Georgetown: The Guyana-Cuba Solidarity Movement (GCSM) on Wednesday will be joining hundreds of other solidary groups worldwide in observing the one-year anniversary of the December 17th announcement pertaining to the Cuban Five.
The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González), are five Cuban intelligence officers who were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States. Jailed since 1998, the final three of the agents returned home on December 17, when Cuba and the United States completed a prisoner swap as part of the deal in which they agreed to restore diplomatic relations after more than five decades of confrontation.
President of GCSM Haleem Khan said it is time for the solidarity movements to reflect on what was accomplished in the last year and, most importantly, what actions need to take moving forward to end the embargo and normalize relations between the United States and Cuba once and for all.
He explained that today is the first anniversary of the return of the Cuban Five and the historic announcements of Presidents Obama and Raul Castro. Starting on December 4, the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity launched a series of tweets and web site posts to commemorate the one-year anniversary of that day.
Adding that a timeline called “One Year Later” was created to highlight important dates around December 17 with links to text and articles, Khan said many of these articles and documents make it clear that the struggle is far from over.
He explained that on February 7, 2015 marked the 53rd anniversary of the ongoing US embargo against Cuba, an island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The embargo, known among Cubans as “the blockade,” consists of economic sanctions against Cuba.
“Estimates place the cost of the Cuban embargo to the US economy between $1.2 and $4.84 billion annually. A 2010 study by Texas A&M University calculated that 6,000 American jobs could be created by lifting the embargo,” Khan explained.
Explaining the consequences, the GCSM President said this has resulted in Cubans are denied access to technology, medicine, affordable food, and other goods that could be available to them if the United States lifted the embargo.
“It is our Cuba’s expert medical opinion that the US embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba.” Amnesty International reported in 2011 that treatments for children and young people with bone cancer and antiretroviral drugs used to treat children with HIV/AIDS were not readily available with the embargo in place because they were commercialized under US patents.”
He said such a devastating embargo needs to be looked at through the eyes of humanity instead of power and privilege.
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