john@yunccn.UUCP (John Hummel) (01/25/89)
JUSTICE FOR POLITICAL PRISONER
LEONARD PELTIER & FREEDOM FOR ALL NATIVE
PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
TO COMPUTER USERS WORLDWIDE:
THESE STATEMENTS (PAGES 1 TO 9) ARE A CALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT
FOR THE STRUGGLE OF LEONARD PELTIER, AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT
LEADER AND POLITICAL PRISONER OF NORTH AMERICA. WE ASK YOU TO
PRINT AND DISTRIBUTE THIS PACKAGE OF INFORMATION TO AS MANY
PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE.
***** WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. *****
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T KNOW THE STRUGGLE OF LEONARD
PELTIER, THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION CONTAINS:
1. STATEMENTS DESCRIBING THE PURPOSE OF WHY WE ARE CALLING UPON
ALL NATIVE PEOPLES AND ALL PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE AND SUPPORT A
ONE-WEEK FORUM ON ABORIGINAL RIGHTS & JUSTICE FOR lEONARD PELTIER
IN OTTAWA, CANADA -- APRIL 15 TO 21, 1989;
2. FOLLOWED BY A HISTORY AND BACKGROUND ON THE STRUGGLE AND CASE
OF LEONARD PELTIER AND OUR WORK IN CANADA FOR HIS FREEDOM;
3. FOLLOWED BY OUR RELEASE ON THE LEGAL ACTION SOON TO UNFOLD IN
CANADA ON LEONARD PELTIER'S BEHALF;
TO THE ONES WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM AND JUSTICE
FOR LEONARD PELTIER & SELF-DETERMINATION
FOR ALL ABORIGINAL PEOPLE:
DEAR FRIENDS,
The LEONARD PELTIER CANADIAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE is proud to
announce a one-week forum on ABORIGINAL RIGHTS AND JUSTICE FOR
LEONARD PELTIER in Ottawa to support the start of full-scale
legal action in Canada on Peltier's behalf on APRIL 17, 1989. A
full week of events, from APRIL 15 TO 21, will demonstrate to the
Canadian Government and to all people the importance of Peltier's
struggle and its direct connection to the struggle for self-
determination of all Aboriginal peoples.
Native people from across Canada will be able to speak on
their land, human and sovereignty rights together and in alliance
with the struggle to free political prisoner Leonard Peltier. The
legal action for Peltier contains the evidence to expose the
fraud perpetrated by the U.S. Government and the FBI against
Canadian Courts at Peltier's 1976 extradition.
For all who know of Peltier's long and hard struggle -- the
disappointments and frustrations -- there continues the awareness
that we must never give up on the truths and principles that are
at stake. Peltier's struggle represents more than the injustices
and persecution toward one man. Extensively documented in
Peltier's case is the violent repression, the human rights
abuses, broken laws, treaties and other violations of first
Nations' sovereignty that are carried out against Native peoples
by North American governments.
In CANADA, we now carry the precious responsibility to help
free Leonard Peltier, and in so doing, to liberate the truth of
the wrongdoings and abuses against Native peoples, fundamental
human rights and in the administration of justice.
The OTTAWA FORUM will be a WEEK OF PRAYER, PROTEST AND
CELEBRATION; OF INTENSE LOBBYING AND PRESS CONFERENCES; AND
PUBLIC MEETINGS AND SPEAKING FORUMS.
A TRADITIONAL ABORIGINAL PRAYER VIGIL will be held for four
days and four nights, starting on Sunday, April 16. A FORMAL
PRESS CONFERENCE will bring news of our work to international
attention. It is our hope that Native Elders from Canada and the
U.S. will be with us in Ottawa to share our prayers. This will
also be a time for Native peoples across Canada to share our
prayers and protest so that the issue of First Nations' rights
can be supported together and in alliance with justice and
freedom for Peltier.
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**** AN APPEAL FOR SUPPORT ****
WE URGE ALL PEOPLES OF THE WORLD to support the struggle for
life and the sacredness of our Mother Earth in this great
struggle to free political prisoner Leonard Peltier and liberate
the truth of the crimes against North America's Native peoples.
YOU CAN HELP BY: Building awareness and support by printing
and distributing this full package of information to Social
Justice and Human Rights organizations; Labour and Environmental
groups and, especially Native Peoples and their support groups.
