The Oscar Biscet Project and the War Against Terror

FRONTPAGE READERS will be familiar with my periodic discussion of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, the Afro-Cuban prisoner of conscience who has been torn from his wife and children since November 3, 1999. As I wrote last week, terrorism underpins the regime that tore this family apart:

If a Cuban criticizes Fidel Castro, he may be imprisoned for "disrespect" or "enemy propaganda." If a group of Cubans gathers to demand the release of this Cuban, they may be imprisoned for "illicit association." If a Cuban disgusted with this repression desires to live elsewhere, he cannot leave the island without permission [and payment of exit fees, I might add].

Dr. Biscet openly yearned for Cuba's emancipation from terrorism, and that is why he is over 400 miles apart from his family. The master class considers his anti-terrorist dissidence tantamount to insanity - a "crazy little man," according to Castro.

It is no surprise that Communist Cuba is on the U.S. State Department's list of regimes that sponsor terrorism, making it an enemy regime complicit with our other enemies such as the Taliban and Iran. Castro promotes abroad what he perpetrates internally. For instance, he proclaimed at Tehran University on May 10, "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." (See John J. Miller's "In Castro's Service" in the November 5 issue of National Review.)

Indeed, Communist Cuba is America's closest enemy. I live nearer to Castro's slave pen than to my state capital and every state in the union. Our country is fighting a War against Terror, and Communist Cuba is not extraneous to this war. On the contrary, Castro is a salient threat given his preeminent proximity to America.

November 3 will be the 24th month that Dr. Biscet has been a prisoner of conscience. On this day, I will commence a 24-day fast to protest the terrorist regime and its crimes against this lucid, heroic, and emblematic man.

My demands to Fidel Castro are simple:

Renounce the enslavement of Dr. Biscet and his countrymen.
Renounce terrorism against the Cuban people.
Renounce complicity with terrorist regimes.

Castro has domestically and internationally sponsored terrorism for decades in our own hemisphere. Now more than ever the enormity of his crimes demands confrontation.

Jay Nordlinger: Who Cares About Cuba?--[Excerpt] So, there are a couple of names named: Rene Montes de Oca Martija and Jose Orlando Gonzalez Bridon. There are thousands of others, belonging to thousands of other political prisoners. Hear (merely) three more: Vladimiro Roca, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, and Maritza Lugo Fernandez. These names mean nothing in our country, except to Cuban-Americans. Perhaps the most inspiring name of all is that of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez, a virtual saint of the resistance. Biscet is a practitioner of civil disobedience in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, his avowed models. He has been imprisoned and tortured since 1998. We know, through his wife, that he has blessed and forgiven his torturers even as they have tortured him. Here is a man-Biscet-whose name should be on many lips. Cuban dissidents complain bitterly that if he were a prisoner of a right-wing regime he would be a worldwide cause. Yet he is anonymous; not even his dark skin seems able to help him. The stream of American celebrities who go to Havana to sup, smoke, and banter with "Fidel" are oblivious.

Snip.

Back in the Reagan years, Jeane Kirkpatrick became a heroine in the Soviet Union for the simple act of naming names on the floor of the U.N.: naming the names of prisoners, citing their cases, inquiring after their fates. Later, in Moscow, she met Andrei Sakharov, who exclaimed, "Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski! I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag." And why was that? Because she had named those names, giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope. Kirkpatrick says now, "This much I have learned: It is very, very important to say the names, to speak them. It's important to go on taking account as one becomes aware of the prisoners and the torture they undergo. It's terribly important to talk about it, write about it, go on TV about it." A tyrannical regime depends on silence, darkness. "One of their goals is to make their opponents vanish. They want not only to imprison them, they want no one to have heard of them, no one to know who or where they are. So to just that extent, it's tremendously important that we pay attention." [End Excerpt]

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