The government’s chief prosecutor Tobusoye Brown also surprised High Court Chief Justice Carl Ingram by asking for $500,000 bail for Xiaojiao Mary Chen after she was charged with promoting prostitution, false arrest and employing aliens without work permits, saying he believed she was a flight risk.
After commenting that he did not recall the High Court in its 30-year history requiring half a million dollars for bail in any case, Ingram set bail at $600 and scheduled a preliminary hearing for December 27 when he will take a plea from Chen. In denying the high bail sought by Brown, Ingram ordered Chen to turn in her Chinese passport and told Brown the immigration department, which comes under the Attorney General’s Office, simply needed to be instructed not to let Chen leave the country if she attempted to do so.
But Brown said that may not work. Immigration officials do not strictly enforce border control requirements such as visas and related paperwork requirements for aliens entering and leaving the Marshall Islands, he said.
Ingram expressed surprise at Brown’s statement, questioning him about immigration procedures at the airport. “Many people have passed through with no records on file,” Brown said.
“It’s not possible to tell employees under the attorney general’s authority to not allow a person to board (an airplane)?” Ingram asked. “Yes, in theory, but in practice, no,” Brown said. “I regret to say we don’t have the resources to enforce strict compliance.”
Brown filed the prostitution charges against Chen under a rarely used anti-prostitution law — only the third time it has been invoked in prosecutions since it was passed in 2001. All three prostitution cases have involved Chinese nationals.
At the court hearing last week, Brown said high-level political leaders have exerted “enormous pressure” on the Attorney General’s Office not to file charges against Chen. Ingram told Brown to “bring me a witness” and added that “if I get evidence, I will act.”
The charges are based on the testimony of two women from China, Lu Huihua and Xu Linfang, who claim that they were hired from Shanghai to be storekeepers for Chen but then found themselves forced into prostitution from September 2008 to January 2009 before they left Chen to work for another company on Majuro.
Chen, a citizen of China, operates the Canton Hotel in Majuro. In an affidavit filed as part of a police report in support of the charges, the women claim they were threatened when they refused to engage in prostitution. But, they claim, they were afraid of returning home without first earning money to pay off the money they owed to finance their trip to the Marshall Islands.
Xu said she was told Marshall Islands immigration would send her home if she didn’t do as she was told. “Mary Chen said there is one thing you have to know in Marshall Islands — there is no law,” Xu said in the statement provided to the court. “Money is law. I know all the ministers and senators. There is nothing I cannot do.”
