letter of january to Obama

Mr President Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.

Washington DC 20500

Mr President,

As is the tradition, I send my best wishes to you for this new year of 2012.

You undoubtedly had an excellent New Year’s party with your wife, your daughters, your parents and your friends.

Six families, among many others, were separated during this holiday season, when you could have done something to avoid this painful situation. I’m referring to the Cuban Five - Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino and René González, along with your fellow countryman Alan Gross.

The Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged last October for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners. We had expected from you, Mr. President, a similar gesture during the Christmas truce; the five Cubans and Alan Gross could then have been with their respective families for the holiday season!

Over the years, the wall of silence surrounding the story of the Cuban Five has been cracking all over, particularly thanks to the courageous and unflagging work of several of your fellow countrymen. All over the world, including among human rights organizations such as the U.N. and Amnesty International, the injustice done to these five Cuban patriots is beginning to be known and condemned.

The imprisonment of Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino and René Gonzalez will stay engraved in the memories as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice of our times. For four of these men, this injustice has been going on for more than thirteen years. The fact that the liberation of René Gonzalez, who has done his time, is accompanied with the obligation to stay on U.S. territory during three years, is inhuman. This anti-terrorist has just spent thirteen years in prison, his family is in Cuba, and as if this were not enough, your administration regularly refuses an entry visa to the United States for his wife Olga.

I wrote to you on the 28th of November 2008, just after your election, to congratulate you and to speak to you of the United State’s incredible injustice towards these five Cubans.

There are numerous friends of the Cuban Five here in Monein, a little village at the foot of the Pyrénées Mountains where I live. Just as many other people throughout the world, they are waiting for the gesture on your part that will finally give these five Cubans back their liberty that they so deserve. I write to you, in their names, every month since the beginning of 2009, this is the thirty-seventh letter I send you.

The Five have been unjustly imprisoned for 13 years. It is time for them to go home to their love ones.

For a long time now we have been appealing to you for an “executive clemency” for the Cuban Five, as practically all appeals to the courts have been tried since the appellate court’s decision of June 4th 2008.

We are now hoping to see a reciprocal humanitarian gesture from your administration that will bring Alan Gross back to his family, and the Cuban Five to theirs. Such a gesture should not present any major diplomatic difficulties. It would honor the Nobel Peace Prize that you received, and peace loving people from all over the world will celebrate your decision.

There is no such thing, Mr. President, as “good” and “bad” terrorists. Terrorism is “bad” no matter who carried it and which the victimized country is. Close to 3500 Cuban people have been victim of terrorism planned from US soil. Some criminals were never punished and are still protected by your administration. The corollary of this is of course that those who impede their dirty work, as the Cuban Five did, are considered “enemies” by past administrations and by your administration as well. These five Cubans are not enemies of your country. By their courageous and dangerous undercover missions in Florida’s Mafia gangs, they have prevented many a terrorist attack against Cuba and have saved many lives, including those of United States citizens.

Most of the successive governments of the United States have applied a repressive policy against Cuba, since its revolution, a policy even harder than what Inter-American Secretary of State Lester D. Mallory advocated, writing to his Secretary of State Roy R. Rubottom on April 6th 1960:

“The majority of Cubans support Castro, there is no efficient political opposition.…All means should be rapidly undertaken to weaken the economic life in Cuba.…A measure that would have a deep impact would be to refuse any financial relations with, or shipping goods to this country. This would reduce incomes, therefore could provoke famine, despair and destabilize the government.”

We are impatiently waiting for other kinds of relations between Cuba and the United States. You have a historic opportunity to contribute to this. Don’t let the chance go by. With this goal in mind, we are hoping for a happy outcome to this lamentable saga of the Cuban Five. It is in your hands.

Please receive, Mr. President, the expression of my most sincere humanistic sentiments.

Jacqueline Roussie

Copies sent to: Mrs. Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano; to Mr. Harry Reid, Eric Holder, John F. Kerry, Pete Rouse, Donald Verrilli, Rick Scott and Charles Rivkin, United States Ambassador in France.

Translated by William Peterson