Jesse Jackson Joins Protest of Navy Bombing Range

The Navy’s bombing at a training range on a Puerto Rican island is “un-American” because it violates the human rights of the island’s residents, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Thursday.

The civil rights leader came to Puerto Rico to intervene in the battle of words between the Pentagon and Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rossello. Rossello wants the Navy to leave Vieques island after recent accidents there.

“We’ve just fought a war in Kosovo in defense of human rights, and that same moral has to be applied in Vieques,” said Jackson, who obtained the release of three American prisoners of war during the Kosovo campaign.

“The Navy should leave,” he said. “What’s happening in Vieques is un-American.”

The Navy has occupied two-thirds of Vieques since 1941. About 9,300 people live between a bombing range and an ammunition dump.

Opposition to the Navy flared after a Marine Corps jet dropped two bombs off target and killed a civilian security guard inside the training ground April 19. The Navy later admitted it had also mistakenly fired bullets tipped with depleted uranium into Vieques in violation of federal laws and that in 1993 it dropped napalm on the island.

Navy officials insist the Vieques bombing range is vital to national security. Nowhere else can the Atlantic fleet train using live munitions under warlike conditions, they say. Vieques has been used to prepare for every U.S. conflict since Vietnam.

Jackson called that position “colonialism” and said Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory whose 3.8 million residents are U.S. citizens, should have the right to reject the military’s presence.

A Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon took issue with Jackson’s remarks.

“To use his own words, there is nothing more noble than putting one’s life on the line for what you believe in. And each of our sailors, Marines and pilots does that every day,” said Cmdr. Karen Jeffries.

“We train the way we fight, and it’s essential that we train with live fire,” Jeffries said. “The American people would be outraged if we sent our people to fight improperly trained.”

Jackson met with Rossello and other political and religious leaders Thursday. He was scheduled to visit the bombing range today, joining protesters engaged in a 3-month-old campaign of civil disobedience by camping among unexploded bombs to thwart more exercises.

President Clinton has ordered the Pentagon to study whether alternatives exist. A commission report is due late this month.