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<font size=4><b>National Lawyers Guild International Committee
Presentation to the United Nations Decolonization Committee Hearings on
Puerto Rico June 20, 2011<br>
</font><font size=3> <br>
</b>The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 as an alternative to
the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color. The
National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human
rights bar organization in the United States. With headquarters in New
York, it has chapters in every state. From its founding, the National
Lawyers Guild has maintained an internationalist perspective, with
international work a critical focus for the Guild. Its International
Committee has organized delegations to many countries throughout the
world, and Guild members are involved in international organizations such
as the International Association for Democratic Lawyers and the American
Association of Jurists. Presently, active subcommittees exist for Cuba,
the Middle East, Korea, Haiti, Palestine, Iran, Puerto Rico, and other
nations. Guild members, including myself, have a long history of
defending activists in the Puerto Rican independence movement. <br>
<br>
<b>I. Status<br>
<br>
</b>The Obama administration has joined the ranks of successive U.S.
administrations which ignore the provisions of international law which
this Honorable Committee has year after year conscientiously applied to
the colonial case of Puerto Rico. In March of this year, the U.S.
President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status of which there is not a
single Puerto Rican member issued a report with recommendations
proposing methods for purportedly resolving the status question,
acknowledging that “status remains of overwhelming importance to the
people of Puerto Rico,” but nowhere expressly acknowledging the colonial
status or the application of international law. The report suggests
convening a plebiscite process, polling the people of Puerto Rico
regarding available status options of statehood, independence, free
association and commonwealth. However, there is a significant potential
for the elimination of the independence option. Although more than half
the population lives in the United States, the Task Force suggests that
“only residents of Puerto Rico should be eligible to vote in any
plebiscite.” The report, moreover, does acknowledge that it is the U.S.
Congress that will ultimately determine the resolution of the
status.<br><br>
The report also addresses multiple insertions of increasing U.S. programs
into Puerto Rico, from the economy to education to labor, from health
care to the environment to law enforcement, in a barely veiled attempt to
increase the nation’s dependency on the United States.<br><br>
Last week, President Obama made a four-hour stop in Puerto Rico, the
first U.S. president in 50 years to visit the island nation. He
encountered mass demonstrations comprised of diverse groups, with
placards and banners reading “Obama, Go Home!” and calling for an end to
U.S. colonial control, independence, and the release of the Puerto Rican
political prisoners, particularly Oscar López Rivera. “Obama can’t talk
about freedom while he has Oscar and the others in prison,” was a theme
echoed by the people.<br><br>
While the White House claimed that the trip was related to furthering the
goals of the Task Force, the visit was seen as a transparent attempt to
woo the many Puerto Rican voters who now reside in the U.S., including in
the hotly contested state of Florida in the upcoming 2012 U.S.
presidential election,<sup> </sup>as the people of Puerto Rico cannot
vote for president. More than half of Mr. Obama’s time on the island was
spent raising over $1 million for his re-election campaign.<sup> </sup>It
was clear to the Puerto Rican people that “neither Obama nor his recent
predecessors recognize that the Puerto Rican political case is a colonial
problem.”<br>
<br>
<b>II. The Ongoing Crisis of Colonialism<br>
<br>
</b>The economy of the colony, one of the few economies in the world with
negative growth, and among slowest growing in the world, cannot support
the population. <br>
<br>
Unemployment is at its highest in two decades, higher than any state in
the U.S. There is an unprecedented exodus, being called “a brain drain,”
leading to the startling statistic that now more than half the Puerto
Rican population lives outside the island, and the vicious cycle of
difficulty in building an economy when much talent is seduced away by the
lack of job opportunities on the island and the perception of increased
job opportunities in the U.S.<br>
<sup> <br>
</sup>With lack of control over its own borders, Puerto Rico has been
unable to stem the unstaunched flow of drugs, which has led to a second,
underground economy and related crime, as well as a staggering murder
rate: as of June 9, there had been 491 murders this year alone; if the
murder rate continues, there will be 1,000 murders this year, making it
