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Vol. 81/No. 8 February 27, 2017
(front page)
Oscar López back in Puerto Rico! Faces restrictions until May 17
BY SETH GALINSKY
In another victory in his fight for freedom, Oscar López Rivera returned
to Puerto Rico Feb. 9 to live with his daughter Clarisa, part of a
“transition” to freedom from 36 years in U.S. prisons.
But in a sign of the U.S. rulers’ concern about the support for López in
Puerto Rico and the boost his return gives to the working-class struggle
there, he remains under strict conditions of home confinement, including
a ban on making any public statements, until his official release date
of May 17. He is required to wear an electronic bracelet.
López was imprisoned on frame-up charges, primarily of seditious
conspiracy, because of his activities in support of independence for
Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony since 1898. He was accused of being a leader
of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), which took credit for
bombings of businesses in the U.S. that operated in Puerto Rico. López
was never charged with any act of violence.
Under the mounting pressure of the broad support in Puerto Rico and the
U.S. for López’s release, then President Barack Obama commuted his
sentence Jan. 17.
López’s daughter, his lawyer Jan Susler, U.S. Congressman Luis
Gutiérrez, and Alejandro Molina, co-chair of the National Boricua Human
Rights Network, greeted him outside the Terre Haute, Indiana, prison
gates. They were later joined by Oscar’s brother José López, San Juan
Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and New York City Council Speaker Melissa
Mark-Viverito.
At a press conference in San Juan that evening, Clarisa López urged
those in Puerto Rico who are anxious to see and speak with her father to
be patient. “We can’t do anything that could give the U.S. Bureau of
Prisons an excuse to return him to federal custody,” she said.
“On May 17 the big party starts,” she said. While still in prison, Oscar
López made plans to visit every municipality in Puerto Rico to thank
people for their support and promote the fight to end the island’s
status as a U.S. colony.
“The U.S. government refuses to admit that it has any political
prisoners,” Susler told the press. “But the way López has been treated
proves that’s not true, including his more than 12 years in solitary
confinement. After his sentence was commuted, prison officials insisted
López keep reporting to guards every two hours,” she said.
López was turned over to the custody of Gutiérrez, on the condition that
they make no stops in Chicago and that there be no organized welcome for
him in Puerto Rico. When other Puerto Rican political prisoners were
released earlier — including Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Oscar
Colazo and Carlos Alberto Torres — they spoke to sizable rallies in
Chicago.
When the delegation arrived at the prison to pick him up, López was
holding a Puerto Rican flag, surrounded by guards armed with rifles, his
daughter said.
“I’m not even allowed to say ‘thanks to you’ in the name of my father,”
she said at the press conference, referring to the conditions of silence
Washington has imposed. “So let me say ‘thanks from me.’”
José López described how his brother first became involved in a wide
variety of struggles in Chicago. He moved there from Puerto Rico when he
was 14 years old. He was later drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to
Vietnam.
“Oscar came back to Chicago in 1967, the year after one of the largest,
if not the largest, rebellion of Puerto Ricans in the United States, the
12, 13 and 14 of June 1966,” Oscar’s brother said. “Puerto Ricans said
they were no longer going to accept being completely marginalized from
all aspects of what an ordinary citizen deserves in a society.”
“Oscar said that going to Vietnam was a mistake, to fight against a
people who were fighting against colonialism, while in this city the
police and national guard were shooting at Puerto Ricans,” José said.
Although Oscar López’s fight for release was supported across the
political spectrum in Puerto Rico, not everyone on the island is pleased
with his return.
Carmelo Ríos, spokesperson in the Puerto Rican Senate for the ruling New
Progressive Party, currently the majority party, criticized those he
charged were “exalting” someone who doesn’t deserve it. They have
forgotten those of us “who didn’t go underground to see how we could
undemocratically overthrow a government we don’t agree with,” he said.
Workers on the American Airlines flight to San Juan had a different
attitude. “One of the flight attendants came up to Oscar as we were
about to land,” San Juan Mayor Cruz told the press. “She gave him a wing
pin and said ‘Bienvenido a su casa’ [Welcome home].
“Then the head of the flight attendants crew came up and said, ‘It’s an
honor to have you with us, sir.’” Cruz added.
Related articles:
Thousands in Puerto Rico protest anti-labor measures
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