Showing posts with label Indigenous Resistance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indigenous Resistance. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Guam's Intervention
I Nasion Chamoru (The Chamoru Nation)
Julian Aguon, Chamoru Rights Advocate
PO Box 8725
Tamuning, Guam 96931
Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues – April 2008 – New York, NY
Item # 6
Topic: Pacific
Presenter: Julian Aguon
Collective Intervention of the Chamoru Nation and Affiliated Indigenous Chamoru Organizations; Society for Threatened Peoples International (ECOSOC); CORE (ECOSOC); Western Shoshone Defense Project; Flying Eagle Woman Fund (ECOSOC); Mohawk Nation at Kahmawake; Cultural Development and Research Institute; Famoksaiyan; Organization of People for Indigenous Rights; Colonized Chamoru Coalition; Chamoru Landowners Association; Chamoru Language Teachers Association; Guahan Indigenous Collective; Hurao, Inc.; Landowners United; Chamoru Veterans Association; Fuetsan Famaloan
Ati addeng-miyo your Excellencies. My name is Julian Aguon and I appear before you with the full support and blessings of my elders. I address you on behalf of the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam, an endangered people now being rushed toward full-blown extinction.
In 2008, the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam brace ourselves for a storm of U.S. militarization so enormous in scope, so volatile in nature, so irreversible in consequence. U.S. military realignment in the Asia-Pacific region seeks to homeport sixty percent of its Pacific Fleet in and around our ancient archipelago. With no input from the indigenous Chamoru people and over our deepening dissent, the US plans to flood Guam, its Colony in Perpetuity, with upwards of 50,000 people, which includes the 8,000 U.S. Marines and their 9,000 dependents being ousted by Okinawa and an outside labor force estimated upwards of 20,000 workers on construction contracts. In addition, six nuclear submarines will be added to the three already stationed in Guam as well as a monstrous Global Strike Force, a strike and intelligence surveillance reconnaissance hub at Andersen Air Force Base.
This buildup only complements the impressive Air Force and Navy show of force occupying 1/3 of our 212 square mile island already. This massive military expansionism exacts devastating consequences on my people, who make up only 37% of the 170,000 people living in Guam and who already suffer the signature maladies of a colonial condition.
The military buildup of Guam endangers our fundamental and inalienable human right to self-determination, the exercise of which our Administering Power, the United States, has strategically denied us—in glaring betrayal of its international obligations under the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN General Assembly Resolution 1514, to name but some.
The unilateral decision to hyper-militarize our homeland is the latest in a long line of covenant breaches on the part of our Administering Power to guide Guam toward self-governance. It was made totally without consulting the indigenous Chamoru people. No public education campaign regarding the social, cultural, and political consequences of this hyper-militarization has been seriously undertaken or even contemplated.
Of the 10.3 billion dollars settled upon by the U.S. and Japan for the transfer of U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam, nothing has been said as to whether or not this money will be used to improve our flailing infrastructure. Recently, the largest joint military exercise in recent history conducted what were casually called war games off Guam waters. 22,000 US military personnel, 30 ships, and 280 aircraft partook in "Valiant Shield." That weekend, water was cut off to a number of local villages on the Navy water line. The local people of those villages went some thirty days without running water. Across the military-constructed fence, the tap flowed freely for the U.S. military population. The suggestion of late is that Guam is expected to foot the bill of this re-occupation. Meetings with defense officials have proved empty. Military officers we have met with inform us only of their inability to commit to anything. In effect, they repeat that they have no working plans to spend money on civilian projects. Dollars tied to this transfer have been allocated to development only within the bases. Money for education in the territory will again be allocated to schools for children of U.S. military personnel and not ours. Meanwhile, virtually every public sector in Guam is being threatened with privatization.
