Navy to End All Vieques Training on May 1 !!
Vieques: The Struggle Continues
Eyewitness report from a Hartford activist
Vieques Supporters Arrested in Hartford
Wednesday June 27, 2001
Hartford, Ct- A group of Vieques supporters were arrested in front of the U.S. Armed Forces Recruitment Center in protest
of the United States' Navy's ongoing bombings on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. State Representative Evelyn Mantilla was one of the demonstrators arrested for peaceful civil disobedience.
The peacefully assembled group of demonstrators engaged in this act of civil disobedience, in an effort to call on
President Bush to fulfill his moral duty as Commander in Chief to respond to serious violations of human rights. . Organized by the Committee All Connecticut con Vieques, protesters believe that the Navy must immediately end all military activities on the Island.
A total of 7 persons were arrested when they blocked the entrance to the military recruitment offices. A group of more than 100 supporters chanted and demonstrated their support as the persons who blocked the entrance of the military offices were being arrested. Several prominent religious and political leaders showed their support from the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Some of the supporters included State Representatives: Art Feltman, Minnie González, Felipe Reinoso
and Lydia Martínez.
Those arrested were: State Representative Evelyn Mantilla, Francis Dávila the Chaiman of Todo Connecticut con Vieques, José A. García social worker, Joyce Tentor from the Hartford Green Party, Cal Robertson Vietnam Veteran, Reynaldo Rojas, graduate student at the University of Connecticut and Brian Kavanagh from the Hartford Catholic Worker.
For 61 years, the people of the Puerto Rican municipality of Vieques- made U.S. citizens by an act of the U.S.Congress--have been subjected to the expropriation of their lands, forced migration and expatriation, bombings and thedestruction of the island's economy, natural resources and environment, at the hands of the United States Navy.
The U.S. government denies the impact of bombing practices in Vieques, and justifies its actions as essential to the U.S. national security. Yet, while the U.S. Navy's presence and practices have destroyed the island's key industries (fishing, agriculture, and cattle-ranching), the Navy employs only 30 of the island's 9400 local residents. Today, there exists an unemployment rate of almost 50%, and 72% of the island residents live below the poverty level, according to conservative
estimates. More startling is that the children of Vieques are born, and its people live, condemned to the slow and painful
torture of preventable, painful and deadly diseases. For over sixty years, Navy bombings have produced toxic levels of lead and cadmium contamination. The Navy's admitted use of tons of explosives, uranium shells, and napalm has led to an island-wide cancer rate which exceeds that of the Puerto Rico's main island by 27%, according to Puerto Rico Department of Health. Other diseases such as lukemia, scleroderma, lupus, thyroid deficiencies and asthma plague the island residents in much higher rates than the Puerto Rican nation as a whole. Every bomb dropped on the practice range further spreads the
contamination.
