Critics of Faleomavaega Visit to Hmong Camp Persist

Faleomavaega’s travel blitz covering Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Western Pacific over the past six weeks has been so truly breathtaking in his scope it is difficult to remember that one of his first stops was Laos, where he pronounced returning Hmong refugees free from persecution in their repatriation camp outside the capital. Early on he was denounced for turning a blind eye to the real situation and even though he is long gone and on to other issues, the criticism persists.

However, that testimony has not pacified many observers concerned about the status of the recently repatriated Hmong. Writing for Worldnet Daily, Anthony C. LoBaido says Faleomavaega’s “testimony has not pacified many observers concerned about the status of the recently repatriated Hmong.”

LoBaido notes that Amnesty International contends Thailand's deportation of the Hmong "violated [Thailand's] obligations under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which provides that state parties must not send people to countries where they risk torture. The government also claimed, after holding them [the Hmong] for three years in arbitrary detention in constant fear of forcible return, that the Hmong agreed to return to Laos voluntarily. In fact, the Thai authorities told them that they would be resettled to third countries only if they first agreed to go back to Laos."

The U.S. ambassador to Thailand wrote in the Bangkok Post that "All the refugees we interviewed in Nong Khai told us on December 28th, that they did not wish to return to Laos, clearly indicating that the return was involuntary. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was available to consider referrals of individuals from this community. This was clearly articulated repeatedly by U.S. officials. Both the UNHCR and the Royal Thai Government had, indeed, determined that many among this population were in need of protection. And the United States, along with many other countries, stood ready to provide third-country resettlement as an option, but this course was not allowed."

Like the People’s Republic of China and Vietnam, two other governments Faleomavaega likes to champion, Laos is a Communist dictatorship. One has to wonder what it is about communist dictatorships that Faleomavaega finds so appealing, especially when so many other people see things that seem to escape his attention.

The complete Worldnet story can be found at http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=124605.

We are not holding our breath that Samoa News to cover this continuing story or anything else about his travel. At this point, we would settle for the paper to simplyh inform its readers that over the past six weeks, the delegate has visited Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Morocco, Spain, Austria and Palau in three separate junkets, with very little time in Washington, which, supposedly, is his duty station.

Faleomavaega in Travel Frenzy; Voters Unaware

Once again, we have to use the internet and other methods to find out what is or is not going on in Washington or other parts of the world as it involves American Samoa or our leaders because Samoa News, the primary source of information on this island, DOES NOT INFORM ITS READERS.

Oh yes, we are getting a blow-by-blow report on the trial and now jury deliberations of our lt. governor and one of our senators, but the Governor is in Washington for a whole bunch of important meetings, including the National Governors’ Conference, the Pacific Basin Development Council, the Coral Reef Task Force, congressional hearings and who knows what else. This week all the territorial governors are in DC because of the NGA meeting, which includes a meeting with the President and a dinner at the White House. So a lot of other organizations hold their meetings (and congressional hearings) to take advantage of everyone being there.

Therefore, this week over the years has become one of the busiest and most important for island officials. Has Samoa News ever told us that? No. Will they tell us what is going on this week? Doubtful. Most likely they will wait for the governor’s return and the issuance of a press release. Or, if the governor doesn’t hand one out, they will wait for his radio report to the people, take notes from that and write a story about the radio program. Seriously.

And with this week being as important as it is, all the island delegates in Congress can be expected to be in place, right? Most will be. How about American Samoa? After all, Faleomavaega has his “crucial” ASPIRE bill in the works. You would think he would want to take this opportunity to brief the governor and enlist his support to get the bill moving. You would think he also would want to accompany the governor to the PBDC and Coral Reef meetings so he can follow up with initiatives in Congress. You would think he would want to partipate in an oversight hearing by a subcommittee which he is the senior member of.

Then there is the matter of Faleomavaega’s quite public invitation to President Obama to visit American Samoa on his way back from Australia, which he will visit after Guam and Indonesia next month. Surely he will want to coordinate efforts with his governor, since the governor will be seeing the President twice, once at a White House dinner and again the next day at a White House meeting with governors only. Needless to say, this is the best opportunity to press the case for a stop, which is optional at best since Air Force 1 does not need to refuel between Australia and the U.S. Mainland.

Now, we don’t have any more access to information than anyone else, so we can only speculate. But we can do some fundamental calculations based on time, distance, airplane speeds and access to information on the internet, the same information everyone else has, including Samoa News. In a February 19 CSCE press release, Faleomavaega was quoted making a statement at an interparliamentary meeting in Vienna, Austria that day. The National Governors’ meeting starts Feb. 20 and ends Feb. 22.

Other meetings follow all this week, including two hearings conducted by the House insular subcommittee. One of those hearings, at which the governor surely will testify, is on Feb. 24. It is the Oversight Hearing on the President's Fiscal Year 2011 budget requests for the Office of Insular Affairs. That is the office that funds our ASG operating budget and that is also the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over Faleomavaega’s ASPIRE bill that has gone nowhere since the hearing on it last fall. This is also the chance to brief Congress on the tsunami last September and the urgent need for additional federal assistance. Under the circumstances, no hearing could be more crucial to us.