There is talk of plans to condemn more of our land to accommodate its accelerated military needs. In contrast, there is no talk of plans to clean up radioactive contaminations (strontium, in particular) of Guam from toxins leftover from the U.S.’ World War II activities and its intense nuclear bombing campaign of the Marshall Islands only 1200 miles from Guam. Indeed, the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam suffer extraordinarily high rates of cancer and dementia-related illness due to the U.S.’ widespread toxic contamination of Guam. For example, Chamorus suffer from nasopharynx cancer at a rate 1,999% higher than the U.S. average (per 100,000). To boot, Guam has 19 Superfund sites, most of which are associated with U.S. military base activities as in the case of Andersen Air Force Base and the former Naval Air Station. Nineteen sites is a significant number in consideration of the island’s small size of 212 square meters.
There is also no word on whether or not the U.S. plans to pay war reparations due to us since it forgave Japan its World War II war crimes committed against the Chamorus.
Like an awful re-run of World War II, when the U.S. unilaterally forgave Japan its horrific war crimes on our people, the US is back at the table negotiating away our human rights including our right to self-determination. Beyond the B-2 bombers in our skies, the ships playing war games in our waters, the added weapons of mass destruction, and the contamination that has robbed us of so many loved ones by way of our extraordinarily high rates of cancers and dementia-related illnesses, there is a growing desperation back home. A desperate lethargy in the wind. A realization that if the UN remains unable to slow the manic speed of US militarization, Chamorus as a people will pass.
In 2005 and 2006, we appeared before the UN Special Political and Decolonization Committee, alerting the UN organ of these two frightening facts: 1) it was recently discovered that the U.S. Department of Interior purposefully killed a presidential directive handed down in 1975, which ordered that Guam be given a commonwealth status no less favorable than the one the U.S. was negotiating with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands at that time; and 2) a campaign of the Guam Chamber of Commerce (primarily consisting of U.S. Statesiders) to privatize every one of Guam's public resources (the island's only water provider, only power provider, only local telephone provider, public schools, and its only port, on an island that imports 85-90% of its food and where private monopolies of public goods would truly make us captive to the forces of the market) is undermining our ancient indigenous civilization with violent speed. Eating us whole.
Not much has changed since we last were here in New York. Our power provider has been privatized, our telecommunications sold. Our only water provider and one port are under relentless attack. The meager, questionable victories we have had to stay this mass privatization are only the result of indigenous Chamoru grassroots activists who, on their own—with no financial, institutional, or strategic support—holding both their hands up, holding the line as best they can. At great personal cost.
Your Excellencies: Know this—the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam are neither informed nor unified around this military buildup despite dominant media representations. For all intents and purposes, there is no free press in Guam. Local media only makes noise of the re-occupation, not sense of it. The Pacific Daily News—the American subsidiary newspaper that dominates the discourse—has cut off the oxygen supply to indigenous resistance movement. Rather than debating this buildup's enormous sociopolitical, environmental and cultural consequences, it has framed the conversation around how best to ask the U.S. (politely) for de facto consideration of our concerns. Without appearing un-American.
We are not Americans. We are Chamorus. We are heirs to a matrilineal, indigenous civilization born two thousand years before Jesus. And we are being disappeared. Off your radar.
All this, and only two years until the end of the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism. And no midterm review by the Special Committee on Decolonization. No designation of any expert to track Guam’s progress, or lack thereof, toward progressing off the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. Not one UN visiting mission to Guam.
It is a sad commentary that the Administering Power year after year abstains or votes against UN resolutions addressing the “Question of Guam” and resolutions reflecting the work of the UN on decolonization including the resolution on the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism and the very recent Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. With this non-support by Guam’s Administering Power, it is no wonder that the list of the Non-Self-Governing Territories under the administration of the United States has turned half a century old with little progress.
We Chamorus come to New York year after year, appealing to the UN decolonization committee to follow through with its mandate. Indeed, the UN has collected almost thirty years of our testimony, with nothing to show for it. I represent today the third generation of Chamoru activists to appear before the UN, desperately trying to safeguard our inalienable, still unrealized, human right to self-determination.
