WPC, Solidarity and Freedom for the Cuban Five

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From: World Peace Council, Thursday, 11 November 2010

http://www.wpc-in.org/ , mailto:wpc@otenet.gr

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Solidarity and Freedom for the Cuban Five

The World Peace Council (WPC) is initiating a campaign in solidarity with the just cause of the liberation of the Cuban Five political prisoners who have been unjustly punished and are being held in US prisons.

We call upon all peace loving organizations and forces in the world to rally around the WPC campaign under the slogan: “Solidarity with Socialist Cuba-Free the Cuban Five” and carry out actions in support of their liberation.

More than twelve (12) years of injustice have passed for those Cuban Five, for their families, for their wives and their children in inalienable violation of their human rights, evidence of the imperialist double standards USA government’s policy fomenting state terrorism towards third countries and particularly against Cuba.

The USA Supreme Court’s shamelessness of rejecting the petition of the Cuban Five and particularly of Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, -condemned to two life imprisonments, plus 15 years which have been denounced as a violation by the Arbitrary Detentions’ Commission of Human Rights Council of the United Nations, shows what is the real political motivation: the US government’s policy towards the Cuban Revolution.

We call on you to reverse this difficult situation for these human lives- the US government has banned the visits by their wives and daughter to two of the prisoners- and confront the hostile media manipulation in the USA which has contributed to their unjust convictions.

We call upon you to exercise pressure on the US government through petitions and publications, events and protests demand from it the unconditional release of the Cuban Five. Their imprisonment constitutes, amongst other things, an act of political revenge of the USA towards Cuba and its Revolution, which we vehemently reject.

We call upon you to denounce the “Common Position” of the European Union by which it is flagrantly interfering in the Cuban domestic affairs and are complicit with the activities of the USA.

This WPC campaign will be also an opportunity to show to the world the achievements and sacrifices of the Cuban society, for more than 50 years under Blockade and the contribution of Cuba for the peoples in the world, including in the USA. It will be a service to the defense of truth and in solidarity with the struggling people of Cuba and its national sovereignty and independence.

Your solidarity contribution will be highly appreciated in your help to disseminate and to discuss this truth. This campaign will culminate in May 2011 with the holding of an International Conference in the Cuban Province Guantanamo, which will confront the US presence and abuse of the Military Base and its attached concentration camp.

Cuba is not alone!

Long live the anti-imperialist Solidarity!

Free the Cuban Five!

World Peace Council November 2010

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Solidaridad por la liberación de los Cinco Cubanos presos en los Estados Unidos

El Consejo Mundial por la Paz, está iniciando una campaña de solidaridad por la justa causa de la liberación de los Cinco presos políticos cubanos quienes han sido injustamente condenados y están en cárceles de los Estados Unidos.

Hacemos un llamado a todas las organizaciones y fuerzas de paz en todo el mundo, para que realicen una marcha bajo el auspicio del Consejo Mundial por la Paz con el eslogan “Solidaridad con la Cuba Socialista – Liberación de los Cinco Cubanos” y llevar a cabo acciones en apoyo a su liberación.

Han pasado 12 años de injusticia para esos Cinco Cubanos, para sus familias, paras sus esposas y para sus hijos en inalienable violación de sus derechos humanos, por evidenciar ante el mundo el doble rasero del gobierno de los Estados Unidos al fomentar el terrorismo de estado hacia terceros países y en particular hacia Cuba.

La desvergüenza de la Corte Suprema estadounidense de rechazar y escuchar la petición de los Cinco, en particular la de Gerardo Hernández Nordelo – condenado a dos cadenas perpetuas, mas 15 años ha sido denunciada por la Comisión de Detenciones Arbitrarias del Consejo de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas; pone al descubierto el motivo político del verdadero responsable: la política gobierno estadounidense hacia la Revolución Cubana.

Les convocamos para revertir esta difícil situación de estas vidas humanas a quien dos de ellos el gobierno de los Estados Unidos les prohíbe ser visitados por sus esposas e hija, víctimas de una hostil manipulación por la parte de los medios estadounidenses los que han contribuido a sus injustas condenas.

Hacemos un llamado a ejercer una presión sobre el gobierno de los Estados Unidos a través de las peticiones y publicaciones, eventos y protestas demandando la incondicional liberación de los Cinco cubanos. Su encarcelamiento constituye, entre otras cosas, un acto de venganza política del gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América hacia Cuba y su Revolución, lo cual nosotros vehementemente rechazamos.

Hacemos un llamado también, para denunciar la “Posición común” de la Unión Europea mediante la cual flagrantemente interfiere en los asuntos domésticos (internos) de Cuba en notoria complicidad con las actividades de los Estados Unidos.

