Marshall Islands defence provisions could “fairly easily” be considered to run against the nuclear-free treaty that they are now a signatory to, says a veteran Pacific journalist and editor.

The South Pacific’s nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament treaty, known as the Treaty of Rarotonga, was signed in Majuro last week during the observance of Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day.

RNZ Pacific’s Marshall Islands correspondent Giff Johnson, who is also editor of the weekly newspaper Marshall Islands Journal, said many people assumed the Compact of Free Association — which gives the US military access to the island nation — was in conflict with the treaty.

However, Johnson said the signing of the treaty was only the first step.

“The US said there was no issue with the Marshall Islands signing the treaty because that does not bring the treaty into force,” he said.

“I would expect that there would not be a move to ratify the treaty soon . . . with the current situation in Washington this is going to be kicked down the road a bit.”

He said the US military routinely brought in naval vessels and planes into the Marshall Islands.

“Essentially, the US policy neither confirms nor denies the presence of nuclear weapons on board aircraft or vessels or whether they’re nuclear powered.

‘Clearly spelled out defence’
“The US is allowed to carry out its responsibility which is very clearly spelled out to defend and provide defence for the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.

“So yes, I think you could fairly easily make the case that the activity at Kwajalein and the compact’s defence provisions do run foul of the spirit of a nuclear-free treaty.”

Johnson said the US and the Marshall Islands would need to work out how it would deliver its defence and security including the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defence Test Site, where weapon systems are routinely tested on Kwajalein Atoll.

Meanwhile, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior will be visiting the Marshall Islands next week to support the government on gathering data to support further nuclear compensation.

“What we are hoping to do is provide that independent science that currently is not in the Marshall Islands,” the organisation’s Pacific lead Shiva Gounden told RNZ Pacific Waves.

“Most of the science that happens in on the island is mostly been funded or taken control by the US government and the Marshallese people, rightly so, do not trust that data. Do not trust that sample collection.”

Top-secret lab study
The Micronesian nation experienced 67 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination.

In 2017, the Marshall Islands government created the National Nuclear Commission to coordinate efforts to address the impacts from testing.

Gounden said Project 4.1 — which was the top-secret medical lab study on the effects of radiation on human bodies — has caused distrust of US data.

“The Marshallese people do not trust any scientific data or science coming out from the US,” he said.

“So they have asked us to see if we can assist in gathering samples and collecting data that is independent from the US that could assist in at least giving them a clear picture of what’s happening right now in those atolls.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Powerful waves, driven by offshore storm surges, hit an important United States military installation in the Marshall Islands on Saturday night, causing damage and resulting in the evacuation of all “non-mission personnel” from the island.

Flooding caused by the waves also hit two airports at Ailinglaplap Atoll, leaving rocks, coral and debris in their wake, keeping those airports closed for weeks.

Other islands reported flooding and moderate damage.

The US Army in a statement yesterdy afternoon that at approximately 9pm on January 20, “a series of weather-induced waves hit Roi-Namur which caused significant flooding in the northern portions of the island”.

A video circulating from Roi-Namur, an island at the northern end of Kwajalein Atoll, shows an approximately one-metre wave hitting the Army’s dining hall, breaking down doors, knocking people down and washing them from outside into the facility.

Roi-Namur houses the US Army’s most sophisticated space-tracking equipment as part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site.

A second follow-up wave, caught on video, was higher, possibly as high as one-and-a-half metres, washing through the dining hall.

No deaths reported
No deaths were reported at Roi-Namur, but one person was being treated for injuries at the clinic on Kwajalein Island, the base headquarters.

“One individual sustained injuries to lower extremities and is currently being seen at the Kwaj Clinic,” said Army public affairs officer Mike Brantley. “He is in stable condition.”

Tomorrow the new RMI administration gets sworn in and they are inheriting multiple problems just over this past weekend alone: 30+ hours of power outages here in Majuro, water distribution problems, and king tide floodings in Ailinlaplap and Roi Namur pic.twitter.com/wCgFVyF1MM

— Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner (@kathykijiner) January 21, 2024

The Army said in a statement on Sunday that US Army Garrison-Kwajalein Atoll and mission partners had established an Emergency Operations Cell to oversee and coordinate all recovery efforts.

