Editorials
Thursday, September 10, 1998

Assaults by patients
must be addressed

ASSAULTS on staff employees by patients at Hawaii State Hospital are reportedly increasing. Governor Cayetano met this week with hospital nurses and heard their complaints first hand. The chief of the state Health Department's Adult Mental Health Division claims that the situation has been blown out of proportion, but further inquiry seems warranted.

Randy Perreira, field services officer for the Hawaii Government Employees Association, said one employee suffered a broken jaw when punched by a patient, and there have been other incidents. He said data given to the union by the nurses show an increase in verbal and physical assaults and injuries.

At the meeting with Cayetano, Perreira said, nurses cited concerns about staff safety and "inconsistent direction from the administration."

In an indirect slap at the Health Department, Perreira said the recently fired administrator of the Kaneohe institution, Marvin St. Clair, introduced measures to ensure staff safety after he took over in March 1995. St. Clair, who criticized the University of Hawaii psychiatric program before leaving, has been credited with improvements to bring the hospital into compliance with federal standards.

Some nurses say the increase in assaults is related to a new rehabilitation program. Division chief Linda Fox said the state is aware of the concerns and has provided additional support as needed for the program. "The important picture is that it is stabilizing and settling, which is very different from the way nurses are reporting it," Fox said. If so, why are the nurses complaining?

The State Hospital has had a troubled history, but seemed to be making progress with the construction of a new facility and other improvements. If assaults on the hospital staff by patients have increased, the problem must be promptly addressed.

Chinese repression

IT was a minor incident, but it told the truth about China as no amount of rhetoric could have. A dissident's wife waiting to meet the United Nations high commissioner for human rights at a Beijing hotel was dragged away by plainclothes police and hotel security.

Chu Hailan was waiting to request help from the commissioner, Mary Robinson, in seeking the release of her dissident husband, who is sick. Chu said later that she was beaten while in the hotel and then taken to a police station. Eight hours later she was released. A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said Chu had been blocking the entrance to the hotel and was disorderly. Sure she was.

Chu's husband is Liu Nianchun, a campaigner for labor rights. One of China's most prominent jailed dissidents, he has been in detention for more than three years without trial. Chu has been seeking a medical parole for treatment of high blood pressure and stomach problems.

The incident provided a brief glimpse of the reality of repression in China. The U.N. Human Rights Commission, which sets policy for Robinson's office, has repeatedly criticized China's treatment of dissidents and Tibetans supporting independence.

Robinson, the former president of the Irish Republic, has pressed Chinese officials about meeting a six-month-old pledge to sign the U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. She hoped to end the confrontation over human rights between China and the U.N., but this was hardly an auspicious beginning.

Smear campaign

IT takes a lot of guts to criticize a president who retains his popularity even in the wake of a scandal, especially when any badmouthing of him may lead to a counterattack by his supporters. This appears to be the case with Indiana Rep. Dan Burton, who has questioned President Clinton's integrity and who once called him a "scumbag."

Now the conservative Republican is in the headlines himself, after reports surfaced that Burton fathered a child from an extramarital affair in the early 1980s. Burton admitted to the incident, said his wife had been aware of it and noted that he has paid child support to the woman for several years. But he also accused Clinton supporters of bringing the story out into the open, which the White House and the Indianapolis newspaper that broke the story denied.

The irony is that Burton's criticism of Clinton focused on his fund-raising tactics, not on the president's admitted sexual relationship with a former White House intern. Yet Burton's past indiscretions are now being used against him. If not by the president's supporters, then whom?

Former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos predicted that critics of the president would soon find themselves under fire, to undermine their credibility and put them on the defensive. This unsavory tactic feeds the public's perception that all politicians are two-faced, play dirty and have something to hide in a capital growing more sleazy by the second.

No Hawaii spaceport

THE state's decision to bow out of competition with 17 other states for the spaceport for the next generation space shuttle is understandable. Unlike some other states, Hawaii has no existing facility, such as closed military airfields in remote areas, that could meet the requirements for the spaceport.

Announcement of the decision recalls the unsuccessful attempt of the Waihee administration to develop a commercial satellite-launching facility in the Kau district of the Big Island. That project was dropped in the face of community opposition. It had a potential to generate jobs and put Hawaii in the space age -- another missed opportunity.

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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