RIGHTS-PUERTO RICO: Lawyers Ask UN to Condemn US Manoeuvres

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 3 2000 (IPS) - The Puerto Rico Bar Association has asked the United Nations (UN) to condemn instensive US military exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a “crime against humanity.”

Attorney Fermín Arraiza stated before the UN Human Rights Commission that “the colonial and military exploitation of Puerto Rico by the United States” has provoked a conflict that pits the US Marines against Puerto Rican civil society and the community of Vieques.

Vieques, a territory of just 132 square km with 9,400 inhabitants just west of Puerto Rico, is two-thirds occupied by US Marines who engage in target practice on the island from the sea and from the air.

As many as 30,000 US soldiers have taken part in these military operations, more than three times the number of island residents, stressed Arraiza.

The attorneys’ claim before the UN commission has the backing of the American Association of Jurists.

The bombings violate the right of the people of Vieques to a clean environment, health and life, affirms the Puerto Rico Bar Association.

Since 1941, when the US military occupation of the island began, the Vieques residents have suffered a poverty rate as high as 70 percent, unemployment reaching 60 percent and excessive levels of environmental contamination.

Some of the toxics found in Vieques include uranium, plutonium, nitrites, napalm, nitro-glycerine, acetylene and various heavy metals that have caused serious nervous and respiratory illnesses among local residents, maintained Arraiza.

In 1985, Vieques reported a cancer rate 27 percent higher than that of the main island of Puerto Rico, and current incidence of cancer is calculated at 50 percent higher, he said.

Recent studies found uranium present in the excrement of children living on Vieques. The high rate of infant mortality on the island only underscores the pollution of the island and the poisoning of its people, according to the document presented to the UN commission.

The US government and its courts, meanwhile, argue that the military manoeuvres taking place on Vieques are justified because they are essential for US national security, Arraiza said.

In its complaint, the Bar Association says Puerto Rican national territory has been used to prepare the military attacks against Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Yugoslavia, among other nations, “putting Puerto Rico in danger of potential military retaliation.”

The US Marines acknowledged that 263 spent uranium projectiles were discharged from a Harrier jet and made impact in an area of Vieques in February 1999 as part of training for the bomb attacks against Yugoslavia the following month by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

This information, contained in a document distributed in Geneva by the autonomous municipal government of Carolina, Puerto Rico, also revealed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had admitted that only 56 of the 263 projectiles were empty capsules.

The recovery of the bomb remnants was postponed until August, due to the danger of un-detonated conventional projectiles spread throughout Vieques. Spent uranium is linked to the Gulf War Syndrome, which affected numerous veterans of the 1991 conflict with Iraq.

The mayor of Carolina, José Aponte de la Torre, said in a statement that David Sanes, a civilian worker in Vieques, died April 19, 1999 when a F-18 mistakenly launched a bomb against the observation post where Sanes was located.

That episode brought the Puerto Rican government and population together as one voice to demand the immediate withdrawal of the US Marines from Vieques and the return of the occupied land to its people, affirmed Aponte.

Arraiza, meanwhile, warned those governments that have ratified the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights against becoming “accomplices to this mockery” and exhorted them to press the UN Human Rights Commission to exercise its jurisdiction and “condemn this crime against humanity.”

He also asked that the UN commission request information about these events from Washington DC, and pointed out that in previous reports the United States had “falsely” stated that Puerto Rico already exercises its right to self-determination, just like Alaska and Hawaii.