For forty five years and as part of their systematic policy of hostility and aggression, ten successive US Administrations have applied a cruel economic, financial and commercial blockade on Cuba, a blockade that has been intensified under the present Republican Administration of President George W. Bush. Up to now, it has caused economic damages that amount to $82,764 billion, a total figure that does not include more than $54 billion imputed to direct damage caused to Cuba’s economic and social objectives by acts of sabotage and terrorism stimulated and funded from the United States.
The policy of the US blockade – whose main objective is to destroy the Cuban Revolution and impose US colonial domination on the island, an ambition clearly stated in the so-called Bush’s Plan for the Annexation of Cuba — qualifies as an act of genocide and a violation of the principles of international law. And, as an evidence of the isolation of this criminal policy of the US Administration, the international community has expressed its increasing and aljost unanimous rejection of the US blockade by voting — for 14 consecutive years — in favour of the resolution that Cuba presents to the United Nations General Assembly to demand the end of the US blockade.
However, in addition to this act of interference, the US Government is also involved in the organization, support and funding of terrorist activities against Cuba and, as a consequence, the Cuban people have mourned the loss of more than 3,478 human lives.
One of the jost atrocious crimes committed against that nation was the mid-flight blowing-up of a Cuban civil aircraft in October 1976, a terrorist action that caused the death of all the 73 people on board. The mastermind behind that horrendous crime was the notorious terrorist and self-confessed criminal Luis Posada Carriles. Nowadays the Bush Administration refuses to extradite him to Venezuela, thus violating international as well as US laws.
And while it supports and protects this kind of terrorists, five courageous young Cubans: Antonio, Fernando, Gerardo, Ramón and René — who were risking their lives every day in the struggle against terrorism — were unjustly condemned to serve long sentences in prison as a result of a fraudulently rigged trial that was turned into a political vendetta against the Cuban Revolution.
The cause of the Cuban Five has brought about a growing movement of solidarity in the world and there are already thousands of voices that are demanding their immediate release and that the real terrorists, who are freely walking by Miami streets, to be brought to justice.
On May 27, 2005, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights declared that the imprisonment of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters is arbitrary and illegal and urged the US Government to release them. More recently, on August 9, the 11th Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals handed down the unanimous ruling of three of its judges revoking the sentences and annulling the rigged trial of the Cuban Five in Miami. Since they are innocent of the crimes they were accused, this would imply their immediate release.
However, while the Cuban Five are still kidnapped, harassed and punished in US maximum-security prisons, in the case of the notorious Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the US Government insists in obstructing the course of justice and does nothing to stop the unpunished terrorist actions of the Miami Cuban-American mafia.
The kidnapping of the Cuban Five and the US Government’s complicity with the notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles are an evidence of the immorality that characterizes the Government of George W. Bush, who is seeking to set himself as the leader of the international campaign against terrorism, a campaign that has been turned into a new crusade against the Third World peoples’ right to sovereignty and self-determination.
For all the above-mentioned reasons, we, the Communist and workers’ parties gathered here today, demand the immediate release of the five Cuban young heroes who have been kidnapped for seven years in US prisons, as well as the end of the genocidal US blockade imposed for 45 years on the heroic Cuban people.
Likewise, we express our deep rejection of all terrorist acts committed in every form and against any people in the world, including state terrorism like the one waged against the Cuban people, and also demand the extradition and trial of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Venezuela.