THE WORK OF ORGANIZING THE APRIL 15 TO 21, 1989 FORUM ON
ABORIGINAL RIGHTS & JUSTICE FOR LEONARD PELTIER IN CANADA IS
AWESOME AND THE COSTS ARE STAGGERING. PLEASE HELP US IN OUR
EFFORTS TO BRING TOGETHER A STRONG VOICE IN OTTAWA THROUGH A
SUCCESSFUL WEEK OF EVENTS. TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS FOR OUR ELDERS AND
PELTIER'S LAWYERS MUST BE BOOKED IN ADVANCE.
WE NEED HELP TO PAY FOR PROMOTION AND MAILING COSTS; TO
OFFSET OUR PHONE BILL; AND TO CO-ORDINATE ORGANIZING WORK FOR
PEOPLE IN OTTAWA AND TORONTO.
Your contribution, whatever amount will help. Please let us
know if you can contribute to pay for a specific expense, ie.
travel costs for an Elder or lawyer. Make cheques payable to
PELTIER CDN. DEFENSE COMMITTEE. If your organization or group can
endorse the forum, please contact us. We thank you for your
support in advance and pray we can bring to national and world
attention our struggle to free Peltier.
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****** FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT (416) 439-1893; OR WRITE:
LPCDC, 43 CHANDLER DR., SCARBOROUGH, ONT. CANADA M1G 1Z1. ******
Name ------------------------------------------------------------
Address ---------------------------------------------------------
City/Prov/State ------------------- Zip/Postal Code -------------
** Please specify if you can help us: ie: Lobbying, Promotion,
Action Telegrams/Letter Writing, Funding Contacts.
***************************************************************
PLEASE CONTACT THE LEONARD PELTIER CANADIAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE
FOR MORE INFORMATION. WE CAN PROVIDE DETAILED INFORMATION &
EDUCATIONAL PACKAGES; PETITIONS AND SPEAKERS.
WRITE: LPCDC, 43 CHANDLER DR., SCARBOROUGH, ONTARIO CANADA
M1G 1Z1 TELEPHONE: (416) 439-1893.
In Struggle & In Unity
LEONARD PELTIER CANADIAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE
BACKGROUND ON THE STRUGGLE OF LEONARD PELTIER
-- AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT LEADER AND
NORTH AMERICAN POLITICAL PRISONER --
The LEONARD PELTIER CANADIAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE is working
for the release of LEONARD PELTIER, a North American Indian
leader and political prisoner, who has been imprisoned for 13
years and is serving two life terms (50 years) in a U.S.
penitentiary. He was extradited from Canada to the United States
in 1976 on evidence falsified by the FBI, and later convicted for
the alleged murder of two FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975.
Evidence in the U.S. uncovered through the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) reveals his frame-up and gross wrongdoings
by the FBI when it employed its counter-intelligence program
(COINTELPRO) against Leonard Peltier and others to destroy the
growing resistance of Indians to the genocidal treatment and
policies by government and its agencies towards Native peoples.
The FBI targetted members of the American Indian Movement
and in specific AIM leader Leonard Peltier as a scapegoat for the
agents' deaths to finally put an end to the protest of these
people against policies of termination of aboriginal rights.
During the years 1972-1976, about 200 violent assaults, including
about 70 deaths, occurred on Pine Ridge Reservation in South
Dakota as a result of the FBI's program of assault.
The basis for Peltier's persecution by the U.S. Government
is directly tied to the efforts by traditional Indian people to
stop the erosion of tribal lands and often the clandestine
sale/transfers of these lands to U.S. agencies. At the heart of
North American Indian struggles, today and then, is the
unresolved issue of violated treaties and sovereignty rights,
where treaty and unceded aboriginal lands are desired by
governments and corporations for uranium, oil, minerals and other
resource wealth. This exploitation is at the heart of Peltier's
ordeal and is documented in numerous articles and several
comprehensive publications (see footnote).
In 1986, Peltier received the International Human Rights
Award from Spain "because he was defending the historical and
cultural rights of his people against the genocide of his race."
--------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES:
In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, Peter Matthiessen, The Viking
Press, New York, 1983 (Found in Public Libraries only);
Blood of the Land, (The Government and Corporate War Against the
American Indian Movement), Rex Weyler, Everest House Publishers,
New York, 1982;
The Trial of Leonard Peltier, Jim Messerschmidt, South End Press,
Boston, 1983.
-- 2 --
-- 2 --
More than a decade of legal appeals for a new trial in the
United States was exhausted in October 1987, with the U.S.
