Vieques: Activism works

Vieques is a small island in the Caribbean. It is a part of Puerto Rica 
and the US navy and airforce have been using it as a bombing range for many 
years. Protests by the local people and their supporters have erupted with 
many courageous demonstrations.

Some demonstrators sneak onto the bombing range by boat. Others don 
camouflage and use the cover of night to cut through fences.

The idea is to halt bombing practice on Vieques island and being arrested 
is part of the deal, even for the nephew of President Kennedy and the wife 
of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

"We are not violent criminals even though we have endured the act of 
shackles and have been treated as common criminals," an indignant 
Jacqueline Jackson told a federal judge when arrested recently. She was 
jailed because she refused to pay $3,000 bail. Jackson walked through a 
quarter-mile of thick underbrush and woods to breach a Navy fence. She was 
arrested soon afterward.

Activists working to end the US Navy's six decades of bombing exercises on 
Vieques claim their peaceful guerrilla tactics succeeded in repeatedly 
pausing the military manoeuvres and contributed to President Bush's 
surprise announcement that the Navy must withdraw in two years.

"The people of Vieques have defeated the most powerful military apparatus 
in the history of humanity," activist leader Robert Rabin said.

Protesters say they want to reach the 900-acre beachside bombing range that 
is on 12,000 acres the Navy owns on the eastern end of the island. The Navy 
land is protected by a nine-mile arc of fencing that is regularly cut and 
then repaired.

Protesters use flares to alert the Navy to their presence, and then retreat 
to avoid arrest, said Luis Angel Torres, a spokesman for the Socialist 
Movement of Workers. Navy spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode said 
protestors were caught after they launched several flares, an hour before 
the Navy began its bombing runs. Navy and Airforce exercises are often 
thrown off scheduled by the demonstrators.

Vieques Commissioner Juan Fernandez, who observes the exercises for the 
Puerto Rican Government, said manoeuvres are delayed as Navy security 
attempts to round up activists.

"Our courage has turned Vieques into a world stage of peaceful protest", 
said one activist.

UN resolution

The 24-member UN committee on decolonisation has adopted a resolution 
calling on the United States to expedite independence for Puerto Rico and 
order an immediate end to US military exercises on the tiny island of 
Vieques. Cuba's UN Ambassador, Bruno Parrilla, said the world could not 
wait for another bomb in Vieques.

The four million residents of the Spanish-speaking island of Puerto Rico 
are US citizens who serve in the armed forces, but they do not pay federal 
taxes, cannot vote for president, and have no vote in Congress.

The resolution calls on the US government "to assume its responsibility of 
expediting a process that will allow the Puerto Rican people to fully 
exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence." 
It urges the US government "to order the immediate halt of its armed 
forces' military drills and manoeuvres on Vieques Island."

It calls on the United States to "return the occupied land to the people of 
Puerto Rico, halt the persecution, incarcerations, arrests and harassment 
of peaceful demonstrators, immediately release all persons incarcerated in 
this connection ... and decontaminate the impact areas" in the Vieques 
bombing range.