Vol. 74/No. 36      September 27, 2010

Theirs is a story of resistance to the assaults on workers’ rights and dignity carried out daily by the dictatorship of capital we live under. The brutality of these assaults comes through in two stories in this week’s Militant. One describes how cops shot and killed five workers in one week in the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, area. Another reports on the Chicago police unit known as the “Midnight Crew,” which tortured more than 100 people, mostly Black men, into giving false confessions.

The Cuban Five were arrested in Miami in 1998 after repeated FBI break-ins at their homes, theft of personal belongings, and wiretapping of their phone conversations. Their “crime” was monitoring the activities of right-wing Cuban-American groups that have carried out violent attacks on Cuba with Washington’s blessing.

While the U.S. government branded them as “spies,” the prosecution never introduced a single piece of evidence that they had obtained any classified information. The five were jailed without bail, then held in solitary confinement for 17 months before their trial. Olga Salanueva, the wife of René González, was arrested and deported in an effort to force him to “confess.” Both Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wife of Gerardo Hernández, have been denied visas ever since to visit their husbands.

At the 2001 trial of the Cuban Five the government introduced “evidence” the defense was not even allowed to see. The judge rejected a defense motion to move the trial out of Miami, where there is a history of government collusion with right-wing Cuban-Americans who seek to intimidate anyone who doesn’t share their opinions. At trial a prosecutor told jurors they would be abandoning their community if they failed to convict “the Cuban sp[ies] sent to … destroy the United States.”

Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino received life sentences and Hernández, convicted on additional frame-up charges of “conspiracy to commit murder,” got two life sentences plus 15 years. The international campaign against these outrageous sentences finally won reduction of the terms for Guerrero, Labañino, and Fernando González, but not for Hernández.

The Cuban Five continue to stand up to the government’s efforts to break them. They continue to speak out from jail against injustice and exploitation, setting an example for revolutionary fighters. Working people have a stake in getting out the facts about their case and joining the fight for their freedom.
 
 
Related articles:
Actions call for freedom for Cuban Five  
 
 
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