Following up on Monday’s post and podcast,
Gomez didn’t get a chance to tell Sting personally, but according to the latest posting on his blog, Gomez had the chance to talk to guitarist Andy Summers.
“While we were in the middle of reading the names of the 300 political prisoners, one of my best buddies approaches me and says, ‘Andy Summers is here.’ Andy Summers is the guitarist of The Police. It turns out that he was simply there to have dinner at Miami’s most famous Cuban restaurant. I politely approached him in the foyer before he was seated. I told him we were having a candlelight vigil outside, precisely because he and The Police are in town,” said Gomez.
“He listened patiently as I explained that Amnesty International recognizes 69 prisoners of conscience in Cuba and that in our Miami community there are close to 1 million Cubans who fled the human rights abuses in that country. He told me that the Cuba concert is not a certainty. I told him that we weren’t protesting the concert but appealing to them to stand up for human rights in Cuba like they had in the past for other countries. I asked him to share the message with his band mates and he said he would. The entire exchange took no more than 90 seconds while he waited for his table,” Gomez posted in his blog.
According to a 2007 Amnesty International report on Cuba, there are an estimated 69 political prisoners being held in jails throughout Cuba.
Gomez said the BUCL is not necessarily calling for The Police to call negotiations for a free concert for the people of Cuba but rather set the rules of their appearance.
“If you’re invited to play for regime you should set the terms in which you will perform — that you can say whatever you want when you are on stage, those are not unreasonable terms to make,” said Gomez.
According to Gomez, Summers said the Havana concert was not a sure thing and that he promised to relay the group’s views to Sting.
Read more about it at the BUCL site, and at Babalu Blog
The video shows the Ladies in White/Damas de Blanco, who won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005.
