US Activists Support Freedom of Cuban Five

Washington, Feb 18 (Prensa Latina) With a call to support the campaign for the liberation of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters in prison in the US, mostly known in the world as the Cuban Five, US movement Occupy Wall Street supported the cause of the Cuban Five Friday.

Members of Occupy Oakland (California), one of the branches of OWS, a group spread to the whole US, convoked for Monday, February 20 to a National Occupation Day for the Cuban Five, close to the prison of San Quentin, north of the city of San Francisco, California.

The National Committee for the Release of the Cuban Five exhorted all the solidary people with the cause of the five anti-terrorist fighters to join the national protest, under the slogan "Free the Cuban Five and All Political Prisoners. End Massive Imprisonment. No to Death Penalty."

The convoking at the website of the organization said that for the national protest, they will count on a declaration by the Cuban Five themselves, to be distributed criminal massive imprisonment and support the campaign for the release of political prisoners.

Different reports confirmed that more than 2 million people are imprisoned in the US, many of whom are victims of maltreatment and torture, procedures that are condemned by the international legislations and the Human Rights Convention.

Also, death penalty is over the heads of many of these prisoners.

Washington has still political prisoners such as Leonard Peltier (36 years in prison), Mumia Abu-Jamal (30 years), Mutulu Shakur (26 years), Oscar Lopez Rivera (31 years), Ruchell Magee (41 years) and Lynne Stewart (10 years) behind bars.

The communiqué also said US soldier Bradley Manning, a man who permitted the filtering of US confidential documents in the website Wikileaks, is still confined since May 2010, and also four of the Cuban Five, with more than 13 years of prison, while the fifth should remain in supervised prison for another three years in Miami, Florida

There are hundreds of liberation committees and organizations which have showed their solidarity with the cause of Fernando Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and the situation of Rene Gonzalez under his supervised prison conditions.

These committees and organizations demanding the release of the Cuban Five are also opposed to the state terrorism policy kept by the US governments against Cuba.

Among the Nobel Prize winners supporting the cause, there are Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Desmond Tutu, Rigoberta Menchú, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Jose Saramago, Harold Pinter, Zhores Alfiorov, and Günter Grass.

PRENSA LATINA