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Vol. 72/No. 20      May 19, 2008

 
New York activists plan working
conference on five Cubans in U.S. jails
 
BY EMILY PAUL  
NEW YORK—A regional conference on the Cuban Five is being organized here for June 13-14. It will plan activities for a fall campaign marking the 10th anniversary of the Cubans’ arrest.

Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino are serving from 15 years to a double life term. They were arrested in 1998 and convicted in a June 2001 frame-up trial of conspiracy to commit espionage, acting as unregistered foreign agents, and—in the case of Hernández—conspiracy to commit murder. The five had been gathering information on ultrarightist Cuban-American groups that have organized violent attacks on Cuba from U.S. territory with Washington’s complicity.

The conference will include workshops on how to broaden support for their release among religious, labor, academic, and cultural communities, as well as among students, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans. The conference will feature two plenary sessions to give an update on the case and to put forward a plan of action for the coming months. Activists in New York are proposing an East Coast demonstration on the 10th anniversary of their arrest as part of an international campaign in September and October to demand freedom for the five.

The conference will also discuss an ongoing campaign to win visas for the wives of Hernández and René González. The U.S. government has denied visas to Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva eight times, and the two have not been able to see their husbands since their 1998 arrest. In addition, an April visit by Guerrero’s mother and sister was cut short when officials put the U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, on lockdown after two inmates were killed by security guards. A similar incident occurred in January at the Beaumont, Texas, federal prison where Labañino is being held. His daughter, who was in Texas to visit him, was not allowed to see him due to the lockdown.

The New York conference is being sponsored by Casa de las Américas, Cuba Solidarity New York, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, New York City Jericho, New Jersey Cuba Solidarity, People’s Organization for Progress, Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5, ProLibertad Freedom Campaign, Socialist Workers Party, Iglesia San Romero, Venceremos Brigade, Workers World Party, and the Young Socialists.  
 
 
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