RMT Cuba Garden Party 2011

TUC Delegates Support Miami Five

Unite General Secretary, Len McCluskey

Nearly 200 TUC delegates attended a lively Latin America solidarity meeting on Monday to hear from speakers on Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Nicaragua and mark the 13th anniversary of the arrest of the Miami Five. Chairing the meeting, NUT General Secretary Christine Blower declared it was “probably the best supported fringe at conference”.

Len McCluskey, Unite General Secretary, started by paying tribute to the Cuban Che Guevara medical brigade in Nicaragua which – organised as a result of the ALBA agreement – has performed more than four million consultations since 2007. Len noted that “whilst the prospect for trade unionists in non-ALBA countries is bleak” Cuba is leading the way in providing “real and material benefits” to the dispossessed of Latin America.

Len told delegates about a “remarkable trade union rally” in defence of the Miami Five in Los Angeles recently which was addressed by Tony Woodley. British trade unions continue to raise the issue of the Five with American unions and, with legal avenues exhausted, only this “spirit of internationalism will break through the wall of silence”.

Cuban Ambassador, Esther Armenteros

Cuban Ambassador, Esther Armenteros, lamented the lack of coverage in the mainstream media of the 13th anniversary of the Miami Five’s arrest. Esther told attendees that the Miami Five “remain unjustly imprisoned for combating terrorism against our country and have been subjected to all sorts of humiliations”.

Esther reflected on a telephone conversation she had with Fernando González when she was working as a diplomat in South Africa. “After ten year in prison, Fernando’s voice was of such strength and conviction that, if I ever feel weak, I think of him”. The British trade union movement knows that it will take the same strength and conviction to bring justice to the Five. This, as Esther observed, will only be achieved by building international solidarity and taking the fight to the US.

Esther also drew attention to a recent Save the Children report which placed Cuba top in Latin America and 8th in the world for paediatrics and children’s medical care. The study was based on three fundamental variables: the number of doctors and nurses per thousand inhabitants, the coverage of the vaccination system and the proportion of women who gave birth with an obstetrician present. Cuba finished ahead of Germany, Russia, France, the UK and America. “How is this possible when we have been subjected to 50 years of economic blockade?” asked Esther. “The US has been stopping Cuba from buying drugs to help sick children – despite this, Cuba has come way ahead of the US”.

Venezuelan Ambassador, Samuel Moncada, hailed the trade union movement as the “most progressive section of British society”. Samuel reflected on the huge social strides made in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez declaring “excluding Cuba, we have the least unequal society in Latin America… and we are striving for the best public services after Cuba too”.

Before delegates mingled over Havana Club cocktails, Christine Blower thanked everyone for attending and Thompsons Solicitors for sponsoring the meeting. “Hope and change clearly is possible,” affirmed Christine as she urged everyone to get involved with CSC’s campaign to mark the 50th anniversary of the blockade which will be launched next month.

The mothers of the Five will join the annual Cuba Solidarity Campaign vigil for the Miami Five outside the US Embassy on 1st December and will be speaking at Latin America Conference 2011 on 3rd December. In Spring 2012, a prestigious exhibition featuring Cuban and British artists will include work by Gerardo and Antonio. For more information on these events and the Miami Five, please click here.

The Miami 5:Thirteen Years On

Tony Woodley with Gerardo Hernandez

The following article was written by Tony Woodley, former Unite General Secretary, for the Morning Star.

The international media has been full of stories marking the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks against the US this week, but you would need to search hard to find mention of the anniversary of the arrest of five Cuban counter-terrorists in Miami 13 years ago today or the fact that two of their wives have been denied visitation rights for 12 years.
 

On September 12 1998 the FBI arrested Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez who were trying to stop right-wing groups carrying out terrorist attacks against the Cuban people. Regular readers of this paper will know these names and the story of the Miami Five.

They travelled to Miami to infiltrate and monitor violent right-wing groups opposed to the Cuban government and responsible for the deaths of almost 3,500 Cubans over the last 50 years.

At the request of the US government they passed their findings to the FBI in 1998 but instead of arresting the terrorists the information was used to identify and arrest the five.

Held in solitary confinement, denied proper access to legal teams and tried in a hostile atmosphere which made it impossible to receive a fair trial, they received unprecedentedly harsh sentences ranging from 15 years to double life.

The arrest, trial and sentencing of the Miami Five has enraged legal opinion, NGOs and human rights campaigners from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to Amnesty International. On top of this their wives and families are denied regular family visitation rights. Furthermore, recent evidence revealed that the US government directly funded Miami-based journalists to the tune of $125,000 to broadcast prejudicial articles before and during the trial.

