|
Cuba accuses U.S. of violating treaties
HAVANA — Cuba accused the U.S. government last Friday of violating international anti-terrorism treaties by allowing Luis Posada Carriles, a man Havana accuses of violent acts against the country, to walk free of all charges after an immigration indictment against him was dropped.
“The U.S. government has not only violated its own laws and supposed commitment to its self-proclaimed ‘War Against Terrorism,’ but also to its own international obligations,” said a government declaration published in the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
The 79-year-old Posada was freed of all charges last Tuesday when a U.S. district judge threw out an immigration indictment against him, accusing the U.S. government of “fraud, deceit and trickery” while trying to buy time for a separate criminal investigation.
Detained on immigration charges in March 2005, the Cuban-born Posada had been awaiting trial in Texas on charges of lying to U.S. immigration officials. He was freed on bond last month pending his court appearance, but until last Tuesday was still under house arrest and had been required to wear an electronic monitoring device.
“We’ll have to see now what the White House does,” the Cuban declaration said. “It still has the option to fulfill its international obligations to detain Luis Posada Carriles and extradite him to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”
Havana accuses Posada of orchestrating a string of 1997 Havana hotel bombings, which killed an Italian tourist, and in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
Venezuela is seeking to extradite Posada in the jetliner explosion, but a U.S. federal judge ruled that Posada cannot be sent there or to Cuba for fear he may be tortured.
The Cuban government’s statement said the U.S. could have continued to hold Posada under the U.S. Patriot Act, which was passed after the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, by simply declaring him a national security risk.
After violent protest clash, L.A. immigrants plan June rally
LOS ANGELES — A week after an immigration rally ended with police using batons and rubber bullets to drive demonstrators and journalists out of a park, activists announced plans to march again next month to refocus attention on immigration reform.
Organizers hope the June 24 march will exceed the crowd of about 25,000 who attended the mostly peaceful May 1 demonstration that ended with riot police sweeping protesters and journalists out of MacArthur Park.
“All of us here today are united in expressing in the clearest voice possible that we can’t be intimidated into inaction,” said Juan José Gutiérrez of Latino Movement U.S.A at a press conference outside City Hall.
About a dozen immigrants stood behind him holding signs calling for amnesty for the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
The march is planned for the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, in the heart of Hollywood and far from downtown, where prior immigration rallies have taken place. Gutierrez said the location was chosen to get other Los Angeles neighborhoods involved in the reform movement.
There were signs he has had some success in attracting support. Activist Preston Wood, the local coordinator of the anti-war group, the Answer Coalition, attended the press conference and said he would march. So did the Rev. Eric Lee, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Los Angeles and Filipino American activist Arturo Garcia.
Honduran activist Cecilia Rodriguez, also at the conference, called for media to cover the event, but not only to get the message out.
“Imagine what would have happened if the cameras weren’t there [in MacArthur Park],” she said in Spanish.
New York ironworkers union, EEOC partially settle race case
NEW YORK — A construction trade union will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to dozens of its members as part of a partial settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stemming from accusations of racial discrimination, the EEOC announced last week.
The International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers Local 580 in Manhattan will pay $800,000 to 45 black and Hispanic members, nine of whom had filed discrimination charges against the union, the EEOC said.
According to a 2001 filing by the EEOC in federal court in New York, the union refused to refer minority journeyworkers to jobs between September 1992 and August 2004 on the basis of race. The union’s refusal, the filing said, resulted in a “substantial disparity” in the number of hours worked by whites and minorities and violated federal civil rights laws.
U.S. District Judge Robert L. Carter approved the partial settlement, which requires about $78,000 of the settlement to go to an employee assistance fund that provides training and helps journeyworkers buy tools, EEOC officials said.
“The EEOC will continue to work to make sure that construction trade unions, as well as those contractors who work with them, respect the crucial right of all construction trade workers to enjoy work on a nondiscriminatory basis,” said Spencer H. Lewis Jr., the EEOC’s New York district director.
Allegations of discrimination in the union go back decades, said Louis Johnson III, a senior trial attorney at the EEOC. More recently, in 1989, a federal judge issued an order and judgment demanding the union stop discriminatory practices in job referrals, Johnson said.
In 2001, the EEOC, acting on the discrimination allegations of the union members, filed a contempt action against the union in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Johnson said.
|
