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Ex-Spanish Prime Minister Demands Release Cuban Prisoners

Posted: Saturday September 18, 2004 7:00 PM EST

By Stefan J. Bos Chief International Correspondent, BosNewsLife

HAVANA/PRAGUE—Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has appealed for the release of dozens of dissidents in Cuba, including Christians, who he said are political prisoners held “simply because they have a different opinion from the official line,” BosNewsLife monitored Saturday September 18.

He made the comments at an international conference in Prague on promoting democracy in Cuba, which was opened by ex-Czech President, Vaclav Havel, a former dissident and long time campaigner for the release of political prisoners on the Communist Island.

The meeting began shortly after BosNewsLife received appeals from Cuban prisoners to the international community not to ease pressure on the government of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, despite reports that some dissidents have now been released.

“The release of some well-known dissidents who were gravely ill does not constitute acts of freedom or a spirit of change. These people have been sent home after having een terrorized, tortured, and weakened in governmental jails,” said blind Christian lawyer Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, who has been held under house arrest, after being released on “health grounds.”

In an open letter to the European Parliament, he stressed he was sentenced “to four years of deprivation of freedom for organizing and celebrating the 2nd Congress of The Cuban Foundation of Human Rights,” an institution over which he still presides. “I send you a warm greeting in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and in whose name I also express to you the purpose of this letter, which is none other than devotion to my country, Cuba,” he wrote.

He and other dissident sources say that prison quards have tortured political prisoners in recent months. “For the period of 17 months after his summary trial on April 7, 2003, my husband has been confined 8 months in punishment cells suffering inhumane prison conditions,” wrote Elsa Morejon Hernandez, the wife of one of Cuba’s most prominent political prisoners, in a letter obtained by BosNewsLife.

Without Family

She said she had received a note from her husband, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, showing that “he’s been cut off from his family, forbidden from receiving any visits, telephone calls, food or any literature.” She said that the ailing man is “been deprived of sunlight; his correspondence is intercepted and he is denied his personal belongings. He sleeps on a cement slab and only at 10:00 p.m. (and) he is given a small mattress.”

From February 2003, through September 7, 2004, he has only been permitted 4 family visits, 3 deliveries of food provisions, she explained. “He has never been allowed to make or receive any phone calls. During the 5 months he was confined with dangerous criminals, he felt harassed and pressured to comply with a
discipline incongruent with his personality and his principles, reason he refuses to cohabit a cell with such individuals.”

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is president of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights and pro-life activist who she said “opposes the death sentence, and desires to live in a democracy in his own country.”

Maximum Security Prison

He cannot practice as a physician in Cuba. Dr. Biscet served a three year sentence in a maximum security prison in the province of Holguin, 768 kms. from his home. He was released in November 2002, and arrested once more on December 6 of the same year, BosNewsLife learned. He and other dissidents were expected to be high on the agenda at the Praque meeting of the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba, which is examining ways to support resistance to Castro’s regime.

Participants also highlighted the case of Raul Rivero, a dissident journalist and author who was arrested in March 2003 along with 74 others in a crackdown on the opposition. “There’s nothing to justify that people like Raul Rivero should be imprisoned just because they wrote a critical poem against a dictator,” the Reuters news agency qouted Aznar as saying.

They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to 28 years on charges of working with the U.S. government to undermine Cuba’s political system, charges they and Washington have denied. Rivero received a 20-year term.

Cuban Government

The Cuban government has justified the crackdown, saying it has the right to defend the nation from foreign attempts to change its socialist system and protect it against those who it calls “mercenaries” and “anti-revolutionaries” among other terms.

The committee was founded a year ago by former Czech President Vaclav Havel, who was a leading dissident during his own country’s communist times. Havel said a free, post-Castro Cuba should take inspiration from the experience of eastern Europe. “Some will be surprised to have so much freedom after all these years of communism and to have so much weight on their shoulders,” he told delegates.

He had some hope for the dissidents. “I think that the situation in Cuba will change quite soon,” Havel told the conference, adding that he hoped it will happen peacefully.

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