Resolution on Solidarity With Cuba

With the victory of the Cuban Revolution on 1st January 1959, result of a rich tradition of struggle, the Cuban people achieved their true and definitive independence.

For nearly half a century, the world has been witness to how the Cuban nation, in heroic resistance to the constant threats and acts of aggression by US imperialism, has been able to defend the right to national self-determination and sovereignty.

One of the clearest expressions of the policy of harassment adopted by successive US administrations towards Cuba has been the application, for the last 48 years, of a savage economic, financial and trade embargo, tightened by the present Republican government of George W Bush, which has caused considerable losses - totalling over $89 bn - to that small nation's economy.

This policy of sanctions, whose primary aim is to destroy the Revolution and the Cuban nation and reinstate dependent, neo-colonial capitalism in Cuba, classes as an act of genocide that violates the most basic principles of trade and international law and has been opposed by 183 nations at the UN General Assembly.

The criminal embargo is accompanied by support, organization and funding by Washington and the US special services, for terrorist activity against Cuba that has included the slaying of 3,478 Cubans.

One of the most horrendous crimes against that nation has been the blowing-up in flight of a Cuban civil airliner, in October 1976, killing 76 people; its instigator is the known terrorist and self-confessed criminal, Luís Posada Carriles.

In a shameful act that demonstrates the double standard adopted by the current Bush administration in its proclaimed war on terrorism, they released this brutal murderer, while unjustly holding prisoner five brave young Cubans who have struggled against the terrorism organized by the extreme right-wing groups based in Miami.

Antonio, Fernando, Gerardo, Ramón and Rene, who risked their lives every day struggling against terrorism, were unjustly and severely sentenced at the culmination of a fraudulent, rigged trial that was really a political vendetta against the Cuban Revolution.

The cause of the Five has aroused solidarity the world over; there are now thousands of voices being raised to demand their immediate release and calling for the real terrorists, like Luís posada Carriles, to be brought to justice.

For all these reasons, the Communist and Workers' Parties gathered in Minsk, demand an end to the embargo the Cuban people have now suffered for 48 years and the immediate release of the Five Cuban Heroes, illegally detained in US prisons for the last nine years.

Cuba has every right to develop its own political, social and economic system, based of the free decision of its people, and has established a democratic system with extensive public participation, of justice and equality with rights for all its citizens, while achieving important social goals that are seen as exemplary by many of the world's peoples.

Minsk 05.11.2007