The Fugitive: Why has the FBI
placed a million-dollar bounty on Assata Shakur?
By Kathleen Cleaver
Twenty-eight
years ago, in a highly disputed trial, an all-White jury convicted
former Black Panther Assata Shakur of the murder of a New Jersey
state trooper. In 1979, while serving a life sentence, she escaped
from prison and eventually resurfaced in Cuba, where she was granted
asylum and has lived ever since. But the U.S. government has continued
to pursue Shakur, regularly increasing the bounty on her head and
classifying her as a “domestic terrorist.” Last May
the Justice Department issued an unprecedented $1,000,000 bounty
for the return of Assata Shakur, 58, who continues to maintain her
innocence. Kathleen Cleaver, a law professor and former communications
secretary for the Black Panther Party, talks about why we all need
to know about Assata, and why she must live free: I was startled
when I heard about the $1,000,000 bounty for the capture of Assata
Shakur. What triggered this renewed interest in Assata? Why spend
so much time and money to hunt her down when Osama bin Laden, head
of an international terrorist enterprise, remains at large?
It turns out that FBI and New Jersey police officials
revealed the million-dollar bounty on May 2 of this year, the thirty-second
anniversary of the New Jersey Turnpike shootout in which State Trooper
Werner Foerster and Black Panther Zayd Shakur were killed. Sundiata
Acoli and Assata Shakur were arrested for the murders. Assata was
severely wounded,
shot while her hands were up. She has always insisted—and
expert defense testimony from the trial bears it out—that
she did not kill anyone. But in separate trials, Sundiata and Assata
were convicted of murdering Werner Foerster. In 1979, while incarcerated
for life in the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey,
Assata escaped. As the FBI circulated the wanted poster that called
for her arrest, all over the New York–New Jersey area her
supporters hung posters proclaiming “Assata Shakur is welcome
here.” Cuba gave her political asylum several years later
on the grounds that she had been subjected to political persecution
and had never received a fair trial.
Apparently the million-dollar bounty has already
been covertly offered by police to a relative of Assata’s
for assistance in kidnapping her from Cuba. This bounty evokes the
memory of those vicious slave catchers who were paid to capture
and torment our runaway slave ancestors and return them dead or
alive. This extraordinary bounty on the head of a Black woman inevitably
brings to mind Harriet Tubman, that Underground
Railroad “conductor” whose ability to organize escapes
earned a $12,000 price on her head from the state of Maryland. Outraged
slave owners added $40,000.
Many freedom fighters I knew and loved, including
Eldridge Cleaver, to whom I was married, were arrested and imprisoned
because of our membership in the Black Panther Party. Our organization
started in response to the gruesome war in Vietnam and the racism
and injustice here that
drenched our lives in violence. Demonstrations, riots, rampant police
brutality and political assassinations marked those years when I
witnessed thousands upon thousands of people arrested and hundreds
killed. Many turned into fugitives to save their own lives, including
my husband, whom I joined in Algeria in May 1969. That was around
the same time that Assata, then a bright New York City college student
named Joanne Chesimard, joined the Black Panthers.
WE had a concrete ten-point program to end racial
inequality. The Black Panther Party demanded the power to determine
our own destiny. We insisted on decent housing, appropriate education,
economic justice, an immediate end to police brutality, and other
rights our people had been fighting for since slavery ended. We
were not patient, we were not
passive, and we were willing to defend our principles with our lives.
Since Panthers couldn’t be bought off or scared off, the government
made the decision to kill us off.
Back in 1968 we became prime targets for law enforcement
and intelligence agencies, particularly after J. Edgar Hoover, then
FBI director, labeled us the “greatest threat to the internal
security” of the United States. We were young and passionately
determined to secure the freedom of our people in our lifetime.
Joining the Black Panther Party at the height of this assault, Assata
saw our leaders imprisoned and killed. Both Black Panther Party
founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale faced the death penalty, and
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, leaders of the Illinois chapter, were
murdered in a predawn raid while they slept. Assata reported that
she was beaten, tortured and denied medical attention after her
arrest, then continually threatened by police and prison guards
while in their custody. There was no question that she felt her
life was in danger.
Under international law and Cuban law, Shakur is
entitled to the protection and freedom of asylum. There are no legal
grounds for her return to the United States because no treaty of
extradition exists between the United States and Cuba, which has
been subjected to a U.S. blockade and trade embargo for more than
40 years.
Despite this, the U.S. government and the state
of New Jersey have repeatedly called for her capture. The meaning
of this new million-dollar bounty is to encourage and finance what
amounts to a kidnapping, one that could end with Assata’s
death. Our memories are haunted by stories of fiercely independent
Blacks whose dignity and pursuit of freedom won
the hatred of enraged White men who sometimes murdered them, riding
publicly in lynch mobs that no law restrained.
The government has elevated this barbaric conduct
to the diplomatic level as a way to reimprison one Black woman who
dared fight for our freedom. The FBI and the state of New Jersey
must be forced to obey the law. We cannot allow them to engage in
lynch-mob diplomacy.
WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
For more information about Assata Shakur’s
case and what you can do to support her, please visit assatashakur.org
or handsoffassata.net, or
call the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement at (718) 254-8800
|