The failure of the U.S. to honor its international obligations to Guam and her native people, the non-responsiveness of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization to our rapid deterioration, and the overall non-performance of relevant U.S. and UN Decolonization organs and officials combine to carry our small chance of survival to its final coffin.
All this combines to elevate the human rights situation in Guam as a matter not only of decolonization, but ethnic cleansing.
Indeed, when future generations look upon these days, they might label Guam not merely a U.S. colony, but rather, a UN colony.
To date the Forum has deferred to the Special Committee. The time has come for the Forum to take the lead. To this end we request the Forum take the following action:
Sponsor an expert seminar in conjunction with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Special Committee on Decolonization to examine the impact of the UN decolonization process regarding the indigenous peoples of the NSGTs—now and previously listed on the UN list of NSGTs. This seminar must be under the auspices of the Forum due to existing problems with the Secretariat of the Special Committee. We request that Independent Expert Carlyle G. Corbin be included in the seminar as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples.
Utilize the Inter-Agency Support Group to begin to implement the Program of Implementation (POI) with UN Agencies, UNDP, UNEP and other agencies and specialized bodies as directed by the General Assembly; and
Communicate its concern for the human rights of indigenous peoples and all peoples in the NSGTs to the UN Human Rights Council and request that the Council designate a Special Rapporteur on the Situation of the Peoples of the Non-Self-Governing Territories.
In Solidarity and Urgency,
The Chamoru Nation and Indigenous Chamoru Organizations of Guam, with support of the above-listed organizations.
Fore more information, feel free to contact the following:
Debbie Quinata, 671-828-2957, dquinata@gmail.com
Hope Cristobal, 671-649-0097, ecris@teleguam.net
Julian Aguon, 808-375-3646, julianaguon@gmail.com
Lisalinda Natividad, 671-777-7285, lisanati@yahoo.com
See also http://decolonizeguam.blogspot.com
Fore more information, feel free to contact the following:
Debbie Quinata, 671-828-2957, dquinata@gmail.com
Hope Cristobal, 671-649-0097, ecris@teleguam.net
Julian Aguon, 808-375-3646, julianaguon@gmail.com
Lisalinda Natividad, 671-777-7285, lisanati@yahoo.com
See also http://decolonizeguam.blogspot.com
Julian Aguon, Chamoru Rights Advocate
PO Box 8725
Tamuning, Guam 96931
Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues – April 2008 – New York, NY
Item # 6
Topic: Pacific
Presenter: Julian Aguon
Collective Intervention of the Chamoru Nation and Affiliated Indigenous Chamoru Organizations; Society for Threatened Peoples International (ECOSOC); CORE (ECOSOC); Western Shoshone Defense Project; Flying Eagle Woman Fund (ECOSOC); Mohawk Nation at Kahmawake; Cultural Development and Research Institute; Famoksaiyan; Organization of People for Indigenous Rights; Colonized Chamoru Coalition; Chamoru Landowners Association; Chamoru Language Teachers Association; Guahan Indigenous Collective; Hurao, Inc.; Landowners United; Chamoru Veterans Association; Fuetsan Famaloan
Ati addeng-miyo your Excellencies. My name is Julian Aguon and I appear before you with the full support and blessings of my elders. I address you on behalf of the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam, an endangered people now being rushed toward full-blown extinction.
In 2008, the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam brace ourselves for a storm of U.S. militarization so enormous in scope, so volatile in nature, so irreversible in consequence. U.S. military realignment in the Asia-Pacific region seeks to homeport sixty percent of its Pacific Fleet in and around our ancient archipelago. With no input from the indigenous Chamoru people and over our deepening dissent, the US plans to flood Guam, its Colony in Perpetuity, with upwards of 50,000 people, which includes the 8,000 U.S. Marines and their 9,000 dependents being ousted by Okinawa and an outside labor force estimated upwards of 20,000 workers on construction contracts. In addition, six nuclear submarines will be added to the three already stationed in Guam as well as a monstrous Global Strike Force, a strike and intelligence surveillance reconnaissance hub at Andersen Air Force Base.
