Hunger strikers rap abuse by INS

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Salvadoran refugees in Honduras. Photo from "Forced to Move," a new book by Renato Camarda (Solidarity Publications, San Francisco).

SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1985 3 The punishment: Forced to stand in desert sun for 14 hours a day, beaten with sticks and clubs, tied by wrists and forced to lie six hours on the floor, isolated in locked outhouses, deported and possibly murdered by "death squads. "

The crime: Coming from El Salvador to seek refuge in the United States.

The "crime" does not fit the punishment, according to prisoners at the notorious El Centro, Calif., detention center run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

On May 27 some 200 prisoners began a hunger strike to win improved conditions at El Centro and to publicize their plea for political asylum. The strike was broken up after four days by 50 INS guards in full riot gear.

Eight of the refugees who are out on bond from El Centro came to a San Francisco rally against U.S. funding for the Nicaraguan contras on June ll to win support for their protest. One of the strikers, Noe Arnoldo Zelaya y Zelaya, spoke with Socialist Action at the rally.

A primary teacher, Zelaya was a member of ANDES, the Salvadoran teachers union. ANDES has been an outspoken critic of human rights violations in El Salvador. Between 1979 and 1985, 300 ANDES members were killed by death squads and the military.

Conditions in El Centro leave the INS open to the charge of human rights violations as well. Prisoners charge that the INS has forced them to stand in the desert sun in over 100-degree temperatures for up to 14 hours. The guards, meanwhile, sit protected by umbrellas or in air-conditioned barracks.

The El Centro prisoners maintain that they are often held for three or four months as punishment without being told the outcome of their trials. The overcrowded facility, built for a maximum of 340 detainees, is regularly filled with over 500 people.

The food is of poor quality-typically powdered eggs with practically no fruit or vegetables. Medical facilities are inadequate; no doctors are available on weekends.

These are the conditions that gave rise to the hunger strike. "We were treated like high criminals, one of the strikers told the rally, "This was an attack against our dignity as human beings."

Repression continues in El Salvador Many people who were threatened by the death squads fled El Salvador to protect their lives or to protect their families that remain behind. But so far, the U.S. government has granted asylum to less than 2.5 percent of the Salvadoran refugees who have asked for it.

The American Civil Liberties Union has collected evidence of 112 cases of people who were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered after they were deported to El Salvador by the U.S. government.

Zelaya, commenting on the Reagan administration's claim of improved human rights conditions in El Salvador, said, "It's not true. Repression is not as public, but repression and disappearances continue. The repression is more targeted on known oppositionists."

It was in response to this combination of circumstances-war and repression in El Salvador that is financed by the United States, denial of asylum to Central American refugees in flight for their lives, and detention and deportation of the refugees-that the Churchbased sanctuary movement developed. Over 200 religious congregations have now declared themselves sanctuaries.

A new development is the establishment of the National Sanctuary Defense Fund to "defend in the courts those ('contras') attacking Nicaragua from American citizens charged with 'illegally' helping these refugees—and to keep these refugees from being sent back to be murdered in cold blood."

INS officials, trying to deflect an expected public outcry, claimed that "outside agitation" sparked the strike at El Centro. But attorneys and activists in the sanctuary movement say they knew nothing of the protest until it was well underway.

The INS put forth its response as part of a broad attack that the government has unleashed upon the sanctuary movement. Armed INS agents conducted coordinated raids on refuge centers in five cities on Jan. 14. They arrested 60 refugees and 20 U.S. citizens in the sweep.

Twelve sanctuary workers in Arizona were charged with conspiring to "harbor, transport, and abet" refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. Pre-trial hearings began May 21 in the U.S. District Court in Phoenix. The trial is scheduled to open in December.

The government attack was aided by a witch-hunting editorial in the April 17 issue of the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper warned that the sanctuary movement is in danger of "being taken over by left-wing activists" and that leftists have already "seized control" of the antinuclear, feminist, civil rights, and Catholic economic doctrine movements.

As proof that church people have been misled by "a politically selective network of activists,, the Journal pointed out that the sanctuary movement has linked concern for the human plight of the refugees with a firm opposition to U.S. government policy in Latin America.

But anyone need only hear the refugees tell their personal stories to realize that their plight was made right here in the U.S.A.

Donations toward the bond fund for the El Centro strikers can be sent to: Friends of the Hunger Strikers Fund, Desert Valley Federal Credit Union, 497 South 4th Street, El Centro, CA 92243.

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