the most deadly in Puerto Rico’s history.<br><br>
In this context, in the past year, the human rights crisis on the island
has burgeoned. The superintendent of Police, a former U.S. agent of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], has overseen and applauded the
unending wave of violent attacks on people protesting the policies of the
colonial administration, particularly on striking students at the
University of Puerto Rico.<br><br>
Police violence has attracted the attention and condemnation of Amnesty
International in London, and even the U.S. Department of Justice is
investigating.<br><br>
The colonial administration has taken measures to ensure that the courts
of the colony are hostile to anything but the administration’s partisan
line, leaving most litigants without an impartial judicial forum in which
to challenge such human rights violations.<br>
<br>
The colonial administration packed the Supreme Court, increasing the
number of justices from seven to nine, in a transparently partisan
effort, accelerating the nomination and confirmation process. The
expansion, which supposedly responded to the court’s workload, was
largely seen an excuse and has been criticized as unnecessary and a power
grab by the governor’s pro-statehood party, with the criteria for
appointment favoring strong pro-statehood credentials over legal and
judicial experience. The court-packing was only one part of a broader
plan, which included legislation to gut the judicial appellate process,
fast-tracking appeals directly to the partisan higher court, often
bypassing the intermediate appellate courts.<br>
<br>
The U.S. federal court in Puerto Rico has been a full partner in
ratifying the rampant violations of human rights, with the case against
the Puerto Rico Bar Association as a foremost example, where the court
blatantly assisted disaffected pro-statehood partisans’ attempts to not
only dismantle the venerable institution, but to try to seize the
building which serves as its headquarters as well as a cultural center,
and in the course of which the federal court held in contempt and jailed
the president for educating his constituency about the lawsuit.<br><br>
The public university system has been taken over by partisan politics.
The colonial administration expanded the board of trustees with four
fast-tracked appointees and named a commission to restructure the
university with members openly hostile to its existence. The
administration has also imposed tuition hikes and curricular changes
which undermine university autonomy and the role of the university as a
forum for open discussion of issues of concern to the people of Puerto
Rico.<br>
<br>
The labor movement continues to be under attack by the colonial
administration’s adoption of anti-labor measures, never having redressed
the dismissal of some 30,000 public workers, the abrogation of collective
bargaining agreements in the public sector, or the creation of
“public-private alliances” as part of the privatization of essential
public services, with the resultant hardship for workers in Puerto Rico.
Labor union protests of these draconian measures have been met with
indifference in some instances and with violent repression at other
times.<br>
<br>
The history of criminalizing the independence movement continues
unabated. The head of the FBI office in San Juan was recently promoted to
an administrative position in FBI headquarters, a move attributed to the
“disarticulation” during his watch of the clandestine pro-independence
group The Macheteros, including the 2005 assassination of Filiberto Ojeda
Ríos, the 2008 arrest of alleged Machetero Avelino González Claudio, and
the 2011 arrest of alleged Machetero Norberto González Claudio.<br><br>
<b>III. Political Prisoners<br>
<br>
</b>This year has been historically significant for Puerto Rico’s
political prisoners held in United States prisons. The sole remaining
political prisoner of the group arrested in the 1980's is Oscar López
Rivera, who has the unenviable distinction of having served 30 years in
prison, despite the fact that he was not convicted of harming anyone or
taking a life. López, 68 years old, and serving a sentence of 70 years,
has a release date of 2023. In a politically punitive move, <br>
the U.S. Parole Commission recently refused his parole bid, erroneously
asserting that his release would promote disrespect for the law. The
decision ignored the express will of the Puerto Rican people and those
who believe in justice and human rights, counting tens of thousands of
voices across the political spectrum who have uniformly supported his
immediate release. The Commission ignored the evidence establishing that
he met all the criteria for parole and also ignored its own rules in the
process. Among these many ignored voices are this venerable body, members
of the United States Congress and many state legislatures of the various
states; the city councils and county boards of many locales in the U.S.
