Aleida Guevara & Irma González in Canada

[Comrade Marcel]

Radio Havana Cuba Oct 3



http://www.radiohc.cu/homeing.htm


Aleida Guevara & Irma González in Canada: Breaking the Wall of Silence

Toronto, October 3 (RHC)--Irma González, the 18-year old daughter of one of the Cuban Five US prisoners, René González and Dr. Aleida Guevara, the daughter of Ernesto Che Guevara are on a "Freedom Tour" of Canada to promote more awareness of the case of the Five and to seek support for their freedom. The five Cubans were arrested in the United States for monitoring Cuban-American terrorist groups in south Florida. The two-week tour, organized by the Canada-Cuba Friendship Association, incorporates 11 Canadian cities.

The first stop was in Toronto with a meeting with elected officials. Later a campus gathering at George Brown College took place where Irma and Aleida were joined by Livio di Celmo, the brother of Fabio di Celmo an Italian citizen who was killed by a terrorist bomb planted by a mercenary in Havana in 1997. The three gave impassioned speeches to the packed audiences.

Miguel Figueroa of the Committee to Free the Five in Toronto reported that a morning press conference was also well-attended, but that little of what was said made it past the editors and producers and into print or on the air. He added that the battle to break the wall of silence in the mass media would continue.

In Kingston, the next stop, Aleida Guevara spoke to a gathering at Kinston Collegiate and Vocational Institute where she urged pressure be brought to bear on the US government to release the five Cubans so that their children won't have to grow up fatherless.

In an interview with a local newspaper, the Whig Standard, Guevara said that she hoped the people of Canada hear them and help to "break the silence" surrounding the case of which is also known as the Miami Five.

"All Cuban people owe a debt of gratitude to these five men because they sacrificed the best part of their lives to protect the lives of our people," she said in reference to the undercover anti-terrorist work the Five were performing before they were arrested in September 1998.

In reference to the campaign of disinformation or lack of information on the five men by the main stream press, Aleida Guevara said that the most important thing on the tour was for the government and people of Canada to acquire correct information about the case.

[Pete]

I watched them when they came to Ottawa

[suffianr]

Any details on that, CrazyPete?

[Ian]

Was anyone there when they got off the ferry from Victoria to somewhere else? I was talking to a comrade and she was about to tell me the story but the subject changed, I think it was going to be a funny story or something, bah doesn't matter much, just something that interests me...

So are you all in YCL? That looks like pretty good org.

[Pete]

YCL? Hell no :P I'm a member of the local PIRG (it is called OPIRG...the one on Vancouver Island is called VIPIRG for example).


The speech. I asked my spanish teacher if I could leave early to see the speech, and she got excited and asked if she could come with me (it was at 7.30, class ends at 7.25) so I got to go and not miss anything ^_^

Aleida speaks no enlgish, and was very emotive, although having to pause for translation dampered her speaking style a bit. She talked about the 25 illegal overfly by US Terrorists (those people who spray disease over Cuba...biological warfare) and of the hijackings, and bombings that occur sadly too often.

Then she hit on the Cuban Five. The US Justice Department knew of their missionthe whole time, and everything that was reported to the Cuban government was reported to the US Justice Department. It was all going well until the Five reported to the USJD about some big time drug traffikers, and it just turns out that these men where also the head of the antiCuban gangs which where killing so many Cubans (atleast 25 in the last few years).

Because of the wealth and influence of this group, the Five where arrested and thrown in jail. When they write letters to their family they are throne into "the hole" (solitary) by the US Authorities (they where found guilty because in Maimi someone from Cuba cannot get a partial jury).

Its been something like 3 years, and because the worms hold such a swing in flordia, nothing is being done with the case. In America money matters more than votes.


Irma Gonzalez said pretty much the stuff up there that Aleida didn't. They are both very articulate woman (Irma spoke a very bad form of english which was recieved with admiration, she's cuban after all!), and very smart. I'm glad I got a chance to see them and gave 10 dollars to their cause.

Oh ya. Amnesty International is refusing to touch this case! WHY???? I can not tell you, but it seems to be the thing that they would pounce on!

[Ian]

I've heard Aleida speak before, but I haven't been lucky enough to hear Irma.

A lot seemed to be lost in the translation, when she said a joke the spanish speakers in the room laughed pretty hard and Aleida smiled, then when it was translated all the anglophones were totally confused as to what was funny, then she sorta looked awkward.

Amnesty are not an exactly friendly bunch to any type of socialist read this letter by Louis Proyect, an american communist.

--


(This is being sent to AI offices worldwide.)

Dear Amnesty International,

I strongly urge you to step back from your newly announced campaign to release the 75 US agents in Cuba. Associated Press reported on July 30 that your researcher Paige Wilhite has stated that "They are prisoners of conscience and the Cuban government has to release them immediately and without conditions." To the contrary, they have broken Cuban laws prohibiting funding from foreign governments, a law found in any sovereign state, including democracies like the USA and Great Britain.

To people of conscience on the left, this well-orchestrated campaign to isolate and punish Cuba economically is rather transparent. You have joined groups such as Reporters Without Borders, whose animosity to communism or state-owned media in 3rd world countries is driven more by bottom line considerations than freedom of expression it would seem. (42% of the budget of "Reporter Without Borders" is covered by the Commission of the European Union, a body which is fanatically pro-privatization.)

