Dear Sisters and Brothers:
On behalf of the revolutionary Government of Cuba and the Cuban people I salute the organizers and all participants at the May 20 Hands off Venezuela and Cuba rally.
We appreciate your solidarity in our struggle for independence and justice in the face or the imperialist aggression that our people have been resisting, heroically and successfully for over 47 year. In spite of the economic blockade our people has advanced dramatically in building a new and better society and cooperating closely with our brothers and sisters in Venezuela we are helping many others in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia to improve their lives. We strongly believe that free and universal health care and education, a decent job and housing are inalienable rights that belong to everybody including the millions deprived from those rights in the United States.
We urge all of you to join us in demanding an end to the criminal and hypocritical policy of the Bush administration that continue to promote terrorism against the Cuban people as illustrated by their protection of such cold blood killers like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles and maintain unjustly incarcerated Five Cuban heroes that were detained aljost 8 years ago precisely for their efforts against those very same terrorist groups that operate with impunity and with the official protection of the US authorities.
We call upon all of you to join in the international campaign against US sponsored terrorism from September 12 when the Cuban Five will have been deprived of their freedom for 8 years to October the 6th that will mark the 30th anniversary of the destruction of a Cubana civilian airplane and the assassination of all 73 persons on board. We should also commemorate next September 21 the 30th anniversary of the killing in Washington D.C. of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffit.
Orlando Bosch was involved in the plot to murder Letelier and Moffit as is clearly reflected in recently declassified U.S. official documents but Bosch has never been questioned by FBI, and is living in Miami still actively pursuing his criminal endeavors.
Luis Posada Carriles is a fugitive of the Venezuelan justice from which he escaped with the help of the Reagan-Bush White House twenty years ago. The U.S. Governmnet knows very well that he and Bosch masterminded the destruction of our airplane in 1976. The U.S. has an obligation to extradite Posada to Venezuela to continue his trial on that heinous crime or has the obligation to prosecute him in the U.S. for the same crime. There is no legal alternative according to international conventions against terrorism that were signed and ratified by the U.S. But Mr. Posada has been for more than a year under U.S. official protection and so far he has not been estradited or accused.
The detention of Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, Fernando and Rene was determined to be arbitrary and illegal by a unanimous decision of a five member panel of U.N. human rights experts. Their convictions were reversed also by a unanimous decision of three judges of the Atlanta Court of Appeals. Those decisions were announced in May 2005 and August 2005, but the Five Cubans are still in prison subjected to cruel and unusual treatment with severe violations of their human rights including the denial of visas to the wives of Gerardo and Rene that have not been permitted to enter the U.S. to visit them.
The Five Cubans must be liberated immediately. Posada Carriles and Bosch must be prosecuted and punished as confessed and very well documented terrorists.
The cynical "war on terrorism" of Bush has to be unmasked, denounced and defeated.
The aggression against the Iraqi people has to be stopped forthwith. The exploitation and discrimination against immigrant workers, the war on poor people, must end.
The threats against Venezuela and the interventionist attempts against other peoples in latin America have to be condemned and rejected.
Let’s fight together to build bridges of friendship, peace and cooperation between the peoples of the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean. Let’s struggle untied, shoulder to shoulder, towards a new and better world, a world of justice and freedom for all.
Long live the American people. Long live the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. In solidarity let’s fight together until victory forever.
Ricardo Alarcon
La Habana
May 20, 2006
