Immediate release of the 5 Cuban patriots

To the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

To the Embassy of the United States in Belgium

To the Embassy of Cuba in Belgium

To the Embassy of the United States in Greece

To the Embassy of Cuba in Greece

Brussels, 27^th March 2013

As is well known to you, the five Cuban patriots, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez still face a brutal behavior on the part of the United States that infringe fundamental democratic and human rights. The unfounded and falsified accusations against them have collapsed throughout the entire hearing procedure in the US courts. The 5 Cuban patriots had been arrested in September 1998, because they had found and revealed criminal activities against Cuba, executed by counter-revolutionary and anti-Cuban organizations, which are planned and organized on US territory, with the tolerance and the support of the official state of the USA and have cost the lives of 3,500 people, have left 2,500 handicapped and have caused enormous damage to the economy of the island. Recently, new evidence came to light that prove that the judicial procedure against them was severely compromised, with an organized and guided campaign, aiming at the falsification of the accusations and at slanders by anti-Cuban media against them.

In spite of the collapse of the accusations against them, the reactions by international organizations and Institutions on the violation of their rights and the enormous international wave of solidarity for their liberation, the first four are still incarcerated for the 13th year in the US prisons, under particularly harsh and inhuman conditions. The fifth, Rene Gonzalez, despite the fact that he has been released, experiences exhausting restrictions, since it has been forbidden for him to return to his home country and he is obliged to stay in Miami for three years, facing risks to his life and his physical safety by savage groups of agents who act against the government and the people of Cuba. Throughout all these years, it has been forbidden for the wives, the children and the relatives of the Cuban patriots to visit them in the US prisons; this applies even to the fifth Cuban patriot, who has been released.

The position of the United States against the 5 Cubans constitutes the continuation and the escalation of their criminal policy against Socialist Cuba and its people, who refuse to submit to the threats and the pressure of international imperialism, to abandon the Socialist socio-political system that they build and to replace it with the exploitative capitalist barbarity imposed on the peoples by the monopolies and their power.

We denounce the criminal imperialist embargo by the United States, as well as the counterrevolutionary plans and operations against Cuba and its people. They are plans that aim at destabilizing the socialist power and at worsening the life of the Cuban people.

We condemn the Common Position adopted by the EU since 1996, which is fully in line with the criminal policy of the USA against Cuba and which constitutes an open intervention in its internal affairs.

The attack against Cuba is an attack against the right of every people to decide and determine their lives and future themselves. It is part of the attack against the workers’ and people’s rights and against their lives, of the anticommunist hysteria and the intensification of the authoritarianism against the workers’ movement in the EU and its member states, in all the capitalist countries.

We demand:

The immediate liberation of the four Cuban patriots who are illegally kept in the US prisons.

To allow the immediate return of the fifth to his home country.

The immediate lifting of the criminal embargo against Cuba by the US government.

The withdrawal of the EU Common Position against Cuba.

The Members of the European Parliament from the Communist Party of Greece

Georgios Toussas

Charalampos Angourakis