Open letter to the President of the United States
We are a group of citizens of the Republic of Panama, who have
decided to address you in your capacity as the President of the United States
of America and, thus, as commander in chief of the armed forces of your country.
The principal reason, but not the only one, that motivates this open letter,
is to respectfully call upon you to order a definitive stop to the military
maneuvers that the US Navy has ended up carrying out, once again, on the small
and populated island of Vieques, located in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Your nation, Mr. President, was founded more than 200 years ago on the basis
of respect for popular will, freedom and human rights, standing out as one
of the oldest and most stable democracies in the history of humanity.
Due to these characteristics, we believe that your government
would have to respect the will of the immense majority of the noble Puerto
Rican people, who have valiantly opposed these maneuvers, risking even their
lives, from the moment they began, and who have proclaimed that they will
renew their opposition if they start again. In this case we are not dealing
with political actions that can be attributed to one party or another, nor
ideological motives of any type or tendency. The popular outcry in Puerto
Rico has now been expressed on repeated occasions in defense of the ecology
and environment of Vieques and this voice must be heard, respected and heeded,
in keeping with the democratic principles that govern the political conduct
of your country's democracy.
Of course, we are also concerned about the fate of those unjustly
incarcerated for the act of having dared to protest. We hope that soon they
will soon be set free, but the problem will not be resolved, nor will the
popular protests cease, until the US Navy, under the command of its commander
in chief, forever desists from the practice of such noxious and dangerous
maneuvers that nobody considers, despite what your government's military spokespeople
say, as really indispensable for the defense of the Atlantic. We want to let
it be known that the people of Puerto Rico are not alone in this struggle,
and that the feelings of solidarity that such just demands have provoked are
universal.
As citizens of the world we want to use this occasion to ask
you, in the name of an anxious humanity, to correct your decision to pull
the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, which is aimed at reducing the
toxic gases that contaminate the planet's atmosphere.
As citizens of the Republic of Panama, we likewise exhort you
to order the cleaning of the firing ranges located in the old Canal Zone,
which represent so much danger to the lives and health of the people who live
next to them, without using as a pretext that such a cleanup would devastate
these areas. The eradication of explosives and munitions will surely involve
costs, but your country is the richest and most technologically advanced on
Earth, and the gentlemanly compliance with this moral and contractual promise
will be an act of justice for our people, which no doubt will redound in the
prestige of the United States. It would be a lack of equity to shift the burden
of solving this grave problem to our country, for which we Panamanians are
in no way responsible. You are morally and contractually responsible for this
work, and it would be unjust if it were imposed upon a country which is not
in any way at fault.
With the hope that the three petitions that we make in this
open letter merit a response favorable to the ecological security of the world,
which is our common home, and in this way once again the principles that this
great democracy represents and sustains will again shine in the international
community, we await a just decision on your part, and on behalf of the government
that you head.
Adolfo Ahumada
Eloy Alfaro
Ricardo Alberto Arias
Ricardo Arias Calderón
Ebrahim Asvat
Aquilino Boyd
José María Cabrera
Nils Castro
Guillermo Cochez
Laurentino Cortizo Cohen
Guillermo Endara Galimany
Julio Escobar
Mario Galindo H.
Jorge Illueca
Humberto Jirón Soto
Raúl Leis R.
Carlos Alfredo López Guevara
Fernando Manfredo
Carmen Miró G.
Eduardo Morgan Jr.
Juan David Morgan G.
José Raúl Mulino
Oydén Ortega
Carlos Ozores
Tomás Paredes
Jorge E. Ritter
Aristides Royo
Ceferino Sánchez
Simón Tejeira
Martín Torrijos
Teresa Yanis de Arias
