Leading Cuban Dissident Asks Pope To Press Castro Regime on Human Rights

Oscar Elias Biscet

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. [More]

SOURCE

Miami Herald