Barbers Point should try
to be more like Subic Bay

I have an idea about what to do with Barbers Point after it's returned to the state. We don't need another park. We need to find out how the mayor of the town adjoining Subic Bay in the Philippines got companies in the Far East to contract people in his country to manufacture their products.

Remember Subic Bay? The U.S. military bid it aloha some four years ago, leaving hundreds of Filipinos who had worked on the base to ponder their bleak future. Today, thanks to the mayor's tenacity, Subic is doing a bang-up job manufacturing products in the very buildings the military left behind. Why can't we?

We are getting Barbers back in 1998 with all the infrastructure in place. Buildings, roads, even a harbor near- by for shipping in materials and shipping out finished products.

Come on, do you really think we need another park? Aren't you tired of our fragile island economy being completely based on tourism, tired of reading the dreaded reports telling us that the latest tourist counts are down?

Wouldn't it be something to see a product saying Made in Hawaii instead of Japan or Taiwan?

Joan Kehaulani Schmidt
Kapolei

Battle for human rights
needs many more soldiers

Thank you for the wonderful June 6 article, "Exploited in Saipan sex bar, teen finds haven here," on our foster daughter, "Katrina." Her mother, who turned her over to us last November, agonized over it but she wanted to be sure that "Katrina" would live to see her 16th birthday.

The death threats could not be ignored. For this same reason, we had to turn her over to our compatriots in Hawaii.

The government of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands has yet to acknowledge that a grave crime was committed against this hapless young victim. No charges were brought forth. It took a labor lawyer from Seattle to even start her quest for justice.

With your help, our voices in the wilderness will be amplified. Someday, human rights and social justice will reign over the Marianas.

If you wish to join our small band of human rights and social justice advocates, please contact any member of the Filipino Coalition for Solidarity based in Honolulu, or contact me directly c/o We the People Movement, P. O. Box 1034, Agana, Guam, USA 96934, telephone (671) 471-8985 or (671) 649-7235, fax (671) 472-8989, e-mail: advocate@Kuentos.guam.net.

Eddie A. del Rosario
Agana, Guam

Northern Marianas
got unfair coverage

Congratulations for a masterful job in helping the Filipino Coalition for Solidarity further exploit "Katrina" in its effort to publicize the current campaign to remove the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands' (CNMI) local control of its immigration and labor policy (Star-Bulletin, June 6).

This "coalition" that claims to monitor human rights abuses in the CNMI from its 3,900-mile vantage point is the same organization that maintained two years ago that literal slavery existed in the CNMI. This is the organization that continues to recycle "documented" stories of CNMI labor abuses by former Hawaii resident Wendy Doromal, who hasn't even been here since 1995.

The only problem is that Doromal's idea of documentation is writing down allegations she hears, much the same method as is used by your reporter in this story. Those accused then stand convicted with no right of appeal.

Of course, real prosecutors can't work like this and one would hope that reporters would not as well. The pat, heart-wrenching stories often collapse in the face of some tough, skeptical questioning of both sides. Skepticism seems to be in short supply at the Star-Bulletin.

Mark M. Broadhurst
Public Information and
Protocol Officer
Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands

No longer a dog's life
for pets in quarantine

I was delighted to read that the animal quarantine period has been cut to 30 days. As a Hawaii resident who is living on the mainland, I am reassured to know that my dog will not have to spend 120 days in quarantine.

My dog has received an annual rabies vaccine since he was born, which my veterinarian tells me protects against this disease. Certainly more research into a test for the presence of rabies in animals is needed.

Leilani Ahina
Carbondale, Ill.
(Via the Internet)

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Same-sex archive

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