Esta campaña del Consejo Mundial por la Paz, también será una oportunidad para mostrar al mundo los logros y sacrificios de la sociedad cubana, por más de 50 años bajo el Bloqueo y el asedio y exponer la contribución de Cuba para los pueblos del mundo, incluyendo el de los Estados Unidos de América. Será un servicio en defensa de la verdad y la solidaridad con la batalla que libra el pueblo de Cuba por su soberanía nacional e independencia.

Su contribución a la solidaridad será altamente apreciada en su ayuda para diseminar y difundir esta verdad. Esta campaña culminará en el 2011 en el mes de mayo con un Seminario Internacional en la Provincia cubana de Guantánamo, en la que confrontaremos la presencia norteamericana y el abuso de la Base Militar y su campamento de concentración anexado.

¡Cuba no está sola!

¡Viva la Solidaridad antiimperialista!

¡Libertad para los Cinco Cubanos !

Consejo Mundial por la Paz

Noviembre 2010

Check out this article from Amnesty International on the Cuban Five

http://mltoday.com/en/subject-areas/cuba/amnesty-international-report-the-case-of-the-cuban-five-984.html

Check out this link http://www.granma.cu/ingles/news-i/17sept-seanpenn-and-beniciodeltoro.html from Granma International

Here is a link to an article by Danny Glover about visiting one of the Cuban Five in prison in California.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/international-i/20-agosto-visiting.html

HAVANA, Cuba, July 28 (acn) Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon denounced on Wednesday the confinement in a punishment cell (the hole) Gerardo Hernandez, one of the five Cuban antiterrorists unfairly imprisoned in the United States, has once more been subjected to.

Hernandez was thrown again into the hole on July 21, and Cuba’s procedures to contact prison authorities and the State Department in order to clarify the situation have been unsuccessful, Alarcon told the press gathered at Havana’s Convention Center. He described this reality as very serious, since Gerardo is in a very small cell, of two meters long by one meter wide, which he shares with another prisoner and where ventilation is limited, since they breathe through a small hole located at the top of a wall.

The US government knows that Gerardo suffers from some ailments, for which he had been asking for medical examination since April. He was finally seen by a physician on July 20 and diagnosed problems requiring treatment.

Apparently, the ailment is caused by a bacterium that, according to the physician, is circulating among inmates, some of whom have become seriously ill, and we’re not sure if that’s Gerardo’s problem, since he hasn’t had any test and was taken to the hole the day after the consultation, he pointed out.

He added that he also has problems with his blood pressure, something understandable because, in spite of being only 45 years old, he has been imprisoned under harsh conditions for almost 12 years now, in spite of which he has stood firm.

The other four are Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino and Rene Gonzalez, arrested on September, 1998, and given excessive sentences for monitoring the activities of counterrevolutionary groups planning criminal actions against the Cuban Revolution and its leaders.

We’re concerned about his poor health –and above all the lack of specialized treatment-, all the worse for being in the hole, because temperature in his prison is over 35 degrees Celsius.

We denounce this very serious situation. We’re following the events, said Alarcon, and let’s hope they end right now or tomorrow. We’re doing all we can and we have contacted his lawyers, but if there’s no clarification on this problem, the National Assembly will have to issue a statement, he stressed.

Since we heard about this situation unofficially, we have been demanding the US authorities for a statement and we haven’t had an enlightening answer on what happened or why he has been punished, he said.

Recently, his sister Isabel saw him and corroborated his situation, because he showed up on a visit bound in chains hand and foot and they spoke by telephone through a glass wall, a condition imposed on punished prisoners, recalled Alarcon.

We have no explanation whatsoever and it’s obvious to us that Gerardo was summoned by various officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, who went to the prison and took part in his being thrown into the hole. Evidently is not an action carried out purely by the prison, he underlined.

The fact that this is the third time Gerardo is taken to the hole in moments of appealing procedures is curious, in this process of unfair imprisonment of our Five Heroes.

He should be working with his lawyers on the arguments for his habeas corpus, and the US government knows that, clarified the President of the Cuban Parliament.

At present, Gerardo is unable to have any contact with his lawyers, receive mail or speak by telephone. He’s completely isolated and, on top of that, considering his health, his integrity is put at risk, something the US government is entirely responsible for, he underlined.

Alarcon made these statements to representatives of the national press accredited to the 5th ordinary period of sessions of the National Assembly of the People’s Power (Parliament), the 12 working committees of which are meeting on Wednesday and Thursday.

By Arthur Shaw

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa criticized the unjust imprisonment of the Cuban Five, jailed for preventing terrorist attacks on Cuba from Miami, Florida.

Pres. Correa condemns the political imprisonment of the Cuban Five as an USA attack on human rights.

