CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER AND PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE February 2006 “I say to my brothers in exile, the international community and the Cuban people that I feel kidnapped only for defending the right to life and the right of all Cubans to live in freedom. remember I will never betray a just cause: that of defending human rights. Please, do not ask me to do this. What inspires me is alive: God and the great teachers of nonviolence, present today more than ever. As Martin Luther King said: “If a nation is capable of finding amongst its ranks of people 5% willing to go voluntarily to prison for a cause they consider just, then no obstacle will stand in their way.”” Provincial Prison of Pinar del Rio, Cuba June 1, 2003 Dr. Oscar E. Biscet, President of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, was released October 31, 2002, after serving a three-year sentence at a maximum-security prison for his peaceful defense of human rights. Thirty-six days later he was violently re-arrested in Havana and forced in a cell with common criminals as he was to join a group of civilians to discuss human rights. He remained in prison and was included in a crackdown by the Cuban regime in March-April, 2003, against 75 independent journalists, librarians, and human rights advocates who went before summary trials and were sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years. For almost five years, this physician has been suffering physical and mental torture in different penitentiaries for refusing to carry out any disciplinary prison measures he deems unacceptable as a political prisoner of conscience. He is presently serving a 25-year sentence in the Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. Dr. Biscet is an example of the human rights violations suffered by all those in Cuba who dare to defend the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1. Born of humble origin on July 20, 1961, Dr. Biscet is a Cuban physician of the black race, follower of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King. He is a leader in the peaceful civil rights movement, who struggles to establish in Cuba a state based on the rule of law through nonviolent civil disobedience. He is president of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, an organization established in 1997, considered illegal by Cuban authorities. 2. Dr. Biscet is prohibited from practicing his profession in his own country. He was expelled from the Cuban National Health System in 1998 for documenting abortion techniques and peacefully denouncing them before Cuban authorities as a form of genocide. 3. Dr. Biscet was evicted from his home in 1998 with his wife and son, having to depend on the charity of friends to survive. His wife presently lives at the home of a former patient who took the family in. 4. Elsa Morejón, Dr. Biscet’s wife and a nurse by profession, has been unemployed since 1998 as a result of her husband’s human rights activities. Elsa was publicly attacked by the government-controlled mass media at her husband’s trial. She has received threatening and obscene phone calls at home, and Cuban authorities have demanded she pay unjustified fines for penalties never committed. 5. Cuban State Security has mistreated Dr. Biscet physically through beatings. 6. Cuban State Security has tried to confine Dr. Biscet to a psychiatric hospital and has tortured him psychologically through threats, humiliations, blackmails, and intimidating interrogations. 7. Cuban authorities have pressured Dr. Biscet to leave Cuba. He has reiterated that he will never abandon his country. 8. Dr. Biscet has been arbitrarily incarcerated 26 times in 16 months since July 9, 1998 until November 3rd, 1999 in cells with no sunlight and with insane individuals and common criminals. When most of these detentions occurred, his family was not informed of his whereabouts. 9. Dr. Biscet went on trial on February 25, 2000, for announcing a peaceful march along with a number of human rights advocates, on the occasion of the 1999 Ibero-American Summit in Havana, at a press conference where two Cuban flags were displayed in an inverted vertical position as a sign of protest for the human rights violations in Cuba. Dr. Biscet was accused of “dishonoring national symbols”, “public disorder”, and “inciting delinquent behavior”, and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was subsequently transferred 450 miles East of Havana away from his family to “ Cuba Si “, a maximum security prison in Holguín province. 10. At “Cuba Si”, prison authorities punished Dr. Biscet during 42 days for carrying out a fast, asking freedom for all political prisoners and human rights for Cuba. He described his isolation cell to his family as a torture; dark, and with no running water. He was fed such a deficient diet that he lost 20 pounds and several teeth. He was denied access to his Bible, medical attention, and family visits. 11. At “Cuba Si” and at “Kilo 8”, penal authorities violated established prison code regulations since Dr. Biscet is denied all privileges granted to common prisoners. (Denied freedom under probation and was not allowed visits from friends.) 12. At “Cuba Si” & “Kilo 8” prisons, Dr. Biscet could not write to his family, and his mail was intercepted, read, and confiscated. 13. Dr. Biscet has denounced from “Cuba Si” and from “Kilo 8” prisons that due to the repressive hostile environment, his life was in danger and that he highly distrusted the medical personnel at the prison facility and has thus not received any medical attention for more than five years. 14. At “Cuba Si” prison authorities placed a paranoid schizophrenic inmate to share Dr. Biscet’s bunk bed on April, 2001. 15. During his three-year confinement in “Cuba Si”, his Bible was taken away four times and in spite of numerous official requests made by his family to receive spiritual assistance in prison, the Catholic Church was allowed to visit him only twice. 16. Dr. Biscet served his 3-year sentence at “Cuba Si”, and was released October 31, 2002, only to be re- arrested on December 6, 2002 as he was to meet with human rights activists, promoting a project called “Clubs of Friends of Human Rights”. On April 7, 2003 he went before a summary trial during a Cuban government crackdown along with 75 other activists, and was sentenced to 25 years for “serving as a mercenary to a foreign state.” He was transferred to the prison of Kilo 7 in Pinar del Rio where he was confined from November 13, 2003 through January 15, 2004 to an underground dungeon with a common criminal and where he lost 40 pounds. 17. Dr. Biscet was transferred on December 1, 2004, to the Combinado del Este Prison in Havana where he is presently imprisoned, suffering inhumane conditions. During all his years of confinement, Dr. Biscet refuses to carry out any disciplinary measure or rule applied to common prisoners, which he deems unacceptable as a political prisoner of conscience. For his stance, he has suffered punishments which consist of prohibiting family visits, food supplies, toiletries or clothing, receive or send correspondence and telephone calls, going out into the sun, confinements with dangerous convicts or in isolations cells 3 ft. by 6 ft. with no windows, no light, or running water. Dr. Biscet, though physically deteriorated, is very strong spiritually. 18. Dr. Biscet is in a poor state of health suffering from hypertension, chronic gastritis and high cholesterol, conditions he previously never had; caused by the psychological stress in prison, and the unbearable food he is forced to eat. The unsanitary conditions in his cell have caused lesions in his skin, and he has lost several teeth due to a serious gum disease that needs urgent attention from a dentist. (After he was released October 31, 2002, the family dentist who was supposed to treat this critical condition received threats and Dr. Biscet was never able to obtain dental treatment.) All documented facts were obtained in the USA directly through live testimonies from Cuba via telephone and were recorded, transcribed, and translated. (since 1998 to the present) by the Coalition of Cuban-American Women/ E-mail: Joseito76@aol.com/ Tel: 305-662-5947/ Fax: (305) 740-7323/ www.biscet.org ADDRESSES: Dr. Oscar E. Biscet González Prision Combinado del Este Carretera Monumental, Municipio Guanabacoa Habana, Cuba Elsa Morejón Hernández Acosta 464 entre 8va y 9na Lawton, Municipio 10 de Octubre La Habana, Cuba Tel: + 537 991774 |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
