Oct 18th, 2011
By: Fidel Castro Ruz
Two days ago on Friday October 14th, Granma and Juventud Rebelde, the Communist Party and Youth League newspapers,
published a brave and energetic message from René González, Hero of the
Republic, to the people of Cuba, after the odious and unfair 13-year
punishment had finished, separately, like the other four heroes who are
serving longer sentences in prisons that are hundreds of miles away from each
other. Not for one instant did the unshakeable steadfastness of each one
of them falter, even when they were repeatedly thrown into punishment cells,
veritable sepulchres, without any space to move, just as “Yankee justice”
decreed, with no crime or any kind of evidence. If there was anything in which
such “justice” didn’t make a mistake, it was in the selection of the type of
men it was punishing.
René was additionally prohibited
from returning to his Homeland to be with his family and his people for three
years. He will have to remain in the territory of the country that had imposed
such unfair punishment on him.
For everyone, and especially for
those of us who have lived through critical years in the history of our
Homeland, René’s words profoundly sized it up.
“The fact that I am now out of
prison – he stated – only means that one avenue of abuse to which I was
subjected has been closed, […] we still have four brothers whom we have to
rescue and whom we need with us with their families, to be among you giving the
best of themselves…”
“For me, this is only a trench, a
new place in which I am going to continue fighting for justice so that the Five
of us can return together to you.”
“…to all the people who have
accompanied us over the years, who have been thousands, and through whom we
have been able, little by little, to break through this information blockade,
to break through the wall of silence that the corporate media have built around
the case, I extend to you, on behalf of the Five, my most profound gratitude,
my commitment to continue representing you as you deserve, which is definitely
what we Five are doing, because we are not only Five, we are a whole people who
have resisted for 50 years, and it is thanks to that that we are still
resisting, […] and will never fail you and will always rise to the
heights that you deserve René’s sincere, steadfast and
energetic words, the unmistakable tone of voice of a fighter who has withstood
13 infinite years of brutal and unfair punishment without faltering for one
second, are really impressive.
Imperial tyranny will not be able to
sustain its gross lies about the injustice committed against the Five Cuban
Anti-terrorist Heroes. It doesn’t matter how treacherously the information
media in its control does its best to present them as agents and spies that
placed United States security at risk. The President of the National Assembly
and the prestigious lawyer José Pertierra have been in charge of pulverizing
the gross Yankee lies about the heroic Cuban anti-terrorists.
The memory of the victorious battle
our people waged for the return of the boy Elián González to his family and
homeland crossed my mind. In the face of the monstrous behaviour of the
Cuban counter-revolutionary mafia of Miami and its contempt of the country’s
authorities, the very president of the United States at that time, Bill
Clinton, was forced to send security forces in order to impose American law and
order on the fascist groups who were being contemptuous and setting symbols and
flags of that country on fire, headed by the “ferocious she-wolf” Ileana Ros,
among others, who today is nothing less than the Chairperson of the Foreign
Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives and dictates rules on
that country’s foreign policy.
René González’ message to the people
of Cuba, at his own initiative and bravely taking on any risk, reinforces our
profound conviction that the position of the US government in terms of the Five
Cuban heroes is by now unsustainable, just as its justification of the criminal
economic blockade against our homeland and the punitive measures it applies on
foreign enterprises that do business with our country.
Such a policy, brutal and unusual,
has been transformed by the powerful empire into an international norm, despite
the practically unanimous opinion of all the members of the United Nations,
with the exception of the US and Israel.
Facts irrefutably show that in the
globalized world of today, under the aegis of the Yankee empire, no security
guarantee exists for any other country. In the UN one can repeat time and time
again the unanimous rejection of the economic blockade on Cuba, or any other
measure such as the right of the Palestinian people to their constitution as a
state, but unless such a right, or any other, fits in with the empire’s
interests, it has no validity whatsoever.
Without it being a deliberate
purpose of the Revolution, our country has become an example of what a small
state can achieve if it steadfastly sustains a policy of principles even when
scientific and technological advances, its patents and the distribution of the
planet’s wealth is in the hands of the most developed and richest nations, that
in times past were the colonial powers, disseminators of looting and poverty in
our countries.
In its long struggle against the
empire, our country’s combatants have been at the point of being the target for
nuclear weapons at the service of that power: the first time in October of
1962; and the second time in mid-1988. On neither of these two occasions did
our Homeland succumb to Yankee blackmail: in 1962, it permitted no inspection
of any sort on its territory, and in 1988, after the battle of Cuito Cuanavale
and the advance of 50,000 Cuban and Angolan soldiers over the South African
forces equipped by the West and provided with nuclear missiles, they decided to
negotiate the independence of Namibia and the end of Apartheid.
The peoples of the Third World
recognize and are thankful for the unselfish solidarity of Cuba in areas that
are so important such as health and education.
Who can believe the strange lie
about Cuba supporting terrorism?
Such a dull and stupid fib on the
part of the powerful country which, only 90 miles away from its shores, not
only applied against it a criminal blockade but also perpetrated the most
grotesque acts of terrorism. The fires set in educational, recreational and
business centres; the live phosphorus in the sugar cane plantations; the use of
explosives in factories; the pirate attacks against port facilities and fishing
and cargo vessels; the organizing of counter-revolutionary gangs; infiltrations
by agents and providing weapons to mercenary gangs began in 1959, after the
First Agrarian Reform Law, leaving a trail of death and destruction in our
Homeland.
The bombing of our air force bases
and the landing of mercenary troops at the Bay of Pigs, escorted by American
aircraft carriers and warships cost innumerable victims when our revolutionary
process was barely starting. Can the United States deny these facts?
Assassination plans on the leaders
of the Revolution organized by US intelligence services were innumerable; in
fact their gross actions didn’t limit themselves to that. Viruses and bacteria
were introduced into our country to sabotage the production of plants and
animals; even worse, diseases that didn’t even exist in this hemisphere were
introduced into Cuba against the population. Haemorrhagic dengue affected
hundreds of thousands of persons and around 150 of them, mainly children, died.
That disease still creates havoc in this hemisphere.
The tale of what the United States
has committed against our people would be endless. (To be continued)
Fidel Castro Ruz
October 16, 2011
9:05 p.m.
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