Friday, May 31, 2013

Ecuadorians Take Case Against Chevron to United Nations



A day after sounding the alarm at Chevron’s shareholder meeting, victims of oil company’s bad faith ask for global action Amazon Defense Coalition 30 May 2013 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Bill Hamilton at (202) 641-0350 or bill@fenton.com Geneva, Switzerland – Fresh from a day of confronting Chevron's CEO and board at their annual shareholders' meeting in San Ramon, CA, tomorrow representatives of Ecuador's community that won a $19 billion judgment against the U.S. oil company take their case to the United Nations. Humberto Piaguaje, coordinator of the organization representing 30,000 indigenous people and subsistence farmers whose lands and streams were devastated by Chevron Corporation's deliberate dumping of chemicals and oil sludge will discuss their experience with attempting to enforce a judgment in their environmental lawsuit against the oil company for environmental damage and the resulting impact on the Ecuadorian population of his region. His presentation will be before member country representatives. Pablo Fajardo of Quito, who leads the global litigation program for the Ecuadorians, and Piaguaje will encourage the world body to take a more active role in supporting successful court actions taken by citizens against transnational companies like Chevron. He will speak of the countless mechanisms used by the company to evade their debt and thwart the law in their Andean country, where the company lost both a trial and an appeal of a case begun 20 years earlier in New York. The two Ecuadorians said the UN should develop and adopt an international convention so that companies such as Chevron, when they commit crimes against the population, can be sanctioned for violations of human rights and thus avoid impunity. On Thursday they made a similar appeal as part of a panel on business and human rights in the Human Rights Council of the UN, at the Seminar on Access to Justice organized by the International Commission of Jurists. "The honest efforts of the Amazonian plaintiffs are constantly met by the bad faith of Chevron, who having promised U.S. courts it would abide by the decisions of the Ecuadorian courts, now hides behind corporate veils and other formalities to avoid pay what is owed. This attitude prolonsd the suffering of the victims of the oil company, and sets a dangerous precedent for future transnational polluters," said Fajardo. Yesterday shareholders representing one third of the ownership of the $246 billion corporation based in California urged Chevron's board to accept a resolution simplifying the process to call special meetings to address emergency issues such as Chevron's growing losses in the Ecuador case. With asset attachment litigation already underway in Argentina, Brazil and Canada, shareholder representatives said Chevron's leadership needed to change course and meet and settle with the Ecuadorians, to avoid further losses. Although opposed by the Chevron board, the resolution received more votes than any other shareholder resolution offered by outsiders. Chevron was found liable in 2011 for the negligence of Texaco, an oil company it acquired in 2002, for polluting the more than 480 thousand hectares of land in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle. The court in Ecuador found that the company dumped 16 billion gallons of toxic water into the estuaries and rivers, poured 650 thousand barrels of crude, built more than 880 waste pits without any protective lining and destroyed the health and livelihood of the close=by communities. In this long trial, the plaintiffs proved the existence of environmental damage and impact on the health and livelihoods of the population affected with high levels of pollution-related diseases as well as human rights violations and collective displacement of five indigenous nationalities that live in the area. Although lawyers for Texaco – now Chevron – promised a U.S. court that it would abide by the findings in Ecuador of the court's agreement to move the case to South America, Chevron has spent millions of dollars avoiding the judgment and engaging in continuous litigation aimed at thwarting or overturning the decision in Ecuador. It has made payments to political figures and dangled huge investment promises to get government officials to block the award, so far without success. For more information, become a follower of The Chevron Pit or follow @ChevronPit on Twitter

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Julian Assange: Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Guilty Plea Part of Crackdown on Journalism, Activism

Jeremy Hammond of the hacktivist group Anonymous has pleaded guilty to hacking into the private intelligence firm Stratfor, the FBI and other institutions. Hammond says his goal was to shed light on how governments and corporations act behind closed doors. Some five million Stratfor emails ended up on the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, shedding light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients. In a statement, Hammond said he accepted the plea deal in part to avoid an overzealous prosecution that could have resulted in at least 30 years in prison. He has already served 15 months, including weeks in solitary confinement. Joining us from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Hammond’s prosecution comes as part of a wider crackdown "on effective political activists and alleged journalistic sources." Click here to watch our web-only extended interview with Assange.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show looking at the case of computer activist Jeremy Hammond, who made headlines by hacking into the private U.S.-based intelligence firm Stratfor. Documents obtained from Stratfor were later published by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, shedding light on how the private intelligence firm monitors activists and spies for corporate clients.
On Tuesday, Hammond admitted to being a member of the group Anonymous and pled guilty to hacking Stratfor as well as a number of other institutions, including the FBI. In a statement, Hammond said, quote, "I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right."
Hammond is facing a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He has already spent 15 months incarcerated, including weeks in solitary confinement. Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, spoke outside the courthouse Tuesday after Hammond pled guilty.
MICHAEL RATNER: Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, of hacking into a protected computer. That count finishes the case in terms of any other charges. It carries up to a maximum of 10 years in prison. He doesn’t have to get that, and in fact the demand is that he get time served. This is part of the sledgehammer of what the government is doing to people who expose corporate secrets, government secrets, and really the secrets of an empire. And the people who should have been on that trial are the very people who Jeremy admitted to hacking into, which is the Stratfor people who have engaged in corporate spying, along with government cooperation, the public safety people in Arizona, the FBI, etc.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sarah Kunstler, one of Jeremy Hammond’s attorneys, also spoke outside the courthouse.
SARAH KUNSTLER: The United States government has discretion over its cases over who it chooses to prosecute and why, and choosing to prosecute Jeremy Hammond for exposing corporate secrets and government spying is nothing if not a political decision.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the Jeremy Hammond case, we are joined by Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. In February 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing hundreds of thousands of emails obtained by Stratfor. Julian Assange joins us via Democracy Now! video stream from the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He took refuge in the embassy last June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he’s wanted for questioning around sex assault allegations. On Tuesday, the Ecuador’s foreign minister accused the British government of trampling on Assange’s rights by refusing to allow him to travel to Ecuador, which granted him political asylum almost a year ago. We’re going to talk about Jeremy Hammond, about Bradley Manning, and about Julian Assange’s own case, for this hour.
Julian Assange, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you start off by responding to Jeremy Hammond pleading guilty and what his case means to you?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Let’s look at what we know and what the prosecution agrees with about Jeremy Hammond. He’s a long-term political activist. He’s been involved in political activism throughout his political life. The allegation against him is that, through his political activism, he became a journalistic source to WikiLeaks and to hundreds of other media organizations in the United States and around the world. The crackdown against Jeremy Hammond is part of, yes, on the one hand, the crackdown on effective political activists, but it’s also part of the crackdown on alleged journalistic sources.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, also your attorney, Julian Assange, for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. He spoke about the emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that were allegedly published by WikiLeaks.
MICHAEL RATNER: Allegedly, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks published, are publishing the material of the Stratfor emails. And so, the comparison is that they are going after now a whistleblower and a source and a person who has been a source to journalists. If you look at what happened to the Stratfor emails, 31 major media around the world in 17 countries published those. He’s a whistleblower. He’s a source. He ought to be protected like whistleblowers and sources ought to be protected. My client, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, ought to be protected as publishers. He shouldn’t have to wind up in the Ecuadorean embassy.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange, your response?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Thank you, Amy. Well, this is part of the wider crackdown against journalistic sources, which has been in the news recently as a result of the FBI and the DOJ taking records from the Associated Press and for Fox News journalist James Rosen. That is something that has really risen up under the Obama administration. Obama has, in relation to the Espionage Act, applied it to more people, more journalistic sources and journalists, than any—than all previous administrations combined, going back to the origin of that act in 1917. In fact, Obama, on his campaign website, brags that it’s twice as many applications as has been previously done.
And that’s part of a new centralization of power in the United States. Back in Russia, if we look in the 1990s and Putin’s taming of the oligarchs, we had independent points of power in Russia, the seven oligarchs, the KGB, the Ministry of Defense, and eventually they’re all pulled in under one central pyramidical structure. And the same thing has been involving in the United States over the last 10 years. That’s why, for example, we see that the—rather unremarked, but extremely significant—that the State Department budget, in its entirety, has been moved in under the national security budget, that USAID budget similarly has been moved in under the national security budget, that the head of the CIA is rotated with the head of the military, that there’s interexchanges at all points, that private military contractors, like Stratfor, form a type of oil between these different groups, interconnecting them in terms up personnel, information flows and contracts—a giant centralization of power. The previous rivalrous group to this was perhaps U.S. finance companies and banks. Post-2008, it’s clear who is winning. And in order to get anything of significance done in the United States, just like in Russia, you need a sponsor within that patronage network.
And as a result of its increasing strength and increasing power, it is able to command an increasing share of the U.S. tax burden, pulling it to itself. The State Department, left on its own, left out there in isolation, was having its budget decline at about 3 to 4 percent per year in real terms, while the military was having a—and the intelligence complex was having a similar increase in real terms per year. So that’s presumably why it decided to jettison some of its independence as an institution and move in under this protective financial umbrella. That shows you the increasing political strength. The U.S. tax burden is picketed over like vultures at a corpse, and the biggest vulture can steal more of the—more of the blood of U.S. taxpayers. And the biggest vulture at the moment is the military-industrial complex, and it’s getting bigger. It’s able to throw more political weight around and able to transfer more finances to itself, which allows it to grow even fatter. Other competing institutions, like the Department of Health or pension programs and so on, they also try and compete politically. But in reality, in fact, they are not competing as well as they could, in the past, so this machine is getting bigger. And as it gets bigger and bigger, it starts to advance its front, to gain more and more power for itself.
And the crackdown in relation to Espionage Act is an example of that, the going after political activists like Jeremy Hammond and trying to put them in prison for 10 years, forcing them to take a plea, by ladling them up with a potential 30-year prison sentence, under exactly the same piece of legislation that Aaron Swartz found himself faced with, the C—the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, same piece of legislation that’s used in the—partly used in the Bradley Manning proceedings, same piece of legislation that’s used in the WikiLeaks grand jury. We know that from subpoenas. So this is part of an advancing front, taking grounds, making new claims that those people that effectively criticize this new centralized power group in the United States should not be able to do so.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Julian Assange, in addition to facing a maximum of 10 years in prison, Jeremy Hammond may also be required to pay up to $2.5 million in restitution costs. So you’ve talked a little bit about how this is part of a widening range of crackdowns on whistleblowers. What do you think this kind of precedent, his plea, sets? And what kind of example do you think it gives for people who are whistleblowers in the future?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Look, the Obama administration is becoming a sausage factory for making political prisoners. And now we have Jeremy Hammond, John Kiriakou, Bradley Manning, and it is after a number of others, as well. The example that it is trying to set, of course, is: Don’t criticize this new power bloc at all. We don’t care what means that you do it by; there will be a way found to criminalize it. And people like Hammond and Manning, John Kiriakou, they’re used as examples: Do something we don’t like, and we’re going to go after you, in order to decrease criticism and embarrassment on behalf of this new dominant political institution in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see Jeremy Hammond as a whistleblower, and if so, why?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, Jeremy Hammond is not a whistleblower. He is a political activist. And his—but the mechanism of his political activism overlaps the mechanism of many different whistleblowers. For example, the alleged whistleblowing activities of Bradley Manning, very similar sort of—similar sort of alleged activity. They are going after him because they don’t like the results. They’re going after WikiLeaks because they don’t like the results. They’re going after Bradley Manning because they don’t like results and to try and keep an appearance of authority. The Pentagon, allied institutions like Stratfor, can’t keep up a perception of authority if bright young men, determined, courageous and moral, like Jeremy Hammond, are seen to have struck a blow against them and exposed their corrupt activities.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, then come back to this discussion. We’re speaking with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, is in the Ecuadorean embassy right now in London. If he dares to step foot outside, the British government says they will arrest him and extradite him to Sweden. We’ll talk about his case, as well as Bradley Manning’s case, who is about to go to trial, in a moment.

