Freeing the Truth: International Colloquium for the Cuban 5

From:    "Political Prisoner News" <ppnews@freedomarchives.org>
Date:    Tue, December 1, 2009

Freeing the Truth: International Colloquium for the Cuban 5

http://www.antiterroristas.cu/index.php?tpl=./interface.en/design/reading/special-article.tpl.html&aNews_lang=en&aNews_obj_id=1002182

  Diana Block
  2009-12-01

   Less than 100 miles from Guantanamo , 200
delegates from 54 nations and all seven
continents converged in Holguín , Cuba between
November 19-23rd. The occasion was the Fifth
International Colloquium dedicated to five Cuban
political prisoners who have been held for eleven
years in prisons across the United States .  I
was one of the U.S. participants who gathered to
bear witness to decades of terrorism that have
been unleashed against the Cuban people by
organizations based a mere ninety miles away in
Miami .  We came together to accelerate the
struggle for the freedom of the Five – Fernando
Gonzáles, René Gonzáles, Antonio Guerrero,
Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino - at a
particularly strategic moment in the case.

            According to Ricardo Alarcón de
Quesada, president of the Cuban National
Assembly, who opened the plenary session of the
Colloquium, the reduction of Antonio Guerrero’s
sentence  on October 13, 2009 from life plus 10
years sentence to 21 years and 10 months, was a
result of the global movement in solidarity with
the Five.  This movement effectively complemented
work in the legal arena to force the U.S.
government to re-examine the excessive sentences
that had been given to three of the Five. In the
next period, the role of international solidarity
activity will become key to freeing the Five if
the legal tactics to win complete freedom for all five men are exhausted.

The global corporate media has imposed a nearly
total information blockade about the case.  When
they do write about the Five they work
hand-in-hand with the U.S. Government to invert
the truth and label them as spies.  In reality,
the Five were defending Cuba against the violent
attacks which had increased during the nineties.
They were gathering intelligence about Cuban
exile extremist groups in Miami , including the
Cuban American National Foundation (CANF),
Brothers to the Rescue, and Alpha 66 to prevent
further destruction and loss of life in a period
when Cuban tourism was targeted by these forces
who hoped to further isolate the island.  The
intelligence that the Five were able to collect
about their activities was shared with the U.S.
government, yet the U.S. failed to act against
those who had perpetrated the violence
and  ironically turned around and prosecuted the
Five.  These facts have been deliberately kept
from the American public and need to be widely
disseminated in order to build popular pressure
demanding their freedom.  Alarcón urged the
delegates not to ignore “any space that we can
utilize from denunciation to prayer” in order to defend the Five.

            While Alarcón’s presentation
provided an analytic framework for understanding
the aggressive activities launched against Cuba ,
family members who had been directly
impacted  gave testimony that enabled delegates
to understand the physical, psychological and
emotional damage these acts caused.  Giustino
DiCelmo, the father of an Italian tourist who was
killed in the 1997 bombing of the Copacabana
Hotel in Havana , painfully expressed what it
meant to lose a son in such a brutally random
manner.   Odalys Pérez Rodriguez is the daughter
of the pilot of Cubana flight 455 which exploded
while flying from Barbados to Jamaica in 1976,
killing all 73 people on board.  She spoke
angrily of Luis Posada Carriles, the CANF leader
who has boasted of his responsibility in the
bombing. The U.S. government refuses to prosecute
him and his cohorts so he continues to live in
freedom in Miami where he is able to continue his
activities against Cuba with impunity.  A group
of delegates also visited the small town of Boca
de Samá , meeting some of those who had resisted
an attack by the anti-Cuban group Alpha 66
(supported by the CIA) on October 12, 1971 in
which two people were killed and several others were injured.

            The strong presence of the mothers,
wives and daughters of the Five throughout the
Colloquium demonstrated the courage and
commitment of these women despite the fact that
their loved ones have been locked up far away in
U.S. prisons for so long.  Olga Salanueva, René’s
wife, and Adriana Pérez, Gerardo’s wife,
explained that the U.S. government has denied
their requests for visas on nine separate
occasions preventing them from visiting their
husbands.  An International Commission for the
Right of Family Visits, with members in 27
countries, has been established to expose the
illegality of the U.S. policy and to build
popular support for the inarguable right to family visits.

            One of the most moving aspects of
the Colloquium were the trips that delegates made
to surrounding communities – Gibara, Báguanos,
Rafael Freyre and Calixto Garcia.  In each town,
community members put together an educational and
cultural program followed by a culinary feast.
These local events showed the breadth and depth
of community support for the Five and their
families. They are recognized by young and old as
national heroes for defending the right of
Cubans’ to live in peace. Community members
expressed resounding appreciation for the
solidarity that the international delegates
offered.   They emphasized again and again that
they held the U.S. government responsible for the
terrorist activities of the extremist groups but
only felt friendship for the American people,
especially those who opposed their government’s policies regarding Cuba .

            At the final plenary, a unitary
declaration was released on behalf of all of the
participants which summarized the demands of the
Colloquium and laid out a plan of action to be
implemented over the next year.  An end to U.S.
logistical and financial support for anti-Cuban
terrorist organizations, the prosecution of Luis
Posada Carriles, and the right to family
visitation were included as key demands.  The
central demand - to free the Five - was directed
at President Barack Obama since he has the legal
and constitutional power to release them and a
moral, political, and judicial obligation to do
so given their innocence.  Their unconditional
release would clearly demonstrate a changed
direction for U.S.-Cuban relationships and open
up opportunities for friendship in Latin America
as a whole (see
<http://www.icap.cu/>www.icap.cu  for full text of the statement).

The Colloquium was very successful in mobilizing
the next stage of global solidarity with the
struggle to free the Five.  Delegates from Latin
America and Africa in particular emphasized their
belief that the incarceration of the Five was an
attack against all freedom loving people around
the world.  And the message for progressive
people within the United States was crystal
clear. It is time for us to insist unequivocally
that the U.S. end its 50-year economic and
military war against Cuba by ending the blockade and freeing the Five.

             On December 8th, Ramón Labañino and
Fernando Gonzáles will be appearing in a Miami
court for re-sentencing.  To get updates on the
case and become involved please go to
<http://www.thecuban5.org/>www.thecuban5.org.
For a full history of the Five see the
Counterpunch series by Ricardo Alarcón: The Untold Story of the Cuban Five.

Diana Block is a member of the International
Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five. She
is also on the Advisory Board of the California Coalition for Women
Prisoners.

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  Questions and comments may be sent to
claude@freedomarchives.org