APIA — Samoa’s prime minister apologised Monday after a 2007 video surfaced showing him giving a Nazi salute and saying “Heil Hitler” at a private family gathering on the island of Savai’i, ABC News, CNN and Al Jazeera reported.
Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt said in a statement that the clip, first published by the Samoa Observer, was never intended for public release. “I recognise that those words and gesture were inappropriate and capable of causing offence and hurt and I apologise for using them,” he said, adding that they do not reflect his beliefs or the values of Samoa’s government or people. He explicitly rejected Nazism, antisemitism, racism and political extremism.
According to the Observer, the roughly seven-second recording shows Schmidt holding a microphone in his left hand and encouraging about 13 people to raise their right arms and repeat the phrase as the camera pans across the group. He was deputy speaker of parliament at the time, having won a seat in the previous year’s general election. He became prime minister in 2025 after a snap election when former Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa failed to pass a national budget.
Germany administered Western Samoa from 1900 until World War I, leaving colonial buildings, infrastructure and families of German-Samoan descent. Schmidt noted his German and Samoan heritage while insisting the 2007 gesture was an aberration. Diplomatic partners in New Zealand, Australia and further afield watched the apology for signs of lasting political damage in a country that rarely dominates global headlines.
The statement arrived days after Schmidt’s government reaffirmed a ban barring the Samoa Observer from covering the prime minister’s events and functions, following official complaints about the paper’s reporting. The Observer’s editor said the ban would not stop the newspaper from doing its job. International coverage focused on the content of the video, Schmidt’s repudiation of Nazi ideology, and the friction between his office and Samoa’s largest independent daily.
Sources: ABC News, CNN, Al Jazeera
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