I"m pissed off. Why won't they let the wife of Gerardo Hernandez into the US to visit him?

[flamingdem]

The right winger dem influence in the administration is showing on Cuba issues.
Hillary etc. have not even rolled things back to where they were in 2003 in
regards to Visas for artists as well. Grrr.

Cuba protests US visa denial
By EDITH M. LEDERER (AP) – 43 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS — Cuba accused the Obama administration of following in the footsteps of the Bush administration and violating U.S. law by denying a visa to the wife of a convicted intelligence agent for the communist nation.

In a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon circulated Monday, Cuba's U.N. Ambassador Abelardo Moreno Fernandez demanded that the U.S. government grant Adriana Perez "a humanitarian visa immediately so that she may visit her husband," Gerardo Hernandez.

The ambassador said that on July 15, after a wait of 95 days, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana denied Perez a visa for the 10th time, using "the crude argument" that she "constitutes a threat to the stability and national security of the United States."

"This is shameful confirmation that the current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is using the same argument as her predecessor Condoleezza Rice to deny Ms. Adriana Perez her visa," Moreno Fernandez said.

"This decision of the United States authorities violates the country's own law and demonstrates a systematic violation of its international obligations," he said. It "is also a systematic and flagrant violation of human rights and an act of torture against Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo — unjustly sentenced to two life sentences plus 15 years in prison — and members of his family."

The U.S. Supreme Court in June refused to review the conviction of Hernandez and four other intelligence agents for the communist country despite calls from Nobel Prize winners and international legal groups to consider the case.

The so-called "Cuban Five," who were arrested in September 1998, maintain they did not receive a fair trial because of strong anti-Castro sentiment in Miami. They have been lionized as heroes in Cuba, but exile groups say they were justly punished.

State Department spokeswoman Rima Vydmantas said the U.S. does not discuss specific details of individual visa cases.

"The fundamental issue is whether the applicant qualifies for the visa under U.S. law on his or her own individual merits," she said.

The letter to the secretary-general included an "appeal to the parliaments and peoples of the world," approved by Cuba's National Assembly, which demands the immediate release of the "Cuban Five."

The appeal states that President Barack Obama "has the constitutional authority and the moral obligation to ensure justice."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Pure malice. You can be sure the Miami mafia is directly in the center of this,

as they have been in every aspect of US/Cuba policy from the first, and even getting their ugly noses up to their eyebrows in the middle of all US/Latin American policy. They were even active in Iran/Contra, of course, not to mention acted as assassins in Operation Condor.

Their lobby has involved by hook or crook all the powerful right-wingers in Congress. They have used muscle on every issue involving Cuba.

It's tragic, it's filthy from the very first, when these men, naive, trusting, like children, took their investigation findings to the FBI, expecting, since they had done the legwork, produced the evidence, the FBI would see the Miami monsters had been conducting war on Cuba contrary to US law, and the FBI BETRAYED THEM.

It may come down to the formal shift in US/Cuban relations, with the FIVE becoming used as a swap for some condition sought from Cuba in exchange.

[Peace Patriot]

2. I think it's more than malice. They don't want her here arguing her husband's and

the Cuban Five's case in the US media. Our corpo/fascist media might feel obliged to cover it, after their fashion--alerting yet more people here, who read between the lines, to what has gone on with this. She would also likely speak to various groups, and help put pressure on the Obama administration to do something about it.

You gotta laugh when our government gets all huffy and puffy about democracy and "free speech" and "political prisoners" in Cuba. Such utter hypocrisy!

Who has the most political prisoners in Cuba? It ain't Cuba!

What is the harm of people in the US hearing from the wife of a prisoner? How does this in any way affect "national security"? It's only "harmful" if the imprisonment is bullshit. And the only "harm" is to bad policy.

It's malicious, yes. And the Miami mafia is behind it, for sure. But the danger here is free speech--not a woman visiting her imprisoned husband. They could grant that, or not grant that. They chose to be malicious. But their motive--the government's motive, as well as the Miami mafia's motive--is to keep the story of the Cuban Five from getting widely known and understood.

Such a horrible joke, the "war on terror."

[Mika]

3. No real Cuban heroes allowed in the US psyche.

Only phony ones, like lackey "dissidents" for profit.


Get the latest news here..

www.freethefive.org

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[flamingdem]

4. I imagine that it is illegal to prevent someone from seeing their spouse if

they don't have a criminal record. It doesn't sit right, there must be precedent.

[Mika]

5. Its a violation of the Geneva Convention.

http://www.freethefive.org/resourceslegal.htm


www.freethefive.org

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