‘Freedom for René, Fernando, Gerardo, Antonio y Ramón!’

The following call was issued by the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) on March 1.

Five Cuban heroes remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States since 1998 for fighting against terrorism. Their excessive sentences were the result of a political trial in the city of Miami.

During their ten years of imprisonment, under cruel conditions, the U.S. government has systematically trampled on the rights of the Five and their families, violating the most elemental principles of international and U.S. law.

The families of our compañeros have been victims of unnecessary bureaucracy to travel to the United States, resulting in long waiting periods for completing all the requirements, including waiting for appointments, waiting to obtain and complete forms, waiting until the forms are analyzed, etc. It can take months, and even more than a year, until they are told either yes or no.

As a result, this practice translates into an average of one visit per year for the mothers or wives who have been able to travel. But in the case of Adriana and Olga, they have never been able to visit their husbands, Gerardo and René. This has been a deliberate strategy of the empire to punish the Five and try to break them.

During all these years, the Federation of Cuban Women has carried out a broad and ample international campaign on behalf of the Five and their families. We have worked towards raising awareness of the case amongst our friends around the world to encourage them to take actions to break the silence around the case in the United States.

The National Secretariat of the Federation of Cuban Women has decided to add up its efforts and actions in 2008, to support the initiative launched by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five to create the International Commission for the Right of Family Visits. This commission’s purpose is to organize actions to denounce the issue of family visits, including a call to the U.S. government to immediately grant humanitarian visas to Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva.

To that end we will offer all our international ties and we will intensify our actions within the United Nations and the human rights enforcement structures to which we have access due to our status as a non-governmental organization of advisory nature in the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

We call on all of our friends, including personalities, organizations and institutions, to join this call, which represents a strategic battle in our fight to obtain the justice that will ensure the return of the Five Heroes to their homeland.