Your help is needed to Free the Cuban 5

I and other lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans activists working with the New York Committee to Free the Cuban Five urge you to sign on to the call below and help circulate it widely. The Cuban Five are political prisoners held by the United States government for the “crime” of trying to stop U.S.-based terror attacks against Cuba. U.S. courts recently denied the ruling for a new trial. With this call we hope to re-invigorate outrage at the targeting and continued imprisonment of these political prisoners.

As Alice Walker said, “The story of the Cuban Five is one of courage, great sacrifice and love. It is a story for the ages. The treatment the (Five) have received is shameful; the silence around this treatment even more so. Where are the people with the courage to insist that prisoners not be subjected to torture?” (Letters of Love and Hope: The Story of the Cuban 5)

Within hours after the call for Rainbow Solidarity with the Cuban Five went out, hundreds of individuals and organizations that fight oppression based on sexuality, gender expression and sex signed on immediately and enthusiastically.

In addition, people of conscience across the United States and around the world of all nationalities, ages, sexes, genders and sexualities are adding their names, as well, to this call.

Together, in the spirit of genuine unity, we are all building a Rainbow of Solidarity for the Cuban Five that is spanning the globe.

Now we must reach hundreds of thousands more in order to exert the powerful pressure on the U.S. government to free the Five Once signed by many, we will send this call for a new trial and freedom for the 5 to the U.S. Attorney General.

Please take a moment to fill out this form to add your name to this important initiative.  And please circulate this call far and wide, encouraging all who care about justice to sign.

By the weekend of January 13-14 we hope to have the Rainbow Solidarity webpage up, in as many languages as possible, for online signers at www.freethefiveny.org. We will also post a sample petition with the call online so that you can download it for mass distribute. Please contact me if you can help translate this introduction and the call into other languages.

Working together, we can help free the
Cuban Five!
Leslie Feinberg

Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban 5

We, the undersigned, call for a new trial to free the Cuban 5–Fernando González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández and René González.

The five were convicted for trying to stop terrorist attacks. They were in this country to try to monitor and halt terrorist plots against Cuba by CIA-backed mercenary commandos training and operating out of the U.S. This is in spite of the hundreds of billions of our tax dollars that Washington pours into its phony “war on terror.”

The five were convicted on June 8, 2001, on charges that included “espionage conspiracy.” Yet no espionage evidence was ever introduced. The trial took place in Miami, a renowned bastion of right-wing Cubans.

The trial of the five was so politically charged and biased that in August 2005, a panel of three judges in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta cited a “perfect storm” of conditions that had made a fair trial impossible.

Yet the ruling for a new trial was later denied. In early 2005 the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the UN Commission on Human Rights ruled that the detention of the five political prisoners in the U.S. violates the International Convention on Civilian and Political Rights.

Despite growing support in the U.S. and around the world, the five remain imprisoned in far-flung U.S. maximum security penitentiaries, serving sentences ranging from 15 years to two consecutive life terms.

The Cuban people have the right to self-determination and sovereignty. The U.S. must stop targeting Cuba with its economic blockade, and CIA-trained, funded and armed attacks by mercenary “contra” armies operating on U.S. soil. These are all illegal act of wars. We call for a new trial and freedom for the Cuban 5!

Please take a moment to fill out this form to add your name to this important initiative.