CRIME FEARS FOLLOW TRAIL OF MIGRANTS

February 19, 2005- (Sydney Morning Herald) Upstairs in Signals disco in Suva, Fiji's lively capital, young Chinese women lounge around. "I see Australia on TV - nice," says 25-year-old Suzie from Beijing, who studies English by day and works as a prostitute at night.

Suzie is carrying a small fold-out mobile, like the 100-or-so other Chinese women in the disco seeking short-term cash and the glittering prize of onward movement to developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

Across the road, on a public bench, their indigenous Fijian and Fiji-Indian counterparts are touting for business. "I think we should put all those Chinese girls in a warehouse and burn it down," proclaims one of them.

Chinese women were originally brought in by criminal entrepreneurs in small numbers to work in back-street brothels patronised by Asian fishing crews.

Now Chinese women come in growing numbers on four-month visitors' visas or as English students at local institutions. But they often have to pay thousands of dollars up front to gang bosses to join the sex industry.

Last week, Fiji police arrested 41 Chinese men and women at a gambling den near Suva's main wharf; many of them were found to be in the country illegally.

An inquiry is under way into allegations that Fijian officials took bribes in return for allowing illegal fishing inside the nation's already tragically depleted exclusive economic zone.

There are many new Chinese restaurants in Suva, but it was a Fiji-born Chinese restaurateur who was jailed after getting mixed up with a foreign Chinese syndicate in heroin smuggling. In Vanuatu, 120 kilograms of heroin found last year has been linked to heroin traffickers, and methamphetamine production, in Fiji.

In Vanuatu, too, "new Chinese" are ruffling feathers by their wholesale movement into the commercial sector. Police are investigating the country's Citizenship Commission after naturalisation certificates were obtained by Chinese not even close to fulfilling long-term residency requirements.

In Papua New Guinea, the new wave of Chinese have opened nightclubs with poker machines.

A senior police officer confirmed that a Malaysian Chinese man, Stephen Ng, who operated bawdy nightclubs as well as horse racing machines, was arrested for deportation in an undercover operation because his personal connections in the force went "to the roof".

In the Solomon Islands, the Australian-led law and order restoration operation has resulted in the jailing of an ethnic Chinese Malaysian logging company executive for attempting to bribe a customs official. However, unsustainable logging, including in the area of the spectacular Morovo Lagoon, continues unabated.

Perhaps history will judge that the greatest crime of all in the region is not corruption itself, but environmental damage and the robbing of resources and the birthright of unborn generations.

Taken from: http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Crime-fears-follow-trail-of-migrants/2005/02/18/1108709439219.html?oneclick=true