letter of december to Obama.

Mr. Barak Obama, President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.

Washington DC 20500

Mister President,

Last October 8th, on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Lui Xiaobo, from China, you declared – “Fundamental human rights must be respected for every man, woman and child”. How can you, Mister President, make such a remark and at the same time fail to respect these rights in the country that you govern? This same October 8th, two Cuban women, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, were in Paris. What must have they thought, these women who’ve criss-crossed Europe this fall to make known the story of the five Cuban anti-terrorists Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino, and René González, prisoners in the United States, whose fundamental human rights have been flouted by your country, as have been those of their families, penalized by their absence?

Olga and Adriana cannot even visit their respective husbands René and Gerardo, two of these five Cubans; your country effectively systematically refuses them an entry visa for the United States under the most fallacious pretexts. Is this not a question, once again, for these two women, of their rights being dragged in the mud by your country? This tragedy has been going on for twelve years now! And yet, Mister President, you can, with a simple signature, set these five courageous men free.
Last October fifth, in Paris, the reporter Sebastien Madau interviewed these two women. Here is what they said – first, Olga, René’s wife:

“The arrest and the imprisonment of our husbands is an injustice that has been going on for too long. They were put in prison as spies, locked up with common law criminals. They were punished without proof. They spent seventeen months without a lawyer. They could not defend themselves, especially because, as is known, 80% of the case file has not been declassified.
The United States is conducting a veritable media battle against them while manipulating the information. We found out that some of the newspaper reporters were paid during the court case to write articles against them. In this case, where is the justice, where is the freedom of the press? The solidarity movement for the Cuban Five had to come up with $50,000 to pay for one page in the New York Times.”

Adriana, Gerardo’s wife, adds:

« We are victims of events that have also punished us as a family. Unfortunately, we have not been able to make this case known to the media. Very few people have asked themselves why the Cuban Five went to the United States.
It’s been 12 years since we’ve seen our husbands. We travel to many countries in order to speak of our cause. (…) The Five have been accused of infiltrating organizations. But for some time now, several Western countries (United States, France, Germany, Great Britain etc.) have also announced the menace of terrorist attacks against their countries. Who gave them these pieces of information? If they’ve been informed of possible terrorist attacks against their countries, isn’t it because they have inside sources? For our husbands, it’s the same thing – they informed our country to prevent bombs from exploding. But our husbands were arrested!

In spite of this injustice, the Five constantly send out messages of peace, and Olga clarifies -

“The Five are struggling against the violence that has struck our country. We were attacked by terrorists. These men are in prison for having infiltrated organizations that overwhelm us with pain and mourning. I saw these people in Miami – they don’t want the well-being of the Cuban people, they just want to kill. As early as 2000, the Five published an open letter to the American people in which they stated that terrorism was the enemy of everyone. They were immediately subjected to retaliatory measures by the prison administration.”

These two women are right. The Five have risked their lives to avoid terrorist attacks such as that which caused the death of 73 passengers of the Cubana Airlines flight from happening again; the authors of this crime, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, are placidly passing their time in Miami, totally untroubled. Actually, not quite placidly because, several months ago, Posada Carriles again called for violent acts against Cuba (see my November letter).

Luckily agents such as these five Cubans did their work conscientiously, infiltrating the terrorist underworld of Florida! They were able thusly able to avoid numerous terrorist attacks such as the one against the Tropicana cabaret, commanded by Santiago Alvarez, a C.I.A. agent who was far from committing his first crime. Can you imagine, Mister President, the number of victims that such an attack would have caused?

These five courageous men deserve to be liberated with your country’s excuses for all the years unjustly stolen from their lives. This would be an important gesture on your part, which would open, at last, the door to new relations between the United States and Cuba.

Still hoping for such a gesture, please receive, Mister President, my most sincere humanitarian sentiments.

Jacqueline Roussie

Copies sent to: Mrs. Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Mr. Harry Reid, Eric Holder and Mr.Charles Rivkin the US Ambassador in France.

Translated by Bill Peterson