A Lesson for War Crimes Committed in Hawai‘i: Last Year a German Court has Convicted a 97-year-old Ex-Secretary at Nazi Camp

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

December 20, 2022
Associated Press

Irmgard Furchner sits in the courtroom at the beginning of the trial day in Itzehoe, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. *Christian Charisius/AP*

BERLIN (AP) — A German court on Tuesday convicted a 97-year-old woman of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp during World War II.

Irmgard Furchner was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, function. The Itzehoe state court in northern Germany gave her a two-year suspended sentence for being an accessory to murder in 10,505 cases and an accessory to attempted murder in five cases.

The court said judges were convinced that Furchner “knew and, through her work as a stenographer in the commandant’s office of the Stutthof concentration camp from June 1, 1943, to April 1, 1945, deliberately supported the fact that 10,505 prisoners were cruelly killed by gassings, by hostile conditions in the camp,” by transportation to the Auschwitz death camp and by being sent on death marches at the end of the war.

“The promotion of these acts by the accused took place through the completion of paperwork” in the camp commander’s office, a court statement said. “This activity was necessary for the organization of the camp and the execution of the cruel, systematic acts of killing.”

The verdict and sentence were in line with prosecutors’ demands. Defense lawyers had asked for their client to be acquitted, arguing that the evidence hadn’t shown beyond doubt that Furchner knew about the systematic killings at the camp, meaning there was no proof of intent as required for criminal liability.

In her closing statement, Furchner said she was sorry for what had happened and regretted that she had been at Stutthof at the time.

Furchner appeared to follow the verdict attentively but didn’t show any obvious emotion. It wasn’t immediately clear whether she would appeal, though lawyer Wolf Molkentin said the defense team thinks the case presents “insurmountable doubts” as to her guilt.

But presiding Judge Dominik Gross said it was “simply beyond all imagination” that Furchner didn’t notice the killings at Stutthof, German news agency dpa reported. He said she could see from her office the collection point where new prisoners had to wait after arrival, and the crematorium was in constant use in the fall of 1944, with smoke spreading across the camp.

Furchner was tried in juvenile court because she was 18 and 19 at the time of the alleged crimes and the court couldn’t establish beyond a doubt her “maturity of mind” at the time of the alleged offenses. Gross nonetheless noted Tuesday that she could have resigned from her position at any time.

Furchner failed to appear for the start of her trial in September 2021, but police later picked her up and she was placed in detention for several days.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that “today’s verdict is the best that could be achieved, given the fact that she was tried in a juvenile court.”

“In view of Furchner’s recent statement to the court that she ‘regretted everything,’ we were concerned that the court might accept her defense attorney’s plea for an acquittal,” Zuroff said in a statement. “Yet given her claim that she had no knowledge of the murders being committed in the camp, her regret was far from convincing.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said of the verdict that “it shows that it’s never too late to ensure that there was some accountability for crimes committed of such horrific nature.”

Prosecutors in Itzehoe said during the proceedings that Furchner’s trial may be the last of its kind. However, a special federal prosecutors’ office in Ludwigsburg tasked with investigating Nazi-era war crimes says prosecutors in various parts of Germany have five more cases pending, dpa reported.

Charges of murder and accessory to murder aren’t subject to a statute of limitations.

Initially a collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles removed from Danzig, Stutthof was later used as a so-called “work education camp” where forced laborers, primarily Polish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died.

From mid-1944, tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos in the Baltics and from Auschwitz filled the camp, along with thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw uprising.

Others incarcerated there included political prisoners, accused criminals, people suspected of homosexual activity and Jehovah’s Witnesses. More than 60,000 people were killed at the camp.

United States’ Export of White Supremacy After Seizing Control of the Hawaiian Islands in 1898

Posted on March 4, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

To mention white supremacy in the Hawaiian Islands for some is a bit strange because it does not appear that white people are in control. Their control, however, was cemented after the United States illegally overthrew the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893. This control lasted until 1959, where former laborers in the sugar and pineapple plantations, after returning from the Second World War, seized political control and pushed for the Hawaiian Islands to be the 50th State of the American Union where the governor would now be an elected position.

The leadership of the insurgency, calling themselves the provisional government, were white, which included Sanford Dole, William O. Smith and Lorrin Thurston. These insurgents, while white by ethnicity, were Hawaiian subjects by nationality and not American citizens. From 1900 to 1959, the leadership of the so-called Territory of Hawai‘i was appointed by the President of the United States. There were only white governors during this period. As a State of Hawai‘i, the former plantation workers would control the voting bloc under American law.

As a minority of the population, the insurgents of 1893 aligned themselves with Americans to entice the United States to annex the Hawaiian Islands after the government was overthrown. By aligning themselves with American politics, they also aligned themselves with American culture—white supremacy. According to Tom Coffman in his book Nation Within—The History of the American Occupation of the Hawai‘i, the insurgents attended higher education in the United States and it is there that they learned what was not experienced in the Hawaiian Kingdom, which is the so-called supremacy of the white race.

Despite the insurgents’ propaganda of lies, their rhetoric, however, was fueled, at the time, by American politics of race relations and the superiority of the Aryan (Teutonic) race over all others. Coffman addresses this by asking what “had Lorrin Thurston learned at Columbia, and what had Sanford Dole learned from his journey up the Kennebec River?” He answered, “the missionary descendants—already so prepared to believe in the superiority of their knowledge and position—were being influenced by American culture and American public life to take over direct control of Hawai‘i.” Between 1840 and 1887, Coffman explains “a systemic theory of white supremacy had been developed that came to be described in the intellectual history of America as Social Darwinism. The keystone of Social Darwinism was the teaching of white supremacy.”

While their physical strength was miniscule in the Hawaiian Kingdom, their arrogance could not be underestimated. The officers of the Hawaiian Patriotic League, in a memorial to President Grover Cleveland dated December 27, 1893, succinctly explained:

Last January, a political crime was committed, not only against the legitimate Sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, but also against the whole Hawaiian nation, a nation who, for the past sixty years, had enjoyed free and happy constitutional self-government. This was done by a coup de main of U.S. Minister Stevens, in collusion with a cabal of conspirators, mainly faithless sons of missionaries and local politicians angered by continuous political defeat, who, as a revenge for being a hopeless minority in the country, resolved to “rule or ruin” through foreign help.

After Cleveland failed to restore Queen Lili‘uokalani under an executive agreement of December 18, 1893, the insurgents became emboldened. Prior to changing the name of the insurgency from the provisional government to the Republic of Hawai‘i in 1894, this minority of people needed to stay in control until a new president entered office after President Cleveland. That President was William McKinley who was open to annexing the Hawaiian Islands.

Professor John Burgess, a political scientist at Columbia University in 1893, was an academic who openly subscribed to white superiority through “Teutonic supremacy in the art of government.” According to Burgess, Teutonic governance was exemplified by “northern Europe and the United States,” but the Hawaiian Kingdom government, led by aboriginal Hawaiians, was not included in this theory because the Polynesian race was not Teutonic. The insurgents, although being Hawaiian subjects and resident aliens, were representative of the so-called Teutonic race. According to Castle, Burgess firmly believed that the “exercise of political right was contingent upon innate political intelligence, and of this intelligence the Teutons were the only qualified judges.”

To the Hawaiian, Burgess’ belief of Teutonic political intelligence would be absurd because Hawai‘i’s constitutional monarchy predated that of Teutonic Prussia. As German political scientist Marquardt pointed out in 2009, “Hawai‘i as early as 1839, preceding even Prussia, transferred European constitutionalism, in the pattern of the constitutional monarchy, into the Austronesian-speaking world of Oceania.” Nevertheless, as facts were not the driving force, the situation was being driven by American racist rhetoric.

Knowing of Burgess’ agenda of promoting white, in particular, Teutonic—Aryan superiority in governance, Dole was in communication with Burgess a year after the overthrow of the Hawaiian government. He wanted to draft a constitution for the insurgency that would change its name from the provisional government to the so-called Republic of Hawai‘i on July 3, 1894. Concerned of the political power wielded by the aboriginal Hawaiian, which was the majority of the Hawaiian national population, the insurgents entertained Jim Crow laws from the American State of Mississippi. In a letter sent from Washington, D.C., on November 4, 1893, by W.D. Alexander, former Surveyor-General of the Hawaiian Kingdom, to Sanford Dole, he wrote, “I enclose extracts from the present Constitution of Mississippi, which is said to have the effect of disfranchising a majority of the negroes of that state.” The Republic of Hawai‘i was in name only. It was not, by definition, a true Republic where the affairs of government were open and transparent.

In his first letter, Dole was merely asking for clarity on a section of Burgess’ book Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law. Before Burgess responded, Dole was able to send a follow up letter that reveals his intent. In his second letter, Dole requests information from Burgess on his constitutional plan whereby “government can be kept out of the control of the irresponsible element.” He stated that there “are many natives and Portuguese who had had the vote hitherto, who are comparatively ignorant of the principles of government, and whose vote from its numerical strength as well as from the ignorance referred to will be a menace to good government.” Burgess, in his response to Dole, was aware that the so-called Teutonic population in Hawai‘i was a very small minority at 5,000, which he said comprised of “Americans, English, Germans and Scandinavians” out of “a population of nearly 100,000.” After offering suggestions in the organizing of government, he ends his letter by recommending that “only Teutons [be appointed] to military office.”

When Coffman mentions the Dole-Burgess letters, he implies that the Hawaiian Kingdom did not have the same race relations as the United States. According to Dominguez, there was “very little overlap with Anglo-American” race relations. She found that there were no “institutional practices [that] promoted social, reproductive, or civic exclusivity on anything resembling racial terms before the American period.” In comparing the two countries she stated that unlike “the extensive differentiating and disempowering laws put in place throughout the nineteenth century in numerous parts of the U.S. mainland, no parallels—customary or legislated—seem to have existed in the [Hawaiian Kingdom].” Dominguez admits that with “all the recent, welcomed publishing flurry on the social construction of whiteness and blackness and the sociohistorical shaping of racial categories…, there are usually at best only hints of the possible—but very real—unthinkability of ‘race.’”

That very real “unthinkability of race” was the Hawaiian Kingdom. Kauai explains that the “multi-ethnic dimensions of the Hawaiian citizenry coupled by the strong voice and participation of the aboriginal population in government played a prominent role in constraining racial hierarchy and the emergence of a legal system that promoted white supremacy.”

