Charges of attempted murder levelled at two ethnic Chinese businessmen in the Marshall Islands have highlighted growing tension between locals and Chinese immigrants in the Pacific island nation.
Tensions over Chinese dominance of small and medium-sized businesses in the Marshall Islands are echoed in many parts of the Pacific.
Huang Peishu and Liang Shoujie were ordered last week to stand trial in the Marshall Islands for the attempted murder of off-duty police officer Tiem Tonko. Their lawyers claim they were beaten up by a group of local men.The pair pleaded not guilty on Thursday to attempted murder and other assault charges and were ordered to stand trial on August 24 in Majuro, the capital of the tiny nation of about 55,000 people.
There have been a number of cases of assault by Marshall Islanders against ethnic Chinese in the past, but this is the first time Chinese have faced serious assault charges against locals.
In a revenue-raising scheme also adopted by several other Pacific island countries in the 1990s, the Marshall Islands sold more than 2,000 passports. As a result, several hundred Chinese carrying Marshall Islands passports moved to Majuro to start businesses.
A recent survey published in the weekly Marshall Islands Journal showed that native-born Marshall Islanders now owned fewer than half of the 146 small and medium-sized business in Majuro.
Seventy-nine such businesses are owned by non-natives, almost all of whom are Chinese or Taiwanese and many of whom hold Marshall Islands citizenship after buying their passports.
"I've got nothing against foreigners coming in to do business, but Marshallese are not ready to compete at this level," said Charles Domnick, who owns several businesses, including a large construction firm, apartments and a restaurant.
Firms owned by native Marshall Islanders will soon become a small minority, he warned.
Similar tensions have arisen in other Pacific island nations, where ethnic Chinese are becoming more dominant in business.
In riots sparked by a political rally in Tonga in 2006, Chinese-owned businesses were one of the main targets of a rampage that left eight people dead and swathes of the central business district burned and looted.
In the Solomon Islands capital Honiara the same year, the Chinatown district and other Chinese businesses were razed in a riot, after lawmakers appointed an unpopular prime minister, Snyder Rini.
Prominent local Chinese businessmen were accused of giving money to Rini, which he allegedly used to bribe legislators for support.
Last year, attacks on Chinese shopkeepers in Papua New Guinea followed a protest march in the capital Port Moresby, where demonstrators complained about the number of Asians, especially Chinese, moving into business.
Chinese people have a long history in the region, having accompanied the first Europeans to settle on the Pacific Islands.
The early immigrants were absorbed into local communities readily and many island countries have sizeable populations of part-Chinese who trace their local roots back to the 19th century or earlier.
But a new wave of immigrants since China's opening to the world in the 1980s has created tensions in some island nations.
Passport sales by several island nations brought an influx of Chinese in the 1990s and more have arrived since, amid allegations of corruption among some immigration officials involved, in countries such as Papua New Guinea.
In the Marshall Islands case, prosecutors alleged Huang and Liang attacked the officer with a rock, machete and a metal stake after he stopped one of them for speeding.
But Chief Public Defender Russell Kun said Huang was beaten by a group of Marshall Islanders and sustained significantly worse injuries than Tonko. "Not one Marshallese has been charged with the assault on my client," Kun said. Despite his serious injuries, Huang was taken into custody and charged even though he was "way worse off than the policeman", Kun said.
"At the trial, it will be a different ball game altogether," he said.
AFP 04-27-10
