By Ana Margarita Gonzalez and Rafael Hojas Martinez
All we should do for the return of the Cuban Five has to be addressed to the American people. The efficiency in our job has to be better, because Gerardo cannot die in jail, and the Union can play a leading roll, said Irma Sehwerert in her address in the International Colloquium in Solidarity with the Cuban Five, organized by the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC).
She sadly remembered a recent meeting of the relatives of the Cuban Five with some American lawyers, but none of them knew about the case. “It is a demonstration of how far is the country from their reality. They did not know about the longest trail in the history of the U.S.A. It seems to be incredible. No matter the press tries not to inform about it, but jurists should have that information, to know what happens and that has to be with their job.”
The event took place in LABIOFARM Enterprise with the participation of union leaders from 12 countries that are in a course at Lazaro Peña School. Leaders from the CTC and the relatives of the Cuban Five participated in the morning report with them before the colloquium started.
Irma Sehwerert talked about the public defender assigned to Gerardo, and how scared he was when he first came to Cuba. He had to accept to be the court-appointed council of a called case of espionage, as the U.S. government has wrongly said since the beginning to nowadays.
“A week later, while he was talking at my son’s house, he confessed he felt embarrassed to be an American. After he carried out his investigations and knew Gerardo, that lawyer said: “I am not defending a man, I am defending a saint”.
Irma Sehwerert urged the foreign and Cuban union leaders to knock every day the doors of the White House: “to bomb” Obama with letters, cards, phone calls, because he can release them. He is the only one who can with just a firm, and the four heroes will be freed.
She also suggested meeting their American counterparts and American personalities to inform them on the case. She asked them use their publications, events, and all necessary means of communication. They can call them to make sittings in front of the U.S. embassies in their countries on the 5th every month and bring the case to light.
The Committee in Solidarity with the Freedom of the Cuban Five from LABIOFARM Group said the Cuban antiterrorists have contributed to form values in the inmates who are held in prison with them. They have taught illiterates how to read and write and they have even informed them on legal matters.
Representatives from Colombia, Brazil and Uruguay highlighted what they permanently do in their countries the 5th every month. They raised their voices to condemn the imprisonment of the Cuban antiterrorists and showed their commitment to be on the side of the Cuban Revolution, which is a leading light and paradigm for the peoples of the world, and mainly the Latin American countries.
Colombians and Uruguayans told that the cause of the Cuban Five is not alien to them, because they have been able to identify themselves and revive their past. Many of them had suffered the imprisonment of their parents, political prisoners, and victims of military dictatorships’ oppression in South American nations in the 1970s.
Raimundo Navarro, member of the National Secretariat of the CTC informed about the work carried out by the union in favor to the Cuban Five, mainly in international forums and meetings with their counterparts from different regions of the world.
“We shouldn’t be satisfied with what has been done so far, because they are still giving the best example of dignity and love for their Homeland in difficult conditions.
