People Before Profit blog

U.S. groups challenge blockade of Cuba

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:05:00 +0000

The Pastors for Peace/U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan and the Venceremos Brigade are off once more to Cuba, the 17th time for the faith-based group led by the Rev. Lucius Walker and the 37th trip for the VB, which will undertake agricultural and construction work there.

The spirited and diverse groups are purposefully violating U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba. In addition, Friendshipment organizers refuse to obtain the license required by the Treasury Department to bring humanitarian aid to the island. To comply with embargo regulations of any kind, they say, is to lend a hand to cruelty and illegalities.

A Pastors for Peace statement declares, “We reject the unconstitutional and immoral efforts to require a license for acts of common humanity. … We will challenge the unjust law and eventually change it.”

The groups are going ahead with their plans, undeterred by recent U.S. Treasury Department warning letters to 200 previous Cuba travel challengers that they may face stiff fines.

The Venceremos Brigade departs for Cuba on July 2, returning on July 17 to Buffalo, N.Y., just as the Friendshipment crosses back into the U.S. at McAllen, Texas.

The VB, a longstanding U.S.-based educational and Cuba solidarity group, will divide its time this year between the helping out at the Camilo Cienfuegos School near Bayamo in Eastern Cuba and the Julio Antonio Mella International Work Camp in Havana Province.

Pastors for Peace first brought donated supplies to Cuba in 1992, when the Cuban people were suffering after the fall of the Soviet bloc and tightening of the U.S. blockade. Since then, annual caravans have brought hundreds of thousands of tons of medical and education materials to Cuba in defiance of the U.S.-imposed blockade.

This year, on June 17-18 at four sites along the U.S.-Canada border, Canadian activists transferred aid material to Friendshipment vehicles about to set off for the South. In all, 13 separate caravans left from various points in the northern U.S. to converge in McAllen, Texas. Along the way, drivers and helpers met with supporters in 120 cities to share information and accept humanitarian donations.

Over 100 caravan participants will cross into Mexico on July 7, head for Tampico on the coast, transfer the supplies to a Cuban ship and then fly to Cuba.

Last year the U.S. government confiscated 45 boxes of computers and electronic materials destined for Cuban schools. In May, after a year of demonstrations in Washington, the U.S. government, faced with having to defend its case in court, relinquished the seized materials.

Direct action, as practiced by Friendshipment and the VB, acquires special relevance in view of legislative failures to end the U.S. blockade.

By a vote of 236-176 on June 14, the House of Representatives turned down an amendment to a Treasury funding bill that would have allowed U.S. students to study in Cuba. At the last minute, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), sensing almost certain defeat, withdrew an amendment that would have eased U.S. restrictions on religious travel to Cuba. As in years past, Rep. Charles Rangel’s (D-N.Y.) perennial bill to legislate the whole embargo out of existence was defeated.

On the positive side, the House passed a measure reversing a cumbersome requirement imposed last year that U.S. food exporters have Cuba’s payments in hand before food shipments could be released to Havana. Congress was responding from pressure from U.S. agribusiness companies, who argue such trade is mutually beneficial.

In general, however, the U.S. blockade of the island remains in full force.

Sam Raina, the Canadian head of an association of 52 companies operating in Cuba, said that the U.S. Treasury Department recently ordered his Canadian bank to cancel his credit cards and other accounts because of his Cuba connections.

Raina told the Toronto Star, “There’s no bank in the world that would defy the U.S. Treasury. … This has all of a sudden become an issue because U.S. trade with Cuba is getting higher.” He pointed out that U.S. restrictions imposed on Canadian businesses are waived for U.S. competitors profiting from food sales to Cuba.

Chicago torture probe draws worldwide attention

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 05:30:00 +0000

CHICAGO — As many as 200 people, mostly African American men, were allegedly tortured while in the custody of the Chicago Police Department during the 1970s and ’80s. The goal, victims charge, was to force them to falsely confess to crimes they did not commit.

Some of the torture victims, based on their “confessions,” were sentenced to death row. Several were subsequently found innocent and released. Many are still in prison.

Now, after years of investigations and grand jury testimonies, a 250-page report on the police abuses is set to be released.

The acts performed under the direction of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge bear a similarity to the horrific abuses at U.S. prisons overseas, such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Cattle prods were used to administer electric shocks to victims’ genitals. They were suffocated, beaten and burned, and had guns forced into their mouths. They faced mock executions with shotguns.

United Nations weighs in

There is international pressure to get to the bottom of the Chicago torture scandal. In its concluding observations and recommendations report, released in May, on the U.S. compliance with anti-torture rules, the United Nations Committee against Torture drew attention to the “limited investigation and lack of prosecution in respect of the allegations of torture perpetrated in Areas 2 and 3 of the Chicago Police Department.”

Joey Mogul of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, which represents several of the torture victims, said in a recent statement, “We had no choice but to take our case to the UN so that these officers can be fully accountable for their criminal acts of torture.”

The Geneva-based UN committee, compromised of 10 internationally recognized experts, called on the U.S. to “promptly, thoroughly and impartially investigate all allegations of acts of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by law enforcement personnel and bring perpetrators to justice.”

Andrea Ritchie, a civil rights lawyer, said in a statement, “It’s clear from their report that the UN committee sees torture by law enforcement personnel in the U.S. as on the same level as the torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It’s not just Guantanamo that needs to be shut down, it’s torture wherever it takes place.”

The situation was also brought to the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington, D.C., last October. Joining with community activists, Illinois Democratic Congressmen Danny Davis and Bobby Rush joined torture victim David Bates and his lawyers to present a petition before the three-member panel.

“We have officials in Chicago who could deal with it, but they don’t want to deal with it,” said Bates. “It’s a shame we have to come to Washington, D.C., to get people from different countries to deal with it.”

Some see a connection to the slowness and unwillingness to deal with police torture to Mayor Richard Daley, who was Cook County state’s attorney for eight years, during which time 55 of the torture cases occurred.

The human perspective

Bates recalled what happened to him two decades ago at age 18. A plastic bag was placed over his head, threatening him with suffocation, and he was punched and kicked by Chicago police officers, he said during a recent interview on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” radio program.

“We have to look at this from a human perspective,” said Bates. “These are individuals who were tortured and beaten at the hands of people who basically are supposed to serve and protect them.”

In an effort to coerce false confessions, Burge and others are believed to be responsible for many brutal acts of police torture of African American and Latino suspects. One tactic used was known as “the Vietnam treatment,” presumably started by Burge, a Vietnam veteran.

Burge has been the subject of various legal investigations for nearly a decade. He was fired in the early 1990s for mistreating a suspect, and has lived in Florida since. He continues to collect a taxpayer-funded pension.

Government payroll documents show that at least 14 detectives implicated in Burge’s torture regime are still working in law enforcement, according to an article published in the Chicago Defender in May 2005. Four are on the Chicago police force, three others serve as investigators for the Cook County Sheriff, and another three work in similar capacities for the Cook County State’s Attorney. Several others serve in private law enforcement roles, including as private investigators and security officers.

Connection to the death penalty

As Federal District Court Judge Milton Shader recently wrote in a capital federal case “it is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s .... Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions.”

