Monday, September 22, 1997 Political prisoners in American jails
should be freed now POLITICAL: Unfair persecution warrants
activists’ extremes on behalf of human rights
By Kamal Hassan
The recent release of former Black Panther leader Geronimo
ji-Jaga Pratt after 27 years of unjust imprisonment has refocused
attention on the issue of political imprisonment in America.
Despite the fact that we are encouraged to believe that there are
no political prisoners in the United States, the truth is that
there are over 100 men and women who have been locked up because of
their active opposition to the oppressive domestic and foreign
policies of the U.S. government and its agencies.
Most of these prisoners are persons of color: New Afrikan
(black), Puerto Rican, indigenous American, Chicano/a, Mexicano/a,
Asian and Caribbean. This is a testament to the fact that America
is not a nation but an empire – a "prison house of nations" that
exists on the stolen land and labor of its subject peoples. Those
who have dared to challenge this colonial relationship have
suffered great repression.
Political prisoners are those persons harassed, arrested, framed
and imprisoned because of their relatively peaceful political
activity against the destructive conditions that their people live
under. Their goal is to transfer power from the corrupt and racist
business people, government officials, pseudo-intellectuals,
policemen, judges and jailers that keep them down to a captive
nation of people yearning to be free. Marcus Garvey, Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Huey P. Newton
spent time in jail because they fought for our freedom. Today,
brother Mumia Abu Jamal faces the death penalty for his
uncompromising political journalism.
Prisoners of war (POWs) are prisoners because they are members
of freedom-fighting groups which have resisted U.S. oppression with
arms. Nat Turner, Sekou Odinga and the previously mentioned Pratt
are or were POWs. Assata Shakur, before she was liberated from
prison and escaped to Cuba, was a prisoner of war.
"What war?" you may ask. They are soldiers in the war for the
liberation of the Black Nation (New Afrika) from the colonial
clutches of the U.S. empire. It is a war that connects movements
for human rights, self-determination and national liberation, that
are sweeping the globe from Puerto Rico to Palestine to Northern
Ireland.
In the struggle for liberation in North America, New Afrikan
political prisoners and prisoners of war have: l. liberated black
freedom fighters after the U.S. government’s "legal" machine had
railroaded them into prison; 2. financed and run food, educational
and medical programs into black communities and supported human
rights movements; 3. given concrete political, military and
material aid to freedom fighters in Zimbabwe, Azania (South Afrika)
and Puerto Rico.
But they are also victims of a "secret war" that was waged
against the black liberation movement by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. Led by Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover in the ’60s
and ’70s, this illegal and top secret onslaught called the
"Counterintelligence (COINTELPRO)" program targeted black activists
and organizations. Its goal was to "disrupt, discredit and
neutralize" black groups and leaders. It was very successful.
These struggles and these prisoners are among the great unspoken
issues in the mainstream dialogue on race and nationality in
America. This is because the powers that be are determined to
protect the American youth of "democracy," and they want it to
appear that the black struggle is limited to a struggle for
"equality" with white folks. Those who have not been fooled by the
"illusion of inclusion" are almost never heard of in mass
media.
The issue of human rights for black people in North America is a
particularly knotty problem for those who wish to maintain the
status quo in the U.S. empire and would swear that it is a
"democratic nation." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948) of the United Nations says food, housing, shelter,
education, productive work and the right to choose one’s
nationality are inherent rights of each individual, that no
government has a right to grant or take away. It further states
that all governments calling themselves humane are bound to create
conditions where these rights (and the others in the declaration)
can be enjoyed by each person under its jurisdiction. Governments
that do not do this are in violation of the declaration.
Blacks have been and still are denied food, housing, shelter,
education, productive work, the right to choose our nationality,
and suffered genocide as a result of the CIA’s involvement with
cocaine traffickers in Central America. So can blacks charge the
United States with human rights violations? Yes. Do black folks,
who are so inclined, have a right to fight for our human rights "by
any means necessary?" On Dec. 12, 1973, a U.N. committee stated
that "(oppressed) peoples have the inherent right to struggle by
all necessary means at their disposal against (oppressive) powers
and alien domination in exercise of this self-determination."
Resistance to oppression is a human right. Denmark Vesey, Nat
Turner, Harriet Tubman, David Walker, Gabriel and Nanny Prosser
were black freedom fighters of yesterday. Today’s black freedom
fighters’ struggles against injustice deserve our respect and
support. We must demand to the international community that those
who fight for our freedom be supported by them also. Those who are
truly committed to the struggle for human rights and self
determination must support this work.