Puerti Rico Student stikes & protests: Students break police occupation of campuses restart protests

[the_future_modernes]

Students at the University of Puerto Rico has been protesting since last year over an $800 tuition fee increase that will make it impossible for tons of their current and prospective classmates to continue their college education. And yet, in spite of widespread protest, government crackdowns of cruel proportions, a whole lot of bleeding, and general dramatics, news coverage of this event has remained sporadic and cursory. There we are and continue to be, panting of revolutions and divers protestation in foreign lands including Thailand, Bahrain, Iran, Egypt etc, and yet, although Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, mainland news media throughly ignores the whole thing. Last year the governor went so far as to take down the University gates and order the occupation of the University by armed police officers, in order to stop any 'leftist activism' on the campus. ACLU Update of Events. You'd think that clear constitutional violation would merit a great many screaming headlines, but nope. One wonders why that is? In May 2010 this article was published when the student demonstrations were getting underway: Student protest in Puerto Rico, but where is the news coverage? The questions she asks there are distressingly current today. I have to search very very diligently to get the few articles I present here:




Student strike at University of Puerto Rico rocks island and sparks political crisis

A student strike at the University of Puerto Rico has forced the resignation of its president and sparked the second political crisis in a year for the island's rulers.

José Ramón de la Torre, head of the 60,000-student system, resigned Friday after a series of violent clashes between students and riot police.

Some 200 people have been arrested and scores of students injured, prompting professors and university workers to walk out for two days last week in sympathy with the students.

On Monday, conservative Gov. Luis Fortuño finally relented and pulled back the hundreds of riot police that had been occupying the system's 11 campuses for weeks.

It was the first police occupation of the university in more than 30 years.

Students began boycotting classes in early December to protest a special $800 annual fee Fortuño imposed this semester to reduce a huge government deficit.

That fee - equal to more than 50% of annual tuition - stunned the university community, given that more than 60% of UPR students have family incomes of less than $20,000 a year.

Student leaders persuaded the trustees to reject similar tuition hikes Fortuño proposed last spring. They did so by conducting massive sit-ins and barricading themselves in buildings on all the campuses for two months, and by running a sophisticated Internet and media campaign that garnered much public support.

Fortuño's pro-statehood New Progressive Party, which controls both houses of the Puerto Rico legislature, responded by packing the board of trustees with new appointees, guaranteeing him complete control this time around.

Local courts cooperated by banning student protests on university grounds.
Most experts expected the students would be too exhausted from last spring to challenge the governor again.

Those experts were wrong.

Inspired by the youth revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, the students refused to simply go home.

They presented more than 200 pages of proposals to university officials on ways to trim budget costs without huge tuition increases.
Under Puerto Rico law, the commonwealth government must spend 9.6% of its budget on the university's operation.

The Fortuño administration, which recently pushed through the biggest corporate and individual tax cuts in Puerto Rico's history, has laid off thousands of government workers and wants even greater privatization of public services.

To underscore his message, Fortuño was a featured speaker this weekend at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

The striking students at UPR know this is not simply a conflict with their trustees. They are up against the forces of the entire Fortuño administration. The way they see it, the future of a great public university, one that has educated generations of low-income citizens in Puerto Rico, is at stake.

Defiant Student Protesters Force Withdrawal of Puerto Rican Police from Restive Campus

Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño has begun withdrawing the police occupation of the main University of Puerto Rico campus in San Juan after two months. SWAT teams and riot squads took over the campus in December following a massive student strike against fee hikes and privatization. Hundreds of students have been arrested, and some have reported being beaten, including sexually harassed and tortured, in the ensuing crackdown. Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez comments on the students’ uprising. [includes rush transcript]MORE

In Puerto Rico, Protests End Short Peace at University

SAN JUAN, P.R. — Months of unrest at the University of Puerto Rico seemed to be reaching a finale over the last 10 days. Scores of students were arrested or injured by riot police officers. Faculty and staff members held a two-day walkout. The president of the university resigned Friday, the police who had occupied campus were withdrawn Monday and an interim president arrived Tuesday.

But there were only three days of peace.

On Thursday morning, students blocked the stairs to classrooms in the social science department with trash cans and chairs, and also closed down the humanities department. At the social sciences building, students said only one professor had tried to get through the blockade.
MORE

ACLU declares human rights crisis in Puerto Rico

In the United States, the media and the citizenry consuming media is focused on the protests in Wisconsin and the revolutions at work across the Middle East while continuing to turn a blind eye to what is happening in Puerto Rico.
It is too simple to look at the protests at the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR) and say the student/youth led movement on the island is just about $800. As the American Civil Liberties Union reports, Since the pro-statehood Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Fortuño came into power two years ago, free speech has been under all out assault.

The report, which calls the situation on the U.S. a colony, a “human rights crisis” makes special note of how women have been especially targeted by police for physical and sexual assault. MORE

Vivir Latino's Universidad de Puerto Rico and UPR tags have more. Her tagging is a bit inconsistent so some tags will have some stories, some will have others.

If you can read Spanish then Vivir Latino links to Indy Media Puerto Rico Scroll a bit and there will be coverage there.


Global Voices Online: Puerto Rican Student protests

An Open Letter to Charles S. Shumer on the political turmoil in Puerto Rico Feb 2

As I watch the news from the States and I see your former Junior Senator, now Secretary of State Clinton, exhort the Egyptian police and military to use “restraint” and demand that leaders in the Middle East open up to reforms, I ask myself —- why the silence about Puerto Rico, the largest remaining direct colony of the United States?

Chuck, haven’t you heard about the strike at the University of Puerto Rico? Hasn’t anyone told you about the hard-fought agreement reached between striking students and the UPR Board last spring? Don’t you know how that moment of inspiration was quickly dissipated when the legislature, without an inkling of input from the university community, immediately increased the number of Board members. Within days, the governor nominated the new members, who were approved upon consent of the Senate and immediately revoked the accords.

Chuck, you may have heard about the police corruption on the island, with the much-heralded arrests of over 100 officers a few months back. But are you aware that in recent days, peaceful demonstrations by students protesting against changes at the UPR, including a substantial tuition hike, have been subjected to known torture techniques by the Puerto Rico Police? Do you know about the police attack on demonstrators last June 30, when a peaceful protest against the closing of the Senate Chamber was brutally attacked, resulting in dozens of injuries? Do you know about the use of tasers against a UPR student last June, the young man shocked three times for holding up a protest sign at a hotel, with the participation of the second in command of our police force?MORE