Vol. 79/No. 35      October 5, 2015

Guerrero thanked those present for their efforts as part of the “jury of millions” that last December finally won the release of the three who remained in prison. The U.S. government tried “to break our physical well-being and moral integrity, but they were never able to achieve that in our more than 16 years of confinement,” he said. “We never wavered in our certainty that Fidel, Raúl and all our people together with the friends of Cuba around the world would tirelessly fight for our freedom.”

Guerrero’s participation marked the tone and deliberations of the Sept. 8-9 international gathering, which brought together some 220 delegates from 18 countries. The event, initiated by the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), was hosted by the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations, the umbrella group that includes the Vietnam-Cuba Friendship Association.

Besides Vietnam and Cuba, the largest delegations included those from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Japan, Philippines, and the Republic of Korea. This year’s conference had more participation from East Asian countries than the previous such gathering, held in 2012 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Others came from Australia, Cambodia, China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, New Zealand and Nepal. Conference organizers also welcomed solidarity delegations from outside the Asia-Pacific region, which this year came from South Africa and the United States.

International delegates remarked on how well-organized the conference was and on the hospitality offered by the Vietnamese hosts, from the professional translation at all sessions to the beauty of the evening cultural performances.

In her keynote address, ICAP President Kenia Serrano highlighted the victory won with the release of the Cuban Five and the establishment of U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations for the first time in 54 years. These steps, she noted, are part of the U.S. government’s recognition that its decades-long attempt to isolate and economically strangle Cuba had failed to achieve its goal. She emphasized that talks on normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations will be “a long process” and do not mean Washington has changed its goal of overthrowing Cuba’s socialist revolution.

“The U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade, which has caused more than $100 billion in human, economic and moral damage to the Cuban people, remains intact,” Serrano said. Today, however, she emphasized, supporters of the Cuban Revolution can build on the victories to broaden the fight to demand that Washington lift its blockade and return the illegally occupied Cuban territory at Guantánamo.

Solidarity between Cuba, Vietnam

Vu Xuan Hong, a member of Vietnam’s National Assembly and president of the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations, also spoke. Describing the ties of solidarity between the two countries and condemning the 55-year-long U.S. economic war against Cuba, Hong said, “Vietnam knows what a nation suffers as a result of war.”

Between 1945 and 1975, the imperialist powers — first Paris, then Washington, with help from the British, Australian, and New Zealand governments — waged a brutal war against the Vietnamese people, destroying large parts of the country’s cities, farmland, and forests. Vietnam’s 1975 victory in that war was a gigantic boost to working people and national liberation struggles worldwide.

Many Vietnamese, Hong said, will never forget the declaration by Fidel Castro, in the midst of the war, that “for Vietnam, Cuba is ready to shed its blood.”

The opening session was also addressed by Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, member of the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party, deputy chair of Vietnam’s National Assembly and president of the Vietnam-Cuba Friendship Association. At the close of the session, Serrano, who chaired the session, invited Mary-Alice Waters, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S. and president of Pathfinder Press, to the podium to present Ngan and Hong with copies of Absolved by Solidarity, a book of prison paintings by Antonio Guerrero. That book and others by and about the Cuban Five and the revolution of which they are the international face were available to conference delegates as part of a broader display of Pathfinder books. A stunning exhibit of Guerrero’s paintings of butterflies and birds native to Cuba was also on display.

During the conference, delegates reported on experiences in building solidarity with Cuba in their countries. Many referred to the campaign their organizations had been part of to free the five Cuban revolutionaries, who were imprisoned on frame-up “conspiracy” charges stemming from their work in defense of the Cuban Revolution.

Robert Corpuz, president of the Philippine-Cuban Friendship Society, said he graduated from medical school in Cuba in 2009. Coming from a family of modest means, “Cuba gave me an education I couldn’t afford in my own country.”

He pointed out that the Philippines and Cuba have many parallels in their history, including U.S. naval bases imposed on their territories, and explained that it took a massive struggle to force Washington to close the Subic Bay base in the Philippines in 1992.

“With the ever-deepening structural crisis of capitalism” in the Philippines and around the world, Corpuz said, “Cuba remains a prime example” for working people.

Rabindra Adhikari, coordinator of the Nepal Peace and Solidarity Council, cited the internationalist example of “Cuba’s volunteer medical team that was sent immediately after the earthquake” that ravaged that Himalayan nation in April, killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

Mitsuhiko Tsuruta, president of the Japan-Cuba Friendship Association, reported that in August his organization and others had hosted a visit to Japan by Fernando González, another of the five Cuban heroes. Among the activities González participated in were the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki marking the 70th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear holocaust unleashed against the populations of those cities.

Annalucia Vermunt, from Auckland, New Zealand, described the work of the Cuba Friendship Society and others in that country “to broaden the knowledge and understanding of the Cuban Revolution among working people and win more support.” Those activities, said Vermunt, who is a member of the Communist League, included a speaking tour by Serrano and exhibitions of Guerrero’s prison paintings, most recently at the coal-mining museum in the town of Blackball.

Fighting U.S. economic war on Cuba

Chris Matlhako, general secretary of the Friends of Cuba Society in South Africa (FOCUS), reported back to the plenary from the commission on organizing actions against the U.S. embargo. He also described the recent speaking tour by the Cuban Five in South Africa, Namibia and Angola, noting that “we owe a huge debt to the Cubans who made it possible for us to break through” and bring down the apartheid regime.

He was referring to the hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers in the 1970s and ’80s who helped defeat military invasions of newly independent Angola by the white supremacist regime in South Africa. Among them were three of the Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, and René González.

Mary-Alice Waters reported on behalf of the commission that discussed how Cuba solidarity forces can use the wide range of media — from press and books to social media — as part of the broader work to involve more people in getting out the truth about the Cuban Revolution.

Waters cited a remark by Guerrero when he spoke with a group of students in Havana earlier this year. “No battle waged by revolutionaries ends with something you once did,” he told the youth. “What matters is what you do each day.” Waters suggested that should be the motto conference participants take with them as they return home.

Serrano pointed to a range of coming events as examples of actions that can be organized to oppose the U.S. embargo, from the Sept. 16-18 “Days of Action” in Washington, D.C., to events around the October vote on the U.S. embargo of Cuba at the United Nations General Assembly.

Dayrelis Ojeda, from the Havana-based Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy, gave a presentation on Cuba’s economic situation and the measures the Cuban leadership is taking today to meet the challenges as they continue to strengthen the socialist foundations of the revolution.

In the discussion period, Serrano answered a question about foreign investment in Cuba. “We decide where and how foreign investments will be made,” she said. “Investors in Cuba must abide by our labor laws,” which are based on the working class holding state power.

Following the close of the conference, representatives of different national delegations were received by Truong Tan Sang, Vietnam’s president. Responding to his welcome, Serrano told Sang, “Cuba will never forget that during the depths of the Special Period” in the 1990s when Cuba lost the bulk of its foreign trade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese leadership led “a campaign asking every household in Vietnam to donate a cup of rice for the Cuban people.”

Sang expressed the strong support of the leadership of Vietnam’s state and ruling Communist Party for the Cuban government’s course of “updating its economic and social model,” and saluted the establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.

The conference concluded with the approval of a Hanoi Declaration, ratifying the participants’ commitment to continue spreading the truth about the Cuban Revolution and to demand “the immediate lifting of the inhuman blockade” and “the return to the Cuban people of their territory of Guantánamo Naval Base” by the U.S. government.

The next Asia-Pacific conference in solidarity with Cuba is planned for 2017, with the host to be announced.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home