https://vimeo.com/92655472
University of Hawai‘i Law School: Alternative Visions of Hawaiian Sovereignty
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Author Archives: Hawaiian Kingdom
The Sovereignty Conversations Dialogues (Part 2)
https://vimeo.com/92316712
The Sovereignty Conversations Dialogues (Part 1)
https://vimeo.com/92290654
Dr. Keanu Sai to Present at University of Hawai‘i Richardson School of Law April 17th
A History of the Future: Keanu Sai and the Occupation of Hawai‘i
In 2012, brothers Gorav Kalyan and Professor Rohan Kalyan, Ph.D., of Nonetheless Productions produced an award winning short film on the United States illegal overthrow of the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and the subsequent U.S. illegal and prolonged occupation since the 1898 Spanish-American War. Filmed entirely on the campus of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, the film interviews academics on their research of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
https://vimeo.com/88787901
Nonetheless Productions has authorized the posting of the film. Dr. Kaylan is an Assistant Professor in International and Global Studies at Sewanee: University of the South in Tennessee. Nonetheless Productions is currently working on expanding the short film into a full documentary. For more information on their project contact Dr. Kaylan at rohan.kalyan
Dr. Keanu Sai to Present at University of Massachusetts at Boston April 8th
Dr. Keanu Sai to Present at Harvard University April 8th
**The Harvard University Native American Program has mistakenly listed the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) as one of the sponsors. OHA is not sponsoring this guest lecture by Dr. Sai.
“Noho Hewa” Showing at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) April 9th
“Hawaiian Nationality” Dissertation Defense – Willy Kauai, Ph.D. candidate
***UPDATE. Willy Kauai successfully defended his dissertation. He will be graduating in May 2014 with a Ph.D. in political science. His committee members were comprised of Professor Neal Milner, Chair, Professor Debora Halbert, Professor Charles Lawrence III, Dr. Keanu Sai, Professor Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie, and Professor Puakea Nogelmeier.
Dr. Keanu Sai to Present at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) April 10th
Dr. Keanu Sai to Present at New York University (NYU) April 7th
Meeting at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law
On the same day the Hawaiian Kingdom’s Envoy was meeting with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs’ Directorate of International Law in Bern, Switzerland, on March 26, 2014, Dr. Keanu Sai was in a meeting with Dr. Stuart Casey-Maslen, head of research for the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law in Geneva. The University of Lausanne, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Swiss Federal Department for Foreign Affairs assists the Academy. The Academy is considering listing Hawai‘i as an occupied State.
At the meeting, Dr. Sai presented a power point presentation on the history of the Hawaiian Kingdom and how it came under an illegal and prolonged occupation. Dr. Maslen was also provided with information and evidence of the occupation. Dr. Maslen assured Dr. Sai that a decision will be made and if it has been determined that Hawai‘i is occupied according to the Academy’s criteria it will be listed on its website Rule of Law of Armed Conflict in June. The website provides monthly updates on armed conflicts and occupation and is currently under construction, but will be completed by June.
Dr. Maslen is the editor of The War Report, which is a project of the Academy that identifies and briefly discusses armed conflicts according to the criteria established under international law. The War Report is a comprehensive global analysis of armed conflicts under international law, which includes military occupations. According to the Academy, “The purpose of The War Report is to collect information in the public domain and provide legal analysis for governments, policy makers, the United Nations, academics, NGOs, and journalists.”
“The classification of an armed conflict under international law is an objective legal test and not a decision left to national governments or any international body, not even the UN Security Council,” says Andrew Clapham, Director of the Academy and Graduate Institute Professor in International Law. “It is not always clear when a situation is an armed conflict, and hence when war crimes can be punished,” added Professor Clapham. “The War Report aims to change this and bring greater accountability for criminal acts perpetuated in armed conflicts.”
The Academy’s listing of the Hawaiian Kingdom as an occupied State will promote accountability for individuals who have committed war crimes in the Hawaiian Islands where prosecution can take place before the International Criminal Court and as well as by countries that have universal jurisdiction such as the Philippines and Germany.
