July 26th – a message from the Cuba Five
Rene Gonzalez, one of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters imprisoned in the US has sent a message on behalf of his jailed comrades on the eve of the July 26 celebrations in Cuba.
July 26, 2008.
Dear friends and supporters:
By next September the 12th it will be 10 years since our arrests. Back then, by putting us in jail, the U.S. government materialized a conscious political decision: The full weight of their law enforcement agencies and their corrupt system of justice would be thrown in support of the terrorists and criminals we were monitoring in Miami .
No wonder our trial has been kept a well guarded secret from the American people. Moving away from every tradition of the mainstream media, nobody seems interested on entertaining the public with a lengthy espionage trial, or willing to take the opportunity to play the usual scare script, or to take this unique opening to warn about a threat to American national security, or to take advantage of the chance to practice the always profitable sport of slandering Communist Cuba.
As five dangerous Communist spies are given the combined sentences of four life terms plus seventy five years, nobody seems interested in learning what peril was the United States into, such as to warrant such punishment. The free press runs away from the courtrooms and the fourth power, as compliant as the other three, cancels interviews and suppresses the case from the news.
All of this shows the uphill battle we must face to convey the truth to the people of this country. It also shows the extraordinary human quality of those who have gotten themselves involved, and the depth of their commitment to justice.
We all still have a hard struggle ahead to bring awareness to the American people; it is a struggle that demands determination, initiative and lots of imagination.
From our five prison cells we want to express to all of you our gratitude for what have been already achieved, and our full trust on what remains to be done.
A big hug to all.
Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, Fernando and Rene