Amid North Korean crisis, Guam residents rally for peace

HAGÅTÑA, Guam — More than 100 Chamorro people and island residents went to the island's capital city Monday evening for a "People for Peace" rally in support of a movement to end the North Korean missile crisis targeting Guam.

Last week, North Korea announced plans to launch four intermediate-range ballistic rockets near the island by the middle of the month. President Trump said that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded” should the rogue nation attack.

Over the weekend, the president spoke with Eddie Calvo, governor of the U.S. territory, to reassure him and the island that the rest of the U.S. is behind the territory "1,000 percent."

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Monday's peace rally organized by local groups, Independent Guåhan and Prutehi Litekyan: Save Ritidian, was to draw attention to the 162,000 lives at stake amid the escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea.

“It’s a great chance for us to assert that perhaps we want something more peaceful,” said Michael Bevacqua, chairman of Independent Guåhan. “Donald Trump says we’ll see what happens with Guam before we decide what to do, but that might make people in Montana or Alabama feel good, but that makes us feel a little bit scared.”

With the eyes of the world currently fixated on the island, Bevacqua said the rally also serves as a chance to teach the international community about Guam and its struggles to decolonize.

“If we can’t directly affect the policies in Washington or in Pyongyang, what we can do is change the perception of us,” he said.

Sabina Flores Perez of the Save Ritidian group said real peace lies with demilitarization on Guam. If the U.S. hadn’t colonized the island, North Korea wouldn’t aim its missiles toward Guam, she said.

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“Our lands were taken away to establish the military bases. It’s these same bases that are making us a target because of the military community,” said Perez.

She added that the missiles are “faced in our direction because of the U.S. presence.”

Perez also referenced the Japanese occupation of Guam, relating the past event to the current missile crisis. She said Japan was only interested in taking over Guam during World War II because it was a U.S. territory.

Siobhon McManus, a 22-year-old English teacher, attended Monday’s rally to support peace as well as stress to the U.S. and North Korea that Guam doesn’t want to have a target on its back anymore.

“We’re really tired of being caught in the cross fire of war not of our making, whether it was World War II and impending nuclear threat that may or may not happen,” she said. “We’ve always been a peaceful people, we never asked for the conflicts that we’re the back drop for.”

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McManus noted that although the missile crisis has stirred anxiety on the island, the media attention from several international news outletshas given Guam’s residents a chance to show how their lives have been affected by colonization.

“Since the world kind of has a spotlight on us for now, it’s also been an opportunity for me as someone who cares about the indigenous people’s rights being Chamorro and also Palauan and being someone from Micronesia that’s saying, ‘our needs as a people have been put on the back burner for a really long time.’ And this is a rally for peace but it’s also a rally to question whether or not peace is something we can achieve with the way we’re currently treated by all of these different empires.”

Follow Shawn Raymundo on Twitter: @Shawn_Del_Mundo

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