Vol. 81/No. 6 February 13, 2017
Supporters continue to press for release of
Oscar López
López’s sentence on frame-up charges of “seditious conspiracy” was commuted by former President Barack Obama just three days before he left office, in a victory for the decadeslong international campaign to win his freedom. López, now 74, has been in jail more than 35 years, more than 12 of them in solitary confinement.
“All the prisoners and prison staff are aware that Oscar is getting out,” Alejandro Molina, a spokesperson of the National Boricua Human Rights Network and a leader of the fight to free López, told the Militant by phone Jan. 30.
Molina, López’s daughter Clarisa, his brother José, his lawyer Jan Susler and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez visited López in prison Jan. 29.
There has been no change in how prison authorities treat López, Molina said. López was strip-searched before and after the visit, prison guards told each visitor where they could sit, and he was only allowed to hug his visitors at the beginning and end of the visit.
“Women, women, women for Oscar, a jailed patriot will soon be out,” was one of the chants at the spirited New York action in Times Square Jan. 29 organized by 35 Women for Oscar López. Along with similar groups in Puerto Rico and Chicago, they are continuing their monthly protests, where they chant for 35 minutes — one minute for each year López has been in prison — until he is back in Puerto Rico.
The same day the group in Puerto Rico celebrated his coming release with a march across the Dos Hermanos bridge in San Juan.
Major events are being organized when López is released in Chicago, Puerto Rico and New York, Molina said. The exact time and place will be set once the date and circumstances become known.
López moved to Chicago from Puerto Rico when he was 14. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965 and sent to Vietnam, which deeply affected his political outlook, along with the Cuban Revolution and the Black struggle in the U.S. Back in Chicago, López helped organize protests against the war, police brutality, discrimination in hiring and housing and the colonial status of Puerto Rico.
On May 28, 1981, López was arrested and accused of being a leader of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), a group that took credit for bombings of businesses with investments in Puerto Rico as part of a fight to win independence of the island, a U.S. colony since 1898.
“The evidence will not tell you anything regarding the racist organizations created by the FBI and the CIA that have killed labor leaders and independentistas,” López said in a statement to the court, referring to murders by rightist paramilitary groups and cops on the island in the 1970s. “We will not hear anything regarding militarism in my country or how my country was conquered by force.”
Opponents of Lopez’s release have been recycling old slanders. The online Washington, D.C.-based web news site Politico, for example, ran an article Jan. 24 titled “Why Did Obama Free This Terrorist?”
“There was strong circumstantial evidence of Lopez’s participation in FALN attacks,” Politico claimed, going on to quote FBI allegations for good coin. But there was no evidence that López was involved in a single bombing or act of violence.
López “will likely be treated to a hero’s welcome when he returns to Puerto Rico,” Politico complained, “a place he has not lived since he was a child.” Politico’s real fear — and that of the rulers in Washington — is that his return to Puerto Rico will bolster the fight against the island’s status as a U.S. colony.
Popular Puerto Rican singer/songwriter Kany García projected a photo of López with the title “Free May 17, 2017” on the main screen during a packed Jan. 28 concert at Coliseo de Puerto Rico in San Juan.
El Nuevo Día noted Jan. 28 that it is possible that López could be released to a halfway house in San Juan prior to May 17. Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz has guaranteed a job for López to facilitate his release.
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