Human Rights Award
Article Date: 19 Sep 2008 - 8:00 PDT
An imprisoned Cuban physician and a Guatemalan forensic scientist have
been awarded the 2008 New York Academy of Sciences Heinz R. Pagels Human
Rights of Scientists Award.
The Academy's Human Rights Committee bestowed the awards on Oscar Elias
Biscet, MD, and Fredy Peccerelli during the Academy's September 18
Annual Meeting. Dr. Angel Garrido of the Lawton Foundation for Human
Rights, of which Dr. Biscet is president, accepted the award on his
colleague's behalf.
Dr. Biscet, a 46-year-old community organizer and human rights advocate,
is a widely known Cuban political prisoner who began serving a 25-year
term in 2002. He is the founder of the Lawton Foundation, a human rights
organization that peacefully promotes the rights of Cubans through
nonviolent civil disobedience. In 1998, Dr. Biscet and his wife, Elsa
Morejon, a nurse, were both fired from the Havana Municipal Hospital for
his open criticism of the Cuban government. In 2007, President George W.
Bush awarded Dr. Biscet the Medal of Freedom, one of many honors he has
received for his human rights work.
Peccerelli is a founding member of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology
Foundation, which, since 1992, has carried out exhumations of unmarked
mass graves containing the remains of individuals murdered during that
country's 36-year armed conflict. Despite repeated threats against him
and his family, Peccerelli has continued to carry out their work, which
that has provided forensic investigation teams with crucial scientific
evidence in the few cases where perpetrators of human rights abuses have
been convicted in Guatemala.
The Pagels Awards were conferred on the two honorees by Henry Greenberg,
chair of the Human Rights Committee. Greenberg, associate director of
cardiology at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital and associate professor of
clinical medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and
Surgeons, says the committee has been aware of the work of the two
honorees for several years and selected them for the award this year
based to recognize their heroism and "to raise the noise level in their
support."
First presented in 1979 to Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov, the award
has gone to such imminent scientists as Chinese dissident Fang Li-Zhi,
Russian Nuclear Engineer Alexander Nikitin, and Cuban Economist Martha
Beatriz Roque Cabello. The 2005 Pagels awards went to Zafra Lerman,
distinguished professor of Science and Public Policy and head of the
Institute for Science Education and Science Communication, Columbia
College, Chicago; and Herman Winick, assistant director and professor
emeritus of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Stanford
University.
For more on the 2008 winners and past honorees, go to
www.nyas.org/programs/award.asp.
About the New York Academy of Sciences
Founded in 1817, the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) is an
independent, nonprofit organization committed to advancing science,
technology, and society worldwide. With more than 25,000 members in 140
countries, NYAS is creating a global community of science for the
benefit of humanity. NYAS's core mission is to advance scientific
knowledge, positively impact the major global challenges of society with
science-based solutions, and increase the number of scientifically
informed individuals in society at large. To learn more, visit www.nyas.org.
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