Vol. 72/No. 22      June 2, 2008

The Cuban Five—Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, René González, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino—have been locked up in U.S. prisons since 1998, serving long sentences on false charges because of their actions in defense of Cuba.

The conference will be held at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. Activists are coming from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and other states.

The program includes seven workshops on how to broaden support for the defense campaign among students and youth; religious groups; labor; Black, Puerto Rican, and other community organizations; academics; artists, musicians, and writers; and civil libertarians and attorneys.

A morning plenary session will be addressed by Leonard Weinglass, part of the Cuban Five legal team, and by a representative of the Cuban mission to the United Nations. Workshops and plenary session discussions will focus on plans for action in the coming months.

One of the main campaigns is a stepped-up effort to win visas for Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva, who have been repeatedly denied entry by U.S. authorities to visit their husbands, Gerardo Hernández and René González. Proposals will also include an East Coast demonstration in September—the 10th anniversary of the arrest of the five—as well as a national conference.

Conference participants will also discuss how to take advantage of an array of speakers, literature, petitions, and documentary videos on the case.

Before their arrest, the five—two U.S. citizens and three Cuban immigrants—were gathering information on right-wing Cuban-American groups that have staged violent attacks against Cuba with Washington’s complicity. Arrested by the FBI on Sept. 13, 1998, they were denied bail and kept in solitary confinement for 17 months. The U.S. government falsely charged them with “conspiracy to commit espionage,” “conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent,” and—in the case of Hernández—“conspiracy to commit murder.” Although none of the main charges were proven, they were convicted and given sentences ranging from 15 years to a double life sentence.

The injustice against the five men strikes many who learn the facts of the case as being part of the broader pattern of U.S. government assaults on basic rights. Over the past decade and a half Washington has enacted laws that have expanded mandatory federal prison sentences, reduced protections against arbitrary search and seizure, authorized “preventive detention” without bail on the basis of “secret evidence,” limited the right of appeal, and expanded the use of the death penalty. Through their resistance in face of harsh prison conditions, the Cuban Five have been in the front ranks of those fighting these assaults.

Initial sponsors of the June 14 conference include Casa de las Américas, Cuba Solidarity New York, Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, People’s Organization for Progress, Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, ProLibertad, Socialist Workers Party, ANSWER, Venceremos Brigade, Workers World Party, Young Socialists, and San Romero Church.

For more information visit www.freethecuban5conference.com.  
 
 
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