Although the Miami Five enjoy a great deal of support within the British union and international solidarity movement, due to a virtual media boycott their case is almost unknown within the US trade union movement.

Last month I was honoured to be involved in a historic meeting to help break this silence when I travelled to Los Angeles to visit one of the five, Gerardo Hernandez, who is serving two life sentences in Victorville Penitentiary.

On August 13, 200 workers, union leaders and activists came together at the invitation of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Los Angeles - the first time since the five's incarceration that a US union has organised a public meeting to inform their members and ask them to join the fight for justice.

It was great to be able to report this meeting to Gerardo the following day when I visited him at his maximum security prison in Victorville.

Despite 13 years held in this truly inhumane place, the man's spirit - like that of all the five and their families - is inspirational. Gerardo is well aware of the work of the British trade union movement and solidarity campaign for his cause, and sends his gratitude to everyone who fights for justice for the five. He also knows that despite waiting on the outcome of a final legal appeal, ultimately his freedom and that of his four comrades lies in the hands of the US government. This is why I have been working closely with US unions to lobby key stakeholders in the Obama administration.

Aside from the meeting in Los Angeles, British unions working together with the Cuba Solidarity Campaign have made notable breakthroughs in this case over the years, such as ours being the first country in the world to win MPs and unions to the cause.

Earlier this year WikiLeaks released cables that show our own PM raised the case with Hillary Clinton as a direct result of union pressure.

Amnesty International is now supporting the case because family members were given the possibility to explain the injustice to Amnesty face-to-face during numerous visits to Britain since 2005 at the invitation of CSC and British unions.

But increasing international solidarity is vital, and as the president of the Cuban parliament Ricardo Alarcon says: "The struggle must be multiplied until the US government is forced to put an end to this monstrous injustice and restore freedom to Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, Fernando and Rene."

Supporters of the five do not want to have to mark the September 12 arrest anniversary every year. We would rather be celebrating the anniversary of their freedom. Everyone can play a role in achieving this, whether as individuals or within our unions and the solidarity movement, and there are many upcoming opportunities to do so.

The mothers of the five will be at Unite sectoral conferences in November, joining the annual Cuba Solidarity vigil outside the US embassy on December 1 and at the Latin America 2011 conference on December 3.

In Spring 2012 a prestigious exhibition featuring Cuban and British artists will include work by Gerardo and Antonio, and later next year all four Miami Five wives will visit Liverpool for a major public meeting.

For more information on these and other events, actions and how to get involved see CSC’s Miami Five website

The Miami Five - 13 Years of Unjust Imprisonment

On this day 13 years ago, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González were arrested by the FBI in Miami while trying to stop right-wing groups carrying out terrorist attacks against the Cuban people. The five counter-terrorists – commonly known as the Miami Five – remain unfairly incarcerated within the US; their wives and family members are denied family visitation rights and they are often held in solitary confinement.

For over 50 years, right-wing exile groups within Miami have targeted Cuba killing nearly 3,500 people in terrorist attacks against the island. This has been done with the complicit support of the US government and the CIA.

To saves lives, Cuba sent five men to infiltrate and monitor these violent dissident groups. At the request of the American government, this information was passed to the FBI in 1998 but – instead of arresting the terrorists – the Bureau used the information to identify and arrest the Miami Five on 12 September 1998.

The Miami Five were sentenced to a total of 75 years imprisonment and remain interned within the US. Compare this to the terrorist and former CIA-operative Luis Posada Carriles who – although responsible for the blowing up of a Cuban airliner in 1973 which killed 73 people – remains at liberty in America.

The arrest, trial and sentencing of the Miami Five has enraged legal opinion, NGOs and human rights campaigners from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to Amnesty International.

In October 2010, Amnesty International released a report condemning the trial of the Miami Five and calling for a review of the case. Central to their criticism was the “underlying concern related to the fairness of holding the trial in Miami, given the pervasive hostility to the Cuban government in that area and media and other events before and during the trial . . . there was evidence to suggest that these factors made it impossible to ensure a wholly impartial jury”.

Amnesty raised serious concerns about the circumstances of the pre-trial detention of the five men which involved sporadic solitary confinement and limited access to attorneys and evidence. As the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared in May 2005, this “undermined the equal balance between the prosecution and the defence”.

Amnesty’s report followed a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals which, in August 2005, unanimously overturned the convictions of the Miami Five on the ground that “pervasive community prejudice in Miami against the Castro government merged with other factors to prejudice their right to a fair trial”. The decision was promptly quashed by the US government.

