JEN RUGGLES PUTS PRESIDENT TRUMP ON NOTICE FOR “WAR CRIMES OF UNLAWFUL AND WANTON APPROPRIATION OF PROPERTY”

Jen Ruggles released a letter today that she sent to President Donald Trump, Majority Leader of the United States Senate Mitch McConnel, and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Paul Ryan regarding “war crimes of unlawful and wanton appropriation of property committed by the United States against Protected Persons in the Hawaiian Kingdom.” Sent on November 28th,  Hawaiian Kingdom Independence Day, Ruggles concludes the letter with an excerpt of the November 28th 1843 United Kingdom and France joint declaration that gave the Hawaiian Kingdom it’s status as an independent nation-state.

“In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) illegally appropriated $7.1 million dollars from the residents of the Hawaiian Islands. During this same year, the State of Hawai‘i additionally appropriated $6.5 billion dollars illegally,” Ruggles said, “The IRS is an agency of the United States and cannot appropriate money from the inhabitants of an occupied state without violating international law. The State of Hawai‘i is an armed force of the United States, established by an Act of Congress in 1959, and being an entity without any extraterritorial effect, it is precluded from appropriating money from the inhabitants of an occupied State without violating the international laws of occupation.”

Ruggles also refers to the Jones Act of 1920 that requires all goods, including tourists on cruise ships to be shipped on U.S. built vessels wholly owned and crewed by U.S. citizens. Ruggles asserts that as a result of the Jones Act, there is no free trade in Hawaii and that it creates a high cost of living for Hawaii residents. “Under the Jones Act, these American carriers travel 2,400 miles to ports on the west coast of the United States in order to reload goods and merchandise, delivered from Pacific countries on foreign carriers, which would have otherwise come directly to Hawai‘i ports,” Ruggles wrote,  “the cost of fuel and the lack of competition drive up the cost of shipping and contributes to Hawai‘i’s high cost of living… These appropriations of monies directly, through taxation, and indirectly, via the impositions of the Jones Act, to benefit American ship carriers and other businesses, are war crimes.”

According to the letter, Ruggles says, “these war crimes derive from the unlawful imposition of United States municipal laws over Hawaiian Kingdom territory” violate Articles 43 of the Hague convention and 64 of the Geneva Convention. Ruggles also explains how according the Article 147 of the Geneva Convention an occupier may only appropriate property of an occupied territory if it justified by military necessity.” Ruggles writes that as such, the United States is committing war crimes as defined by defined under federal criminal law—18 U.S.C. §2441.