After unilaterally annexing the Hawaiian Islands by enacting an American law in the Congress called a joint resolution in 1898, and not by a treaty of cession, the denationalization through Americanization was firmly planted in the educational system throughout the Hawaiian Islands. To do this, the educational system established by the Hawaiian Kingdom would be weaponized. Thus began the brainwashing of the school children that obliterated the national consciousness of their country, the Hawaiian Kingdom, and imposed the English language over the Hawaiian language.

In 1919, the Allied Powers of the First World War concluded that “attempts to denationalize the inhabitants of occupied territory” is a war crime. In their report, the Allied Powers charged that Bulgaria imposed their national characteristics on the Serbian population; banned the Serbian language; people were beaten for saying “Good morning” in Serbian; and the Serbian population forced to be present at Bulgarian national ceremonies.

The United Nations War Crimes Commission established after the Second World War to prosecute war criminals stated:

Attempts of this nature were recognized as a war crime in view of the German policy in territories annexed by Germany in 1914”

At that time, as during the war of 1939-1945, inhabitants of an occupied territory were subjected to measures intended to deprive them of their national characteristics and to make the land and population affected a German province

Since 1898, the United States did exactly what Bulgaria and Germany did during the First and Second World Wars. Where the military occupations of the First and Second World Wars would only last 4 to 6 years, the policy of denationalization through Americanizatoin would last over a century unfettered. Within three generations, the national consciousness of the Hawaiian Kingdom was obliterated.

Under the ownership of the infamous insurgent Lorrin Thurston, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser newspaper served as the insurgents’ propaganda machine. In 1904, Walter G. Smith, an American from San Francisco, became its editor in chief. In the September 8, 1905, edition, he summed up the effect and purpose of weaponizing the educational system under the heading “The American Way.”

It would have been proper yesterday in the Advertiser’s discussion of schools to admit the success which the High School has had in making itself acceptable to white parents. By gradually raising the standard of knowledge of English the High School has so far changed its color that, during the past year seventy-three per cent. were Caucasians. It is not so many years ago that more than seventy-three per cent. were non-Caucasians. At the present rate of progress it will not be long before the High School will have its student body as thoroughly Americanized in blood as it long has been in instruction.

The idea of having mixed schools were the mixture is of various social and political conditions is wholly American; but not so mixed schools where the American youth is submerged by the youth of alien races. On the mainland the Polacks, the Russian Jews, the Huns and the negroes are, as far as practicable, kept in schools of their own, with the teaching in English; and only where the alien breeds are few, as in the country, are they permitted to mingle with white pupils. In the South, where Americans of the purest descent live, there are no mixed schools for whites and negroes; and wherever color or race is an issue of moment, the American way is defined through segregation. Only a few fanatics or vote-hunters care to lower the standard of the white child for the sake of raising that of the black or yellow child.

One great and potent duty of our higher schools, public and private, is to conserve the domination here of Anglo-Saxon ideas and institutions; and this means control by white men. We have no faith in any attempt to make Americans of Asiatics. There are too many obstacles of temperament and even of patriotism in the way. The main thing is to see that our white children when they grow up, are not to be differentiated from the typical Americans of the mainland, having the same standards, the same ideals and the same objects, none of them tempered by the creeds or customs of decaying or undeveloped or pagan races.

From a country, whose literacy rate was second to Scotland and New England, aboriginal Hawaiian school children were forced to enter the labor force after receiving an eighth grade education. If you were white, you were allowed to attend High School. In an article published by New York’s Harper’s Weekly magazine in 1907, the reporter, William Inglis, visited three schools that were established during the Kingdom – Ka‘iulani and Ka‘ahumanu public schools that went to the eighth grade, and Honolulu High School. At Kai‘iulani, he reported:

Out upon the lawn marched the children, two by two, just as precise and orderly as you can find them at home. With the ease that comes of long practice the classes marched and counter -marched until all were drawn up in a compact array facing a large American flag that was dancing in the northeast trade-wind forty feet above their heads. Surely this was the most curious, most diverse regiment ever drawn up under that banner – tiny Hawaiians, Americans, Britons, Germans, Portuguese, Scandinavians, Japanese, Chinese, Porto-Ricans, and Heaven knows what else.

“Attention!” Mrs. Fraser commanded.

The little regiment stood fast, arms at sides, shoulders back, chests out, heads up, and every eye fixed upon the red, white, and blue emblem that waved protectingly over them.

“Salute!” was the principal’s next command.

Every right hand was raised, forefinger extended, and the six hundred and fourteen fresh, childish voices chanted as one voice:

“We give our head and our hearts to God and our Country! One Country! One Language! One Flag!”

Harper’s Weekly, “Hawaii’s Lesson to Headstrong California: How the Island territory has resolved the problem of dealing with its four thousand Japanese Public-School children,” Feb. 16, 1907.

At Honolulu High School, before the name was changed to President William McKinley High School in 1907 after the story was published, the reporter stated:

Professor M.M. Scott, the principal of the high school, was kind enough to call all the pupils, who were not taking examinations, out on the front steps of the building, where the visitor could inspect them in the sunshine. The change in the color scheme from that of the schools below was astounding. Below were all the hues of the human spectrum, with brown and yellow predominating; here the tone was clearly white.

The American Experience with Unilateral Annexation of Another State’s Territory: The Story of Texas Without the Rhetoric Just International Law

Posted on March 2, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Like many who are unaware of the legal and political history of the Hawaiian Kingdom, many are unaware of the legal and political history of the State of Texas. While there are parallels to the Crimean and the Hawaiian situation, there are also important distinctions. Under international law, annexation is a unilateral act by an independent State, and a treaty of cession is a bilateral act between independent States. As a unilateral act, annexation is illegal under international law.

The Republic of Texas was established during the Mexican Revolution but it doesn’t mean the revolution was successful and that the Republic became an independent State. The revolution began on October 2, 1835, that included other provinces rebelling against the regime of President Antonio López de Santa Anna. The Republic of Texas was comprised of United States citizens and Tejanos (Hispanic Texans) who declared their independence on March 2, 1836. Four days later was the famed Battle of the Alamo. Although the Republic of Texas declared their independence their act was treasonous under Mexican law. It was still a part of Mexican territory, and the Republic was fighting Mexican troops through the 1840s. There was no treaty of peace whereby Mexico acknowledged the Republic of Texas as an independent State, and, therefore the revolution continued.

This was a different situation for the United States and when the thirteen colonies declared their independence on July 4, 1776. This act was a treasonous act under British law that triggered the American revolution. It did not transform the thirteen colonies into thirteen independent States. Like the Mexican revolution, battles were fought for seven years until there was a treaty of peace entered into between representatives of King George III and the representatives of the thirteen colonies calling themselves the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The treaty of peace was called the Treaty of Paris and it was signed on September 3, 1783. The treaty specifically acknowledged the former thirteen British colonies as independent States and Article 2 provided the boundaries of the new independent States. Article 1 stated:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States; that he treats with them as such, and for himself his Heirs & Successors, relinquishes all claims to the Government, Propriety, and Territorial Rights of the same and every Part thereof.

Article 2 of the Treaty of Paris regarding the boundaries states:

And that all Disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the Boundaries of the said United States may be prevented, it is hereby agreed and declared, that the following are and shall be their Boundaries, viz.; from the Northwest Angle of Nova Scotia, viz., that Angle which is formed by a Line drawn due North from the Source of St. Croix River to the Highlands; along the said Highlands which divide those Rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the northwesternmost Head of Connecticut River; Thence down along the middle of that River to the forty-fifth Degree of North Latitude; From thence by a Line due West on said Latitude until it strikes the River Iroquois or Cataraquy; Thence along the middle of said River into Lake Ontario; through the Middle of said Lake until it strikes the Communication by Water between that Lake & Lake Erie; Thence along the middle of said Communication into Lake Erie, through the middle of said Lake until it arrives at the Water Communication between that lake & Lake Huron; Thence along the middle of said Water Communication into the Lake Huron, thence through the middle of said Lake to the Water Communication between that Lake and Lake Superior; thence through Lake Superior Northward of the Isles Royal & Phelipeaux to the Long Lake; Thence through the middle of said Long Lake and the Water Communication between it & the Lake of the Woods, to the said Lake of the Woods; Thence through the said Lake to the most Northwestern Point thereof, and from thence on a due West Course to the river Mississippi; Thence by a Line to be drawn along the Middle of the said river Mississippi until it shall intersect the Northernmost Part of the thirty-first Degree of North Latitude, South, by a Line to be drawn due East from the Determination of the Line last mentioned in the Latitude of thirty-one Degrees of the Equator to the middle of the River Apalachicola or Catahouche; Thence along the middle thereof to its junction with the Flint River; Thence straight to the Head of Saint Mary’s River, and thence down along the middle of Saint Mary’s River to the Atlantic Ocean. East, by a Line to be drawn along the Middle of the river Saint Croix, from its Mouth in the Bay of Fundy to its Source, and from its Source directly North to the aforesaid Highlands, which divide the Rivers that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the river Saint Lawrence; comprehending all Islands within twenty Leagues of any Part of the Shores of the United States, and lying between Lines to be drawn due East from the Points where the aforesaid Boundaries between Nova Scotia on the one Part and East Florida on the other shall, respectively, touch the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean, excepting such Islands as now are or heretofore have been within the limits of the said Province of Nova Scotia.

Instead of a treaty whereby Mexico explicitly recognized the Republic of Texas as an independent State by a successful revolution and provided the boundaries of the new State, the Republic sought recognition from foreign States to include the United States in an attempt to circumvent the sovereign rights of Mexico and its territorial integrity. In March of 1837, the United States recognized the Republic of Texas but failed to annex the Republic by a treaty of cession. In 1840, Great Britain entered into a treaty with the Republic for trade purposes but did not recognize it as an independent State because it was still Mexican territory.

On March 1, 1845, the United States Congress enacted a Joint Resolution for annexing Texas to the United States. It stated that “Congress doth consent that the territory properly included within and rightfully belonging to the Republic of Texas may be erected into a new State, to be called the State of Texas, with a republican form of government, to be adopted by the people of said Republic, by deputies in convention assembled, with the consent of the existing government, in order that the same may be admitted as of the States of this Union.”

At issue, and was always the issue, were the boundaries of the Republic of Texas. A treaty of peace would have settled the boundaries, like the 1783 Treaty of Paris, but without a treaty the Republic of Texas had no formal boundaries. This was acknowledged in the joint resolution that stated “Said State to be formed, subject to the adjustment by this Government of all questions of boundary that may arise with other Governments.” That other government was Mexico.