Swiss Foreign Ministry Meets With Hawaiian Envoy in Bern
Due to the war crimes that continue to be committed with impunity by the State of Hawai‘i, an illegal regime, against innocent civilians, the acting government of the Hawaiian Kingdom has temporarily refrained from pursuing its proceedings at the International Court of Justice and has decided to focus its attention to secure a Protecting Power pursuant to the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV) and the Additional Protocol I (API). A Protecting Power is a State that ensures compliance of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the United States to the provisions of the GCIV and API, with particular focus on the protection of civilians.
As a State Party to the GCIV and AP, article 5(1) of the API, states, “It is the duty of the Parties to a conflict from the beginning of that conflict to secure the supervision and implementation of the Conventions and of this Protocol by the application of the system of Protecting Powers, including inter alia the designation and acceptance of those Powers, in accordance with the following paragraphs.” And according to article 5(3) of the API, if a Protecting Power has not been designated, “the International Committee of the Red Cross…shall offer its good offices to the Parties to the conflict with a view to the designation without delay of a Protecting Power to which the Parties to the conflict consent.”
On December 18, 2013, at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was formally requested to assist the Hawaiian Kingdom in securing a Protecting Power in accordance with the GCIV and API. In this pursuit, the acting government has been in the process of securing a meeting with the Swiss government in order to formally request that it be a Protecting Power and to work with the ICRC. The Swiss government has a long history of serving as a mediator to international conflicts and did serve as a protecting power in the past. A meeting was secured on March 26, 2014, and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs’ Directorate of International Law in Bern, Switzerland, received the acting government’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Negotiations to secure Switzerland as a Protecting Power for the illegal and prolonged occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom have begun.
Hawai‘i and the Namibia Exception
According to international law, the United States Federal government and the United States’ State of Hawai‘i government operating within the territory of the Hawaiian Kingdom are illegal regimes. Article 43 of the Hague Convention, IV, mandates that the occupying State, the United States, to administer the laws of the occupied State, the Hawaiian Kingdom. According to Professor Marco Sassoli, Article 43 of the Hague Regulations and Peace Operations in the Twenty-first Century, p. 5, “Article 43 does not confer on the occupying power any sovereignty over the occupied territory. The occupant may therefore not extend its own legislation over the occupied territory nor act as a sovereign legislator. It must, as a matter of principle, respect the laws in force in the occupied territory at the beginning of the occupation.”
These illegal regimes are and have been administering United States law and not Hawaiian law in an attempt to conceal the prolonged and illegal occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom. According to Dr. Yaël Ronen, Status of Settlers Implanted by Illegal Regimes under International Law (2008), p. 2, “Illegal regimes often transfer of their own populations or populations loyal to them in the territory, and subsequently grant these populations residence or nationality in the territory. This is done in order to change the demographic composition of the territory under dispute and thereby solidify the regime.”
When another country’s government is operating within the territory of another country without title or sovereignty, every official action taken by that regime is illegal and void except for its registration of births, marriages and deaths. This is called the “Namibia exception,” which is a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1971 called the Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970).
In 1966, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution 2145 (XXI) that terminated South Africa’s administration of Namibia, formerly known as South West Africa, a former German colony. This resulted in Namibia coming under the administration of the United Nations, but South Africa refused to withdraw from Namibian territory and consequently the situation transformed into an illegal occupation. As a former German colony, Namibia became a mandate territory under the administration of South Africa after the close of the First World War.
Addressing the legal consequences arising for South Africa’s refusal to leave Namibia, the ICJ stated that by “occupying the Territory without title, South Africa incurs international responsibilities arising from a continuing violation of an international obligation,” and that all countries, whether a member of the United Nations or not were “under an obligation to recognize the illegality and invalidity of South Africa’s continued presence in Namibia and to refrain from lending any support or any form of assistance to South Africa with reference to its occupation of Namibia.” The ICJ, however, clarified that “non-recognition should not result in depriving the people of Namibia of any advantages derived from international cooperation.