This buildup only complements the impressive Air Force and Navy show of force occupying 1/3 of our 212 square mile island already. This massive military expansionism exacts devastating consequences on my people, who make up only 37% of the 170,000 people living in Guam and who already suffer the signature maladies of a colonial condition.
The military buildup of Guam endangers our fundamental and inalienable human right to self-determination, the exercise of which our Administering Power, the United States, has strategically denied us—in glaring betrayal of its international obligations under the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN General Assembly Resolution 1514, to name but some.
The unilateral decision to hyper-militarize our homeland is the latest in a long line of covenant breaches on the part of our Administering Power to guide Guam toward self-governance. It was made totally without consulting the indigenous Chamoru people. No public education campaign regarding the social, cultural, and political consequences of this hyper-militarization has been seriously undertaken or even contemplated.
Of the 10.3 billion dollars settled upon by the U.S. and Japan for the transfer of U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam, nothing has been said as to whether or not this money will be used to improve our flailing infrastructure. Recently, the largest joint military exercise in recent history conducted what were casually called war games off Guam waters. 22,000 US military personnel, 30 ships, and 280 aircraft partook in "Valiant Shield." That weekend, water was cut off to a number of local villages on the Navy water line. The local people of those villages went some thirty days without running water. Across the military-constructed fence, the tap flowed freely for the U.S. military population. The suggestion of late is that Guam is expected to foot the bill of this re-occupation. Meetings with defense officials have proved empty. Military officers we have met with inform us only of their inability to commit to anything. In effect, they repeat that they have no working plans to spend money on civilian projects. Dollars tied to this transfer have been allocated to development only within the bases. Money for education in the territory will again be allocated to schools for children of U.S. military personnel and not ours. Meanwhile, virtually every public sector in Guam is being threatened with privatization.
There is talk of plans to condemn more of our land to accommodate its accelerated military needs. In contrast, there is no talk of plans to clean up radioactive contaminations (strontium, in particular) of Guam from toxins leftover from the U.S.’ World War II activities and its intense nuclear bombing campaign of the Marshall Islands only 1200 miles from Guam. Indeed, the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam suffer extraordinarily high rates of cancer and dementia-related illness due to the U.S.’ widespread toxic contamination of Guam. For example, Chamorus suffer from nasopharynx cancer at a rate 1,999% higher than the U.S. average (per 100,000). To boot, Guam has 19 Superfund sites, most of which are associated with U.S. military base activities as in the case of Andersen Air Force Base and the former Naval Air Station. Nineteen sites is a significant number in consideration of the island’s small size of 212 square meters.
There is also no word on whether or not the U.S. plans to pay war reparations due to us since it forgave Japan its World War II war crimes committed against the Chamorus.
Like an awful re-run of World War II, when the U.S. unilaterally forgave Japan its horrific war crimes on our people, the US is back at the table negotiating away our human rights including our right to self-determination. Beyond the B-2 bombers in our skies, the ships playing war games in our waters, the added weapons of mass destruction, and the contamination that has robbed us of so many loved ones by way of our extraordinarily high rates of cancers and dementia-related illnesses, there is a growing desperation back home. A desperate lethargy in the wind. A realization that if the UN remains unable to slow the manic speed of US militarization, Chamorus as a people will pass.
In 2005 and 2006, we appeared before the UN Special Political and Decolonization Committee, alerting the UN organ of these two frightening facts: 1) it was recently discovered that the U.S. Department of Interior purposefully killed a presidential directive handed down in 1975, which ordered that Guam be given a commonwealth status no less favorable than the one the U.S. was negotiating with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands at that time; and 2) a campaign of the Guam Chamber of Commerce (primarily consisting of U.S. Statesiders) to privatize every one of Guam's public resources (the island's only water provider, only power provider, only local telephone provider, public schools, and its only port, on an island that imports 85-90% of its food and where private monopolies of public goods would truly make us captive to the forces of the market) is undermining our ancient indigenous civilization with violent speed. Eating us whole.