This unilateral act, under international law, was the United States intervention in the internal affairs of Mexico, which is violation of international law, and triggered the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. In the 1848 Peace Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war, the new border between the United States and Mexico began from the Gulf of Mexico along the Rio Grande river, which is the southern border of the State of Texas, then by a surveyed boundary line that runs along the southern borders of what are now States of New Mexico, Arizona and California. Article V of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo states:

The boundary line between the two Republics shall commence in the Gulf of Mexico, three leagues from land, opposite the mouth of the Rio Grande, otherwise called Rio Bravo del Norte, or Opposite the mouth of its deepest branch, if it should have more than one branch emptying directly into the sea; from thence up the middle of that river, following the deepest channel, where it has more than one, to the point where it strikes the southern boundary of New Mexico; thence, westwardly, along the whole southern boundary of New Mexico (which runs north of the town called Paso) to its western termination; thence, northward, along the western line of New Mexico, until it intersects the first branch of the river Gila; (or if it should not intersect any branch of that river, then to the point on the said line nearest to such branch, and thence in a direct line to the same); thence down the middle of the said branch and of the said river, until it empties into the Rio Colorado; thence across the Rio Colorado, following the division line between Upper and Lower California, to the Pacific Ocean.

If Texas was annexed in 1845, then the boundary would not have begun from the Gulf of Mexico, but rather from the surveyed boundary line that would have begun from the mid-southern border of what is now the State of New Mexico, which is adjacent to the city of El Paso, Texas. From El Paso, the Rio Grande river goes north into the State of New Mexico. Texas had no territorial boundaries until Mexico ceded its territory north of the Rio Grande in 1848 and not in 1845.

The United States tends to view things retroactively. As an example, although the United States achieved its recognition from Great Britain in 1783, its history books say it achieved independence in 1776 when it declared it. Likewise, instead of the history books stating that Texas territory was acquired in 1848, it says Texas was annexed in 1845. Texas was never annexed in 1845 but rather acquired from Mexico in 1848.

In 1988, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) published a legal opinion regarding the annexation of Hawai‘i. The OLC’s memorandum opinion was written for the Legal Advisor for the Department of State regarding legal issues raised by the proposed Presidential proclamation to extend the territorial sea from a three-mile limit to twelve miles. The OLC concluded that only the President and not the Congress possesses “the constitutional authority to assert either sovereignty over an extended territorial sea or jurisdiction over it under international law on behalf of the United States.” As Justice Marshall stated, “[t]he President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations,” and not the Congress.

The OLC also stated, “we doubt that Congress has constitutional authority to assert either sovereignty over an extended territorial sea or jurisdiction over it under international law on behalf of the United States.” The OLC then concluded that it is “unclear which constitutional power Congress exercised when it acquired Hawaii by joint resolution. Accordingly, it is doubtful that the acquisition of Hawaii can serve as an appropriate precedent for a congressional assertion of sovereignty over an extended territorial sea.”

That territorial sea referred to by the OLC was to be extended from three to twelve miles under the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention. In other words, the Congress could not extend the territorial sea an additional nine miles by statute because its authority was limited up to the three-mile limit. Furthermore, the United States Supreme Court, in The Apollon, concluded that the “laws of no nation can justly extend beyond its own territories.”

Arriving at this conclusion, the OLC cited constitutional scholar Professor Willoughby, “The constitutionality of the annexation of Hawaii, by a simple legislative act, was strenuously contested at the time both in Congress and by the press. The right to annex by treaty was not denied, but it was denied that this might be done by a simple legislative act. …Only by means of treaties, it was asserted, can the relations between States be governed, for a legislative act is necessarily without extraterritorial force—confined in its operation to the territory of the State by whose legislature enacted it.” Professor Willoughby also stated, “The incorporation of one sovereign State, such as was Hawaii prior to annexation, in the territory of another, is…essentially a matter falling within the domain of international relations, and, therefore, beyond the reach of legislative acts.”

Like Crimea there is no treaty of cession whereby Ukraine ceded Crimea to Russia with its boundaries, and like Hawai‘i there is no treaty of cession whereby the Hawaiian Kingdom ceded the Hawaiian Islands to the United States with its boundaries. The question is who is the independent State with its rights under international law, and not an entity that has yet to achieve independence under international law.

What is Annexation under International Law?

Posted on February 28, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

By definition the word annexation is to add to one’s own territory by appropriation. Under international law, it is a unilateral act by one State as to territory of another State, which is why it is unlawful. According to The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts:

The international law of belligerent occupation must therefore be understood as meaning that the occupying power is not sovereign, but exercises provisional and temporary control over foreign territory. The legal situation of the territory can be altered only through a peace treaty or deballatio. International law does not permit annexation of territory of another State.

What is lawful under international law is cession whereby the ceding State transfers its territory to the acquiring State by a treaty. According to Professor Oppenheim:

Cession of State territory is the transfer of sovereignty over State territory by the owner-State to another State and the only form in which a cession can be effected is an agreement embodied in a treaty between the ceding and the acquiring State.

American examples of ceded lands are the 1807 Louisiana Purchase where France ceded its territory west of the Mississippi river to the United States and 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo where Mexico transferred its territory north of the Rio Grande river to the United States as part of a peace treaty.

The latest example of an unlawful annexation is when Russia annexed Crimea after its invasion in 2014. Ukraine, which Crimea is a part of its territory, did not cede its territory to Russia by a treaty. Under international law, the annexation of Crimea is unlawful. There is no reason to say unlawful about the Russian annexation because it is inherently unlawful under international law.

Chinese Foreign Ministry in its Report of February 20, 2023, Acknowledges the Illegal Annexation of Hawai‘i

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

In a blistering report by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on American imperialism, China acknowledges the United States unlawful annexation of Hawai‘i in 1898. The Foreign Ministry reported:

Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawai‘i.

After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United State included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to page the way for expansionist objectives.

In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined.

The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.

The Foreign Ministry also cited a Tufts University report that found the United States carried out almost 400 military interventions from 1776 to 2019.

When the attempt to acquire the Hawaiian Islands by a treaty of cession failed in 1898 because of protests by Queen Lili‘uokalani, Head of State of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and Hawaiian subjects and supporters, the breakout of the Spanish-American War prompted the United States to unilaterally annex Hawai‘i by enacting a congressional statute called a joint resolution of annexation. On May 31, 1898, the U.S. Senate went into secret session on the subject of unilaterally annexing the Hawaiian Islands as a military necessity. The senators knew that a joint resolution, as American municipal law, has no effect beyond the borders of the United States, but the President could exercise his war powers by signing the joint resolution into law. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge stated:

If I had been permitted to continue I could have been permitted to continue I could have finished in ten minutes. I have really made the argument which I desire to make. If it had not been that it would have precipitated a protracted debate, I should have argued then what has been argued ably since we came into secret legislative session, that at this moment the Administration was compelled to violate the neutrality of those [Hawaiian] islands, that protests from foreign representatives had already been received, and complications with other powers were threatened, that the annexation or some action in regard to those islands had become a military necessity.

The word “necessity” was used 21 times in the secret session, but no one would know what was discussed because secrecy prevented the public from seeing it until 1969.

Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Saturday, February 1, 1969 reported:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Now it can be told—what happened during the longest of three Senate sessions during the Spanish-American War, a debate over whether to take over Hawaii.

The debate of nearly three hours on that day—May 31, 1898—and in two secret sessions the previous month had remained locked up until last week. Then at the request of a historian who noted gaps in the Congressional Record, the Senate passed a resolution authorizing the National Archives to take the wraps off the debate transcript.

The government’s only explanation for the long suppression of the debate records is that they had been long forgotten.

THE SECRECY WAS clamped on during a debate over whether to seize the Hawaiian Islands—called the Sandwich Islands then—or merely developing leased areas of Pearl Harbor to reinforce the U.S. fleet at Manila Bay.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, grandfather and namesake of the current chief U.S. peace negotiator in Paris, had the floor. He was pleading for all war measures and particularly for the dispatch of reinforcements to Adm. George Dewey who already had destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.

But before Lodge could press his case for the need of Hawaii as a rear base, Sen. David Turpie of Indiana demanded and got the Senate chamber cleared. Even the official reporter of debate was expelled for five minutes.

Study of the transcripts is unlikely to add more than a minor footnote to history, for as Lodge contended during the debate:

“I do not know anything that would give them (the enemy) any information,” because “there is nothing, nothing not already in the newspapers.”

LODGE COMPLAINED BITTERLY at the time about the secrecy, but his peers went along with Turpie and Sen. Georg Gray of Delaware, who questioned the “propriety” of public utterances “addressed to the ears of the enemy.”

Going further, Sen. Eugene Hale of Maine declared that the Senate is “the last place in which to discuss what shall be done about war,” for its word “goes on the wing of the lightning to every part of the globe.”

Lodge said Dewey’s need for reinforcement was urgent because “great and powerful interests in Europe (Paris bankers holding Spanish loan bonds) are directly interested in having Manila wrested from him and his fleet destroyed.”

Sen. William Stewart of Nevada saw “no possible secrets involved in the discussion of the annexation of the Sandwich Islands.” He contended the Navy required a coaling station for its ships and a “residing place” for the men enroute to the Philippines.

PEARL HARBOR, ALREADY UNDER LEASE, Stewart argued, wouldn’t be much use until costly dredging operations opened the entrance channel. “Either we must have the Sandwich Islands,” he declared, “or the administration must recall Dewey.”

The senate was unimpressed by the argument of Sen. Richard F. Pettigrew of South Dakota that the great circle route to Manila, skirting the Aleutian Islands, was 500 miles shorter than the route through Honolulu.

He argued that many warships and fortifications could be built with $10 million proposed to be “thrown away in the interest of a few sugar planters and adventures in Hawaii,” and asked: “Why embarrass that feeble republic, or monarchy, or oligarchy or whatever it is, with our presence?”

Sen. John T. Morgan of Alabama was concerned about the bubonic plague, cholera, yellow fever, small pox and “all the horrible diseases to which humanity is incident” prevailing in the Philippines. Therefore, “we cannot refuse to men going there a stopping place on the salubrious islands of Hawaii.”

Sen. Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina had the last word about the islands, saying “is not Hawaii lying there praying to the United States: ‘Please come and swallow me and pay the $4 million you promised.’”

