International Campaign for Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva - please distribute

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International Campaign for the Right of two Cuba Women

to Visit their Husbands Imprisoned in the United States

Since September 1998, five Cubans have been suffering unjust sentences in U.S. prisons. The five men were monitoring Miami-based terrorist organizations of Cuban-American origin. For more than four decades, these organizations have perpetrated hundreds of terrorist attacks resulting in the death and disability of 5000 Cuban citizens.

The Five were collectively sentenced to four life sentences plus 74 years. Furthermore, another cruel punishment has been added to their family members, obstructing the visits of mothers, wives and children of the Five.

On average, these prisoners receive family visits once a year. This violation of the prisoners’ rights is even more severe for two of the Five: Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, whose wives the U.S. government has consistently denied visitation rights.

Olga Salanueva, wife of Rene has not been able to visit her husband for 6 years. Adriana Perez wife of Gerardo has not been able to visit him since he was arrested. Olga and Adriana are both model citizens and pose no threat to the U.S.

Both women have requested visas on 7 occasions and every single time, the United States government has denied them.

The United States government has no reason to deny these families the right to see each other.

In the English edition of the book “Letters of Love and Hope” that includes correspondence between the Five, their wives and their children, Alice Walker, the North American writer tells us:

“The treatment they have received is shameful. The silence around this treatment even more so. 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? That their children not be denied access to them, that their wives and mothers not be driven to despair by the many failed attempts they make to see their wrongly, in this case incarcerated kin.”

Mendocino, California, July 24, 2004

We make a call to all the women of the world to rise up against this tremendous injustice and to demonstrate by all means possible our solidarity with them and to demand that the U.S. government must immediately grant visas so that they can visit their husbands in prison.

In this battle thousands of men and women join us in solidarity, including 9 Nobel Prize winners. Most recently, on January 17, 2007, Amnesty International published a public statement about this issue.

We make a call to all women world-wide to organize a strong International Campaign between March 8^th and May 14^th, to coincide with International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day.

We propose the following:

To incorporate the demand for the granting of the visas to Adriana and Olga into all actions organized on International Women’s Day;

To ask female journalists and other writers to mention the violations that these two Cuban women are suffering;

To send messages to Condoleezza Rice demanding the granting of visas;

To deliver protest letters to U.S. Consulate personnel throughout Latin America and Europe; and

To organize Colloquiums that among other themes, raise the issue of these flagrant violations as a new form of torture of prisoners and expose these two women as victims of the violations.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH ADRIANA PEREZ AND OLGA SALANUEVA!

WE DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE GRANTING OF VISAS FOR BOTH WIVES!

STOP THE VIOLATIONS OF VISITATION RIGHTS OF THE FAMILY OF THE FIVE!

FREE THE CUBAN FIVE NOW!

ALL THE WOMEN OF THE WORLD, RISE UP FOR THESE TWO WOMEN!

TOGETHER WE CAN ACHIEVE OUR GOAL!

International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five

Friends and committees of 10 countries have already joined this campaign including: Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, United States, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Ukraine.

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