“We have accountability of all employees (US and Marshall Islands) and evacuated all non-mission essential personnel to Kwajalein.”

Kwajalein Island is the missile testing range headquarters and is located about 64 km to the south at the other end of the atoll.

“All Roi residents will remain on Kwajalein until basic services can be restored on Roi,” the Army said. “Recovery efforts will be our top priority.”

On Sunday, the Marshall Islands National Weather Service issued a mass text message alert saying: “Northern swells may cause inundation in northern atolls and north-facing shores. Hazardous conditions for swimming and sailing in small crafts due to crashing waves and stronger than usual currents due to swells.”

Damage assessment
An aerial damage assessment conducted by the Army on Sunday morning showed “how water inundation washed over the northwest side of the island (Roi-Namur), flooding at least one-third of it”, the Army said in a brief update Sunday morning.

“There is standing water on both sides of the north end of the runway and the first floors of all but two bachelors’ quarters.”

There was flooding in multiple buildings, including the Tradewinds Theater, the Army store, “and all of the automotive warehouse area”.

Remarkably, the small island of Santo, located 5 km away from Roi-Namur, which houses a Marshallese community of 1000, appeared to be unaffected by flooding, said Kwajalein Member of Parliament David Paul Sunday.

He said the Kwajalein Atoll local government had initiated a survey of all inhabited islands in Kwajalein to determine damage.

Kwajalein is the world’s largest atoll and has Marshallese communities on more than 10 islands.

Wave swells also seriously flooded islands in Ailinglaplap Atoll, tossing debris onto airfields at Woja and Jeh islands.

It likely will take weeks to clear the runways for air service to return. Kili Island, home of the displaced Bikini Islanders, also experienced flooding Saturday-Sunday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A pair of Chinese scam artists wanted to turn a radiation-soaked Pacific atoll into a future metropolis. They ended up in an American jail instead.

How they got there is an untold tale of international bribery and grifting that stretched to the very heart of the United Nations.

The stakes could scarcely have been higher for Hilda Heine, the former president of the Marshall Islands.

A new OCCRP investigation reveals details of how Chinese-born fraudsters Cary Yan and Gina Zhou paid more than US$1 million to UN diplomats to gain access to its headquarters in New York, before embarking on a controversial plan to set up an autonomous zone near an important US military facility in the Pacific Ocean.

For years, Hilda Heine’s remote archipelago nation of just 40,000 people was best known to the world for Cold War nuclear testing that left scores of its islands poisoned.

Sitting in the centre of the Pacific Ocean, the country was a strategic but forgotten US ally.

But the arrival of a couple of mysterious strangers threatened to change all that. With buckets of cash at their disposal, the Chinese pair, Cary Yan and Gina Zhou, had grand plans that could have thrust the Marshall Islands into the growing rivalry between China and the West, and perhaps fracture the country itself.

Public controversy
First proposed in 2017, while Heine was still president, Yan and Zhou’s idea raised public controversy.

With backing from foreign investors, the couple planned to rehabilitate one irradiated atoll, Rongelap, and turn it into a futuristic “digital special administrative region.”

The new city of artificial islands would include an aviation logistics center, wellness resorts, a gaming and entertainment zone, and foreign embassies.

Thanks in part to the liberal payment of bribes, Yan and Zhou had managed to gain the support of some of the Marshall Islands’ most powerful politicians. They then lobbied for a draft bill that would have given the proposed zone, known as the Rongelap Atoll Special Administrative Region (RASAR), its own separate courts and immigration laws.

Heine was opposed. The whole thing reeked of a Chinese effort to gain influence over the strategically located Marshall Islands, she told OCCRP.

The plan was unconstitutional and would have created a virtually “independent country” within the Marshall Islands’ borders, she said.

The new Chinese investor-backed zone would also have occupied a geographically sensitive spot just 200 km of open water away from Kwajalein Atoll, where the US Army runs facilities that test intercontinental ballistic missiles and track foreign rocket launches.

Became a target
But when President Heine argued against the draft law, she became a target herself. In November 2018, pro-RASAR politicians backed by Yan and Zhou pushed a no-confidence motion to remove her from power.

She survived by one vote.

Even then, the president said she had no idea who this influential duo really were. Although they seemed to be Chinese, they carried Marshall Islands passports, which  gave them visa free access to the United States. Nobody seemed to know how they had obtained them.

