Chilean Parliamentarians Ask USA to Normalize Ties with Cuba

Many Chilean deputies favored normal relations between the United States and Cuba, and the release of the anti-terrorist fighters imprisoned in American jails.

Eleven members of the Committee for Friendship with Cuba of the Chilean Parliament handed a letter addressed to President Barack Obama, in which the normalization of ties with the Caribbean island is requested.

The Inter-Parliamentary Group composed of legislators from different parties want to send to you the request to restore relations between the United States and Cuba as two sovereign and independent countries, says the letter.

In arguing its claim, the deputies stressed that when the integration of America lives a promising time the unity of Latin American and Caribbean strengthens.

When most countries of the world have repeatedly condemned the blockade and the majority of Americans support a change in policy towards Cuba, we join the international outcry to normalize ties, says the text.

Accompanied by collective solidarity with Cuba, parliamentary Hugo Gutierrez, president of the Human Rights Commission of the House, was commissioned to deliver the letter to the American Embassy in Santiago, Chile.

‘According to surveys of the Center for Latin America of the Atlantic Council, 56 percent of Americans and 63% of Florida residents support a change in policy toward Cuba, “the note read.

It also said that the 79 percent of Cuban-Americans living in Florida also join the international clamor for normalization of relations between the two countries.

In another vein, Chilean deputies also refer to the case of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly convicted, of which three remain in American jails.

In the eyes of the world is evident the injustice committed since they were taken to prison in 1998 and recalled that International and American jurists have said that the theme of the Five is a political issue, it says.

‘Therefore, it is that we come to ask you, Mr. President, that through your power put an end to the economic blockade of Cuba (…), giving greater freedom and normalcy in relations between the two countries for the benefit of its citizens’ , says.

In particular the letter of parliamentarians put emphasis on freedom of Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino, the three Cubans serving long sentences counterterrorism is granted.

A group of experts from the United Nations, more than 10 Nobel laureates, policy makers, intellectuals, trade unionists, students, religious leaders, and others have repeatedly asked you to use his executive powers and sends them to their homeland, they said.

Finally, MPs ask Obama to use his good offices ‘to the prison authorities allow us to visit the Cuban citizens who are imprisoned because we have found it impossible to get permission to enter such penitentiaries’.