He was beaten up by protesters hours after inert bombs began falling on the island's eastern tip Monday, beginning the latest exercises on a firing range whose use by the Navy has raised anger that exploded after off-target bombs killed a civilian guard in 1999.
A protest movement that burgeoned last year has lost support since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, but small bands of demonstrators protested Monday outside the Navy camp that encompasses the firing range.
Navy military police arrested five women from the Puerto Rican Independence Party who entered Navy ground in the pre-dawn darkness, hours before planes began dropping inert bombs in the first exercises since October. As they were taken away, the intruders pumped their handcuffed fists into the air and shouted ``Navy get out!'' in Spanish.
Like some of the nearly 1,000 protesters who have broken into Navy land to thwart the bombing exercises in the past two years, the women will be charged in federal court and serve jail sentences for trespassing, said Jorge Fernandez Porto, the Independence Party's environmental adviser.
An anti-Navy vigil Saturday night attracted about 200 people on Vieques, and about 80 people took part in a car cavalcade Sunday.
Independence Party members said they were protesting peacefully near the Navy camp on Sunday night when they were attacked with pepper gas and rubber bullets, including one that hit a woman in the buttocks. Navy spokesman Lt. Corey Barker said pepper gas was fired - but not bullets - after demonstrators threw rocks and set spikes in the road.
Protesters said pepper gas was fired on protesters again Monday night.
On Monday, pro-Navy demonstrator Jose Julio Diaz carried the American flag in front of a group of anti-Navy protesters. A female protest leader punched him in the face and others also beat him before police intervened and took him to a police station for his own protection.
Police Col. Cesar Gracia said Diaz was bleeding from a punch to the head. Later, the Rev. Nelson Lopez Aponte, a Roman Catholic priest who opposes the bombing exercises, said Diaz had ``committed a grave error by having the gall to come here.''
Opponents of the exercises say they harm the environment and health of Vieques' 9,100 residents. The Navy, which has used the firing range for decades but stopped using live ammunition after the guard's death, denies that claim.
Activists occupied the range for a year after the accident, preventing exercises until they were forcibly removed by U.S. marshals. The campaign surged last year when activists including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Rev. Al Sharpton were jailed for entering Navy land, but support has waned since Sept. 11 amid accusations that it is anti-American.
Puerto Rico Gov. Sila Calderon, who was elected largely because of a promise to force the Navy to leave immediately, now says she backs a deal, endorsed by President Bush, for the Navy to leave by May 2003. However, a U.S. law passed after Sept. 11 says the Navy can use Vieques until it finds an alternative.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/4/202616