For years, indeed decades, we have denounced the blockade imposed by the US authorities against Cuba. We have denounced and continue to denounce the various policies and measures adopted by Washington since 1959-1960 to isolate, destabilise and attack Cuba. We are anti-imperialists and convinced internationalists.

We were therefore very concerned to learn of the arrest during a march of protest in Havana on 11 July of Frank García Hernández, Cuban historian and Marxist, Leonardo Romero Negrín, young socialist studying physics at the University of Havana, Maykel González Vivero, director of Tremenda Nota and Marcos Antonio Pérez Fernández, pre-university student. Frank García Hernández is an important scholar has achieved a worldwide reputation for his work on reevaluating the history of the Cuban left and organising an international congress on Trotsky in Havana in 2019.

We call for the unconditional release of Frank and all his comrades and for respect for the democratic rights of all the Cuban people.

As the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg stated in The Russian Revolution in 1918:

‘without a free and untrammelled press, without the unlimited right of association and assemblage, the rule of the broad masses of the people is entirely unthinkable.’

She added:

‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party — however numerous they may be — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of “justice” but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes

when “freedom” becomes a special privilege.’

As we publish this petition, we have heard of unconfirmed reports that Frank García Hernández was released on Monday 12 July. We are delighted to hear this and await definitive confirmation that he has been freed. At present we don’t have any information about the other people arrested with Frank.