Public Health Assessments Evaluation for Vieques, Puerto Rico

On the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, thousands are commemorating the 10th anniversary of when the U.S. Navy stopped using their home as a bombing range. Since the 1940s, the Navy used nearly three-quarters of the island for bombing practice, war games and dumping old munitions. The bombing stopped after campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience, but the island continues to suffer. At the current cleanup rate, the Navy says, it will take until 2025 to remove all the environmental damage left by more than 60 years of target practice. A fisherman recently discovered a giant unexploded bomb underwater. The island of about 10,000 people also lacks a hospital to treat illnesses such as asthma and cancer that may be attributed to the military’s former bombing activity. "We believe the military is really not interested in cleaning up Vieques and rather interested in continuing to punish Vieques for having thrown the U.S. Navy out in 2003," says Robert Rabin of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. "This is a process that we believe is happening with no real supervision, no genuine community participation." We also speak to Rep. José Serrano of New York, a native Puerto Rican.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Vieques, the tiny island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico where thousands are commemorating the 10th anniversary of when the U.S. Navy stopped using their island as a bombing range. Since the 1940s, the Navy used nearly three-quarters of the island for bombing practice, war games and dumping of old munitions. Resistance to the bombing reached a turning point in 1999 when a Marine pilot missed his target and dropped two 500-pound bombs that killed a civilian security guard. A campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience eventually forced the Navy to close the facility. This is how Democracy Now! reported on the end of the bombing on May 1st, 2003, when we spoke with Rosa Clemente, then a reporter for Free Speech Radio News.
ROSA CLEMENTE: It was an exciting and a joyous moment for the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico, but I think for all the people who struggled, wherever those people may be, to get the U.S. Navy to leave, and for people all over the world to see a victory and to claim that victory. So it was an amazing moment, and there were thousands upon thousands of people from all over the world that were there celebrating with the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico.
But with that celebration, there’s also a caution. And that caution, I think, comes from the transfer of the land to the U.S. Department of Interior as opposed to giving the land back to the people of Vieques and, in an essence, giving the people of Vieques their reparations. And those reparations need to come by giving the people back their land and also by the U.S. government doing intensive, massive cleanup of the land, that has depleted uranium, napalm, and God knows what other contaminants that continue to kill the people, and particularly in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
AMY GOODMAN: That was May 1st, 2003. Well, 10 years later, Vieques continues to suffer from a slow cleanup process. The island of about 10,000 people also lacks a hospital to treat illnesses such as asthma and cancer, that many attribute to the military’s former bombing activity.
For more, we’re joined here in New York by Congressmember José Serrano, who has been one of the Congress’s most vocal critics of the actions of the U.S. military in Vieques. He represents the 15th Congressional District of New York in the Bronx, born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
And joining us from Vieques via Democracy Now! video stream is Robert Rabin, longtime activist, founding member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, spent six months in prison for participating in the mass civil disobedience campaign that helped pressure the Navy to end its bombing exercises.
Robert, let’s start with you in Vieques. What’s happening today on this 10th anniversary of the successful campaign to stop the U.S. Navy bombing it?
ROBERT RABIN: Buenos días, Amy. Good morning.
Today we are celebrating and remembering and reorganizing the forces here in Vieques. We’re remembering an enormous victory, May 1st, 2003. The people of Vieques and the Puerto Rican nation, in the archipelago and in the diaspora, with help from thousands of people throughout the world, peace-loving people, without firing a single shot, defeated the most powerful military force in history.
But 10 years later, we continue to suffer the effects of the toxic legacy—highest cancer case rates in all of Puerto Rico. Vieques is a small, poor island with no hospital, serious problems, economic and social problems. So, we are, again, remembering this enormous victory but still struggling to make—pressure the government in Puerto Rico and the federal government to be responsible for the horrific ecological and health disaster created by half a century of U.S. military activity here.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Robert, I want to ask you about the cleanup. In my column in today’s Daily News, we run a picture of an undetonated bomb that was found by fishermen recently in 80 feet of water off of Vieques. The military says it’s spent already about $180 million, the most expensive cleanup in its history. But yet, so much of the waters are still contaminated with all of these unexploded munitions. Your sense of how that cleanup has been going?
ROBERT RABIN: I would suggest that most of that almost $200 million has ended up in the bank accounts of large U.S. corporations hired by the Navy to do the cleanup. While the cleanup is taking—has taken over 10 years so far, they’re only scratching the surface. This is a process that we believe is happening with no real supervision, no genuine community participation. We believe the military is really not interested in cleaning up Vieques, and rather interested in continuing to punish Vieques for having thrown the U.S. Navy out in 2003. So we need to continue to pressure and get the support from congressmen, like Congressman Serrano, Nydia Velázquez and Luis Gutiérrez, and now also Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida, have taken up this issue to help push the federal government to be responsible for the ecological destruction done on Vieques as well as helping with the severe health crisis that resulted from these—from military toxics.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Congressman Joe Serrano, what about the cleanup? You have been lobbying fiercely in Congress to get the money, but Robert Rabin is saying some of that money is being wasted and is not really doing the job.
REP. JOSÉ SERRANO: Well, absolutely. Robert has a key word here that I was going to use, and he used it first, which is "punishment." I really saw, I believe, the first couple of years after that May 1st 10 years ago, that there was a resentment, and by members of Congress, sort of "How dare you defeat the military? How dare you push us out?" and in the administration. And so it was very hard to get dollars. In fact, we didn’t cry over it, but I think the closing of Roosevelt Roads was also sort of a punishment. "Oh, yeah? Well, you want that closed? Well, we’re going to close this one that has jobs and so on involved with it." And so, this—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Both Roosevelt Roads and Fort Buchanan, right?
REP. JOSÉ SERRANO: Exactly. So there’s been that sense: "How dare you do it?" Then there is the fact that in this country, and perhaps throughout the world, 10 years becomes a long time, and people forget that there’s a loss of memory of what happened there. My understanding, yesterday I learned that less than 5 percent of the munitions have been removed. So we continue to push in the Appropriations Committee, where I sit. We continue to push the administration. But there is a new emphasis now. I’m seeing a new mobilization, similar to what I saw 10 years ago or 15 years ago, to say, "OK, now the cleanup has to really take a serious role here."
AMY GOODMAN: What about the issue of cancer? There was a study by Dr. Jorge Colón of the University of Puerto Rico that was based on hair samples of the people of Vieques. He found 34 percent of the population, about a third, had toxic levels of mercury, 55 percent contaminated with lead, 69 percent with arsenic, 69 percent with cadmium, 90 percent with aluminum and antimony, whose toxic effects are similar to arsenic poisoning. These are all substances found in the ordnances used on the island, the bombs.
REP. JOSÉ SERRANO: Right, and that was something that the activists in Vieques were saying prior to the Navy getting out, the fact that under the American flag there was no place that had such a high incidence of cancer. And then there was the correlation—or the lack of it—between the fact that the larger island of Puerto Rico did not have the same rate as Vieques did. So, obviously there’s a relationship. But when you’re talking to the military, the military, you know, sort of at times wants to run its own country, its own world, and just refuses to understand or react to what we want, which is an immediate cleanup and a commitment. Yesterday we spoke to the EPA folks, and they told us that the dedication is of $20 million a year. Well, $20 million of a fund, then for Vieques to participate in that fund—no, we need a dedicated amount from the administration for Vieques, and that’s what we’re pushing for.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And does the cleanup include the oceans as well as the land? Because so far all of the cleanup has been on land.
REP. JOSÉ SERRANO: It has to, because so much of it went into the water. So much went into it as part of the practice. You know, I’m not a military person, but I know that part of it was how to get these things into the water and what effect it had. So you have X amount on land; you have X amount on water. But the fact that 10 years later only 5 percent have been removed is an insult. But I go back to the word "punishment." I really believe there are still some people who don’t care and others who say, "How dare you kicked us out? You have to pay a price for that."
AMY GOODMAN: In 2005, evidence emerged that the U.S. Navy paid $1.7 million to a public relations firm to increase support for a 2001 public referendum on whether the Navy should be allowed to keep use Vieques for live-fire training. Voters ended up overwhelming calling on the Navy to stop using the site, even though the Navy spent, oh, about $358 per referendum voter in their PR effort. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the Navy hired the Rendon Group to, quote, "organize local leaders to build grassroots communications support ... ensure the integrity of the voting process ... develop methods and tracking procedures to increase support among citizens." Robert Rabin, can you talk about this vote and the significance of the Navy spending the money in this way?
ROBERT RABIN: Yes, Amy. The military tried intensely to get people in Vieques to vote for the continuation of bombing practices here during that referendum. However, the overwhelming support of the community was just too much for the Navy. As you mentioned, the Navy spent millions of dollars. They gave out lots and lots of money to people as direct payments to people supposedly to start up new businesses. They were just paying people off to vote. And despite that, around 30—we believe that the people of Vieques expressed themselves very clearly. About 80 percent of the eligible voters participated in that referendum, and over 70 percent voted for the immediate and permanent cessation of military activity. So it was an overwhelming victory despite Navy attempts and Navy use of millions of dollars to try to influence an election—obviously something anti-constitutional, illegal.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Robert, I want to ask you about what’s happened in economic development on Vieques since the Navy left. In my discussions with Cacimar Zenón, a fisherman there, yesterday by phone, he raised questions about the increase of land speculation, of North Americans who have moved to Vieques since the Navy left, and what the situation is for the economy of the fishermen and the residents of Vieques.
ROBERT RABIN: Yes. Vieques is undergoing a severe process of gentrification, displacement, population substitution—things that are not uncommon to places like Vieques, beautiful places where people with powerful economic interests or people with more economic power than the local population come in, buy property, begin to develop businesses. And we’ve been seeing this process in Vieques for decades. It certainly took off in a greater way after the Navy left Vieques. So, we need a lot of support from the government to help local business people, local people in Vieques, to develop their own businesses. There is a Vieques microbusiness incubator project that grew out of the struggle, directed by Nilda Medina here on Vieques. It’s one of the only projects that’s really pushing to help people from Vieques to take over some of the niches in the economy that haven’t been taken over by people from outside.
The difference between Vieques and other places where gentrification and speculation take place is that these processes that are so devastating for the local economy and local populations are happening on top of a half a century of U.S. military degradation, environmental health degradation, and economic obstacles to development that went on while the U.S. Navy was here, again, over half a century, in control of over 70 percent of Vieques’ resources—its best lands, its most fertile lands, best aquifers, the highest points of the island, the closest connecting point to the main island in Puerto Rico. So the Navy presence in Vieques not only was devastating to the environment and the health, but also was a horrific obstacle to economic development on Vieques for half a century. There’s a 1980 Puerto Rican government study that indicates Vieques lost approximately $100 million a year on potential tourist development that could not take place on Vieques, miscompared to the rest of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands close by.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Rabin, we want to thank you for being with us, longtime activist and founding member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, spent six months in prison for participating in mass civil disobedience against the Navy bombing, which ended 10 years ago this week.
We’re going to continue with New York Congressmember José Serrano to talk about immigration, after this.