Eleven men tortured by Burge were on Illinois’ death row, according to the Illinois Coalition to End the Death Penalty, before former Gov. George Ryan stepped in. Ryan pardoned four of the men and the remaining men are in prison for life without parole, some waiting for their appeals. And, in many instances, prosecutors continue to stand in the way of timely remedies.

A 1999 Chicago Tribune study found that the system in Illinois has been plagued by investigatory error, official misconduct, unreliable snitch testimony, disbarred and otherwise disciplined defense attorneys and other problems. “With such a track record, can we ever be certain that we will not execute an innocent person?” the ICEDP asks. The Burge case and the resulting wrongful capital convictions highlight why the death penalty is systemically faulty.

A history of brutality

It is no secret that Chicago, like many other cities, has a long history of police brutality against racially and nationally oppressed communities, including cover-ups by authorities.

Police torture and corruption “represents one of the most explosive controversies in Chicago’s history, fueling concerns about systemic racism in law enforcement,” read a statement issued here last November by a coalition of human rights organizations, bar associations, attorneys and community activists.

Bernadine Dohrn, a law professor at Northwestern University and spokeswoman for the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights said that during a 19-year period ending in 1991, Chicago Police displayed “extreme discrimination and racism,” and no officers were ever tried or charged.

Thirty years ago, Barnabas F. Sears, acting as a special prosecutor, investigated former Cook County State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan and his role in the 1969 police raid of a West Side home that resulted in the shooting deaths of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Groups like the People’s Law Office first made a name for themselves by investigating the FBI and the Chicago Police force’s involvement in this brutal act.

Unfortunately, police brutality continues to plague Chicago, especially in Black and Latino communities. The city of Chicago has had to pay out millions of dollars as settlements in some of these cases.

According to one study by the Chicago Reporter, between 1998 and 2002 citizens made 13,703 charges against officers. The Office of Professional Standards, a civilian body that investigates excessive force by officers, found evidence to support 847 of them. During the same period, the city resolved 935 civil cases alleging excessive force by Chicago police officers that will cost the city $61.2 million.

Probe of recent abuses

Special prosecutor Edward J. Egan, 83, a former state appeals court judge, was appointed in 2002 to review the case and has spent the last four years looking into the allegations against Burge and others, but has yet to issue any findings or criminal charges.

Last week, the Illinois Supreme Court denied a request to keep Egan’s report from going public. “We’re terribly relieved not only to see the light at the end of the tunnel but the end of the tunnel,” Egan told The Associated Press after the ruling.

There has had to be consistent pressure on authorities to make public the report and that the investigation be done correctly. After prosecutor Egan was appointed, University of Chicago law professors Locke Bowman and Randolph Stone wrote an article in the Chicago Sun-Times asking him to be “thorough, aggressive, unsparing, open” and “impartial.”

“The African American community, reasonably enough, sees the allegations that Burge and other white Chicago police officers brutalized dozens of young black men as suggesting the most stark and appalling police racism,” they went on to say.

More than two-dozen current and former police officials and homicide detectives have taken the Fifth Amendment because Egan could charge them criminally as result of the civil suit testimony. The investigation’s report is expected to include the names of those who refused to testify.

Attorneys for the victims of police torture in Chicago are pleading for justice, including investigative interviews of Mayor Daley. The plaintiffs’ lawyers say they want to explore what measures were taken, if any, in response to internal reports of police misconduct.

“He was aware of the torture from the beginning and he did nothing about it,” said Flint Taylor, an attorney for the People’s Law Office, referring to Daley’s tenure.

Washington hearing offers hope

As the only hearing focused on human rights violation within the U.S., the IACHR investigators were presented with details of the case in the hopes that the panel would intervene and call for an independent international inquiry. The case presented to the panel asked the international community to put pressure on officials to file charges against the Chicago Police Department, given the department’s the lack of accountability for such acts.

Commissioner Clare K. Roberts, an attorney in Antigua and Barbuda and then-president of the IACHR, suggested that the groups presenting the petition consider bringing a formal case before the international panel.

A formal case could produce public findings by the commission that could prove embarrassing to Chicago officials, although it would not require the city to become involved in any international court proceedings. The U.S. is not a signatory to the American Convention on Human Rights, the international agreement that provides for a court solution in such cases.

Solving the problem across the nation

Other jurisdictions across the country have taken similar measures in response to police abuse and corruption. A far-reaching investigation followed in the wake of allegations that a number of Los Angeles police officers had been involved in the drug trade and had planted drugs on suspects. Officers of the L.A. Police Department were eventually prosecuted and more than 100 criminal cases were thrown out.

In Pittsburgh, following a rash of complaints of police abuse of citizens, a federal court imposed a consent decree under which the police are monitored by the U.S. Justice Department.

Lawyer Taylor went on to explain at the IACHR that while extreme forms of brutality “more or less” ended with the firing of Burge, the cover-up of the torture abuses has extended to 30 years.

“Unless Burge and his progeny are indicted, it can be expected that the public respect for police will descend to the level of respect that the police have shown for the public,” said Lawrence Kennon, a former Cook County prosecutor and member of the Justice Coalition of Greater Chicago.

Taylor, who appeared with Bates on the same recent edition of “Democracy Now,” said that perhaps there’s not enough public outrage about this torture scandal.

But, he concluded, “the international community is looking at it in a very strong way, and to hear Chicago put in the same breath with Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is something that, if that doesn’t wake up the powers that be here in the city of Chicago and that doesn’t wake up the U.S. attorney’s office and that doesn’t, in fact, put on the carpet the state’s attorney of Cook County and the mayor of the city of Chicago, I don’t know what will.”

Pepe Lozano (plozano@pww.org) is a member of the editorial board of the People’s Weekly World.

Hearing spotlights plight of African immigrants

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:33:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES — A standing room only crowd came out June 25 to discuss how the immigration issue affects the African American community.

In a previous article in the People’s Weekly World, editorial board member Rosita Johnson wrote: “When oppressed groups cooperate, the entire working class benefits.” And that is exactly what is happening in Los Angeles.

Union leaders, community leaders, dignitaries and working-class people came to the meeting hosted by Assemblymember Karen Bass to learn about the immigration issue from another perspective: that of immigrants from Africa.

There are approximately 550,000 African immigrants residing in Los Angeles County. Many of them are here without proper documents. They work in the shadows in fear of deportation at any time.

Mulu Alemayehu, an immigration attorney representing immigrants from African countries, said that the real problem with immigration today is the Real I.D. Act. This law has had a detrimental impact on African immigrants. The act requires that asylum seekers must prove their identity.

This is clearly impossible, he said, because the authorities responsible for providing documentation are the same police officials that torture and rape those seeking asylum. Alemayehu said, victims of torture are asked by the U.S. government to obtain legal documents from their oppressors. In some countries, ethnic cleansing is official government policy. Many who seek asylum here are forced to do so using false documents. The Real I.D. Act also requires that there be corroborative evidence of torture or rape.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, immigrants from majority Muslim countries, like Somalia, find their visa applications denied without cause other than the fact that they are Muslims.

Maria Elena Durazo, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said that in the hospitality industry there are almost no African Americans employed. There are plenty of Asian and Latino workers, but no Black workers, she said.

Durazo said the hospitality industry is not hiring Black workers. “This must change.” Unite Here, the union that organizes hospitality workers, has demanded, as part of contract negotiations, an active program to outreach, recruit, train and hire African American workers into jobs with good pay and health care.

