Cuban Biscet calls for public defiance of 'illegitimate' Cuban government

Posted on Thursday, 01.10.13

Cuban Biscet calls for public defiance of 'illegitimate' Cuban government
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban dissident and former political prisoner Oscar Elias Biscet on
Wednesday called for a new mass movement that will demand democracy and
human rights "in public places, in a non-violent political defiance" of
the government.

Flanked by other dissidents at a Havana news conference, Biscet said the
"Project Emilia" is starting as a drive to gather signatures for a
declaration that rejects all parts of the communist-run government as
"illegitimate."

The second phase, he added, will be to present the declaration and
signatures before international bodies such as the International
Criminal Court in the Netherlands and the Interamerican Commission on
Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States.

"But the fundamental work is here in Cuba, to try to create a grand
civic mass movement" that will push for democracy and human rights "in
public places, in a non-violent political defiance of the government,"
he told El Nuevo Herald by telephone from Havana.

Eventually, the movement may become a political party, added Biscet, 51,
a physician and founder of the Lawton Foundation for human rights and
viewed as one of the most respected and conservative critics of the
Fidel and Raúl Castro governments.

Dissidents have launched several similar campaigns in recent decades.
Some were crushed by the government and others simply faded away for
lack of popular support.

Biscet and his wife, Elsa Morejón, a nurse, were fired from their jobs
in the public health system for their activism and he has served 11
years in prison — the first three for dishonoring a national symbol by
flying the Cuban flag upside down, among other charges.

He was freed in late 2002, was arrested again one month later and was
tried as part of a 2003 crackdown on dissent, known as Cuba's Black
Spring, that sentenced 75 peaceful opposition activists to up to 28
years in prison for "counterrevolutionary activities."

Amnesty International declared him a "prisoner of conscience" in 1999
and President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 2007.

Biscet was freed in March of 2011 as part of talks between Raúl Castro
and the Catholic Church that led to the release of the last of the 2003
prisoners still in jail. Most went directly into exile in Spain, but
Biscet and about a dozen others stayed in Cuba.

Biscet said "Project Emilia" was named in honor of Emilia Teurbe Tolón,
who sewed the first Cuban flag in 1849.

"We have seen, through the passing of more years than we care to
remember, how the communist regime has not ceded one atom of freedom and
has resisted, rigidly and arbitrarily, any change that would guarantee a
dignified life to our people," the declaration noted.

"We have no other alternative … than non-violent political defiance to
realize the freedom of our people," it added.

Biscet identified the seven other initial signers of the declaration as
Cubans who have been active in dissident and human rights groups for
some years. They are not well known to other dissidents or outside the
island.

They were: Carlos Manuel Pupo Rodriguez and Agustin Figueroa Galindo of
the Free Cuba Union Party: Jorge Omar Lorenzo Pimienta of the National
Council for Human Rights in Cuba; Hugo Damian Prieto Blanco of the Hard
Line and Boycott Orlando Zapata Tamayo; Angel Pablo Polanco Torrejon and
Gabriel Gordillo Garcia of the Committee for Change; and Jose Diaz Silva
of the Opposition Movement for a New Republic.

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