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

HAVANA, Cuba, Sept 20 (acn) Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez participated on Sunday in an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the meeting between the leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro and US black civil rights activist Malcom X at the Theresa Hotel in New York.

Rodriguez arrived in New York to participate in various summits called by the United Nations and in the discussions of the 65th ordinary period of sessions of the UN General Assembly, Prensa Latina news agency reports.

The commemoration took place in a facility only a few meters from the building in which the Theresa Hotel was located in 1960.

Foreign Minister Rodriguez addressed a very attentive and appreciative audience, speaking about the solidarity between Cuba and African-Americans all these decades.

“Fifty years after Malcolm X met with Fidel Castro in New York in the midst of the Cold War, the Cuban people still rely on the support of African-Americans,” Cuba’s FM said.

Rodriguez said the Cuban delegation to the United Nations in 1960 received support from Malcolm X and other black leaders and forged a lasting bond between “Cuban revolutionaries and the African-American progressive people.”

The diplomat added that while the Cold War is long over, the threat of nuclear war still looms if Iran is attacked over its nuclear program.

“Today, the same firm voice of our historical leader is in front of an international call for peace, and cautioning about the risk that a military attack against Iran would have for the world, putting it on the brink of a nuclear war,” Rodriguez said to a cheering crowd.

The celebration included a panel comprised of Rosemari Mealy, author of the book `Fidel and Malcom X: Memories of a Meeting’; and William Sales, a professor of African Studies at the Seton Hall University.

Other speakers included Jane Franklin, author of the book `Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History’; veteran trade union militant Ashaki Binta; and Evelyn Erickson and Narciso Ortiz, two young Americans who graduated from Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine.

The Cuban supporters asked for help freeing five Cuban antiterrorists imprisoned in the United States since 1998 and they also remembered the legacy of the Rev. Lucius Walker, who died on September 7. He was the executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations (IFCO)-Pastors for Peace, an organization he led since its founding in 1967, and who directed a program to send Americans to study medicine in Cuba.

http://www.cubanews.ain.cu/2010/0920cuban-fm-participates-event-commemorate-fidel-malcom-x-new-york.htm

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

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?

Argentinean personalities have sent a letter to Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano demanding visas for two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands imprisoned in the United States for more than 11 years.

The letter, delivered early in the morning of February 16th to the US Embassy in Buenos Aires has the signatures of Nobel Peace recepient Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Estela de Carlotto President of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Nora Cortiñas Mother of Plaza de Mayo – Founder Line, writer and journalist Stella Calloni, Graciela Rosemblum President of the Human Rights Argentinean League, jurists Beinusz Szmukler and Carlos Zamorano, Fray Antonio Puigjané, Capuchino Priest, Sociologist Atilio Borón and Philosopher León Rozichtner. All signers are Argentinean members of the International Commission for the Right of Family Visits.

A copy of this document has been sent to several international human rights organizations.

The signers denounced the United States for violating the right of family visits and for denying visas to the wives of Gerardo Hernández, serving two life sentences and René González serving 15 years.

In the letter, which can be seen on several websites, those who signed asked: Where is justice and the sense of humanity in the US?

As it is publicly known, Gerardo and René are two of the Five Cuban Patriots imprisoned in the United States for monitoring criminal based in Miami.

The letter also denounced the fact that while the Five continue to serve unjust prison terms, on March 1st the international criminal Luis Posada Carriles will appear in a Court in El Paso, Texas for charges of lying to immigration authorities instead of facing justice for the numerous crimes he has committed.

SEND LETTERS, FAXES, E-MAILS
OR MAKE A PHONE CALL

On July 15, 2009 the US denied for the tenth time the visa application presented by Adriana Pérez

We ask you to please contact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking the following:

1) To immediately grant a HUMANITARIAN VISA to ADRIANA PEREZ to visit her husband GERARDO HERNÁNDEZ in prison and end the violation of the right of family visits.

2) To grant multiple visas to all family members of the Cuban Five so they can visit their imprisoned loved ones in the US.

To contact the US State Department:

US State Department
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520

Fax number: 1-202-647-2283
Phone number: 1-202-647-4000

In July, 2008 Olga Salanueva was classified as “permanently ineligible.” On December 18, 2009, she was denied humanitarian parole.

We ask you to contact Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking the following:

1) To immediately grant a HUMANITARIAN VISA to OLGA SALANUEVA to visit her husband RENE GONZALEZ in US prison.

To contact Homeland Security:

Janet Napolitano
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

Fax number: 1-202-282-8401
Phone number: 1- 202-282-8000
Comment line: 1- 202-282-8495

If possible please send copies of your letters to the United Nation Human Rights Council e-mail: InfoDesk@ohchr.org

Urgent Action e-mail urgent-action@ohchr.org
Complaint Procedures 1503 e-mail 1503@ohchr.org.