Letters

(Australia) Shadow Minister for the Pacific Islands - Bob Sercombe - says it all when he admits to being a tourist (Pacific Magazine, January-February 2006). Like most short term tourists, I would estimate he has little idea of the real tests facing the Pacific.

He speaks positively now about Solomon Islands under RAMSI. Now that he knows it is a success. But I'd like a bet on whether he was bagging the idea three years ago.

RAMSI is not a success because it is regional, and multilateral like Sercombe contends. RAMSI is a success because Australia has thrown plenty of money and personnel at it, and the Solomon Islands Prime Minister, and majority of civilians, have supported it. Did they have any other option?

Sercombe reserves judgment on ECP Mark II. How convenient. If it is a success - he'll jump on the bandwagon and applaud PNG, if not - it's surely a Liberal failure. But then let's hear

Sercombe's alternative blueprint for Australian aid to PNG? If he has one. Does he have an idea on why ECP Mark I failed? Does he know of the complex issues? Do even 300 AusAID staff in Port Moresby understand the issues or the place where they live?

As for labor mobility - Working Holiday Visa backpackers usually start with AUS$10,000 to their name, and only supplement that with part time work.

They can afford the AUS$10,000 because they do come from rich countries. I doubt whether many Pacific Islanders could start with such a deposit, nor follow the working holiday visa rules which limit hours of work - and survive. As a foreigner, Australia is not a cheap place to live.

Any labor to come from Pacific Islands to Australia would need to come under a vastly different new visa which allows full time work, and relaxed entry rules.

Is that sort of immigration feasible?

And then there is Sercombe's long list of institutions he wants to implement. Having lived in the Pacific for 15 years I have seen and heard of so many.

And so much aid funding has gone to them. Wasted money, junkets and never ending debate is prevalent. Tangible achievements - let me know Bob.

Jason McIlvena
Papua New Guinea

(Editor's Note: While Bob Sercombe remains Labor's spokesman on Overseas Aid and Pacific Island Affairs, he announced at the end of February that he would not be the ALP candidate for Maribyrnong at the 2007 Federal election.)

No Such Thing As Race

I can't believe it. In your most recent story on the Northern Marianas election (December 2005) you said "There are two ethnic indigenous races in the CNMI…." The use of the word "race" to refer to ethnic groups was a 19th century practice. Where have you been for the past century?

Let me summarize the state of our scientific knowledge of the concept of race. Study of human genetic variability shows that modern humans originated in Africa about 100,000 years, and left Africa about 65,000 years ago. Those of us who do not have African ancestry are all more similar to one another biologically than are most Africans--that is to say, the vast majority of human genetic diversity is within Africa.

If you travel from Northeast Africa (where ancestors of all non-Africans departed for their journey to the rest of the planet) you find continuous gradations of genetics and of phenotypes (the physical manifestations of an interaction between genes and the environment). There is no place on the planet where you can draw a line around a group of people and show that they are biologically sufficiently different from their neighbors to call them a separate race. In fact, there is more genetic variation within groups that have historically been called races than there is between them.

Carolinians and Chamorros are both descendent of the Austronesian people who populated much of the Pacific Islands region. As with most Pacific populations, many of the members of these groups have a history of inter-marriage with a variety of other populations, including Europeans, Papuans, Japanese and Filipinos.

The concept of race is a social construct. It exists in the minds of ordinary people, and social scientists study it for what it is--a false belief system that affects social reality because people believe it. You should not perpetuate it in your magazine, and in fact, this is the first time in my nearly 20 years of studying the Pacific and working there that I have seen or heard anybody refer to Pacific Island ethnic groups as races.

Mike Burton
Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Irvine

Pitcairn Injustice A 'Travesty'

The March 3 (www.pacificmagazine.net) story relating to the appeal of Pitcairn Island men earlier convicted of sexual abuse needs some clarification.

The conviction totals to date number six out of seven men, not six out of 13.

Though the UK decided, in spite of protests, to try these men by British law, Great Britain already had in place on the island "Pitcairn law," which Britain wrote and sanctioned for many decades, a law that had been successfully used numerous times in the past to judge sexual abuse cases on the island. Trial by Pitcairn law does not a criminal make for a number of the activities that "downtown London" British law does. Pitcairn law took into account the very different life style and culture on remote Pacific Islands that was and still is so different from that of the numerous, criminal-ridden cities of England.

Contrary to the story, not all legal costs were borne by the UK. Although there is provision for Pitcairn men to have their own defense counsel, Pitcairn's governors, sitting in authority more than 4,000 miles away from the island in Wellington, denied the Pitcairn men's requests, and in so doing forced into destitution families of the men who felt the government-appointed counsel was not serving them well.

All of the legal apparatus that was thrown together to convict these men-including all judges, all prosecution attorneys, all defense attorneys-was put together by just one person, Pitcairn's Governor Richard Fell. He was operating under orders from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, people without a clue about life on Pitcairn Island. Those orders stated that prosecution had to go forward by British law even if it meant "total dis-habitation of the island." This apparatus, including the building months before the trials began of a fancy Pitcairn jail capable of holding six inmates (note: six of seven men tried were convicted), the forming of a special law, pressured by the UK, by the New Zealand Parliament allowing Pitcairners to be tried in a "foreign country" thousands of miles from their own shores, and numerous other similarly irregular actions, all call this whole travesty of justice into serious legal question.

Herbert Ford, Director
Pitcairn Islands Study Center
Angwin, California

Look At Kava Extraction

I am constantly amused by the various stories from Europe about the need for a kava ban or to lift a ban. It would be a lot simpler to judge the issue if the method of extraction of the active ingredients of kava by European drug companies was considered instead. If those companies used highly concentrated solvents to get the maximum amount of chemicals out of the kava roots it is no wonder that dangers could lurk in the resultant tablets. Compared to the Pacific methods of extraction by pounding and water-filtering I think the ban is like comparing apples and oranges.

Espen Ronneberg
New York

Check Sources

There are several comments I would like to make about this article ("Local Church Leaders United Against Reverend Moon's Church", www.pacficmagazine.net, February 17).

I have been a member of Rev. Moon's "Church" for 30 years, since I was 30 years old.

I have been kidnapped and "deprogrammed" twice, when I was 35 years old, and at the time, owned my own house and business, both of which I lost when I was held against my will for 70 days.

Pastor Pere says he has "proof that they (Moonies) are anti-Christ and anti-God." This comment is the farthest from the truth that I can imagine. Rev. Moon has re-iterated over and over and over, his belief in God and in Jesus as the Messiah.

I would like to find the source of this quote, but assuming it is actually similar to something Rev. Moon said (translated from Korean), does that scare or offend Pastor Pere?: "I am the incarnation of God, the whole world is in my hands and will conquer and subjugate the world. God is now throwing Christianity away and is now establishing a new religion, and this new religion is the Unification Church. All Christians in the world are destined to be absorbed by our movement."

There has been so much mis-information about men and women who love God and dedicate their lives to Him and His service; I am surprised that Pastor Pere accepts what he is being told without actually checking the sources.

John Abelseth
Richmond BC Canada

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