RIGHTS-US: Campaign to Free Political Prisoners

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Mar 5 1998 (IPS) - A coalition of U.S. activists is stepping up pressure on the government to acknowledge that more than 100 people are detained in the United States for political reasons.

According to the ‘Jericho 98′ campaign, the number of detainees arrested on political grounds may even exceed 150 persons – ranging from former members of the the Black Panthers to supporters of American Indian autonomy and independence for Puerto Rico.

The campaign intends to increase the pressure on Washington by staging a march on the nation’s capital Mar. 27, when organisers hope to attract thousands of people to demand an amnesty for all the alleged political prisoners.

“The United States’ steadfastly refuses to recognise that political prisoners exist in the United States, while hypocritically denouncing countries like Cuba and China for their alleged treatment of such prisoners,” said the logistics coordinator of the planned march, Herman Ferguson.

“They claim they don’t violate the human rights of any of their citizens,” Ferguson said of U.S. officials. “But the United States covers up the fact that it has political prisoners.”

The Jericho 98 campaign is pleading the cases of several individuals who have been recognised by rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The campaign gets its name from the Biblical story of Joshua, who brought down the walls of Jericho.

The cases include the jailing of former Black Panther Mumia Abu- Jamal and the leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Leonard Peltier.

Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer, and remains on “death row” despite a nationwide campaign that questioned the evidence against him and sought a re-trial. Peltier is in prison for the 1975 murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, and irregularities in his trial have attracted similar attention from rights groups worldwide.

Other prisoners whom the Jericho 98 organisers cite as political detainees include some 30 members of the pro- independence Puerto Rican groups, ‘Los Macheteros’ and the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN); nine members of the Philadelphia-based African nationalist group MOVE; several former Black Panthers; and white leftists, including Father Philip Berrigan and Silvia Baraldini.

Ferguson said the campaign is focusing only on clear-cut cases where individuals with strong political beliefs have been imprisoned despite weak evidence.

“These names we are putting forward can stand any test of their bona fides” as political convictions, he argued.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam organisation – which will support the Washington march — laid the blame for many of the detentions on the FBI’s heavily-criticised Counter- Intelligence Programme (COINTELPRO), which he argued heavily targeted activists for arrests.

The political prisoners, Farrakhan said, “should be granted amnesty, and those who are out of this country should be allowed home.”

Another former Panther convicted of murder in the Foerster case, Sundiata Acoli, has been in prison for 24 years, most recently being denied parole in 1994. He is one of the alleged political prisoners for whom release is sought, according to the Jericho 98 organisers.

Even the march organisers are people who claim to have experienced political detention. Ferguson spent years in exile in Guyana after being convicted for his involvement in the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol Club; after returning to the United States in 1989, he served seven years in prison before resuming activist work in New York.

Safiya Bukhari, the national coordinator for Jericho 98, was imprisoned for eight years – largely because of her involvement with the Black Panthers, she claims.

Many other former Panthers – including, most recently, Elmer ‘Geronimo’ Pratt, whose murder conviction was overturned last year in Oakland, California – have challenged their prison sentences after pointing to COINTELPRO’s reputation for targeting black activists during the 1970s.

The United States rejects charges that it has any political prisoners. U.S. officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno, refused to meet a U.N. special rapporteur for human rights last year, and frequently rebuff international appeals for improved prison conditions and abolition of the death penalty.