Not much has changed since we last were here in New York. Our power provider has been privatized, our telecommunications sold. Our only water provider and one port are under relentless attack. The meager, questionable victories we have had to stay this mass privatization are only the result of indigenous Chamoru grassroots activists who, on their own—with no financial, institutional, or strategic support—holding both their hands up, holding the line as best they can. At great personal cost.
Your Excellencies: Know this—the indigenous Chamoru people of Guam are neither informed nor unified around this military buildup despite dominant media representations. For all intents and purposes, there is no free press in Guam. Local media only makes noise of the re-occupation, not sense of it. The Pacific Daily News—the American subsidiary newspaper that dominates the discourse—has cut off the oxygen supply to indigenous resistance movement. Rather than debating this buildup's enormous sociopolitical, environmental and cultural consequences, it has framed the conversation around how best to ask the U.S. (politely) for de facto consideration of our concerns. Without appearing un-American.
We are not Americans. We are Chamorus. We are heirs to a matrilineal, indigenous civilization born two thousand years before Jesus. And we are being disappeared. Off your radar.
All this, and only two years until the end of the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism. And no midterm review by the Special Committee on Decolonization. No designation of any expert to track Guam’s progress, or lack thereof, toward progressing off the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. Not one UN visiting mission to Guam.
It is a sad commentary that the Administering Power year after year abstains or votes against UN resolutions addressing the “Question of Guam” and resolutions reflecting the work of the UN on decolonization including the resolution on the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism and the very recent Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. With this non-support by Guam’s Administering Power, it is no wonder that the list of the Non-Self-Governing Territories under the administration of the United States has turned half a century old with little progress.
We Chamorus come to New York year after year, appealing to the UN decolonization committee to follow through with its mandate. Indeed, the UN has collected almost thirty years of our testimony, with nothing to show for it. I represent today the third generation of Chamoru activists to appear before the UN, desperately trying to safeguard our inalienable, still unrealized, human right to self-determination.
The failure of the U.S. to honor its international obligations to Guam and her native people, the non-responsiveness of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization to our rapid deterioration, and the overall non-performance of relevant U.S. and UN Decolonization organs and officials combine to carry our small chance of survival to its final coffin.
All this combines to elevate the human rights situation in Guam as a matter not only of decolonization, but ethnic cleansing.
Indeed, when future generations look upon these days, they might label Guam not merely a U.S. colony, but rather, a UN colony.
To date the Forum has deferred to the Special Committee. The time has come for the Forum to take the lead. To this end we request the Forum take the following action:
Sponsor an expert seminar in conjunction with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Special Committee on Decolonization to examine the impact of the UN decolonization process regarding the indigenous peoples of the NSGTs—now and previously listed on the UN list of NSGTs. This seminar must be under the auspices of the Forum due to existing problems with the Secretariat of the Special Committee. We request that Independent Expert Carlyle G. Corbin be included in the seminar as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples.
Utilize the Inter-Agency Support Group to begin to implement the Program of Implementation (POI) with UN Agencies, UNDP, UNEP and other agencies and specialized bodies as directed by the General Assembly; and
Communicate its concern for the human rights of indigenous peoples and all peoples in the NSGTs to the UN Human Rights Council and request that the Council designate a Special Rapporteur on the Situation of the Peoples of the Non-Self-Governing Territories.
In Solidarity and Urgency,
The Chamoru Nation and Indigenous Chamoru Organizations of Guam, with support of the above-listed organizations.
