Cuban Five: Open letter to President Obama

Havana City, September 25, 2009.
Dr. Barack Obama
President of the United States of America .
Mrs. Michelle Obama

Estemeed sister and brother Michelle and Barack:

Peace and well-being for you. We greet you with great affection.

We are a group of cuban protestant women, lay leaders, pastors, and theologians that are addressing you in your capacity as the family presiding over the government of the United States of America .

We believe you have been elected in a transparent electoral process, with the endorsement of the vast majority of your people, and we are glad that is the case. It is a great responsibility for both of you, as it is undoubtedly, feeling that God has chosen you for this time as Mordecai would say when defending the Jewish people, before Queen Esther (Esther 4: 14 b). We have asked God to bless you in your responsibility to lead the destiny of your Nation along the best ways as well as your relations with the rest of the world.

On the occasion of such a meaningful celebration of the Thanksgiving Day, in which two cultures met in an historical effort to achieve reconciliation and unity, we are addressing you to request that the case of the Cuban five men in prison since 1998 in the USA charged with espionage be reviewed: Antonio Guerrero, Ram Labano, RenGonzez, Fernando Gonzez and Gerardo Herndez, who have already been in prison for eleven long years.

They were sentenced in 2001. A long process of appeals has taken place during the last years. The Defence has emphasised the partiality of the site, the extreme sentences, and particularly the fact that the US national security was never endangered (affirmed by high representatives of the US Army). However, only three of them have managed to be re-sentenced in Miami .

We are begging you that the process of appealing be studied, the hundreds of documents compiled by the Defence, the decision of the three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of 2005 and the frequent violations of human rights that are found in this process, acknowledged by international institutions, parliaments, and the public opinion of many countries.

Obama, you are a man who is taking firm steps towards the way of justice, as a worthy and unquestionable heir of Martin Luther Kings way of thinking and we thank God for that. The Nobel Peace Prize you have received is rather than an honour, a challenge to be consistent with the principles of justice of that award and with the long list of names supporting it.

Michelle, we admire your life itinerary and we hope that as a wife and mother, you may be able to place yourself in Adrianas shoes, her impossibility to have a child, out of this reason.

On this Thanksgiving Day, one word from you, one of your signatures, could change the uncertain destiny of these young men, allowing them to return to their homes, back to their families, to enjoy the same well-being and joy that you experience together with your two daughters. Read the rest of this entry »