Parliament - Members of the Cuban five on Tuesday asked South African MPs to support the lifting of the US trade embargo on the Caribbean nation.
The former Cuban intelligence officers - Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González - were briefing MPs as part of their 13-day trip to South Africa.
“We thank the people of South Africa and we thank this Parliament for the solidarity and the resolutions passed for the Cuban five and the lifting of the embargo - an embargo, by the way, that is still in place regardless of the conversations between the two governments…,” said Fernando González while addressing MPs about talks between Cuba and the United States towards the normalisation of relations between the two countries.
“It is a difficult process and is a process that is based, and is always going to be based on respect for Cuban sovereignty and for Cuban right to choose its own path, it’s own system. We never going to surrender that right.”
González said the normalisation of “neighbourly relations” with the US could only happen once Guantanamo Bay US naval base, which is located on land first leased to the US by Cuba in 1903, is returned to Cuba.
“It is something that we Cubans, friends of Cuba around the world, still have to fight for - a struggle for the lifting of that embargo and for the return to Cuba of that piece of our land that has been illegally occupied by the United States government for too many years now,” he said.
Ramón Labañino echoed González’s sentiments, adding it was the spirit of South Africans like former president Nelson Mandela who helped keep hope alive among him and his fellow countrymen while they were jailed in the US.
“When we couldn’t see the sun, the five of us always keep in our cell three pictures - first one of Fidel Castro, the second one of Che Guevara and the third one of Nelson Mandela - because his spirit, among many others, were the inspiration for us to keep us alive,” said Labañino.
“When we don’t have nothing else to hold us up, we had the spirit of Nelson Mandela.”
The men were arrested in 1998 on charges ranging from conspiracy to commit espionage to conspiracy to commit murder.
René González was released in October 2011. Fernando González was released in February last year, while the rest were released in December last year as part of a prisoner swap for the US to secure the release of Alan Gross, an American jailed in Cuba on suspicion of espionage.
ANA