History was made in the St Ann’s Bay RM Court last week when two Chinese language interpreters appeared in the court in a case involving two Chinese supermarket operators from St Ann’s Bay and two visiting Chinese nationals. Court observers say it is possibly the first time two interpreters in the same language are appearing in a court case, at least one in St Ann. The case was first reported by the North Coast Times last month when the two visiting Chinese nationals — Zhu-Songwu and Zhu Zelin — appeared in court, jointly charged for larceny by trick. Two Chinese supermarket owners in St Ann’s Bay are claiming they thought they were getting a deal of valuable gold artefacts when they paid out US$70,000 (more than J$7 million) for what turned out to be fake. The supermarket operator and his wife are alleging that the two Chinese nationals came to them saying they had dug up valuable artefacts on the North-South leg of Highway 2000. It is alleged that the two men claimed that they had a will that dated back to 1937 and also claimed gold pieces and valuable statuettes left by a Chinese immigrant to Jamaica, for one of his two sons. The deal reportedly went down, after negotiations January 20, this year when the merchants in St Ann’s Bay paid US$70,000 for what they apparently thought was very valuable. In fact according to the claim, the local Chinese had chipped one of the items, a statuette of Buddha and found what seemed to be goal and accepted the other items as such. However, the following day they took the items for proper tests that revealed the purchase was all fake. The local supermarket operators reported the matter to the police and the two men alleged to have carried out the sale were held at the Norman Manley Airport in Kingston as they were about to return to their homeland, February 5. The men have pleaded not guilty to the charge and say they conducted no transaction in US dollars with the local Chinese merchants and that they didn’t dig up any treasure or claim to have done so. The men returned to court Wednesday, April 2, with their own interpreter, a Jamaican woman who teaches Mandarin Chinese in Kingston. That’s despite another interpreter, born in China and naturalized in Jamaica, provided by the court, since the two Chinese nationals do not speak any English. Attorney Oswest Senior Smith secured bail for his clients Zhu-Songwu and Zhu Zelin, although the Clerk and one of the two supermarket operators raised objections. The court imposed some tough conditions: arrangements had to be made for a home to be rented for the two men in St Ann, where they had no relations or friends; they have to report to Ocho Rios police every day; they are under curfew not to leave their homes before 6:45 a.m. and must be at home before 6:30 in the evening; they must not be seen near any port. As the men were travelling on visitor’s visas, the court ordered their immigration status to be upgraded.
