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incarceration of these anti-terrorist fighters: Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon Labañino Salazar, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, and Rene Gonzalez. This is the 13th year! On all five continents, the message has been the same: the United States must unconditionally release the Cuban Five and allow them to return to their country to enjoy their freedom with their families.
Last week, Zimbabwe’s Lovemore Gwati, president of the Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five gave a moving narrative of the Five and also called for their unconditional release.

He argued that at a time when most nations are worried about terrorism and when nation states are sharing information in order to avert acts of terrorism, it is surprising that the Cuban Five who actually assisted the United States with information about terrorist activities planned by Cuban-Americans in Miami, Florida, ended up being the accused.
According to the Cuban government, “In September 1998, five Cubans were arrested in Miami by FBI agents. Their mission in the United States was to monitor activities of groups and organisations responsible for terrorist activities against Cuba.”

Case summary
“Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero and Rene González were charged with the vague crime of conspiracy to commit espionage. The US government never charged them with actual espionage, and they were not found with any classified document.

“The trial lasted more than six months, becoming the longest in the United States so far. More than 119 volumes of testimony and 20 000 pages of documents were compiled, including the testimony of three retired Army generals and a retired admiral, who agreed that there was no evidence of espionage.
“The Five were sentenced to four life sentences totalling 77 years and confined to five different maximum security prisons, completely separated from each other and no communication between them: Gerardo

Hernández – one life sentences plus 15 years; Ramon Labañino Salazar – one life sentence plus 18 years; Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez – one life sentence plus 10 years; Fernando González – 19 years; and, Rene González Sehwerert -15 years”.
Thirteen years later, plus several appeals and many voices of solidarity, the Cuban Five are still behind bars in the US. Their case has gone before the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, but the US will not budge.

An even glaring anomaly is the fact that on October 7, Rene Gonzalez is supposed to be released from prison, but he will not be able to join his family in Cuba because the condition of his release is that he will be on parole, which means he has to be on US soil.
This is a blow for Gonzalez whose wife has previously been denied visas to visit him.

The Cuban government asks, “What will happen then from October 7? Will FBI agents arrest the terrorists in the places where they know “they are or frequent. Or will they devote to watch Rene to guarantee that he does not bother the terrorists?”
However, for this writer it was interesting to see renowned African-American author, poet, and activist Alice Walker (of “The Color Purple” fame), being one of the many voices of reason calling for the release to the Five.

In a compilation titled “The Sweet Abyss” – a “blend of letters, diary entries, poems, drawings and personal thoughts by the wives and children of the five Cubans”, Walker in her introduction says, “The story of the Cuban Five is one of courage, great sacrifice, and love.
It is a story for the ages; especially for those of our people who have suffered under the implacable oppression of white American supremacy; a rule of colour and power the rest of the world appears destined to experience.”

This is a 2004 publication, before the Barack Obama era, but Walker bares the racial and class divides, which are a part of the United States way of life: “The five men were treated atrociously, as Cubans routinely have been and darker skinned Cubans even more so, in prisons in the United States.
“Although judges were unable to define a specific ‘crime’ the five had done, beyond attempting to discover and alert their country of planned terrorist attacks – which Cuba has suffered for decades from Miami-based

Cubans backed by the United States government – they were treated sadistically . . . “
We ask where the rule of law is in the land of the free!
Like Alice Walker, we also question why the American Congressmen and Senators have done very little to ensure that justice is realised: “Where are the Congress members, the Senators and Representatives, we should be able to rely on in cases such as this? People with the courage to insist that prisoners not be subjected to torture”, asked Walker.

Walker adds an important factor about the Cuban Five’s case: “What floated up to consciousness for me as I read these letters back and forth between incarcerated fathers, sons, husbands; and wives, children, and mothers attempting desperately to reconnect, was a realisation of how old this story really is. When I read these letters and poems and viewed the drawings I was connected to those of our ancestors who first experienced the wrenching devastation of the destruction of their families. I felt in my own body the long centuries of slavery, of the systematic – and to our ancestors, insane – focus of the slave owners on tearing families apart. How courageously so many of our ancestors must have defended, or tried to defend, this precious unit, the family . . . “

So many US presidents and their secretaries of state, house representatives and, thousands upon thousands of open and classified documents, but what has been achieved, except a demonstration that might is right?

There are three months before the curtain closes down on 2011. Is there hope for the Cuban Five from the Obama administration that had promised to soften its policies toward Cuba?
If the Cuban embargo ends before year end, then there is every hope that the Cuban Five will also be set free. However, considering how Obama has been changing goal posts on key foreign policy issues, this might be another year when the world hollers to no avail. If Palestinians are bluntly told that a UN resolution will not bring them statehood, what more the Cuban Five who are now the “terrorists” when a real Cuban terrorist walks scot free in the US?

Why is the case of the Cuban Five important to Zimbabwe? Lest we forget, Zimbabwe’s relationship with Cuba dates back to the liberation struggle, a foundation of statehood that cannot be wished away. Even the Americans fought revolutions like the Cubans and us.
Cuba also shaped the revolutionary principles in Zimbabwe and the region. Squeezed as they are, they have continued to be their brothers’ keepers. They have also fought our wars, Angola being the best example.

Tiny as it is, Cuba was once a mini-United Nations with students from different parts of the world receiving their tertiary and vocational education there. Their models are being successfully replicated here. Namibians are successfully training with their Zimbabwean counterparts at Belvedere Technical Teacher Training College using the Cuban model.
At some point, Zimbabwe had fulfiled its quota of science and mathematics teachers – all trained in Cuba, and this saw results in the sciences improving a lot. The Cuban Medical Doctors Brigade has been working in our hospitals countrywide, imparting and exchanging skills and knowledge.

We toyi-toyied and put on all sorts of paraphernalia demanding justice and independence not only for Zimbabwe, but for other nationalities. We also chanted slogans and sang songs.
During the apartheid era, the “Free Nelson Mandela” or “Free the ANC 6” badges were worn like badges of honour. How about the Cuban Five?
If the social media is credited for bringing down governments in North Africa, why aren’t these social networks being used to exert pressure on the US administration to release the Cuban Five?