“We looked and looked and we couldn’t find when and how they got [the passports],” Heine said. “We didn’t know what their connections were or if they had any connections with the Chinese government.

“But of course we were suspicious.”

The plan came to an abrupt end in November 2020, when Yan and Zhou were arrested in Thailand on a US warrant. After being extradited to face trial in New York, they pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to bribe Marshallese officials.

Both were sentenced earlier this year. Zhou was deported to the Marshall Islands shortly after her sentencing, while Yan is due for release this November.

But although the federal case led to a brief burst of media attention, it left key questions unanswered.

Who really were Yan and Zhou? Who helped them in their audacious scheme? Were they simply crooks? Or were they also working to advance the interests of the Chinese government?

OCCRP spent nearly a year trying to find answers, conducting interviews around the world and poring through thousands of pages of documents.

What reporters uncovered was a story more bizarre — and with far broader implications — than first expected.

Aubrey Belford, Kevin G. Hall and Martin Young are investigative writers for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Covid-19 testing of Marshall Islanders in managed quarantine has seen the largest number test positive for covid-19 since managed repatriation started nearly two years ago.

Seven out of a repatriation group of 72 people tested positive for the coronavirus last Friday, according to a government announcement issued late Friday night.

All are in quarantine at the US Army base at Kwajalein Atoll. This repatriation group is the first to spend only three days in quarantine in Honolulu prior to departure to the Marshall Islands on Tuesday this week.

When the Marshall Islands first began allowing controlled entry to the country in June 2020, the government required two weeks quarantine in Honolulu followed by two weeks quarantine in the Marshall Islands — one of the strictest covid-19 prevention entry protocols in the world.

These strict quarantine requirements have kept the Marshall Islands covid-19 free.

“The seven positive tests represent new infections and these individuals do not pose an infectious threat to the community as they remain in secure and monitored quarantine on Kwajalein,” said Health Secretary Jack Niedenthal in statement released Friday night.

“All individuals remain asymptomatic or have mild symptoms and in addition to the protection provided by being vaccinated will also receive oral antiviral medication to prevent progression to severe forms of covid-19.”

Covid-19 prevention protocols
Marshall Islands covid-19 prevention protocols require that all people entering the country through its monthly controlled quarantine programme must be fully vaccinated and boosted. A 14-day quarantine is required.

However, due to the positive cases identified Friday, the 14-day period has been extended from Friday instead of from the group’s arrive on April 12.

“We’ve decided that every time someone tests positive in this group, the clock starts over at 14 days — so 14 days from now,” said Health Secretary Niedenthal.

“They get another test on day seven. If someone tests positive on day seven the clock starts again for 14 days.”

The seven positive cases identified Friday at Kwajalein brings to 14 the number of covid-19 positive cases in managed quarantine since mid-2020.

There has been no community transmission yet in the Marshall Islands, making it one of only a handful of countries globally to remain covid-19 free throughout the pandemic.

After more than a year of requiring two weeks of quarantine in Hawaii, with multiple covid-19 tests prior to departing to the Marshall Islands, government authorities reduced the Hawaii quarantine late last year to one week.

Hawai’i quarantine time reduced
With this group that went into quarantine last Friday in Honolulu, the Marshall Islands reduced its Hawai’i quarantine time to three days.

Two of the 74 people in quarantine in Hawai’i tested positive on their day-three tests and were not allowed to travel to the Marshall Islands.

These are the first border cases involving Marshall Islanders since November 2020. Three Americans in a separately managed Army repatriation group in January also tested positive for covid-19 in quarantine.

In January, as infections around the Pacific escalated due to spread of the omicron variant, Niedenthal warned that if the Marshall Islands got cases in quarantine, “we can’t afford any mistake. If people test positive in quarantine here, we have to be perfect (to prevent the spread)”.

Niedenthal noted that lapses in protocols governing quarantine operations in other Pacific islands led to border cases triggering community transmission.

Since it started managed quarantine operations in October 2020, the Ministry of Health and Human Services has required that all of the doctors, nurses and security personnel involved in the quarantine process live in the quarantine facility with each repatriation group as a way to prevent possible community spread in case a person tests positive during the quarantine.

