CALL FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE CUBAN FIVE
(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.
(Issued and adopted on November 10, 2007 at: "BREAKING THE SILENCE: Solidarity Conference for the Cuban Five," at Toronto, Canada, organized by the Canadian Network on Cuba, la Table de Concertation de Solidarité Québec-Cuba, and the National Network on Cuba (U.S.) and attended by hundreds of activists and prominent figures in the struggle for constitutional and human rights.)
We, participants in the two-day conference held in Toronto, Canada, "BREAKING THE SILENCE: Solidarity Conference for the Cuban Five" issue this call to all people of good will who want a world of peace and justice:
* To increase the momentum developed in countless movements around the world to free Gerardo Hernandez, René Gonzalez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez, five Cuban anti-terrorist political prisoners incarcerated in the United States since 1998, whose only crime was to work to prevent planned terrorists acts of Miami-based, anti-Cuba groups responsible for nearly 3500 deaths and thousands of injuries in Cuba since 1959.
* To join together in an immediate response and a "Week of Free the Five" actions whenever the decision of the Atlanta federal appellate court is reached.
* To support the formation of an international commission for the rights of family visits to help secure U.S. visas for Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva to visit their husbands who they have been prevented from seeing for nine years, and to issue timely visas to all family members. To distribute the "100 Women in Each City" petitions for women to sign demanding the right of family visits for Adriana and Olga.
* To demand the extradition to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles whose acts included the bombing of a Cubana civilian airliner that caused the death of all 73 people aboard in 1976.
* To call on the U.S. government to end its double standard on terrorism, to cease its plans to change the constitutional order of Cuba and to end the blockade.
* To pressure the Canadian government not to cooperate with U.S.-imposed "security" requests but rather to expand its bilateral relations and strengthen its independent foreign policy towards Cuba.
* To call for organizations all over the world to urge their elected officials (parliamentarians, mayors, etc.) to sign letters and petitions addressed to the U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Ambassadors and Ministers of Foreign Affairs to demand justice for the Five and their families.
* To join together in broadening the international campaign to free the Cuban Five, to incorporate more youth, to link with other social movements including movements in support of political prisoners, and to engage in more frequent actions to "break the silence" of the mass media on the rights of the Five and their families.