Clinton's Clemency Prompts Protests in Puerto Rico

Información enviada a Mario Rojas, Director de Tlahui. Puerto Rico, a 15 de Agosto, 1999. Latinolink on the PRISONERS

Clinton's Clemency Prompts Protests in Puerto Rico
By Lance Oliver
(c) 1999 LatinoLink

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, August 13, 1999

For years, a determined alliance of Puerto Ricans has lobbied for the release of what it calls the Puerto Rican political prisoners. They are more than a dozen men and women in jail for crimes committed in the name of achieving Puerto Rico's independence.

Thousands of people, from average folk in Puerto Rico to Nobel Prize winners, signed petitions. The steady drumbeat kept up for years: free the Puerto Rican political prisoners.

On August 11, President Clinton offered to open the door and let the prisoners go. But the result was not a celebration, but rather a howl of protest that grows louder day by day.

The reason? The long list of conditions placed on the release of the prisoners.

To be released, the prisoners must make a request to the president to commute their sentences, renounce the use of violence for any purpose, report regularly to a parole officer, avoid associating with anyone convicted of a crime, etc.

The central conflict is that the supporters of the prisoners wanted a presidential pardon, but what they got, essentially, was a presidential offer of parole. A parole carries conditions, usually the same types of conditions Clinton imposed on the Puerto Ricans.

Some of those conditions are sticking points, however. For example, asking the president to commute their sentences is seen by some as an admission of wrongdoing. That's not a big obstacle for a prisoner who robbed a convenience store to get cash, but it's a major problem for a person who has spent years in prison because of a cause he or she fervently believes in.

Similarly, it's common for parolees to be prohibited from associating with people who have been convicted of crimes. But many pro-independence activists in Puerto Rico have committed acts of civil disobedience. Would that restriction prevent the prisoners from participating in the cause that is so important to them they gave up much of their lives for it?

Supporters say the Puerto Ricans in jail are political prisoners because they were given disproportionately long sentences for their crimes due to their political motives.

What they should get, their supporters argue, is a presidential pardon, such as Jimmy Carter gave in 1979 to nationalists who fired on the floor of Congress with handguns in 1954. Those prisoners refused to recognize U.S. sovereignty over them or Puerto Rico and remained in jail until the Carter pardon.

There are already signs that many, if not all, of the current Puerto Rican prisoners will do the same and reject the clemency offer by Clinton. Family and friends who have talked to the prisoners by telephone say the terms have been called humiliating and denigrating.

After years of trying to get Clinton to act on the case of the Puerto Rican prisoners, it appears his gesture will not be the final act at all, but rather the beginning of a new chapter in a battle that goes on.

Lance Oliver writes a weekly column on Puerto Rico for LatinoLink. He can be reached by email at loliver@caribe.net. Last change: August 13, 1999

From: ALM alm1998@aol.com
Más información - Further information - Plus d'information