Standoff In Oregon

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Feb 2, 2016 - 6:18:11 PM

Police officers block the turnout to Sodhouse Lane, which is the main road leading to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, Jan. 27, near Burns, Ore. Authorities were restricting access to the Oregon refuge being occupied by an armed group after one of the occupiers was killed during a traffic stop and eight more, including the group's leader Ammon Bundy, were arrested. Photo: AP/Wide World photos

Tensions grow as federal authorities and armed protesters clash

WASHINGTON—The unlawful occupation of the Malheur Federal Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon by an armed posse of White, anti-government militants may be drawing to a close. After 28 days of much forbearance, patience, and kid-gloves treatment by law enforcement authorities accorded to the gang members, only four protestors—a man, his wife and two others—remained at the refuge, at Final Call press time, defying even their own captured leaders who called on them to “stand down.”

Ammon Bundy, who led the occupation that began on Jan. 2, was arrested Jan. 26 along with seven other protesters including his brother, Ryan during a traffic stop on a desolate stretch of highway on their way to a public meeting intended to address the armed siege.

In a court appearance, Mr. Bundy urged the remaining protesters to “turn yourselves in and do not use physical force,” according to a statement read by his attorney. He asked the holdouts to use the national platform they have to “defend liberty through our constitutional rights. We need to step back. Somebody died yesterday,” attorney Mike Arnold said. “Mr. Bundy wants everybody to remember that somebody died, and this is not just about him right now.”

During that traffic stop Jan. 26, law enforcement officers shot and killed LaVoy Finicum, one of the protest group’s most prominent members, who had vowed to never be captured alive.

Mugshots of eight Oregon standoff militia members. Top row from left are Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Brian Cavalier and Shawna Cox. Bottom row from left are Ryan Payne, Joseph Donald O’Shaughnessy, Peter Santilli and Jon Eric Ritzheimer. Photos/graphic: MGN Online

The occupiers—who call themselves “patriots”—said Mr. Finicum had his hands in the air when he was shot, but Greg Bretzing, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Oregon, told reporters that Mr. Finicum reached his hand toward a pocket on the inside of his jacket, at least twice before he was shot. Mr. Finicum had a loaded, semi-automatic handgun in that pocket, the FBI official said. To support their version of the events, the FBI released video apparently taken from an aircraft that shows the shooting.

“We know there are various versions of what occurred during this event: most inaccurate, some inflammatory. To that end, we want to do what we can to lay out an honest and unfiltered view of what happened and how it happened,” Mr. Bretzing said of the 26-minute video.

A federal judge denied bond for Mr. Bundy and other members of the group—11 in all, 10 arrested in Oregon, and one who surrendered in Arizona. According to published reports, a source told a Harney, Ore. county officer that the charging documents revealed the group had explosives, night vision goggles and weapons, and that “if they didn’t get the fight they wanted out there they would bring the fight to town.”

Journalist Arun Gupta was on Highway 395, at 5:00 p.m. Jan. 26 on his way to cover that fateful community meeting which neither Mr. Finicum, nor the Bundy brothers were able to attend, when he was turned back just moments after the confrontation. The road was closed due to a crash, and law enforcement officers told him alternate routes might take hours to reach the meeting in Grant County. Mr. Gupta soon heard rumors, which proved true, of what happened

This photo taken from an FBI video shows Robert "LaVoy" Finicum after he was fatally shot by police Jan. 26 near Burns, Ore. A video released Jan. 28 by the FBI of the shooting death of a spokesman for the armed occupiers of a wildlife refuge shows the man reaching into his jacket before he fell into the snow. The FBI said the man had a gun in his pocket. Photo: AP/Wide World photos

“I was very near where the police trap happened on the highway,” Mr. Gupta told The Final Call. “I was going to the same meeting and the Bundy’s got arrested with the leadership of the refuge occupation. I saw LaVoy Finicum (earlier on Jan. 26) at the Malheur Refuge. He waved both times he saw me, the last as he drove in his pickup truck. I wanted to talk to him but I was rushing from one interview to the next and figured I could catch him later. He said weeks ago he would die before he was arrested. A few hours later he was shot dead.”

Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, 55, has been the spokesperson during the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation. He was killed Jan. 26. Photo: MGN Online

But these protestors were treated far gentler than they would have been had they not been White, Mr. Gupta said. “There’s absolutely no doubt, that if armed Muslims took over a federal facility, then we would have seen them bombed out. The only question would be would they use a drone strike or B-52s.”

“I think the Oregon standoff is a perfect example of White privilege in 2016,” Dr. Wilmer Leon, a political scientist and host of “Inside The Issues” on Sirius-XM Radio told The Final Call. “Because there is no way that I am aware of that any group of color, particularly armed men, could take over a federal facility, occupied or unoccupied, swear to the media that they are there to the death and be allowed to stay there for weeks on end.

“Here is an instance where we know the individuals are armed, because they said so. And we know that the individuals were ready to engage in combat, because they said so. But even with those stated points being made, they’re still allowed to hold their ground. Everyone now is still trying to find a peaceful way to resolve the conflict,” said Dr. Leon.

In a video posted on YouTube after the arrest and shooting, a man—identified by The Oregonian as David Fry—said the four remaining occupiers would not leave until the government pardoned everybody who has been charged, and allowed those still inside to walk free. “They just want to separate us and get us all home so they can pick us off one by one at our houses without being stuck together as a group with guns,” another man identified as Dylan Anderson told CNN. They want the FBI to let them walk away and return to their home states without being arrested or confronted.

If the occupiers, whom he calls his “fellow patriots,” do not get assurance of an unimpeded exit, they are prepared to hold their ground, he said. “No one here wants anyone to be hurt or die, but I am not afraid to die,” Mr. Anderson said.

All the defendants face a federal felony count of “conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats.” But those charges are mild, compared to the gravity of their crimes according to Mr. Gupta. “The charges are a joke,” said Mr. Gupta, an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, and Salon.

“It actually shows how racialized the ‘War on Terror’ is. They’ve only been hit with one charge. Again, if these were Muslims they would have been hit with a hundred charges, all of them related to domestic terrorism. And I’m not supporting the anti-terrorism apparatus, but these guys have been hit with only one charge,” he said.

The arrested Bundy brothers and their father, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy have a family history of armed confrontations with the federal government. In 2014 Cliven Bundy assembled an armed band to his ranch demanding the federal government return of his livestock which had been confiscated because the Bureau of Land Management claimed he owed for decades of disputed fees for grazing his cattle on federal land.

After that standoff dragged on for weeks, the federal government relented and released Mr. Bundy’s livestock. The protestors claimed their tactics were victorious, possibly inspiring the armed Oregon standoff, observers said.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy and others started this incident protesting the sentencing of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, ranchers who were convicted of arson on federal lands in Oregon. A January 2 demonstration supporting the Hammonds family led to the armed occupation of the Malheur refuge, with protesters decrying what they call government overreach when it comes to federal lands.

Mr. Hammonds and his son later surrendered to federal custody, and as did several other local ranchers and farmers, asked the Bundy-led posse to go home.

Ironically, the land, which the armed criminals were demanding the federal government transfer to the ownership of local White ranchers, is still claimed by Native people, the original owners. Charlotte Rodrique, the chair of the Burns Paiute Tribe and her people claim treaty rights to the land which is now the wildlife refuge and sanctuary. Ms. Rodrique says the occupiers desecrated sacred lands, demanding that they “get the hell out,” according to published reports.

On January 5, 1879, 500 Paiutes were forcefully loaded onto wagons and walked, under heavy armed guards from their land to the Yakama Reservation in Washington. They traveled 300 miles on that forced march, through knee-deep snow, shackled two-by-two, according to indianz.com and other online sources.

“What the (White) radicals in Oregon that are occupying the National Wildlife Refugee headquarters are saying is that this land belongs to Harney County and has always belonged to Harney County and that’s just not true,” Andy Kerr, a conservationist, and author of Oregon Desert Guide, 70 Hikes and Oregon Wild Endangered Forest Wilderness told The Final Call. “In some cases the United States has concluded treaties with Native American tribes. I’m not going to say that wasn’t under coercion and a lot of threat.

“Some of the land has been taken by the federal government by conquest, by treaty, and or purchase,” Mr. Kerr said. “These federal lands have always been federal lands as long as the United States has been around, and they don’t belong to the states. What the radicals in Oregon that are occupying the National Wildlife Refugee headquarters are saying is that this land belongs to Harney County and has always belonged to Harney County and that’s just not true.”

“I find it very interesting,” said Dr. Leon, “that this whole discussion about what’s been happening in Oregon, has been conspicuously absent from any discussion during the presidential or political debates.

“You can have President Obama get Iran to release 10 U.S. sailors who sailed into Iranian waters—he gets them back within 14 hours unharmed—and (Sen.) Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) calls him weak. But a band of armed White gunmen can hold federal territory and they say absolutely nothing. I find that to be incredibly hypocritical. And it amazes me how this whole thing can go ignored at the (presidential) debates.”

The FBI told reporters it is working “around the clock” to negotiate a peaceful surrender with the remaining holdouts. But even as the arrested leader of the Oregon standoff called for those who remained at the wildlife refuge to leave, another outside “patriot” group issued a new “call to action” for “any and all Americans” to join the anti-government occupiers still at the facility. The Pacific Patriots Network posted the call to action on its website Jan. 29, according to TalkingPointsMemo.com.

“Come stand together with other Americans, and express our Constitutional right to PEACEFULLY assemble and air our grievances,” the call to action said. It called for the arrest of the law enforcement officers involved in the shooting that killed occupier LaVoy Finicum, as well as for the departure of the federal authorities who have staked out the wildlife center and for the resignations of some of the local officials in Harney County, Oregon.

The Final Call