The Case of Oscar Lopez Rivera






“The U.S. government categorically denies it has political prisoners in its gulags. It does it primarily to cover up the nefarious, barbaric and even criminal acts and practices it carries out against us and other regular prisoners, and to do it with impunity. It uses the denial as its license to violate our most basic human rights by subjecting us to isolation and sensory deprivation regimens that are nothing less than cruel and unusual punishment. It uses it to hoodwink its own citizens to believe that it doesn’t criminalize dissenters or opponents of its wars and other imperialistic practices. It does it to perpetuate the lie that it is the ultimate defender of freedom, justice, democracy and human rights in the world. And it uses it at times to further criminalize the political prisoners and/or our families and to disconnect us from our families, communities, supporters and the just and noble causes we served and try to continue serving.” -Oscar López Rivera1
Introduction
In the 1960′s and 70′s, the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, like so many other communities in the United States, was rebelling, resisting the violence and brutality of colonialism, racism, and exploitation. Its young leaders sought not only to battle against and expose these evils, but to help the community take control of its institutions, to instill a sense of hope. It was a time when anti-colonial, national liberation movements had prevailed throughout the world2 and anti-imperialist movements were fighting for independence and self-determination. It was a time when young men — including Oscar — were being drafted to fight the Vietnamese people’s war for liberation. It was a time when the Black Panther Party advocated armed self-defense, when police in Chicago assassinated the party’s young leaders.
Men and women such as Oscar López Rivera led these community struggles and were influenced by events, not just in their immediate neighborhood, but in the world, as they founded institutions which continue to serve the community today.
In Puerto Rico during this era, several armed clandestine political organizations formed and carried out actions to protest the presence of United States repressive forces. In the U.S., the FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation) began during this period. Between 1974 and 1980, the FALN claimed responsibility for bombings of military, government and economic sites, mainly in Chicago and New York, to call attention to the colonial case of Puerto Rico and to demand the freedom of the Nationalist prisoners serving long sentences in U.S. prisons for their pro-independence actions in the 1950′s.3
Arrest and its aftermath
In 1980, eleven men and women were arrested and later charged with the overtly political charge of seditious conspiracy — conspiring to oppose U.S. authority over Puerto Rico by force, by membership in the FALN, and of related charges of weapons possession and transporting stolen cars across state lines.4 Oscar was not arrested at the time, but he was named as a codefendant in the indictment. His co-defendants were sentenced to terms in prison ranging between 55 and 90 years, consecutive to state court sentences for the same underlying conduct. The judge stated his regret that he did not have the power to give them the death penalty.5
In 1981, Oscar was arrested after a traffic stop, tried for the identical seditious conspiracy charge, convicted, and sentenced by the same judge to a prison term of 55 years. In 1987 he received a consecutive 15 year term for conspiracy to escape–a plot conceived and carried out by government agents and informants/provocateurs,6 resulting in a total sentence of 70 years.
Upon arrest, Oscar took the same position his co-defendants had taken, asserting that under international law, U.S. colonial control over Puerto Rico was a crime against humanity,7 that the courts of the U.S. had no jurisdiction to try him as a criminal, and that he should be remanded to an impartial international tribunal to have his status judged. While this position was recognized by international judicial bodies and other international fora8, the U.S. government refused to recognize it and proceeded to try him for criminal offenses. As his co-defendants had done, he presented no defense and pursued no appeal.