and Puerto Rico; the mayors of many towns in the U.S. and Puerto Rico,
including the Association of Mayors of Puerto Rico; bar associations
including the Puerto Rico Bar Association, the National Lawyers Guild and
the American Association of Jurists; clergy and religious organizations,
including the Ecumenical Coalition representing every religious
denomination in Puerto Rico; the National Latino Congreso, human rights
advocates, academics, students, artists, community organizations, and
workers.<br>
<br>
The Commission also flouted President Clinton’s 1999 determination that
Oscar’s sentence was disproportionately lengthy and that he should be
released in September of 2009. The Commission ignored the fact that
Oscar’s co-defendants released as a result of the 1999 Clinton clemency
are productive, law-abiding citizens, fully integrated into civil
society. Finally, the Commission ignored its own July 2010 order to
release Oscar’s last remaining imprisoned co-defendant Carlos Alberto
Torres.<br>
<br>
Avelino González Claudio, a 68 year old man with Parkinson’s Disease, has
served 3 years of his 7 year prison sentence and is scheduled for release
in 2012. His brother, Norberto González Claudio, 65, was apprehended last
month after 25 years in clandestinity. He awaits trial in federal court
in Connecticut, facing 275 years for the same charges as his brother and
many former political prisoners, accused of belonging to the Ejército
Boricua Popular – Macheteros, a pro-independence clandestine force which
expropriated over $7 million from a Wells Fargo Depot in 1983, the
proceeds to finance their struggle for independence.<br><br>
They remain strong in spirit, their commitment to the independence of
their nation undaunted, in spite of adversity, particularly buoyed by the
mass demonstrations of support for their release during the U.S.
president’s recent visit to the island.<br><br>
<b>IV. Environment<br>
<br>
</b>Two examples suffice to demonstrate the need for self-determination.
The island of Vieques, a U.S. Superfund site, has been shamefully left to
abandon after 60 years of military occupation polluted its land, air and
water and consequently gravely damaged the health of the people and their
economy. Yet in the face of this shameful abandon, the U.S. makes
promises it does not fulfill and suggestions without remedial
action.<br><br>
A $450 million 92 mile gas pipeline, which the colonial administration
euphemistically calls “the Green Way,” is another pending environmental
disaster, to run across the island, threatening the safety and health of
the people and the environment along the entire path, without public
participation, in violation of all the rules, and replete with
allegations of corruption. The project has generated massive public
opposition. The role of United States agencies is suspect.<br>
<br>
<b>V. Conclusion<br>
<br>
</b>The National Lawyers Guild International Committee, incorporating the
requests sought by other presenters before this Honorable Committee,
urges the adoption of a resolution calling for the General Assembly to
consider the case of Puerto Rico; and calling on the government of the
United States to:
<ul>
<li>immediately cease the brutality, criminalization and harassment of,
and attacks on, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the students, and
all those who exercise their fundamental rights to expression and
association;
<li>immediately release Puerto Rican political prisoners: Oscar López
Rivera, who has served more than 30 years in U.S. custody, and Avelino
González Claudio and Norberto González Claudio;
<li>identify and hold criminally liable all those responsible for the
assassination of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos (2005), Santiago Mari Pesquera
(1976), Carlos Muñiz Varela (1979), and other militants of the Puerto
Rican independence movement;
<li>withdraw the FBI, the U.S. court, and all other U.S. police,
repressive and military forces from Puerto Rico;
<li>withdraw from Vieques, formally return legal property of the land to
the people of Vieques, cease detonating unexploded ordnance, completely
clean up the pollution left by the U.S. Navy’s 60 year occupation through
the use of proven, environmentally friendly clean-up methods, and
compensate the people of Vieques for the damage to their health done to
them by the same;
<li>cease and desist from the application of the death penalty in Puerto
Rico;
<li>ensure the right to quality public higher education;
<li>formally commit to negotiate in good faith with the people of Puerto
Rico a solution to the colonial condition; and recognize the proposals
that emanate from a Constitutional Assembly, initiated by the people of
Puerto Rico, such as that called for by the Puerto Rico Bar Association,
as the true expression of the aspirations of the people of Puerto Rico,
and respond to them accordingly.
</ul> <br>
Dated: June 20, 2011 Respectfully submitted, <br>
Jan Susler People’s Law Office <br>
1180 N. Milwaukee Chicago, IL 60622 <br><br>
773/235-0070 <br>
<u><a href="mailto:jsusler@aol.com">jsusler@aol.com </a><br><br>
</u>On behalf of the National Lawyers Guild International Committee <br>
<u><a href="http://www.nlginternational.org/">
http://www.nlginternational.org/ </a><br><br>
</u><br>
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