Environmental tragedy in Vieques.

The civil disobedience campaign against the United States military's presence in the island-town of Vieques, Puerto Rico continues in full

force after almost two months. The US Navy has occupied most of Vieques since 1941 and has been using it for target practice ever since.

The current protest campaign, which follows a local decades-long tradition of anti-Navy activism, was triggered by a tragic event on April 19. That evening, a civilian, David Sanes, was killed in Vieques by bombs dropped from an American fighter plane. Sanes was working as a civilian security guard in an observation tower in Navy territory.

Since late April, several groups of protesters have been camping out in the area used by the Navy for target practice, and so far have shown no intention of leaving the place.

One of the groups camping out in the Navy area is the Puerto Rico Independence Party, or Partido Independentista Puertorriqueno (PIP). The PIP campers, led by senator and party president Ruben Berriuos, have been protesting on the beaches of Vieques for months.

The PIP'S environmental advisers have been surveying the ecological damage inflicted by the military, and have found that the target practice area is habitat for the endangered brown pelican and the leatherback turtle, which is the world's largest turtle.

During the first 17 days of the camp vigil, PIP environmental adviser Jorge Fernandez reported seeing three leatherback turtles laying eggs in a part of the coast that is frequently bombed by airplanes.

"We found countless 20 and 30 millimeter ammunition shells and a buried bomb around the turtles' nests," said the advisers in recent testimony to a commission appointed by Puerto Rico governor Pedro RossellU to study the impact of the US Navy's activities on Vieques.

"Leatherback turtles return to lay their eggs in the place where they were born. How many of these turtles and their eggs have been killed by the Navy's bombing?" asked the advisers in their statement to the commission.

According to the PIP, the US Navy is violating a number of United States federal laws in Vieques, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Executive Order on Environmental Justice.

Even more startling has been the recent disclosure that the US military had tested depleted uranium ammunition in Vieques. The Navy admitted this in May, as part of a response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Military Toxics Project, a US-based NGO.

According to the PIE a depleted uranium particle less than a thousandth of a millimeter thick, lodged inside a human lung, can expose the owner of the lung to 800 times more radiation than is considered safe according to US regulations.

The protest reached Washington DC when about one hundred Puerto Ricans protested in front of the White House, demanding that the Navy leave Vieques. The demonstrators included Puerto Rico-born US Congressmembers Luis Gutierrez, Nydia Velazquez and Jose Serrano.

New York City also got a taste of the anti-Navy campaign in June, in the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade. Vieques was one of the main themes in this year's parade.

"The parade will have a large contingent of people who will demand the US Navy's departure from Vieques', said Jose Rivera, member of the New York City council, to the Puerto Rican press before the event.

Rivera also said that he's trying to get the New York state legislature and African-American political leader Jesse Jackson to take a public stand on the issue.

Goats guarding lettuce

In mid-June, Bill Clinton ordered Defense Secretary William Cohen to appoint a commission to investigate the controversy surrounding the military presence on Vieques. But the protesters and their supporters are not impressed by Clinton's decision to have a commission to deal with the matter.

They are especially angered by the fact that the four-member commission includes retired admiral Diego Hernandez. Earlier this decade, the Puerto Rico-born Hernandez headed the public relations campaign for the Navy's Relocatable Over The Horizon Radar (ROTHR).

The ROTHR, which will allegedly help US authorities interdict drug planes flying out of South America, will consist of two separate facilities currently under construction, one in Vieques and the other in the main island of Puerto Rico.

In October 1995, sixty thousand protesters marched against ROTHR in San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital.

In 1997 Hernandez had told the Puerto Rican press that Vieques was indispensable for US national security, because it was the only place where the Atlantic Fleet could train.

For his role in the pro-ROTHR public relations campaign, Hernandez was declared persona non grata in Vieques in 1997 by the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CRDV), a grassroots organization that opposes the US military's presence.

"The only good thing about (Clinton forming a commission) is that it shows that Clinton knows that there's an island named Vieques," says CRDV spokesman Ismael Guadalupe.

Reverend Juan Vera, president of the Puerto Rico Evangelical Council, also has doubts about the commission's objectivity.

"This is like having goats look after heads of lettuce", said Vera, commenting on the fact that three of the four commission members appointed by Cohen have military backgrounds. "What objectivity can these gentlemen have?" asked Vera.

Carmelo Ruiz is a Puerto Rican journalist and activist, and a regular contributor to Earth Island Journal.