RESOLUTION re. HUBER MATOS

WHEREAS, Huber Matos, a teacher who dared to voice his concern that Cuba be a free and democratic county, is now suffering through his eighteenth of twenty years as a political prisoner; and

WHEREAS, he was sentenced at a public trial at which he was denied all rights of due process; and

WHEREAS, his suffering is ruthlessly multiplied by the fact that he sits blind and toothless in solitary confinement, without clothes, in a windowless cell; and

WHEREAS, he faces this miserable predicament alone, having been denied all rights of visitation from family and friends; and

WHEREAS, as both a teacher and a defender of freedom he exemplifies the inherent linkage between freedom, democracy, and education; and

WHEREAS, this week diplomatic negotiations will open between the United States and Cuba:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers call upon the government of the United States under the Carter Administration to make every effort possible, as a gesture of furthering human rights, to persuade the government of Cuba to commute the remaining sentence of Huber Matos; and

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers publicize the plight of Huber Matos to teachers and trade unionists throughout the world as an example of why the future of both the freedom to learn and the freedom to teach depends on a continuing campaign for human rights.