3/2003

TO PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS AND FRIENDLY PERSONALITIES

As it is known, five young Cubans are confined in different US maximum-security federal prisons. They are serving unjust sentences for purported crimes against the USA. In fact, they were fighting against the terrorism of the Miami Cuban-American mafia against our country.

In addition to the terrible conditions in which our comrades are, two of them and their relatives are suffering from an arbitrary situation: they are being deprived of their elementary right to meet each other. René Gonz?lez Sehwerert has been prevented from receiving the visit of his wife Olga Salanueva and his daughter Ivette. The last time he saw her, for just a few minutes, she was four months old and he was handcuffed to a chair. Now his daughter is five years old.

Olga Salanueva was deported to Cuba in October, 2000, because her husband René, full of dignity, refused twice the proposal of the District Attorney’s Office in South Florida to declare himself guilty of the charges he was being accused in exchange for not deporting his wife. Both René and his daughter Ivette are US citizens, but their status has been useless to make their rights be respected.

After many procedures and delays, Adriana Pérez O’Connor, got a visa to visit her husband Gerardo Hern?ndez Nordelo. However, upon her arrival at the Houston International Airport in Texas, on July 25, 2002, she was arbitrarily arrested, isolated, finger-printed and interrogated by the FBI as if she were a criminal. Eleven hours later she was forced to come back to Cuba, deprived of the possibility of visiting her husband.

These actions are flagrant violations of the constitutional norms of the USA themselves, of the principles and instruments of the United Nations and of sensitive human rights.

It is beyond doubt that preventing a person from communicating with his family, be it his wife or his children, without any hope to see them during 15 years of imprisonment or during his whole life in the case of life sentences, is a physical, moral and spiritual torture. In the case of René Gonz?lez’s youngest daughter, they are also violating the United Nations Declaration and Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In the face of such despicable facts, we call upon parties, organizations and friendly personalities to express their solidarity with René, Gerardo and their closest relatives and to send messages to the US Government, the United Nations Organization and specialized institutions in order for the most elementary human rights of these families to be respected.

June 16, 2003

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CUBA

USEFUL INFORMATION:

Gerardo Hern?ndez Nordelo - Unjustly sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years. He is in the US Prison of Lompoc in California.

René Gonz?lez Sehwerert - Unjustly sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. He is in the US Prison of McKean in South Carolina.