I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
http://counterpunch.org/peltier09112009.html
By LEONARD PELTIER
September 11-13, 2009
The United States Department of Justice has once again made a mockery
of its lofty and pretentious title.
After releasing an original and continuing disciple of death cult
leader Charles Manson who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford,
an admitted Croatian terrorist, and another attempted assassin of
President Ford under the mandatory 30-year parole law, the U.S.
Parole Commission deemed that my release would "promote disrespect
for the law."
If only the federal government would have respected its own laws, not
to mention the treaties that are, under the U.S. Constitution, the
supreme law of the land, I would never have been convicted nor forced
to spend more than half my life in captivity. Not to mention the fact
that every law in this country was created without the consent of
Native peoples and is applied unequally at our expense. If nothing
else, my experience should raise serious questions about the FBI's
supposed jurisdiction in Indian Country.
The parole commission's phrase was lifted from soon-to-be former U.S.
Attorney Drew Wrigley, who apparently hopes to ride with the FBI
cavalry into the office of North Dakota governor. In this Wrigley is
following in the footsteps of William Janklow, who built his
political career on his reputation as an Indian fighter, moving on up
from tribal attorney (and alleged rapist of a Native minor) to state
attorney general, South Dakota governor, and U.S. Congressman. Some
might recall that Janklow claimed responsibility for dissuading
President Clinton from pardoning me before he was convicted of
manslaughter. Janklow's historical predecessor, George Armstrong
Custer, similarly hoped that a glorious massacre of the Sioux would
propel him to the White House, and we all know what happened to him.
Unlike the barbarians that bay for my blood in the corridors of
power, however, Native people are true humanitarians who pray for our
enemies. Yet we must be realistic enough to organize for our own
freedom and equality as nations. We constitute 5% of the population
of North Dakota and 10% of South Dakota and we could utilize that
influence to promote our own power on the reservations, where our
focus should be. If we organized as a voting bloc, we could defeat
the entire premise of the competition between the Dakotas as to which
is the most racist. In the 1970s we were forced to take up arms to
affirm our right to survival and self-defense, but today the war is
one of ideas. We must now stand up to armed oppression and
colonization with our bodies and our minds. International law is on our side.
Given the complexion of the three recent federal parolees, it might
seem that my greatest crime was being Indian. But the truth is that
my gravest offense is my innocence. In Iran, political prisoners are
occasionally released if they confess to the ridiculous charges on
which they are dragged into court, in order to discredit and
intimidate them and other like-minded citizens. The FBI and its
mouthpieces have suggested the same, as did the parole commission in
1993, when it ruled that my refusal to confess was grounds for denial
of parole.
To claim innocence is to suggest that the government is wrong, if not
guilty itself. The American judicial system is set up so that the
defendant is not punished for the crime itself, but for refusing to
accept whatever plea arrangement is offered and for daring to compel
the judicial system to grant the accused the right to right to rebut
the charges leveled by the state in an actual trial. Such insolence
is punished invariably with prosecution requests for the steepest
possible sentence, if not an upward departure from sentencing
guidelines that are being gradually discarded, along with the
possibility of parole.
As much as non-Natives might hate Indians, we are all in the same
boat. To attempt to emulate this system in tribal government is
pitiful, to say the least.
It was only this year, in the Troy Davis, case, that the U.S. Supreme
Court recognized innocence as a legitimate legal defense. Like the
witnesses that were coerced into testifying against me, those that
testified against Davis renounced their statements, yet Davis was
very nearly put to death. I might have been executed myself by now,
had not the government of Canada required a waiver of the death
penalty as a condition of extradition.
The old order is aptly represented by Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia, who stated in his dissenting opinion in the Davis case, "This
Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a
convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later
able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. Quite
to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved,
while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged
'actual innocence' is constitutionally cognizable."
The esteemed Senator from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, who is now the
chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, used much the
same reasoning in writing that "our legal system has found Leonard
Peltier guilty of the crime for which he was charged. I have reviewed
the material from the trial, and I believe the verdict was fair and just."
It is a bizarre and incomprehensible statement to Natives, as well it
should be, that innocence and guilt is a mere legal status, not
necessarily rooted in material fact. It is a truism that all
political prisoners were convicted of the crimes for which they were charged.
The truth is the government wants me to falsely confess in order to
validate a rather sloppy frame-up operation, one whose exposure would
open the door to an investigation of the United States' role in
training and equipping goon squads to suppress a grassroots movement
on Pine Ridge against a puppet dictatorship.
In America, there can by definition be no political prisoners, only
those duly judged guilty in a court of law. It is deemed too
controversial to even publicly contemplate that the federal
government might fabricate and suppress evidence to defeat those
deemed political enemies. But it is a demonstrable fact at every
stage of my case.
I am Barack Obama's political prisoner now, and I hope and pray that
he will adhere to the ideals that impelled him to run for president.
But as Obama himself would acknowledge, if we are expecting him to
solve our problems, we missed the point of his campaign. Only by
organizing in our own communities and pressuring our supposed leaders
can we bring about the changes that we all so desperately need.
Please support the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee in our
effort to hold the United States government to its own words.
I thank you all who have stood by me all these years, but to name
anyone would be to exclude many more. We must never lose hope in our
struggle for freedom.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier #89637-132
USP-Lewisburg
US Penitentiary
PO Box 1000
Lewisburg, PA 17837
For more information on Leonard Peltier visit the Leonard Peltier
Defense-Offense Committee website.
http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/
.
No comments:
Post a Comment