The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.10           March 15, 1999 
 
 
Miami: No To U.S. Gov't Attack On Cuba's Right To Communicate  

BY BILL KALMAN
MIAMI - On February 25 a joint press conference organized by the Antonio Maceo Brigade (BAM), the Alliance of Workers of the Cuban Community (ATC), the cultural group Rescate Cultural Afrocubano, and the Miami Coalition against the Cuban Embargo was held here to protest the decision of U.S. District Judge James King to freeze some $19 million owed by five U.S. phone companies to Cuba. The judge's decision is yet another violation of Cuba's sovereign rights by Washington, the speakers argued.

The five carriers - AT&T, MCI, LDDS, IDB, and WILTEL - have withheld payments due since December 1998, pending a final decision by King on whether or not to confiscate the money they owe ETECSA, Cuba's phone company, for long-distance calls from the United States. ETECSA, which stands for Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., is a joint venture between the Cuban government and an Italian phone company. The seized money would go to relatives of three members of the counterrevolutionary "Brothers to the Rescue" group who were shot down while violating Cuban airspace in 1996. The relatives of these rightist terrorists were awarded $187 million in damages by the federal court in Miami in 1997, but have not been able to collect a penny from the Cuban government. King is to hear final arguments in the case this week.

With the U.S. threat of not paying ETECSA for calls that have already been placed for the last quarter of last year, the Cuban government had no choice but to shut down phone service from these carriers to the island. At 12:01 am on February 25 all direct dial circuits owned by the five phone companies were cut off. Two carriers, Sprint and TLDI from Puerto Rico, continue to provide service because they have been making payments despite the court case.

The Miami Herald reported on a statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry that "the Cuban government considers this a totally reasonable position." In fact, Cuba had been warning U.S. authorities for weeks that it would cut off phone links if this legal robbery occurred.

"We protest this move to prevent normal relations between Cuban emigrants in the U.S. and their families in Cuba," said BAM leader Andres Gomez at the press conference. "The decision by Judge King to freeze the money due to Cuba from the telephone companies is an attack against our fundamental right to communicate with our relatives."

`Brothers' provocation
King, who made the original ruling against the Republic of Cuba and the Cuban Air Force, has been intent on finding ways to collect on his judgment. February 24 marks the third anniversary of the Brothers to the Rescue provocation that resulted in the shootdown of two pirate aircraft. The big business press like the Miami Herald has tried to use the anniversary to continue its attacks on the Cuban revolution. A Herald editorial on February 23 states, "If phones go dead, it's Cuba's fault. Make it pay for shooting down innocent civilians."

Gomez answered these slanders, "Today, we continue to maintain that those who are responsible for the shooting down of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes over Cuban territory are those who organized that operation, participated in it, encouraged it, and permitted it to take place."

The U.S. State Department has opposed the relatives' attempts to garnish Cuban funds, arguing that this would damage the claims of U.S. property owners expropriated by the Cuban government in the 1960s. A 17-page brief filed by the Justice Department states that the U.S. trade embargo prohibits any financial dealings with Cuba, including garnishments. U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright argued, "It is one of those things where've had to balance the larger national interest against theirs [the relatives]." The U.S. government has only allowed U.S. phone companies to directly pay Cuba for direct-dial services since 1994.

The best answer to the slander that Havana was to blame for the deaths of the Brothers to the Rescue provocateurs was given in a speech by Cuban foreign minister Roberto Robaina to a special session of the United Nations general assembly on March 6, 1996. The speech was printed in the April 1, 1996, issue of the Militant.

After documenting the "long history of aggression" directed against Cuba by the U.S. rulers since 1959, Robaina takes up the incident of Feb. 24, 1996, in great detail. He explained that twice in the month before the shootdown, on January 9 and 13, Brothers to the Rescue pirate aircraft "dropped over the city of Havana tens of thousands of flyers...exhorting the population to carry out actions against the Cuban constitutional order." The Cuban leader continued, "We actually begged the US government to do all in its power to prevent those flights, which violated not only our laws, but also the laws of the United States."

Robaina declared, "My country has every right not to tolerate the impermissible. We exercise the same sovereign right of all states to defend the territorial integrity of our country, its sovereignty, and the peace of our citizens. "

Bill Kalman is a member of United Transportation Union Local 1138.

 
 
 
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