The brutal treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and at the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba by the U.S. government and military shows what the imperialist rulers have in store for all working people, Koppel said. He encouraged those at the forum to campaign to get out the truth about this assault and to demand the immediate release of all those held by U.S. and allied forces.

Koppel, who is a leader of the Socialist Workers Party, pointed to the Mideast, where the Palestinian people in their hundreds of thousands are standing up in the face of savage Israeli military occupation and assaults. And in Cuba, a strengthening of the revolution can be seen in "a giant movement to expand culture and educational opportunities--something that is only possible because working people have made a socialist revolution in Cuba and hold state power," Koppel said.

The resistance to the employers' assaults by working people in the United States includes the Machinists strike at Lockheed and the Widows' Walk to Washington to demand the government guarantee federal benefits for widows and miners suffering from the disease.

"Last June, five Cuban revolutionaries were framed up and convicted in federal court in the United States on a series of conspiracy charges," Koppel said. These included conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign power, to commit espionage, and in one case, to commit murder. The five prisoners are Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González.

"The five were given draconian sentences from the federal judge ranging from 15 years in prison to a double life sentence," the socialist said. "But the real crime of these five men was carrying out a revolutionary mission to defend their country, Cuba. They were defending their revolution by gathering information on the activities of counterrevolutionary groups that operate on U.S. territory to launch violent attacks on Cuba. These groups have a long record of such activity and do so with complete knowledge and complicity by the U.S. government."

Koppel said the frame-up "is not only an attack on the Cuban Revolution, it is an attack on the rights of all working people in the United States. This includes the unconstitutional way the FBI carried out its so-called investigation of these men, the frame-up character of their trials, and the brutal prison conditions they are subjected to. What the five Cubans face will sound familiar to many working people throughout this country," he said.  
 
Internationalist mission
The mission the five undertook in the United States "is just like the internationalist combat missions that hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers have carried out over the past decades in Africa, in the Americas, and around the world," Koppel said. "Each of the five is from a generation born after the victory of the Cuban Revolution. So they're all in their late 30s, early 40s. Two were born in the United States--one in Chicago and one in Miami. They and their families returned to Cuba after the revolutionary victory as supporters of the revolution."

Koppel reviewed information about the life of Gerardo Hernández published in Juventud Rebelde, the newspaper of the Union of Young Communists in Cuba. Hernández was born in 1965 into a working-class family. In high school he became a leader of the high school students association and in the 11th grade joined the Union of Young Communists.

In 1989, together with thousands of volunteers from the island, Hernández joined the internationalist mission in Angola where Cuban forces were central to defending the country from invasion by the South African army under apartheid. As part of a tank brigade Hernández distinguished himself in 54 combat missions. He was stationed in Cabinda, an area of strategic importance because of oil wells located there.

"After completing his mission in 1990, he was awarded medals of honor for his courageous role in combat," Koppel said. "Three years later Hernández is admitted into the ranks of the Communist Party as a vanguard proletarian fighter nominated by his co-workers, like all those who join the Communist Party of Cuba.

"The other four Cubans who are in prison today have similar records as vanguard proletarian fighters," the socialist leader said. "Most were members and leaders of the Union of Young Communists when they were in high school and college. Fernando González and René González are also Angola veteran tank drivers. In all cases their families did not know that they were on a special mission when they moved to the United States," he said.

Koppel noted that after their arrest by federal authorities in 1998, the U.S. government tried to break the five revolutionaries, and continues to do so today. They were taken to FBI headquarters where agents attempted to get them to cooperate. They were threatened with maximum sentences and told they could get a new life and identity in exchange for cooperating with the U.S. government and testifying against others. All five refused and were locked up in federal prison in Miami where they spent 17 months in solitary confinement in what is known as "the hole."

"Life in 'the hole' is something that many people in Cuba are beginning to learn about by reading letters sent from the prisoners to their families," Koppel said. "It is giving more people in Cuba a glimpse into what the reality of life in the United States is for millions of working people thrown into prison."  
 
Part of a revolutionary tradition
"The actions of these five Cubans are part of a long revolutionary tradition in Cuba," Koppel said. "Revolutionaries who serve in Cuba's counterintelligence service combating counterrevolutionary organizations and efforts by the U.S. government to attack and overthrow their revolution are seen as heroes."

Two such combatants were Tony Santiago and Alberto Delgado, whom Koppel said he learned more about by reading From the Escambray to the Congo, by Víctor Dreke, a leader of the Cuban Revolution, and by talking with Dreke on a recent visit to Cuba.

"Tony Santiago was one of the first revolutionary guerrilla leaders Dreke met and he fought under Santiago's command," Koppel said. "After the triumph of the revolution, Santiago began to work for Cuban State Security. He later pretended to break with the revolution in order to infiltrate the CIA-backed forces. In January 1961 he was killed at sea when his boat was sunk by counterrevolutionary Cuban pirates who apparently did not know who he was. At that time, to give you an appreciation of the ability of these revolutionaries, Santiago was heading to Cuba where he was to take up a CIA-appointed post as overall head of the counterrevolutionary bands operating in the Escambray."

Alberto Delgado also took on a mission for Cuban state security after serving in the revolutionary armed forces. Today he is known as the Man of Maisinicú and his revolutionary activity is popularized in a well-known Cuban film by that name.

Delgado operated on a farm in the area of Maisinicú, which is near the southern central town of Trinidad in the Escambray region. He successfully became a key contact of the counterrevolutionary bands who would use his farm for their operations.

