Sign Banking Presentation Hawaii Later

Industry sign banking hawaii presentation later

welcome to this virtual parallel event of the 45th session of the human rights council meeting held this week at the palais de nacion the united nations headquarters in geneva switzerland this event is under the auspices of in comendios an ngo in consultive status with the ecosoc it is also co-sponsored by the koani foundation in hawaii as well as the piece for okinawa coalition my name is lila berg and i am speaking to you from hawaii i'm a former public school teacher and principal and a former state legislator in the hawaii house of representatives i will be moderator for this panel today's topic is demilitarizing the pacific hawaii okinawa guam and the northern marianas islands the united states has long held an extensive military presence in the pacific particularly on islands such as hawaii okinawa guam and the northern marianas the native peoples of these islands have long opposed the presence of the military and have demanded a significant reduction of military imposition on their lands the united states attempts to placate these demands by moving large numbers of military personnel from one island to another recently the united states and japan decided that they would move one-third of okinawa's military presence to guam now the native peoples of these islands have joined together to outright condemn the transfer of military personnel to and from various islands and to call for the complete removal of military forces from the pacific joining us today as panelists are his excellency leon kaula of hawaii mr robert kajiwara of okinawa and congresswoman sheila of the northern marianas our panelists are influential representatives from their respective locations and will be discussing the impact of the military on their respective islands our first speaker is his excellency leon kaulahau minister of foreign affairs for the hawaiian kingdom and prominent strategist advocate and spokesperson for hawaii's independence minister cu is a familiar participant in geneva at the human rights council and is working to restore and develop new relations between the hawaiian kingdom and other states he is chair of the decolonization alliance based in new york city co-author of the book modus vivendi situation of west papua and was nominated in 2017 for the nobel peace prize aloha minister the floor is yours it's good again to address the uh the human rights council in geneva thank you very much for this opportunity thank you to income indios for providing this opportunity for this parallel event the side event so we can talk about this really really pertinent topic in in the pacific at this point and that is the demilitarization of the pacific um and we're not talking about well we are talking about the entire pacific but we're talking about specific areas and for ourselves hawaii and for okinawa as well as for guam and now these three areas are particularly impacted of course by the united states military presence in these in our islands so we're going to talk a little bit about i'm going to talk a little bit about what happened in hawaii and how this entire militarization of these specific islands came about so back in the late 19th century the united states was looking westward past california and out into the pacific and wanting very much to expand its influence out into the pacific meanwhile in the pacific the hawaiian islands have been enjoying a 60-year trade relationship with the united states and um and particularly the sugar industry had grown tremendously during the civil war of the of the americas and in that the hawaiian islands became the major sugar producer for the northern states of the uh of the united states uh after the civil war so what happened with the sugar industry in hawaii is that it boomed there was a tremendous amount of growth and there's a tremendous amount of profits being made by growing more and more sugar and that lasted for a few years after the civil war but once the southern states came back online with their sugar production of course the united states did not depend so much upon the hawaiian islands and tariffs went into place and now unfavorable trade levels began to become discussed and so the the hawaiian islands the people who owned the sugar plantations and ran the sugar business which was by now a huge business in hawaii so they were very panicked about how they were going to be selling more sugar and how they could keep the market stable so they plotted and they felt that the best way to do so was to have hawaii the hawaiian kingdom their country annexed to the united states that would solve their problem of having a stable sugar price for for the sugar crops that they raised here in hawaii and so that was their motivation for pushing for annexation and that started about 20 years prior to even the annexation happening and all during this time the monarch uh kalakaua and then later um we're trying to hold the line and and say we do not want to be annexed to the united states and that we are a sovereign country and that we will make do so this faction of sugar planters and businessmen bankers and the like and shippers in hawaii uh started to really plot against the government to overthrow the government and to annex it to the united states now this had been vetted with members of the united states of the president of the united states his cabinet members particularly the war department at the time and what was going on was that the war department of the united states in looking to expand its influence into the pacific was eyeing pearl harbor as the ideal harbor for their navy in the pacific and so there had been years of negotiations going on to have access to pearl harbor so there were treaties reciprocity treaties signed between the hawaiian kingdom and the united states to allow pearl harbor to be used by their navy for choline station it was not to be a military base but a coaling station meaning they could put up mountains of coal there and then um and then refurbish the coal uh burning uh furnaces on their steamships their their navy vessels so it was a calling station and but this was not quite enough for the united states so they started to look toward how can we actually acquire exclusive use of pearl harbor for our um for our use so that's what happened they started to come into collusion with the interests in hawaii that wanted to join the united states through annexation and the the military military industrial complex in the united states wanted to secure pearl harbor so the two colluded and they came up with this plot which they finally executed in um jan on january 17th 1893 and that's when the sugar planters and their chums got together into into they had formed a what they call a committee of safety and the freedom of safety was to seize control of the hawaiian islands seized control of the government depose the queen and then enter into negotiations to annex hawaii to the united states and meanwhile the united states would support this uh with the landing of a a group of a company of marines uh about 160 of them to ensure that the sugar planters could succeed in overthrowing the government of the one kingdom so this plot hatched and on uh january 16 1893 uh the marines landed in honolulu out in front of the palace which was the the seat of the government well the cedar government was in the government building but the palace was where the home of the monarch was so they uh basically appointed their guns their cannons and their guns at the palace in this display of protection of the revolt that was going on or the uh or the haitian that was going on and so the next day on the 17th of january 1893 the committee of safety declared themselves to be in charge of the hawaiian kingdom government and um in order that the queen stepped down uh and the foreign ministry