Yet, I have a PINA news story that says Faleomavaega has accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a Tuna Policy Summit in Palau on February 25. Given the distance to Palau from Washington and adding the international dateline as a factor, it is difficult to see how Faleomavaega can attend two House hearings on the 24th and give a speech in Koror on the 25th. We will be watching the hearings on the internet to see if he is there. It is also hard to imagine he got back to Washington from Vienna in time to have any serious meetings with the governor before the governor went off to be with the president on February 21 and 22.

If there is a verdict in the lt. governor’s trial, you can bet that the Samoa News special correspondent covering the trial will have that result flashed back to Samoa News immediately but while he is waiting, do not expect him to cover any of what I have recounted above. Even if he did file a story, you could bet that Faleomavaega’s sister-in-law, who is one of the editors, would be certain that its readers remained ignorant of their delegate’s outright dereliction of duty. All they know is that he has invited Obama to American Samoa. Never mind whether Obama actually shows up. The fact that Faleomaveaga invited him proves to them how influential he is. It’s not results that count and it’s not even effort that counts. It’s perception of effort is all that matters. Give us a break.

Eni to Use Palau to Test influence

Before a stunned audience at the Department of the Interior’s annual insular investment in Honolulu last week, Faleomavaega announced he would undertake an effort to move primary congressional jurisdiction from the House Committee on Natural Resources to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In effect, this move, if successful, would strip Palau issues from the Natural Resources subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife, on which Eni sits as a senior majority member, to the Foreign Affairs Asia, Pacific and Global Environment subcommittee that he chairs.

Since the House would be unlikely to move jurisdiction over Palau from Natural Resources to Foreign Affairs without moving jurisdiction for the other Freely Associated States at the same time, Eni is making a real power play that has enormous ramifications for him. Were he to succeed, it would amount to a major humiliation for Madeleine Bordallo (D), his fellow delegate from Guam who chairs the insular panel, and would send chills up and down the spine of State Department officials, who prefer to handle diplomatic relations with the Micronesian states but not administer funds for them.

In light of Eni’s sneak attack, ironically launched in Honolulu, it also will be interesting to see just how enthusiastic Bordallo will be to look after American Samoa’s interests in her subcommittee from now on. After subcommittee assignments were announced following last November’s election, Eni was quoted in the news as saying that now that Madeleine was positioned to protect territorial interests for everyone on Natural Resources, it gave him wide berth to do the same on the Asia-Pacific subcommittee. Since his subcommittee has not a stitch of responsibility for territorial issues, of course his assertion is laughable on the face of it. Nonetheless, Samoa News swallowed hook, line and sinker his contention that his keeping an eye on U.S. foreign policy in the region somehow would benefit American Samoa and he would not need to be all that vigilant on Natural Resources.

Were he not to succeed in this bold move against Bordallo, Eni would suffer another major humiliation in Washington, coming hard on the heels of his recent embarrassment at the hands of his colleagues on his unsuccessful attempt to change the wording of a House Resolution on Taiwan. Of course, just as in the case of the Taiwan issue, any further loss of Eni's prestige and influence likely would be confined to Washington--which is important enough, since that is his theater of operation--because it is likely the major media outlet at home, Samoa News, will continue to suppress news unfavorable to its knight in shining armor. As noted here before, Eni’s (whose real family name is Hunkin) sister-in-law, Teri Hunkin, is an editor at the paper.

Meanwhile, speaking of the Taiwan issue, some critics have wondered if Eni were a witting front man for Beijing on Taiwan matters, with one blogger astutely noting that the roving congressman also was caught toasting Communist strongman Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi in December, 2007. As we have pointed out, Eni was an early member of the radical leftist Congressional Progressive Caucus founded by enrolled Socialist then-congressman Bernie Sanders in the early 1990s and only dropped his membership quietly three years ago during a close election campaign after he was criticized publicly for his association. Eni is decidedly to the left of not only the population at large but his own Mormon political base.

Now some other blogs also are beginning to question whether he is a communist. The Doctor Bulldog and Ronin Blog, for example, republished from TyskNews.com a list of “known socialists and commies in our government” that included Eni, although TyskNews has updated the list and dropped him. The spotlight is beginning to shine on congressional socialists because of rising conservative concern that Obama Administration budget proposals are driving the government in the direction of socialism.

Whether or not he is a socialist or a closet communist, there is no doubt that Eni is to the left of center and much more liberal than his constituency. There also is rising concern here that his support of Big Labor’s Check Card proposal will open the door to unionization of our tuna canneries. Coupled with the minimum wage increase that has been forced upon the islands, the days of the canneries could be severely numbered.

Are these seemingly separate questions somehow connected? From seizing control of Micronesia policy to minimum wage, card check and his secret amendment to permit foreign bottoms a backdoor way to fish in South Pacific EEZs, we think they may be. As events play out, we think the dots will begin to connect. Readers here will know what is happening but the general public here will remain clueless, thanks to media suppression of the news.