen. “The clergy ordered their flocks not to buy from, sell to, or speak with us and even pressured them to ask that our land lease be revoked,” says Tom. “In time, however, the villagers saw that we were different from the other Europeans they knew. Most noticeably, we treated them kindly. Indeed, our kind acts often brought tears to their eyes, and they said they wanted us to stay!”