in hawaii at the time of the united states which is like the embassy of the united states its uh representative the ambassador of john l stevens uh then backed the usurpers of the government those that were uh created and said that the united states uh now supported this this uh fake government or this insurgency so the queen actually um at that point yielded to the united states to the president of the united states because she understood that this was a purely illegal act under international law and that this could be settled through the diplomacy and through international legal means and so she she was not worried about this being a permanent situation she thinks she thought it was very temporary and so she basically petitioned the united states to um to with with return her country uh that didn't quite happen at the end the insurgents sent a group to washington dc and within a week or so after their arrival they had a treaty of annexation signed by the president of the united states who at that time was benjamin harrison and it was his administration that was behind this collusion of overthrowing the hawaiian kingdom um and anyway he signed a treaty of annexation it had to go to the u.s senate for ratification and so it went there but meanwhile because benjamin harrison was a lame duck president his his presidency ended about a month and a half two months after the insurgency um after the coup d'etat so he had not gotten the treaty of annexation ratified by the senate and when the new president came in grover cleveland was the new president when he came in he immediately withdrew the treaty of annexation from the senate and basically told him to hold off and he conducted his own investigation and the investigation goes on and he he uncovers the plot of what had happened and basically disassociates the united states from what had happened and said that the united states had actually committed an act of war against a friendly nation and and said that the united states was obligated to act in kind to return the proper government of the hawaiian kingdom meaning the hawaiian kingdom government so that's what happened however the united states military forces refused to actually withdraw or use that opportunity to to wait until the president was out of office and when the president left office in 1897 um immediately another treaty of annexation ensued and again this was highly pushed but this time it was being pushed by the new president of the united states mckinley and his cabinet and his uh staff and particularly theodore roosevelt who was his vice president and other hawkish members who at that time were convinced that it was hawaii's manifest manifests destiny to expand its influence into the pacific and so that's what they did they cooked up a pretense under the the cover of the spanish-american war uh in which they seized the philippines used hawaii as the staging area for not only the spanish-american war which was fairly short-lived it was just a few weeks long but after that ensued a four or five year battle with the filipinos who thought that they were being liberated but the united states then announced that they were in indeed being colonized now by the united states so the filipinos took up arms and they fought a battle that lasted about five years uh roughly 250 000 at least 250 000 filipinos died in that war and about 5 000 americans died in that war but that was the test that was the pattern that was beginning to take place was the united states decided and they were that or used hawaii as the staging area for for its reach into the pacific and that is where it all started uh with the taking of the hawaiian islands and the establishment of military bases in the hawaiian islands so uh after that of course there were a number of different wars in which the hawaiian islands were involved mainly as a staging area however world war ii of course hawaii became a major target and the bombing of pearl harbor uh that day of infamy is is very very um well remembered but the thing that most people don't realize what that was that japan was out to the us fleet that was harbored in at pearl harbor which is still where the u.s street is harbored today by the way but uh the the thing was a strategic move in the part of japan to uh to to american uh military forces in the pacific uh and and that's what occurred in pearl harbor so at this point the the japanese attack was not against of course the hawaiian islands it was against the military installations in the hawaiian islands and that has been the case ever since so hawaii has been the main military outpost it is the largest um military command in the world so um and that is headquartered in honolulu but what has happened over the years is that the hawaiian islands or particularly pearl harbor and the military bases located on oahu are still the prime target for any enemy of the united states so the benefit of having the united states military here uh is far reduced compared to the threat that it is to the people of the hawaiian islands and we had an incident that happened in um january 2018 i believe uh in which there was a false alarm there was a missile alert that went out through everyone's cell phone which said that there was an incoming missile and it was at the point where the words were being exchanged between north korea and the united states the belligerent words and so it was a highly uh plausible attacker from a nuclear attack from from north korea that's what everyone assumed and so everyone panicked now it took about 40 minutes for the all clear signal to to sound that there wasn't an attack but in the meantime what was exposed was that the united states has not made any preparation whatsoever to protect the civilian populations of hawaii against a nuclear attack or against any kind of that that attack so so we are in the midst of or we are a big red x in the middle of the pacific for for any enemy of the united states to attack now the level of warfare of course has increased tremendously from world war ii from december 7 1941 where that that was a target that the japan sent in is its fleet of bombers and specifically bombed the military targets today a nuclear weapon one nuclear weapon detonated a couple of miles or mile up above the island of oahu would decimate the entire island and annihilate the entire population whether they're civilian or military and so this is the level of threat that we are facing today much much greater than what we faced in 1941 or even since um so this is why we're calling for the demilitarization of the pacific and where it is a similar situation with okinawa and with guam um and we do not want to be wrapped up in this uh inter international global bullying on the part of big countries with big weapons because we are at this point put a tremendous risk of on not only our lives but our existence the existence of our nation so the hawaiian kingdom is for calling the united states to withdraw completely from the hawaiian islands and we want to to do this in a peaceful manner in a manner in which the united states realize that they need to withdraw from foreign soil our soil and that it is our our call to make the hawaiian kingdom needs to make the call as to whether or not we want any kind of military u.s military or foreign military presence in our islands uh so this is where we stand we are um calling upon the united states to return the hawaiian islands or actually to back off and to um uh we we are asserting our claim to the hawaiian islands to uh to determine for ourselves the uh how our we should be governed as well as how what policies we should have uh in the future in the area of international relations so thank you very much for this time i i hope that you have been educated a little bit about our situation uh and i would like to hear again from the other members of this family mahalo nui aloha