The hypocrisy of the US war on terrorism is revealed by its treatment of my husband
Olga Salanueva
Wednesday December 7, 2005
The Guardian
The United States always says that it is fighting a war against terror. But when it comes to terrorism that is grown in its own backyard, it somehow chooses to forget about it. Worse than that, as in the case of the persecution of the Miami Five, Washington appears to be condoning and protecting terrorists who have been responsible for the deaths of scores of innocent victims.
I am talking about the four-decade-long war of terror that the US government and Cuban emigre groups based in Miami have waged against Cuba - and about my husband René González, one of five Cubans imprisoned in Miami seven years ago for doing nothing more than trying to prevent terrorist attacks being planned against Cuba in the very territory of the United States.
It was in September 1998 that five armed US federal agents burst into our Miami apartment and took René away. It was a traumatic event for our two daughters. This was not the kind of arrest you see in films. There was nothing ethical about it. No one spoke to him of his rights. They had no documents to support their actions and it was not until a day later that I learned that René and the four others had been charged with conspiracy to commit espionage.
My husband is now in his eighth year of imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. He was found guilty in a trial so obviously biased that his lawyers were incredulous that this could happen in the modern-day United States. Without a shred of evidence being presented by the prosecution they were given sentences ranging from 15 years, in the case of my husband, to life in the cases of Gerardo Hernández, Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero. Recently, the Atlanta court of appeals revoked their convictions. The prosecution has appealed against this decision and the process may yet take months or even years to resolve. Meanwhile, my husband and his comrades remain in jail.
The Miami Five were treated to bouts of solitary confinement far beyond the limits that other prisoners have to bear and they have been denied visiting rights. A committee of the United Nations has found their treatment to be in contravention of international human rights standards. It is time the United States was held to account for the injustice that has been done.
Not only has my husband been unjustly imprisoned, his family has also been treated appallingly. For neither my daughters nor myself have seen him in five years because the US refuses me a visa to visit him in prison. Our younger daughter, Ivette, is a US citizen by birth, as is René. Yet they are denied a fundamental right that is supposedly guaranteed US citizens by law.
Time and again the United States has arbitrarily denied me the possibility of visiting René. There is no reason to justify this denial. Like Adriana Pérez, the wife of fellow-prisoner Gerardo Hernández, I am suffering as an additional punishment to the unjust sentence imposed on my husband.
Ivette is now seven, and only knows René through the photos produced by the worldwide campaign to free him; she goes through life asking about him and wondering what life would have been like if she had had her father at home. She asks me constantly when all this will end, if her father will ever come home. Ivette is an innocent child who is being vindictively punished.
We demand the cessation of these cruel, dishonest practices - and denounce and refute all the false arguments and lies that the authorities have tried to use to continue punishing these political prisoners, who are in fact fighters against terrorism.
Olga Salanueva, the wife of René González, one of Cuba's Miami Five, is on a campaigning tour of Britain this week
www.antiterroristas.cu
www.freethefive.org