THE UNITED STATES ANNEXED the Hawaiian Islands five weeks after the debate. But before the Senate reopened its doors that day, Morgan steered the discussion back to Cuba, the original cause of the war with Spain.

The first secret session, April 25, 1898, involved technical and emotional debate over wording of the declaration of war and why it or some accompanying resolution did not formally recognize the independence of Cuba or at least declare the Cubans to have the rights of belligerents in the conflict.

THE SENATE ENDED UP BY ACCEPTING the House passed version reading that “war and the same is hereby declared to exist and that war has existed since the 21^st of April”—four days earlier.

Dropped from the final declaration was a Senate proposed tagline requiring the administration to “prosecute said war to a successful conclusion.”

Sen. Stephen White of California joined the unanimous vote for war “even with that mild prevarication” about when the war started.

Symposium on War Crimes Committed in the Hawaiian Islands by the United States

Posted on February 18, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Watch the Hawaiian Society of Law & Politics‘ Symposium showcasing the “Royal Commission of Inquiry – Investigating War Crimes and Human Rights Violations Committed in the Hawaiian Kingdom” held at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa on February 11, 2023. This half-day symposium, in collaboration with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Native Hawaiian Student Services, and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Education, featured experts in the fields of international law, international relations, international criminal law and war crimes, and Hawaiian Kingdom law on the topic of the American occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom since January 17, 1893. Part 2 of the presentation ends with a celebration of Aloha ʻĀina (Hawaiian patriotism) through mele (song) by well known Hawaiian entertainers and musicians.

The presentations stem from the three presenters’ articles published in the Hawaiian Journal of Law and Politics: Professor William Schabas, “Legal Opinion on War Crimes Related to the United States Occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom since 17 January 1893;” Professor Federico Lenzerini, “Legal Opinion on the Authority of the Council of Regency of the Hawaiian Kingdom;” and Dr. David Keanu Sai, “The Royal Commission of Inquiry.”

CovertAction Magazine: Royal Commission of Inquiry – Investigating War Crimes in the Hawaiian Islands

Posted on February 5, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Alternative news media outlet CovertAction Magazine recently published an article by Dr. Keanu Sai as Head of the Royal Commission of Inquiry. Here is a link to the article.

KITV News: Symposium Will Highlight Investigation into War Crimes in the Hawaiian Islands

Posted on February 3, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Secretary of State Gresham’s Report to President Cleveland Regarding the Illegal Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom Government on January 17, 1893

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

To ensure clarity as to what actually happened on January 17, 1893, below is the report by Secretary of State Walter Gresham to President Grover Cleveland dated October 18, 1893. The report stems from the periodic reports to the Secretary of State from James Blount as Special Commissioner. From April 1, 1893, when he began the investigation, to his final report dated July 17, 1893. Gresham’s report led to President Cleveland’s message to the Congress on December 18, 1893, concluding that the “military demonstration on the soil of Honolulu was of itself an act of war,” and that “the provisional government owes its existence to an armed invasion by the United States.”

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DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Washington, October 18, 1893

THE PRESIDENT:

The full and impartial reports submitted by the Hon. James H. Blount, your special commissioner to the Hawaiian Islands, established the following facts:

Queen Liliuokalani announced her intention on Saturday, January 14, 1893, to proclaim a new constitution, but the opposition of her ministers and others induced her to speedily changer her purpose and make a public announcement of that fact.

At a meeting in Honolulu, late on the afternoon of that day, a so-called committee of public safety, consisting of thirteen men, being all or nearly all who were present, was appointed “to consider the situation and devise ways and means for the maintenance of the public peace and the protection of life and property,” and at a meeting of this committee on the 15th, or the forenoon of the 16th of January, it was resolved amongst other things that a provisional government be created “to exist until terms of union with the United States of America have been negotiated and agreed upon.” At a mass meeting which assembled at 2 p.m. on the last-named day, the Queen and her supporters were condemned and denounced, and the committee was continued and all its acts approved.

Later the same afternoon the committee addressed a letter to John L. Stevens, the American minister at Honolulu, stating that the lives and property of the people were in peril and appealing to him and the United States forces at his command for assistance. This communication concluded “we are unable to protect ourselves without aid, and therefore hope for the protection of the United States forces.” On receipt of this letter Mr. Stevens requested Capt. Wiltse, commander of the U.S.S. Boston, to land a force “for the protection of the United States legation, United States consulate, and to secure the safety of American life and property.” The well armed troops, accompanied by two gatling guns, were promptly landed and marched through the quiet streets of Honolulu to a public hall, previously secured by Mr. Stevens for their accommodation. This hall was just across the street from the Government building, and in plain view of the Queen’s palace. The reason for thus locating the military will presently appear. The governor of the Island immediately addressed to Mr. Stevens a communication protesting against the act as an unwarranted invasion of Hawaiian soil and reminding him that the proper authorities had never denied permission to the naval forces of the United States to land for drill or any other proper purpose.

About the same time the Queen’s minister of foreign affairs sent a note to Mr. Stevens asking why the troops had been landed and informing him that the proper authorities were able and willing to afford full protection to the American legation and all American interests in Honolulu. Only evasive replies were sent to these communications.

While there were no manifestations of excitement or alarm in the city, and the people were ignorant of the contemplated movement, the committee entered the Government building, after first ascertaining that it was unguarded, and read a proclamation declaring that the existing Government was overthrown and a Provisional Government established in its place, “to exist until terms of union with the United States of America have been negotiated and agreed upon.” No audience was present when the proclamation was read, but during the reading 40 or 50 men, some of them indifferently armed, entered the room. The executive and advisory councils mentioned in the proclamation at once addressed a communication to Mr. Stevens, informing him that the monarchy had been abrogated and a provisional government established. This communication concluded:

Such Provisional Government has been proclaimed, is now in possession of the Governmental departmental buildings, the archives, and the treasury, and is in control of the city. We hereby request that you will, on behalf of the United States, recognize it as the existing de facto Government of the Hawaiian Islands and afford to it the moral support of your Government, and, if necessary, the support of American troops to assist in preserving the public peace.

On receipt of this communication, Mr. Stevens immediately recognized the new Government, and, in a letter addressed to Sanford B. Dole, its President, informed him that he had done so. Mr. Dole replied:

GOVERNMENT BUILDING
Honolulu, January 17, 1893

SIR: I acknowledge receipt of your valued communication of this day, recognizing the Hawaiian Provisional Government, and express deep appreciation of the same.

We have conferred with the ministers of the late Government, and have made demand upon the marshal to surrender the station house. We are not actually yet in possession of the station house, but as night is approaching and our forces may be insufficient to maintain order, we request the immediate support of the United States forces, and would request that the commander of the United States forces take command of our military forces, so that they may act together for the protection of the city.

Respectfully, yours,

SANFORD B. DOLE
Chairman Executive Council.

His Excellency JOHN L. STEVENS,
United States Minister Resident.

Note of Mr. Stevens at the end of the above communication.

The above request not complied with.

STEVENS.

The station house was occupied by a well-armed force, under the command of a resolute capable, officer. The same afternoon the Queen, her ministers, representatives of the Provisional Government, and others held a conference at the palace. Refusing to recognize the new authority or surrender to it, she was informed that the Provisional Government had the support of the American minister, and, if necessary, would be maintained by the military force of the United States present; that any demonstration on her part would precipitate a conflict with that force; that she could not, with hope of success, engage in war with the United States, and that resistance would result in a useless sacrifice of life. Mr. Damon, one of the chief leaders of the movement, and afterwards vice-president of the Provisional Government, informed the Queen that she could surrender under protest and her case would be considered later at Washington. Believing that, under the circumstances, submission was a duty, and that her case would be fairly considered by the President of the United States, the Queen finally yielded and sent to the Provisional Government the paper, which reads:

I, Liliuokalani, by the grace of God and under the constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom.

That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America, whose minister plenipotentiary, his excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be lauded at Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government.

Now, to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps the loss of life, I do, under this protest, and impelled by said force, yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me and the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.

When this paper was prepared at the conclusion of the conference, and signed by the Queen and her ministers, a number of persons, including one or more representatives of the Provisional Government, who were still present and understood its contents, by their silence, at least, acquiesced in its statements, and, when it was carried to President Dole, he indorsed upon it, “Received from the hands of the late cabinet this 17th day of January, 1893,” without challenging the truth of any of its assertions. Indeed, it was not claimed on the 17th day of January, or for some time thereafter, by any of the designated officers of the Provisional Government or any annexationist that the Queen surrendered otherwise than as stated in her protest.

In his dispatch to Mr. Foster of January 18, describing the so-called revolution, Mr. Stevens says:

The committee of public safety forthwith took possession of the Government building, archives, and treasury, and installed the Provisional Government at the head of the respective departments. This being an accomplished fact, I promptly recognized the Provisional Government as the de facto government of the Hawaiian Islands.

In Secretary Foster’s communication of February 15 to the President, laying before him the treaty of annexation, with the view to obtaining the advice and consent of the Senate thereto, he says:

At the time the Provisional Government took possession of the Government building no troops or officers of the United States were present or took any part whatever in the proceedings. No public recognition was accorded to the Provisional Government by the United States minister until after the Queen’s abdication, and when they were in effective possession of the Government building, the archives, the treasury, the barracks, the police station, and all the potential machinery of the Government.

Similar language is found in an official letter addressed to Secretary Foster on February 3 by the special commissioners sent to Washington by the Provisional Government to negotiate a treaty of annexation.

These statements are utterly at variance with the evidence, documentary and oral, contained in Mr. Blount’s reports. They are contradicted by declarations and letters of President Dole and other annexationists and by Mr. Stevens’s own verbal admissions to Mr. Blount. The Provisional Government was recognized when it had little other than a paper existence, and when the legitimate government was in full possession and control of the palace, the barracks, and the police station. Mr. Stevens’s well-known hostility and the threatening presence of the force landed from the Boston was all that could then have excited serious apprehension in the minds of the Queen, her officers, and loyal supporters.

It is fair to say that Secretary Foster’s statements were based upon information which he had received from Mr. Stevens and the special commissioners, but I am unable to see that they were deceived. The troops were landed, not to protect American life and property, but to aid in overthrowing the existing government. Their very presence implied coercive measures against it.

In a statement given to Mr. Blount, by Admiral Skerrett, the ranking naval officer at Honolulu, he says:

If the troops were landed simply to protect American citizens and interests, they were badly stationed in Arion Hall, but if the intention was to aid the Provisional Government they were wisely stationed.

