wfn.org | NCC Calls for U.S. Military to Withdraw from Vieques, P.R.

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227
E-mail: news@ncccusa.org;  Web: www.ncccusa.org

56NCC5/6/99     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NCC CALLS FOR U.S. MILITARY TO WITHDRAW FROM VIEQUES, PUERTO
RICO, AFTER BOMB MISSES TARGET, KILLING ONE AND INJURING FOUR
Vieques Activists Received NCC's 1998 Mauricio Amilcar Lopez
Human Rights Award

 NEW YORK, May 6 ---- The National Council of Churches (NCC)
has called for the United States military to withdraw its bases
from Vieques, Puerto Rico, after a bomb dropped on April 19
missed its target, killing one civilian and injuring four people.

 Since this tragic incident occurred, the movement to get
the U.S. Navy to withdraw from Vieques has been renewed, with
residents openly protesting and performing acts of civil
disobedience such as sit-ins in military territory.  It was only
four months ago that an NCC delegation visited the 33,000-acre
island of Vieques to confer the Mauricio Amilcar Lopez Human
Rights Award to four people representing all the inhabitants who
have struggled against U.S. Navy occupation for decades.

 In a statement issued April 22, the NCC said, "We
emphatically support the demands of the people of Vieques to
withdraw the naval base from the island and return tranquility
and the right to live in security and peace to the civilian
population.  We join the governor of Puerto Rico, the Honorable
Pedro Rosello Gonzalez, in his demand to President Clinton to
cease military activities in Vieques."

 "This is exactly what residents of the island always fear
will happen," said the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, NCC General
Secretary.  "The potential for this kind of accident is the
reason why the military should not be conducting exercises on an
inhabited island."

 "The people of Vieques have not known a lasting peace since
1940," explained the Rev. Dr. Rodney Page, NCC Deputy General
Secretary and Executive Director of Church World Service.  "As
religious leaders, we supported the people of Vieques in their
past struggle.  This is a time to declare and renew our support
as the struggle is again galvanized."

"The U.S. Navy took over more than two-thirds of the island
and conducts war games with live ammunition that take place
contiguous to areas where people live," added the Rev. Oscar
Bolioli, Director of the NCC's Latin America and the Caribbean
Office.

Decades of military exercises have left thousands of
craters and cracked houses and disrupted the local fishing
industry.  Vieques residents also experience a higher rate of
cancer than the rest of Puerto Ricans.  Fishers and other island
inhabitants began organizing in the late 1960s and `70s to get
the U.S. Navy to withdraw, but so far have not succeeded.

 During their visit, leaders from the region and from the
international community stressed the need to view the occupation
of Vieques as a human rights struggle.  "This is a struggle for
the dignity of the people, for people's control over their own
economic and social growth so they can have better health and
education," said Bishop Rafel Malpica Padilla, Chair of the NCC's
Committee on the Caribbean and Latin America (CCLA), which
created and confers the Human Rights Award.

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