Furthermore, recent evidence obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act demonstrates that the American government directly funded Miami-based journalists to write and broadcast prejudicial articles and commentary before and during the trial. Despite overwhelming evidence, the Supreme Court has consistently refused to consider appeals on these grounds – even though similar cases have been granted a retrial.

Legal avenues in defence of the Miami Five have virtually been exhausted and only humanitarian intervention from President Barack Obama or the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can give justice to the five and their families. Public pressure to break the silence around this case is vital.

UK-based NGO the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the British trade union movement have been crucial in building the broadest possible alliance in support of family visitation rights and, ultimately, the release of the Miami Five.

Any potential solution lies with the American government and the British movement in support of the Miami Five has been working closely with US unions – including the United Service Workers, the United Steel Workers and the Teamsters – to lobby key stakeholders in the Obama administration.

In a recent meeting in support of the Miami Five in Los Angeles, former Unite the Union General Secretary Tony Woodley declared, “the Miami Five enjoy a great deal of support on the international level, but that is not the case inside the United States. Solidarity is absolutely crucial in this case and the political struggle will be decisive for the return of the Miami Five to Cuba”.

America’s duplicity with regard the Miami Five is laid bare by Cuba’s ongoing inclusion on the US State Department terror blacklist alongside Iran, Sudan and Syria. As the Cuban Foreign Ministry said recently, the US government “has absolutely no moral right to judge Cuba, which has an unblemished history in the fight against terrorism and has been consistently the victim of this scourge”. This allegation is vindicated by the grotesque treatment of the Miami Five and the inexplicable harbouring of Posada Carriles.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry accused the US of the “political manipulation” of the sensitive issue of terrorism and, similarly, the handling of the Miami Five must be seen as distinctly political.

The unjust treatment of the Miami Five typifies US foreign policy towards Cuba and – when contrasted to the United States’ promotion and funding of dissident groups in Cuba – highlights American hypocrisy. The freedom of the Miami Five will only be secured through collective political action across the broadest possible campaign. Until their release, the campaign will continue.

Tackling an economic crisis by public consultation

By Jenny Kassman

The expansion of the private sector in Cuba, contained in the island’s new legislation proposed by the National Assembly in September 2010 was finally ratified by the Assembly on 1 August this year.  However, in September, this proposed measure was greeted as a fait accompli with an outburst of joy and relief by the UK mainstream press.  “End of the road for communist Cuba? ONE MILLION jobs could go private in the most radical reforms since 1959 revolution,” declared James White in the Daily Mail (15 Sept. 2010).  “Thanks Fidel, but you’re 50 years too late,” gloated James Delingpole in the Telegraph, adding “It’s nice, obviously, that the cigar-smoking beardie has finally had the grace to acknowledge the error of his ways. But shouldn’t he have worked this out 50 years earlier, and spared the poor Cuban people a heap of communist misery?”   And not much more was said about the matter.

However, in its haste to tell the British public once more that socialism (or, in their words, ‘communism’) in Cuba was at the “end of the road”, the western media, as is so often the case, omitted to mention how these proposals would progress along the road to becoming actual legislation.  Neither had it mentioned that they had only acquired their initial form after a major input by the Cuban trade unions.  At the time, only about 30% of them had been ratified before the remaining 70% were presented to the country for consideration and amendment prior to their ratification. If the media had possessed the inclination to discover more about the subject, they would have had a very different story to report.

Che's Murderer and Operation Miracle

Che and Fidel

Mario Terán, a retired noncom notorious for having executed the legendary guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara on Oct. 9, 1967, at a little school in La Higuera in Bolivia, lived in the deepest anonymity in Santa Cruz. Steeped in indigence, he lived on his miserly pension as a former soldier and had lost his sight to cataracts that he had been unable to cure, for lack of resources.

In 2004, Cuban President Fidel Castro launched a broad humanitarian campaign throughout the continent, named Operation Miracle. Supported by Venezuela, it consists in operating – at no personal cost – on those low-income Latin Americans who suffer from cataracts and other eye diseases. In 30 months, about 600,000 people from 28 countries, including U.S. citizens, recovered their eyesight thanks to the altruism of the Cuban doctors. The avowed objective is to operate 6 million people by 2016.

The election of Evo Morales as President of the Republic of Bolivia in December 2005 and his willingness to establish social policies that will improve the wellbeing of some of the poorest people in the continent have allowed Bolivians to gain access to the humanitarian program launched by Cuba. About 110,000 Bolivians have regained their eyesight without paying a single penny.

