Pacific Notes
Pacific Notes
Palau
Chinese workers take cop hostage
Nearly 220 Chinese factory workers here were put under house arrest April 11 after police removed them from a gated restaurant where they barricaded themselves for 20 hours. For a time, the workers took a police officer hostage. The restaurant siege was the culmination of three months of frustration: The group has been stranded since January when the Taiwanese management for Orientex Palau faced grave financial woes and fled. That left the workers without tickets home and thousands in owed wages. But the workers believed the restaurant owner was the man behind their plight, and saw no hope in the complex lawsuits aimed at settling their case.
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Since the arrests, a sizable delegation was dispatched by Beijing and the plans are to send the workers home immediately. Palau President Tommy Remengesau, who was originally looking for money to send them home himself, says he remains committed to ensuring the workers get their owed wages. Remengesau also defended the level of force used in the arrest. Observers complained that some of the group, mostly women, were thrown to the ground and bound, others dragged through the mud. He said it was the necessary end to an unfortunate and illegal action on the workers part. It appears everyone just wants to send them home, so prosecutions seem unlikely.
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—Scott Radway
Region
Pacific Gun Epidemic
A report called Small Arms in the Pacific by Philip Alpers and Conor Twyford has been released by the Small Arms Survey and the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva.
The report was launched in early April at the Forum Secretariat in Suva by Secretary-General Noel Levi and disarmament activist Adi Ema Tagicakibau. The 3.1 million guns in civilian hands in the region outnumber those of the armed forces and police by a ratio of nearly 14 to 1, says the report.
Alpers, from Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center, commented further on Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat that, “There’s a lot of information which will surprise some Pacific governments. The largest stockpile per capita of unrecorded firearms in the Pacific is held in New Zealand.” In 2001, Tonga was set to buy NZ$10 million dollars worth of small arms from the United States. New Zealand helped to stop the sale, says former Minister of Disarmament, Matt Robson MP.
“Gunrunners are very, very adept at finding the easiest entry point into a region,” Alpers says, “and once they’ve found that country or even that small community, then they’ll start moving guns through there because it’s the easiest place. That undermines all the efforts of all the other countries, and so I think what we’ve got to do is try and get a little bit of harmonization amongst the gun laws.”
The report indicates a very wide variation in gun laws between the Pacific countries, but, Alpers says, the Nadi framework, a recent protocol adopted by 16 member countries of the Pacific Island Forum, is a very good start. “It’s not too late for us. We are in a perfect position in the Pacific to do something about this.”
The report found that Pacific people are heavily armed, with 3.1 million firearms lawfully held in civilian stockpiles—one for every 10 people. This compares to one for every 16 worldwide. Niue and Cook Islands have “extremely high ratios of guns per head of population.” In Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, groups bent on rebellion, intimidation and profit have treated state-owned armories as gun supermarkets, stealing weapons when needed. At least 25 nations legally export arms to the Pacific, with almost one-third of the sales coming from the U.S.
— Norman Douglas and Radio Australia
Kiribati
Tito Out, New Election Set
Despite efforts to pull in key members of the opposition into his camp, Kiribati President Teburoro Tito couldn’t muster the numbers to form a government, losing a no confidence vote in late March. A budget bill introduced by Tito was defeated 21-19, forcing dissolution of the parliament.
A general election is now set for late this month to elect a new president. There will definitely be a new president of Kiribati following this election, says former three-term President Ieremia Tabai, now an opposition leader. That’s because Tito has now held the post for the three-term limit and cannot contest for another term, he says.
After his party lost heavily in the national election late last year, Tito won a popular vote for the presidency earlier this year. To bolster his numbers in parliament, Tito then named several leading opposition MPs to his cabinet, including Dr. Harry Tong, a long-time and outspoken opponent.
Opposition leader Taberannang Timeon told Radio New Zealand International that Tito “miscalculated our solidarity.” Among key issues of contention in the failed budget bill was funding for an ATR-72 aircraft that the Tito government leased nearly a year ago for regional service and a plan to pay compensation to workers who went on strike 20 years ago.
Kiribati is now under a caretaker administration comprising the Speaker of Parliament, the Chief Justice and chairman of the Public Service Commission.
—Giff Johnson
Kosrae, FSM
New Dictionary
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Alister Tolenoa, Chief of Instructional Services for the Kosrae Department of Education, and David Hough, linguist and author with the Shonan Institute of Technology in Japan, have completed the first phase of an ambitious dictionary project that seeks to promote the acquisition of primary language skills for school children. The project is funded for three years by a grant from the Japan Ministry of Education and Science. The project’s aim is for school teachers and children to actively participate in developing educational materials which will help to preserve the Kosraean language by using it as the primary medium of instruction in grades K-12. A good example is the recently completed children’s dictionary. The first 500 copies will be printed and available for first and second graders by September 2003. Also in progress is a trilingual Junior Dictionary for grades 3-5 and a revision of the out-of-print Kusaiean-English Dictionary for the higher grades, produced at the University of Hawaii East-West Center in the 1970s.