Supreme Court refusing to hear the FOIA evidence despite a
worldwide appeal for his release from prominent religious
leaders, politicians, institutions and the public. The U.S.
government still refuses to release more than 6,000 pages of
classified FOIA documents for reasons of "national security."
We might ask ourselves: What truths are being withheld in
these documents which might violate the security of the United
States and Canada?
The decision by the U.S. Government to deny Peltier a new
trial shows that the government can now target an individual for
prosecution, fabricate evidence against him, suppress evidence of
his innocence and get a conviction which is upheld through years
of legal appeals. Peltier's U.S. legal/defense committee is
presently lobbying for a Congressional investigation into FBI
wrongdoings/abuses on the case and for the release of the
remaining FOIA material.
Peltier's unjust ordeal is one of the most significant
international human rights violations of our time, which, if left
unresolved affects the fundamental liberties of all humankind.
Canada has been party to a terrible injustice by wrongfully
extraditing Peltier based on conflicting testimonies of a
witness, who later confessed she had been coerced by the FBI to
lie. Jim Fulton, MP (NDP Skeena, B.C.) calls the extradition a
"treaty fraud" and "breach of trust" between nations. He has
resubmitted a second Private Members' Motion (M-115) demanding
Peltier's return to Canada, which can be called before the House
of Commons for debate at any time.
On June 25, 1987, the Assembly of First Nations unanimously
endorsed Peltier's case at their annual assembly and called for
his return to Canada. Canadian support includes about 60 members
of Canada's Parliament; the Native Women's Association of Canada;
the Native Council of Canada; the Right Rev. Robert F. Smith,
former Moderator of the United Church of Canada; and more.
International support has come from Rev. Jesse Jackson; Robert
Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury; Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of
South Africa; the 4th Bertrand Russell Tribunal (Holland, 1981);
8 Episcopal Bishops and 74 international religious organizations.
Don Edwards, Chair of the U.S. Subcommittee on
Constitutional and Civil Rights; and the U.S. National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have formally endorsed
the case as a gross violation of Peltier's human, civil and
constitutional rights. Amnesty International stated in October,
1985, its official position that "the interests of justice would
best be served by granting Leonard Peltier a new trial." In 1986,
the U.S. Peltier Defense Committee, invited by the Soviet Peace
Committee, carried the message of Peltier's ordeal to the Soviet
Union. In the months after, the White House received a staggering
total of about 17 million letters from Soviet citizens calling
for Peltier's unconditional release.
-- 3 --
-- 3 --
We now have a Canadian legal defense for Peltier, composed
of respected criminal lawyers, who have developed a formal plan
of legal action in Canada. On April 17, 1989, an application for
leave to appeal the 1976 unjust extradition of Peltier will be
presented to the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa (see press
release).
We are organizing a one-week forum on ABORIGINAL RIGHTS &
JUSTICE FOR LEONARD PELTIER (APRIL 15 TO 21, 1989) in Ottawa to
support the legal initiative, which will bring together Native
nations from across Canada. This is being done in recognition
that the injustice to Peltier is no different than the injustices
experienced by Native peoples of this country in their 500-year
struggle to the right to govern themselves. We look at the
Supreme Court of Canada as a stage upon which to address the
human, land and sovereignty rights of Indian people of this
country, whose lands and lives are under attack by the policies
and activities of governments and corporations.
Like Nelson Mandela, Leonard Peltier is recognized
internationally as a symbol of his people's struggle for freedom.
Here in North America where Canadian and U.S. governments direct
attention to human rights abuses in other parts of the world, the
oppression and genocide of North American Native people is a
reality of which the majority of Canadians and Americans are
unaware. Many Native people are asserting their rights as nations
to their lands and have therefore become targets for persecution
by the government. All Native people are struggling to survive
the poverty and cultural breakdown that foreign governments and
institutions have inflicted on them. Many must also overcome the
artificial divisions and divisive attitudes that centuries of
assimilation policies have and continue to create amongst Native
people to prevent them from uniting as Native nations in defense
of their culture.
The fundamental human rights of all peoples of Canada
remains violated when the extradition of an individual is
obtained solely on the basis of fraud and remains unchallenged by
the Canadian Government ever since. Peltier's formal adoption by
a Native nation in British Columbia and his plea for political
asylum was not honored by Canadian authorities. As we seek to
expose Canada's role and responsibility in the persecution of
Leonard Peltier, we also address the oppression and genocide that
the Canadian government continues to carry out against Native
peoples in Canada and link these conditions with those found in
the struggles of Aboriginal people worldwide.
