CubaMinrex. Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Message from five Cubans unfairly imprisoned in US jails for ten years

Mr. President,

It has been three years since the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of this body declared our imprisonment illegal and urged the United States government to take necessary steps to remedy the situation. By then, the mockery of the law and of the most elementary decency which this whole story represents was approaching its seventh year.

Solitary confinement, abuse of our children, manipulation of evidence, blackmailing of witnesses, an intimidated jury, an accomplice judge and a city that had been turned into a media circus had been left behind. All of this to protect terrorists whose threat motivated our presence in the US territory. As if this mockery were not enough, one of those terrorists, identified as such by the UN Rapporteur on the subject, even dared to sully these premises as a member of the official delegation of the United States.

Three years after that honourable statement was made, this mockery continues. Another pronouncement of the Court of Appeals, which is equally solid and honourable, has been buried under an accomplice tangle of shady procedures. The deadliest terrorists in the Western Hemisphere joined others who were already walking the streets of Miami freely and enjoying full protection. Our children are becoming teenagers and adults far from their fathers’ warmth. Two of our wives are still unable to visit us and one of them seems to have been condemned not to see her husband for the rest of her life.

One would say that this distinguished body, and through it the United Nations, are being subjected by the most agressive government in the world to a tolerance test.

How much disdain is allowed for brute force?

How much are we capable of yielding in terms of principles?

How much dignity do we accept to sacrifice to the law of the strongest?

How much cynicism does it take to revolve our consciousness?

While mankind faces the dilemma of fear and a certain concept of pragmatism that keep manifesting themselves as indifference and a passive acceptance of injustice, we, even though we are speaking from five US prisons, will not stop calling on the conscience of mankind to awake and rebel against such impunity.

Sincerely,

Gerardo, Fernando, Ramón, Antonio y René.

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