Those men turn today 14 years of lockup, hence we have promoted this campaign of denunciation, Graciela Ramirez, coordinator of the International Committee to Free the Five, told reporters.

According to Ramirez, marches in front of U.S. embassies, exhibitions, concerts, presentations of books, documentaries, and political acts, are included of today’s activities.

Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez are currently serving harsh sentences for gathering information on violent plans against Cuba, forged by terrorist groups operating in U.S. soil.

Solidarity organizations in Spain will stage a rally today in Puerta del Sol Square, while associations and friendship networks with Cuba will march in front of the U.S. embassies in Portugal and Germany.

As part of those expressions of support, activities for the Five, as they are universally known, will be also held in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina , Bahamas, St. Lucia, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

According to Ramirez, solidarity groups in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Guinea Bissau, South Africa, Lebanon, and Ethiopia also join to this campaign of denunciation.

Meanwhile, activists also talked of activities in favor of those antiterrorists in the United States and Canada.

In remarks to Prensa Latina, Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Five, said that many activities will be held in San Francisco, Washington DC and other U.S. cities from today to the coming few days, demanding the return to Cuba of Gerardo, Rene, Ramon, Antonio, and Fernando.

Regarding Canada, solidarity groups held a vigil in front of the U.S. Consulate in Vancouver and a forum in the same city.

The video includes interviews with renowned international artists such as Danny Glover and Peter Coyote speaking about the injustice committed against the Cuban patriots, detained in Miami in September 1998.

Thousands of people in the United States and the world have seen the videos, and important websites such as Facebook and Twitter, where many supporters of the Cuban cause have joined the struggle, have re-posted those videos.

The International Committee stated in a press release that the organization continues to work in a series of community activities in Washington DC, New York and San Francisco, to denounce the 14 years of unjust prison of the Cuban antiterrorists.

Cuban emigrant organizations in Miami called yesterday for a conference to analyze the special appeal currently underway for four of the Cuban five sentenced in 2001 in the United States.

The meeting was suggested by the Marti Alliance, Antonio Maceo Brigade, Jose Marti Association, the Bolivarian Circle of Miami, and the Association of Christian Women in Defense of the Family, among other nongovernmental groups in solidarity with Cuba.

Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, internationally known as the Cuban Five, were detained in 1998 in this country for monitoring anti-Cuban terrorist organizations located in Florida.

Rene was released from prison on October 7, after having completed his prison term. He was forced to remain in U.S. territory for three more years under supervised release.

In a biased trial in the city of Miami in 2001, the Five were condemned to long sentences in prison ranging from 15 years to double life imprisonment plus 15 additional years.

Happy 53rd Anniversary of the Revolution, Brothers and Sisters! Every Year, Every Month…

…Every Day that we resist and continue to advance is a New Victory…

…in front of those who for more than a half century have tried to make us bend. Greetings!

Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo

Dear friends:

I wish to convey to all of you my most sincere appreciation for another year of company in solidarity with this struggle for truth and justice.

The year which will soon end is yet another year of significant efforts of all those, who in one way or another, contribute to the objective of making the freedom of the Cuban Five a reality.

We are aware of the activities and events that all of you organize everywhere in the world as part of the campaign for our freedom. To each one of you, in each place on the planet where you show the universal value of human solidarity, with the closing of the year 2011, receive my gratitude and my certainty that we will achieve victory.

May you have a happy and fruitful New Year, and that 2012 be another year of gains and victories for the causes that we defend.

Happy 2012!

¡Venceremos!

Fernando Gonzalez Llort

Dear sisters and brothers,

This year 2011 is reaching an end, and we want to take this special time to send you all our love, with warmness and the gratitude of the Five, for all that you give every day for the cause of Cuba; that is our cause.

You are our greatest virtue, our strength and the main reason we can maintain our optimism that someday the big miracle of our freedom will happen and we will all celebrate together in victory.

With those of you who have always been there along our side for these 13 years of unjust imprisonment, we are fulfilling the prophecy that all work of love overcomes the adversity and in the end that will prove to be the case.

We wish you happy holidays, a 2012 with peace, love, health and victories.

The love of the Five is with you every second of the year and of life!

On behalf of our five families, of the Cuban people, and from each one of us, we wish you

!!!!!!!HAPPY 2012!!!!!!!

Ramón Labañino

Dear friends,

The second half of December has started.  I decided to share with you this message that I have sent to many friends, answering their words of solidarity and encouragement.