Disproportionate sentences
Oscar, like all Puerto Rican independentistas in U.S. custody, is punished for his beliefs and affiliations, for who he is, not for any act he committed. Government statistics evidence that those who commit non-political criminal offenses receive far lower sentences than do independence fighters. For example, in 1981, the year Oscar was sentenced for seditious conspiracy, the average federal sentence for murder was 10.3 years.9 Though he was not accused or convicted of hurting or killing anyone, his sentence was more than five times the average sentence for murder.
His 15 year sentence for conspiracy to escape is even more disproportionate. Conspiracy to escape is apparently so rare that the government doesn’t even maintain statistics, so we are left to compare his sentence to those for actual escape: Oscar’s sentence is more than 8 times longer than the average sentence for escape.10
Not surprisingly, Oscar has been held in prison far longer than those convicted of violent felonies. By the mid 1990′s, the average time actually served in prison by those convicted in federal court of violent felonies was just above four years;11 by the late 1990′s, for federal convictions of murder/manslaughter the average time served was 10.8 years.12
Oscar’s imprisonment for more than 31 years in prison gives him the unique and unenviable distinction of being the longest held Puerto Rican political prisoner in the history of the nation’s independence movement.13
Politically punitive treatment
The U.S. has not been satisfied with merely incapacitating Oscar by holding him all those years in prison. Prison officials immediately labeled him a “notorious and incorrigible criminal” and the FBI, using informants/provocateurs, targeted him in attempts to further criminalize him and legitimize his transfer to the most maximum security prisons, where he was subjected to isolation and sensory deprivation, labeled as a predator, and “the worst of the worst.”
For more than 12 years, he was held at the notorious high security U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, and its successor, the Administrative Maximum Unit [ADX] at Florence, Colorado. At ADX, Oscar writes, “some of us were subjected to a sleep deprivation regimen that was pure and simple torture. I experienced it for 58 days and my sleeping patterns were so badly damaged that I still have serious problems sleeping.”14
At Marion and ADX, he was also the target of constant harassment such as cell searches, confiscation of reading and art materials, and placement in hot cells where there was contraband in order to issue us infractions, send us to the hole, and force us to start the “stepdown” program [to win transfer to a lower security prison] all over again.15
The extreme, prolonged isolation, which causes psychological and physical deterioration, has been widely condemned as violating international human rights standards.16 Indeed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has declared that “segregation, isolation, separation, cellular, lockdown, Supermax, the hole, Secure Housing Unit… whatever the name, solitary confinement should be banned by States as a punishment or extortion technique,” and that “indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement in excess of 15 days should also be subject to an absolute prohibition.”17
In 1998, after more than 12 years in total isolation — with his mental faculties and sense of humor very much intact, and with his self-taught art skills quite honed, despite every effort to break him — he was finally moved to a regular maximum security prison. Prison officials, however, imposed a special condition, requiring him to report his whereabouts every two hours to prison guards. The condition, which was to last for 18 months, has now been in place for a record-breaking 14 years.
In spite of prison policy permitting bedside visits and attendance at funerals, and ignoring letters of support from ministers and elected officials, prison authorities refused to let Oscar attend the bedsides of his ailing mother, father or older sister, and refused to let him attend any of their funerals. During those trying times, prison authorities even refused to allow him to purchase extra telephone time, limiting further his already restricted contact with his family.
Since 1999, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied all media requests to interview Oscar, in spite of policy allowing for media interviews of prisoners, in spite of allowing media interviews of other prisoners, and in spite of having allowed Oscar to be interviewed many times previously, without incident. Each rejection has used the identical, unsubstantiated excuse that “the interview could jeopardize security and disturb the orderly running of the institution.” This ban, preventing his voice from reaching his people and his community of supporters, harkens to bans imposed by other governments and regimes once regarded as anti-democratic.18
Since 2011, the government has extended this ban beyond media, rejecting requests by New York elected officials to meet with Oscar. Insisting that they will not be rebuffed, U.S. Congressman Luis Gutiérrez [D- Ill.], who has been allowed to visit, told the press, “He is our longest held political prisoner, and we aren’t going to accept no for an answer.”19
In 2011, the FBI actively intervened to prevent his release on parole, hijacking the hearing by anti-terrorist fear-mongering in order to influence an adverse decision, all the while attempting to humiliate Oscar. Eight prison officials — an exaggerated and intentionally intimidating presence — hovered near a chained and handcuffed Oscar as the hearing examiner improperly allowed live testimony from four people he wrongly characterized as “victims” — a wounded survivor and family members of people who died in a1975 explosion in New York — who spewed FBI-sown hatred in Oscar’s face. Knowing full well that Oscar was never accused or convicted of anything related to the explosion, this testimony formed a significant basis for the parole commission’s order denying parole and ordering a reconsideration hearing 15 years hence, in January 2026, when Oscar will be 83 years old.
The decision to deny parole was immediately denounced by the leaders of Puerto Rico’s political and civil society. Puerto Rico’s non-voting U.S. congressional representative — a supporter of statehood for Puerto Rico — said, “I don’t see how they can justify another 12 years of prison after he has spent practically 30 years in prison, and the others who were charged with the same conduct are already in the free community. It seems to me to be excessive punishment.”20 His concerns were echoed by the president of the Puerto Rico Bar Association, leaders of the political parties, labor and the religious sector.
Although on the eve of his 70th birthday Oscar admits, “the calendar is not my friend,” his resilience, his commitment, and his love are unflagging:
The last 14 years I have spent in this gulag, Terre Haute. And the harassment has not stopped. Several times my art materials have been confiscated or lost, art work destroyed, family visits stopped, and I still have to report to the jailers every two hours. In those 14 years, in spite of all the provocations and harassment, the jailers haven’t been able to accuse me of committing any infractions. But that doesn’t stop them from doing what they’ve been doing to me for the past 31 years. And I’m fairly certain the other political prisoners continue experiencing the same treatment and conditions. It could be argued that government’s denial of our existence has worked. But our wills and spirits are strong enough to continue resisting and struggling.21
Use of pardon throughout the world
The people of Puerto Rico on the island and in communities throughout the U.S. and their allies are waging a campaign asking President Obama to exercise his constitutional power of pardon to commute Oscar’s punitive sentence and grant his immediate release.
The campaign faces a significant challenge, as President Obama has racked up the stingiest record for commutations and pardons in modern history, and the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Pardon Attorney is guilty of rampant racism and misrepresentation in the recommendations it passes along to the president.22
At the same time, governments across the world routinely recognize and utilize the healing power of pardons, especially at holiday times like this. This year, prisoners — including political prisoners in some countries — have already been released in countries large and small, often at the urging of the U.S. government.23 President Obama and his Secretary of State have both recently stated publicly that “a single political prisoner is one too many.”24
Some of the countries that have released prisoners this year include Iran (at least 130 political prisoners),25 Cuba,26 Syria,27 Russia,28 Gambia,29 Ethiopia (1,900 as part of the country’s annual new year’s mass amnesty),30 Thailand,31 Afghanistan,32 Pakistan,33 Azerbaijan,34 and Belarus.35 In Burma, 500 hundred prisoners, including political prisoners, were released in September as the president embarked for the United Nations, describing the move as an effort to “bring tranquility and perpetual peace” to the country.36 Hundreds more were released on the eve of Mr. Obama’s November visit to that country, as part of that country’s efforts to win international favor and lift sanctions.37 In October, Egypt’s new president Mohamed Morsi granted a sweeping pardon to political prisoners which could number as many as 5,000, a concession to the movement which ended the previous regime.38
Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has granted one sentence commutation and 22 pardons,39 not counting the annual Thanksgiving turkeys.40 Half of the people he pardoned never served any time in jail, and most of them had been released years ago.41 He has denied 1,019 pardon petitions.42
Critics, including a lawyer who served as Pardon Attorney under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have widely encouraged him to more liberally exercise the constitutional power he holds.43
Conclusion
There is significant precedent for Mr. Obama to commute Oscar López Rivera’s disproportionate sentence.44 As a result of international campaigns waged by the Puerto Rican people and their allies, three United States presidents commuted the sentences of Puerto Rican political prisoners: President Harry Truman in 1952 commuted the death sentence of Oscar Collazo; President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and 1979 commuted the lengthy sentences of Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Lolita Lebrón, Irving Flores and Oscar Collazo after they served 25 and 29 years in prison; and President Bill Clinton in 1999 commuted the disproportionate sentences of Oscar’s co-defendants Edwin Cortés, Elizam Escobar, Ricardo Jiménez, Adolfo Matos, Dylcia Pagán, Luis Rosa, Alberto Rodríguez, Alicia Rodríguez, Ida Luz Rodríguez, Alejandrina Torres, and Carmen Valentín, after they served more than 16 and 19 years behind bars, and also commuted the sentence of Juan Segarra Palmer after he served 19 years in prison.
At the time of their release, the president offered to release Oscar on the condition that he serve an additional ten years in prison. The president’s offer, however, failed to include two others.
While Oscar encouraged his compañeros/as to accept the commutation, he decided he could not accept, as he did not want to leave anyone behind. Had he accepted the offer, he would have been released in 2009. Those not included in the offer have since been released on parole, leaving Oscar as the sole remaining political prisoner from that case.
In granting the 1999 commutations, President Clinton determined that “the prisoners were serving extremely lengthy sentences — in some cases 90 years — which were out of proportion to their crimes.”45 The fact that none of them had been convicted of hurting or killing anyone was a factor mentioned by the president:
our society believes … that a punishment should fit the crime. Whatever the conduct of the other FALN members may have been, these petitioners—while convicted of serious crimes — were not convicted of crimes involving the killing or maiming of any individuals.46
President Clinton acknowledged being moved by the support from “various Members of Congress, a number of religious organizations, labor organizations, human rights groups, and Hispanic civic and community groups” along with “widespread support across the political spectrum within Puerto Rico,” and thousands of letters requesting their release.47 He also indicated he was moved by “worldwide support on humanitarian grounds from numerous quarters,” pointing specifically to Former President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Prize Laureate South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Coretta Scott King.48
Those same reasons still obtain, and that support has only continued to grow in the 13 years since Oscar’s co-defendants were released. With your support — and hopefully in short order — President Obama can take his place in this line of history, and grant Oscar’s release, so that he may live out the rest of his years in the comfort and warm embrace of his family and his people.

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1. Oscar López Rivera, Statement to the American Studies Association conference October 29, 2012, http://dogmaandgeopolitics.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/oscar-lopez-rivera-statement-to-the-american-studies-association-in-puerto-rico/.
2. “The independence of Ghana (1957), the agony of the Congo (Lumumba was murdered in January 1961), the independence of France’s sub-Saharan colonies following the Gaullist referendum of 1959, finally the Algerian Revolution (which might plausibly mark our schema here with its internal high point, the Battle of Algiers, in January-March 1957, as with its diplomatic resolution in 1962)–all of these signal the convulsive birth of what will come in time to be known as the 60s.” Fredric Jameson, “Periodizing the 60s”, in Sayres, Sohnya, Stephanson, Anders, Aronowitz, Stanley, and Jameson, Fredric, The 60s Without Apology Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, p. 180.
3. “Terrorists without a cause,” Chicago Tribune editorial, March 18, 1980, Sec. 2, p.2. (“Most of the incidents have involved bombs, fortunately so placed and timed as to damage property rather than persons…But again the terrorists were out to call attention to their cause rather than to shed blood.”).
4. United States v. Carlos Alberto Torres et al., No. 80 CR 736 (N.D. Ill.).
5. At the sentencing hearing, which took place soon after the holiday marking George Washington’s birthday, Federal judge Thomas McMillen made the following retort to an observation by one of the prisoners about the irony of the occasion: “You mentioned George Washington. You know, if George Washington had been captured by the British during the American Revolution he wouldn’t have been put in the penitentiary or jailed; he would have been executed. And that, as a matter of fact, is the penalty which should be imposed on Count 1 [seditious conspiracy] in this case.” U.S. v. Carlos Torres, Transcript of Sentencing Hearing, February 18, 1981, p. 20.
6. United States v. Oscar Lopez et al., No. 86 CR 513 (N.D. Ill.)
7. In 1960, the United Nations General Assembly called for “a speedy and unconditional end [to] colonialism in all its forms and manifestations.” Resolution 1514 (XV). By 1970, that same body declared that “further continuation of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations is a crime which constitutes a violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and the principles of international law.” Resolution 2621 (XXV). The latter resolution recognized the right of colonial peoples to do precisely what the thirteen colonies which would later comprise the United States had done: “to struggle by all necessary means at their disposal against colonial powers which suppress their aspiration for freedom and independence.” The same United Nations, through its Decolonization Committee, established to monitor the implementation of its resolutions mandating an end to colonialism, has repeatedly declared that Resolution 1514 (XV) applies to the case of Puerto Rico.
8. See, e.g., Verdict of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, Session on Puerto Rico (Barcelona, 1989); Verdict of the Special International Tribunal on the Violation of Human Rights of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in United States Prisons and Jails (New York, 1990); Verdict of the International Tribunal of Indigenous Peoples and Oppressed Nations in the U.S.A. (San Francisco, 1992).
9. Administrative Office of the United States District Court, Sentences Imposed Chart For Year Ended June 30, 1981 (Washington, D.C.) , p. 145. See also, Alice Vachss, “Megan’s Law Won’t Reduce Sex Crimes”, New York Times, July 31, 1995, p. A9 (“According to the most recent Bureau of Justice report, the national average sentence for convicted violent felons was less than eight years, of which they served less than four in prison.”).
10. The average sentence for escape during the decade of 1980 to 1990 was 20.9 months (1 year 8 months). Administrative Offices of the United States Courts.
11. Federal Criminal Case Processing, 1980-89 With Preliminary Data for 1990: A Federal Justice Statistics Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 1991), p. 18 (between 1985 and 1990, for violent offenses, the average time served until first release ranged from a low of 48.8 months (4.0 years) to a high of 54.2 months (4.5 years); Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1993, Table 6.92.
12. Kathleen Maguire and Ann L. Pastore, eds., Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1997 (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics: Washington, D.C. 1998) Table 5.57, p. 431. See also, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1993, p. 652, Table 6.92 (average time served in federal prison for murder 5.4 years); National Corrections Reporting Program, 1992, p. 34 (average time served in state prison 8 years); Michael Pollan, “How Pot Has Grown”, New York Times Magazine, February 19, 1995, p. 32. (“An American convicted of murder can expect to spend, on average, less than nine years behind bars.”)
13. José “Che” Paralitici, Sentencia Impuesta: 100 Años de Encarcelamientos por la Independencia de Puerto Rico (Ediciones Puerto, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2004).
14. Oscar López Rivera, Statement to the American Studies Association conference October 29, 2012, http://dogmaandgeopolitics.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/oscar-lopez-rivera-statement-to-the-american-studies-association-in-puerto-rico/.
15. Id.
16. Amnesty International, Allegations of Ill-Treatment in Marion Prison, Illinois, USA, May 1987, p. 15 (“[w]ithin Marion, violations of the [United Nations] Standard Minimum Rules [for the Treatment of Prisoners] are common… There is hardly a rule in the Standard Minimum Rules that is not infringed in some way or other.”); L.C. Dorsey, the National Interreligious Task Force on Criminal Justice, Marion Prison: Progressive Correction or Legalized Torture? (New York), p. 6 (“The absence of balance in the procedures at Marion prison, where security measures override the individual need for human contact, spiritual fulfillment, and fellowship, becomes an excuse for the constant show of sheer force. The conditions of Marion prison…constitute, in our estimation, psychological pain and agony tantamount to torture.”); Human Rights Watch, Prison Conditions in the United States (New York: 1991), pp. 3, 75-77 (noting the proliferation of state maximum security prisons modeled after Marion, condemning as dangerous the trend toward “Marionization” of prison in the United States).
17. “Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says,” United Nations News Centre, October 18, 2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40097#.ULw10ORfDN8.
18. Francis Welch, “The ‘broadcast ban’ on Sinn Fein,” BBC, April 5, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4409447.stm; Glenn Frankel, “Britain’s Media Ban on Terrorist Groups Remains Controversial: Censorship: Voices of revered statesmen are silenced in history program broadcast to schoolchildren in Northern Ireland,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1990, http://articles.latimes.com/1990-11-1/news/mn6586_1_northern-ireland. See also, Ed Moloney, “Media Censorship During ‘the Troubles’: A leading Irish journalist ponders the consequences, Nieman Reports, of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Summer 2000, http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/101953/Media-Censorship-During-the-Troubles.aspx.
19. “Piden liberar a preso político Oscar López Rivera,” December 1, 2012, http://aquiestapr.blogspot.com/2012/12/piden-liberar-preso-politico-oscar.html; “Políticos de NY abogan por la libertad de Oscar López Rivera,” El Diario/La Prensa, December 1, 2012, http://www.eldiariony.com/Politicos-visitaran-a-preso-nacionalista-puertorriqueno.
20. José A. Delgado, “‘No se justifica mantener en prisión a Oscar López’, dice Pierluisi Piensa que los boricuas demócratas del Congreso pueden hacer un nuevo reclamo a la Junta de Libertad Bajo Palabra, El Nuevo Día, January 6, 2011, http://www.elnuevodia.com/nosejustificamantenerenprisionaoscarlopezdicepierluisi-858086.html
21. Oscar López Rivera, Statement to the American Studies Association conference October 29, 2012, http://dogmaandgeopolitics.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/oscar-lopez-rivera-statement-to-the-american-studies-association-in-puerto-rico/.
22. Dafna Linzer and Jennifer LaFleur, “Presidential Pardons Heavily Favor Whites,” ProPublica, December 3, 2011, http://www.propublica.org/article/shades-of-mercy-presidential-forgiveness-heavily-favors-whites; Dafna Linzer, “Contrasting Colors, Contrasting Results,” ProPublica, December 3, 2011, http://www.propublica.org/special/contrasting-colors-contrasting-results.
23. See, e.g., Associated Press, “Azerbaijan pardons prisoners jailed after protests,” Fox News, June 22, 2012, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/06/22/azerbaijan-pardons-prisoners-jailed-after-protests/ (“U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for jailed opposition figures to be released while visiting the former Soviet nation earlier this month.”); “Washington Welcomes Release of Political Prisoners in Belarus,” Rianovosti, April 17, 2012, http://en.ria.ru/world/20120417/172864234.html (U.S. State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said, “This, coupled with previous releases, represents a significant step. “We urge the Government of Belarus to immediately and unconditionally free all remaining political prisoners and ensure the full restoration of their civil and political rights.”); Juan Carlos Chavez, “US calls for immediate release of government opponents in Cuba, Miami Herald, April 4, 2012, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/04/2732066/us-calls-for-immediate-release.html; Mark C. Toner, “Message on the Twenty-Third Anniversary of Tiananmen Square,” June 3, 2012, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/06/191692.htm (Toner is Deputy Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson, of the U.S. State Department); Associated Press, “US Ambassador Rice demands Egypt’s leaders release 19 Americans facing trial,” Washington Post, February 6, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/us-ambassador-rice-demands-egypts-leaders-release-19-americans-facing-trial/2012/02/06/gIQAToNhtQ_story.html.

El caso de Oscar López Rivera y la justa causa de su libertad ante la visita de Obama a Puerto Rico

“… los que internalizamos el valor y el sacrificio estamos convencidos que nuestro movimiento de liberación nacional no cobraría fuerzas sin personas dispuestas a prescindir de su libertad a cambio de la de su pueblo.”
Este año se cumplen treinta años de prisión de uno de los hijos de este pueblo y luchador anticolonial condenado por la causa de la libertad de Puerto Rico. Nos referimos a Oscar López Rivera, el prisionero político más antiguo del Hemisferio, quien continúa extinguiendo en una prisión federal dos sentencias que en conjunto suman 70 años de cárcel.

Nacido en 1943 y veterano del la Guerra de Vietnam donde fue condecorado por su valor en combate, a su regreso a Chicago donde residía, Oscar se integró muy pronto a las luchas de su comunidad en defensa y afirmación de los derechos de los puertorriqueños. Allí radicalizó su pensamiento tornándolo en acción diaria en pro de la libertad de Puerto Rico. Junto a otros compañeros y compañeras, se integró a la lucha organizada en lo que alguien llamó alguna vez la retaguardia de nuestro pueblo, para así, desde las propias entrañas del monstruo imperialista, impulsar la independencia de su Patria.

Su captura se produjo en 1981. Un año antes, en 1980, sus compañeros de lucha Haydée Beltrán, Luis Rosa, Ricardo Jiménez, Elizam  Escobar, Carmen Valentín, Carlos Alberto Torres, Dylcia Pagán, Adolfo Matos, Alicia Rodríguez e Ida Luz Rodríguez habían sido capturados. Más adelante, en 1983, ocurriría lo mismo con Alejandrina Torres, Edwin Cortés y Alberto Rodríguez.  Antes, también había sido capturado en la ciudad de Nueva York, otro luchador puertorriqueño William Guillermo Morales. Todos ellos asumieron al momento de sus capturas la condición de prisioneros de guerra. Como tales, reclamaron la condición de combatientes anticoloniales no reconociendo la jurisdicción de los tribunales de Estados Unidos por lo que demandaron ser procesados por un tribunal internacional o por un tribunal de un tercer país que no formara parte del conflicto anticolonial entre Puerto Rico y Estados Unidos.

De acuerdo con el Protocolo I de la Convención de Ginebra de 1949, la protección que dicho Convenio Internacional reconoce a los prisioneros de guerra, se extiende también a personas capturadas en conflictos o luchas contra la ocupación colonial, la ocupación de un país por parte de regímenes racistas y a aquellos otros que participan de luchas por la libre determinación de sus pueblos. Así lo ratifica también la Resolución  2852 (XXVI) de la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas de 20 de diciembre de 1971 y la Resolución 3103 (XXVIII) del 13 de diciembre de 1973, cuando establece:

“Todo participante en los movimientos de resistencia, luchando por la independencia y la autodeterminación si es arrestado, tiene que recibir el tratamiento estipulado en la Convención de Ginebra.”
De acuerdo con el referido protocolo, un prisionero de guerra no puede ser juzgado como un criminal común, mucho menos si la causa de tal procedimiento descansa en actos relacionados con su participación en una lucha anticolonial.

El carácter político de los procesos legales seguidos por Estados Unidos contra estos prisioneros lo establece la naturaleza de las acusaciones hechas por Estados Unidos contra ellos, donde se les imputó conspiración sediciosa para derrocar el gobierno de Estados Unidos. A lo anterior se suma el carácter desproporcionado de las sentencias impuestas. En el caso de la mujeres capturadas, el promedio de las sentencias impuestas fue de 72.8 años; mientras que en el caso de los varones, el promedio fue de 70.8 años. En el caso particular de Oscar,  las sentencias impuestas ascienden a 70 años de prisión.

A través de los años, múltiples resoluciones del Comité de Descolonización de las Naciones Unidas han demandado del gobierno de Estados Unidos la excarcelación de los prisioneros políticos puertorriqueños. Tribunales especiales convocados desde la sociedad civil igualmente han demandado su excarcelación y denunciado específicamente las condiciones bajo las cuales se les ha mantenido encarcelados. Tales fueron los pronunciamientos del “Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos”, el cual sesionó durante los días 27 al 29 de enero de 1989 y del “Tribunal Especial Internacional sobre Derechos Humanos de los Prisioneros Políticos y Prisioneros de Guerra en Prisiones y Cárceles de Estados Unidos”, llevado a cabo  los días 7 al 10 de diciembre de 1990 en la ciudad de Nueva York.

En el caso de Oscar López Rivera, durante la Administración de William Jefferson Clinton, en ocasión del indulto que fuera conferido a la mayoría de los prisioneros políticos puertorriqueños que para entonces habían cumplido cerca de 20 años de prisión, se ofreció la posibilidad de la excarcelación de Oscar López Rivera unos años después de la salida del primer grupo. Esta oferta fue rechazada por Oscar mientras permanecieran encarcelados otros de sus compañeros, como era el caso de Carlos Alberto Torres y Haydée Beltrán. Estos últimos, sin embargo, ya se encuentran fuera de prisión. Al presente, a pesar el comportamiento ejemplar que Oscar ha mantenido en prisión en los pasados 30 años, la Junta de Libertad Condicional le niega la posibilidad de una salida de prisión.

Al reclamo por la excarcelación de Oscar López Rivera se ha sumado básicamente la totalidad del pueblo puertorriqueño. Dirigentes políticos, religiosos, comunitarios, representantes del movimiento obrero, de los gremios profesionales, el sector cooperativista, organizaciones juveniles y estudiantiles; en fin, el más amplio conjunto de representantes de la sociedad civil puertorriqueña, demandan la excarcelación de Oscar. Igual ha ocurrido en amplios sectores de la comunidad puertorriqueña en Estados Unidos, así como otros importantes reclamos desde la comunidad internacional.

Estados Unidos no puede estar pregonando por el mundo un reclamo de respeto a derechos humanos cuando mantiene en su propio suelo prisioneros políticos, encarcelados como resultado de su lucha anticolonial como es el caso Oscar López Rivera.

La persecución por parte del gobierno de Estados Unidos contra aquellos que luchan por la independencia de Puerto Rico ha sido una constante en nuestro país a lo largo de los pasados 113 años de colonialismo impuestos como resultado de la Invasión de 1898. Sobre el particular, el profesor José “Che” Paraliticci, en su libro Cien Años tras las rejas: Historia de los presos independentistas puertorriqueños bajo el régimen de Estados Unidos, indica;

“Desde que Estados Unidos invadió a Puerto Rico en 1898 y comenzó a regir política y militarmente sobre el país, no ha habido una sola década en que algún independentista no haya ido a la cárcel, tal vez con la excepción de la década del veinte. No obstante, en todos los demás periodos, comenzando en 1899, se ha acusado al independentismo de violar infinidad de leyes y, como consecuencia, sentenciados a prisión tanto en Puerto Rico como en el propio Estados Unidos. Al independentismo se le ha imputado haber violado la ley del correo, del servicio militar obligatorio, de armas, de explosivos, del gran jurado y de la mordaza. También se les ha acusado de conspiración, sedición, agresión, desacato, incitación a motín y penetrar sin autorización a propiedad de los Estados Unidos en Puerto Rico, entre otras. Por estas acusaciones son cientos de independentistas lo que han estado tras las rejas a lo largo de este siglo.

El independentismo sentenciado durante estos cien años no ha sido únicamente el puertorriqueño residente en Puerto Rico. Asimismo, han estado en prisión puertorriqueños residentes en Estados Unidos tanto como no puertorriqueños simpatizantes de la lucha de independencia puertorriqueña.”

El presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, quien tiene a su alcance el ejercicio del indulto presidencial, se propone visitar a Puerto Rico el próximo 14 de junio dentro del marco de una reunión del llamado Comité Interagencial de Casa Blanca. El presidente Obama se ha expresado en los pasados dos años indicando que reconoce el derecho a la libre determinación del pueblo puertorriqueño. Más aún, ha indicado la importancia de que los puertorriqueños nos pongamos de acuerdo en asuntos que competen a nuestra libre determinación. La libre determinación de un pueblo no es posible con la presencia de prisioneros políticos en cárceles del imperio cumpliendo prisión como resultado de su lucha anticolonial. Los puertorriqueños tenemos un consenso en la demanda de la excarcelación de Oscar López Rivera.

Entre las muchas deudas que tiene Estados Unidos con el pueblo puertorriqueño se encuentra la excarcelación de nuestros prisioneros políticos, particularmente la de Oscar, quien ya lleva tres décadas en cárceles del imperio. Ya es hora de que Oscar regrese a su casa, a su familia, a su pueblo que le admira y respeta. Es la hora de su libertad

Friday, May 17, 2013

The US legacy on Vieques

Are cancer, birth defects, and diseases the lasting legacy of US weapons use on the Puerto Rican island?



On the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, residents cite cancer, birth defects and 
diseases as the lasting legacy of decades of US weapons use there. 
But 10 years after the bombings stopped, the US refuses to acknowledge a link.
For more than 60 years, the idyllic Caribbean island was used as a practice ground for 
US Navy weapons, turning more than half of it into a no-go zone. The island of 10,000 struggled for decades to get its land back.

On May 1, 2003, the US government ended bombing on Vieques. 
Bunkers that once held thousands of bombs were shuttered, and land used by the 
 military was converted into nature reserves. But a decade
 after this major victory, Vieques remains an island in trouble.
Islanders suffer significantly higher rates of cancer and other illnesses than 
the rest of Puerto Rico, something they attribute to the decades of weapons use.
But a report released in March by the US Agency for Toxic Substances and
 Disease Registry (ATSDR), the federal agency in charge of investigating toxic substances, said it found no such link.
"The people of Vieques are very sick, not because they were born sick,
 but because their community was sickened as a result of many factors,
 and one of the most important is the contamination they was subjected to for more than 60 years. These people have a higher rate of cancer, of hypertension, of kidney
 failure," Carmen Ortiz-Roque, an epidemiologist and obstetrician, told Al Jazeera.
For more than 60 years, the Navy was bombing us with many poisons
, napalm, agent orange, depleted uranium and many other things, some of
 which we may never know definitively.
Norma Torres Sanes, a civil disobedient in the fight against foreign
military presence in Vieques
"The women of child bearing age in Vieques are drastically more contaminated
 than the rest of the women in Puerto Rico .... 27 percent of the women in
Vieques we studied had sufficient mercury to cause neurological damage in their
unborn baby," she added.
Vieques has a 30 percent higher rate of cancer than the rest of Puerto Rico, and
nearly four times the rate of hypertension.
"Here there is every type of cancer - bone cancer, tumors. Skin cancer. Everything.
 We have had friends who are diagnosed and two or three months later, they die.
These are very aggressive cancers," said Carmen Valencia, of the Vieques Women's Alliance.
Vieques has only a basic health care with a birthing clinic and an emergency room.
 There are no chemotherapy facilities, and the sick must travel hours by ferry or
plane for treatment.
Seafood, which is an important part of the diet - making up roughly
 40 percent of the food eaten on the island, is also at risk.
"We have bomb remnants and contaminants in the coral, and it’s clear that
that type of contamination passes onto the crustaceans, to the fish, to the bigger
 fish that we ultimately eat. Those heavy metals in high concentrations can cause
 damage and cancer in people," Elda Guadalupe, an environmental scientist, explained.

But the ATSDR said it could find no relationship between mercury in
fish and military operations on Vieques.
So, will the US government accept any responsibility? And what solutions can
 the islanders implement to tackle this health situation?
Inside Story Americas travelled to Vieques to produce a special report on
 the ongoing environmental issues and health crisis there.
Together with presenter Shihab Rattansi, we discuss the crisis with guests:
Katherine McCaffrey, a professor of anthropology at Montclair University, who
has also written a book on the military presence in Vieques; James Barton
 a munitions expert and co-author of a report on the ecological, radiological,
 and toxicological effects of naval bombardment on Vieques.
Representatives from the ATSDR declined to appear on the show.

"The navy was up to full scale operations, that included NATO participants,
 for many years. The concern for exposing the residents to the toxic plume
 generated as a result of the prevailing trade winds was never taken into
consideration and are still not taken into consideration as open detonation
continues to this day for disposals operations when there are technological
alternatives."
- James Barton, a munitions expert and co-author of a report on the
 ecological, radiological, and toxicological effects of naval bombardment on Vieques

The US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry issued
 this statement to Inside Story Americas:

"For more than a decade, ATSDR has been concerned for the health of Vieques
 residents and involved in evaluation of potential health hazards related
 to the Navy’s past military activities on the Island of Vieques. ATSDR
 appreciates that the people of Vieques still have questions about
 the effects of environmental contamination from military operations
on the island and their health. To respond to these concerns, ATSDR
evaluated its previous findings at Vieques. ATSDR carefully and critically
 reviewed these data, including studies conducted by persons outside of ATSDR."
"Based on available data, there is no indication that past military activities
have caused exposure to high levels of contamination. ATSDR looked at
 information about contaminants in air, water, soil, plants, and marine
seafood; medical tests to measure the amount of chemicals in residents’
bodies; and reports about health conditions, new cancer cases, and
deaths. Even though we looked specifically for a link, our review
of these data could not find a link between military activities and human exposure."
"ATSDR recommends that public health officials look into
 ways to develop more reliable population-based statistics for condition
s like asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other chronic diseases on
Vieques using an existing health survey such as the Behavioral Risk Factors
Surveillance System. ATSDR will provide laboratory and other technical
support if a biomonitoring investigation is conducted."
"ATSDR considers our evaluation complete at this time. However,
if public health issues arise or additional studies are conducted, we
could evaluate addition data and information."


The US Navy issued this statement to Inside Story Americas about Vieques:
"The US Navy has been working with the Puerto Rico Environmental
Quality Board, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the US Fish and
 Wildlife Service to clean the former Navy range which covers approximately
15,000 acres, and much of this area contains few or no munitions. To date more
 than 2,500 acres have been cleared which accounts for approximately 17 million
pounds of scrap metal removed and more than 38,000 munitions items destroyed."
"The Navy requested the assistance of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
 (ATSDR), an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, to investigate t
he alleged contamination in Vieques. After studying the four pathways (Groundwater,
Soil, Fish/Crabs, and Air) that would most likely result in exposure to contaminants,
ATSDR released a number of Public Health Assessments (PHAs) in the summer
and fall of 2003 and concluded there were no health risks to the residents of the island."
"In 2009, ATSDR again investigated whether there were any health hazards associated
 with the Navy's use of Vieques. In December 2011, ATSDR released its
summary report for public comment and, in March 2013, reaffirmed its
findings that there is no scientific evidence of any health hazards associated with the Navy's use of Vieques."

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'

Indiana farmer must pay agribusiness giant $84,000 for patent infringement

- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of biotech giant Monsanto, ordering Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, 75, to pay Monsanto more than $84,000 for patent infringement for using second generation Monsanto seeds purchased second hand—a ruling which will have broad implications for the ownership of 'life' and farmers' rights in the future.

Indiana grain farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman walks past the US Supreme Court on February 19, 2013 in Washington (AFP/File, Mandel Ngan) In the case, Bowman had purchased soybean seeds from a grain elevator—where seeds are cheaper than freshly engineered Monsanto GE (genetically engineered) seeds and typically used for animal feed rather than for crops. The sources of the seeds Bowman purchased were mixed and were not labeled. However, some were "Roundup Ready" patented Monsanto seeds.

