Two Open Letters on the Cuban Five. Did They Help?
My Open Letter to the US Ambassador to Canada, with Cc to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, December 9, 2008:
“U.S. Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins
Ottawa, Canada
web1@ottawa.usembassy.govMr. Wilkins,
I am addressing this open letter to you as you are about to leave your post next month to be replaced by an appointee from the new Obama administration. I am also writing a cc to Barack Obama and his new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recently nominated and to be confirmed by the Senate later on.
More than 10 years ago, on September 12, 1998, five Cubans were unjustly arrested in Miami and sentenced to long prison terms in violation of American and international laws and norms. They are still in U.S. jails purging the following sentences:
Gerardo Hernández: 2 life terms plus 15 years
Fernando González: 19 years
Antonio Guerrero: 1 life term plus 10 years
Ramon Labañino: 1 life term plus 18 years
René González: 15 yearsIn fact, their only “crime” was to infiltrate Florida-based terrorist groups carrying out terrorist activities against Cuba and its people in order to inform the U.S. officials so that the latter take action to impede more such activities.
You were nominated as the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada and confirmed in the spring of 2005. During the course of your mandate, from the beginning to date, you were informed in many ways by Canadians and Québécois about the case. The basic demand was and is the immediate release of the Cuban Five. The plea also centered on the visitation rights for the families from Cuba who face one obstacle and humiliation after another. In fact two of the spouses, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wives of René González and Gerardo Hernández respectively, have not been granted a visa by your government during the entire period and therefore have not visited their husbands for more than 10 years.
During your mandate in Canada, the Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC) and the Table de Concertation de Solidarité Québec-Cuba through their respective affiliated organizations and committees have carried out many activities right in front of your consulates. For example, in Vancouver, monthly picket lines have been organized in Vancouver and this example was later followed in Montreal since May 2006 to date. Despite rain, sleet and snow, nothing stopped them. On many of these occasions and in other cities in Canada and Québec such as Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary and Québec City (just to name a few) pickets were combined with the handing in of petitions to your attention signed by thousands of ordinary citizens and personalities. However, you have never even recognized this or responded in any way to these demands.
On an even broader scale, on an initiative of the Table de Concertation and followed through by the CNC, earlier this year no less than 56 deputies elected to the Canadian parliament in Ottawa made a formal demand for the release of the Five and visitation rights. A cc was sent to you. You never responded. The Canadian Labour Congress, representing over 3 million workers also added their voice as did union centrals from Quebec. The Canadian Federation of Students, representing 500,000 students did likewise.
Your Vancouver consulate staff has surely noticed the huge billboards erected in the Vancouver area demanding the release of the Cuban Five. No response?
A special effort was made to have women sign a petition for the visitation rights of Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez. To provide you with one example, in Québec, 600 women petitioned you to allow for visitation rights. You never replied. Post-cards in English and French from citizens in Canada and Quebec have been sent to the Secretary of State responsible for Ambassadors such as yourself, demanding visitation rights.
Individuals have written open letters to you from many cities, for example Toronto, putting forwards the same demands. You did not react.
You are about to leave your post along with George W. Bush; the only conclusion we can come to is that your attitude is just one more example of the arrogant and insensitive policy of the current U.S. administration towards us here north of the border.
The rest of my letter is addressed to President-elect Barack Obama and the next Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mr. Obama, you have campaigned on the platform of change including a fresh foreign policy which supposedly takes into account other countries, their respective citizens rather than riding rough shod over them as your predecessor, and his administration has done. As far as Canada is concerned, there are surely many points where fences have to be mended. The case of the Cuban Five and respecting the demands of our citizens, elected officials and organizations is one of them. If you desire to draw a clear line of distinction between on the one hand the past administration’s arrogant attitude towards other countries and peoples, and on the other hand, your new White House to be sworn in on January 20th 2009, you cannot ignore, as Mr. Wilkins has condescendingly done, the petitions and demands of your neighbors to the north. What we have done here is just a small part of the world-wide movement in favor of the immediate release of the Cuban Five and visitation rights.