Durazo said the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, inspired by civil rights activists Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and the Rev. James Lawson, envisioned a society with access to free, quality public education and health care.

Roy Young, consul general of Belize in Los Angeles, praised Bass for her leadership. He said that immigrants have a duty to become citizens and “we should honor Karen, join the union, and participate in the political life of the United States.”

Thousands march at World Peace Forum

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:24:00 +0000

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — With over 4,000 international delegates from some 90 countries and the participation of thousands more from across Canada, the World Peace Forum 2006 opened here June 23. Dozens of panels, concerts, workshops and other events continued over the next five days.

The biggest event of the WPF came on the second day of the gathering, as an estimated 10,000 people marched in the “Walk for Peace, Justice and Sustainability” to a rally at Sunset Beach in Vancouver’s West End.

The rally was headlined by “peace mother” Cindy Sheehan, who moved many to tears with her powerful call to end the violent U.S. occupation of Iraq now, before the death toll rises even higher. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq while serving in the U.S. military, embraced Iraqi journalist Nermin al-Mufti and said she shared the pain of Iraqi mothers who have also lost their sons and daughters to war.

Other rally speakers included B.C. Teachers Federation President Jinny Sims, anti-globalization activist Walden Bello from the Philippines, progressive Mexican Bishop Samuel Ruiz, Bev Jacobs of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and South African teachers’ leader Thulas Nxesi. Buffy Sainte-Marie got the crowd to their feet with a performance of her antiwar anthem, “Universal Soldier.”

At the opening plenary of the WPF, Ono Reiko of the Japanese Confederation of A- and H-Bombs Survivors’ Organizations concluded an emotional address with an appeal for “No more Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis! … No more war!”

Several U.S. mayors used the plenary to condemn the Pentagon’s bloated military budget.

“I fear that my country, the United States of America, is failing to effect real leadership,” said Mayor Jennifer Hosterman of Pleasanton, Calif., referring to the responsibility of mayors around the world to take action on national and international issues that affect their communities.

Greg Speeter from Cities for Peace said local officials are having to deal with issues of environmental degradation, poverty and violence “with fewer and fewer resources.” Speeter bemoaned the size of the U.S. military budget versus the amount spent on environmental protection, health care and antipoverty programs.

“Thirty-one percent of the children in Chicago live in poverty,” he said. “That’s up from 25 percent when the Bush administration came into power. … The amount of money that Chicago spends on war each year could provide a college education for every high school graduate and build 10 schools in the city.”

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, whose pro-business Non-Partisan Association majority initially opposed the city’s hosting of the WPF, congratulated current City Councillor David Cadman and former Councillor Ellen Woodsworth for their efforts in creating the forum. He said, “Hearing stories of cities that have endured war was a real eye-opener for me.”

Alfred Marder of New Haven, Conn., president of International Association of Peace Messenger Cities, spoke about how “millions of voices are demanding an end of the madness endangering our planet,” particularly the danger posed by nuclear weapons.

Derek Corrigan, the mayor of Burnaby, B.C., urged citizens everywhere to pressure their cities to join the 1,300-strong Mayors for Peace and help create global solidarity for world peace.

Buffy Sainte-Marie and Somali-born hip-hop artist K’Naan drew a crowd of over 2,000 to Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre during the forum for a benefit concert for campaigns to eradicate the antipersonnel explosive devices that kill and maim more than 10,000 civilians each year.

Another highlight was the strong presence of the World Peace Council, which relaunched its “Peace Messenger” in newspaper format to coincide with the forum. Speakers from the WPC and its affiliated national organizations took part in a number of forums and panels, and a special seminar featuring top WPC leaders presented the long-standing antiwar group’s priority campaigns on global issues. The seminar was the first major public event featuring the newly re-established Canadian Peace Congress, which is now active once again as a WPC affiliate.

Orlando Fundora of Cuba, president of the WPC, called for an end to state-sponsored torture in Guantanamo and in Iraq and asked all governments to abide by the UN Convention against Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Fundora, a victim of torture at the hands of former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, presented his demands on June 26, the day that the UN General Assembly designates as International Day in Support of Torture Victims.

U.S. delegates included Judith Le Blanc, co-chair of the New York-based United for Peace and Justice.

For more information on the forum, visit www.worldpeaceforum.ca.

— People’s Voice (Canada)

Sham pullout plan called election ploy

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:22:00 +0000

The pressure of antiwar public opinion going into the fall congressional elections was clear last week as Republican strategists tried to sidetrack Iraq withdrawal calls by newly emboldened Democrats.

In the latest move, administration officials leaked a classified briefing by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, floating the possibility of pulling about 7,000 troops out in September, and another 21,000 by December 2007. The “plan,” reported in The New York Times June 25, is filled with qualifications and contains no end date for pulling all troops out. The projected 7,000 is less than 6 percent of the 127,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq. According to the Times, officials called the 2007 withdrawals “more of a forecast of what may be possible … than a hard timeline.” Even if all 28,000 were withdrawn by the end of next year — a highly uncertain prospect — that would leave some 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq with no end in sight.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) commented, “What remains to be seen is whether they will create a plan with real benchmarks, or a cynical cosmetic drawdown of troops, designed to minimize the impact of Bush’s unpopular war at the polls in November.”

“The truth is that the Iraqi people and the American people understand that an open-ended military commitment in Iraq is in nobody’s interest,” Lee said in a June 27 statement. “I believe we need clear benchmarks, a short, precise timetable, and an assurance that when U.S. troops come home, they all come home, meaning no permanent bases.”

The Bush administration has strenuously resisted any timetable for pulling the troops out and any restrictions on a long-term military presence in Iraq.

Congressional Republicans removed from the Iraq “emergency” funding bill amendments sponsored by Lee and Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Md.) barring permanent U.S. bases there. The Republicans allowed the amendments to pass on a voice vote, so they could not be accused of favoring permanent occupation, and then quietly killed them. They are likely to do the same for Biden’s 2007 defense appropriations bill no-permanent-bases amendment, which passed in a Senate voice vote June 22.

The U.S. applied intense pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to drop a withdrawal timetable call from his new national reconciliation plan. However, Iraqi public opinion and political parties across the political spectrum have called for a clear withdrawal timetable.

The Casey report is widely seen as a crass White House-orchestrated election ploy. Just days earlier congressional Republicans had hurled accusations of defeatism and “cutting and running” as they blocked Democrats’ calls for troop withdrawal.

Republicans have “repeatedly and loudly” rejected these proposals, “using arguments that have now been exposed as false,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “Yet the Bush administration is proceeding with planning reductions in our military presence in Iraq immediately before the midterm elections. When it comes to Iraq, the only schedule that matters to Republicans is the U.S. election schedule.”

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), called it an indication of one of the “worst-kept secrets in town” — that the administration wants to pull out troops before the November elections “and the president will then claim some kind of progress or victory.”

