The Canadian Network on Cuba launches its "Sandy Relief Fund" Campaign

At 1:25 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 25th, Hurricane Sandy entered Cuba just west of Santiago de Cuba as a category 2 hurricane. However the extent and speed of Sandy gave it a destructive capability as great as any of the category 5 hurricanes.  Its central path took it rapidly through the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Holguín and Guantánamo, the former two provinces being the most populous in Cuba after the City of Havana.

The hurricane devastated the heroic city of Santiago de Cuba, destroying houses, damaging public buildings and monuments, leaving the city without water supply, electricity, shops, markets and trees. Despite massive evacuations, it took a toll of some 11 human lives, an unusually high number in Cuba for hurricanes (mainly by collapsing buildings) — 132,733 houses were affected with 15,322 totally destroyed and 43,426 losing roofs. Massive damage, not yet fully calculated, was caused in Guantánamo and Holguín before the hurricane left this province near Banes, precisely where hurricane Ike had entered four years earlier.

President Raúl Castro, visiting Santiago de Cuba on Sunday, Oct.  28, said that only urgent temporary measures can be taken and that the recovery of Santiago would take years.

The emergency measures are well underway. Roads to healthcare centres and other essential services were speedily cleared. Linemen have been arriving from seven provinces to work together with local ones to restore electricity and telephone services. Roofing materials are arriving from neighbouring provinces such as Las Tunas. Temporary systems have been set up to provide 85% of  the affected population with drinking water, and food supplies have been arriving from throughout Cuba to Santiago and other severely affected parts of eastern Cuba. Cultural activity has not been overlooked, with some cultural centres being promptly and reopened, with artists from different parts of the country to join local artists in lifting the spirits of the people.

Good friends of Cuba have also been prompt to supply assistance. Venezuela, for example, has given 650 tons of help including non-perishable food, drinking water and heavy machinery to Cuba, with some going to Haiti. However, the need remains great. Cuba continues to give its help to Haiti, which, although not directly hit by Sandy, suffered much destruction from flooding, with scores of lives lost.

Cuban provinces as far east as Villa Clara and Cienfuegos suffered from high winds and flooding due to heavy rainfall.

Canadians have responded generously in the past to disasters affecting Cuba and other Caribbean countries suffering from natural disasters. With great gratitude we recall that from coast to coast they responded to requests from the Canadian Network on Cuba, the umbrella group representing friendship organizations with Cuba.  We forwarded to Cuba after 2008, when the country was ravaged by three hurricanes, more than $404,000.00cad.

When on January 12, 2010, Haiti suffered the horrific earthquake, the CNC, recognizing that the most effective way of helping Haiti was by doing so through Cuba, mounted its TO CUBA FOR HAITI Campaign, which so far has collected and sent to the Cuban Medical Brigade in Haiti $453,728.12 cad.

Cuba needs substantial help, both immediate and long term, in order to overcome the crisis brought on by hurricane Sandy. Cuba’s Ministry of External Commerce (MINCEX) is establishing an account to receive the financial contributions.  As in all our previous fundraising efforts, every single penny donated will go to Cuba. Charitable tax receipts will be provided.

Our experience with regard to Cuba's response to natural disasters is that it knows how to multiply the value of any donations it receives. We feel confident, based on the island's unsurpassed humanitarian work both within Cuba and in other countries, that it has the skills, the organization and the ethical and moral values to put whatever aid it receives to the best possible use.


The CNC urges everyone who can afford to do so to support this effort by giving a donation:

1) payable to your local Friendship organization and please also write "CNC Sandy Relief Fund" on your cheque's memo  line. They will forward the info/money for tax receipts to the Mackenzie-Papineau MF.

2) payable to the ‘Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund’ and mail to the
Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund,   Att: Sharon Skup 56 Riverwood Terrace Bolton, ON  L7E 1S4  
Please also write "CNC Sandy Relief Fund" on your cheque's memo  line.
Charitable receipts will be issued by the Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund in 4-8weeks (Charitable Org - Revenue Canada Reg, #88876 9197R0001). There will be no administrative charges, not even for postage stamps or anything else.

Keith Ellis, Coordinator, CNC Sandy Relief Fund (905 822 1972;  zellis@yorku.ca)

Isaac Saney, CNC Co-Chair and National Spokesperson

Elizabeth Hill, CNC Co-Chair and Treasurer

People's Tribunal and Assembly to be held in Toronto on Cuban Five

* Toronto, September 21 - 23, 2012 *


This event has been endorsed by the Young Communist League of Canada.

Almost 14 years ago, the Cuban Five – René González, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando González – were falsely charged and wrongly in a Miami courtroom of "conspiracy to commit espionage" against the U.S. on behalf of the Cuban government. Ever since the unjust conviction, the five Cubans have been held in separate U.S. prisons, often in solitary confinement.

