Feb 16, 2010
Argentinean personalities have sent a letter to Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano demanding visas for two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands imprisoned in the United States for more than 11 years. The letter, delivered early in the morning of February 16th to the US Embassy in Buenos Aires has the signatures of Nobel Peace recepient Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Estela de Carlotto President of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Nora Cortiñas Mother of Plaza de Mayo - Founder Line, writer and journalist Stella Calloni, Graciela Rosemblum President of the Human Rights Argentinean League, jurists Beinusz Szmukler and Carlos Zamorano, Fray Antonio Puigjané, Capuchino Priest, Sociologist Atilio Borón and Philosopher León Rozichtner. All signers are Argentinean members of the International Commission for the Right of Family Visits. A copy of this document has been sent to several international human rights organizations. INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE RIGHT OF FAMILY VISITS
Av. Corrientes 1785, 2º “C”- Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, c/p 1042
República Argentina
February 10, 2010US Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham ClintonUS Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano
c/c US Ambassador in the Republic of Argentina
Ms Vilma Martínez
United Nations Human Rights Council
Rapporteur Against Torture
United Nations Group on Arbitrary Detentions
Amnesty International
Ombdusman
Dear Ms Clinton and Ms Napolitano: From the Republic of Argentina we respectfully write to you to ask the State Department of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security to immediately grant HUMANITARIAN VISAS to two Cuban citizens, Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva, wives of prisoners Gerardo Hernández and René González respectively.
They have been denied visits to their husbands in prison for 11 years. Up to now the State Department has denied their visas applications with different arguments on each occasion. On December 18, 2009 the Department of Homeland Security denied the humanitarian parole to Olga Salanueva. Without any explanation, they denied this elementary recourse to come to the US with the sole purpose to see her husband, René González, unjustly sentenced to 15 years in prison.
We have learned about the pressure that this family was put through by the US government, including a lengthy detention Ms Salanueva, with the purpose of pressuring her husband to collaborate with the prosecutors assuming a crime that he never committed. Three months later in December 2000, Olga was deported to Cuba without allowing her to bring along her two year old child who by the way is a US citizen. After 10 years since the deportation, the US government continues punishing this woman. There is not any accusation or legal process against her. Additionally her status of being a mother and a wife of US citizens makes a compelling connection to the United States.
We also are aware of the arbitrary detention suffered by Ms Adriana Pérez when she was planning to visit her husband Gerardo Hernández, unjustly serving two life sentences plus 15 years in US prison. In July, 2002 Ms Perez was detained in the Houston Airport, photographed, finger printed, interrogated for 11 hours, prevented from speaking to a lawyer or Cuban diplomats and subsequently sent back to Cuba, cruelly preventing Adriana to see her husband.
That was the last time that she was granted a visa to see him during the 11 years he has been imprisoned. The last visa denial for Adriana was on July 15, 2009, the day of their 21 wedding anniversary.Four month later, on November 2nd, Gerardo Hernandez’s mother died. Not even a sad event like this in the life of any human being was Adriana Perez allowed to visit her husband to console him.
The applications for humanitarian visas for Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez are supported by an important number of religious, legal and human rights institutions. From the World Council of Churches to the US Council of Christian Churches, the Cuban Council of Churches, the Association of American Jurists, Amnesty International, 170 personalities including several Nobel Prize winners, parliamentarians, elected officials, and intellectuals from all over the world.
We are asking ourselves, why so much cruelty against two honorable women who have committed no crime and whose only purpose is to visit their imprisoned husbands? These two women have been received and welcomed by Parliaments, Ministers and Governments of many countries. Incredulously we ask ourselves where is justice and the humanitarian sense of the United States?
Until the Cuban Five are freed, the below signatories demand the immediate granting of HUMANITARIAN VISAS to ADRIANA PÉREZ and OlGA SALANUEVA and MULTIPLE VISAS TO ALL THE FAMILY OF THE CUBAN FIVE.Sincerely,Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize
Estela de Carlotto, President Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo
Nora Cortiñas, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo-Founding Line
Beinusz Szmukler, Consultative President of the American Association of Jurists
Stella Calloni, Journalist and Writer
Graciela Rosenblum, President of League for Human Rights
Fray Antonio Puigjané, Capuchino Priest
Atilio Borón, Sociologist, Member of UNESCO Latin American Council of Social Science
Carlos Zamorano, Jurist, Secretary of the Human Right Lawyer Association
León Rozichtner, Philosopher, Writer, Konex Prize 2004
Please respond to: Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre
Av. Corrientes 1785, 2º “C”- Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, c/p 1042
República Argentina
E.mail: ladh@velocom.com.ar
Appendix On numerous occasions since 2003, Amnesty International has denounced the violation of the rights of family visits for Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez.
On January 17, 2007, Amnesty International denounced again the violation of these prisoners to receive visits from their wives as an “unnecessary punishment”.
Since March 2009 Amnesty International has maintained a campaign demanding visas for Olga Salanueva y Adriana Pérez.