Your wife, Michelle, as a woman cannot stand on the sidelines as the visitation rights of two women are denied.
Mrs. Hillary Clinton, you had campaigned directly or indirectly during the primary season as possessing among other attributes, being a woman and thus best capable of defending the interests of women. Please immediately look into the issue of the visitation rights for Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez. It would also be very much appreciated by the millions of people around the globe including Nobel Prize winners, parliamentarians, U.N. bodies, human rights groups, etcetera if you take advantage of the briefing sessions with your counter-part C. Rice and look into this file concerning the release of Cuban Five and family visitation rights. Secretary of State Rice has received post cards, letters and petitions from your neighbors here and from all continents. Unfortunately, all of this has been put on the back-burner by the current Secretary of State and the Ambassadors from that State Department such as Mr. Wilkins who has haughtily refused to acknowledge and take action on this issue.
Regards,
Arnold August
Montreal
cc
Barack Obama
230 S. Dearborn St # 3900
Chicago, IL 60604 U.S.Hillary Clinton
780 Third Avenue
Suite 2601
New York, NY 100017”
In 2013 the International Committee asked me to write an open letter to President Obama as part of a monthly gesture on the part of writers and journalists such as myself as well as very important personalities such as Nobel Prize winners and world-famous authors. This was difficult to do, given my views on US imperialism including the Obama Administration. However, I did write it, taking as an example the Cuban Government’s tradition of diplomacy going back to January 1, 1959. I remember going to the post office with the letter to have it registered and mailed. The postal office clerk, who knows about me and my work, asked: “YOU are sending a letter to Obama?” Yes. Here is the letter:
“February, 2013
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500Dear President Obama,
I am writing today to request that you employ your constitutional presidential power to grant pardons to the Cuban Five and immediately send them back to their country and families. These prisoners are Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González.
Article 2, Section II of the Constitution provides you with the “Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” This article carries a humanitarian feature and exists in most countries of the world. One can say that it is virtually universal. Let us highlight a few positive examples that bring out the best of the American people. President Abraham Lincoln pardoned 264 of 303 members of the Dakota Indigenous people who defended themselves against settler expansion in the Sioux Uprising of 1862. More recently, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter in his first day of office granted unconditional pardons to hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded the draft during the U.S. war against Vietnam by fleeing the country or by failing to register for military duty.
There are also instances of leaders granting pardon in other countries. In 2010, Cuba released the prisoners tried and convicted of crimes against the security of the Cuban state. Many U.S. commentators suggested that this would result in “a thaw” in U.S.-Cuban relations. Despite this, there has been no gesture from you to date to pardon the five Cuban prisoners.
Furthermore, in December 2011, the Cuban government announced through Raúl Castro that the Council of State, over which he presides, “has agreed to pardon more than 2,900 prisoners. Not included in this pardon, with very few exceptions, are individuals convicted of crimes of espionage [and] terrorism.” One may respond by claiming that Cuba did not pardon most individuals for “crimes of espionage” and thus why should the U.S. free the Cuban Five? Yet, the U.S. government has never actually accused them of espionage, nor has it affirmed that real acts of espionage were carried out, as no classified document was confiscated from the Five. For this reason, they were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder, because actual espionage or murder could not be proven. In law, “conspiracy” facilitates a conviction compared to actual conspiracy; nonetheless, the sentences received were greatly disproportionate to any “conspiracy” conviction.
The Cuban government, compared to the U.S. government, even further “agreed to pardon” among the more than 2,900 prisoners “certain individuals convicted of crimes against the security of the state, who have completed a large portion of their prison terms with good behavior.” The Cuban Five, in contrast, were never convicted of crimes endangering the security of the state, as no proof could be found to this effect. The five Cuban prisoners are also known for their good behaviour in prison. Therefore, President Obama, I urge you to join the tradition of some of your own predecessors, such as Lincoln and Carter. This humanitarian policy is preferable to your most recent statement on this issue. On January 30, 2013 in an interview on Telemundo, you stated that “in order for us to see an actual normalization of the relations between the United States and Cuba, that we have to do something about all those political prisoners who are still there.” Clarification would be in order regarding “political prisoners” in Cuba; the facts suggest that the only “political prisoners” left in Cuba are those in Guantanamo prison.
