René González responds to Washington Post editorial on Alan Gross.

Editorial del Washington Post

by Stephen Kimber on January 7, 2012

René González Sehwerert

On December 31, 2011, the Washington Post published an editorial demanding the return of Alan Gross, an American government contractor sentenced to 15 years in Cuban prison for illegally bringing telecommunications equipment into the country.

In the editorial, the Post claimed Cuba saw Gross as a "potential bargaining chip" to win the release of the Cuban Five, a group of Cuban intelligence agents sentenced to harsh prison terms in the U.S. for "conspiracy to commit" espionage.

"There is no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between the illegal espionage of the Cubans and the conduct of Mr. Gross. The five Cubans were sentenced to long prison terms in 2001 for, among other things, operating as undeclared foreign agents and infiltrating U.S. military installations in South Florida. All are acknowledged intelligence officers, unlike Mr. Gross, a would-be humanitarian who got himself caught up in the U.S.-Cuban dispute over U.S. efforts to promote civil society on the island."

René González, the only one of the Five to be released from prison—but who is still currently forced to serve his parole in the U.S.—has written a powerful, thoughtful response to the editorial. He's encouraging others to read the Post's editorial and write their own letters to the editor to challenge the inaccuracies in the piece and to push the American media to finally report completely and fairly on the case of the Five.

Dear Editor:

Your editorial regarding the case of Alan Gross -and in passing the one of the Cuban Five- is so charged with factual inaccuracies that it can only be explained -at least in part- by the astonishing decision by the American media to not publish anything of the longest "espionage" trial in the history of the country, which ended up on such harsh sentences that would suggest a danger to the US that everybody on the planet should have been aware of. I won't burden you with all the inaccuracies and will only refer to a few of them…

To read the complete letter… and more on the case of the Five. See in http://www.cubanfive.ca/2012/01/rene-gonzalez-responds-to-washington-post-editorial-on-alan-gross

____________
Stephen Kimber
Professor of Journalism
University of King's College
Halifax, Canada
www.stephenkimber.com
cubanfive.ca