Among them is Mario Terán, who was rid of his serious illness by the Cuban doctors. Pablo Ortiz, a Bolivian journalist who works for the newspaper El Deber of Santa Cruz, told the story: "Terán had cataract problems and was cured in Operation Miracle by Cuban doctors at absolutely no cost."

Then he gave more details: "The fellow is a perfect unknown. Nobody knows who he is. He is destitute and when he appeared at the hospital hosting Operation Miracle nobody recognized him; he was then operated. The story came from his own son, who came to the newspaper to express his gratitude in public... It happened last August [2006]."

Sometimes, history keeps some surprises in reserve. Thus, the murderer of Che was cured by doctors sent by Fidel Castro, the most faithful and intimate companion of "the heroic guerrilla." Terán owes his eyesight to the emissaries of health that follow the internationalist example of the man he killed.

According to the former CIA agent Félix Rodríguez, who participated in Che's capture, Terán volunteered to execute the rebel leader. Earlier, he had murdered in cold blood all the other prisoners. But his valor failed when he faced Che.

"When I entered the classroom, Che was seated on a bench. When he saw me, he said: 'You've come to kill me.' I felt inhibited and lowered my head without answering.

"Then he asked me: 'What did the others say?' I told him they had said nothing, and he commented: 'There were brave men!'

"I didn't dare to shoot. At that moment, I saw a big Che, very big, enormous. His eyes shone with intensity. I felt that he was overwhelming me and when he looked at me fixedly I felt woozy. I thought that, if he moved quickly, Che could take away my weapon.

"'Stay calm and aim carefully,' he told me. 'You are going to kill a man.'

"I took a step backward, toward the door, closed my eyes and fired the first burst... I regained my composure and fired the second burst, which struck him in an arm, a shoulder and the heart. He was already dead."

Che, despite the execrable media campaign designed to stain the image of one of the greatest revolutionaries of the 20th Century, remains "big, very big, enormous" and continues to shine "with intensity" thanks to the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Cuban doctors who, from the anonymity of their heroic action everywhere, continue to believe that another, less cruel world is possible.

Article by Salim Lamrani

Launch of CSC's Trade Union Newsletter

This week we launched our new Cuba Solidarity Campaign trade union newsletter Trade Unions for Cuba. Union affiliates and individual CSC members will be accustomed to receiving their quarterly copy of CubaSí magazine, but the new bulletin will concentrate on trade union news and campaigning actions. Trade Unions for Cuba will be published electronically approximately every three months and will satisfy the hunger for topical Cuba news between issues of CubaSí.

The newsletter aims to celebrate collaboration between CSC, British trade unions and trade unions in Cuba. It will bring up-to-date news on trade unionism in Cuba, report on CSC work with unions domestically, mobilise campaigns and promote events, brigades and tours.

The first issue includes a report on WikiLeaks revelations which show the success of the CSC and trade union campaign against the Hilton Hotels in 2007. British trade unions – including the GMB and Unison – played a crucial role in boycotting Hilton due to their refusal to accommodate Cuban guests and the WikiLeaks cables show that our campaign reached the highest levels of the U.S government. 

Unison young activists Lisa and Vikki with
Dennis Doody, UCATT rep on CSC EC



It also includes a report on CSC’s presence at trade union conferences this year and features a story of three young activists – Vikki Garratty, Lisa Scott and Geri Cowell – who took part in CSC’s May Day Brigade this year. According to Vikki, the Brigade was “one of the best experiences of my life” and the newsletter applauds the work the three campaigners have done supporting solidarity with Cuba and fundraising for CSC since their return. A big thanks to all those who contributed at Unison’s Young Members’ Weekend in Cardiff!

The core objective of the newsletter, however, is to enhance understanding of Cuba, promote campaigning work and increase union affiliations to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. The report on the visit of Tony Woodley – former Unite General Secretary – to a Miami 5 meeting in Los Angeles demonstrates that the British trade union movement has been crucial in the campaign to free the Miami 5 by securing the support of American unions such as the United Service Workers, the United Steel Workers and the Teamsters.

It is only through union support that this was possible and it is therefore imperative to build on the already fantastic relationship which CSC enjoys with the trade union movement. If your union branch or region isn’t already affiliated to the Campaign, we hope you will consider joining online or by emailing Dan Smith. Affiliation costs just £40 for a branch and £50 for a region.

A hi-res version of the newsletter can be viewed here. Please feel free to forward to colleagues or print-off and distribute around notice boards and offices. If you would like to receive future copies, please email CSC Campaigns Officer Dan Smith.