The Mark 2010

The Cuban Five are behind bars in the U.S. for defending their country against exile groups with a history of violence.

Almost everyone seems to be getting out of jail these days.

When Conrad Black made bail, it garnered a lot of media attention. So too has the release of 52 prisoners in Cuba who were part of a group of 75 locked up in 2003. Human rights organizations and Cuban exile groups have labelled these men “political prisoners,” while the Cuban state sees them as threatening dissidents. Their wives formed a group named “The Ladies in White” which protests in Havana every week.

But with all of the attention given to these prisoners, has anyone stopped to ask why they were behind bars in the first place?

Openly disagreeing with President Raul Castro was not their crime. Dissent is not a ticket to a life sentence in Cuba. The Ladies in White are testimony to this – they have openly protested the government for years. The Cuban authorities allow them to do so and permit foreign media to cover the rallies.

So what landed the 75 in prison? It was the fact that they openly took money from U.S. agencies intent on destabilizing the Cuban government. That the U.S. does this is nothing new. The practice continues with the Obama administration. This year the U.S. State Department has committed $20 million to “support the Cuban people.” $16 million of this is earmarked for the creation of civil society groups and for media broadcasts. From the point of view of the Cuban government, this comes across as a hostile invasion of well-funded dissidents with a media machine on their side. What country would not be concerned by the idea of a foreign government funding dissent within its borders?

And what about prisoner Orlando Zapata, who became a born-again political prisoner and died in a Cuban jail from a hunger strike this February? Amnesty International called him a prisoner of consciousness in Cuba, even though he was convicted of domestic assault in 1993, and jailed again in 2000 for sinking a machete into the head of Leonardo Simón.

Going to the clink for violent assault is not unusual. Whether or not someone should serve time for receiving foreign funds in order to cause political dissent can be debated. For example, some would argue that thanks to western financial support, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine managed to bring democracy to that country.

But what about going to federal prison for thwarting the plans of terrorist groups who have a track record of blowing up resort hotels and airplanes? Should stopping violent groups from engaging in terrorism warrant jail time?

Because Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González – otherwise known as the Cuban Five – are all serving time in U.S. federal prisons for infiltrating Miami-based exile groups intent on overthrowing the Cuban government. In the late 1990s, the five men radioed information about the activities of groups with violent pasts back to Havana. They also gained jobs at the Key West air base, where they were accused of espionage against the United States. The five were found guilty of 26 charges, including first-degree murder (related to the Cuban military shooting down a civil aircraft), by the United States District Court in Miami and were issued the maximum sentences allowable, including back-to-back life sentences.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights found that the Miami trial did not take place in a culture of objectivity. Amnesty International condemned the trial as biased, and criticized the U.S. government for forbidding the wives of the five to visit their husbands in prison. And yet, there is nowhere near the same amount of political will or popular attention afforded to the Cuban Five as there is to the group of 75.

Why is there such a discrepancy in awareness? It seems that it is very easy for democratic societies to single out Cuba as having a unique, and therefore tainted, political system that must naturally breed human rights violations. It is far more difficult to recognize that such violations can happen right here in western democracies.

But if the U.S. justice system is willing to grant Conrad Black a second chance, and if Raul Castro can approve the exile of 52 dissidents, then what in the world are we waiting for in granting justice to the Cuban Five?