The U.S. government’s action is a violation of elementary human rights for all five jailed Cuban revolutionaries and their relatives. But it is also an attack on the rights of all working people—on either side of prison walls.

Why is Washington doing this? The real “crime” of the Cuban Five was to defend their country in face of attacks that are part of the U.S. rulers’ 44-year-long campaign of aggression against the Cuban Revolution. The five were gathering information on the activities of rightist groups with a record of violent attacks on Cuba, operating on U.S. territory with Washington’s knowledge and complicity.

All five are examples of revolutionists who have devoted their lives to the worldwide fight for liberation from imperialist domination. Prior to taking on their mission in the United States, three of the five—including Hernández and González—served in Angola together with the 300,000 other Cuban volunteer combatants who battled shoulder-to-shoulder with Angolan freedom fighters and helped crush the invasion of that African country by the apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1970s and ’80s. The five have also set an example from behind prison walls, refusing to bend their knee to Uncle Sam. They have become part of the class struggle in the United States through political correspondence and circulation of literature among other inmates. At the same time, they have conducted themselves as “model prisoners,” as their attorneys have explained.

The repeated denial of visas to these relatives of the five—and their draconian sentences and harsh treatment in prison—is dramatic proof of the hypocrisy of Washington’s frequent claims that it stands for justice and humanity.

Another grotesque violation of human rights is the U.S. government’s use of its naval base in Guantánamo—Cuban territory occupied against the will of the Cuban people—to jail indefinitely, without charges or rights, hundreds of men accused of “terrorism” and to subject them to barbaric conditions including torture. Partisans of the campaign to free the Cuban Five, and all other democratic-minded individuals, should seize the moment of the recent Supreme Court decision to hear the cases of 16 of the Guantánamo detainees in order to demand that all of the more than 600 people held there be released immediately.

Exposing these manifestations of imperialist brutality is part of winning support for the fight to free the Cuban Five. Solidarity helped get them out of the “hole” earlier this year. Solidarity can ensure they can see their families too.

Grant visas to the relatives of the five Cuban militants! Free the Cuban Five!
 
 
Related article:
U.S. State Dep’t denies visas to wives of two of the Cuban Five, for fourth time  
 
 
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