In his regular Saturday nationwide broadcast to the Ecuadorian people – this time from Pedro Maldonado in Pichincha province – Pres. Correa expressed his hope that this vile injustice in the USA against the Five will be reversed and the five anti-terrorist fighters and patriots returned their home in Cuba.

The Cuban Five are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González. They were arrested September 12, 1998 and railroaded in rigged trial in an rabid anti-Cuban Miami court in 2000. In May 2009, the GOP-infested US Supreme Court refused to overturn the Kangaroo convictions of the Cuban Five, upon the urging of the Barack Obama regime.

“During the changing of the presidential guard ceremony, we were accompanied by a special guest, Irma Schewerert, a Cuban woman and mother of one of the Cuban heroes, who have been imprisoned in the United States for more than 11 years now,” Ecuadorian Pres. Rafael Correa said. “In real terms, this is an attack on human rights and hopefully this situation will soon be reversed. These Cubans are political prisoners. Political, yes! These ones really are political prisoners.”

“The Five were accused of espionage when what they were doing was preventing acts of sabotage mounted by a particular section of the ultra-right Cuban community in Miami. And instead of being congratulated for it, they were subjected to a questionable trial,” Correa noted.

Correa studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a Master of Science in Economics in May 1999, and later a PhD in Economics in October 2001.

Throwing the heroic Cuban Five into the US gulag is consistent with hypocritical protection and immunity that the bourgeois regime in the USA conferred on Luiz Posada and Orlando Bosch, two terrorists fiends who blew up Cuban-owned commercial airliner in mid-air in 1976, slaughtering all 73 people on board. The bourgeois regime in the USA shamelessly pardoned Orlando Bosch after the 1976 massacre and declined to extradite Luis Posada to Venezuela, the country where two pro-US imperialist psychopaths masterminded the plot to destroy the airliner and slaughter its passengers and crew.

In July 12, 1998 published interview with NY Times reporter Ann Louise Bardach, headlined A Bombers Tale, Posada boasted openly about some of the people he murdered and other acts of terrorism committed AFTER the 1976 attack on the Cuban airliner.

Still, the bourgeois regime and most of the bourgeois media in the USA say the Cuban Five should stay in US prisons because the US is anti-terrorist.

The Cuban Five worked to prevent a repetition of the 1973 bombing of the Cuban airliner that slaughtered so many innocent people.

How is preventing another massacre an act of terrorism on the part of the Cuban Five?

Again, how is protecting terrorists who now reside comfortably in Miami anti-terrorist on the part of the US regime?

By Arthur Shaw

Ramon Labañino is one of the Cuban Five, a group of five political prisoners held in five separate US prisons. Labanino had his 47th birthday on June 9 but remained in an solitary confinement cell where he has been held since April 27.

Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is denied contact with any other persons, excluding members of prison staff. It is considered by some, especially prisoners, as a form of psychological torture. Solitary confinement is colloquially referred to in “American” as the ‘hole’, ‘lockdown’, or the ‘SHU’ (pronounced ‘shoe’).

Labañino is currently being held in a solitary confinement cell at the Kentucky maximum security penitentiary.

The change from prisoner population to solitary confinement resulted from being re-sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment by the Federal Court of Miami last December. The Miami court changes is sentences in accordance with the latest demands of the reactionary sector of the Cuban American community in Miami.

During a brief interview with Prensa Latina, the proletarian news agency in Cuba, Labañino’s wife Elizabeth Palmeiro explained that her husband is currently “being held in isolation just as he was for the first 17 months after his arrest in 1998.” This time “they have put him in the ‘hole’ claiming alleged security reasons, given that he cannot be together with the rest of the prison population in a maximum security prison if he is now only classified as a “medium security” prisoner.

As is widely known, lunacy prevails among the authorities who run the US gulag which contains over 2,000,000 immates.

The issue is, Elizabeth Palmeiro said, that while the US gulag authorities are deciding where Labañino is to be relocated as medium security rather than maximum security prisoner, “Ramón remains in the hole.”

The prison authorities who run the US gulag hope that this time the “hole” will break Labanino and turn him into an imperialist collaborator

Ramon Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández and René González … the Cuban Five … were arrested on September 12, 1998 in Miami and later subjected to a kangaroo political trial, tampered with by representatives of the reactionary sector of the Cuban American community in Miami. The kangaroo trial resulted in long, unjust, and excessive sentences for the railroaded Cuban Five.

The Five, as the world knows them, infiltrated anti-Cuban terrorist organizations in Florida and their crime was to expose terrorist plots hatched against the Cuba from the United States. Strangely, none of these “anti-Cuban terrorist organizations in Florida” were in 1998 or now on the list of terrorist organizations prepared by the US attorney general although these organizations had murdered over 3000 people in Cuba and destroyed millions of dollars of property.