|
The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5 |
|
Cuban 5 News/Updates
Jan. 19, 2012 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba published the answer of that UN body to
a document sent by the Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations in Geneva, on the case of Gerardo Hernandez,
Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González. The response of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, reflects
the commitment to follow the situation of René, who was forced by U.S. authorities to spend three more years in the northern
nation under "supervised release" after being released a few months ago and despite his expressed desire to return to Cuba
with his family. Pillay affirmed that he would continue to insist personally with U.S. authorities
for the right of the wives of René González and Gerardo Hernández to be allowed to visit their husbands. More than a dozen Nobel prize laureates, various organizations, and a growing number of people on the planet demand that the United States
put an end to this injustice.
by Juan O. Tamayo Antonio Guerrero, serving a 22-year sentence on an espionage conspiracy charge,
wrote in an email to supporters that he arrived Jan. 11 at the Marianna federal prison after his transfer from the Florence
facility near Puebla in Colorado. He gave no reason for the transfer, but Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the National
Committee to Free the Cuban Five, said Guerrero asked for the change so that his mother could visit him more easily. Mirta Rodríguez, a Havana resident and about 70 years old, had to take three different
flights to Colorado during each of her previous trips to visit her son, La Riva added. The five Cuban spies have been kept in prisons far from South Florida, like those
in Colorado and California, in an apparent effort to avert possible prison confrontations with anti-Castro inmates. Marianna, about 65 miles west of Tallahassee, was the last prison stop for another
Wasp Network member, René González, who was freed October 8 after he completed his 13-year prison sentence. He remains on parole somewhere in the United States. Guerrero, whose sentence runs until 2017, stays in contact with supporters in Cuba
and elsewhere through e-mail. He has written scores of poems and essays in prison, and some of his paintings are on exhibit
this week at a gallery in Seattle. Cuba says the Wasp Network spies were in South Florida to monitor anti-Castro terrorists
and report on their plans. Evidence at their trial showed they also tried to infiltrate U.S. military installations in South
Florida. Guerrero, a maintenance worker at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West,
reported to Havana on the types and number of military aircraft that landed there, but had no access to classified materials. Other Wasp members tried to infiltrate the Pentagon’s Miami-based U.S. Southern
Command and reported on flights in and out of the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, which runs the war in Afghanistan. Also serving long prison sentences as part of the Wasp Network are Gerardo Hernández,
Fernando González and Ramón Labañino. Hernández is serving two life sentences for murder conspiracy, a charge stemming
from his role in providing Havana with information that helped Cuban warplanes shoot down two U.S. civilian airplanes in 1996,
killing all four South Florida men aboard. Antonio Guerrero art exhibit opens in Seattle Labor and community solidarity with Cuban Five by National Committee to Free the Cuban Five-Seattle
Welcoming the approximately 100 visitors, Community College President Paul Killpatrick
described how Guerrero first learned to paint in prison and is now Karen Strickland, president of Local 1789, recalled her visits to Cuba and the inspiration of the island nation's health and education systems. Rodolfo Franco, president of Washington Federation of State Employees, Local 304, said, “They say the truth will set you free. But for the Cuban Five, their truth imprisoned them,” in reference to how the U.S. imprisoned the Five after they revealed the truth about the extent of anti-Cuba terrorist organizing in Miami.
Betty Luke, of the Chinese Expulsion Remembrance Project, said that she spoke “with one foot in the social justice community and one foot in the art community.” She explained the work of the CERP, which is to commemorate the expulsion of the Chinese from Seattle in 1886. She also talked about her impression of Guerrero's art. She was particularly moved by the painting of his prison uniform shirt. Cindy Domingo, co-coordinator of the Women and Cuba Collaborative, showed a photo of a 2002 delegation to Cuba in which the delegates met with Guerreros's mother, Mirta Rodriquez. Jane Cutter of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five gave an update on the case and urged everyone to get involved in supporting the Five. She also presented Free the Five T-shirts to John Martinez of the AFT Local 1789 Human and Civil Rights Committee, who played a major role in bringing the exhibit to Seattle, and to gallery director Ken Matsudaira, who worked hard to prepare the exhibit. Other speakers included Judy Zeh, chairperson of the Seattle-Cuba Friendshipment Committee, and Lynne Dodson, executive secretary of the Washington State Labor Federation. The program was chaired by John Martinez. The event concluded with music by Los Flacos.
|
||
|
Contact the Project at: freethecuban5@gmail.com or call us at The Free the Cuban 5 Hotline 718-601-4751
|
Havana, Jan 19 (Prensa Latina) The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights will continue monitoring
closely the situation of the five antiterrorist Cuban fighters who are unfairly serving harsh sentences in the United States,
according to a letter released by the Foreign Ministry.
One of the five Cuban spies convicted as part of the “Wasp Network” requested a transfer to a medium-security
prison in northwestern Florida to make it easier for his mother to visit him, according to supporters.
“From my altitude,” a traveling exhibit of paintings by Antonio Guerrero, one of the five Cuban heroes, opened
at M. Rosetta Hunter Gallery at the Seattle Central 