Spotlight: Oregon standoff enters fourth day amid mixed public reaction

The standoff between a group of militiamen that took a federal wildlife refuge in the U.S. northwestern state of Oregon and law enforcement authorities entered the fourth day amid mixed public reaction.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy said Tuesday that their plan was to help local residents regain their rights from the federal government and then they would go home.

"We do have a plan," Bundy from Nevada told reporters at the refuge. "We see a time coming very soon when the community will begin ... to take that over, so they can claim their own rights, so that they can stand strong enough to defend them. And then we will go home."

The militiamen -- they claimed to be 150 but witnesses said they were just 15 -- took the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after a demonstration on Saturday in Burns, a small town about 450 km southeast of Portland, Oregon, in support of two local ranchers facing additional prison time for arson.

Dwight Hammond Jr., 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, were convicted in 2012 for setting fire in 2001 and 2006 to public land adjacent to their ranch. The 2001 blaze burned 139 acres of public land, according to court documents.

The father and son served prison terms of three months and one year respectively.

However, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which was passed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the mandatory minimum punishment for arson committed against federal property was upped to five years in federal prison.

A federal judge in October ruled the Hammonds to return to prison for about four more years each.

The father and son reported to a federal prison Monday in California, according to David Ward, sheriff of Harney County, Oregon, where the wildlife refuge is located.

The Hammonds distanced themselves from the protest group. In a letter to Ward, W. Alan Schroeder, the Hammonds' lawyer, said that "neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond Family."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Oregon State Police and deputies from sheriff's offices around Oregon have arrived in Burns but held off intervening to try to remove them, in the hope of resolving the standoff peacefully.

Authorities have closed school for the week in the area out of concerns of possible violence.

"You said you were here to help the citizens of Harney County," Ward said in a message aimed at the occupiers. "That help ended when a peaceful protest became an armed and unlawful protest."

"The Hammonds have turned themselves in. It is time for you to leave our community," the sheriff said. "Go home, be with your own families and end this peacefully.

Meanwhile, the public has had mixed reaction to the protest, with some showing skepticism about the real motive of Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, who staged in April last year an armed standoff with federal agents in Bunkerville, Nevada, over grazing rights on federal land.

Online public opinion has been split over the Oregon standoff, with many branding the takeover as an act of domestic terrorism, while others saw it as an act of resistance against government oppression.

On Twitter, a user under the name "S.G." questioned: "How many kids are missing school and parents missing work because of your terrorism?"

Bundy, on his Twitter account which was reportedly suspended Tuesday afternoon but has now been reactivated, thanked everyone for their "support."

But Charles Johnson replied: "'Support?' What support? Maybe you haven't noticed but your Twitter replies are running about 90 percent plus against you."

Other Web users went further complaining that the government's response to the situation in Oregon would have been more severe had the occupants been minorities.

"If the 'protesters' were black or brown, we'd be calling them terrorists, and they'd already be dead," Rachel Goldin said in a comment to a report on OregonLive.com.

The seeds of protest of the militiamen were sown by a decade-long dispute between some westerners and the federal government over the use of public land. The issue traces back to the 1970s and the Sagebrush Rebellion, a movement that sought more local control over federal land in the American West.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. owned more than 81 percent of Nevada land in 2010. In Oregon, that number hovered right around half -- 53 percent of the state's land, or more than 30 million acres.

Some ranchers have strongly objected to the government's management of federal land, especially over issues of water or environmental conservation, and to the terms of their leases. But critics of the push for more local control have said the federal government should administer the public land for the widest possible uses. Endi