Rene is free, but it is a freedom with many conditions; it is a freedom where he is in constant physical danger; it is a freedom without being able to have Olguita and his daughters next to him; it is a freedom without freedom.

Gerardo continues under the terrible conditions of a penitentiary, something I know very well. His strength remains high against the injustice of the double life sentence despite not being able to receive visits from Adriana.

Our Habeas Corpus process is reaching its end. Perhaps in the beginning of next year we will receive an answer. I am wondering what Judge Lenard’s response will be?.

It gives us great strength to hear about the participation of many friends from all over the world who attended the VII Colloquium for our freedom in Holguin. Once again the success of this yearly event shows that the struggle for our cause is growing.

These are some of the things that 2011 ends with, in the middle of a world that cannot take it anymore and is dying of pain. It is a world that is asking us to run to help it in order to save humanity from so much selfishness; a world that is taking us, as Fidel affirmed, “in a relentless pace, towards a definitive and total catastrophe”.

For me, the recent visit of my two sons has been the most wonderful thing that has happened to me in this 13 years of imprisonment.

With great thanks for your support, on behalf of the 5, I wish you a Happy New Year 2012!

Peace, health, happiness and success in your goals.

We are always optimistic, and reiterate: Venceremos!

Five embraces.

Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez

Dear friends:

As another end of the year approaches with all the festivities and the symbolism that for each of us, from its place on our diversity, hold these days, the family spirit is renovated and our best wishes point to the immediate future; projecting our aspirations, dreams, realities and affections.

For the five of us, separated from our families and from our people for more than 13 years, the recurrent wish of seeing at last this injustice repaired will be again our greatest hope. All of you, who have being with us throughout all these years on an endless struggle to accomplish something as simple as the application of the laws, have shown to be sensible enough so as to feel on your own flesh the laceration inflicted by the denial of such an elemental aspiration on both us and on our loved ones; by giving space on your hearts to this battle that for enduring would have already made many people give up. For that perseverance we thank you and reiterate to all of you the assurance of our eternal gratitude.

A very important year is coming. It is probably a decisive one, when the last legal skirmish of this long and tortuous process can be elucidated. Such as it has been admitted by the prosecutors themselves, the weight of the solidarity is of no small effect, and the knowledge that we still count on your efforts gives us encouragement and sustenance. We have no doubt that we all will continue together on this struggle until we can be victorious, and that it will be thanks to the actions of people like you that in the end the reunification of our families will be achieved.

It is because of that reciprocal link that the happiness of yours is also our happiness, that we share your projects, that we enjoy your successes and that together we all project the optimism and the perseverance that make us one. With that spirit of fraternity and shared feelings we wish you the best New Year and lots of success on every one of your aspirations, which are also ours.

Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2012.

With affection.

Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert

Musical meetings, exchanges with relatives of the Cuban Five, as they are universally known, and the launching of books are part of the activities.

On the occasion of Construction Workers´ Day, many workplaces, factories and workshops will receive examples of solidarity with the antiterrorists, the national trade union of that area stated.

On the fifth of each month, activists in several parts of the planet demand that the United States end what they describe as the injustice in the case of Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez, sentenced after infiltrating violent groups operating with impunity against Cuba from Miami.

Recently, in the eastern city of Holguin, 750 kilometers (466 miles) from Havana, more than 300 delegates from 50 countries agreed in a colloquium to increase actions to reveal the situation of the Five and demand of Washington their release and return to the island.

Among measures used is a greater use of social networks, to break the barrier of silence imposed by larger media in the case of the antiterrorists detained in 1998.

(Prensa Latina)

Photos: Bill Hackwell, with captions by Alicia Jrapko

Photo: Bill Hackwell

Today, October 16, was another beautiful day in this tour of the U.S. capital.

We had the enormous pleasure of visiting the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum where we had many moving experiences, among them the unforgettable Planetarium, the Apollo 10, and the first flight of the Wright brothers.

Afterwards, we visited the White House. There the children engaged in a spirited dialogue with Concepción Martín (“Connie”), a Spaniard with U.S. citizenship who has held a peaceful vigil in front of the White House since 1981!!! Thirty years, twenty-four hours a day in Lafayette Park, facing the White House, “suffering” as she told us, “prohibitions, cruelties and incidents, temperatures below freezing in winter and extremely elevated in summer, rain and snow. Why am I here? To make the people who visit the White House understand that we cannot live under the continual threat of global nuclear war that would mean the end of humanity. I am here for peace, because at the end of the day there’s nothing more important.”

