MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Cuban regime frees leading dissident who promises to keep protesting
Oscar Elias Biscet was serving a 25 year prison sentence The Cuban government has freed one of the country's leading dissidents, but he says he will keep protesting against the government.
Oscar Elias Biscet, freed on Friday, is one of the last of 52 political prisoners released under an accord between President Raul Castro and Cuba's Catholic Church last July.
“I am fine; very happy to be reunited with the family,” he told the foreign news agencies.
“It goes without saying that I will continue in the opposition because even in jail I did not give up my questioning attitude toward this government and the abuses it commits.”
Police escorted the 49-year-old Biscet from the Combinado del Este prison to his house in Havana, the capital.
Biscet, who was serving a 25-year prison sentence following a crackdown on dissidents in 2003, was perhaps the most prominent member of the group of 52 who were to be freed under a deal last year negotiated with Spain and Catholic
church officials.
The government has released 40 of the dissidents who agreed to go into exile in Spain, but initially balked at freeing the others. Authorities later released eight others, and after Biscet's release, only three of them remain behind bars.
During his incarceration, Biscet was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 by then-president George Bush.
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Read all commentsBrazilian Ex-President Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva has been criticised for comments in which he compared Cuban dissidents to common criminals.
Mar 13th, 2011 - 08:21 pm 0Lula said that hunger strikes, which some dissidents have staged, were not a pretext for release. “Imagine if all the criminals in Sao Paulo went on hunger strike to demand freedom,” he said.
Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas, who was on hunger strike, said he felt betrayed by then-President Lula's comments. Farinas had been staging his protest for over a fortnight prior to Lula's visit, to seek the release of all the ailing political prisoners from Cuban jails.
He began his action after jailed dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who had been on hunger strike for several weeks, died in prison.
His death provoked widespread international condemnation and calls for the release of all Cuba's detained political dissidents.
Now, with the help of the church, the Castros think there is sufficient advantage to release nearly all political critics of their regime.
Press hard for the release of those remaining in Cuban prisons for criticising the Castro regime.
Of course the Castro's regime falls in the “bad regime” category, so if 20 “political prisoners” go into hunger strike, it would absolutely cause the ire of the ones that keep out of jail the terrorist Posada Carriles and Co. and at the same time keep filling the Guantanamo gulag with “proved terrorists” or terrorists in the making , where? in Cuba of course!
Mar 14th, 2011 - 12:33 am 0Come on give me a break! Even a stupid can see that these people are payed by the same power to do so, in order to create another of their colorful “revolutions”. It's not that the empire hasn't tried over 50 years to bring this particular “ bad regime” to its knees, they employed ALL the tricks the CIA and the Pentagon can muster, with the help of their European suckers of course, without making a single dent on a poor but determined county's right to become independent from the rapacious empire.
By the way, haven't this “poor victim” refused to be freed before? Or was another well paid “hero”
That of course wouldn't fit the picture, eh? Imagine the western vassal media's publishing it!
“POLITICAL PRISONER IN CUBA REFUSES TO BE FREED”, that would say a lot, wouldn't it?
Aedi, I realise that English is not your native language, but I am having difficulty following your logic.
Mar 14th, 2011 - 01:58 pm 0As I understand it, the USA have taken in a million or more (?) refugees from (the Communist Dictatorship) Cuba.
My criticism was of my erstwhile President.
Lula da Silva became a pariah in his own land by failing to give recognition to the voice of the common man, in Cuba, in Venezuela and in Iran.
Though he enjoyed great support from the unwashed/uneducated, he betrayed the very roots and philosophy of the people who voted for him - the common man and woman of the country he served through The Workers Party (P.T.).
Lula agreed with these ('bad') dictators that
(i) they had the right to stone women to death,
(ii) to remove free speech and
(iii) to imprison those disagreeing with the dictator.
That made Lula the wrong man to 'rule' Brasil, and I am thankful he is gone.
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