BY HARVEY McARTHUR
CHICAGO - Nearly 100 people crowded the Puerto Rican
Cultural Center here August 11 for a press conference
responding to the Clinton administration's offer of
conditional "pardon" of 11 of the 17 Puerto Rican political
prisoners now held in U.S. prisons.
Participants included more than a dozen relatives of the incarcerated independence fighters, who have already spent up to 19 years behind bars. The meeting cheered calls for the unconditional release of all the Puerto Rican political prisoners.
Jan Susler, an attorney for the People's Law Office, said the prisoners were considering the government's offer, but none had yet made known publicly whether they accepted the terms.
President William Clinton announced earlier that day that he was offering to release 11 prisoners immediately, but only if they agree to a series of onerous conditions. These are Edwin Cortés, Elizam Escobar, Ricardo Jiménez, Adolfo Matos, Dylcia Pagán, Alicia Rodríguez, Ida Luz Rodríguez, Alberto Rodríguez, Luis Rosa, Alejandrina Torres, and Carmen Valentín.
Each of these prisoners would be required to sign statements personally requesting "clemency from the President" and renouncing "the use, threatened use, or advocacy of the use of violence for any purpose, including the achieving of any goal concerning the status of Puerto Rico."
In addition they would have to submit to terms of parole and other conditions, including not meeting or communicating with each other or with other Puerto Rican independence activists, not traveling without U.S. government permission, reporting to U.S. parole authorities, not possessing firearms or "destructive devices," and submitting to drug tests on demand.
"Each patriot will have to make their decision about signing the conditions," José López, director of the Cultural Center, told the meeting. If any of them are freed, he said, "we will welcome them as heroes."
López called on those present to join in "a huge march and rally" set for San Juan, Puerto Rico, on August 29 to demand freedom for all Puerto Rican political prisoners. A number of activists in Chicago are already making plans to be there.
Six of the 17 prisoners are not included immediately in Clinton's commutation offer. Juan Segarra and Oscar López would have to serve additional time before being considered for a pardon. Carlos Alberto Torres, Antonio Camacho, José Solís, and Haydée Beltrán are not included at all in the amnesty offer. Torres is serving a 70-year sentence. Camacho was released last year but rearrested after he refused to submit to the outrageous terms of his parole. Solís was sentenced in July on frame-up charges to 51 months in prison. Beltrán has been pursuing a separate effort to win parole.
In Puerto Rico, several independence fighters and relatives of the prisoners condemned the degrading terms demanded by Clinton. Luis Nieves Falcón, head of the Puerto Rico Committee on Human Rights, which has been spearheading the campaign on the island for the release of the prisoners, stated, "We cannot support these conditions" insofar as they require that the prisoners publicly call themselves criminals and renounce their views.
The terms are "subhuman," declared Ramón Segarra, son of prisoner Juan Segarra Palmer. Even in prison they can express their views, he said.
In a phone interview from his home in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, pro-independence leader Rafael Cancel Miranda said, "We will greet any freed prisoner with open arms, but we demand all 17 prisoners be released immediately with no conditions. They are all patriots and none is a criminal. Justice cannot be done halfway."
"The fact that the United States government made this announcement shows they were forced to respond to pressure from the people. It shows they are not invulnerable," Cancel Miranda said. He noted that when he and four other Nationalists, who spent a quarter century in U.S. prisons, were released in 1978 and 1979 after an international defense campaign, "we never accepted any of their conditions. The U.S. imperialist government is the criminal, not us."
Cancel Miranda added, "We must step up the campaign to free all the prisoners." He urged defenders of the political prisoners to join the August 29 rally in San Juan.
Harvey McArthur is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers. Martín Koppel contributed to this article.