That policy remains in effect with the current group in quarantine at Kwajalein.

No travel restrictions
“As these are border quarantine cases of covid-19, there are no restrictions of travel between Majuro and Kwajalein, and there are no travel restrictions between Kwajalein and neighbouring islands and between Ebeye and Kwajalein,” said the Health Secretary’s statement.

He also urged “all individuals aged five years and above (to get) fully vaccinated, which includes being boosted if eligible”.

The Ministry of Health and Human Services has provided booster shots as well as vaccinating people in the five to 11 age group since late last year.

Public health teams have been flying to remote outer islands to continue covid-19 vaccination services initially begun mid-last year to provide booster shots to adults, as well as vaccinate children.

Giff Johnson is editor of the Marshall Islands Journal. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The US Army ignored agreed-to covid prevention rules for entry into the Marshall Islands this week and the result was the first border cases of covid in the Marshall Islands in more than a year.

Three US Army personnel tested positive for covid soon after arrival at the US Army Garrison — Kwajalein Atoll (USAG-KA) Tuesday while starting a two-week quarantine period for entry into the country.

Despite record-breaking numbers of covid cases in Hawai’i and the US mainland over the past several weeks, driven largely by the omicron variant, the Army brought in the largest group ever to come to Kwajalein in the weekly US Army repatriation groups since it started the process in June 2020.

The group arrived Tuesday this week following a one-week quarantine in Hawai’i to undergo an additional two weeks of quarantine at the Kwajalein base.

Of the 37 base workers and their families now in quarantine, three tested positive for covid. On Wednesday, Army authorities informed Marshall Islands officials of the positive cases in this group.

These are known as “border cases”.

The Marshall Islands is one of the few countries globally that has never had community transmission of covid in the two years since the virus appeared.

‘Clearly broke the protocols’
The 37 people in this weekly Army group were allowed to board the military flight to Kwajalein from Honolulu without waiting for the results from a covid test, “which clearly broke the protocols jointly agreed to by National Disaster Committee (NDC) and USAG-KA,” said Chief Secretary Kino Kabua, who chairs the Marshall Islands National Disaster Committee.

A negative covid test is required for anyone to fly from Honolulu to the Marshall Islands.

A public statement issued by the Office of the Chief Secretary Wednesday said all three positive cases are showing no symptoms and are in quarantine and isolated from the community at Kwajalein.

There were no border cases in either Kwajalein or Majuro for 14 months preceding this week’s development. This is primarily because a quarantine period in Hawai’i — two weeks for unvaccinated individuals, one week if vaccinated — coupled with three covid tests prior to departure to the Marshall Islands has ensured no border cases in the Marshall Islands for an extended period.

Last week’s Army group saw one person bumped off the flight when they tested positive for covid prior to departure from Honolulu. But this protocol was not followed this week.

“NDC had discussions with the colonel on Wednesday who stated it was a procedural error on their part,” said Kabua.

“He conveyed it was unacceptable that the situation occurred and that he had already brought his entire team to rectify the problem, including pulling back the authority to authorise the flights to his level.”

Monitoring of test results
Kabua added: “We reiterated the importance of adhering to the joint protocols and discussed additional measures to enhance collaboration at the technical-working level, especially the monitoring of test results coming out from Honolulu.”

Prior to the discovery of the three border cases, the Ministry of Health earlier this week issued a call to temporarily halt all repatriation for one month in light of the explosion of covid cases in Hawai’i, the US mainland and the world during the past month.

Hawai’i has been reporting between 1500 and 3000 new covid cases daily over the past several weeks after having only 57 cases as recently as December 7. The United States set a new record with more than 500,000 cases a day earlier this week.

The recommendation to “pause” repatriation was the lead point in a “Ministry of Health Emergency Covid-19 Resolution” issued January 3.

There is currently one Marshall Islands repatriation group tentatively scheduled for January and the Army brings in groups of its workers weekly.

The ministry recommended using a one-month pause on repatriation groups to enhance health and community preparation for the possible introduction of covid-19 omicron into the community, including vaccination, boosters and updating National Emergency Operations Centre plans.

The ministry also called on the government to “mandate covid-19 vaccination for healthcare workers, front-liners, civil servants and school aged children, including booster doses”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. Giff Johnson is editor of the Marshall Islands Journal.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz