By Pacific Island Times News Staff
A Guam-based law firm has filed charges of human rights abuse against the U.S. military, alleging violations of Chamoru people's indigenous rights to self-determination and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
The Blue Ocean Law filed the complaint before the Special Rapporteur
on behalf of the community group Prutehi Litekyan: Save Ritidian.
The submission follows an August 2020 complaint filed with Francisco C. Tzay, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples. In January 2021, in response to that submission, three Special Rapporteurs—including David R. Boyd, the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, and Marcos A. Orellana, the Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights—issued a joint allegation letter to the U.S. military expressing serious concerns over its ongoing military buildup of Guam.
In a letter signed by all three UN officials, they said:
“[T]he Chamorro people have not provided their free, prior and informed consent in connection with the ongoing expansion of U.S. military bases and its accompanying increase in personnel on Guam. The military escalation risks increased contamination to the drinking water, loss of wildlife and biodiversity, irreversible damage of their traditional lands, territories, and resources; loss of traditional livelihoods, cultural sites and heritage and threatens the physical and cultural survival of the Chamorro.”
According to Prutehi, the intervening years have seen the United States only intensify its militarization of Guam, resulting in deepening and increasingly irreparable harm to land and sea as well as the island’s indigenous people.
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These actions include installing a new missile defense system in preparation for combat with U.S. adversaries in the region; bringing thousands of new personnel to Guam, resulting in a population increase that the island’s civilian infrastructure is unable to support; constructing and commencing operation of a large-scale live-fire training range complex adjacent to sacred sites, critical habitat, and the island’s only freshwater resource; engaging in dangerous open fire and open burn practices that imperil environmental and human health; and making Guam’s territory available for the storage of Singapore’s fighter jets and other military materials.
“The military has shown deep disdain for the rule of law, and in the process has put our people in grave danger,” said Jessica Nangauta, a board member of Prutehi.
“That is why we have requested the intervention of the Special Rapporteur. That is why we have asked him to come to Guam. He should see for himself the many ways in which the military is proceeding with its buildup to the detriment to our people’s health and wellbeing.”
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