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Humanitarian visas demanded for
wives of Five
WASHINGTON,
March 8.—To coincide with International Women’s Day,
a group of U.S. public figures sent a letter to
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Janet
Napolitano, secretary of homeland security,
respectively, calling on their government to
immediately grant humanitarian visas to Olga
Salanueva and Adriana Pérez so that they may visit
their husbands imprisoned in the United States.
 The
letter’s signatories are U.S. members of the
International Commission for the Right to Family
Visits, which comprises 170-plus known figures from
27 countries.
They
include labor leaders such as Dolores Huerta,
co-founder and first vice president of the United
Farm Workers of America; and Melvin MacKay,
president of the ILWU Local 10 of San Francisco;
Noam Chomsky, Michael Torres, actor Danny Glover,
writer and poet Alice Walker, and the historic
fighter Angela Davis.
The
demand is also supported by Wayne Smith, former head
of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba; the legendary
civil rights activist Yury Kochiyama; and Peter
Phillips, president of Project Censored.
The
14 personalities end their letter by saying to
Clinton and Napolitano that the gesture of granting
visas to the wives of René González and Gerardo
Hernández “will show the world that we are
represented by elected officials who want better
relations with other nations and who have
compassionate and humanitarian hearts.”
Recently, Argentine members of the International
Commission for the Right to Family Visits handed in
a letter to the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires,
likewise addressed to the secretary of state and
secretary of the Homeland Security, and containing
the same demand.
Translated by Granma International
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