Vieques - Hunger Striker Protests Test Bombing!
NEW YORK -- Eleven people were arrested Sunday after participating in a morning protest at the Statue of Liberty during which some of them held flags outside the crown and one protester climbed on top of the national landmark.
The demonstrations were in protest of the U.S. Navy's presence in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Many Puerto Ricans object to the Navy using an uninhabited part of the island for shelling exercises.
The protesters climbed the stairs of the statue to the top, where they hung two flags -- one of Puerto Rico, the other of the island of Vieques. They also carried a banner reading "Free Vieques."
Juan Casanos, a member of the group, said he and his colleagues entered the statue by ordinary means and simply climbed to the top.
Window broken, police say
The U.S. Park Police said a group of six people who ascended the statue to the observation area in the crown broke out a window, which one man climbed through before unfurling a Puerto Rican flag and the banner.
Police, who arrested the other five, cleared the popular tourist attraction in New York Harbor of tourists and tried to talk the man into coming in from the exterior deck. The man, who was not identified, surrendered after more than two hours, said Sgt. Sal Norman of the U.S. Park Police.
Five other people in the group were also arrested, including three who videotaped the incident, Norman said. Charges from the U.S. attorney's office were pending, he said.
The New York Police Department aviation and harbor patrol assisted the Park Police by guarding the surrounding area of the island.
The statue is located on Liberty Island off the southern tip of Manhattan.
Referendum could be in 2001
The Navy has used two-thirds of the 20-mile by 4-mile (30-kilometer by 6-kilometer) island for exercises since the 1940s. The island's 9,400 civilians live between an eastern training ground and a former weapons depot in the west.
Demonstrations against the military's presence in Vieques spread throughout Puerto Rico in April 1999, when a U.S. Marine Corps jet dropped two 500-pound (227-kilogram) bombs off target, killing a civilian guard working on the bombing range.
Protesters camped out on the bombing range for more than a year, preventing maneuvers until U.S. marshals forcibly removed them in May.
Since then, hundreds of people have been arrested trying to enter the bombing range to stop exercises. U.S. President Bill Clinton has pledged that the Navy will leave Vieques by May 2003 if residents vote in a referendum to expel it. That vote is expected as early as next year.