Several organizations have offered to accompany these Cuban women to the US prisons where their husbands are serving their sentences including: Directors of the US based World Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, Father Miguel D´Escoto, former President of the United Nations, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize, Estela Carlotto, President of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Yeidckol Polevnsky, Vice-President of the Mexican Senate, Gayle McLaughlin, Mayor of Richmond, California, former Bishop of Detroit Thomas Gumbleton and the Rev Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, former General Secretary of the US National Council of Churches, and Rev. Lucius Walker, Executive Director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace.
Important organizations, parliaments, unions, intellectuals and personalities have also demanded the granting of Humanitarian Visas for Olga and Adriana, including 187 Members of the European Parliament, the former President and 7 Vice Presidents of the European Parliament. Presidents Lula Da Silva, Fernando Lugo, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega and President of South Africa Jacob Zuma have added their voices as well in support of the visas.
Also Salvador Sánchez Cerén, Vice-president of El Salvador, María León, State Minster for Women’s Affaire-Venezuela, Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Peace Prize, Danielle Mitterrand President of France-Libertades Foundation, Jitendra Sharma, Vice-president of the International Association of Democrat Lawyers, Juan Guzmán Tapia, Director of the Human Rights Center of the Central University of Chile, David Suzuki, President of David Suzuki Foundation, The American Association of Jurists, the International Association of Democrat Jurists, William Sloan, President of the American Association of Jurists-Canada, the Buenos Aires Association of Lawyers, the Lawyer Orders of Brazil, Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild, the Puerto Rico Collage of Lawyers , the International Union of Jurists, the Ibero-American Union of Jurists, the US National Association of Public Defenders, the US National Association of Criminalists Lawyers, the US/Florida Criminalist Lawyers Association, Father Jacques Gaillot Catholic Bishop of France, Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson, joint general secretaries of UNITE, Brendan Barber, Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), Paul Kenny, General Secretary of the GMB trade union, Denis Lemelin, CUPW National President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers, all members of Congress of Argentina, 13 Mayors of California, the City Council of Richmond and the City Council of San Pablo, both in California, the City Council of Detroit, Charles Barron elected official of the 42 District of New York, Esteban Torres former Congressman, Malvin Mackay President of the ILWU local 10 in SF, The American Association of Teachers, San Francisco, the SF Labor Council, Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Lucius Walker Executive Director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, Rev. Spenser D. Simrill of the Episcopal Cathedral of Minnesota, Yury Kochiyama, civil right activist, Wayne Smith, former chief of the US Interests Section in Havana, Antonio González, President of the William C. Velazquez Institute, actors Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte, writers Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips, James Cockcroft, Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild, Alfonso Sastre, Ingnacio Ramonet, Marcos Ana, UK Catholic Priest Geoffrey Bottoms, Martín Almada, Jurist, Alternative Nobel Prize 2002 of Paraguay, the Workers Union of Argentina, the Board of Andalucia, the Workers Union of Bolivia, Brendan Barber, Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) Sader, Executive Secretary of CLACSO (Latin-American Council of Social Sciences, Samir Amin, President of Alternative World Forum, Manuel Bonmati, Secretary of International Policy of the Workers Union of Spain, Marco Martos Carrera, President of the Academy of Language of Perú, Father François Houtart, Priest and Sociologist of Belgium, Khaled Salama, Member of the National Palestinian Council and President of the Federation of Arab Entities of America, Parliamentarians and intellectuals of America Latin, Europe and the Caribbean amongst many others are demanding this basic elementary right.
The Five are internationally known as “the Cuban Five”. When their defense lawyers asked the US Supreme Court to review the case their petition was supported by 12 Amicus Briefs, including 10 Nobel Prize Winners, Mary Robinson former President of Ireland and former High Commissioner of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, the entire Mexican Senate, the National Assembly of Panama, 75 members of the European Parliament including two former Presidents and three current Vice-presidents, hundreds of Parliamentarians of different countries, a number of worldwide Lawyers and Human Right Associations.
With the denial of the US Supreme Court to review the case, all the legal recourses are exhausted without justice being done. On top of the unjust sentences an additional punishment was added creating obstacles and delays for visas for all the families of the Five. René González and Gerardo Hernández, are two of the Cuban Five imprisoned in the United States from September 12, 1998 for monitoring terrorist organizations of Cuban origin based in Miami. In the cases of Gerardo Hernández and René González the right of family visits has been violated.
This discrimination has created irreversible damage to the prisoners and their families.
Denying prisoners the right of being visited by their wives has become with the passing of years a form of cruelty and torture.
It is discouraging to observe that the United States persists in punishing five innocent men, when it has recognized that the Five never put at risk the national security of the United States. Meanwhile the US government has allowed freedom for international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, author of the blowing up of a civilian Cuban airliner where 73 innocent people died in 1976. On March 1st, Posada Carriles will appear in a court in El Paso Texas. He will be on trial for lying to US immigration authority instead of the numerous crimes of terror that he has committed.
