U.S. Moves to Reassert Control of Pacific Territory
Rich Winkel
/** ips.english: 507.0 **/
** Topic: ECONOMY: U.S. Moves to Reassert Control of Pacific Territory **
** Written 3:07 PM Apr 4, 1998 by newsdesk in cdp:ips.english **
Copyright 1998 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 01-Apr-98 ***
Title: ECONOMY: U.S. Moves to Reassert Control of Pacific Territory
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, APR 1 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton's administration,
and key U.S. lawmakers, have launched a major effort to retake
control of labour, immigration, and trade policies from the
Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific territory given quasi-
independent status 22 years ago.
The territory, located about 1000 kms east of China, currently
hosts some 30 Asian-owned apparel factories employing as many as
37,000 workers from China, Bangladesh and the Philippines - lured
to the territory, denied their human rights, and forced into what
amounts to involuntary servitude, according to U.S. officials.
''The Northern Mariana Islands should decide whether its priority is to
be a member of the United States political family or to preserve an
economic system that is antithetical to United States values,'' U.S.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt testified before a Senate Committee
here Tuesday.
''If the CNMI (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), is
going to promote this kind of economy, they cannot do it under the
American flag,'' he added, urging Congress to extend U.S.
immigration and labour laws to the territory in order to end the
abuses.
The hearing, called by the Republican Chairman of the Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Frank Murkowski,
followed a spate of reports over the past year about labour
conditions on the Saipan, the main island in the Northern
Marianas, which have appalled both Democrats and Republicans.
''If these conditions existed in any of our states, we would
not tolerate it for one day,'' according to Rep. George Miller, a
Democrat, who released a report on the situation in the
Commonwealth last week . He said the report ''documents an
Orwellian nightmare of indentured and destitute labour, of
entrapped and abandoned workers, of forced prostitution and
coerced abortions, of government corruption, of denials of basic
labour and religious rights.''
The Northern Marianas, conquered from Japan during World War
II, became a U.N. Trust Territory in 1947. In 1976, its
inhabitants voted by a three-to-one margin to become a self-
governing commonwealth of the United States whose inhabitants
gained U.S. citizenship 10 years later. The United Nations ended
its trusteeship of the territory in 1990.
To help spur economic growth on the islands, Congress agreed to
exempt the CNMI from federal minimum wage and immigration laws. In
the mid-1980s, the Mariana's government extended an open
invitation to foreign apparel manufacturers, eager to take
advantage of a ''Made in the USA'' label, to set up shop in CNMI.
The result has been a thriving apparel industry which ships some
800 million dollars a year in goods to U.S. retailers, including
top labels like Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. But that
production appears based on the recruitment and exploitation of
tens of thousands of foreign workers who, according to Babbitt,
now hold more than 90 percent of all private-sector jobs on the
islands.
Some 37,000 foreign workers now outnumber the roughly 28,000
native islanders. Most of the workers, targets for a rising number
of ''hate crimes,'' pay up to 7,000 dollars each to come to the
Marianas and are kept in unhealthy and overcrowded barracks after
they arrive.
U.S. officials have also discovered that contractors recruit
women, including minors, from Russia, the Philippines, and
elsewhere, to work in nightclubs and brothels on Saipan. In
testimony Tuesday, one 16-year-old Filipina, who was taken to the
CNMI two years ago, told senators that she was forced to perform
sex acts at one club and was about to be sent to Hong Kong to work
as a prostitute when she escaped and filed a complaint with the
federal authorities.
''I thought laws in America protect workers and treat people
with respect,'' the girl, 'Katrina', said in written testimony.
''I thought I would make good money to send home to my family. But
I was treated like an animal.''
Eric Gregoire, a human rights activist with the Roman Catholic
Church in the CNMI, brought several other workers to testify
before the Senate. Two Bangladeshis testified they had paid some
5,000 dollars to travel to Saipan in response to a newspaper
advertisment by companies which repeatedly refused to pay them.
''More than 1,000 Bangladeshis are there on the island,'' said
Azizul Haque. ''Many are jobless; many do not have enough food to
eat; many are sick.''
The Clinton administration is asking Congress to extend federal
immigration and minimum wage laws to the CNMI, and to close trade
loopholes allowing products by foreign garment makers, using
foreign labour and materials in the territory, enter the U.S.
market quota and duty-free.
Most of these foriegn plants are linked to China, noted Babbitt
who called the scheme ''an abuse of the trade privileges that
were extended to the Commonwealth'' in order to create jobs for US
citizens on the island.
Such a move, however, is being fought by the new CNMI
government headed by Governor Pedro Tenorio who has pledged to
redress the situation and who, earlier this month, ordered a
series of raids against most of the plants. Tenorio, who initiated
the system which led to the abuses when he served as governor
during the 1980s, warned Tuesday that federal control could ruin
the territory's economy.
''A federal takeover ignores the fact that we depend on guest
workers for our economic survival,'' he said, adding that
''already, the Asian financial crisis has caused several hotels to
close down. ''The combined impact of federalisation on our tourism
and garment industries would devastate our econony,'' he said.
The CNMI government can also count on support from Republican
right-wingers in the House of Representatives. The CNMI government
under Tenorio's predecessor and nephew, Froilan Tenorio, paid for
visits to the territory over the last year by Majority Leader Dick
Armey, Majority Whip Tom DeLay and Rep. Don Young, Murkowski's
counterpart in the House.
DeLay has been particularly outspoken in support of CNMI and
has even proposed a similar ''guest worker programme'' for
Mexicans in the United States. DeLay, who visited the islands most
recently in January, told then-governor Froilan Tenorio, ''You are
a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party and
you represent everything that is good about what we're trying to
do in America and in leading the world in the free market
system.''
Testifying Tuesday, Miller expressed greater confidence in
Pedro Tenorio, noting that he had taken some steps towards
addressing Washington's concerns. ''But these efforts to not
diminish the need for the Congress to change the policies that
have allowed these abuses to flourish,'' he added.
Babbit stressed that Washington will continue to support the
efforts of the new governor, but noted that his proposed reforms
do ''not include any significant changes in (CNMI's) policies
regarding indentured workers or the garment industry.''
(END/IPS/jl/mk/98)
Origin: ROMAWAS/ECONOMY/
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