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Mission Seeks Greater European Solidarity for the Cuban Resistance
13.09.2010
Berlin, Germany. September 7, 2010. Assembly of the Cuban Resistance. As world attention focuses on the growing impact of the actions of the civic resistance movement in Cuba, the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance has launched a mission to seek the European Union's support for those efforts.
Former Cuban prisoner of conscience Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, who was removed from Holguin Provincial Prison and forcibly exiled to Spain on August 19, 2010, as well as exiled activists Sylvia Iriondo of Mothers and Women Against Repression and Janisset Rivero of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, who were representing their respective organizations and the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, met with Thomas Seidel, of the German Federal Foreign Office's Latin America bureau.
Afterward, during a press conference attended by international media in Berlin on the morning of September 7, 2010, former prisioner of conscience Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta called for solidarity with the cause of freedom for the Cuban people, along with the delegation from the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance.
“You tore down the Berlin wall. Help us now to tear down the military olive green wall of the Castro brothers' dictatorship,” stated the former prisoner of conscience, referring to the necessity of maintaining the European Common Position toward Cuba.
The conference was organized by the International Society for Human Rights (Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte). Members of parliament (MPs) who have supported Cuban political prisoners by symbolically adopting them also took part. Bundestag MPs Dieter Dombrowski and Arnold Vaatz moderated the conference.
“We are here to ask the European Union not only to maintain the Common Position, but to strengthen it,” stated Iriondo during her statement, which focused on the current debate among EU member states concerning the revision of political sanctions in place against the regime on the Island.
Herrera Acosta condemned the human rights violations that take place in Cuban prisons and recalled Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who shared the same prison with Herrera Acosta during the last two years of his life.
In her own remarks, Janisset Rivero, described the current situation in Cuba and the internal resistance movement's struggle to achieve democratic change.
“There is a struggle for freedom taking place in Cuba. We need the world's support, and Germany's, so that the Cuban people might finally achieve a life of dignity and rights,” stated Rivero during her presentation at the end of the conference.
The Assistance Fund for Cuban Political Prisoners made former Cuban prisoner of conscience Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta's presence at the event possible.
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