In fact, the politically-motivated trial and conviction of the Cuban five had nothing to do with threats to U.S. security. The Cuban Five never conspired to commit espionage. They were on a mission to monitor and report on violent groups in Miami that are well known by the U.S. government to be responsible for terrorist acts against the Cuban people.

For more than 50 years, hundreds of attacks have been launched against Cuba by these extreme right-wing groups, whose aim is the violent overthrow of the Cuban government. Their campaign of bombings, assassinations and other attacks has left 3,478 Cubans dead and 2,099 seriously injured.

The Cuban Five were peacefully trying to do what U.S. law enforcement authorities have refused to: prevent terrorism.

This horrific injustice against the Five has provoked an unprecedented campaign in the U.S., Canada and around the world to demand that their convictions be overturned and that they be granted immediate release.

As part of this international effort to achieve the freedom of the Cuban Five, a number oftrade unions and solidarity groups from across Canada, in coordination with the Canadian Network on Cuba and La Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba, are convoking a Peoples' Tribunal & Assembly on September 21-23, 2012 in Toronto, to shed new light on this egregious injustice and to build a broad public campaign to demand their freedom.

The Peoples' Tribunal & Assembly aims:

• to act as a forum for education and for launching an appeal to get justice for the Cuban Five;

• to break the silence of the mainstream media about this case; and

• to map out the next steps of a broad and united campaign on the Cuban Five in Québec and across the rest of Canada.

The Peoples' Tribunal, composed of prominent Canadian and international panelists, will hear from expert witnesses before rendering a ruling. Although the Tribunal's ruling will not be legally or judicially binding, it will carry moral force and suasion of the outrage of concerned people across Canada and internationally.

Witnesses will testify to the suffering caused to the Cuban people and to others as a result of all the terrorist attacks against Cuba and Cuban interests.  They will testify to the unjust trial in Miami, the U.S. government's covert payments to journalists covering the trial, the horrendous sentences given to the Cuban Five and the violation of international law by the United States government regarding the inhumane treatment they have endured, the denial of visitation rights to family members and the U.S. government's harbouring and protection of self-confessed anti-Cuban terrorists.

The Peoples' Assembly will serve to develop and adopt an extensive plan of action to pressure the Canadian government to join the international demand urging U.S. President Obama to use his authority to immediately release the Cuban Five and allow them to return to their homeland.


Participants to the Peoples' Tribunal and Assembly on the Cuban Five are coming from the USA,
the UK, Cuba, and Canada. A press conference where Tribunal participants will be present is called for Friday, September 21, 11:00 a.m., at the Metro Hall, 55 John Street (south of King), room 303.

From Cuba:

1.  Adriana Pérez, wife of Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban Five. Perez, who lives in Cuba, has not been allowed a U.S. visa for the last thirteen years of her husband's imprisonment despite repeated attempts. Her husband is serving two life sentences plus fifteen years in a maximum security prison. The most serious charge against him was conspiracy to commit murder, a charge for which there was no evidence and which the prosecuting attorney wished to withdraw for lack of evidence at his trial. The judge refused to withdraw the charges. In this most complex trial to that date in U.S. judicial history, the jury asked no questions for clarification and found all Five Defendants guilty on all counts.

2. Elizabeth Palmeiro, wife of Ramón Labañino, one of the Cuban Five. His life sentence was vacated and replaced by a sentence of thirty years. A three-judge appeals court had requested a retrial but in an unprecedented move the Prosecution asked for all the judges on the appeals court panel to review the case and 3-judge panel decision was overturned; the retrial never happened. Sentences were vacated in three of the five cases and the same judge who passed the original sentences reduced Labanino's life sentence to thirty years in prison.

3. On October 6, 1976, the Cubana airliner of passenger flight 455 exploded from a bomb set by two persons working with Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind of this horrendous action. Seventy-three passengers aboard lost their lives including the gold medalists of Cuba's fencing team that had just concluded their competition at Games in Caracas. Posada Carriles continues to live freely in Florida. A representative from the Cuban education community will speak on behalf of the relatives of the victims from that explosion, at the Tribunal and Assembly.

4. Rodolfo D'Ávalos Fernández, member of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba and a renowned human rights lawyer.

5. Dr. Raymundo Navarro, member of the National Secretariat for International Relations of the Cuban Confederation of Trade Unions (CTC), a medical doctor who is also an elected deputy to the National Assembly of the People's Power (Parliament of Cuba).

6. Esperanza Luzbert, Director, North America, Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).


7. Other representatives from Cuba will be present.


Contacts: Heide Trampus, Co-ordinator, tribunal.five@gmail.com, 416 431 5498
            Lisa Makarchuk, Chair, Media Sub-Committee lisamakarchuk@sympatico.ca, 416 603 9858