Editorials
Monday, June 29, 1998

Legislature should
clarify lap-dancing law

THE state Supreme Court has given clearance for prosecutors to seek prostitution convictions against nightclubs that allow strip dancers to engage in the sensual entertainment known as lap dancing. City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle has had the good sense to prosecute only what everyone recognizes to be prostitution -- sexual intercourse for pay. He and other prosecutors should maintain that policy until the Legislature has an opportunity to clarify the law.

Under state law, prostitution includes "sexual contact" with another person for a fee, even if what actually is being touched is clothing. In lap dancing at Honolulu nightclubs, female dancers wiggle their scantily clad or nude derrieres on the laps of fully clothed men. Legislators may consider such behavior offensive enough to be made illegal, but it should not be regarded as prostitution. However, as the high court reads the language of the law, lap dancing is prostitution.

Carl Richie, who ran an adult entertainment business on Kauai, was convicted by a Kauai jury two years ago of promoting prostitution and racketeering for having his dancers engage in lap dancing. After public criticism of the severity of his 15-year prison sentence, he received early parole in May and was released after 2-1/2 years in prison. The Supreme Court overturned Richie's racketeering conviction but upheld the prostitution conviction.

However, Justice Mario Ramil, who wrote the court's opinion, suggested the Legislature might want to change the law to redefine "sexual contact" or even eliminate it as a basis for prostitution. Legislators should act to eliminate what the court recognizes to be bad law that it had no choice but to interpret as it did.

N. Ireland elections

THE path to peace in Northern Ireland is still slippery. Elections to the 108-seat Belfast Assembly, the legislative body envisioned by the peace accords approved in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic in April, have produced an Assembly so narrowly divided that it could be paralyzed. The Assembly is supposed to implement key elements of the peace agreement, including the nomination of a 12-member administration of Protestants and Catholics. Assembly decisions must have the approval of majorities of both Protestant and Catholic members.

The election results showed strong support by the electorate for moderate Catholics but wide divisions within the pro-British Protestant majority.

Final results showed that just enough supporters of the peace accord were elected to make the new government work. David Trimble, leader of the principal pro-British Protestant party, was left in position to become the de facto prime minister. But the vote was too close for Trimble's comfort. His party remains bitterly divided over his support for the accord.

To Trimble's disappointment, exactly the same number of anti-agreement Protestants, 28, will be seated in Assembly as supporters of the pact. Trimble appealed to his party to stop "inflicting damage on itself by squabbling in public" over the merits of the accord.

The elections showed how tenuous support for the pact is among the Ulster Protestants, who have resisted absorption into the Irish Republic for most of this century in a struggle often punctuated with terrorism on both sides. Although the accords do not alter Northern Ireland's status in a fundamental way, they represent an attempt at conciliation that many Protestants regard with distrust. The ancient hatreds underlying this dispute still fester. The Belfast Assembly's future may be a stormy and frustrating one.

Japanese atrocities

THE United States government got this one very, very wrong. The Immigration Service stopped Yoshio Shinozuka on arrival at Chicago and forced him to return to Japan. Shinozuka is a veteran of World War II and a suspected war criminal, a member of a unit that conducted biological experiments on prisoners of war and civilians.

What's wrong with turning him away? Doesn't it show that the watch list system for barring war criminals is working?

Not if you look closer. Shinozuka had planned to give talks in the United States on atrocities committed by Japan during its invasion of China. A colleague, Shiro Azuma, who was to join Shinozuka on the tour, became ill and stayed behind in Japan.

Since World War II, Azuma and Shinozuka have become well known for their efforts to disseminate the facts about Japanese atrocities. Shinozuka has admitted helping Japanese army doctors test biological weapons by infecting Chinese prisoners with deadly diseases, while expressing regret for his involvement. Azuma was to describe the so-called Rape of Nanking, the most notorious Japanese atrocity of the era, in which thousands of civilians were slaughtered.

Japan to this day has been reluctant to admit the existence of these atrocities. Many Japanese still think their country was justified in its role in the war and prefer to think of Japan as a victim, not an aggressor, because of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Azuma and Shinozuka are doing important work by trying to get the Japanese to accept the disagreeable truth of history. To deny either of them entry to the United States because they are on a war-criminal watch list is a travesty. The U.S. should be doing everything in its power to encourage them.

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Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor