“A colony by any other name is still an affront to all humanity,” said Frank Velgara of the Vieques Support Campaign. A mass protest movement forced the U.S. Navy to end its target practice and military maneuvers on Vieques in May 2003, but “the lands remain out of the hands of the Viequenses and controlled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Prospects for sustainable economic development appear farther away, as a massive corporate land grab accelerates daily,” he said.

Ismael Guadalupe Ortiz, a longtime leader of the struggle against the U.S. military presence in Vieques, said the Navy continues to wreak havoc on the island by burning and exploding undetonated bombs it left behind. “This is a return to the military activity that we had fought,” he said, and is causing further harm to the environment. Guadalupe demanded that Washington end the detonations. He also called for the release of five Puerto Rican political prisoners in U.S. prisons.

Eduardo Villanueva of the Human Rights Committee of Puerto Rico told the hearing that prison authorities have not let up in their harassment of the prisoners. He said guards in Terre Haute, Indiana, have subjected 62-year-old Oscar López Rivera to sleep deprivation.

López Rivera, Carlos Alberto Torres, and Haydée Beltrán Torres have been incarcerated for 25 years for fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico. Two others, José Pérez González and José Velez Acosta, were jailed in 2003 for their protests against the U.S. military control over Vieques.

Washington’s colonial rule is highlighted by its imposition of the death penalty on the island’s judicial system, said Julio Fontanet Maldonado, president of the Puerto Rican Lawyers Guild. A U.S. appeals court has ruled that U.S. death penalty laws apply on the island in spite of a ban on capital punishment in the Puerto Rican constitution.

Martín Koppel, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York, testified that the facts made clear that Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony. Independence is a necessity not only for the people of Puerto Rico if they are to freely determine their own destiny, Koppel said. It is also “in the interests of the vast majority of the people of the United States. As long as Puerto Rico is under Washington’s colonial boot, the fighting capacity and solidarity of the working-class movement in the United States will be weakened.”

Other speakers who condemned U.S. colonial rule included representatives of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, the Hostos National Independence Movement, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, the Socialist Front, and the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques.

A handful of speakers backed variations on Puerto Rico’s current colonial status or argued for making the island the 51st U.S. state.

For the sixth consecutive year, the UN committee approved the resolution.  
 
 
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