Toronto, Canada in late September was
the setting for a Peoples’ Tribunal established to secure justice for the five
Cuban patriots victimized by the US criminal justice system. Appropriately
dubbed “Breaking the Silence,” the tribunal sought to bring attention to a
gross injustice largely ignored or distorted by the North American media.
Held over the September 21-23 weekend,
the tribunal drew several hundred participants to a review of the bogus case
brought against five Cuban agents planted in the midst of the virulently
anti-Communist, Miami-based Cuban defector community. As instruments of Cuban
State Security, the Cuban Five were charged with ferreting out violent plots
concocted to overthrow the Cuban government and harm the Cuban people and their
friends. Necessarily operating clandestinely, they were essential
counterweights to the US government's long established and deep engagement with
organized criminal elements freely operating out of South Florida with CIA
support.
To not employ all available means,
including infiltration, would have been tantamount to abandoning the Cuban
revolution. No honest person could but see the intervention of the five Cubans
in the Miami cesspool of reaction and crime as anything other than an act of
national defense and internationalist vigilance.
The Peoples’ Tribunal drove these
points home. Speakers developed a detailed case supporting the existence of a
dangerous nest of violent, reactionary ex-Cubans organizing in the Miami area with
the knowledge and support of US security agencies. Reports to the tribunal
established a long history of subversion and assassination on the part of
Miami-based paramilitary organizations with the complicity of US officials.
Testimony left little doubt of both the reasonableness and urgency of
infiltrating these organizations. Nothing underscored the unchecked violence of
the Miami murderers more movingly than the testimony of Livio Di Celmo, the
brother of Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, who was killed in a brutal
bombing of a Havana hotel. The attack was orchestrated by the US government
agent and career assassin, Luis Posades Carriles. Carriles bragged openly to
the media that “The Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Further, tribunal witnesses exposed the
hand of the US government in railroading these patriots with exaggerated
charges, a polluted political atmosphere, extra-judicial pressure, and
corrupted evidence. A clear picture emerged that nothing even approaching a
fair trial landed the Five in Federal penal facilities, an unjust incarceration
that has taken 14 years of freedom from them.
Speaker after speaker stressed the
necessity of building an international campaign for their freedom. As Elizabeth
Labañino, wife of imprisoned Ramón
Labañino, stated so eloquently, “We don’t trust in this system, we trust in
solidarity.”
Serving on a panel of “magistrates of
conscience”-- de facto jurors-- in
the proceedings were fourteen distinguished figures including leading US
anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan, and noted US filmmaker, Saul Landau. Adding
gravity to the panel were leaders of the Canadian labor movement: Marie Clarke
Walker (Vice-President of the Canadian Labor Congress), Denis Lemelin (National
President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers), Ken Neumann (National
Director for Canada of the United Steelworkers), and Naveen Mehta (General
Council of United Food and Commercial Workers Canada). Joining the panel from
the UK was Tony Woodley (Former Joint General Secretary and current Head of
Organizing of the 1.5 million members of UNITE the UNION).
The panel asserted that “…this Peoples’ Tribunal concludes that the Cuban Five
were unjustly detained, unjustly prosecuted, and unjustly sentenced, all
contrary to international and U.S. domestic law including the U.S.
Constitution. This Peoples’ Tribunal
proposes the convictions be quashed, and that Gerardo Hernández, Ramón
Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González Llort and René González be set
free immediately, without any restrictions on their liberty.”
But the tribunal served as more than an
urgent call for solidarity with the Cuban Five; it also exposed the corruption,
hypocrisy and cynicism of the US government.
Judicial
Corruption: The collusion of the highest levels of
government with the judicial frame-up demonstrated what should be in no need of
demonstration, namely, that the US judicial system answers to the needs of the
rich and powerful. There are no broad interests of the US people served by
maintaining a nest of violent anti-Communist thugs in Southern Florida. Nor do
the US people support them anymore than they support an internationally
abhorred, legally unsanctioned blockade of Cuba. Judicial rulings are fitted to
conform to the interests of the US ruling class, just as they were in the Citizens United vs Federal Election
Commission Supreme Court decision.
The
Hypocrisy of “Terrorism”: The term “terrorism” has been
appropriated by colonial and imperial powers to demonize the resistance of
subjugated or weaker peoples. Whenever the oppressed rise up, they are labeled
“terrorists.” Whether it was the anti-colonial Mau Mau movement, the Algerian
National Liberation Front, or the African National Congress in South Africa,
those audacious enough to defy British or French imperialism or colonial
settlers were tagged as agents of terror. Perhaps the original “terrorists”
were the aboriginal peoples of the New World who refused to acquiesce to those
stealing their lands.
It is deemed “unsporting” of the weak
to use extreme or unorthodox methods in the face of the powerful, overwhelming
killing machines of bullies. Hence, they are guilty of terror!
It is another story when powerful
states or their agents slaughter defenseless civilians or political
adversaries. The North American and European media never saw terrorism when the
Indonesian military killed over a million civilian Communists and their
supporters. Nor do they see terrorism in the daily violence against Palestinian
civilians by the Israeli Defense Force. And, of course, the capitalist media is
incapable of finding terrorism in the acts of the Miami mafia and their
bombings, assassinations, and intimidation at the behest of US security
agencies. It was left to the Cuban Five to expose these dangers and work to
prevent their realization. Every day the fear-mongering of a hypocritical “War
on Terror” justifies another act of terror inflicted on innocent civilians in
some far-away country by the US military.
The
Cynicism of Human Rights: One of the most inviolable of
rights is the right of self-defense, a right that applies equally to a person or a state. Through most of the
twentieth century, aggression against another country, regardless of how
illegitimate the government or how odious the country's internal policies, was
recognized as a violation of the country’s sovereign rights. Conversely, any
victim of aggression had a right to respond in self-defense. While Western
“democracies” often fell short in aiding those exercising this right against
aggression (Abyssinia, Spain, etc), they enshrined the doctrine as an essential
condition of peace in both the League of Nations and the United Nations.
Recently—especially since the demise of the Socialist bloc as a
counter force—the US and its NATO allies have openly and often violated the
right under the cynical and illegal excuse of “humanitarian intervention.” At
the same time, the US shamelessly embraces its own right of self-defense with
its global and perpetual “War on Terror,” a war that has brought death and
destruction throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
But the violations of sovereignty in
the former Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria and other victims of Western
“humanitarianism” are preceded by the example of Cuba. Since the revolution,
the US and its Cuban-renegade mercenaries have used invasion, infiltration,
bombings, assassinations, sabotage, and other forms of aggression to undermine
and destroy the revolutionary government. The US and its allies have trampled
Cuba’s right of self-defense, but the revolution has persevered. The judicial
persecution of the Cuban Five is another instance of the denial of Cuba’s right
to self-defense against outside aggression.
There is no excuse for the North
American media silence or popular hesitation in defense of the Cuban Five.
These brave, selfless and principled fighters have suffered 14 years of
imprisonment for values that any fair-minded person would acknowledge. Their
honor is secure, standing up to the corruption, hypocrisy, and cynicism of a
ruthless imperial power.
Zoltan
Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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