"In March 1964," Koppel said, "Delgado arranged to get a counterrevolutionary leader onto a boat that was supposedly going to take him back to the United States. This was at a time that the counterrevolutionaries began to be cornered by the revolutionary militias. So they decided to go back to their masters in the United States. But the supposedly 'American' boat that came to pick them up was manned by members of the Cuban armed forces," he said, "who were all in American uniforms. They spoke perfect English and served him American whiskey and food. Just when the counterrevolutionaries were getting themselves comfortable, the 'Americans' told them to go below deck for immunization shots in order to get through immigration. So they all go down the hatch where they are arrested by state security officials." Remaining counterrevolutionary leaders found out about the arrests and they lynched Alberto Delgado, he said.

"The U.S. government has a healthy respect for Cuba's counterintelligence operations," Koppel said, "although they will never understand how the Cubans are able to do it. That is because over and over again they underestimate the capacity of working people in Cuba to defeat them. In fact, the two counterintelligence services that Washington has never been able to beat are the Cubans and the Bolsheviks in the early years of the Russian Revolution. Memoirs of old CIA war horses complain about this fact. The Cubans are simply following the revolutionary traditions of the leaders of the Russian Revolution," Koppel said.  
 
Brutal conditions of U.S. prisoners
"The abusive treatment of the five imprisoned Cuban patriots," the socialist leader said, "is of a piece with the outrageous treatment by the U.S. government of 300 men jailed under barbaric conditions at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, which is territory held against the will of the Cuban people.

"Many of you have probably seen that famous picture of the prisoners in chain-link cages, exposed to the elements with their hands and feet bound and their eyes covered with blacked-out goggles," he said. "This, by the way, is not a tropical climate. It's the one area in Cuba that is desert-like in its climate and the sun really beats down.

A recent article in the New York Times described some of the brutal conditions the prisoners face at the hands of their U.S. captors. "The reporter mentions that some of the prisoners' are taken to interrogation huts in golf carts," Koppel said. "Why? Because the prisoners' leg shackles were rubbing the prisoners' ankles raw when they had to walk there. They're being rubbed down to the bone. And this is a government that claims to speak for civilization.

"The position of labor in this country," Koppel said, "has to be that these prisoners' basic rights and dignity must be protected no matter who they are. It is what the U.S. government is doing that is a crime," he said.

During World War II the SWP defended the up to 350,000 German prisoners of war in U.S. prison camps from abusive conditions and campaigned for their release and return to their country, Koppel noted. And in Europe during the war, "our comrades approached German soldiers with revolutionary literature in occupied France and Belgium, reaching out to them as fellow workers. These were the ones branded as the enemy. Jewish combatants, revolutionaries, risked death to leaflet German soldiers.

Similarly, the SWP defended the Soviet workers state from imperialist attack, but nonetheless condemned the Stalin government for sinking civilian German ships and refused to join the chauvinist anti-German chorus.

"Our starting point is that the number one enemy of humanity is imperialism," Koppel said. "What you see at work at the concentration camp in Guantánamo is not an aberration, but what they are seeking to make the norm. During the recent Afghan war we were in favor of the Taliban army smashing the imperialist troops," he added. "We were for the defeat of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan. That would have been a blow in favor of humanity," he said.  
 
A travesty of justice
The arrest, trial, and sentencing of the five Cuban revolutionaries was a travesty of justice and an attack on constitutional rights, Koppel said. The FBI agents repeatedly broke into their homes and raided their computer files before arresting them, violating Fourth Amendment protections against arbitrary search and seizure.

"When they arrested the five, U.S. officials charged them with spying and trying to obtain military secrets," Koppel said, "but the prosecution was not able to prove that any of them actually carried out a single illegal act. At the trial, no evidence of any military secrets being stolen from the United States was ever presented. All five testified at the trial that they were reporting on the activities of rightist groups with records of violent attacks on Cuba. Instead, the five were convicted of conspiracy charges, which is what the U.S. government does when they can't find any hard facts, despite a years-long investigation.

"These attacks are not an exceptional thing," Koppel said. "The treatment of these five in the U.S. judicial and police system is part of a broader war by the employer class in this country against workers' rights at home, including the efforts to try to expand the powers of the political police, which they're using this case to try to do.

It is the U.S. government and the superwealthy ruling families it represents that is the driving force behind the four-decade-long assault on Cuba, Koppel noted. This is because in the view of the U.S. rulers the Cuban Revolution is a dangerous example for working people all over the world, including in this country.

"The Cuban Revolution shows that it is possible for working people to make a revolution," Koppel said. "That it is possible to take power out of the hands of the exploiting minority and build a socialist society based on human solidarity together with people throughout the world."
 

René González, #58738-004, FCI Loretto, P.O. Box 1000, Loretto, Pennsylvania 15940;
Antonio Guerrero, #58741-004, U.S.P. Florence, P.O. Box 7500, Florence, Colorado 81226;
Gerardo Hernández, #58739-004, U.S. Penitentiary-Lompoc, 3901 Klein Blvd., Lompoc, California 93436;
(for Fernando González) write to: Ruben Campa, #58733-004, F.C.I. Oxford, P.O. Box 1000, Oxford, Wisconsin 53952-0505;
(for Ramón Labañino), write to: Luis Medina, #58734-004, U.S.P. Beaumont, P.O. Box 26035, Beaumont, Texas 77720-6035.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home