Testimony of Dr. Judith T. Won Pat, Speaker, Guam Legislature

Before the Fourth Committee, United Nations

October 3, 2011

Hafa Adai (Greetings!) your Excellency and distinguished members of the Committee. I am Dr. Judith T. Won Pat, a descendent of the CHamoru people. I serve as the elected speaker of the Guam Legislature.

On behalf of the People of Guam, I am here to respectfully petition this Committee and the United Nations General Assembly to act on ensuring that the fundamental rights of the CHamorus to freely act on determining their political status is not impeded or otherwise influenced by the administering power. It is through this exercise that the CHamoru people may finally determine for themselves their political destiny.

In the course of nearly five hundred years, the CHamoru people endured ethnic and cultural genocide, forced labor, religious, and political oppression by three different sovereign nations. For the past fifty years the CHamoru people, and other inhabitants of Guam, continue to bear witness to economic exploitation and political oppression by the incumbent administering power. As others have noted before me and as the scientific and historical record upholds, the CHamoru people had a long history of being a free and independent people prior to the arrival of the colonizers beginning in the sixteenth century.

The same record affirms that the existence of an ancient CHamoru people predates the arrival of other Testimony of Dr. Judith T. Won Pat, Speaker, Guam Legislature Before the Fourth Committee, United Nations, Pacific islanders in neighboring lands and that CHamoru Chiefs on Guam held law over the land before the kings of Europe. However, since the sixteenth century and the age of exploitation that came with it, the CHamoru people have not had the opportunity to fully implement a measure of full self-government that is free of outside rule or influence.

For the past five hundred years the CHamoru people have been subjugated by foreign powers to a state of forced colonialism. And on behalf of the CHamoru people, I come before this distinguished assembly of international representatives to appeal for your assistance in our latest step in the political evolution of Guam.

Self-determination is, after all, a fundamental inalienable right affirmed by the United Nations Charter. Assist the CHamoru people in bringing an end to the practice of colonialism in order that we may peaceably assemble and determine the political, economic, social, and cultural future of our people.

I Liheslaturan Guahan yan I Maga' lahen Guahan (The Guam Legislature and the Governor of Guam) stand united in safeguarding this fundamental right as espoused by the United Nations. We have jointly initiated campaigns that are meant to raise the social consciousness about CHamoru self-determination. More so, in the coming months both the executive and legislative branches would have set into motion, through local law, the necessary mechanisms in order for a full and meaningful exercise of our inalienable right of self-determination to occur on Guam.

It is time to signal to the world and to the administering power that protectionist laws shall not happen without our consent. It is time to formally act against any form of conditional representation to the administering power's congress, representation that is stripped of the one man one vote principle. It is time to stand up in objection to any system that sustains the practice of discrimination and segregation of public schools based on status. We must resign ourselves from having to abide by protectionist rules of a bygone era. More so, we must remove ourselves from that political status such as defined by the United Nations as being a ‘colony.'

Madame Chair, the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism (2001-2010) has passed. That decade was a commitment by the United Nations General Assembly to the examination and recognition of the need to eradicate colonialism. I call upon the Committee to set into motion by thoughtfully and boldly authoring resolution for adoption by the United Nations General Assembly that deems this decade as the Third and Final International Decade of Colonialism. May this Committee rise and cast light upon those nation states that willfully violate the foundational principles of this great assembly for it is no longer proper to recognize the abused and not the abuser.

Let us fashion an unorthodox approach in order that those subjected to the tyranny of colonization may have their redress.

I humbly submit the following steps for consideration by the Committee whose membership is comprised of free and equal peoples throughout the world: 1. Rebuke those who continue the practice of colonialism. 2. Dispatch a United Nations special mission to the Non-Self-Governing territory of Guam to provide information to the People of Guam on the role of the United Nations in the process of self-determination, on the legitimate political status options, and in observance of our CHamoru self-determination, without influence by the administering power, in order that the CHamoru people may finally act in full measure on the determination of political status. 3. Recognize Guam and other Non-Self-Governing Territories as member states to the United Nations.

i. Full membership not only affirms the principles of sovereignty of all colonized peoples it is an admonishment by the Committee and the United Nations General Assembly upon the administering powers for willfully absconding from war crimes, crimes of political oppression, and from their duty to implement the tenets as established by the United Nations, specifically those that call for an end to colonialism.

In closing, generations have passed without peaceful resolution of the political status of the colonized People of Guam. On behalf of the CHamoru people, I respectfully request for the Committee to act in order that we may not bear witness the passing of yet another generation without having brought resolution to CHamoru self-determination. For it is my fear, given the fait accompli of the administering power's colonialist strategy of inaction, that the reverse will hold true: through the inertia of inaction on the part of the colonizer, we may witness the eradication not of colonization but of the identity and political will of the colonized. Madame Chair and distinguished members, if we must be anything, let us be just in our ways in order that our actions, more than just our words, serve as a beacon of hope-that symbolic light of justice-that serves to renew the spirit of colonized and oppressed peoples throughout the world. It if we must cast a light, let it be a glorious liberating light.

Respectfully submitted,

Dr. Judith T. Won Pat

LISTEN TO SPEAKER WON PAT'S ADDRESS