letter of september to Obama

Mister President Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.

Washington DC 20500

Mister President,

As I do every month since your election to the White House, in the name of the friends of the Cuban Five, from Monein in France, I am writing to you.

It has now been thirteen years since the five Cubans - Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino and René González have been imprisoned in your country.

Thirteen years of being locked up under extremely harsh conditions, in several United States prisons, for these five men who are victims of a political frame-up.

Thirteen years since Gerardo Hernandez has been able to kiss his wife Adriana, for whom the authorities of your country refuse an entrée visa, and almost as many years under the same conditions for René Gonzalez and his wife Olga.

In one month, on the 7th of October 2011, one of the Cuban Five, René Gonzalez, will be freed. But what does such a release mean when this man is compelled to stay in Miami for the next three years?

Miami is a city where there are those who look back nostalgically to the time of the dictator Batista and who keep alive a bitter hate for the Cuban revolution.

It was in Miami that these five men were condemned under the iniquitous conditions that you are aware of, Mister President.

It is in Miami where the Mafia resides, the one that is ready and waiting to destroy the government it loathes, the Mafia that venerates the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
Can you imagine, Mister President, in this den of killers, what would happen to a Cuban patriot coming out of thirteen years of prison for having defended his country? You might as well send him directly off to the slaughterhouse!

It is in Miami where the most violent terrorist attacks were hatched. Operation Condor is still in the minds of every resident, with its litany of crimes.

In March 2006, the Florida Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen dared to state, during an interview for the British documentary “638 Ways to Kill Castro” – “I am all for the scenario of seeing someone assassinating Fidel Castro”. Ros-Lehtinen is the vice-president of the Committee of International Relations for the House of Representatives. You won’t count on her to furnish bodyguards for René Gonzales for three years; instead of that, she’ll be hiring hit-men to take him out!

Do you think a Cuban patriot would easily find someone to hire him? Of course, all the residents of Miami aren’t enemies of the Cuban revolution, but I can already imagine the death threats that someone who had the courage to offer a job to René Gonzalez will be receiving! We have seen how the people who were pre-selected as jurors during the Cuban Five court case in Miami were treated!

In this city, will René be able to live with complete peace of mind with his family? How can one imagine that his wife will all of a sudden obtain the visa that has been refused to her all these years? And even if she gets it, how can one imagine family life under permanent anguish in face of such dangerous living conditions?

Would René Gonzales be able, in all impunity, from Miami, to bear witness to what he went through during the thirteen years he spent in your prisons? It’s unthinkable!
Mister President, I’m writing to you in all seriousness. You have barely a month left to take the decision to send these five valorous men back to Cuba.

If you refuse to sign their liberation decree, you will be holding the full responsibility for the predictable happenings that will surely follow.

Admittedly, you might risk losing a few Florida voters, but you would be gaining the esteem and respect of millions of United States citizens and of people all over the world. You could increase your stature before your country’s justice system and in your own eyes, Mister President.

We are all awaiting your signature that must render these five courageous Cubans the liberty that never should have been taken from them.

Please receive, Mister 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 Werrilli, and Charles Rivkin, United States Ambassador in France.

Translated by William Peterson