Normalize diplomatic relations with Havana!

U.S. out of Guantánamo!

Free the Cuban five!

We urge you to join with other opponents of the U.S. policy of aggression against Cuba in campaigning around these demands.

The recent announcement--"leaked" to the New York Times by well-placed officials--that the U.S. government may bar remittances by Cuban-Americans to relatives on the island and ban direct charter flights to Cuba is part of a menacing new escalation of Washington’s threats and provocations against the Cuban Revolution. The termination of all "people-to-people" licenses for U.S. residents to visit Cuba is also part of these attacks.

Another piece of this imperialist campaign has been the spate of hijackings of Cuban planes and boats to the United States since last August, prompted by the U.S. government’s practice of limiting visas to Cubans who want to emigrate, while automatically granting residence to any Cuban who manages to reach Florida’s shores by whatever means. This policy, codified in the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, coupled with U.S. officials’ failure to prosecute these hijackers, has given the green light to such armed acts of piracy, which endanger the lives of countless Cubans.

Washington is now using the arrest and conviction of 75 opponents of the Cuban Revolution on charges of aiding and abetting a hostile state power in its campaign to subvert Cuban sovereignty, as well as the execution of three armed hijackers (the facts on these developments are reported elsewhere in this issue), to portray the revolutionary government as a ruthless dictatorship in order to justify further attacks on the Cuban people.

This cynical campaign has nothing to do with concern for human rights, democracy, or freedom. It is being orchestrated by the main executioner and number one jailer in the world--Washington, an imperialist regime that just invaded and occupied Iraq to safeguard its plunder and secure its strategic bases in the Mideast.

The arrest, frame-up, and conviction on conspiracy charges of five Cuban revolutionaries working to protect their fellow countrymen from armed groups operating from U.S. soil is one more dramatic proof of the hypocrisy of U.S. concerns for "justice" and "humanity." The five are now serving draconian sentences of up to double life in U.S. prisons.

Washington’s use of its naval base in Guantánamo--Cuban territory occupied against the will of the Cuban people--to jail indefinitely, without charges or rights, hundreds of men accused of "terrorism," and to subject them to what can only be termed systematic torture, is the greatest provocation of all. The use of Cuban soil for this imperialist brutality would bring tears to the eyes and strength to the arms of Cuba’s national hero, José Martí, who gave his life in the struggle against the perpetration of such atrocities.

These hostile actions are of a piece with more than 40 years of the unrelenting attempts by U.S. imperialism to overthrow the Cuban Revolution--from bombings, sabotage, and assassinations, to the 1961 Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion, to a threatened nuclear holocaust in 1962, to a brutal economic war that continues to this day. Confronting the determination, consciousness, and preparedness of Cuba’s working people, all have failed.

Washington’s policies are not irrational. Nor has their fundamental character changed from one administration to the next, whether Democratic or Republican. By its example, Cuba represents a mortal danger to the property interests and prerogatives of U.S. ruling families. Cuba shows that working people--including in this country--are capable of forging a revolutionary leadership, taking political power out of the hands of the capitalist exploiters, and joining the worldwide struggle for a society based on human solidarity and the needs of the majority of the earth’s toilers, not the dog-eat-dog reality and morality of capitalism.

That is what Washington fears. That is what the people of Cuba and their government support. That is what we join them in defending.
 
 
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U.S. government threatens Cuba with new sanctions  
 
 
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