This hall was so situated that the troops in it easily commanded the Government building, and the proclamation was read under the protection of American guns. At an early stage of the movement, if not at the beginning, Mr. Stevens promised the annexationists that as soon as they obtained possession of the Government building and there read a proclamation of the character above referred to, ho would at once recognize them as a de facto government, and support them by landing a force from our war ship then in the harbor, and he kept that promise. This assurance was the inspiration of the movement, and without it the annexationists would not have exposed themselves to the consequences of failure. They relied upon no military force of their own, for they had none worthy of the name. The Provisional Government was established by the action of the American minister and the presence of the troops landed from the Boston, and its continued existence is due to the belief of the Hawaiians that if they made an effort to overthrow it, they would encounter the armed forces of the United States.

The earnest appeals to the American minister for military protection by the officers of that Government, after it had been recognized, show the utter absurdity of the claim that it was established by a successful revolution of the people of the Islands. Those appeals were a confession by the men who made them of their weakness and timidity. Courageous men, conscious of their strength and the justice of their cause, do not thus act. It is not now claimed that a majority of the people, having the right to vote under the constitution of 1887, ever favored the existing authority or annexation to this or any other country. They earnestly desire that the government of their choice shall be restored and its independence respected.

Mr. Blount states that while at Honolulu he did not meet a single annexationist who expressed willingness to submit the question to a vote of the people, nor did he talk with one on that subject who did not insist that if the Islands were annexed suffrage should be so restricted as to give complete control to foreigners or whites. Representative annexationists have repeatedly made similar statements to the undersigned.

The Government of Hawaii surrendered its authority under a threat of war, until such time only as the Government of the United States, upon the facts being presented to it, should reinstate the constitutional sovereign, and the Provisional Government was created “to exist until terms of union with the United States of America have been negotiated and agreed upon.” A careful consideration of the facts will, I think, convince you that the treaty which was withdrawn from the Senate for further consideration should not be resubmitted for its action thereon.

Should not the great wrong done to a feeble but independent State by an abuse of the authority of the United States be undone by restoring the legitimate government? Anything short of that will not, I respectfully submit, satisfy the demands of justice.

Can the United States consistently insist that other nations shall respect the independence of Hawaii while not respecting it themselves? Our Government was the first to recognize the independence of the Islands and it should be the last to acquire sovereignty over them by force and fraud.

Respectfully submitted.
W.Q. GRESHAM.

Americans are Protected Persons in the Hawaiian Kingdom

Posted on January 11, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Originally posted on August 31, 2018. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols form the core of international humanitarian law, which regulates the conduct of armed conflict and seeks to limit its effects. They protect people not taking part in hostilities and those who are no longer doing so.” Coverage of the Geneva Conventions also apply to occupied territories where there is no actual fighting. Amnesty International defines war crimes as “crimes that violate the laws or customs of war defined by the Geneva and Hague Conventions.”

Internationally, “protected persons” is a legal term under international humanitarian law that refers to specific protections afforded to civilians in occupied territory whose rights are protected under the 1949 Geneva Convention, IV, and its Additional Protocol. According to Article 4 of the Geneva Convention:

“Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.”

Under this definition, civilians who possess the nationality of the occupying State while they reside in the territory of the occupied State are not protected under the Geneva Convention. Article 147 of the Geneva Convention provides a list of grave breaches, called war crimes, which would apply to protected persons as defined under Article 4.

“Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a [occupying] Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”

The relevant grave breaches and explanations that would apply to the American occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom can be found in paragraphs 190 through 205 of the Emergency Petition for Writ of Mandamus filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. If you are a protected person whose situation would fall under one of the explanatory paragraphs in the mandamus, a grave breach or war crime may have been committed against you.

Fifty years later, however, this definition of a protected persons was expanded to include the citizenry of the occupying State. This was an evolution of international criminal law ushered in by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The case was the prosecution and conviction of Duško Tadić who was a Bosnian Serb. After being arrested in Germany in 1994, he faced among other counts, twelve counts of grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Convention, IV. On May 7, 1997, he was convicted by the trial court on 11 counts but did not include the counts of grave breaches of the Geneva Convention.

In paragraph 608 of its judgment, the trial court found that Tadic was not guilty of 11 counts of grave breaches because the civilian victims possessed the same Yugoslavian citizenship as Tadic who represented the occupying Power in the war. The prosecutors appealed this decision and it was not only reversed by the Appeal Chamber of the ICTY, but it also expanded the definition of protected persons in occupied territory under international humanitarian law.

In its judgment in 1999, the Appeals Chamber concluded:

“[The] primary purpose [of Article 4] is to ensure the safeguards afforded by the [Geneva] Convention to those civilians who do not enjoy the diplomatic protection, and correlatively are not subject to the allegiance and control, of the State in whose hands they may find themselves. In granting its protection, Article 4 intends to look to the substance of relations, not their legal characterisation as such. … Hence, even if in the circumstances of the case the perpetrators and the victim were to be regarded as possessing the same nationality, Article 4 [Geneva Convention] would still be applicable.” Tadic, ICTY Appeals Chamber, Judgment (1999), para. 168 and 169.

This is an important evolution in international criminal law and has a profound impact on the occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Up until 1999, protected persons in the Hawaiian Islands excluded American citizens. But since 1999, the Tadic case has expanded protection to citizens of the occupying State who reside in the territory of an occupied State. The operative word is no longer nationality or citizenship, but rather allegiance that would apply to all persons in an occupied State. This is not to be confused with an oath of allegiance, but rather the law of allegiance that applies over everyone whether they signed an oath or not. Hawaiian law only requires an oath of allegiance for government employees.

Under Hawaiian Kingdom law there is specific wording that covers allegiance. It is found in the Hawaiian Penal Code under sections 2 and 3 of Chapter VI for the crime of treason.

“Allegiance is the obedience and fidelity due to the kingdom from those under its protection. … An alien, whether his native country be at war or at peace with this kingdom, owes allegiance to this kingdom during his residence therein, and during such residence, is capable of committing treason against this kingdom.”

By expanding the scope and application of protected persons to American citizens residing in the Hawaiian Kingdom, they, along with all other nationalities of foreign States as well as Hawaiian subjects, are afforded equal protection under the Geneva Convention and can be considered victims of grave breaches or war crimes committed against them by American citizens in violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions.

Swiss General Secretariat Receives the Hawaiian Kingdom’s Accession to the Fourth Geneva Convention

Posted on January 11, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Originally posted on January 29, 2013. On January 14, 2013, Ambassador Benno Bättig, General Secretariat of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), received at his office in Berne, Switzerland, the Hawaiian Kingdom’s Instrument of Accession to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Along with the Instrument of Accession, Ambassador Bättig also received a copy of the Hawaiian Protest and Demand deposited with the President of the United Nations General Assembly, August 10, 2012; and a DVD package of the Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom arbitration case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands, 2001.

The FDFA is responsible for maintaining the foreign relations of Switzerland and serves as the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The department is headed by Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter. The FDFA is composed of a General Secretariat and the State Secretariat, to which the department’s directorates and agencies are subordinate. Ambassador Bättig was appointed General Secretariat January 11, 2012.

CLARIFICATION: Article 156 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that accessions shall be notified in writing to the Swiss Federal Council and the Swiss Federal Council shall communicate the accessions to all the Powers in whose name the Convention has been signed, or whose accession has been notified. The Swiss Federal Council receives accessions through the FDFA. And according to Article 159, the Swiss Federal Council also informs the Secretary-General of the United Nations of all ratifications, accessions and denunciations received by them.

Feb. 11, 2023 Symposium – The Royal Commission of Inquiry Investigating War Crimes and Human Rights Violations Committed in the Hawaiian Kingdom

Posted on January 7, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

The Hawaiian Society of Law & Politics (HSLP), in collaboration with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa College of Education, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Native Hawaiian Student Services, and the Kamehameha Schools Kanaeokana, invites you to its February 11, 2023 Symposium showcasing the Royal Commission of Inquiry – Investigating War Crimes and Human Rights Violations Committed in the Hawaiian Kingdom. The event is at no cost but you’ll need to register to ensure you can get a seat. The auditorium is air conditioned and sits 300. The symposium will also be live streamed on Facebook via NHSS UH Mānoa for those who are unable to attend.

The half-day symposium will feature experts in the fields of international law, international relations, international criminal law and war crimes, and Hawaiian Kingdom law on the topic of the American occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom since January 17, 1893.

Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe will open the symposium with a Hawaiian chant and then followed by a special appearance by Hawaiian actor Jason Scott Lee who acted in films such as Dragon – the Bruce Lee Story, the Jungle Book, Rapanui, Mulan, and The Wind and the Reckoning.

Presenters to follow include Professor William Schabas, renowned expert in international criminal law and war crimes from Middlesex University London, author of “Legal Opinion on War Crimes Related to the United States Occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom since 17 January 1893;” Professor Federico Lenzerini, professor of international law from the University of Siena, Italy, and Deputy Head of the Royal Commission of Inquiry, author of “Legal Opinion on the Authority of the Council of Regency of the Hawaiian Kingdom;” and Dr. Keanu Sai, a Lecturer in Political Science and Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i, and Head of the Royal Commission of Inquiry, author of “The Royal Commission of Inquiry.” The presenters will discuss the subject matter of their respective articles which have been published by the Hawaiian Journal of Law and Politics. Following their presentations, the presenters will sit together on a panel to answer questions from the audience.

The symposium will also have as a finale a presentation celebrating Aloha ‘Āina (Hawaiian Patriotism) through mele (song) by well known Hawaiian entertainers and musicians featuring Mele Apana, Lina Girl, Davey D, Amy Gilliom, Mailani Makainai, Ku‘uipo Kumukahi, Sean Pimental, Glenn Maeda, Danny Kennedy, Na Wai Ho‘olu‘u o ke Ānuenue, and Heuaʻolu Sai-Dudoit.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE: The symposium will begin at 11:00am and end at 4:30pm at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Art Building auditorium across from Varney Circle where the water fountain is. Here is a link to a map of UH Mānoa. Light lunch and drinks included at no cost.

Registration is now open for all UH Mānoa students, faculty and staff, as well as community members. Click here to register for the event.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: February 10, 2023

For any questions or concerns, please contact nhss@hawaii.edu.