Fore more information, feel free to contact the following:
Debbie Quinata, 671-828-2957, dquinata@gmail.com
Hope Cristobal, 671-649-0097, ecris@teleguam.net
Julian Aguon, 808-375-3646, julianaguon@gmail.com
Lisalinda Natividad, 671-777-7285, lisanati@yahoo.com
See also http://decolonizeguam.blogspot.com
Fore more information, feel free to contact the following:
Debbie Quinata, 671-828-2957, dquinata@gmail.com
Hope Cristobal, 671-649-0097, ecris@teleguam.net
Julian Aguon, 808-375-3646, julianaguon@gmail.com
Lisalinda Natividad, 671-777-7285, lisanati@yahoo.com
See also http://decolonizeguam.blogspot.com
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The Question of Guam 2007
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
Sixty-second General Assembly
Fourth Committee
3rd Meeting (PM)
FOURTH COMMITTEE CONTINUES DECOLONIZATION DEBATE, HEARING
PETITIONERS FROM GUAM, WESTERN SAHARA
As the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) continued its discussion of decolonization issues this afternoon, the questions of Guam and Western Sahara featured prominently, with the Committee hearing more than 20 petitioners on both those matters.
On the question of Guam, petitioners raised concerns about the steady United States military presence, and the expected rise in their number by 50,000, including military personnel, their dependents and contractors. They said militarization of Guam was an impediment to the right to self-determination of the Chamoru people -- Guam's native people. Though the Chamoru did not unanimously support the United States militarization on the island, it could not be stopped because that country was the administering Power.
"American military commanders beamed with pride at the incredible control they enjoyed over this tiny little island, which they regularly call 'Fortress Guam'," said the representative of Famoksaiyan, an organization that brings together Chamoru people from the Pacific and the United States, in support of Guam's decolonization. As the United States continued to "politely and impolitely" insist that the United Nations mind its own business, he felt it was necessary for the United Nations to engage in its own forms of "polite and impolite action".
A representative of the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice said that the militarization of the island had also sparked a capitalistic boom, with indigenous Chamoru families struggling economically, selling their land to American and foreign companies in the hope of profiting from the military boom. The United Nations should be more active in upholding the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples with respect to Guam, and more resources for educational campaigns about self-determination and decolonization should be disseminated.
A representative of the Guahan Indigenous Collective also spoke on the question of Guam.
Background
The Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) met this afternoon to continue its debate on all decolonization issues, and was also expected to hear petitioners from Non-Self-Governing Territories. (Reports before the Committee are summarized in yesterday's Press Release GA/SPD/371.)
Committee Chairman ABDALMAHMOOD ABDALHALEEM MOHAMAD ( Sudan) informed members that, while it had been decided that the Committee would hear petitioners on the questions of New Caledonia, Guam and Western Sahara today, the petitioner from New Caledonia was unable to come to New York as scheduled. Therefore, the Committee would begin by hearing from petitioners on the question of Guam.
Petitioners on Question of Guam
MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA, representative of Famoksaiyan, an organization that brought together Chamoru people from the Pacific and the United States committed to the decolonization of Guam, noted that, in 1980, Chamorus made up 45 per cent of Guam's population, but that number had fallen to 37 per cent in 2000. Since 11 September 2001, America's military presence had risen steadily, and Guam faced a further increase of 50,000 civilian and military personnel due to the relocating of American Marines, Air Force and Army staff from Okinawa and the Republic of Korea. "American military commanders beamed with pride at the incredible control they enjoyed over this tiny little island, which they regularly call 'Fortress Guam', or the 'tip of America's spear'," he said.
The official position of the United States on its colonies today was that they were domestic concerns, he said. As such, the United Nations had no authority or mandate to encourage negotiations on their status, or to alter their relationship to the United States. The United States Government's resistance to resolution 1541 (1960) (Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples) was clear. As the United States continued to "politely and impolitely" insist that the United Nations mind its own business, he felt it was necessary for the United Nations to engage in its own forms of "polite and impolite action".