Later the children went on to enjoy themselves, play and interact with friends from the Cuban solidarity movement, in a warm house in Maryland, and just when they were playing with their balls, bicycles, and were at the height of their games, once again there was a cry: “Guys! Tony Guerrero is calling…and it’s his birthday today!” We immediately passed the telephone around and quickly improvised a “Happy Birthday” chorus which turned into an infectious conga in the La Colmenita style, imitating Los Papines [a Cuban percussion group]. Afterwards we had a lovely conversation where the story was repeated about the group of children who dedicate themselves to lifting the spirits of those who suffer the unspeakable, and become re-energized with a stronger and more serene initiative than ever.

Tony told us that he’d spent his birthday with a visit from his family that had made him extremely happy and that “Imagine, now I’m talking with all of you…”

In an attempt to calm the moment down, Carolina Fernández began to sing a song to Tony that has become very popular among the members of La Colmenita whenever a beloved has a birthday, and she sang softly into the receiver the tender song “Besitos” [Little kisses], by our friend David Torrens. Our brother Tony was so moved that he said to Carolina: “You can’t imagine how I’ll sleep tonight after having received all these little kisses from all of you”…and later he told me very quietly: “This conversation with your kids is one of the gifts that I had kept for myself on this birthday.”

Carolina is the same girl who plays a leading role in one of the scenes from Abracadabra, when one night, after one of the first rehearsals while she is sleeping in Muma’s (the teacher in Abracadabra) house, in the middle of a power blackout, she says that she can’t sleep because of the heat and mosquitoes. After a long silence, Carolina, a child who at the time was only ten years old, asked quietly, “Muma, how will the Cuban Five sleep? …Will they be hot? Do their cells have windows?”

Days later when by chance that question reached Tony’s family, they sent a message to La Colmenita: Tell Carolina that Tony saw his first window in these twelve years… last May.”

This is one of the lines spoken by Carolina, playing María Silvia, in our Abracadabra.

La Colmenita in Washington. Photo: Bill Hackwell

La Colmenita in Washington. Photo: Bill Hackwell

La Colmenita in Washington. Photo: Bill Hackwell

"In the evening when we were at the house of a friend in solidarity, enjoying their friendship, a call came from Tony, who after talking with Tin and some of the children and with a bit more time left before lockup, told him that this was the birthday gift he'd wanted. Everyone sang Happy Birthday to him and a little bee, with all the sweetness in the world, sang "Besitos," disarming everyone. It was unforgettable." - Alicia Jrapko. Photo: Bill Hackwell

La Colmenita in Washington. Photo: Bill Hackwell

René González

Cuban anti-terrorist Rene Gonzalez, who is on probation in the United States, called to continue fighting for the release of his four fellow countrymen, who have been imprisoned in the United States since 1998.

Rene Gonzalez, along with Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Gerardo Hernandez were severely condemned for reporting terrorist plans against Cuba, which were forged by terrorist groups based in the state of Florida.

“The fact that I am now out of jail only means that a series of abuses run out, but we still have four brothers who need to be rescued,” Gonzalez said in a public letter.

Gonzalez thanked on behalf of his fellowe countrymen all the gestures of solidarity to their cause, expressed by children, workers, students and people in general.

According to Rene, he will continue fighting for justice on the Cuban Five, as they are internationally known, cause, so that the can return to Cuba.

On Oct 7, Rene was released on probation and the decision of a judge in Miami forces him to spend three years of “supervised release” in the United States after completing his sentence.

(Prensa Latina)

René González, one of the five men known as the Cuban Five, today will walk out of Federal Prison in Marianna, Florida. He will walk out with his head held high after more than 13 years in prison, having served his utterly unjust sentence with complete dignity. He has been a model prisoner, even while suffering the indignity of being inhumanely deprived visits from his wife for more than 11 years.

Unable to afford René even the small victory of his release, however, the U.S. government insists on punishing him and his family even more by requiring him to remain in Florida for the three years of his parole, even though René has no family in Florida and his life will be in danger from the very terrorist groups he helped to infiltrate.

That danger cannot be underestimated. Florida Congressperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was quoted in the Miami Herald on Monday calling René an “enemy of America” with “American blood on his hands.” These utterly false charges are a clear incitement to violence, and demonstrate all too clearly the necessity of allowing René to return immediately to Cuba.

