Ignorance fuels Internet nation scams

By Michael J Field

Conmen hitting the world

have one thing on their side when it comes to using a Pacific dateline on the Internet. Most people cannot tell Nauru from Niue, Savusavu from Suva or Enenkio from Karitane. And in the snows of New Hampshire public relations expert Stephen Abbott is having a great joke on everybody.

He’s never been into the South Pacific but his is the father of the nation of the Republic of Howland and Baker Islands.

And on his web site he makes it so easy to fall for it all, particularly with the complaint that since the Millennium hotel room rates had fallen flat in the republic.

For the informed EnenKio is easily recognisable as one of the better known web scams with its claim to Wake Island in the North Pacific. Karitane is a fiction created by another web state, the “Dominion of Melchizedek”. When the drama of Rotuma arose some news organisations found Abbott’s site, and took

it seriously.

Adding to the confusing is the fact that both Howland and Baker do exist and are bleak US atolls just north of Kiribati - which does, quietly, claim them.

“I was genuinely unaware that ‘micronations’ in Fiji and in the Marshall Islands had taken a more real and concrete form until I did some research into the matter last week,” Abbott says.

“While I’m all in favour of sovereignty, and even secession, in many cases around the world, the artificial nature of these newly-created ‘nations’ clearly falls far short of any criteria for true national identity and legitimacy.” Abbott said after the Rotuma drama broke he created an explanation page for fear that somebody might take his republic too seriously.

“It is a model nation, in the sense that it is a sociological blank slate upon which economic, social, political, racial and various other societal issues can be played out in a neutral setting,” the note says. It is modelled on the laws and culture of Singapore.

Abbott has also created a history for the islands, diverging from what is known at the point American aviator Amelia Earhart became hopelessly, and fatally, lost in 1937. She had been heading for Howland Island from New Guinea. She never showed up, but on the Republic’s website she “lands on and takes off from Howland Island”. In 1948 a Texas billionaire buys the island and “transformed them into a Singapore-like business empire”. The other cybernations are little more than scams, as the US State Department warned, saying the Dominion and EnenKio were “both entirely fraudulent in intent and practice”. The Republic of Howland and Baker offers, according to the web site, “a wide range of offshore business attractions” although it comes with an interesting warning:

“Things aren’t always what they appear

and if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Check with your bank for the best investment options. Don’t trust the Internet for investment and banking advice.”