Protest set as Puerto Rico activist subpoened

While Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama campaign for the June 1 Democratic primary in Puerto Rico, one can question why Puerto Ricans can vote for the Democratic nominee but not for president of the U.S. The hypocritical millions of dollars wasted in propaganda to support these two imperialist candidates on Puerto Rican soil expose what Puerto Rico really is: a U.S. colony much like Guam.

One can also ask why the Puerto Rican government isn’t using those millions to pay living wages to the school teachers or reducing the cost of perishable products at a time when the Puerto Rico economy is superfrail.

What also exposes Puerto Rico’s colonial status as the electoral spectacle brings attention to the island is the repressive apparatus of the U.S. federal government lashing out in its attempt to silence the pro-independence movement. Since December 2007 at least five pro-independence Puerto Ricans have been visited or sought out on the U.S. mainland by federal authorities. Four have been cited to appear before the most anti-democratic juridical apparatus—the grand jury—where one does not have a right to have legal representation present.

The government subpoenaed Julio Pabón, Christopher Torres, Tania Frontera and the latest, on May 13, Elliot Monteverde Torres. A statement from the Hostos Jan. 11 Grand Jury Resistance Campaign describes Monteverde Torres as living “with his wife and daughter in Texas and ... from the Bronx, N.Y. He was a student leader in the U.S., a lawyer and a distinguished leader of the movement in solidarity with Vieques in New York.”

Vieques is an island that is part of Puerto Rico that was used for bombing practice by the Pentagon for decades.

On May 22, the date set for Monteverde Torres to appear in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., was postponed until May 30. The campaign has called for a 9:30 a.m. demonstration on Thursday, May 30, in front of the Brooklyn Federal Court at Cadman Plaza.

Simultaneous pickets will take place in Puerto Rico and Chicago denouncing grand jury repression, supporting those who refuse to cooperate with the grand jury and calling for the FBI to stop the harassment of the Puerto Rican community and to get out of Puerto Rico.

This new wave of repression comes at a time when the U.S. government has closed the case investigating the FBI killing of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 23, 2005. Ojeda Ríos was a leader of the Ejército Popular Boricua-Macheteros.

Puerto Rico’s Commission of Civil Rights, an official legislative body, is pushing forward with its own investigation of Ojeda Ríos’ killing. The CCR has unearthed contradictory statements from the head of the FBI, Luis Fraticelli; the head of the National Police, Pedro Toledo; and the head of the municipal police of Hormigueros, Nelson Cuevas, as to what happened when Ojeda Ríos was killed. (El Diario New York, May 23-24)

This is in hopes for justice to prevail on behalf of the Ojeda Ríos family and for the independence movement—so that these extrajudicial killings will not go unpunished with impunity, like the authorities who killed the two pro-independence youth in 1978 in Cerro Maravilla, Puerto Rico.