While Richard Gere, Martin Scorcese and other Hollywood celebrities focus their attention on the plight of Tibet and Chinese oppression, American oppression goes on unheralded.

Unpopular as domestic political prisoners are, they exist, have existed, and unfortunately will continue to exist. From Sacco and Vanzetti to Geronimo Pratt, all have been falsely accused and imprisoned (or in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, put to death) because of what they stood for.

Had Leonard Peltier implicated the real killers of the FBI agents for whom he is serving two life sentences, it is likely that he would be a free man. But he feels justified in his silence, mainly because the FBI had been assisting the Chief of the Oglala nation to rid itself of AIM members - over 75 AIM members were killed and their deaths never investigated, nor their killers brought to justice.

His story is long and complicated, but the underlying truth is that he did not kill those FBI agents and because the FBI could not prove who did, he became their scapegoat.

While I have sympathy for and support the efforts to release political prisoners worldwide, American efforts to press for the release of foreign political prisoners seem hollow when it isn't working to settle its own problems.
by Roberto Munoz