—Olivier Wortel
Region
Kava Healthy Again
Ateam of University of Hawaii scientists has proposed an answer as to why some Europeans who used products containing kava extract suffered from severe liver damage, the Honolulu Advertiser reports.
Researchers led by C.S. Tang, professor of molecular biosciences and biosystems engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, have come up with an explanation as to how a plant used in Island cultures for 2000 years suddenly became toxic, causing liver damage that was fatal in some cases, and prompting a number of nations to ban sales of the herbal supplement.
According to Tang and his team, peelings from the stem bark of kava plants were used to create the extract for the herbal supplements, and may be to blame for liver failure and liver-related injuries that included hepatitis and cirrhosis. Traditional kava drinkers discard the peelings, but Tang and his team learned from a trader in Fijian kava that European pharmaceutical companies eagerly bought up the peelings when demand for kava extract soared in Europe in 2000 and 2001.
The researchers have reported that they have found a harmful alkaloid called pipermethystine in tests of stem peelings and kava leaves. It was not found in the root itself. The root is what is used to make the traditional drink. Pacific kava producers hope that the UH results are accepted by the regulatory agencies as soon as possible. Bans in Singapore, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom have wiped out the market for pharmaceutical sales of kava.
—Michelle Isidro and the Honolulu Advertiser
American Samoa
Tauese Brother Is New Lt. Gov.
Aitofele Toese F. Sunia was sworn in on April 11 as the new lieutenant governor of American Samoa after he was confirmed by the Legislature earlier in the day. Sunia, 59, is the younger brother of the late governor of American Samoa.
Gov. Tauese P.F. Sunia died on March 26 while en route to Honolulu from Apia for medical treatment. (See our story, page 12.) Aitofele was treasurer for the American Samoa government when he was appointed by the new governor, Togiola Tulafono, as the second in command.
Territorial Chief Justice Michael Kruse administered the oath of office with various government, traditional and Christian leaders looking on at a brief ceremony held at the government Executive Office Building. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior for Insular Affairs, David B. Cohen was also present during the ceremony.
—Fili Sagapolutele
Marshall Islands
Smoke billows out over Majuro lagoon.
The worst fire in Majuro’s history struck the Marshall Islands capital in late March, destroying a major grocery business, several other companies and many rental apartments and offices.
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The fire started at Cost Price, one of the largest wholesale and retail grocery operations in Majuro. It soon engulfed several large refrigerated containers next to Cost Price, G&L Enterprises rental offices and apartments, a stevedore warehouse, the Jemenei Duty Free Store, Won Hai Shein Restaurant and Lai Lai store, as well as numerous apartments. Estimates of the damage caused by the fire ranged into the millions. There were no deaths and the only injury reported was a minor one to a firefighter.
“It’s absolutely the worst fire ever in Majuro,” said Jerry Kramer, chief executive officer of Pacific International Inc. and a nearly 40-year resident of the capital. The large area burned out contained several companies owned by Majuro’s long-established Taiwanese and Chinese business people. The destruction of Cost Price was expected to have an immediate impact on the local food supply, since this store is estimated by a number of local retailers to account for as much as 30 percent of the local grocery market. Despite the disaster, Cost Price was back in business fewer than two days later—albeit at a much reduced level—working from reefer containers with an outdoor, roadside table serving as its “office” in front of sister retail store, Formosa.
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The fire ignited around 5 p.m. on March 27, reportedly shortly before power was restored to this downtown business area after a planned, all-day power outage to replace power poles by Marshalls Energy Company, the power utility. Cost Price, like many of the larger grocery stores on Majuro, operates on its own generators during power outages. Police officials said that the fire apparently started from the company’s backup generator and then quickly spread.
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Firefighters arrived on the scene after the blaze was well in progress, but had no water to fight the fire because the city fire hydrant system, which uses salt water pumped from the lagoon, had no pressure in it since the power had been off all day. A Majuro Water and Sewer Company water delivery truck arrived a few minutes later to feed the fire engines, and continued with 1,000 gallon water deliveries for hours, but by the time of its first delivery the fire was already spreading—helped by a strong trade wind—to neighboring buildings. Majuro firefighters, who rarely fight fires and had never experienced a blaze of this magnitude, also lacked the know-how to halt the spread of the fire once they had water.
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Mobil Oil’s bulk fuel plant workers used a portable pump to fill up a tanker with salt water from the lagoon that was ferried to and from the fire most of the night to assist the firefighters. Cost Price and other neighboring stores managed to salvage some of their warehouse stock before the fire engulfed the buildings. Many local residents who lived in apartments on the side and back of Cost Price were also able to remove some of their household goods before flames destroyed their living quarters. The Won Hai Shein Restaurant had only just reopened earlier this year after a major renovation and was completely destroyed by the fire.
Both Cost Price and the rental offices, owned by G&L Enterprises, were insured. The fire continued to burn for several days as thousands of cans of tinned meat continuously erupted—much like a shooting gallery—spewing oil back onto the embers that repeatedly flared up.
—Giff Johnson
