People's Democracy

Intellectuals Declare War On US Terror

OCTOBER 6, 2006 marked the thirtieth anniversary of a treacherous terrorist attack perpetrated by Venezuelan mercenaries Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch who were CIA-guided personnel, and in which two bombs were detonated on a Cubana Airlines civil aircraft, killing 73 people (57 Cubans, including 24 youths of the Cuban National Fencing team, 11 young Guyanese and 5 Koreans). Today, the agents have been allowed to escape from a Venezuelan prison and are treated as heroes while those who went out to expose them are languishing in US jails. This was merely one of the many terrorist acts against Cubans that have resulted in over 3478 innocent people being killed over 42 years. Worse, 637 attempts were made on the life of president Fidel Castro and no less than 3,44,203 people have been affected by bacteriological terrorism, of whom 158 died, 101 of them children.

Faced with either helplessly watching innocents die or catch these terrorists in the act in Miami and other parts of the world, five brave young men volunteered to defend the innocent by catching the terrorists in their lairs in the USA. They are Ramon Labanino Salazar (born in 1963) a brilliant economist who graduated from Havana university with distinction; Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert (born in Chicago, 1956), pilot and flight instructor; Fernado Gonzalez Llort (born in 1963), graduating with distinction in International Political Relations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Relations; Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo (born in 1965) who graduated in International Political Relations from the Higher Institute of International Relations, as well as a cartoonist whose cartoons were published in book form in 2002; and Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez (born in 1958 in Miami) who graduated from the Kiev Technical University and worked on the extension of Santiago de Cuba International airport, and is a poet who has published collections of his poems.

Obviously such gifted individuals deserve the highest accolades for becoming front-line fighters in the global war on terror, but what they got was prison terms ranging from two life terms plus fifteen years; life imprisonment plus 18 years, life imprisonment plus 10 years, and 15 years. And this too, with a mockery of a trial, which US courts too found difficult to uphold because the investigation was flawed with the FBI entering the residences of the Five without informing them; seizing 20,000 documents (none of them classified) and declaring them classified or ‘top secret’ to prevent the defence from using them, the trial venue was Miami, the epicenter of US-based terror groups where no impartial trial can take place and the arbitrary manner in which the prosecution was given free rein while the defence was obstructed; the life sentences too were based on the flimsy accusation of conspiracy with no substantive charges being proved; they were held without bail for 33 months; without bail between the trial and arrest and in solitary confinement for 17 months, with their families even not being allowed to meet them, which was itself unconstitutional. They were then put in separate maximum security prisons, the worst in the USA.

Then the Appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court that they made against the trial was reviewed by three judges who declared the trial unfair and that it violated the fundamental rights of the accused. The US administration then took the unprecedented step of referring it to all 12 Judges of the Circuit Court. It is evident that justice is being delayed to deny it. 

To protest against this, a number of poets, including some of the leading ones of Northern India met at the Bijwasan farm of the Cuban Ambassador for a poetry reading session organised by the National Committee for Solidarity with Cuba to mark the anniversary of the place crash and demand the release of the Five Cuban patriots.

The evening began with the Cuban Ambassador, Juan Carretero Ibanez, reading out two poems of Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, “From My Height” and “I Will Return”. He was followed by three poets named among the first ten in Hindi writing today, Vishnu Nagar, Manglesh Dabral and Asghar Wajahat, followed up by Pankaj and Savita Singh reading their poems. Asad Zaidi read his moving translation of Emmanuel Ortiz and Suneet Chopra brought the session to close with a reading of his poem ‘Hiroshima’. The programme was attended by a number of leading intellectuals like the award-winning film-maker Jauhar Kanungo, Delhi University Teachers Dr Vibha Maurya, Dr Nalini Taneja, Dr Shakti Kak, Dr Vijaya Venkataraman, Dr Murali Manohar Prasad Singh and Dr Rekha Awasthy, artists Atul Sinha, Mekkhla Harrison, art impresario R N Singh, and all India treasurer of the DYFI, Pushpinder Tyagi, among others. All those present marked the occasion by calling for the release of the Five patriots. (INN)