A clear message on the Kwajalein issue

To U.S. Ambassador Greta Morris
U.S. Embassy, Majuro
Marshall Islands

In several public pronouncements, including statements in the Marshall Islands Journal, you have taken the public stance that you and your government believe that the MOURA under Compact II provides sufficient legal basis for and assurance of the continued use of Kwajalein beyond 2016. You have been adamant on this in spite of numerous meetings with you, prior to and after Compact II went into effect. During those meetings, our representatives have tried to explain to you and your advisors that we do not agree to the extension of the Kwajalein Land Use Agreement and the Marshallese Constitutional provisions that are at odds with your assumptions.

It may very well be that those of us who wrote our Constitution and adopted it in plebiscite did not understand fully the fundamentals of law governing the taking of land in our own country. But it could very well be that it is you who does not understand our position. Nowhere in our Constitution is there a provision I am aware of that states that the United States of America does not have to abide by our laws. I shall try to reiterate once again what we have apparently been unsuccessful in conveying to you and your government.

Our Constitution prohibits the taking of land without the consent of the owners of the land and fair compensation. The RMI government owns no land. For the legitimate use of Kwajalein beyond 2016, a Land Use Agreement between the RMI and the people of Kwajalein is required by law and by the Constitution. No such agreement exists and we have proclaimed our intention not to agree to a new one and to return to our lands in 2016. Your condescending public statements ignoring that reality go beyond acceptable standards of international relations and, to us, reflect systematic taunting on the part of a powerful partner bullying a less powerful one. So pervasive is your attitude among other American representatives on our country that now an army colonel on temporary duty to oversee housekeeping chores there calls Kwajalein “my island!”

You have never missed an opportunity to state that you have the right to the use of Kwajalein beyond the life of the lease under which you now occupy our lands. Is it your position and that of your government that you will ignore the laws and Constitution of our land and take Kwajalein without the landowners’ consent? Is it your position and that of your government that you will simply deny the existence of our Constitution and take land which belongs neither to you nor the government of the RMI because that is what you were promised by people who have no rights to those lands?

Knowing that the RMI possesses no rights to land in Kwajalein, yet claiming you have the right to remain there beyond 2016 is a remarkable display of colonial audacity. It is one thing to dress up Compact II as a guarantee of Kwajalein use rights when you needed to get this lopsided agreement through your own Congressional approval processes. We were surprised to find even the venerable Heritage Foundation a part of this gross misrepresentation of facts. If your government negotiators found it useful for their own purposes to be duplicitous with their own Congress in their presentation of Compact II, that is your business. But riding roughshod over our own Marshallese Constitutional processes to force that injustice upon our people is outrageous!

Your government has done similar things to us to in the past. The taking of Kili without compensation and handing it over to the people of Bikini in partial compensation for the nuclear obliteration of land in Bikini is a glowing example. Even your straight-faced recollection on BRAVO day last year of the nuclear insult your government perpetrated upon our people was quite remarkable, considering all the facts now known and widely disseminated about what really happened. Stonewalling those issues like what you are doing with the Kwajalein issue will not solve them. These issues aggravate an already grave and sensitive wound in our shaky relationship.

You take Marshallese land without compensation and use it to pay your debts to other Marshallese people whose lands and livelihood you have destroyed. While you abused us during the Trusteeship period, what you do now is even more acrimonious and unjust. You are threatening a sovereign nation. Your threat is not so veiled this time. And while it is not surprising, considering what you are doing in other parts of the world, we are not afraid to stand up to you and your might. We have legally confronted you before and we shall do it again to protect our homelands and assert our inalienable rights. While you may believe otherwise, we do not subscribe to your world policy that “Might makes right.” What are you going to tell our elders, our children and grandchildren? That it is the “will of God” that you take Kwajalein and that “everything is in God’s hands?”

Make no mistake about our physical and spiritual ties to our lands. Our forefathers fought and died to provide us with this peaceful home, sovereign and free. Our right to live here peacefully and to pass to it on to our heirs, whole and intact, is a fundamental right you and your government cannot take away. We have been your friends for the longest time in spite of the outrageous things your government has done to us. But there comes a time when even friends must draw the line.

Madam Ambassador, it appears hypocritical on the one hand that the United States is losing thousands of American lives and continues to put at risk American and Marshallese lives to defend the cause of freedom and to inaugurate a new constitution and establish democracy in Iraq, while on the other hand, your government is undermining the very foundation of our Marshallese constitutional democracy.

You now have as accurate a presentation as possible of the views of the Mojen of Jeimata, its elders and those who belongs. If there is something that we do not understand about your views regarding our relationship and your intentions for the future, please enlighten us. But threatening us as if we are just grass for the American elephants to tramp on does not augur well for a mutually beneficial tomorrow.

Respectfully yours,

Iroijlaplap Imata Kabua
Majuro