RIMA MILES, a Refaluwasch (or Carolinian), from the island of Saipan in Guam, said the Chamoru right to self-determination was being threatened by the United States' actions, which contradicted the terms of its obligation to the Chamoru people. Currently, the Territory was preparing for a population increase of 55,000 in military workers and dependents, which made up more than a quarter of the current population. The militarization of their homeland was a direct impediment to the Chamoru right to self-determination. In addition, live-fire sites would be available to the naval and air forces of other United Nations Member States, including Australia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. She urged the Committee to condemn that multinational disregard for the United Nations Charter and resolution 1541.
She said that, not only were they seeing international Governments interested in United States military schemes for Guam, but "corporate vultures" were circling and already touching down, and $10 billion in new investment by the United States Department of Defense could be expected. With one third of the island occupied, national integrity would be compromised. Where the land and sea used to be protected, now beachfront developments foreshadowed the future to come. The loss of land was coupled with environmental degradation.
The United Nations must look at non-self-governing situations on a case-by-case basis, especially when administering Powers were not cooperative, she said. She had come today with no monetary support from the United States or the local government. "We are students and parents who do not have […] money, but still we come […] in order for you to fulfil your mission", and so that "these voices cannot be forgotten". More than 160 United States atomic and hydrogen bomb tests had made women into vessels to pass death to the hope they carried in their wombs.
MARIE AUYONG, Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice, speaking on behalf of Victoria-Lola M. Leon Guerrero, said that an amplified militarization of Guam was a direct impediment to the native people's human right to self-determination and should spark concern in the international community about United States military presence in the Pacific. Guam was host to the largest United States military exercises in the Pacific since the Viet Nam War. The people of Guam did not unanimously support the United States militarization on the island, yet, because that country was the administering Power, they had no way of stopping it.
She said that the militarization of the island had also sparked a "capitalistic boom". The island seemed to be "for sale", and indigenous Chamoru families, struggling economically, had begun to sell their land to United States and foreign companies, which hoped to profit from the military boom. "It is tragic that more than 60 years after your inception, and the United Nations declaration to eradicate colonization, the people of Guam remain squashed under the thumb of the world's biggest super Power," she said.
The United Nations should be more active in upholding resolution 1541, ensuring that the native Chamoru people of Guam exercise their right to self-determination and decolonization. A fact-finding mission should be sent to Guam. The island also needed more resources for educational campaigns about self-determination and decolonization.
Sixty-second General Assembly
Fourth Committee
3rd Meeting (PM)
FOURTH COMMITTEE CONTINUES DECOLONIZATION DEBATE, HEARING
PETITIONERS FROM GUAM, WESTERN SAHARA
As the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) continued its discussion of decolonization issues this afternoon, the questions of Guam and Western Sahara featured prominently, with the Committee hearing more than 20 petitioners on both those matters.
On the question of Guam, petitioners raised concerns about the steady United States military presence, and the expected rise in their number by 50,000, including military personnel, their dependents and contractors. They said militarization of Guam was an impediment to the right to self-determination of the Chamoru people -- Guam's native people. Though the Chamoru did not unanimously support the United States militarization on the island, it could not be stopped because that country was the administering Power.
"American military commanders beamed with pride at the incredible control they enjoyed over this tiny little island, which they regularly call 'Fortress Guam'," said the representative of Famoksaiyan, an organization that brings together Chamoru people from the Pacific and the United States, in support of Guam's decolonization. As the United States continued to "politely and impolitely" insist that the United Nations mind its own business, he felt it was necessary for the United Nations to engage in its own forms of "polite and impolite action".
A representative of the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice said that the militarization of the island had also sparked a capitalistic boom, with indigenous Chamoru families struggling economically, selling their land to American and foreign companies in the hope of profiting from the military boom. The United Nations should be more active in upholding the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples with respect to Guam, and more resources for educational campaigns about self-determination and decolonization should be disseminated.
A representative of the Guahan Indigenous Collective also spoke on the question of Guam.
Background
The Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) met this afternoon to continue its debate on all decolonization issues, and was also expected to hear petitioners from Non-Self-Governing Territories. (Reports before the Committee are summarized in yesterday's Press Release GA/SPD/371.)
