November 5th for the Cuban 5, Peter Phillips Joins the International Campaign and Sends a Message to Obama

This month Peter Phillips joins the international campaign "The 5th of each month for the Cuban 5"  by sending a letter to President Obama asking for their freedom.

 Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at the Sonoma State University, California and President of the Media Freedom Foundation.     

Phillips was the Director of Project Censored from 1996 until 2010. Every year this project publishes a book with the top 25 stories most censured by the US corporate media. Project Censored is managed by the School of Social Sciences at the Sonoma State University and the students are responsible for the research and writing of the stories ignored by U.S. mean stream media. 

The book Censored 2008 included an extensive article written by then student Jeffrey Huling about the case of the Cuban 5 entitled "Corporate Media Bias and the Case of the Cuban Five".

Letter of Peter Phillips to President Obama

November 5th, 2012

Dear President Obama,

You have the presidential power to pardon and release five political prisoners held by Federal Bureau of Prisons in the United States. Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, and René González Sehwerert are being incarcerated by US authorities on false charges of general conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, and conspiracy to act as non-registered foreign agents. René González is an American citizen, and currently under restricted probation in Florida.

This is a case of which I am sure you are well aware.  Each of these individuals, known world-wide as the Cuban Five, were arrested in 1998 for working on behalf of the Cuban people against on-going terrorists groups based in Miami. Hundreds of bombings, assassinations, and external attacks have occurred since the 1959 revolution against the Cuban people. The Central Intelligence Agency in cooperation with right-wing Cuban extremists is clearly implicated in many of these attacks going back as far as the Kennedy administration.

It is time for the normalization of US-Cuba relations and the termination of attempts by the US government to undermine the Cuban government. Continued belligerence by you and the US government towards Cuba and these men is the wrong policy at this time in US history. You can move forward in the development of positive US-Cuba relations immediately after the US election November 6 by  pardoning the Cuban Five and moving to the lifting economic sanctions.

I hope you make the right decision.

Sincerely,

Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State University
President of Media Freedom Foundation

International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5