2008 - Volume 11 Number 6
The Chamoru people of Guam are desperate. They have lost their land. They have lost their right to govern themselves. They have lost many of their own people to cancers due to the high contamination of the land.
They feel abandoned by the United Nations which has not upheld its own protocols and conventions. They have lost their resources and public utilities to privatisation. This indigenous culture will die rapidly without action. The death of culture and the increasing death rate of the people due to poverty and sickness amount to ‘ethnic cleansing’.
The US presence with its massive ecological and military footprint threatens the people of Guam in a number of ways: their culture, their language, their health, their livelihood and indeed their very existence. Being where they are, the people of this tiny island are directly threatened in the event of a military strike in the region.