The very fact that a man who the government called a “spy” and a “threat to national security” is required to remain in the United States, rather than being immediately deported, demonstrates quite clearly what the prosecution and persecution is all about. The government never thought for one minute that René and his brothers were “spies” or a “threat to national security”; if they did, they would be putting René on the first plane back to Cuba. Instead, the punishment meted out to René and his brothers was all about protecting the terrorists who serve the interests of the U.S. government by trying to destabilize the Cuban government and overturn the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba has suffered the scourge of terrorism not just since Sept. 11, 2001, but for more than 50 years. A scourge that over those years has killed at least 3,478 people, most of them Cuban but also many others including 11 Guyanese and five North Koreans killed in the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 and an Italian (Fabio di Celmo) killed in a hotel bombing in 1997. Thousands more have been seriously injured by the terrorists.

René and his brothers – Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramón Labañino – can be proud that they came to the United States, unarmed and risking their lives, to fight that scourge by infiltrating the right-wing terrorist groups based in Miami who were responsible for that terrorism, and exposing their ongoing plots. The U.S. government helped organize, finance, and direct the actions of those terrorist groups from the beginning, and protected them from the consequences of their actions. It continued that collaboration and protection by arresting René and the others, and continues that protection with the unjust punishment of René and the other four.

That same government continues to this day to resist Venezuela’s valid extradition request for the most notorious terrorist of them all, Luis Posada Carriles, responsible not only the 1976 plane bombing which took the lives of 73 people, but also for the torture of numerous Venezuelans when he was part of the secret police in that country.

If the U.S. government wants to continue to claim it is engaged in a “war on terror,” it can help back up that claim with some very simple actions. Allow René González to return to Cuba immediately, free the remaining members of the Cuban Five and allow them to return to Cuba as well, extradite Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela, and arrest the other known terrorists in Miami. Until those acts have been performed, any claims by the U.S. government of “fighting terrorism” will continue to ring hollow.

The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five has an online petition to President Obama to allow René González to return to Cuba, which has been signed by people across the United States and from around the world. We urge all people of conscience the world over to add their voices to this demand at: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-persecution-of-ren-gonzlez-let-him-return-to-cuba

It is supposed that Cuban antiterrorist Rene Gonzalez is released from prison on Oct. 7, and this fact will prove Obama’s real willingness, Alarcon told press.

Rene Gonzalez, as well as Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Gerardo Hernandez, was severely condemned for gathering information on anti-Castro actions organized in Florida.

“The least Obama can do is to send Rene to his home in Havana, and avoiding our every day question, whether he is with the terrorists or against terrorism,” said Alarcon by attending a vigil on occasion of the 35th anniversary of Barbados Crime at the Havana’s Jose Marti Anti-Imperialist Tribune’s Mount of Flags.

I hope that Rene Gonzalez’ release from prison is normal, with no incidents or provocations, the Cuban parliamentary leader said.

Most of people who participated in the vigil, held in front of the U.S. Interest Section (USINT) in Havana, “have not been born when on October 6, 1976, a Cubana de Aviacion airplane exploded in midair off the coast of Barbados, killing 73 people, Alarcon recalled.

Humanity should not forget this event, and one of the masterminds of this crime, Luis Posada Carriles, is walking freely in the United States. That northern country neither charged, not extradited him to Venezuela as it is required to do so, and nor tried as terrorist, Alarcon noted.

Orlando Bosch, who died this year and received all honors in Miami, said in front of cameras and microphones that he participated in that horrific crime, with prior knowledge of Washington, Alarcon said.

October 6 recalls us that after 35 years, the United States keeps on being guilty of international terrorism.

Members of the diplomatic staff accredited in Havana, youth leaders and students from different education centers attended the vigil.

(Prensa Latina)

A message from the Cuban Five on the execution of Troy Davis

By the Cuban Five

The Cuban Five, from left to right: Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, René González, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero

The message below was sent by Ramón Labañino on behalf of the Cuban Five. The Cuban Five are political prisoners in the United States, serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively after being falsely convicted of politically motivated criminal charges while monitoring the operations of anti-Cuba terrorist organizations in Miami. To learn more about the Cuban Five and the struggle to win their freedom, visit the website of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five at www.FreeTheFive.org.

Brothers and sisters:

We feel deeply the horrific execution of Troy Davis. It is another terrible injustice and stain on the history of this country. We join in the pain felt by his relatives, friends and brothers across the world. Now we have another cause, another flag, to pursue our struggle for a better world for all, free of the death penalty and barbarism.

In Troy’s honor, and all the innocents of the world, we must continue, united, until the final victory!

Our most heart-felt condolences!

Five fraternal embraces,

Antonio Guerrero
Fernando González
Gerardo Hernández
René González
Ramón Labañino