Vol. 80/No. 47 December 19, 2016
Fight to free Oscar López is gaining broad support
At the urging of the National Boricua Human Rights Network and others, more than 106,000 people have signed a petition on the White House website calling on President Barack Obama to release López before his presidential term ends. The White House says it will respond to any petition that gets 100,000 or more signers in 30 days. Signatures can still be added until Dec. 11.
In Puerto Rico support for López’s release cuts across the entire political spectrum, from supporters of independence to leaders of the two main bourgeois parties there that take turns administering U.S. colonial rule.
The AFL-CIO labor federation, the N.Y. City Council and the United Methodist Church General Synod are among the scores of U.S. organizations, labor unions, religious groups and prominent individuals calling for his release.
López moved to Chicago from Puerto Rico in 1957, when he was 14 years old. Eight years later he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to fight in Vietnam.
“We see the results in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan of interfering in the affairs of other countries,” López said in an interview published Dec. 3 in Puerto Rico’s El Nuevo Día, discussing U.S. imperialism’s military interventions around the world. “I experienced the war in Vietnam in flesh and bone. I can guarantee that the Vietnamese people did not accept us.”
Upon returning to Chicago, López threw himself into struggles against job discrimination, police brutality and poor housing, for bilingual education, and for the release of Puerto Rican Nationalist fighters imprisoned in the U.S.
He was arrested in 1981 and accused of being a leader of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), which took credit for the bombing of businesses in the U.S. with interests in Puerto Rico. López was not accused of involvement in a single act of violence, but framed up on charges of “seditious conspiracy” and sentenced to 55 years in prison.
“No Puerto Rican can seditiously conspire against the U.S. government, because colonialism is a crime against humanity,” López told El Nuevo Día. “Everyone who is colonized has the right to self-determination and independence, utilizing all methods at hand, including violence. Puerto Rico, nevertheless, has not been violent.”
In an effort to counter the growing campaign for López’s release, Fox News posted a scurrilous article on its website Dec. 1, titled “Please, President Obama, FALN Terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera Should Not Go Free.”
The article repeats lies against López. “Rivera has refused to admit or take responsibility for the numerous terror attacks perpetrated by FALN under his guidance,” author Liz Peek said. She implies that López was responsible for the 1975 bombing of the Fraunces Tavern in New York City that killed four people.
El Nuevo Día asked López about that attack.
“If the federal agency had a fingerprint connecting me to anything that caused deaths, I would have been sentenced to life in prison,” he said, pointing out that the FBI knew that he was in Puerto Rico when the bombing occurred. “They have the records of the hotel where I stayed, the car I rented, the plane ticket.”
El Nuevo Día also asked López about his views on Cuba and its revolution, saying, “Fidel Castro is criticized because, among other things, he did not permit multiparty elections.”
“Democracy is found in the participation of the citizenry,” replied López, a long-time supporter of the workers and farmers revolution in Cuba.
“I know many Cubans and I was privileged to share five years with Fernando González, one of the five Cuban national heroes,” he said. González and four other Cuban revolutionaries spent more than 15 years in U.S. prisons on frame-up charges.
González and another of the five, Gerardo Hernández, joined a Nov. 18 meeting at the Casa del Alba Cultural in Havana to promote the campaign to win Lopez’s release. Winners of a “Freedom for Oscar López” photo contest were announced at the packed meeting.
González said that when he and the Puerto Rican independence fighter were together in prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, they were able “to support each other and exchange views about political and ideological topics.”
If Obama does not free López before leaving office, “we will continue the struggle because dignity and reason are on our side,” said Edwin González, a representative from the Puerto Rican Mission in Cuba.
You can write López at: Oscar López Rivera, #87651-024, FCI Terre Haute, P.O. Box 33, Terre Haute, IN 47808.
Related articles:
Join fight to free Oscar López!
Sign the petition to free Oscar López!
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