Leading Cuban dissident asks pope to press Castro regime on human rights
By ERIKA BOLSTAD
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- With a visit from Pope Benedict XVI scheduled next month,
one of Cuba's best-known political dissidents on Thursday called on the
Roman Catholic leader to use his power and visibility to shine a light
on human rights abuses and political oppression under the Castro regime.
If he has an opportunity to meet with the pope, he will ask him to be an
advocate for the oppressed, Oscar Elias Biscet told a House Foreign
Affairs subcommittee. He spoke through a translator, in testimony
telephoned from Cuba.
"I would say to him that I would love for him to lobby for our freedom
of speech and for a multi-party system, so that everyone can participate
and be represented," Biscet said. "We hope that his coming will bring
great change to our country."
President George W. Bush awarded Biscet the Medal of Freedom in 2007
while he was still imprisoned for his opposition to Fidel Castro's
regime. Biscet accused the Cuban government in the mid-1990s of allowing
and covering up botched abortions, and he was imprisoned from 1999 to
late 2002. He had been free for 37 days when he was arrested again.
Biscet, 50, was one of 125 political prisoners ordered released last
March by the government of President Raul Castro. Some congressional
leaders, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., have nominated him
for a Nobel Prize.
His testimony Thursday came at considerable personal risk and could lead
to his rearrest, he acknowledged. "Everything is possible," Biscet said.
"We're under constant supervision."
The committee did not announce Biscet's name before the hearing, out of
concern that Cuban authorities would detain him before he was able to
testify from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. During the hearing,
Biscet's photo was projected on two separate video screens. His image
was on several posters propped up along the wall in the hearing room.
Reps. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., and Albio Sires, D-N.J., said they
would write to the pope asking him to meet with Biscet. Rep. David
Rivera, R-Fla., said the message to the church couldn't be more clear.
"Now it is up to the Catholic Church to respond to Dr. Biscet," Rivera
said. "It is up to the pope himself to respond to Dr. Biscet. I would
hope they would be responsive to Dr. Biscet's hope and aspirations and
his request of the pope and the Catholic Church."
Biscet told the committee that the police in Cuba beat him, disfigured
his face and broke his foot in an effort to "stop through torture, stop
me from defending human rights."
He also described conditions in the prison where he was held. Some
prisoners were undressed collectively, disregarding "any respect for
human dignity," he said. They were handcuffed at their ankles and hands
for more than 12 and as many as 24 hours. Some were hanged by their
hands, with their feet barely touching the ground.
Cuban journalist Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, a recently freed political
prisoner who lives in Miami, told the committee that women are treated
with particular brutality by police. Some women have reported that their
captors undressed them, screamed obscenities at them, touched their
genitals and threatened them with rape, he said. "I still have fresh in
my mind the screams of prisoners who were being freshly tortured," he
said. "I don't know if I'll be able to ever forget that."
Sires said Biscet's testimony was untainted by the politics of the Miami
exile community. That should give the Castro regime pause, Sires said,
because Biscet is one of their own.
"He's not a product of Miami Beach, he's not a product of Miami, he's
not a product of Cubans in exile," he said. "This is a man that was
educated in Cuba, and he sees that this is a dictator, that this a
country that oppresses human rights. That this is a country that allows
no one the freedom to express themselves. And he's personally seen what
they do to people who are seeking freedom of expression."
Biscet on Thursday vowed to continue what he described as a nonviolent
movement to change Cuba. Biscet said Cubans expect little to improve
while the Castro brothers remain alive, but that they cannot wait for
their deaths to agitate for change.
"So we will create change on our own," he said. "We are hoping that we
will have the capacity to create nonviolent coercion and pressure in
order to actually install that political change ourselves."
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