Vol. 78/No. 46      December 22, 2014

“We want to help lift the wall of silence imposed by the big media chains, especially in the Arab countries, and inform people about the case of the Five,” Wafica Ibrahim, national coordinator of the Lebanese Committee in Solidarity with the Cuban Five, told the Militant in a Dec. 9 phone interview. She described the response the committee has received to its stand at the Beirut International Arab Book Fair.

“We have books, flyers, and pamphlets,” she said. “We are promoting two new books in Arabic, Voices From Prison: The Cuban Five from Pathfinder Press and Empire of Terror by Alejandro Castro Espín. Two days ago we sold 15 copies of Voices From Prison and eight copies of Empire of Terror.”

“The stand has become a kind of tribune. People come to talk about Cuba and to ask where things are at with the Five,” Ibrahim said. Many people have heard about the case from coverage on the TV station Al Mayadeen. “Some students said they had made photocopies of Voices From Prison and handed them out. They’re coming back tomorrow to talk more,” she said.

Tens of thousands have visited the fair, “not just Lebanese, but people from other Arab countries as well,” she said.

Below is an article about the stand published Nov. 30 by the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina titled “Cuban Anti-Terrorist Struggle Comes to Beirut Book Fair.” Translation from Spanish is by the Militant.

Sweet Abyss, The Forbidden Heroes and The Arab Peoples as Seen by José Martí in Spanish, English and French, round out the display that also includes postcards demanding U.S. President Barack Obama free the Cuban antiterrorists.

Activists of the L4C5 will later mail the postcards to Obama, one of its members explained as young people came to the booth looking for posters of the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara and reproductions of Cuban flags.

“Cuba is winning so much support because it’s a symbol of revolutionary struggle, because its people are strongly committed to their land and to their patriotic values, and because they have known how to face great challenges,” said Ghassan Khalidi of EPLA. “We’d like to do more than share a booth — we’d like to go there and fight alongside them if necessary.”

The book by Castro Espín, promoted by All Prints Distributors and Publishers, is “an indictment of imperial ideology and the methods the oligarchy of global power uses against the interests of the peoples in order to attain their hegemonic goals,” explained Wafica Ibrahim.

Ibrahim, who translated the book to Arabic and is the national coordinator of L4C5, told Prensa Latina that the 266-page book is an effort to portray, from a military and economic perspective, the mentality of the U.S. rulers obsessed with national security.

Voices From Prison from Pathfinder Press includes accounts of the life in prison and the resistance of Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino who, along with Antonio Guerrero, René González, and Fernando González, were given lengthy sentences following a Miami trial plagued with arbitrary injustices.

René González and Fernando González are now free in Cuba after completing their entire unjust sentences.

The book fair, Lebanon’s largest literary event and one of the oldest in the Arab world, was inaugurated Nov. 28 by Prime Minister Tammam Salam at the International Exhibition and Entertainment Center in Beirut, where it will remain until Dec. 11.
 
 
Related articles:
Who are the Cuban Five?
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home