Meetings support five Cubans held in U.S.
Not spies but anti-terrorist heroes
By Bill Massey
Chicago
A broad-based campaign to release the five U.S.-held Cuban
political prisoners was kicked off on the weekend of March
15-17 with three impressive and well-attended meetings. In a
whirlwind tour, Florentino Batista of the Cuban Interests
Section and Gloria La Riva of the National Committee to Free
the Five spoke in Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit demanding the
freedom of Ramón Labañino, Fernando
González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández and
René González. The five were wrongfully convicted
and maliciously sentenced to long terms ranging from 15 years
to life.
Batista and La Riva showed how the five Cuban heroes had
sacrificed years away from their country, family and friends to
halt death-dealing attacks from U.S.-based terrorist groups.
Since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, terrorists based in Miami have
taken more than 3,000 Cuban lives with the knowledge and
complicity of U.S. government officials. Countless thousands of
others have been wounded and injured in these sustained and
well-planned violent attacks.
It was only after U.S. officials refused to act and showed
their support for the attacks that the five Cubans left their
country on the extremely dangerous mission of infiltrating
violent anti-Cuban organizations in the U.S. They were charged
with obtaining information that would prevent the further loss
of lives at the hands of the brutal murderers.
Florentino Batista said, "If anyone had known before the
Sept. 11th terrorist attacks in the United States, wouldn't we
have wanted them to warn of the impending disaster and to have
prevented the loss of so many lives? The people of the U.S. and
the world would have seen them as heroes. They would not have
been thrown into prison. Only the accomplices of such terrorism
would imprison them, and that is just what has happened to
Ramón, Fernando, Antonio, Gerardo and René."
La Riva announced legal appeals and the gathering of a
massive number of petitions to George Bush demanding their
release. The petitions cite injustice that is the stock in
trade shown to African American and other oppressed groups in
this country every day, and that is now being visited upon
thousands of immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and
many other parts of the world.
La Riva called upon the audiences to take petitions to
meetings, rallies and other gathering places. She called for
the formation of groups to gather petitions at the April 19
through 22 anti-war events in Washington, D.C., and at the
demonstrations in San Francisco.
Those wishing petitions can go to the web page
www.actionsf.org. For more information call (415) 821-6545 or
email freethefive@actionsf.org. At each meeting cards were
distributed and messages to the prisoners were written and
signed by those in attendance. Each prisoner will receive cards
from each of the meetings.
A broad range of progressive groups sponsored the three
meetings. The Milwaukee Coalition to Normalize Relations with
Cuba, the Justice for Cuba Coalition in Detroit and the Chicago
Chapter of the International Action Center were the initiating
organizations.
Local chapters of the Free the Five Committee are in
formation. Speakers participated from the Palestine Aid
Society, the African American Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
and Aaron Patterson, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, the
Angela Davis Copwatch and Campaign Against Racial Profiling,
the Greater Milwaukee Green Party, Voces de la Frontera and the
U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange.
Reprinted from the March 28, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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