This is a desperate time for Aboriginal people whose earth-
respecting culture is under attack through numerous means from
killing and repressive violence to sophisticated assimilation and
genocidal policies. The highest rates of suicide, imprisonment,
infant mortality and shortest life expectancy all relate to the
struggle of Native people to exist as Native people in a society
where Aboriginal people are a threat to the continued
exploitation of the earth. Because the state does not allow
Native people to live out their true identity within their
culture, they remain political prisoners in their own homelands.
-- 4 --
In this time of global oppression and ever-escalating
destruction of the natural world, Indigenous people all over the
world have a strong message of benefit to humankind if allowed to
govern themselves and accomplish themselves within their culture.
Native people are on the frontlines of the war of greed that is
ravaging and polluting the earth. The institutions that are
destroying the Earth for profit are the same ones that see our
brother and sister human beings as exploitable and dispensable
for profit. Leonard Peltier and his case is documented testimony
of the inhumane lengths that are undertaken to perpetuate this
system which ultimately threatens all living things.
We now have a legal remedy in Canada which could ultimately
free Leonard Peltier from prison. Leonard's case is more than
ever a Canadian issue and a responsibility for Canada to correct.
Peltier's liberation would have far-reaching impact on the
struggle for sovereignty and self-determination of all North
American Native nations.
Today the work of Peltier's Canadian Defense Committee
involves legal defense; lobbying for political support; and
promotion/public education and outreach in Canada. Our work also
includes the work of mobilizing support in the United States and
internationally. A counsel to the Defense Committee, composed of
Native Elders, such as Ojibwe Elder Art Solomon, lawyers and
long-time supporters, offers direction and advice.
At the time of legal action to the Supreme Court this April,
we know we will come together in Ottawa in desperation to pray
together as nations of Indian people for the world to recognize
that we are under attack, and to acknowledge our aboriginal
rights and demand freedom for our brother, Leonard Peltier.
In the Spirit of Justice
For All,
LEONARD PELTIER CANADIAN
DEFENSE COMMITTEE
..... FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE .....
Leonard Peltier Wrongfully Extradited
LEGAL ACTION SEEKS TO EXPOSE FRAUD COMMITTED ON CANADIAN COURTS
The Leonard Peltier Canadian Defense Committee is proud to
announce the beginning of a full-scale legal action to expose the
unjust extradition of American Indian Movement Leader Leonard
Peltier and seek his return to Canada.
On Oct. 27, 1976, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the
extradition of political prisoner Leonard Peltier to the United
States. His extradition was fraudulently obtained. The same
people who orchestrated his extradition orchestrated an unfair
trial. Canada shares the blame for this continuing and shocking
injustice.
More than 12 years ago, Agents of the U.S. Government,
officers of the F.B.I., deliberately misled the Canadian judicial
system and perpetrated a fraud on a Canadian court. Now that
legal proceedings are exhausted in the United States, and with
substantial new evidence, Leonard Peltier will seek leave to
appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada from his fraudulently
obtained extradition.
The sole sufficient evidence used to extradite Peltier to an
unfair trial in the United States was totally false. The full
story of this outrageous fraud will be presented to the Supreme
Court of Canada on April 17, 1989.
The Court will be urged to permit Peltier to reveal the full
extent of the deceit and perjury that delivered him into the
hands of his persecutors. Canada's Parliament will then have
the facts and can demand his return.
The injustice to Leonard Peltier raises fundamental
questions for Canadians about the integrity and
foundation of the extradition treaty between our two countries.
It raises questions about violations in the administration of
justice, against Aboriginal sovereignty; Canadian and
international law, and ultimately, Canada's sovereignty.
The Americans involved in this unjust extradition betrayed
the trust Canada places in the United States. No such trust can
exist while the wrongful imprisonment of an innocent man remains
unredressed and a fundamental fraud on our courts remains
unanswered. The truth about Leonard Peltier's extradition will
now be told. We profoundly hope it will lead, at long last,
to justice and freedom for Leonard Peltier.
**************************************************
FOR MORE INFO.: LEONARD PELTIER CDN. DEFENSE COMMITTEE, 43
CHANDLER DR., SCARBOROUGH, ONT. CANADA M1G 1Z1; (416) 439-1893.
** PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO THIS STRUGGLE BY PRINTING AND
DISTRIBUTING THIS STATEMENT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. THANK
YOU FOR YOUR TIME. **