The Cuban Five are for the World
by Tom Whitney

Five Cuban men, in U.S. jails for six years, have gained support throughout the world because of the justice of their cause - defending Cuba against terrorism; the enormity of their sentences - life sentences for three of them; and hideous irregularities in their trial. Attention necessarily has been focused on their appeals and on easing their lives in jail and those of family members. But increasingly the men themselves are becoming the story.

Their supporters soon realized that they are exemplary human beings. Letters, poems, and other writings circulating on the Internet, and the book ‘Sweet Abyss" published last year in Cuba, demonstrate the extraordinary love, concern, and seriousness they bring to their roles as fathers and husbands.

Now their words and example – their teaching – are going out to a wider world. The prisoners have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and European solidarity groups are canvassing legislators, academicians, and past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize to support the nomination.

"To fight for the liberty of the five is a duty of all the forces that are against terrorism in any part of the world. It’s to struggle for the cause of many other prisoners that, like the five, are serving out unjust jail terms in U.S. prisons." Angela Davis was speaking in Germany January 15, on the 86th anniversary of the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg. She was there, joined by 1000 people, to accept an award for protecting human rights.

Antonio Guerrero, one of the prisoners, sent greetings. That his observations and analysis were read at the gathering goes along with an expanding role for the prisoners as teachers, or more precisely, as combatants in Cuba’s "battle of ideas." From a prison "lockdown" in Colorado he summarizes for listeners in Germany data from the UNESCO report "the State of the World’s Children 2005." 15 million children have been orphaned because of AIDS. Half of the 3.6 million war dead since 1990 have been children. 640 million children are poorly housed, if at all. More than 120 million don’t attend primary school. He quotes from the report: "’Poverty, war, and AIDS make life miserable for one billion children.’ " He asks why facts like these are relegated to the back page of the Economist, where he found them. In fact, he knows.

He blames wealthy nations for demanding debt repayments from poor countries, contributing almost nothing for aid, and wasting 900 billion dollars on arms. Through the Cuban Revolution, he, the child of working parents, could study civil engineering in the Soviet Union. One billion people today are illiterate. If they could read and write, they could understand humanity’s crisis. They could "unite to construct a system in which justice, peace, and solidarity reign…We possess transforming ideas like those of Rosa Luxemburg, and we say with total conviction ‘A better world is possible.’"

The European-Cuban Solidarity Conference, meeting November 20 in Luxemburg, took up the prisoners’ cause. Representatives of 21 nations called upon European nations " to increase pressure on the government of the United States to free the five Cuban political prisoners" and to respect families’ visiting rights. Fr. Geoff Bottoms, who was there, reports that a petition to the EU Human Rights Committee calling for the their freedom is being circulated throughout Europe. German solidarity groups have initiated a motion on their behalf in the European Parliament, and a campaign throughout Europe has started up to secure members’ support. Geoff Bottoms, who leads prisoner support efforts for the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the U.K., reports that European worker solidarity for Cuba and the five prisoners is strongest in Britain because of labor unity there.

Meanwhile, the wait is still on for the 11th District Court to hand down a decision on the prisoners’ appeals of their convictions and sentencing. And U.S. solidarity groups are continuing their campaign to press Congresspersons to intervene with the State Department so that Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva may visit their husbands in jail. Of special note are advertisements in behalf of the wives placed in major newspapers by the Seattle-Cuba Friendship Committee and paid for by donations from all over the country.