[News] Violence Against Student Strike in Puerto Rico Escalates With Police Brutality and Rubber Bullets

[Anti-Imperialist News]

<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maritza-stanchich-phd>Maritza Stanchich, Ph.D.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maritza-stanchich-phd/violence-against-student-_b_817297.html?view=screen

Associate Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico
Posted: February 2, 2011 04:31 PM


<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maritza-stanchich-phd/violence-against-student-_b_817297.html>Violence 
Against Student Strike in Puerto Rico Escalates 
With Police Brutality and Rubber Bullets


More than 150 students practicing civil 
disobedience have been arrested in Puerto Rico 
and riot police on Thursday escalated violent 
repression of a university strike with 
<http://pr.indymedia.org/news/2011/01/47242.php>brutal 
arrests and rubber bullets during a sit-in 
demonstration at the Capitol. As President Obama 
and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for 
governmental prudence during a historic revolt in 
Egypt, the most basic free speech rights are 
under attack with apparent impunity in this U.S. 
territory of about four million U.S. citizens 
still grappling with a century-old colonial 
relationship with the United States.

Meanwhile, the Reaganite Republican and pro 
Statehood Governor, Luis Fortuño, was again 
traveling on Friday, 
<http://www.vocero.com/noticias-es/gobernador-viaja-a-simi-valley-california>with 
a trip to California sponsored by The Heritage 
Foundation, though he denied attending a 
controversial event nearby with the billionaire 
Koch brothers behind the Tea Party movement. 
Fortuño's bold austerity measures and 
ruthlessness have made him a Republican Party 
darling, as strategists scramble for Latino 
leaders they can promote while rejecting 
immigration reform and with Tea Party followers 
spewing hate speech against Latino immigrants.

The student strike that began in December against 
an imposed fee and the privatization of the 
institution has demonstrated the lengths to which 
the Fortuño administration will go to repress all 
dissent. The governor has 
<http://laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14092&ArticleId=336085>laid 
off 20,000 public sector employees, nullified 
public sector union contracts, and gutted the 
budgets of cultural, educational and social 
agencies, including the University of Puerto 
Rico. Early in his term, he activated the 
National Guard for civilian purposes, to the 
public outcry of civil and human rights groups.

Adding to the climate of a university under 
siege, the administration announced 10 academic 
programs at the flagship Río Piedras campus have 
been placed "on pause" and would turn away new 
undergraduate majors, including the 
internationally renowned department of Hispanic 
Studies. That professors learned of this through 
the press, and using terminology that appears 
nowhere in university regulations, heightened 
fears that the university--a cornerstone of 
Puerto Rico's national patrimony--is being dismantled.

"The thought is unbearable," said Princeton 
University professor Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, an 
alumni of the Hispanic Studies program, who 
recalled his intellectual mentors there with 
reverent indebtedness. The department in turn 
announced it would fight the potential 
suspension, which echoes a broader attack on the 
humanities seen at public universities elsewhere, 
as crude market forces seem to suddenly determine what counts as knowledge.

With the next semester set to begin Monday, 
student protesters seem to be putting their lives 
on the line for public higher education, as 
growing contingents of riot police suppress even 
relatively small protests of 100 or so students. 
A journalist from Al Jazeera plans a trip to 
Puerto Rico to cover the unrest, largely ignored by most U.S. media.

Police have also dealt harshly with journalists 
during civil disobedience arrests, with several 
journalists attacked, and one correspondent of 
student-run RadioHuelga arrested, despite his 
clearly displayed press credentials. Press 
organizations filed complaints and assault 
charges against the police Monday on behalf of 
journalists violently blocked from newsgathering.

Indeed photographs and videos of Thursday's 
police escalation are 
<http://pr.indymedia.org/news/2011/01/47174.php>damning. 
Along with firing 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77xibyogluY>rubber 
bullets and using tear gas and pepper spray, 
police are seen 
<http://pr.indymedia.org/news/2011/01/47242.php>applying 
pressure point techniques to the neck to block 
blood flow of student civil disobedients, which 
induces extreme pain and can be potentially fatal 
if misapplied, according to medical experts cited 
in the local press. Police are also seen in 
videos groping the breasts of a female student 
under arrest, prompting local human rights groups 
to publicly denounce such sexual misconduct and 
women's rights groups to hold a protest today.

Thursday's events brought to bear broad criticism 
from political leaders and the public alike, with 
concerns that further escalation may cause 
deaths. This independent 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77xibyogluY>video 
shows police abusing students under arrest and 
firing potentially fatal rubber bullets as 
protesters then took to the streets, as well as 
reactions from the public affected by the mayhem. 
When the arrests began, the students were sitting 
on the ground, arms-locked, in civil 
disobedience, as they have been for the past two 
weeks at entrances to the main university campus. 
The subtitled interview with a student being 
arrested was filmed from under a car, which the 
cameraman resorted to when police blocked his filming.

Expressions by a nun and teacher from a nearby 
parochial school echo widespread erosion of 
public confidence in the police, who in the past 
few years have been rocked by scandal, from 
killings attributed to police brutality or 
botched responses, to the biggest FBI police 
corruption sting in history with the arrest of 
more than 130 in October. Recent headlines 
indicate the new year began with the highest 
murder rate in a decade, with 111 murders in 
January, per capita a higher rate than Mexico.

And with the campus occupied by police breaking a 
more than 30-year truce, the nerves of members of 
the university community are as frayed as one 
could expect should a similar scenario unfold at Kent State University.

"Police chief José Figueroa Sancha and Governor 
Luis Fortuño are totally directly responsible for 
whatever happens," said Elizabeth Concepción 
Laguere, a sister at the Convento Jesús Mediador, 
who was arrested on January 19 in solidarity 
civil disobedience, and wished aloud that "the 
public would overcome their fear and come out in support of the students."





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