The conduct of an illegal regime during occupation is limited and confined to the international laws of occupation and to the principle of ex injuria ius non oritur—where unlawful acts cannot be the source of lawful rights. According to Ronen, p. 39, “Opposite the principle of ex injuria jus non oritur operates the principle ex factis ius oritur. It mandates that acts of the illegal regime may have legal consequences despite the illegality and status of the regime that performed them.” Ronen explains, “In other words, the general invalidity of domestic acts carried out under an illegal regime is qualified where such invalidity would act to the detriment of the inhabitants of the territory. This is the Namibia exception.” The ICJ in the Namibia case explained, “the principle ex injuria jus non oritur dictates that acts which are contrary to international law cannot become a source of legal acts for the wrongdoer… To grant recognition to illegal acts or situation will tend to perpetuate it and be benefitial to the state which has acted illegally.”
The focus of the Namibia exception is to protect the interests of the nationals of the occupied State and not to entrench the authority of an illegal regime. The validity of any other official acts of an illegal regime other than the registration of births, marriages and deaths must not serve “to the detriment of the inhabitants of the territory” being occupied and must not be seen to further “entrench the authority of an illegal regime.”
The Hawaiian Kingdom at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (1999-2001)
https://vimeo.com/17007826
On November 8, 1999, international arbitration proceedings were initiated at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), The Hague, Netherlands, between Lance Paul Larsen and the acting Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom). The arbitration agreement provided, “The Arbitral Tribunal is asked to determine, on the basis of the Hague Conventions IV and V of 18 October 1907, and the rules and principles of international law, whether the rights of the Claimant under international law as a Hawaiian subject are being violated, and if so, does he have any redress against the Respondent Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom?”
Larsen was arrested on October 4, 1999, in Hilo, Hawai‘i, and imprisoned for 30 days, seven of which were in solitary confinement, for following Hawaiian Kingdom law. Larsen, as the Claimant, alleged that the acting government, the Respondent, was 
legally liable to him for allowing the unlawful imposition of American municipal laws over him within the territorial jurisdiction of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In the pleading, Larsen’s attorney, Ms. Ninia Parks, esq., based her case on the following grounds:
- Mr. Larsen is a Hawaiian subject, with a Hawaiian nationality.
- As a Hawaiian subject, Mr. Larsen is bound by Hawaiian Kingdom law. He is not bound by the laws of the State of Hawaii nor by the laws of the United States of America.
- Mr. Larsen’s rights as a Hawaiian subject have been systematically and continuously denied by the United States of America, the occupying force in the prolonged occupation of the Hawaiian islands by the United States of America. At a minimum, the United States of America has continually denied Mr. Larsen’s nationality as a Hawaiian subject, has illegally imposed American laws over his person, has extorted monetary fines from Mr. Larsen under threat of imprisonment, and has imprisoned Mr. Larsen for asserting his lawful rights as a Hawaiian national.
- The government of the Hawaiian Kingdom has a duty to protect the rights of Mr. Larsen, a Hawaiian subject, despite the continued occupation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States of America.
- The government of the Hawaiian Kingdom, through its acting Regency, has not fulfilled this duty.
In its pleading, the acting Government, represented by Dr. Keanu Sai as lead agent, denied the allegations and submitted “that the Claimant’s rights under international law are being violated, but to what extent, is left to the Arbitral Tribunal to decide. That this decision must be made within fixed and established principles and laws pertaining to the matter, and that the Hawaiian Kingdom Government is not liable for redress of these violations under its present conditions as an occupied State.”
In the American Journal of International Law, vol. 95, p. 928 (2001), and reprinted in the Hawaiian Journal of Law and Politics, vol. 1, p. 83 (2004), Bederman and Hilbert, state that at “the center of the PCA proceeding was…that the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist and that the Hawaiian Council of Regency (representing the Hawaiian Kingdom) is legally responsible under international law for the protection of Hawaiian subjects, including the claimant. In other words, the Hawaiian Kingdom was legally obligated to protect Larsen from the United States’ ‘unlawful imposition [over him] of [its] municipal laws’ through its political subdivision, the State of Hawai‘i. As a result of this responsibility, Larsen submitted, the Hawaiian Council of Regency should be liable for any international law violations that the United States committed against him.”
