Bush awards Cuban dissident Medal of Freedom
Posted: Monday, November 05, 2007 3:45 PM
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Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
HAVANA –
President George Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor, to Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet, an opponent of Cuba’s communist regime serving a 25-year sentence in a high-security Havana prison.
While in good company among the other Medal of Freedom recipients, including Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Harper Lee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the "To Kill a Mockingbird," Biscet, 46, has been a political prisoner in Cuba for most of the last eight years.
As Biscet’s son, Yan Valdes, accepted the award on his behalf at the White House Monday, Bush praised Biscet as "a physician, a community organizer, and an advocate for human rights" who is a "man of peace, a man of truth, and a man of faith."
Bush lauded the fact that Biscet "has continued to embody courage and dignity," despite his long imprisonment.
From activist to political prisoner
In an interview with NBC News in Havana, Biscet’s wife, Elsa Morejón explained how her husband’s actions as an anti-abortion crusader in the early 1990s led to his repeated imprisonment and increased political activism.
According to Morejón, Biscet’s views were tolerated until he and a young colleague wrote a paper criticizing abortion practices in Cuban hospitals.
After he sent his research to the state-run media, as well as Fidel Castro’s office, Biscet started the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights. His small group, which was swiftly outlawed under Cuban law, proposed the expansion of civil liberties for Cubans based upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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| Roberto Leon/ NBC News |
| Elsa Morejón, the wife of the Cuban dissident Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet, holds her wedding photo. |
As a result of his outspoken activities Biscet, lost his job as a physician at a community health care clinic. He was detained in 1997 for nearly a month. That same year, Morejón was fired from her nursing post.
Carrying his Bible, Biscet continued to preach the use of non-violence as a catalyst for change.
In 1999, he managed to bring some two dozen members of the island’s splintered opposition groups together for a 40-day partial fast to demand freedom of expression and liberty for political prisoners.
At the time, Havana dismissed the protest as a "publicity stunt" and maintained it held no political prisoners. A spokesman for the government argued that the only prisoners held by the government were common criminals or "counter-revolutionaries."
A few months later, Biscet himself was taken into custody and charged with "dishonoring patriotic symbols, instigating delinquency and engaging in public disorder."
Later in 1999, on the eve of the Ibero-American Summit in Havana, Biscet organized a demonstration to protest abortion and the death penalty. He held a news conference with Havana-based international journalists where he hung three Cuban flags upside down to show his disapproval of the island’s system of government.
Those actions sent him to prison for almost three years.
Major crackdown on dissidents
One month after his release in 2002, Biscet was again under arrest – more this time for what he said than what he did.
Interviewed by the Miami Herald newspaper, Biscet called on outside governments to help remove the Castro government. He also endorsed a peaceful transition toward democracy but did not rule out employing violence to hasten a change of rule, equating "people who use other methods" to Cuban patriots.
With his detention, Biscet became the first opposition figure to be swept up in what became a major government crackdown against dissent.
Over the following months, the regime charged some 75 dissidents with working with the Bush administration to topple Fidel Castro and subvert national security. In swift trials, all were found guilty and handed stiff sentences.
This time, Biscet was condemned to 25 years in prison.
International attention
In 2003 and again in 2005, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention denounced Biscet’s confinement. Other human rights advocates, including Amnesty International, petitioned the Cuban government for his immediate release.
While this has done nothing to free her husband, Morejón believes international awareness has led to an improvement of his prison conditions.
Once confined to a small cell with little light or ventilation in a rural prison hours from his family, Biscet has been transferred to Havana’s Combinado del Este Penitentiary, where he has a desk, a chair and a locker for his personal belongings.
Morejón said Biscet has managed to regain some of the 40 pounds he lost since his initial incarceration.
Nonetheless, Biscet’s health remains fragile. He suffers from high blood pressure, gastric ulcers, and has also lost most of his teeth. But he refuses to accept any care from prison doctors.
"He doesn’t trust them," says Morejón. "It’s an ethical issue."
For Biscet, so is the matter of clothing. Since his first day in jail, Biscet refused to put on the prison uniform.
"For nine months, all he wore was his underwear. He was brought to me like that for our visits. It made his mother ill. But, he explained, this is his protest. He is an innocent man, taking the moral high ground," Morejón says.
Eventually, the authorities capitulated, allowing Biscet to dress in his own clothing.
After Bush announced Biscet as a Medal of Honor recipient, Morejón called her husband with the news. "He was humbled by the gesture, dedicating it to the Cuban people and to victims of communism all over the world."
Biscet hopes the award will help draw attention to the plight of Cuba’s political prisoners.
