October 25, 2004
Dr. Elias Biscet on hunger strike.
Prisoner of conscience Dr. Elias Biscet once again on hunger strike to protest gravely inhumane conditions and treatment:
Encuentro en la red, October 21, 2004Toward the end of September, the mother of the political prisoner sent letters to Fidel Castro, Felipe Perez Roque and Ricardo Alarcon, but she has not received a reply.
Cuban political prisoner, Oscar Elias Biscet has initiated a fast in order to call attention to “the abuses that he and two colleagues are being subjected to” in jail, his family reported. They asked for help from the international community “to save his life.”
Dr. Biscet was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April, 2003. He has spent the major part of this incarceration in punishment cells. Last October 14th, he began to ingest only water and sugar in protest of his situation.
“For 19 months, the Cuban government has kept my husband, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez, out of communication and exiled in his own country, subjected to treatment plagued with cruel and degrading violations, “ his wife, Elsa Morejon, reported in a letter to the “Cuban nation and the international community.”
“During this time, he has had to live in prison cells without windows, sleeping on the floor. Only at 10:00 PM, do they bring him a moldy mat,” she added.
According to Morejon, Biscet lives “without running water, deprived of his belongings, and prohibited from reading and writing his family and friends. He is not allowed to “receive religious attention or go out in the sun.”
“In addition, he is prohibited from receiving the food that his family takes to him in jail. He is forced to eat two meals which are appropriate for swine, not for humans,” Morejon says, and she adds that the dissident physician, has lost some 70 pounds, his teeth have fallen out, and he has severe digestive disorders.
Prison authorities have prohibited him from having “all visits, including contact with his mother, wife, and children.”
Biscet, president of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, is serving his sentence in Kilo 8 Prison in Pinar del Ro. He is one of the 75 opposition members that the Cuban government sent to prison in the spring of 2003 with sentences of up to 28 years.
Morejon confirms that last September 30, Hilda Gonzalez, mother of the political prisoner, sent a letter in the Council of State, addressed to Fidel Castro, “explaining all the mistreatments that her son was being subjected to and “ asking him to intercede on her behalf so that she could be permitted communication with the dissident.
Gonzalez sent a copy of the letter to Chancellor Felipe Perez Roque and to the President of the National Assembly of Popular Power, Ricardo Alarcon, but “to date, she has not had any response,” Morejon says.
“Family and friends of Dr. Biscet hold the Cuban government responsible for deliberately putting his health and life in danger. They have in their hands a medical diagnosis in which reports of his arterial hypertension and hyper-cholesterol conditions are on record; in addition, friends and family hold the Cuban government responsible for not having given him the necessary attention and following up on judicial violations” that occur in Kilo 8 Prison, Morejon states in her letter.
His wife demands “the immediate cessation of the physical and psychological mistreatments” to which the prisoner and his family members are being subjected, that Dr. Biscet be allowed telephone communications, and that he be moved to Havana, where his relatives live, and that the prison authorities agree to let the dissident receive necessary nourishment for his health problems.
According to Morejon, Biscet is in prison only because “he opposes the death penalty and he wants a better future for all Cubans, where a State of Law and a full democracy exists.”
The physician opposition member was arrested in March, 2003, 36 days after having left jail after serving a sentence of three years.
Posted by Val Prieto at October 25, 2004 10:16 AM
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frustrating, I just don't understand the wisdom of a hunger strike. but, I cannot place myself in his position to even imagine it.
Posted by: j.scott barnard at October 25, 2004 01:51 PM