“It shouldn’t be a political decision, but it is going to be with this administration,” Levin said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Observers say the weight of the nation’s progressive and peace forces has created a new political dynamic. When the Senate GOP leadership staged a tightly controlled debate on Iraq a week earlier, Democrats, spurred by mounting public opposition to endless occupation, pressed measures calling for specific plans to bring the troops home from Iraq, starting this year. An amendment introduced by Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Russ Feingold (Wis.) and Barbara Boxer (Calif.) set an end date of July 1, 2007. Six other Senate Democrats introduced an amendment calling for beginning withdrawal this year and for Bush to submit a plan by the end of this year with dates for continued pullout next year. House Democrats have introduced several withdrawal initiatives, all of which have been blocked by the Republicans.

A USA Today/Gallup Poll taken June 24-25 shows most Americans want Congress to pass a resolution that includes a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Half of those surveyed would like all U.S. forces out within 12 months.

Jesus Colon: A Puerto Rican in New York

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:45:00 +0000

Jesús Colón (1901-1974) was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico.

Colón was born after the Spanish-American War, when the American Tobacco Company gained control of most of the tobacco-producing land in Puerto Rico. His father was a baker and his family owned the “Colón Hotel.”

His home was behind the town’s cigar factory, which hired “readers” to read stories and current events to the employees while they worked. As a child, Colón visited the factory to listen to these stories. He was exposed to the writings of Karl Marx and Émile Zola. From these ideas he formed a personal socialist ideology and also an interest in both the spoken and written word. The family moved to San Juan where he continued his education at the Jose Julian Acosta School.

In 1917, when he was 16, he boarded the S.S. Carolina as an employee and landed in Brooklyn, N.Y. There he went to live with his older brother, Joaquin Colón, who was already residing in Brooklyn. He worked in various unskilled jobs and was able to observe the deplorable conditions of the working class of the time.

Colón was discriminated against because of the color of his skin (he was Black) and because of his difficulty speaking the English language. He wrote about his experiences as well as those of other immigrants. He was the first Puerto Rican to do so in English. His best-known work, “A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches,” inspired other writers.

Colón began a Spanish-language newspaper and in 1955 he wrote a regular column for the Daily Worker, a publication of the Communist Party USA. Colón was also the president of Hispanic Publications, which published history books, political pamphlets in Spanish, and literature.

In the 1950s, during the McCarthy period, Colón was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington. He outraged the committee when he stated, “I will not cooperate with this committee in its aim to destroy the Bill of Rights and other constitutional rights of the people.”

In 1969, Colón ran for the office of comptroller of the city of New York, running with Rasheed Storey, candidate for mayor, on the Communist Party ticket. Neither candidate won.

Colón died in New York City in 1974. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated, returned to Puerto Rico and scattered over River La Plata in Cayey, where the river goes to the north of Puerto Rico and into the Atlantic Ocean.

Colón’s writings are included in many anthologies, compilations and booklets. International Publishers President Betty Smith tells the World that her company has had “a great many requests to reprint one or more sketches from Colón’s book, ‘A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches,’” published by International Publishers.

Smith said, “The New York State Department of Education selected several to reprint in a multicultural reader for New York schools. Cultural centers have also requested permission to use material from the book in their works. The book was first printed in 1962 and reprinted in 1982, 1991 and 2002. Since 1982, the covers have photographs by Tony Velez of New York Puerto Rican street festivals, and drawings by Ernesto Ramos Nieves, with a foreword by Juan Flores. Two of the sketches and other facts of Colón’s life were dramatized this past year in the play ‘The Red Rose,’ produced by Pregones Theater in the Bronx, N.Y.”

The following are two excerpts from “A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches.”

— Colón’s biographical information comes from Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia.

A hero in the junk truck

By Jesús Colón

How many times have we read boastful statements from high educational leaders in our big newspapers that while other countries ignore the history and culture of the United States, our educational system does instruct our children in the history and traditions of other countries?

As far as instruction in the most elementary knowledge of Latin America is concerned, we are forced to state that what our children receive is a hodgepodge of romantic generalities and chauvinistic declarations spread further and wider by Hollywood movies.

We do not have to emphasize that the people are not to blame.

Blame rests on those persons and reactionary forces that represent and defend the interests of finance capital in education.

Last summer my wife and I had an experience that could be presented as proof of our assertion.

We were passing by, on bus No. 37, my wife and I.

“Look, Jesus, look!” said my wife pointing excitedly to a junk truck in front of the building that was being torn down. A truck full of the accumulated debris of many years was parked with its rear to the sidewalk, littered with pieces of brick and powdered cement

Atop the driver’s cabin of the truck and protruding like a spangled banner, was a huge framed picture of a standing figure. Upon his breast was a double line of medals and decorations.

“Did you notice who the man was in that framed picture?” my wife asked insistently as the bus turned the comer of Adams and Fulton Street.

“Who,” I answered absent-mindedly.

“Bolivar,” my wife shouted.

“Who did you say he was?” I inquired as if unduly awakened from a daze.

“Bolivar, Bolivar,” my wife repeated excitedly and then she added, “and to think that he is being thrown out into a junk truck,” she stammered in a breaking voice.

We got out of the bus in a hurry. Walked to where the truck was about to depart with the dead waste of fragments of a thousand tilings. The driver caught us staring at the picture.

“What do you want?” he shouted to us in a shrill voice above the noise of the acetylene torch and the electric hammers.

“You know who he is,” I cried back pointing at the picture tied atop the cabin of the driver’s truck like Joan of Arc tied to the flaming stake.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” the driver counter-blasted in a still higher pitch of voice. But I noticed that there was no enmity in the tone of his voice, though loud and eardrum-breaking.

“He is like George Washington to a score of Latin American countries. He is . . .”

“You want it?” he interrupted in a more softened voice.

“Of course!” my wife answered for both of us, just about jumping with glee.

As the man was un-roping Bolivar from atop the truck cabin, the usual group of passersby started clustering around and encircling us — the truck driver, my wife, myself and Bolivar’s painting standing erect and magnificent in the middle of us all.

“Who is he, who is he?” came the question of the inquiring voices from everywhere. The crowd was huddled on top of us, as football players ring themselves together bending from their trunks down when they are making a decision before the next play. “Who is he, I mean, the man in the picture?” they continued to ask.

Nobody knew. Nobody seemed to care really. The question was asked more out of curiosity than real interest. The ones over on the third line of the circle of people craned their necks over the ones on the second and first lines upping themselves on their tip toes in order to be able to take a passing glance at the picture. “He is not an American, is he?” someone inquired from the crowd.

My wife finally answered them with a tinge of pride in her voice. “He is Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Latin America.”

Curiosity fulfilled, everybody was on his way again. Only my wife, myself and Bolivar remained.

Well, what to do next. It was obvious that the bus driver would not allow us in the bus with such a large framed painting going back home. Fortunately we have a very good American friend living in the Borough Hall neighborhood.

“Let us take him to John’s place until we find a person with a car to take Bolivar to our home,” I said. My wife agreed.

We opened the door of John’s apartment.

“I see that you are coming with very distinguished company today — Bolivar,” he said, simply and casually as if he had known it all his life.

John took some cleaning fluid and a soft rag and went over the whole frame in a loving and very tender manner.

We heard a knock at the door. In came a tall and very distinguished looking man dressed in black, a blend of Lincoln and Emerson in his personality. “He is a real representative of progressive America,” John whispered to us. The reverend spoke quietly and serenely. Looking at the picture he said just one word:

“Bolivar!”

And we all felt very happy.

Excerpted from “A Puerto Rican in New York”

The story of Ana Roque

By Jesús Colón

Her full name was Ana Roque de Duprey. She was born in the city of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, in 1853. Ana Roque de Duprey was one of the most remarkable women ever born in Puerto Rico.

Ana Roque was able to read, write and solve elementary problems of arithmetic at the age of 3. At the age of 9 she had mastered all there was to learn in the schools of those days.

At the ripe old age of 11, Ana Roque de Duprey was a supplementary teacher in one of the few schools that we had in Puerto Rico at that time.

When Ana was informed there was no textbook to teach geography, she went to work and wrote a book on universal geography. She also wrote a book on “The Botany of the Antilles” and many other books, pamphlets and papers, including 32 novels.

Ana was perhaps the only woman in all San Juan who had a telescope on the roof of her house. Her researches in astronomy were recognized by the Astronomical Society of France, which made her an honorary member.

When feminism started to spread over England and the United States, Ana Roque was instrumental in bringing to Puerto Rico the first currents of the women’s rights movements as understood in those early days. Ana Roque was the founder of the first Puerto Rican feminist society. In 1917 she founded “La Mujer del Siglo XX” (Twentieth Century Woman), the first magazine to deal with women’s problems in Puerto Rico.

Thus, Ana Roque had a number of “firsts” in Puerto Rican history. She was our first astronomer, the first newspaperwoman. She was the first woman to be made doctor honoris causa by a Puerto Rican university. Ana Roque was also made honorary president of the Puerto Rican Association of Women Voters of which she was one of the founders.

This aspect of women’s rights — a woman’s right to vote — was one to which Ana Roque dedicated many years of her life to make a reality.

In 1929 the Puerto Rican legislature passed a law giving Puerto Rican women the right to vote. Since then many women have been elected.

Most of these achievements were the result of women’s rights movements started around the second decade of the present century, inspired and directed by women like Ana Roque de Duprey.

In 1929, Ana Roque, then in her late 70s, made herself ready to go out and vote. She always had said one of the greatest thrills in her life, one of her most precious fulfillments would be the day when she could go out and exercise her civic right to vote as men had been doing for many years. As she was now very old and not so strong and healthy as she was in her younger years, she was brought out into the streets in a wheelchair, lovingly pushed by a dozen friendly hands to the voting place. Newspapermen and a great number of people were present. They wanted to tell the Puerto Rican world that they were present when Ana Roque de Duprey — the woman who had contributed so much to make women’s right to vote come true — was herself exercising this right, one of the most important citizens’ rights.

For many days and nights throughout many years, one of the most outstanding women in Puerto Rico’s history, Ana Roque de Duprey — mathematician, astronomer, writer and fighter for women’s rights — had thought about this moment in which she, herself, would be voting like any other citizen.

The cameramen with their cameras ready and the newspapermen, pencil and paper pad in hand, were alert to preserve for posterity this moment in the life of a woman who had done so much for Puerto Rican women.

People from all walks of life invaded the polling place to see Ana Roque in the act of performing one of the greatest ambitions of her life: to vote, just like a man.

But Ana Roque was never able to realize her great ambition. For she had forgotten to register. In those early years of the 1930s, as now, you could not vote if you did not register. You must register in order to vote.

Ana Roque, in her immaculate black dress and her white pique collar, that she liked to wear so much, was taken in her wheelchair from polling place to polling place in the fruitless hope of finding out if her name was perhaps registered in some other place than the one in which she was supposed to vote.

It was all in vain. This woman, who had done so much to win the right to vote for Puerto Rican women, died soon after in 1933, at the age of 80, without ever being able to vote in her whole life. She had forgotten to register.

Excerpted from “A Puerto Rican in New York”

A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches $7.95 plus $3 shipping. (New Yorkers add tax on the $10.95). International Publishers, 235 W 23rd St., New York NY 10011-2302 e-mail: service@intpubnyc.com, phone: 212-366-9816 fax: 212-366-9820

Puerto Ricans in Chicago celebrate 40 years of struggle

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:06:00 +0000

CHICAGO — This city’s North Side Humboldt Park neighborhood and the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center celebrated 40 years of struggle, culture and progress in the Puerto Rican community, June 12-18.

Forty years ago, on June 12, 1966, Aracelis Cruz was shot by a police officer on the corner of Damen Avenue and Division Street. The officer said Cruz was carrying a gun. It set off a series of violent confrontations between the Chicago police and the Puerto Rican community.

Eighty-one policemen with 58 squad cars were called in to respond to the riots, using tear gas and nightsticks. The National Guard was also called in, along with six K-9 units.

Jose Lopez, historian and community leader, remembered seeing policemen indiscriminately shooting Puerto Ricans. “I saw policemen sic dogs on innocent people, on women and children,” he told NBC News.

“People were bitter, people became angry,” Lopez added. “I mean, it was like immediately there was a spontaneous response to the police violence.”

Many believe the 1966 Division Street riots were a turning point for Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. For many years it, like many areas where people of color lived, suffered the oppressive effects of racism, poor housing, inadequate schools and pure neglect, grappling with poverty, lack of jobs and no political representation.

The riots were “a time of great awakening,” said Lopez. “Out of the ashes, there seemed to be a rebirth among Puerto Ricans, where they took greater responsibility for the community.”

Four decades later, this community commemorated its history, emphasizing “community-building and cultural resistance.” A weeklong series of cultural and educational events showcased the continued fight against gentrification, police brutality and economic and social inequality.

Events included a pictorial exhibition displaying 40 years of Puerto Rican Chicago, a mural project with local artist Martin Soto, a presentation of “Spark,” a youth-oriented play directed by Nuyorican poet Tato Laviera, an intergenerational poetry/spoken word performance at Batey Urbano youth center, and, on June 17, the 29th Puerto Rican Peoples’ Day Parade along Division Street.

Activities also included the second annual “Community as Intellectual Space” symposium, June 16-18, with the theme “from community-organizing to community-building,” aimed at generating discussions in panels and workshops about why community residents must work together on social, cultural and economic issues.

Sudan and Darfur: The problem is political

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:43:00 +0000

The following is a response to questions posed by the People’s Weekly World editorial board to Fathi M. El Fadl, a leader of the Sudanese Communist Party, about the current situation in Sudan and in particular Darfur.

Founded in 1946, the Sudanese Communist Party has been a political force in the country for 60 years, despite harsh repression against it. Although relatively small, it was considered the best organized political party when Sudan won its independence from Britain in 1956.

Sudan’s current president, Omar al-Bashir, took power in a 1989 coup. Since then, “the SCP has emerged as one of the Bashir government’s most effective internal opponents, largely through fairly regular publication and circulation of its underground newspaper, Al Midan,” according to sudan.net.

Taking issue with many western media reports, El Fadl says the crisis in Sudan is not one of race or ethnicity (Arab vs. African), but a political and economic one that requires political and economic solutions.

The problem of Darfur is a political one. It is part of Sudan’s overall political crisis. It will never be properly tackled except in the framework of a comprehensive political solution to the problems of the country.

Sudan’s colonial legacy cannot be blamed for today’s problems. It is 50 years since the British left the Sudan. The problem is that Sudan is 10 times worse than when the British left. Those who took power either through democratic election or military means failed the people of the Sudan miserably.

All Sudan’s regimes followed a capitalist path of development. The present regime of the National Islamic Front — now they call themselves National Congress — is considered by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to be one of their success stories. It implemented the IMF structural program to the hilt. The policies implemented by Sudan’s various regimes have resulted in the uneven development in the country. Today, people in the center can use computers, graduate from universities, have access to medicine and some modern life, while in the majority of the Sudan, west, south, east and north, people are hungry, with no future.

Solving the Sudanese crisis, with all its depth, complexity and interconnected aspects, requires peace, unity, democracy and balanced development that can only be achieved through the active participation of political parties, representatives of the regions, including those carrying arms, and civil society organizations. The problems cannot be dealt with as a secondary byproduct of the settlement of the civil war in the South, as the U.S. and other governments think. The grounds for civil wars are still there. The agreement reached on the South in 2005 did not put an end to the factors fueling conflicts and the dangers to the unity of the country.

Real solutions for Darfur

The Darfur crisis is the result of the political and economic marginalization of broad sectors of the Sudan, and cannot be remedied except by a dialogue, leading to a peaceful, just political solution based on commitment to eradicating the roots of the conflict.

A real solution requires:

• emphasizing the principle of democratic transformation on both national and regional levels, respecting human rights as stated in international convenants, and the supremacy of the rule of law — guaranteed by a permanent constitution providing civil rights and liberties, separation of powers with an independent judiciary, equality and nondiscrimination based on race, religion, gender or culture, and non-exploitation of religion in politics.

• equal participation in all levels of government, a commitment to the principle of decentralization and a federal government based on diffusion of authority between the center and the regions.

• just distribution of wealth between the center and regions to achieve balanced and sustained development.

• establishing ownership of land in Darfur based on rights of the various tribes, while at the same time taking into consideration the common good in the area.

• spreading the principle of reconciliation and coexistence among tribes in Darfur with the aim of preserving the social fabric.

Steps towards a settlement of the war in Darfur must start with putting an end to acts of belligerency. A real ceasefire, supervised by enlarged African Union forces, well equipped and supported, must be followed by immediate disbanding and disarming of the Janjaweed militias. Direct dialogue should be initiated to attain a just settlement based on the principles listed above.

Participants in the Arab Summit in Khartoum last March committed themselves to finance African Union troops in Sudan until October. The AU forces have extended their mission till September. By October they will be under United Nations mandate. The composition of an international force under the UN mandate should follow those already on the ground, that is, African and Asian forces. It should not include forces from NATO or Arab countries.

While noting the efforts of AU forces to monitor the ceasefire and protect civilians, we nevertheless notice the persistence of grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur.

Troops in Darfur, AU or UN, must include in their mandate and duties the protection of the civilian population and cooperation with the International Criminal Court. The failure of the government to settle the conflict is reflected in the impunity of the authors of the heinous crimes committed in Darfur. The court established by the government to prosecute criminals has neither the will nor the power to prosecute. Effective access to justice must be provided for victims of crimes against humanity, before national and international jurisdictions.

Destroyed villages must be rebuilt and safe return of the original inhabitants must be made possible.

Who is responsible?

The government is the main force responsible for the catastrophe in Darfur. It, and its Janjaweed militia, have targeted civilians from the same ethnic groups as Darfur’s two rebel movements. As part of this campaign of ethnic cleansing, the government has encouraged, supported and armed members of Arab tribes to attack their neighbors. The increasing violence has left hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need of food, shelter and protection against ongoing attacks. Whether it has reached the level of genocide is irrelevant for the people of Darfur. They simply want to live in peace.

Since the beginning of the year the situation has significantly deteriorated, due to attacks by the Janjaweed and government forces on civilians, both within and outside the camps. In addition, all parties to the conflict have violated the ceasefire.

Recently the conflict has taken on a larger international dimension: Sudanese government-backed militias and Chadean rebels have launched cross-border attacks into Chad. The African Union has cited both the growing complexity of the operation and the need for a stable source of funding as the main reasons for handing over its 7,000-strong mission. Yet the AU forces continue to suffer from capacity constraints, insufficient technical support and constant obstruction from the Sudanese government.

The government has promoted anti-UN propaganda, comparing the introduction of UN troops in Darfur to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What the government officials neglect to say is that 6,000 UN troops are already in the Sudan, deployed as part of the 2005 peace agreement for the South. This mission is expected to reach 10,000 troops. Thus Sudan already hosts foreign troops in its territory. It was the government that invited them. The government is clearly attempting to manipulate public opinion with inflammatory misinformation about a non-existent invasion of the country.

Rich in resources

Darfur is rich with natural resources. Oil is one. There is talk of uranium, gold and other resources. At the same time, it is known that the U.S. is planning to build a pipeline from Saudi Arabia through Sudan and Chad down to Cameroon, to transport the oil of all these countries to the USA. The carrot-and-stick game between the U.S. administration and Sudan’s government is indicative of the behind-the-scene talks on the pipeline project, and the aim of U.S. oil cartels to replace the Chinese in the oilfields in Sudan’s South.

France is another player. Chad is its domain and Chad has oil. France is not ready to let the situation in Darfur endanger stability in Chad and the flow of oil to France.

Libya played a major role in the change of regime in Chad. Libya has tribes that move in and out of Sudan. It has a vested interest in the conflict.

Sudan’s people and its future

All the people of Darfur are Muslims, and all are black. The nomadic tribes are mainly of Arab origin and the rebels belong mostly to African tribes.

There are two main rebel movements in Darfur. The major one is the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement. Its leaders come from the major African tribes. Its policies are to a great extent a reflection of the mainstream policies of the Sudanese opposition to the regime. It has good relations with the National Democratic Alliance, the umbrella that groups all opposition forces including the Sudanese Communist Party. A small group split off recently, over personality issues.

The second group is the Justice and Equality Movement. It has strong links with the Islamic leader Hassan El Turabi who engineered the 1989 coup that brought the present government to power, but who was removed in a palace coup in 1999.

It is difficult at this stage to envisage separation of Darfur from Sudan. No one in the rebel movements is advocating independence. But also it cannot be ruled out if a solution proves difficult to achieve.

It is rather difficult to pass a judgment on the agreement reached on Darfur. But it is not a good omen that not all factions have signed. Even if all sign on, it will take a long time to see results. The people on the ground are also important and may have a different view of what has to be done. That is why it is important that the AU and the so-called mediators should try to accommodate the requests of the groups involved, imploring the government to give more concessions with regard to sharing genuine power, ensuring security on the ground and wealth-sharing.

I think Sudan as a country is in danger, but the danger is coming from the government, which refuses to implement the peace agreement signed last year with the SPLM of the South. The government is playing with fire that can burn the unity of the country.

Solidarity

For those in other countries wishing to express solidarity with the Sudanese people, the most important action is to explain the political ramifications of the crisis of Darfur, both domestic and international, and the real way out, as described here. As important as humanitarian aid is, in fact charity organizations are carrying out their work in Darfur. What is missing is an understanding of the political depth of the problem. On the other hand for us it is important to unmask the position of the Sudanese government, to demand that it cooperate with efforts to hold accountable those responsible for violation of human rights in Darfur, including through the International Criminal Court.

Fathi M. El Fadl is a member of the Sudanese Communist Party’s international affairs committee.

U.S. residents less healthy than Canadians

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 06:52:00 +0000

A study by Harvard Medical School researchers in the July 2006 issue of the American Journal of Public Health finds that U.S. residents are less healthy than Canadians.

Moreover, despite spending nearly twice as much per capita for health care, U.S. residents experience more problems getting care and more unmet health needs.

The study analyzes the Joint Canada-U.S. Survey of Health, the first-ever cross national health survey carried out by the two nations’ official statistics agencies.

The authors found that U.S. residents were less healthy than Canadians, with higher rates of nearly every serious chronic disease examined in the survey, including diabetes, arthritis and chronic lung disease. U.S. residents also had more high blood pressure (18 percent of U.S. residents versus only 14 percent for Canadians). U.S. rates of obesity and sedentary lifestyle were higher, with 21 percent of U.S. respondents reporting obesity versus 15 percent of Canadians. However, U.S. residents were slightly less likely to smoke.

Canadians had better access to most types of medical care (with the single exception of pap smears). Canadians were 7 percent more likely to have a regular doctor and 19 percent less likely to have an unmet health need. U.S. respondents were almost twice as likely to go without a needed medicine due to cost (9.9 percent of U.S. respondents couldn’t afford medicine versus 5.1 percent in Canada).

After taking into account income, age, sex, race and immigrant status, Canadians were 33 percent more likely to have a regular doctor and 27 percent less likely to have an unmet health need.

Race and income disparities, although present in both countries, were larger in the U.S. Nonwhites were more likely than whites to have an unmet health need in the U.S. (18.6 percent vs. 11.1 percent), while in Canada they were not (10.8 percent vs. 10.2 percent). Notably, both white and nonwhite Canadians had fewer unmet health needs than white U.S. residents.

Poor U.S. residents (making less than $20,000 per year) were 2.6 times less likely to have a regular doctor than the affluent (those making $70,000 or more). In Canada, the poor were only 1.7 times less likely to have a regular doctor.

In the U.S., cost was the largest barrier to care. More than seven times as many U.S. residents reported going without needed care due to cost as Canadians (7 percent of U.S. respondents vs. 0.8 percent of Canadians). Uninsured U.S. residents were particularly vulnerable; 30.4 percent reported having an unmet health need due to cost.

Lead author Dr. Karen Lasser, primary care doctor at Cambridge Health Alliance and instructor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “Most of what we hear about the Canadian health care system is negative, in particular, the long waiting times for medical procedures. But we found that waiting times affect few patients, only 3.5 percent of Canadians vs. 0.7 percent of people in the U.S. No one ever talks about the fact that low-income and minority patients fare better in Canada. Based on our findings, if I had to choose between the two systems for my patients, I would choose the Canadian system hands down.”

“These findings raise serious questions about what we’re getting for the $2.1 trillion we’re spending on health care this year,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard and study co-author. “We pay almost twice what Canada does for care, more than $6,000 for every American, yet Canadians are healthier, and live two to three years longer.”

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and study co-author, commented: “Our study, together with a recent study showing that people in England are far healthier than Americans, is a terrible indictment of the U.S. health care system. Universal coverage under a national health insurance system is key to improving health. A single-payer national health insurance system would avoid thousands of needless deaths and hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies each year. In 1971, Congress almost passed national health insurance. Since then, at least 630,000 Americans have died because they failed to act. How much longer must we wait?”

Reprinted with permission from Physicians for National Health Care, www.pnhp.org.

UN spotlights continuing scourge of AIDS

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 06:25:00 +0000

UNITED NATIONS — Twenty-five years after AIDS was first detected, in Los Angeles, and five years after the UN General Assembly adopted the “Declaration on Commitment on HIV/AIDS,” heads of state, ambassadors, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and people infected with HIV met here to review what progress has been made in the battle against a scourge that has killed millions.

AIDS has become a global pandemic. Over the past few decades it has become the fourth greatest cause of death in the world, and has devastated and destabilized huge swaths of the globe, especially in Africa. It has left millions of children orphaned and millions of people struggling to survive.

The three-day UN meeting, which opened on May 31, produced a new declaration that called for more effort to combat the spread of the disease, including the need to raise $20-23 billion by 2010.

“HIV/AIDS has unfolded along a pattern we tend to see only in nightmares,” UN General Secretary Kofi Annan told the opening session. He said AIDS has had “more catastrophic long-term effects” than any other disease.

“Denial dogged the response to AIDS,” he said. “Millions paid with their lives.”

Annan said that significant progress has been made since the declaration of five years ago, noting that 70 countries have quadrupled access to AIDS testing and services, and that more than 20 countries had succeeded in providing treatment to more than half of those in need.

But most countries have fallen significantly short of the targets set in 2001, he said.

“These shortcomings are deadly,” Annan said. “For example, most countries have still not ensured that young people have an accurate understanding of HIV and how it can infect them.” Another failure is that most countries have made little or no progress in slowing the spread of the disease in women and girls.

Many speakers noted the alarming spread of AIDS among women and youth. “During this high-level plenary, 43,000 more people globally will be infected,” said William Harvey Roedy, president of the MTV cable television network. “More than half of these new infections will be among young people 15-24 and more than half will be among women. If they had been chickens with bird flu, they would dominate the media.”

The first openly HIV-positive person to ever address the General Assembly, South Africa’s Khensani Mavasa, 28, said, “The reality is that hundreds of thousands of people are on treatment, but millions are dying.”

She also emphasized the situation facing women: “I am a person who survived rapes and other forms of abuse. I still live under the power of men and the institutions they run to perpetuate the oppression of women. But women constitute nearly 60 percent of the world’s 40.5 million HIV-positive people. Violence against women has been directly linked to HIV infection in women.”

The negative role of the big, for-profit pharmaceutical companies was made clear at the conference, as was the pronounced division between rich and poor nations. In richer nations, people have greater access to therapy and longer life spans. This is not the case in poorer nations, such as South Africa. “The 900 people who will die in my country today,” said Mavasa, “do not deserve it.”

“Inequality is particularly serious in this pandemic,” said Dr. José Mendoza Graces, Venezuela’s vice-minister of health and social development. Referring to the U.S., he added, “If there are countries which simply defend the rights of multinational manufacturers of medicines and cannot even guarantee these medicines for their own peoples, what cooperation can the peoples of other countries hope to have with this nation?”

He called for “cooperation based on humanism and not on profit.”

Cubans jailed in U.S. as spies are hailed at home as heroes

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:33:00 +0000

HAVANA—European tourists here send home postcards with stamps bearing the images of five faces, known simply as los muchachos (the young men) or los cinco (the five). The faces, usually surrounded by billowing Cuban flags, stare out, larger than life, from factory walls, apartment buildings, billboards.

The five are heroes in Cuba, but villains to exiles in the United States, where they are serving long prison terms for espionage-related convictions in 2001.

Their case, once cheekily cast in the Miami news media as a “spy-vs.-spy,” Cold War-era throwback, illuminates the resilience of the complicated, decades-long standoff entangling Cuba, the U.S. government and Cuban exile groups based in Florida. It is now also raising nettlesome questions about the nuances of terrorism and international espionage.

American officials tend to paint Cuban agents as infiltrators bent on undermining U.S. national security. But the Cuban government asserts they are men of courage, sent to the United States to ferret out terrorism plots by Cuban exile groups waging war against President Fidel Castro.

