Cuban Dissident Oscar Biscet Would Also Like to Attend the Forum 2000 Conference

In March this year, one of the most famous opponents of the Castro regime, Oscar Elías Biscet, was released from a Cuban jail after eight years.  During a police roundup of dissidents in 2003, this trained physician and deeply religious Catholic was given one of the harshest sentences – 25 years imprisonment.

 

At the time, Castro identified him as one of the leaders of “counterrevolutionary elements” and accused him of undermining socialist society, disturbing public order, and insulting state symbols. But the thing that infuriated Fidel Castro the most, however, was Biscet’s study called “Rivanol: A Method to Destroy Life,” in which he accused the regime of controlled abortions using the antiseptic Rivanol. According to the American Congressman of Cuban descent, Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Oscar Biscet enjoys great support among Cuban-Americans. In 2007, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President George W. Bush. Upon taking receipt of the award, his son Yan, who lives in Miami, drew attention to his father’s deplorable state of health at the time. He had lost 15 kilos in the appalling conditions of a Cuban jail as well as nearly all his teeth.

 

At present, thanks to massive pressure from abroad, he is finally free and was therefore able to respond to an invitation to this year’s Forum 2000 Conference. "I am pleased to inform you that I have begun taking administrative steps so that I can attend this important gathering,” he wrote in a letter to Forum 2000’s Director Oldřich Černý. “But I don’t live in a free country. The right to travel in Cuba must be approved by the ruling elite.” Even though Oscar Biscet currently has a valid passport, it is still not certain whether the Cuban authorities will allow him to leave the country and attend the conference in October, like the case of another Cuban dissident who is invited every year to the Forum 2000 Conference, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas.