Backtracking - Thurs, Nov 23, 2006

Hi Everyone,

I'm pretty sure this never reached American news, but just in case I thought I would send an update on the situation here. On the main island of Tongatapu, in the city of Nuku'alofa, there have been some riots and demonstrations against the government. Here's the news from what I can gather. Right now, the Kingdom of Tonga is ruled by a monarchy system. The King has the ultimate power and appoints all of the ministers including the Prime Minister. Additionally, although there is a Parliament, a majority of the seats are reserved for nobles - i think 15 out of 25 seats or something like that - but the nobles are only a group of 30 famililes in Tonga, representing a very small percentage of the people. A majority (it seems) of the people in Tonga would like this system to be reformed so as to be more democratic. They would like the king to become more of a figure head, like in England, and for the people to be given more seats in Parliament and for the Prime Minister to be elected by the Parliament. On Thursday, the government voted on these reforms, and due to the majority in Parliament being from the noble class, they did not pass the reforms. Thousands of people had been gathered on the Parliament lawn for the vote and when they heard the news they stormed the Parliament building and the Parliament members had to run away. Then the angry mob went into town and started burning down all the stores in Nuku'alofa, mostly the Chinese run stores because there is also all this tension between the Chinese families and the Tongans because the last King had tried to sell Tongan passports to raise funds for the country and many, many, many Chinese families bought passports to Tonga and moved to Tonga in an effort to then be able to apply for citizenship to the United States as a Tongan national so the Tongan people then felt that they had less opportunity to come to the United States. And to add to the hurt, as all this happened, the USA started making immigration more difficult and to counter the influx of TOngan applications, then allowed fewer people to come to the US from TOnga. (This is all what I have just gathered from talking to people so I may be wrong on some things, but that is the basic gist). So anyways, on Thursday the demonstraters started burning buildings and they attacked the Shoreline officers which are owned by the government and control the electricity and phone lines and internet, etc. Six people were killed at the Shoreline offices and maybe 2 others elsewhere. And, because it was so dry, pretty much all of Nuku'alofa seems to have been affected by the fires. WHich is crazy becuase that's where I was on Tuesday.

NOW THE GOOD NEWS...I am, thankfully, no longer on the island of TOngatapu. On tuesday night we left for Ha'api and so I am safely away on another island a 10 hour boat ride away. ALso, the government voted again and has decided to go through with the reforms so the demonstrations and riots have stopped and everything has calmed down in Nuku'alofa. We were totally unaffected by any of this up here in Ha'api. Peace Corps made announcements on the radio stations for all the PEace COrps people in TOngatapu to stay home and came to check on us so everyone on the streets and in the towns were making sure we were ok, but it was all sai pe (just fine). here everyone is just happy and calm and nice. and we had american night last night and ate pizzas and acted american.

Ok, i should let some other people use the computer.

real quick, on my first day here i learned to weave a basket from a coconut leaf. fun!

CHeers everyone!!-carly