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"ONLY OPPRESSION SHOULD FEAR THE FULL EXCERCISE OF FREEDOM" - JOSE MARTI, CUBAN POET AND PATRIOT
Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is a medical doctor by profession. In 1997 he founded the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, one of the first independent civic groups in Havana. After he, on behalf of his foundation, sent to authorities a statistical report on diseases caused by brutal methods of pregnancy termination in his neighborhood, he was fired and forbidden to practice medicine, additionally his family were evicted from their home.
Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is serving a 25-year prison sentence in a dark underground cell far from his home since December 2002. In 1999, Biscet led dozens of members of the opposition and thousands of Cubans on a 40-day prayer fast. Biscet organized teach-ins on non-violent resistance, civil disobedience, and the writings and thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He succeeded in creating activists by educating them in the philosophy and practices of nonviolent resistance and leading them to challenge the dictatorship.
Dr. Biscet was arrested on November 3, 1999 for displaying three upside down flags, an international sign of distress, at a news conference just as 20 foreign leaders gathered in Havana for the Ibero-American summit. Fidel Castro had him arrested to prevent him from leading a demonstration that Biscet organized to mark the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to protest the death penalty in Cuba. Upon his release on Oct. 31, 2002, he organized another press conference to denounce prison conditions and demanded that the International Red Cross be allowed access to Cuba's prisons (the first and last visit took place in 1989.)
On December 6, 2002 Oscar Elias Biscet was re-detained with 16 other dissidents after they attempted to meet at a home in Havana to discuss human rights. When police prevented them from entering the home, Dr. Biscet and other activists sat down in the street in protest chanting: "long live human rights" and "freedom for political prisoners." The group was arrested, though most of them were released shortly afterwards, but Biscet remained in custody.
Despite the fact that he was already in detention during the crackdown, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet was tried together with a number of dissidents who were arrested in March 2003. Dr. Biscet was sentenced under article 91 of the Penal Code to 25 years in prison on April 7, 2003 to 25 years in jail and sent to a special state security prison Kilo Cinco y Medio in Pinar Del Rio province. Following his detention the International Republican Institute recognized Dr. Biscet’s leadership with a Democracy Award in 2003 and Miami Dade College granted him an honorary degree in 2004.
Dr Biscet and his wife, Elsa, before his arrest.
