Palau president remains calm as storm brews on island

When asked by the United States to accept a group of hard-to-place Guantanamo inmates, Palauan President Johnson Toribiong mulled over the request as both a head of state and a criminal defense lawyer.

The 62-year-old politician says he considered the plight of the 13 Chinese men as he had countless other defendants during two decades as one of this tiny Pacific island nation’s top litigators.

The men, ethnic Uighurs, had gotten a raw deal, he said, jailed for years without trial. Now, they weren’t considered dangerous terrorists after all. No country had been willing to take the Muslims -- before Palau.

“These people are not monsters,” said Toribiong, who, with graying hair and glasses, looks pensive, even professorial. “They should be presumed innocent because no one has proven them guilty.”

The last two weeks have been tsunami-like for Toribiong.

Barely 120 days in office as leader of the isolated republic of 20,000 citizens -- a job not unlike being mayor of a small town -- he’s now in the international diplomatic spotlight.

By offering the detainees refuge, Toribiong, like any other potential host, runs the risk of offending Beijing, which has demanded the men be returned to China to be tried as political criminals on charges of insurgency.

He has also angered some islanders, who say he’s bringing trouble to their piece of paradise. But Toribiong waves off his critics.

As a former U.S. territory, Palau must come to America’s aid, he says. And Palauan culture has long embraced castaways and drifters who wash up on the island’s shores.

Friends aren’t surprised at Toribiong’s sense of calm amid the crisis.

“He believes in giving people a second chance,” said Johnny Gibbons, a grade-school friend of Toribiong’s who now serves as Palau’s justice minister. “Often appointed by the court, he defended alleged drug dealers and murderers, people with no resources.

“He didn’t judge them. He defended them.”

Toribiong, the son of a Seventh-day Adventist minister, was born in 1946, after the U.S. had freed Palau from Japanese rule in World War II. Like many newborns of the day, he was given an American first name -- there are many Roosevelts, Trumans and Eisenhowers.

Toribiong was raised by his grandmother and his step-grandfather, a village chief he recalls as a “historian, magician and medicine man.”

“His step-grandfather taught him integrity,” said Raphael Ngirman, one of Palau’s top tribal chiefs, his lips reddened from chewing betel nut. “Johnson was quiet and considered, even as a boy. But his friends and elders respected that style.”

Fascinated with America, Toribiong applied for a scholarship to attend college in Colorado and earned his law degree at the University of Washington.

He returned to Palau to start a career as a public servant, becoming a defense lawyer and later a part-time judge. He was also appointed chief of his boyhood village, an honor in a culture where rural areas are governed by tribal chiefs who are named by female elders.

For a time, he was president of the island’s baseball federation. “I call him a baseball coach,” said Toribiong’s younger brother Joel, a senator. “He’s a thinker. He sits on the bench forever to ponder things before he puts his lineup together.”

But Johnson Toribiong made his name as a defense lawyer.

“One time when he had taken on a big case, I asked him, ‘How can you represent someone you know is guilty?’ ” Ngirman said. “He didn’t flinch. He said he did the best job he could no matter what crime his client was accused of.”

Toribiong won a close battle to become president in November, spending election day checking on polling places, roaming the same villages where he had played as a boy.

He had barely begun his new job when America came calling.

In early June, Toribiong received a call from Mark Bezner, charge d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy here, who wanted to discuss a proposal to resettle as many as 17 Uighurs from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Palau.

Toribiong quickly met with a delegation of U.S. officials, including Daniel Fried, the Obama administration’s special envoy for the Guantanamo closure and Navy Rear Adm. William D. French.

“We were open about our political problems resettling the Uighurs,” Bezner said. “He looked at this as an opportunity to help the U.S., which was refreshing.”

Before accepting, Toribiong said, he consulted with elected officials and village chiefs, who told him that such hospitality was the Palauan way.

“It wasn’t a hard decision,” he said. “There were only a few questions: Is it the right thing to do? Is it just? And will it benefit Palau in the long run?

“For me, the answers were all a resounding yes. Maybe I’m naive, but I thought: ‘These are human beings. It’s only a few people. We can handle this.’ We decided to treat them as temporary settlers looking for a permanent settlement.”

Toribiong has been criticized by some islanders who say the world’s troubles should remain far from their tropical home. One former Palauan president has said publicly that he wouldn’t have accepted the Uighurs. As Toribiong sat in the sun within earshot of the crashing surf, he dismissed his critics as “trying to play local politics with an international issue of human rights.”

He has sent a delegation to Guantanamo to interview the men, who will be placed in a halfway house here until longer-term housing and jobs can be found.

“We’re considering whether we should give these men a party when they arrive, give them garlands and leis,” he said.

Supporters say Toribiong, like any lawyer, is a shrewd deal-maker, picking up a valuable bargaining chip when Palau negotiates with American officials for future economic aid.

Since independence in 1994, Palau has received about $20 million in annual assistance from the United States. But that aid is set to end this year.

The U.S. is also considering assigning a full-time ambassador to Palau, a bonus for the small out-of-the-way nation about 4,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.

“Palau’s choice to accept these detainees has generated debate and a reaction from China that it didn’t bargain for,” Bezner said. “But for a tiny nation, it also achieved a huge amount of visibility.”

As Toribiong deals with the complications involved with his Uighur guests, he will blow off steam the way he always has: breaking away for an afternoon of snorkeling and spear fishing.

The freshman president says he’s at peace with the idea that some may never understand his decision to step into the world spotlight. “What can I say,” he said. “I’m enigmatic.”

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john.glionna@latimes.com