In February 2000, the PCA’s Secretary General Tjaco T. van den Hout recommended that the acting Government provide a formal invitation to the United States to join in the arbitration. In order to carry out this request by the Secretary General, Dr. Sai was sent to Washington, D.C. Ms. Ninia Parks, attorney for the Claimant Lance Larsen, accompanied Dr. Sai.
On March 3, 2000, a telephone meeting with John R. Crook, Assistant Legal Adviser for United Nations Affairs section of the US Department of State, was held. It was stated to Mr. Crook that the “visit was to provide these documents to the Legal Department of the U.S. Department of State in order for the U.S. Government to be apprised of the arbitral proceedings already in train and that the Hawaiian Kingdom, by consent of the Claimant, extends an opportunity for the United States to join in the arbitration as a party.”
Mr. Crook was made fully aware of the United States occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the establishment of the acting Government. This direct challenge to US sovereignty over the Hawaiian Islands should have prompted the United States to protest the action taken by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in accepting the Hawaiian arbitration case and call upon the Secretary General to cease and desist because this action constitutes a violation of US sovereignty. The United States did 
neither. Instead, Deputy Secretary General Phyllis Hamilton notified the acting Government that the United States notified the Court that it will not join in the arbitration, but did request from the acting government permission to access all pleadings and transcripts of the case. Both the acting government and Larsen’s attorney consented. By this action, the United States directly acknowledged the circumstances of the proceedings and the acting government’s representation of the Hawaiian Kingdom before an international tribunal.
Three distinguished jurists presided on the Arbitration Tribunal. Professor James Crawford, SC, served as Presiding arbitrator. Professor Crawford is a professor of international law at the University of Cambridge. At the time of the arbitration, Crawford was also a member of the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) and was responsible for the ILC’s work on the International Criminal Court (1994) and the Articles on State Responsibility (2001).
Judge Sir Christopher Greenwood, QC, served as Associate arbitrator. Greenwood was at the time professor of international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science and legal counsel to the United Nations on the Laws of War and Occupation. In 2008, the United Nations elected Greenwood to be judge on the International Court of Justice.
Dr. Gavan Griffith, QC, served as Associate Arbitrator. Griffith was former Solicitor General for Australia and also served as counsel and agent for Australia in Nauru v. Australia before the International Court of Justice.
Three days of oral hearings were set for December 7, 8 and 11, 2000 at the PCA. At the center of these proceedings was whether or not Larsen was able to maintain his suit against the acting Government for not protecting him without the participation of the United States who would need to answer to the alleged violations committed by them against Larsen. Larsen was attempting to hold the acting Government responsible for his injuries committed by the United States. In international law, this is a situation called the “necessary and indispensable party” rule and it was the basis of decisions made by the International Court of Justice in Monetary Gold case (Italy v. France, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and United States of America), the Nauru case (Nauru v. Australia), and the East Timor case (Portugal v. Australia).
In the 2001 Arbitral Award, the Tribunal explained, that it “cannot determine whether the Respondent [the acting government] has failed to discharge its obligations towards the Claimant [Larsen] without ruling on the legality of the acts of the United States of America. Yet that is precisely what the Monetary Gold principle precludes the Tribunal from doing. As the International Court explained in the East Timor case, ‘the Court could not rule on the lawfulness of the conduct of a State when its judgment would imply an evaluation of the lawfulness of the conduct of another State which is not a party to the case.’”
The Tribunal, however, did acknowledge the Hawaiian Kingdom to be an independent State. In its decision, the Tribunal concluded in the Award, “that in the nineteenth century the Hawaiian Kingdom existed as an independent State recognized as such by the United States of America, the United Kingdom and various other States, including by exchanges of diplomatic or consular representatives and the conclusion of treaties.” International law provides for the continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom since the nineteenth century to the present, which was the basis for the arbitration case in the first place.