The Supreme Court Justices, who gave Monsanto a warm reception from the start, ruled that Bowman had broken the law because he planted seeds which naturally yielded from the original patented seed products—Monsanto's policies prohibit farmers from saving or reusing seeds from Monsanto born crops.
Farmers who use Monsanto's seeds are forced to buy the high priced new seeds every year.
Ahead of the expected ruling, Debbie Barker, Program Director for Save Our Seeds (SOS), and George Kimbrell, staff attorney for Center for Food Safety (CFS), asked in an op-ed earlier this year, "Should anyone, or any corporation, control a product of life?":
Bowman vs. Monsanto Co. will be decided based on the court's interpretation of a complex web of seed and plant patent law, but the case also reflects something much more basic: Should anyone, or any corporation, control a product of life?
[Monsanto's] logic is troubling to many who point out that it is the nature of seeds and all living things, whether patented or not, to replicate. Monsanto's claim that it has rights over a self-replicating natural product should raise concern. Seeds, unlike computer chips, for example, are essential to life. If people are denied a computer chip, they don't go hungry. If people are denied seeds, the potential consequences are much more threatening.
Bowman had argued that he was respecting his contract with Monsanto, purchasing directly from them each year, but couldn't afford Monsanto's high prices for his riskier late season crops. Bowman's defense argued that Monsanto's patent was "exhausted" through the process of natural seed reproduction and no longer applied to Bowman's second generation seeds.
“If they don’t want me to go to the elevator and buy that grain," Bowman had stated, "then Congress should pass a law saying you can’t do it."
The Center for Food Safety released a report in February which shows three corporations control more than half of the global commercial seed market.
As a result, from 1995-2011 the average cost to plant 1 acre of soybeans rose 325%.
As AP reports, more than 90 percent of American soybean farms use Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" seeds, which first came on the market in 1996.
Vandana Shiva, an expert on seed patents and their effects on farmers around the world, wrote recently:
Monsanto’s concentrated control over the seed sector in India as well as across the world is very worrying. This is what connects farmers’ suicides in India to Monsanto vs Percy Schmeiser in Canada, to Monsanto vs Bowman in the US, and to farmers in Brazil suing Monsanto for $2.2 billion for unfair collection of royalty.
Through patents on seed, Monsanto has become the “Life Lord” of our planet, collecting rents for life’s renewal from farmers, the original breeders.

How the US Turned Three Pacifists into Violent Terrorists


 

From left, Greg Boertje-Obed, Sister Megan Rice, and Michael Walli. (Photo: Saul Young/News Sentinel)In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism.  Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.

Here is how it happened. 
In the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 2012, long-time peace activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and trespassed onto the property.  Y-12, called the Fort Knox of the nuclear weapons industry, stores hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium and works on every single one of the thousands of nuclear weapons maintained by the U.S.
“The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist.  For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”
- Sr. Megan Rice

Describing themselves as the Transform Now Plowshares, the three came as non-violent protestors to symbolically disarm the weapons. They carried bibles, written statements, peace banners, spray paint, flower, candles, small baby bottles of blood, bread, hammers with biblical verses on them and wire cutters. Their intent was to follow the words of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Sr. Megan Rice has been a Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus for over sixty years.  Greg Boertje-Obed, a married carpenter who has a college age daughter, is an Army veteran and lives at a Catholic Worker house in Duluth Minnesota.  Michael Walli, a two-term Vietnam veteran turned peacemaker, lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington DC.
In the dark, the three activists cut through a boundary fence which had signs stating “No Trespassing.”  The signs indicate that unauthorized entry, a misdemeanor, is punishable by up to 1 year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
No security arrived to confront them.
So the three climbed up a hill through heavy brush, crossed a road, and kept going until they saw the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) surrounded by three fences, lit up by blazing lights.
Still no security.
So they cut through the three fences, hung up their peace banners, and spray-painted peace slogans on the HEUMF.  Still no security arrived.  They began praying and sang songs like “Down by the Riverside” and “Peace is Flowing Like a River.”
When security finally arrived at about 4:30 am, the three surrendered peacefully, were arrested, and jailed.
The next Monday July 30, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were arraigned and charged with federal trespassing, a misdemeanor charge which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail.  Frank Munger, an award-winning journalist with the Knoxville News Sentinel, was the first to publicly wonder, “If unarmed protesters dressed in dark clothing could reach the plant's core during the cover of dark, it raised questions about the plant's security against more menacing intruders.”
On Wednesday August 1, all nuclear operations at Y-12 were ordered to be put on hold in order for the plant to focus on security.  The “security stand-down”  was ordered by security contractor in charge of Y-12, B&W Y-12 (a joint venture of the Babcock and Wilcox Company and Bechtel National Inc.) and supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
On Thursday August 2, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli appeared in court for a pretrial bail hearing.  The government asked that all three be detained.  One prosecutor called them a potential “danger to the community” and asked that all three be kept in jail until their trial.  The US Magistrate allowed them to be released.
Sr. Megan Rice walked out of the jail and promptly admitted to gathered media that the three had indeed gone onto the property and taken action in protest of nuclear weapons.  “But we had to — we were doing it because we had to reveal the truth of the criminality which is there, that’s our obligation,” Rice said. She also challenged the entire nuclear weapons industry: “We have the power, and the love, and the strength and the courage to end it and transform the whole project, for which has been expended more than 7.2 trillion dollars,” she said. “The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist.  For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”
Then the government began increasing the charges against the anti-nuclear peace protestors.
The day after the Magistrate ordered the release of Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli, a Department of Energy (DOE) agent swore out a federal criminal complaint against the three for damage to federal property, a felony punishable by zero to five years in prison, under 18 US Code Section 1363.
The DOE agent admitted the three carried a letter which stated, “We come to the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war.  Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us to believe that our activity here is necessary; that we come to invite transformation, undo the past and present work of Y-12; disarm and end any further efforts to increase the Y-12 capacity for an economy and social structure based on war-making and empire-building.”
Now, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were facing one misdemeanor and one felony and up to six years in prison.
But the government did not stop there.  The next week, the charges were enlarged yet again.
On Tuesday August 7, the U.S. expanded the charges against the peace activists to three counts.  The first was the original charge of damage to Y-12 in violation of 18 US Code 1363, punishable by up to five years in prison.  The second was an additional damage to federal property in excess of $1000 in violation of 18 US Code 1361, punishable by up to ten years in prison. The third was a trespassing charge, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison under 42 US Code 2278.
Now they faced up to sixteen years in prison. And the actions of the protestors started to receive national and international attention.
On August 10, 2012, the New York Times ran a picture of Sr. Megan Rice on page one under the headline “The Nun Who Broke into the Nuclear Sanctum.”  Citing nuclear experts, the paper of record called their actions “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.”
At the end of August 2012, the Inspector General of the Department of Energy issued at comprehensive report on the security breakdown at Y-12.  Calling the peace activists trespassers, the report indicated that the three were able to get as far as they did because of “multiple system failures on several levels.” The cited failures included cameras broken for six months, ineptitude in responding to alarms, communication problems, and many other failures of the contractors and the federal monitors.  The report concluded that “Ironically, the Y-12 breach may have been an important “wake-up” call regarding the need to correct security issues at the site.”
On October 4, 2012, the defendants announced that they had been advised that, unless they pled guilty to at least one felony and the misdemeanor trespass charge, the U.S. would also charge them with sabotage against the U.S. government, a much more serious charge. Over 3000 people signed a petition to U.S. Attorney General Holder asking him not to charge them with sabotage.
But on December 4, 2012, the U.S. filed a new indictment of the protestors.  Count one was the promised new charge of sabotage.  Defendants were charged with intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of 18 US Code 2155, punishable with up to 20 years in prison.  Counts two and three were the previous felony property damage charges, with potential prison terms of up to fifteen more years in prison.
Gone entirely was the original misdemeanor charge of trespass.  Now Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli faced up to thirty-five years in prison.
In a mere five months, government charges transformed them from misdemeanor trespassers to multiple felony saboteurs.
The government also successfully moved to strip the three from presenting any defenses or testimony about the harmful effects of nuclear weapons.   The U.S. Attorney’s office filed a document they called “Motion to Preclude Defendants from Introducing Evidence in Support of Certain Justification Defenses.”  In this motion, the U.S. asked the court to bar the peace protestors from being allowed to put on any evidence regarding the illegality of nuclear weapons, the immorality of nuclear weapons, international law, or religious, moral or political beliefs regarding nuclear weapons, the Nuremberg principles developed after WWII, First Amendment protections, necessity or US policy regarding nuclear weapons.
Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli argued against the motion. But, despite powerful testimony by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a declaration from an internationally renowned physician and others, the Court ruled against defendants.
Meanwhile, Congress was looking into the security breach, and media attention to the trial grew with a remarkable story in the Washington Post, with CNN coverage and AP and Reuters joining in.
The trial was held in Knoxville in early May 2013. The three peace activists were convicted on all counts.  Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli all took the stand, admitted what they had done, and explained why they did it.  The federal manager of Y-12 said the protestors had damaged the credibility of the site in the U.S. and globally and even claimed that their acts had an impact on nuclear deterrence.
As soon as the jury was dismissed, the government moved to jail the protestors because they had been convicted of “crimes of violence.” The government argued that cutting the fences and spray-painting slogans was property damage such as to constitute crimes of violence so the law obligated their incarceration pending sentencing.
The defense pointed out that Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli had remained free since their arrest without incident. The government attorneys argued that two of the protestors had violated their bail by going to a congressional hearing about the Y-12 security problems, an act that had been approved by their parole officers.
The three were immediately jailed.  In its decision affirming their incarceration pending their sentencing, the court ruled that both the sabotage and the damage to property convictions were defined by Congress as federal crimes of terrorism.  Since the charges carry potential sentences of ten years or more, the Court ruled there was a strong presumption in favor of incarceration which was not outweighed by any unique circumstances that warranted their release pending sentencing.
These non-violent peace activists now sit in jail as federal prisoners, awaiting their sentencing on September 23, 2013.