While Amnesty International has a rather preening posture about being "above politics", it has shown a rather dismaying tendency in the past to adapt to the foreign policy needs of the USA and Great Britain, where it seems to enjoy the greatest support both socially and economically.

For example, when the Iraqi army was accused of ripping babies from hospital incubators in December 1990, Amnesty International told the Washington Post that "We heard rumors of these deaths as early as August but only recently has there been substantial information on the extent of the killings." Not only were you spreading disinformation hatched by the infamous Hill & Knowlton public relations firm, you were helping to launch the war against Iraq whose opening salvos relied on this lurid fabrication.

Next you got involved in the Balkans--once again on behalf of US foreign policy. When you sponsored a 25 city tour in the USA for Jadranka Cigelj, Judith Miller (!) of the NY Times wrote glowingly about your efforts to raise awareness about how the Serbs were using rape as a political weapon--even quoting the wretched David Rieff, who has emerged as a frontline spokesman for humanitarian imperialist interventions.

Unfortunately neither Judith Miller nor your public relations department spelled out the exact character of Cigelj's activism around the rape issue, nor her sordid political past. In "Fool's Crusade", Diana Johnstone points out that "Cigelj was a vice president of Croatian president Franjo Tudjman's ruling nationalist party, the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) and was in charge of the Zagreb office of the Croatia Information Center (CIC), a wartime propaganda agency funded by the same cryptofascist Croatian émigré groups that backed Tudjman. The primary source for reports of rape in Bosnia was Cigelj's CIC and associated women's groups, which sent 'piles of testimony to Western women and to the press'".

She adds:

"The CIC benefited from a close connection with the 'International Gesellschaft fur Menschenrechte' (International Association for Human Rights, IGfM), a far right propaganda institute set up in 1981 as a continuation of the Association of Russian Solidarists, an expatriate group which worked for the Nazis and the Croatian fascist Ustashe regime during World War II. In the 1980s, this organization led a propaganda campaign against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, accusing them of running camps where opponents were tortured, raped, and murdered on a massive scale."

Finally, an article by Paul De Rooij in the October 31, 2002 online edition of Counterpunch titled "Amnesty International & Israel: Say it isn't so!" (www.counterpunch.org/rooij1031.html)takes you to task for trivializing Israeli violence and apolitical fence-sitting.

He writes:

"Reading AI's reports doesn't reveal why there is a conflict in the area in the first place. The portrayal of violence is stripped of its context, and historical references are minimal. The fact that Palestinians have endured occupation, expulsion, and dispossession for many decades, the explanation of why the conflict persists, is nowhere highlighted in its reports. This posture eliminates the possibility of taking sides, and AI doesn't automatically side with the oppressed victims; instead, it assumes a warped sense of balance. It qualitatively equates the violence perpetrated by the IOF with Palestinian resistance. In attempting to be impartial, AI is oblivious to the history of ethnic cleansing that is the root cause. Israeli violence is qualitatively different than Palestinian violence; it is different than that found in other conflicts because it aims to expel the native population."

Not that I would gainsay De Rooij's compelling argument, but I would quibble with one characterization. Instead of describing AI as "fence-sitting", I would regard you--at least in these instances--as having fallen off the fence and into the lap of the US and British foreign policy establishment.

Louis Proyect


--

From here (http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg48417.html)


Just makes one agree with the graffiti you see on school desks at my school "Amnesty Sucks", maybe I should start doing some of that myself...

[Pete]

Where you at the Ottawa presentation??

I picked up phrases and such in her speech, and partially understood the 'funny' part, and it became funnier when the English translatioin filled in the gaps of my mental translation. I've only had spanish class for a month, but suprisingly I'm picking it up quite fast (thanks to my knoweldge of French I'm assuming).

That was a good article. I always have scorn towards Amensty, especially after the Dudley George Memorial when they did not arrive until it was time for them to make a speech. They where ignorant enough to miss the smudging ceremony, refuse to cook the food they provided, and then took the credit for it (forgetting of course the massive OPIRG sponsorship....which makes me wonder why we still support amnesty...they show up to flout how good they are and then almost leave with out thanking the people who actually made it happen... damn amnesty :S). Err...that bracketed statement is a bit secratarian, but as you say they are not socialist in anyway, and forget the poor consensus based student activist group that supports all the anarchist and communist projects in the community. Oh I'm just *****ing now...

[Ian]

No I wasn't at the Ottawa speech, I was at the Sydney speech back in July. I'm from Australia, in case you didn't already know.


What is OPIRG by the way?

[Pete]

I thought you where. Just checking, because the same thing happened here ^_^

OPIRG = Ontario Public Interest Research Group. For my own paranoia I don't feel like disclosing which OPIRG I belong to, but to anyone who reads my posts over the past year (almost) that I've been here should know...but thats beside the point.

PIRG's, as I know it atleast, evolved from many groups that sporatically jumped into being after one of Ralph Nader's speeches back in the 60's or 70's. They are a consensus based umbrella organization of groups with mandates for social, economic, political, or environmental justice. Most people are a form of communist/socialist/anarchist/syndicist, but there are a very small number of liberals on social democrats (which keep sliding more to the left).

They have branches across North America, and perhaps even on your fair Isle? I don't know for sure, and that history could very well be bullshit that one of my 'comrades' told me ... but it could be true.

It's my kind of group (I am quite heavily involved considering my course load)

[Valkyrie]

Here's an hour-long webcast of the Vancouver Solidarity Event for the Cuban Five.

http://oneworld.net/link/gotolink/addhit/46987