Click here to visit HSLP’s Symposium’s website

Exposing the Achilles Heel of the State of Hawai‘i Judiciary

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Since the Permanent Court of Arbitration verified and acknowledged the Hawaiian Kingdom to still exist as a State under international law in 1999 in Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom, it’s been a slow but methodical progression of exposing this legal reality. For the Hawaiian Kingdom to be a State in continuity since the nineteenth century despite the United States illegal overthrow of its government on January 17, 1893, it radically shifted the legal and political terrain concerning the United States’ presence and the State of Hawai‘i’s control over Hawaiian territory. From the 50th State of the American Union to an Occupied State under a prolonged and illegal occupation.

While under international law, there is a rule that effective control by the government of the State over its territory is the exercise of sovereignty, this independence rule does not apply over territory of another State during military occupation. Under international humanitarian law, when a State is in effective control over occupied territory it triggers the law of occupation, not sovereignty, which obligates the occupying State to temporarily administer the laws of the occupied State until a treaty of peace is concluded. In the Hawaiian situation, the State of Hawai‘i and the Counties are in effective control of the territory of the Hawaiian Kingdom and are subject to the international law of occupation. Their effective control is not an exercise of sovereignty. According to Professor Krystyna Marek:

Belligerent occupation is thus the classical case in which the requirement of effectiveness as a condition of validity of a legal order is abandoned. The explanation of this unusual fact is to be found in the temporary nature of belligerent occupation. International law could not permanently relinquish the requirement of effectiveness, since this would mean reducing international law and relations to a pure fiction. But belligerent occupation is by definition not of a lasting character. Sooner or later it is bound to end, whether in favour of the occupied or the occupying State.

Once believed to be a democratically elected government under United States laws, the State of Hawai‘i, under international law, is an American armed force and not a government. The leadership of the State of Hawai‘i and the Counties are citizens of the United States. This is similar to the situation in Cyprus after it became an independent State on August 16, 1960, from Great Britain. In 1974, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus and established the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as a Turkish armed force. The northeastern territory of Cyprus has been under Turkish occupation, through its proxy the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, since 1974. The difference, however, is that the Hawaiian Kingdom is an internationally recognized sovereign and independent State, but the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is not.

In 1959, the United States Congress established the State of Hawai‘i by legislation to be the successor of the Territory of Hawai‘i that the Congress established in 1900. In the 1900 statute, the Congress specifically stated that the Territory of Hawai‘i is the successor of the Republic of Hawai‘i. And the Republic of Hawai‘i was the successor to the provisional government that President Grover Cleveland stated to the Congress that it “owes its existence to an armed invasion by the United States” on January 16, 1893. President Cleveland also concluded that the provisional government was “neither a government de factor nor de jure” but self-declared.

When an occupying power imposes its legislation and administrative measures over the territory of an occupied State, it constitutes the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation. For this war crime not to have been committed in the Hawaiian Islands, the Hawaiian Kingdom, as an independent State, would had to have been extinguished by the United States under international law and acquired its sovereign territory. To have extinguished the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States needs to show evidence of a treaty of cession, whether by conquest or otherwise. Examples of foreign States ceding portions of their sovereign territory to the United States by a peace treaty include the 1848 Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement with the Republic of Mexico that ended the Mexican American War, and the 1898 Treaty of Peace between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain that ended the Spanish American War.

There exists no such treaty. Instead, the United States enacted a congressional law on July 7, 1898, purporting to have annexed the Hawaiian Islands. The legislation was called a joint resolution of annexation. This act itself, being American legislation, is the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation.

In 1994, the State of Hawai‘i Intermediate Court of Appeals established a precedent case called State of Hawai‘i v. Lorenzo. In that case, it set the precedence for defendants who argue that the courts do not have jurisdiction because of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s continued existence, they must present a factual or legal basis for concluding that the Kingdom exists as a State under the rules of international law. The Supreme Court, in State of Hawai‘i v. Armitage, clarified the evidentiary burden that Lorenzo placed upon defendants. The court stated:

Lorenzo held that, for jurisdictional purposes, should a defendant demonstrate a factual or legal basis that the Kingdom of Hawai‘i “exists as a state in accordance with recognized attributes of a state’s sovereign nature[,]” and that he or she is a citizen of that sovereign state, a defendant may be able to argue that the courts of the State of Hawai‘i lack of jurisdiction over him or her.

Since 1994, State of Hawai‘i courts denied attempts by defendants to dismiss their cases because of the Lorenzo principle. In other words, these courts were asserting that the defendants failed to present any factual or legal basis that the Kingdom continues to exist as a State. This was the case until the Council of Regency got involved in order to expose the illegality of the American occupation in the court system.

The Regency was working with attorney Dexter Ka‘iama who had been representing defendants who were arguing that the courts of the State of Hawai‘i have no jurisdiction. His arguments were based on State of Hawai‘i v. Lorenzo, which the Appellate court and the Supreme Court stated that defendants had the burden of providing evidence of a factual or legal basis that the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist as a State. Ka‘iama provided evidence that met that burden.

In a 2012 case that came before Circuit Judge Glenn Hara in Hilo, Wells Fargo Bank v. Kawasaiki, Judge Hara openly stated what all the judges knew after Ka‘iama presented the irrefutable evidence of the Kingdom’s continued existence. The transcript of the case preserved the record, which stated:

MR. KAIAMA: The scope of my special appearance, Your Honor, is to make argument and presentation with respect to Ms. Kawasaki’s 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss challenging the subject matter jurisdiction of this court, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay. So here’s the court’s inclination, Mr. Kaiama. And in answer to the plaintiff’s comment that maybe the motion may be delayed, it looks like the motion is one that challenges the subject matter jurisdiction. At least on its face. But—and any time there is a jurisdictional challenge, it can be made at any time. That’s my understanding. Because if the court has no jurisdiction then whatever the court does is void. Um, so I’m treating this as a motion to dismiss for the court’s lack of subject matter jurisdiction for the reasons stated. And that is that the argument is that the Kingdom of Hawaii still exists, and therefore, in essence, this court has no jurisdiction, it’s the courts of the Kingdom of Hawaii. That’s how I’m taking the motion. Mr. Kaiama?

MR. KAIAMA: And that is essentially Ms. Kawasaki’s motion and our argument.

MR. KAIAMA: I have now been arguing, Your Honor, this motion before judges of the courts of the circuit court and district court throughout the State of Hawaii, and nearly—and probably over 20 times, and in not one instance has the plaintiff in the cases challenged the merits of the executive agreements to show that either it’s not an executive agreement or that the executive agreements have been terminated. Because we belief, respectfully, again Your Honor, they cannot.

THE COURT: No, but, Mr. Kaiama, I think you failed—in my mind, what you’re asking the court to do is commit suicide, because once I adopt your argument, I have no jurisdiction over anything. Not only these kinds of cases where you may claim either being a citizen of the kingdom, but jurisdiction of the courts evaporate. All of the courts across the state, from the supreme court down, and we have no judiciary. I can’t do that.

THE COURT: I think what [Mr. Kaiama is] saying is the argument is that if, in fact, I buy into his arguments then this court has no jurisdiction over any matter. That’s his analysis, I think.

MS. HIROSANE [for Wells Fargo]: And that’s my understanding of it too, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay. So the court will deny the motion to dismiss the complaint pursuant to Hawaii Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

Hara’s extra-judicial or unlawful order led to Wells Fargo Bank’s pillaging of defendant’s home and property by a court that possessed no jurisdiction. As acknowledged by Hara in the transcript, “if the court has no jurisdiction then whatever the court does is void.” The defendant was the victim of the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation, deprivation of fair and regular trial, and pillaging.

To stop the State of Hawai‘i’s judiciary from unravelling, the Supreme Court, in 2013, in State of Hawai‘i v. Kaulia, responded to a defendant’s arguments that was like the case that came before Judge Hara except that Ka‘iama was not his attorney. The Supreme Court stated that the defendant “contends that the courts of the State of Hawai‘i lacked subject matter jurisdiction over his criminal prosecution because the defense proved the existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the illegitimacy of the State of Hawai‘i government.” With only American case law and municipal laws to rely on, the Supreme Court responded with, “Whatever may be said regarding the lawfulness of its origins, the State of Hawai‘i is now, a lawful government. Individuals claiming to be citizens of the Kingdom and not the State are not exempt from application of the State’s laws.”

The Supreme Court was silent in providing evidence of the lawfulness of the State of Hawai‘i, which, according to the rules of evidence, silence is an acknowledgement of its unlawfulness. According to Professor Nuno Antunes, under international law, acquiescence “concerns a consent tacitly conveyed by a State, unilaterally, through silence or inaction, in circumstances such that a response expressing disagreement or objection in relation to the conduct of another State would be called for.” On acquiescence, the International Court of Justice in Case concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thailand), the Court stated:

It has been contended on behalf of Thailand that this communication of the maps by the French authorities was, so to speak, ex parte, and that no formal acknowledgment of it was either requested of, or given by, Thailand. In fact, as will be seen presently, an acknowledgment by conduct was undoubtedly made in a very definite way; but even if it were otherwise, it is clear that the circumstances were such as called for some reaction, within a reasonable time, on the part of the Siamese authorities, if they wished to disagree with the map or had any serious question to raise in regard to it. They did not do so, either then or for many years, and thereby must be held to have acquiesced. Qui tacet consentire videtur si loqui debuisset ac potuisset.

On June 1, 2013, Ka‘iama was licensed to practice law in the Hawaiian Kingdom. His license was issued by Hawaiian Kingdom Supreme Court First Associate Justice Allen K. Hoe. On August 11, 2013, Ka‘iama petitioned the Council of Regency for a commission as Attorney General after Gary V. Dubin resigned. Ka‘iama stated:

As an Attorney, Counselor, Solicitor and Proctor who has been admitted to practice in al the courts of the Hawaiian Kingdom on June 1, 2013, by the Honorable Allen K. Hoe, First Associate Justice, I respectfully and humbly petition the Council to consider me for the office of acting Attorney General of the Hawaiian Kingdom in light of the recent resignation of Gary V. Dubin, Esq., from the office of the same.

After consideration, the Council of Regency commissioned Dexter Ke‘eaumoku Ka‘iama as Attorney General.

Attorney General Ka‘iama continued to represent defendants in both civil and criminal cases making the argument that the court does not have jurisdiction or authority over the cases because they were unlawful. But in every case that came before these courts across the islands, the judges were not following the Lorenzo precedent, which is their own rule. Without any proof of evidence that countered Attorney General Ka‘iama’s or, in other words, provided any evidence that the Hawaiian Kingdom no longer exists as a State under the rules of international law, they just steam rolled forward as if there was no problem with their authority. As Professor Marek explained:

Thus, the relation between effectiveness and title seems to be one of inverse proportion: while a strong title can survive a period of non-effectiveness, a weak title must rely heavily, if not exclusively, on full and complete effectiveness. It is the latter which makes up for the weakness in title. Belligerent occupation presents an illuminating example of this relation of inverse proportion.

The utter disregard by the State of Hawai‘i courts, to include the Supreme Court, to the rules of fair play and evidence based arguments only proves its “weakness in title” against the Hawaiian Kingdom’s “strong title.” Under international criminal law, these actions taken by the courts, which are preserved in the court filings, comprise the Achilles heel, which is the weakness despite the strength of the State of Hawai‘i judiciary. The actions taken in violation of the law of occupation gives rise to war crimes and individual criminal culpability. There are no statute of limitations for war crimes. These actions do come under the investigative authority of the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

Backstory of the Hawaiian Kingdom v. Biden Federal Lawsuit

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Yesterday, Federal District Judge Leslie Kobayashi signed an Order officially ending the federal lawsuit Hawaiian Kingdom v. Biden. Attorney General Dexter Ka‘iama, representing the Hawaiian Kingdom by its Council of Regency, filed the notice of withdrawal on November 28, 2022, and yesterday was the Order. The federal lawsuit was initiated on May 20, 2021, and spanned for nineteen months. Here is the backstory of the federal lawsuit and its significance in obtaining evidence for the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation.

The objective for the filing of the lawsuit was to seek an order from the court to compel the United States, the State of Hawai‘i and the Counties to comply with international humanitarian law by administering the laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom as an occupied State. The lawsuit also sought from the court an order to halt the imposition of American municipal laws because it is the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation, which is the unlawful imposition of legislative and administrative measures of the occupying State.

But before the federal court could rule on the complaint, the Hawaiian Kingdom requested the court to transform from an Article III Court into an Article II Occupation Court, since the court is operating within the territory of the Hawaiian Kingdom and not within the territory of the United States. Article III Courts are federal courts that operate within the territory of the United States by judicial authority under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, whereas Article II Occupation Courts are federal courts that are established under the executive authority President under Article II of the U.S. Constitution in territories that are occupied by the United States military. According to Professor Bederman, there are twelve instances in the history of the United States where Article II Occupation Courts were established during the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the Second World War.

An amicus brief or friend of the court brief was filed by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyer Guild, and the Water Protector Legal Collective on October 6, 2021, to help explain to the court why it was obligated to transform into an Article II Occupation Court. The Court pondered on this issue for five months.

Then on March 3, 2022, District Judge Kobayashi issued an Order granting the dismissal of Sweden’s Honorary Consul Anders Nervell from the lawsuit. In the Order, and without providing any evidence that the Hawaiian Kingdom no longer exists under international law, she stated that she will not transform into an Article II Occupation Court. Instead, Judge Kobayashi justified her decision on prior court decisions that provided no evidence of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s demise under the rules of international law. American court decisions, like American laws and administrative measures, constitute the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation. In other words, Judge Kobayashi knowingly committed the war crime.

The Hawaiian Kingdom attempted to address the error of Judge Kobayashi but to no avail. She laid the path for the court and the defendants to commit the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation and deprivation of fair and regular trial. The Hawaiian Kingdom would then use the proceedings to get evidence that the defendants and the court knowingly imposed American legislative and administrative measures. The elements for the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation are:

1. The perpetrator(s) imposed or applied legislative or administrative measures of the occupying power going beyond those required by what is necessary for military purposes of the occupation.

2. The perpetrator(s) was aware that the measures went beyond what was required for military purposes or the protection of fundamental human rights.

3. Their conduct took place in the context of and was associated with a military occupation

4. The perpetrators were aware of factual circumstance that established the existence of the military occupation.

The third and fourth elements refer to the mens rea or the criminal intent requirement. With respect to these last two elements:

1. There is no requirement for a legal evaluation by the perpetrator as to the existence of the military occupation.

2. In that context there is no requirement for awareness by the perpetrator of the facts that established the character of existence of the military occupation.

3. There is only a requirement for the awareness of the factual circumstances that established the existence of a military occupation.

Later that month, on March 22, 2022, H.E. Dr. David Keanu Sai, as Minister of Foreign Affairs ad interim, delivered an oral statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) bringing attention of the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty before the 47 countries that are member States of the HRC, which included the United States. Here is the message:

None of the 47 member States of the HRC protested, or objected to the oral statement of war crimes being committed in the Hawaiian Kingdom by the United States. This is important because under international law, according to Professor Antunes, acquiescence “concerns a consent tacitly conveyed by a State, unilaterally, through silence or inaction, in circumstances such that a response expressing disagreement or objection in relation to the conduct of another State would be called for.” In other words, silence means agreement.

This oral statement would have the effect of shifting accountability from the U.S. courts to the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI). The RCI’s mandate is “to investigate the consequences of the United States’ belligerent occupation, including with regard to international law, humanitarian law and human rights, and the allegations of war crimes committed in that context. The geographical scope and time span of the investigation will be sufficiently broad and be determined by the head of the Royal Commission.”

The RCI will focus on senior leadership of the United States, the State of Hawai‘i and the Counties. In mid-November of 2022, the RCI published its first war criminal reports of the senior leadership that were also named defendants in Hawaiian Kingdom v. Biden. The evidence of these perpetrators’ mens rea was by their own admissions in pleadings filed with the federal court.

There is no requirement for a “legal evaluation” or agreement that Hawai‘i is under a military occupation but rather only the awareness of the “factual circumstance that established the existence of the military occupation.” The amended complaint and the Hawaiian Kingdom’s own filed pleadings provided the factual circumstances of the American military occupation and neither the defendants nor the judges refuted or objected to these facts or provided any evidence that the Hawaiian Kingdom is no longer a sovereign and independent State under international law. Silence under international law means agreement.

Since the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) there has been major developments in the national criminal laws of the 123 States that signed the ICC’s founding document, the Rome Statute. Article I of the Rome Statute states:

An International Criminal Court (“the Court”) is hereby established. It shall be a permanent institution and shall have the power to exercise its jurisdiction over persons for the most serious crimes of international concerns, as referred to in this Statute, and shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions. The jurisdiction and functioning of the Court shall be governed by the provisions of this Statute.

Complementary jurisdiction means that the national courts of these States are the first to deal with international crimes. This is because States, not the ICC, already have national criminal justice systems in operation and are capable of dealing with perpetrators who commit international crimes. The ICC deals only with cases under limited circumstances and has been the cause of much criticism.

Usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation has not only victimized the civilian population in the Hawaiian Islands for over a century, but it has also victimized the civilians of other countries that have visited the islands since 1898 who were unlawfully subjected to American municipal laws and administrative measures. These include State of Hawai‘i sales tax on goods purchased in the islands but also taxes placed exclusively on tourists’ accommodations collected by the State of Hawai‘i and the Counties. The collection of these taxes from tourists constitute the war crime of pillaging.

The Counties have recently added 3% surcharges to the State of Hawai‘i’s 10.25% transient accommodations tax. Added with the State of Hawai‘i’s general excise tax of 4% in addition to the 0.5% County general excise tax surcharges, civilians who are visiting the islands will be paying a total of 17.75% to the occupying power. In addition, those civilians of foreign countries doing business in the Hawaiian Islands are also subjected to paying American duties on goods that are imported to the United States destined to Hawai‘i. These duty rates are collected by the United States according to the United States Tariff Act of 1930, as amended, and the Trade Agreements Act of 1979.

Under national criminal jurisdictions, States of these tourists would have authority to arrest and prosecute under passive personality jurisdiction. The passive personality principle provides countries with jurisdiction for crimes committed against their nationals while they were abroad in the Hawaiian Islands. This type of jurisdiction has more teeth as opposed to universal jurisdiction that allows States to prosecute war criminals who committed crimes outside of the territory of the State and where the perpetrator or victim is not a national of the State. The drawback on universal jurisdiction is that it can only be triggered when the perpetrator is in the territory of the prosecuting State. Passive personality jurisdiction, on the other hand, provides for immediate action to apply for extradition arrest warrants to be issued by the prosecuting State where the perpetrators remain outside of the prosecuting State’s territory.

The RCI will focus its attention on the various national criminal jurisdictions in order to seek arrests warrants for the subjects of the RCI’s war criminal reports because war crimes cannot continue to take place in Hawai‘i with impunity. War crimes have no statute of limitations and prosecution can follow a perpetrator until his elderly years.

The Far Reach of the War Crime of Usurpation of Sovereignty Being Committed in the Hawaiian Islands Since 1898

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Hawaiian Kingdom

Usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation was listed as a war crime in a 1919 report by the Commission on Responsibilities of the Paris Peace Conference that was established by the Allied and Associated Powers at war with Germany and its allies in the First World War. The Commission was especially concerned with acts perpetrated in occupied territories against non-combatants and civilians.

Usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation is the imposition of the laws and administrative measures of the Occupying State over the territory of the Occupied State. Usurpation, according to Black’s Law dictionary, is “The unlawful encroachment or assumption of the use of property, power or authority which belongs to another.”

The Commission did not indicate the source of this crime in treaty law but it would appear to be Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, which states, “The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.” Article 43 is the codification of customary international law that existed on January 17, 1893, when the United States unlawfully overthrew the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom and began its prolonged belligerent occupation.

In the annex of its 1919 report, the Commission charged that in Poland the German and Austrian forces had “prevented the populations from organising themselves to maintain order and public security” and that they had “[a]ided the Bolshevist hordes that invaded the territories.” It said that in Romania the German authorities had instituted German civil courts to try disputes between subjects of the Central Powers or between a subject of these powers and a Romanian, a neutral, or subjects of Germany’s enemies. In Serbia, the Bulgarian authorities had “[p]roclaimed that the Serbian State no longer existed, and that Serbian territory had become Bulgarian.” It listed several other war crimes committed by Bulgaria in occupied Serbia: “Serbian law, courts and administration ousted;” “Taxes collected under Bulgarian fiscal regime;” “Serbian currency suppressed;” “Public property removed or destroyed, including books, archives and MSS (e.g., from the National Library, the University Library, Serbian Legation at Sofia, French Consulate at Uskub);” “Prohibited sending Serbian Red Cross to occupied Serbia.” It also charged that in Serbia the German and Austrian authorities had committed several war crimes: “The Austrians suspended many Serbian laws and substituted their own, especially in penal matters, in procedure, judicial organisation, etc.;” “Museums belonging to the State (e.g., Belgrade, Detchani) were emptied and the contents taken to Vienna.”

The crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation was referred to by Judge Blair of the American Military Commission in a separate opinion in the Justice Case, holding that “This rule is incident to military occupation and was clearly intended to protect the inhabitants of any occupied territory against the unnecessary exercise of sovereignty by a military occupant.” Australia, Netherlands and China enacted laws making usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation a war crime. In the case of Australia, the Parliament enacted the Australian War Crimes Act in 1945 that included the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation.

The war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation has not been included in more recent codifications of war crimes, casting some doubt on its status as a crime under customary international law. And there do not appear to have been any prosecutions for that crime by international criminal tribunals of late. However, the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation is a war crime under “particular” customary international law. According to the International Law Commission, “A rule of particular customary international law, whether regional, local or other, is a rule of customary international law that applies only among a limited number of States.” In the 1919 report of the Commission, the United States, as a member of the commission, did not contest the listing of the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation, but rather only disagreed, inter alia, with the Commission’s position on the means of prosecuting heads of state for the listed war crimes by conduct of omission.

The Hawaiian Kingdom Royal Commission Inquiry views usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation as a war crime under “particular” customary international law and binding upon the Allied and Associated Powers of the First World War—United States of America, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan, principal Allied Powers and Associated Powers that include Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Thailand, Czech Republic, formerly known as Czechoslovakia, and Uruguay. Great Britain, as an empire at the time, included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa who also fought in the First World War. Therefore, as an international crime under particular customary international law, these countries are obligated to prosecute this war crime in their courts.

In the Hawaiian situation, usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation serves as a source for the commission of other war crimes within the territory of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which includes the war crimes of compulsory enlistment, denationalization, pillage, destruction of property, deprivation of fair and regular trial, deporting civilians of the occupied territory, and transferring populations into an occupied territory. The reasoning for the prohibition of imposing extraterritorial prescriptions or measures of the occupying State is addressed by Professor Eyal Benvenisti:

The occupant may not surpass its limits under international law through extraterritorial prescriptions emanating from its national institutions: the legislature, government, and courts. The reason for this rule is, of course, the functional symmetry, with respect to the occupied territory, among the various lawmaking authorities of the occupying state. Without this symmetry, Article 43 could become meaningless as a constraint upon the occupant, since the occupation administration would then choose to operate through extraterritorial prescription of its national institutions.

Usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation came before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (“PCA”) in 1999. In Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom, the Permanent Court of Arbitration convened an arbitral tribunal to resolve a dispute where Larsen, the claimant, alleged that the Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom, by its Council of Regency, the respondent, was liable “for allowing the unlawful imposition of American municipal laws over the claimant’s person within the territorial jurisdiction of the Hawaiian Kingdom.” The PCA accepted the case as a dispute between a “State” and a “private party” and acknowledged the Hawaiian Kingdom to be a non-Contracting State in accordance with Article 47 of the 1907 Hague Convention. The PCA annual reports of 2000 through 2011 specifically states that the Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom proceedings were done “Pursuant to article 47 of the 1907 Convention.” According to Bederman and Hilbert of the American Journal of International Law:

At the center of the PCA proceeding was the argument that … the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist and that the 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 [and its County of Hawai‘i].

In the situation of Hawai‘i, the usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation would appear to have been total since the beginning of the twentieth century. This is an ongoing crime where the criminal act would consist of the imposition of legislation or administrative measures by the occupying power that goes beyond what is required necessary for military purposes of the occupation. Since 1898, when the United States Congress enacted an American municipal law purporting to have annexed the Hawaiian Islands, it began to impose its legislation and administrative measures to the present in violation of the laws of occupation.

Given that this is essentially a crime involving government action or policy or the action or policies of an occupying State’s proxies such as the State of Hawai‘i and its Counties, a perpetrator who participated in the act would be required to do so intentionally and with knowledge that the act went beyond what was required for military purposes or the protection of fundamental human rights.

Usurpation of sovereignty has not only victimized the civilian population in the Hawaiian Islands for over a century, but it has also victimized the civilians of other countries that have visited the islands since 1898 who were unlawfully subjected to American municipal laws and administrative measures. These include State of Hawai‘i sales tax on goods purchased in the islands but also taxes placed exclusively on tourists’ accommodations collected by the State of Hawai‘i and the Counties.

The far reach of the victims of war crimes committed in the Hawaiian Islands includes civilians throughout the world in various countries.

At the United Nations World Summit in 2005, the Responsibility to Protect was unanimously adopted. The principle of the Responsibility to Protect has three pillars: (1) every State has the Responsibility to Protect its populations from four mass atrocity crimes—genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing; (2) the wider international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist individual States in meeting that responsibility; and (3) if a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter. In 2009, the General Assembly reaffirmed the three pillars of State’s Responsibility to Protect their populations from war crimes and crimes against humanity under resolution A/63/308, and in 2021, the UN General Assembly passed resolution A/75/277 on “The responsibility to protect and the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

Rule 158 of the International Committee of the Red Cross Study on Customary International Humanitarian Law specifies that “States must investigate war crimes allegedly committed by their nationals or armed forces, or on their territory, and, if appropriate, prosecute the suspects. They must also investigate other war crimes over which they have jurisdiction and, if appropriate, prosecute the suspects.” This “rule that States must investigate war crimes and prosecute the suspects is set forth in numerous military manuals, with respect to grave breaches, but also more broadly with respect to war crimes in general.”

Determined to hold to account individuals who have committed war crimes and human rights violations throughout the territorial jurisdiction of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the Council of Regency, by Proclamation on April 17, 2019, established a Royal Commission of Inquiry in similar fashion to the United States proposal of establishing a Commission of Inquiry after the First World War “to consider generally the relative culpability of the authors of the war and also the question of their culpability as to the violations of the laws and customs of war committed during its course.”

In mid-November of 2022, the Royal Commission of Inquiry published War Criminal Reports no. 22-0002, 22-0002-1, 22-0003, 22-0003-1, 22-0004, 22-0004-1, 22-0005, 22-0005-1, 22-0007, and 22-0007-1 that provides the evidence that U.S. President Joseph Biden, Jr., Vice-President Kamala Harris, Admiral John Aquilino, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, Senator Charles Schumer, Representative Nancy Pelosi, State of Hawai‘i Governor David Ige, Commissioner Ty Nohara, Tax Director Isaac Choy, Hawai‘i County Mayor Mitchell Roth, Hawai‘i County Council Chairwoman Maile David, Maui County Mayor Michael Victorino, Maui County Council Chairwoman Alice Lee, County of Kaua‘i Mayor Derek Kawakami, and Kaua‘i County Council Chair Arryl Kaneshiro have committed the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation. Accomplices to this war crime include: U.S. Attorneys Brian Boynton, Anthony Coppolino, and Michael Gerardi; State of Hawai‘i Attorneys Holly T. Shikada and Amanda J. Weston; County of Hawai‘i Attorneys Elizabeth Strance, Mark Disher and Dakota Frenz; County of Maui Attorneys Moana Lutey, Caleb Rowe and Iwalani Mountcastle; and County of Kaua‘i Attorneys Matthew Bracken and Mark Bradbury.

The reports have documented the necessary evidence that satisfies the elements of the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation: (1) the perpetrators imposed imposed or applied legislative or administrative measures of the occupying power going beyond those required by what is necessary for military purposes of the occupation, which is the actus reus or the criminal act; (2) the perpetrators were aware that the measures went beyond what was required for military purposes or the protection of fundamental human rights, which is the mens rea or the guilty mind; (3) their conduct took place in the context of and was associated with a military occupation; and (4) the perpetrators were aware of factual circumstances that established the existence of the military occupation.

With regard to the last two elements listed for the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation: (1) there is no requirement for a legal evaluation by the perpetrator as to the existence of an armed conflict or its character as international or non-international; (2) in that context there is no requirement for awareness by the perpetrator of the facts that established the character of the conflict as international or non-international; and (3) there is only a requirement for the awareness of the factual circumstance that established the existence of an armed conflict that is implicit in the terms “took place in the context of and was associated with.”

According to Professor Dietrich Schindler, “the existence of an [international] armed conflict within the meaning of Article 2 common to the Geneva Conventions can always be assumed when parts of the armed forces of two States clash with each other. … Any kind of use of arms between two States brings the Conventions into effect.” Dr. Stuart Casey-Maslen, author of The War Report 2012, further concludes that an international armed conflict “also exists whenever one state uses any form of armed force against another state, irrespective of whether the latter state fights back.”

The Hawaiian Kingdom has been in an international armed conflict with the United States since January 16, 1893, when U.S. troops invaded the city of Honolulu. The Hawaiian Kingdom has been under military occupation since January 17, 1893, when Queen Lili‘uokalani conditionally surrendered to the United States forces. For a comprehensive legal narrative and analysis of this international armed conflict download the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s ebook The Royal Commission of Inquiry: Investigating War Crimes and Human Rights Violations Committed in the Hawaiian Kingdom (2020).

The 123 countries who are States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court have primary responsibility to prosecute war criminals under complementary and universal jurisdiction. This type of jurisdiction gives State Parties the first responsibility before the International Criminal Court can initiate proceedings and authority to prosecute individuals for international crimes to include the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation without regard to the place the war crime was committed or the nationality of the perpetrator. With the exception of the United States, China, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Thailand, the Allied Powers and Associated Powers of the First World War are State Parties to the Rome Statute.

In this situation where the citizenry of these countries have become victims of the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation, they can seek extradition warrants in their national courts in order for their governments to prosecute these war criminals under the passive personality principle. The passive personality principle provides countries with jurisdiction for crimes committed against their nationals while they were abroad in the Hawaiian Islands. This has the potential of opening the floodgate to lawsuits from all over the world.

The commission of the war crime of usurpation of sovereignty during military occupation can stop when the United States, the State of Hawai‘i and the Counties begin to comply with Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations and administer the laws of the Occupied State—the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Hawaiian Kingdom Blog

Weblog of the acting government of the Hawaiian Kingdom presently operating within the occupied State of the Hawaiian Islands.

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