Havana, October 13 (RHC) –- A recent forum held in Lincoln, Nebraska, in which over 100 participants addressed Washington's wars on Iraq and Syria and environmental issues, had the case of the Cuban anti-terrorist fighters held in US jails at the center of discussions of the Nebraskans For Peace event.
An article on The Militant website, entitled “The Fight to Free the Cuban Five Wins New Support at Nebraska Conference,” reads that a series of paintings by Antonio Guerrero, three of the Five, who are still imprisoned in U.S. jails, was displayed in the main meeting hall.
During a break, Nebraskans For Peace president Mark Vasina introduced Jacquie Henderson, who has helped organize exhibits of the paintings in the U.S. Henderson recalled Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González and René González, three of the Five, were among some 425,000 Cuban volunteers who between 1975 and 1991 took part in an internationalist mission to help newly independent Angola repel repeated invasions by the white supremacist South African apartheid regime.
The activist pointed out that “this gives us some insight into what has shaped the exemplary character of the Five and the internationalist, selfless character of revolutionary Cuba, which has sent hundreds of medical volunteers to combat Ebola in Africa today.”
In addition to 15 watercolors painted to mark 15 years of incarceration, the exhibit included one new painting, “The Verdict of the Jury,” from a collection of 16 works by Guerrero on the trial of the Five. It shows prisoners’ hands applauding for the Five through bars as they return to prison following their conviction.
Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labanino, along with Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez, were given unfair sentences in the U.S., after they monitored Florida-based violent organizations that planned terrorist actions against Cuba.
Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez returned to Cuba after fully serving their prison sentences, but their three compatriots are still held in U.S. prisons despite international demands for their release.
