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Vol. 72/No. 23      June 9, 2008

 
Join effort to free Cuban Five!
(feature article/editorial)
 
In September the Cuban Five will have spent a decade in U.S. prisons. For 10 years they have been fighting for their release. Today there are greater numbers of people who, as they learn the facts, will be outraged at their frame-up, unfair trial, brutal treatment, and long sentences and will lend their names to the campaign to tell the U.S. government: Enough is enough! Free them now!

We urge you to build and participate in the June 14 regional conference in New York City to broaden support for this campaign. The conference will plan a stepped-up defense effort in the fall, including a petition campaign, campus and other speaking engagements, and a national demonstration.

Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, and René González are working-class fighters framed up by the U.S. government. Under the banner “An injury to one is an injury to all,” the labor movement has a long tradition of defending those like the five—from Sacco and Vanzetti to civil rights fighters to Puerto Rican patriots locked up in U.S. prisons today.

This case is part of the fight against the assaults on workers’ rights the U.S. employers and government have escalated over the past decade and a half. Thousands have been victimized by these attacks, from Troy Davis—a Black man in Georgia on death row for 16 years despite the recantation of trial witnesses—to Guantánamo inmates jailed “indefinitely” without charges, to meatpacking workers locked up on criminal charges of “identity theft.”

The Cuban Five are in the front ranks of those fighting these assaults. They have extended solidarity to union militants and other political prisoners, and circulate literature on working-class struggles among fellow inmates.

Washington has enacted laws that have expanded mandatory prison sentences, authorized “preventive detention” without bail on the basis of “secret evidence,” restricted appeal rights, and expanded the use of the death penalty. Prison lockdowns and solitary confinement have increasingly become the norm.

The five men were convicted based on evidence collected through secret, warrantless searches of their homes—a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable search and seizure.

The FBI burglars couldn’t dig up evidence to frame them up for any serious offense. So the government resorted to “conspiracy” charges, a notorious frame-up weapon wielded by bosses against militant workers.

Hernández, Guerrero, and Labañino are all serving life sentences for “conspiracy to commit espionage”—with no proof they possessed or delivered a single classified document.

Particularly outrageous is the accusation of “conspiracy to commit murder,” used to sentence Hernández to a double life term. He was charged for actions taken by a sovereign government—Cuba—in self-defense against incursions by planes flown by a right-wing group over its airspace in 1996.

The five have faced brutal conditions, including 17 months in solitary confinement before their trial.

Washington has refused visas to Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva, the wives of Gerardo Hernández and René González, respectively, to visit their husbands.

The New York conference will include workshops for youth and students, religious groups, civil liberties activists, unionists, community organizations, and others. In every local area, plans can be made now to build this conference and to launch activities this fall in a strong, renewed campaign for the release of the Cuban Five.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. diplomat in Cuba funneled money to counterrevolutionaries
Young socialists campaign to win release of Cuban 5
Free the Cuban Five Working Conference leaflet  
 
 
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