In the U.S. Constitution’s Article 2, Section II, the President is vested with the powers to grant pardon, with the exception of “Cases of Impeachment.” Impeachment refers to people within the U.S. political system itself who have committed wrongdoings that merit accusations of impeachment. This is considered the worst offense and thus only those convicted of impeachment are exempt from any possible presidential pardon. Clearly, this “impeachment” exception does not apply to these five prisoners. Once again, I request that you pardon them.
Amendment 8 of the U.S. Constitution excludes the use of “cruel and unusual punishment.” In the case of Gerardo Hernández, for example, he has been sentenced to two consecutive prison life terms plus fifteen years for crimes he maintains that he did not commit and that the government could not prove. While at the same time, during all this period for over fourteen years since his arrest, the State Department has denied an entry visa to his wife Adriana Pérez to visit him. Is this is not an example of “cruel and unusual punishment”? In a similar manner, Olga Salanueva, the wife of René González, another of the Cuban Five, has also been denied an entry visa to visit her husband in the U.S.
Therefore, I am asking you to enforce the relevant portions of the U.S. Constitution that can be characterized as being humanitarian. I implore you to sit down with the Cuban government and work out a humanitarian solution to this problem of prisoners so that the normalization of relations between the two countries can be established and flourish. A compassionate outlook is a hallmark of democracy. Cuba has already exhibited this twice in the case of prisoners. In addition, let us not forget Alan Gross, held in a Cuban prison, who appears to have been abandoned by your government.
It is time to turn the situation around. The decisions by Lincoln and Carter to pardon may not have been popular with everyone in the U.S. at the time, but these stands have gone down in history as being positive examples.
Thank you in advance for considering my appeal.
Sincerely,
Arnold August
Montreal”
Did these letters help? I would not be so arrogant as to declare that they contributed to the freedom of the Cuban Five. My view on 17D and the victorious release of the remaining three Los Cinco prisoners is not held by all people who have been involved in the struggle.
This is my own personal view and not of any organization. Alan Gross was quite ill in 2014 and even threatened to commit suicide. His wife was very vociferous and was publicly complaining that Obama was not doing enough to release her husband. An Editorial in the New York Times (NYT) and other US influential newspapers also added their voice to the clamor. The NYT, as part of a series of positive Editorial Board statements on Cuba-US Relations, was also calling for the release of the remaining Cuban Five as part of a prisoner swap involving Alan Gross. The last thing that Obama wanted to do was to have Alan Gross die in a Cuban prison - during his term. This would have been devastating for his legacy. The only solution to get Gross out of prison was to exchange him for the remaining Cuban Five, a demand of the Cuban government. The latter had for a long time been stating that a humanitarian gesture on both sides would solve the problem. This exchange was a necessary and inevitable pre-condition for re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, one of the banners that Obama wanted to emblazon on his legacy as a trophy. The fact that he is planning to go to Cuba in 2016, just announced this week, but on his own conditions, indicates the importance that he attaches to this political and diplomatic effort.
However, these letters and similar ones, did help on a very important front. Soon after I wrote the February 2013 letter, it was made public, published in Cuba and of course sent to the Cuba Five scattered in prisons all over the US and to their families in Cuba. I remember having travelled to Havana soon after its publication in February to attend the International Book Fair in Havana. By coincidence, I bumped into some Cuban Five family members whom I know. The formality of greetings was barely over when they all mentioned to me that my letter to Obama was exceptionally good and encouraging. When I got home, there were letters waiting for me from the Cuban Five who were also buoyed by the letter. Thus, this brings me to the point that these activities by me and thousands others contributed to the spirit, optimism and heroic resistance of Los Cinco until they were eventually all released.
However, this is only one very small example coming from Quebec. One of the best is the exhibition of caricatures made by one of the Five, Gerardo Hernández in January, 2013.
For a report and photos of this event, click here.
