The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

 
Cuban 5: ‘We continue to
resist until there is justice’
 
Below are excerpts of statements by René González and Gerardo Hernández in response to the June 15 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to hear their appeal. González and Hernández along with Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, and Fernando González are Cuban revolutionaries who have been unjustly locked up in U.S. prisons for nearly 11 years. Arrested in 1998, they were framed up and convicted in a 2001 federal trial in Miami on charges of “conspiracy to commit espionage,” not registering as foreign agents, and, in the case of Hernández, “conspiracy to commit murder.” The five were gathering information on counterrevolutionary Cuban American outfits that have carried out violent attacks on Cuba from south Florida with the complicity of the U.S. government. Also included here is an excerpt from Hernandez’s statement in September 2008 marking the 10th year of their imprisonment. The translation from the Spanish is by the Militant.

René González
Once again the judicial mask of the most hypocritical society that has ever existed falls, exposing the true face of U.S. imperialism and insulting the conscience of the world with a cynical message: Their own laws will not prevent them from securing the impunity of their own terrorists… .

We are five soldiers, proudly and consciously occupying our trench, who have decided to rise for something rather than to fall for nothing. We are a living mirror of the moral values of a people, in which the enemy, impotent and enraged, can see reflected its own lack of values, its spiritual poverty, its frail self-image, and all its evils. We are five Cuban revolutionaries whom the enemy will never subdue, an enemy that will live every day of its life with the humiliation of not understanding why.

For the peoples of the world, the shamelessness of this legal process is but the repetition of an old lesson: we confront an empire that will not stop before any crime if it believes it can get away with it. No ethical consideration or universal outcry will make it stop but the price imposed by resistance.

To the Cuban people, the real target of this act of vengeance, it becomes another reason to close ranks, to not believe in appearances, to always expect the worst from the aggressor, and to never cease in the building of a society where the hypocrisy, revanchism, indignity, deceit, and cowardice that have driven a trial like ours are far from being virtues, as they are in the neighboring empire.

That will be the only measure of justice worthy of all its victims.

Ever onward to victory!

Gerardo Hernández
Based on the experience we have had, I am not surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision. I have no confidence in the U.S. justice system. There are no longer any doubts that our case has been, from the beginning, a political case, because not only did we have the necessary legal arguments for the Court to review it, but we have the growing international support as reflected in the Amicus briefs presented to the Court on our behalf. I repeat what I said a year ago, on June 4, 2008, that as long as one person remains struggling on the outside, we will continue resisting until there is justice.

September 2008 message
Somebody recently mentioned that the Supreme Court now has the last word. I would say it has only the next-to-last word. In the case of the Five, it is you who have the last word: our brothers and sisters in Cuba, the United States, and around the world, who throughout these years have been our main source of encouragement.

We do not place our hopes on any court. Ten years are more than enough to have cured us of any naïveté. Our hope lies with you, who, through your sacrifices and swimming against the stream, have made possible the fact that today the injustice committed against the Five has become known on every continent….

We know right is on our side, but to win real justice we need a jury of millions of people throughout the world. We need you, the defenders of just causes, to make our truth be known.
 
 
Related articles:
Socialist conference extends support to Cuban Five
Toronto meeting discusses Cuban Revolution today  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home