Committee Chairman ABDALMAHMOOD ABDALHALEEM MOHAMAD ( Sudan) informed members that, while it had been decided that the Committee would hear petitioners on the questions of New Caledonia, Guam and Western Sahara today, the petitioner from New Caledonia was unable to come to New York as scheduled. Therefore, the Committee would begin by hearing from petitioners on the question of Guam.
Petitioners on Question of Guam
MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA, representative of Famoksaiyan, an organization that brought together Chamoru people from the Pacific and the United States committed to the decolonization of Guam, noted that, in 1980, Chamorus made up 45 per cent of Guam's population, but that number had fallen to 37 per cent in 2000. Since 11 September 2001, America's military presence had risen steadily, and Guam faced a further increase of 50,000 civilian and military personnel due to the relocating of American Marines, Air Force and Army staff from Okinawa and the Republic of Korea. "American military commanders beamed with pride at the incredible control they enjoyed over this tiny little island, which they regularly call 'Fortress Guam', or the 'tip of America's spear'," he said.
The official position of the United States on its colonies today was that they were domestic concerns, he said. As such, the United Nations had no authority or mandate to encourage negotiations on their status, or to alter their relationship to the United States. The United States Government's resistance to resolution 1541 (1960) (Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples) was clear. As the United States continued to "politely and impolitely" insist that the United Nations mind its own business, he felt it was necessary for the United Nations to engage in its own forms of "polite and impolite action".
RIMA MILES, a Refaluwasch (or Carolinian), from the island of Saipan in Guam, said the Chamoru right to self-determination was being threatened by the United States' actions, which contradicted the terms of its obligation to the Chamoru people. Currently, the Territory was preparing for a population increase of 55,000 in military workers and dependents, which made up more than a quarter of the current population. The militarization of their homeland was a direct impediment to the Chamoru right to self-determination. In addition, live-fire sites would be available to the naval and air forces of other United Nations Member States, including Australia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. She urged the Committee to condemn that multinational disregard for the United Nations Charter and resolution 1541.
She said that, not only were they seeing international Governments interested in United States military schemes for Guam, but "corporate vultures" were circling and already touching down, and $10 billion in new investment by the United States Department of Defense could be expected. With one third of the island occupied, national integrity would be compromised. Where the land and sea used to be protected, now beachfront developments foreshadowed the future to come. The loss of land was coupled with environmental degradation.
The United Nations must look at non-self-governing situations on a case-by-case basis, especially when administering Powers were not cooperative, she said. She had come today with no monetary support from the United States or the local government. "We are students and parents who do not have […] money, but still we come […] in order for you to fulfil your mission", and so that "these voices cannot be forgotten". More than 160 United States atomic and hydrogen bomb tests had made women into vessels to pass death to the hope they carried in their wombs.
MARIE AUYONG, Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice, speaking on behalf of Victoria-Lola M. Leon Guerrero, said that an amplified militarization of Guam was a direct impediment to the native people's human right to self-determination and should spark concern in the international community about United States military presence in the Pacific. Guam was host to the largest United States military exercises in the Pacific since the Viet Nam War. The people of Guam did not unanimously support the United States militarization on the island, yet, because that country was the administering Power, they had no way of stopping it.
She said that the militarization of the island had also sparked a "capitalistic boom". The island seemed to be "for sale", and indigenous Chamoru families, struggling economically, had begun to sell their land to United States and foreign companies, which hoped to profit from the military boom. "It is tragic that more than 60 years after your inception, and the United Nations declaration to eradicate colonization, the people of Guam remain squashed under the thumb of the world's biggest super Power," she said.
The United Nations should be more active in upholding resolution 1541, ensuring that the native Chamoru people of Guam exercise their right to self-determination and decolonization. A fact-finding mission should be sent to Guam. The island also needed more resources for educational campaigns about self-determination and decolonization.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
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