US CONDEMNED FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN VIEQUES
Video Interview with Luis Nieves Falcon, Cordinator of the Comité Pro Derechos Humanos in Puerto Rico

HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL FINDS VIOLATIONS COMMITTED IN PUERTO RICO AND VIEQUES BY THE UNITED STATES

Human Rights Tribunal: A Summary of the Violations In January of 1989, a special session of a Permanent People¹s Tribunal was convened in Barcelona, Spain to determine whether the U.S. government was in violation of human rights treaties and obligations under international law in relation to Puerto Rico and its people. After considering three days of testimony from experts, and reviewing numerous documents on varied aspects of the U.S. - Puerto Rico relations and their effect on the lives of the Puerto Rican people, the Tribunal found that the U.S. government was denying the People of Puerto Rico their most fundamental human right: the right to self-determination. In arriving at this legal conclusion, our colleagues of the Barcelona Tribunal issued the following verdict. Based on the factual and legal foundations presented, the Permanent People¹s Tribunal DECLARES

1. That Puerto Rico and its people have the right to freely determine their political, economic, social and cultural condition in accordance with the Algerian Declaration and principles of International Law.

2. That the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is not the proper way for the Puerto Rican people to exercise their self-determination right, whereas in the referenda that have been carried out on the Island, the required guarantees which govern the true exercise of such right, in accordance with the Resolutions and practices of the United Nations, have not been observed.

3. That the U.S. has an international duty to respect the Right of Puerto Rico to its self-determination, in accordance with the obligations it has conventionally and customarily assumed.

4. That the actual U.S. military policy in Puerto Rico constitutes an obstacle for self-determination of the island and it threatens the peace and security conditions of the Caribbean region.

In returning their verdict, our predecessor Tribunal called upon the U.S. government to take the following steps to ensure the self-determination rights of the People of Puerto Rico:
To implement through all political, economic and administrative means available to them, the conditions that would make possible for the Puerto Rican People to exercise their self-determination right, and especially to...

Excerpted from
Sentencia del Tribunal Internacional Sobre Violationes de los Derechos Humanos en Puerto Rico y Vieques Por Los Estados Unidos de America Published by Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico