Statue protest stops tourists

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32801, 29 December 1971, Page 1

Statue protest stops tourists

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright;

NEW YORK, December 28.

A Federal judge has ordered 16 Vietnam war veterans occupying the Statue of Liberty to explain why they should not be forcibly removed.

The men, who are protesting against the IndoChina war, hope to draw attention to their cause by staying in the statue until New Year’s Day. Judge Lawrence Pierce, acting on a request by officials of the National Parks Service,

which maintains the statue, instructed the demonstraters to show cause why an order should not be made directing them to leave the monument. The demonstrators, who hid in the raised ann of the 305foot statue, on Liberty Island, have caused the monument to be closed to the public since they occupied it on Sunday. “VISITORS DEPRIVED” In an affidavit, Mr Larry. Akel, a Parks Service management assistant at Liberty Island, said that by barricading themselves inside the statue the war veterans were denying access to between 1500 and 2000 visitors a day. Because many of these visitors, including some from abroad, would only be in New York for a few days, the protesters’ action “may irreparably prevent them from seeing the Statue of Liberty," he said. Judge Pierce signed the order after fruitless efforts by a Government attorney to come to some agreement with the demonstrators, who say they have enough food to last a week. LETTER TO NIXON Mr Robby Dunne,, a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which organised the sit-in. has issued the text of an open letter to President Nixon in which the veterans said: “We can no longer tolerate the war in South-East Asia, regardless of the colour of its dead ... Mr Nixon, you set the date (for final United States withdrawal), we’ll evacuate.” A similar anti-war “sit-in” at the historic Philadelphia House where, it is said Betsy Ross made the first American flag ended earlier yesterday when police arrested 23 Vietnam war veterans and two young women