Controversial Risenhoover Files Case for Indigenous Group

April 6, 2010

Dr. Paul Risenhoover of Robin Hood International Human Rights Legal Defense Fund filed a 200-page lawsuit against the federal government on behalf the National Chamorro Association of the Mariana Islands according to the Saipan Tribune. The National Chamorro Association of the Mariana Islands president is former alleged labor abuser Glenn H. Manglona. (Domestic helpers on Saipan and on Rota filed labor cases against the former Rota Director of Labor.)

From the Tribune:

The Legal Defense Fund also filed a draft pleading with the International Court of Justice on behalf of the “native Chamorro and Carolinian Indian nationals and Formosans,” concerning the U.S. and Japan's violations of duties and responsibilities to protect Chamorros and Carolinians under a Treaty of Peace between the two countries.

“What this lawsuit tries to accomplish is to invoke Chamorro and Carolinian rights as tribal people. We have certain rights that are not being provided by the U.S. government. In a nutshell, we can make the Covenant better. It's not perfect but we can make it better for us,” said Manglona.

The Legal Defense Fund said that while U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Paul L. Friedman has upheld the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's issuance of the rules to be acceptable to the statutory and Covenant authority of Congress, he has not ruled on whether the Constitution gives Congress the authority to enter into the Covenant.

I downloaded some of the "legal" documents filed in this case, and seriously could not make sense of them. They did not look like legal documents, but like drafts cut and pasted by someone outside of the legal profession. Here are some of the legal (?) documents filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit Court.

I find it extremely ironic that the leader of a so-called “human rights organization” was involved with promoting the violation of human rights. Dr. Risenhoover promoted the recruitment of innocent Palauans and Micronesians to work in the filthy and abusive Agriprocessor Plant in Postville Iowa. (See this post: Baloney)

In an August 2008 news article Dr. Paul Risenhoover called for workers from the Marshalls, Palau and other Micronesian Islands to work in the non-union, abusive meat packing plant.

The article stated: “The factory owners are Orthodox Jews who produce Kosher religious meat for Jewish families and many Seventh Day Adventists, purchase their Kosher meats.” I guess they cared how their meat was prepared, but were not concerned that workers were abused and their human rights were denied. A Marianas Variety article also covered the news saying that Dr. Risenhoover told Palauans of the “opportunity” during an Austronesian Forum in 2008.

His recruitment of workers took place after the well-publicized outrage and exposure of illegalities and abuses at the plant. In May 2008 the plant was the site of an immigration raid that led to the arrest of 389 illegal workers and eventual charges against former executive Sholom Rubashkin and several managers.

In April 2009 Elizabeth Billmeyer, personnel manager, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to harbor undocumented aliens for profit and one count of knowingly accepting false resident alien cards. In September 2009 the chief financial officer of Agriprocessor Plant, Mitchell Meltzer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy for making false statements to a bank.

Risenhoover is a board member of the Free China Movement. He has quite the controversial past. In 2007 he was deported from Taiwan, blacklisted, and denied reentry for six months. He filed a court case challenging passport denial for being behind in child support payments. A Wikepedia article states:

"The Court characterized Risenhoover's complaint as "a scrambled collection of conspiracy allegations and unexplained citations to federal statutes." Risenhoover maintained that he was subject to certain cognitive disorders and should not be discriminated against on this basis. Risenhoover argued he was effectively in custody, wherever he was, because he was unable to travel internationally without a passport.

Due to the unstructured nature of Risenhoover's pleadings it is difficult to ascertain what ultimately happened but it is clear from the exhibits that he flew from Kaohsiung to Tokyo on February 26, 2006. Further he complained of ill-treatment by the authorities at or about that time.

He lost the case.

Dr. Risenhoover is apparently well-known in courtrooms. In 1999 The New York Times reported that a judge threw out out a lawsuit concerning selling human organs. The judge called Risenhoover a “fraudulent opportunist.”

From the article:

Federal charges against two men accused of conspiring to sell human organs taken from Chinese prisoners were dismissed yesterday by a judge who sharply criticized the Government for building its case around an informant she denounced as ''a fraudulent opportunist.''

Judge Deborah A. Batts of United States District Court in Manhattan said the informant, Paul Risenhoover, had been seeking to overthrow the Chinese Government and might have entrapped the two defendants. She said Mr. Risenhoover was now refusing to return from abroad to appear at trial, which denied the defendants their Constitutional right to cross-examine him.

The The NY Daily News had this to say about the case:

In a caustic, 155-page decision, the judge attacked the government's case, zeroing in on the use of informant Paul Risenhoover, who admits to opposing the Communist government of China "by any means necessary."

Risenhoover has "his own political, personal and possibly financial agendas, and he seems to operate on the premise that his desired ends justify any means," Batts wrote.

You can get an idea of Risenhoover's political views by reading this 2005 letter to the editor he wrote concerning Taiwan’s independence.

I wouldn't worry about this case going anywhere.