Since the Cuban Five were convicted, the reach of Havana’s information-gathering machine—described by a former CIA Cuba analyst, Brian Latell, as “among the four or five best anywhere in the world”—has become even more apparent. In 2002, Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst on Cuban affairs for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, was convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Cubans; the year before, a high-ranking U.S. immigration official in Miami was convicted of disclosing classified information to Cuba. In January, a longtime professor at Florida International University and his wife, a mental health counselor at the college, pleaded not guilty to charges that they acted as spies for Castro.

But none of those cases has generated as much debate as that of the Cuban Five. There has been a groundswell of support for the five acknowledged agents among some American liberal groups and celebrities, including Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple,” actor Danny Glover and author Noam Chomsky. A San Francisco group maintains a Web site called “National Committee to Free the Cuban Five.” The Detroit City Council even passed a resolution in March calling for their release, saying the agents were attempting to prevent terrorism against Cuba.

The calls for their release gained momentum last August when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, overturned the convictions and ordered a new trial, because of a “perfect storm” of bias in the Cuban exile bastion of Miami. The decision is now being reviewed by the full court.

In a recent interview, Ricardo Alarcon—president of Cuba’s National Assembly and the third-most-powerful political figure on the island after Castro and his brother, Raul—described the work of secret agents as the right of a sovereign nation to defend itself. He called Cuba an object of terrorism, a nation under threat of violence.

Alarcon said hundreds of Cuban citizens have been killed in terrorist attacks since Castro came to power in 1959 and recalled banners saying “Iraq now, Cuba later” at demonstrations in Miami before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Asked whether Cuba would continue to send agents to the United States, Alarcon shifted from Spanish to English and said emphatically: “Yes, with a capital Y.”

The Wasp Network

José Basulto, founder of an anti-Castro group in Miami, remembers a young man named Ruben Campa hanging around the airport where Basulto kept his planes in the mid-1990s. The planes were being used to save Cuban refugees stranded in the ocean between Florida and Cuba, and to drop anti-Castro leaflets in Havana, a tactic that infuriated the Cuban government.

Campa was quick to make friends and “eager to jump on the bandwagon,” Basulto recalled, and soon he was flying missions for the group, Brothers to the Rescue.

After the spies were arrested in September 1998, Basulto said he learned that Ruben Campa was an alias borrowed from a dead Texas boy and that his recruit’s real name was Rene Gonzalez. Gonzalez and nine others were arrested and accused of running “La Red Avispa”—the Wasp Network—which prosecutors said was spying on U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups.

Indictments were eventually handed up against four others, bringing the total to 14 and making the prosecution one of the largest multiple-defendant spying cases in U.S. history. Also, three months after the initial arrests, three Cuban diplomats at the United Nations were expelled for alleged involvement with the Miami spy network.

Five of those accused pleaded guilty. Four others have remained fugitives, but Gonzalez and the others in the Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez (no relation to Rene Gonzalez) -- have fought the charges.

The years before the arrests had been particularly tense.

In 1997, there was a series of terrorist bombings in Havana hotels. One Italian tourist was killed. The Cuban government suspected Miami exile groups of being involved in the attacks in an attempt to undermine Cuba’s burgeoning tourist industry. At the time, the Cuban government saw Basulto, a CIA-trained operative, as a threat. In 1961, he had fired a cannon from a boat off Havana and hit a hotel.

Alarcon said that in the summer of 1998, Cuban intelligence officials delivered a packet of documents outlining their concerns to FBI agents at a meeting in Havana. Not long afterward, the Wasp Network arrests were announced in Miami. Alarcon was apoplectic.

“They shot the messenger,” Alarcon recalled thinking at the time, arguing that the U.S. had double-crossed Cuba.

Guy Lewis, a former U.S. attorney who oversaw the Cuban Five prosecution, said in an interview that one of the agents worked as a mechanic at Naval Air Station Key West and another counted planes from his apartment near MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where overseas military operations were coordinated.

“It’s clear,” Lewis said, “that Cuba’s intelligence service maintains a contingency of very well-trained, organized and financed agents.”

Trial in Miami

While the Cuban Five awaited trial, Miami’s exiles were in an uproar about Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old boy found off Florida’s coast after the boat that carried him from Cuba capsized, killing his mother and 10 other refugees.

Seven months after Gonzalez was returned to his father in Cuba, jury selection began in Miami for the Cuban Five trial over the objections of defense attorneys who argued that a fair trial would be impossible so soon after the Gonzalez case had inflamed a city full of anti-Castro exiles.

Jurors listened to testimony for six months about encrypted messages sent to Cuba and code names. The defense argued that the accused should be freed because they collected no classified data and did not get into off-limits areas of military bases. Prosecutors countered that it was their failure to register as foreign agents and their intent to collect sensitive information that warranted convictions.

The jury—which included no Cuban Americans—convicted all five. Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison on a murder conspiracy charge for tipping off Rene Gonzalez and another Cuban spy not to fly with Brothers to the Rescue on the day the Cuban military shot down two of the group’s planes in 1996, killing four of its members.

The state-run daily in Havana, Granma, responded with a front-page editorial headlined: “A Heroic Behavior in the Entrails of the Monster.”

’Hypocrites’

One recent afternoon, in a neighborhood behind the chipped and faded Jose Marti sports complex in central Havana, Antonio Lagé stepped over children playing beneath an apartment bulletin board that, like so many in Havana, carries a photo of the Cuban Five. “Hypocrites, that’s what Bush and the Americans are—hypocrites,” he said. “They talk about fighting terrorism, but they keep these heroes in prison for trying to stop the terrorists in Miami.”

Leonard Weinglass, a renowned U.S. defense lawyer, has taken up Hernandez’s appeal after a career that includes representing members of the Chicago Seven antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1968, and former Black Panther and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Weinglass persuaded the appeals court panel that the accused spies could not get a fair trial in Miami. Now his strategy is to concede that there was a technical violation of the law but argue that the actions of his client were necessary to protect lives.

“If they are under attack, does a country have the right to send agents to another country to get information?” Weinglass said, while sipping a mojito on the patio of the storied Hotel Nacional de Cuba. “That is a major intelligence question.”

Weinglass and the wives and mothers of several imprisoned agents picked up more allies during a speech to a California legal group in Havana, among them 16-year Democratic congressman Esteban E. Torres.

“It’s a real miscarriage of justice,” Torres said. “It tells us something about our government and the judiciary and the intelligence service: Anything that they can do to get Fidel, they’ll do.”

Though Castro has never been connected to the case, U.S. intelligence experts say they believe the Cuban leader personally oversees high-priority spying missions.

“And he’s good,” said Latell, author of the book “After Fidel.” “He’s really, really good.”

Alarcon said more agents would be sent to the United States, even though Cuba experts contend the threat from exiles—whether perceived or real—is diminishing.

Alarcon points out that John D. Negroponte, President Bush’s director of national intelligence, recently said the United States had more than 100,000 intelligence personnel.

Cuba does not have that many intelligence personnel, Alarcon said, but it has more agents than the five celebrated officers now in prison. The real number, he said, “is somewhere in between.”

Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Foreign Service, June 3, 2006

Reprinted from page 1 of the Washington Post on www.freethefive.org