“The political police arrested me today at 8:30 am on Milagros and 8th in Lawton, when I was heading towards the reservation to a meeting with other activists of the Emilia project, today is the 11th anniversary of the project, we were going to take stock of the work carried out during the year. They took me in police car #091 to the Santa Fe Police Station and there they kept me in an office sitting for 8 hours of interrogation and I did not cooperate. They did not want to tell me the reason for my arrest, only that I knew “Because I was there, they indirectly said that I knew that I was going to a meeting of the Emilia Project. At 4:50 the political police put me in a police car and left me near where I live with the intention of getting me away from the place of the activity.” , expressed Biscet in a message for DIARIO LAS AMÉRICAS.
“I thank all the freedom-loving people and the international community who showed solidarity and condemned my arbitrary arrest and demanded my freedom. This is another example of the serious violations of human rights in the country. I am a defender of human rights. human rights and especially freedom of expression. We will continue in the principles of the Emilia Project until the creation of a free Cuba,” he added.
Dr. Biscet was stopped by a Cuban Political Police car leaving his house, when he was trying to go to a meeting with other activists on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the project that declares the regime and all its institutions of power illegitimate.
At the time of his arrest, Dr. Biscet was trying to head towards the Vedado area, where human rights activists had gathered to evaluate the work of the most recent stage, on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the creation of the Emilia Project.
“The house woke up surrounded by police,” Elsa Morejón, wife of Dr. Biscet, said in a telephone communication with DIARIO LAS AMÉRICAS.
“They (the activists) had been planning the meeting. Those conversations they have on the phone have surely been intercepted (by the repressors). I got up around 5:00 in the morning and from the house I could see that they had us surrounded and I warned him (Biscet), but he had his convictions and left. From the portal I saw him walk away, but the moment I lost sight of him, they arrested him,” described Morejón, who asked to spread the complaint, “I don’t have a connection to Twitter (X) or Facebook to do so,” he explained.
In the afternoon, Morejón reported that the regime released Biscet, who is at his home.
Anniversary of the Emilia Project
The human rights activist also explained that this January 9, when commemorating an anniversary of the Emilia Project, Dr. Biscet, who was sentenced to 25 years and served prisoner of conscience, in isolation after being arrested in the repressive wave Known as Black Spring in 2003, he would be participating with other activists opposed to the regime in a meeting in the Vedado neighborhood.
Morejón was informed that the area where the meeting would take place was cordoned off by members of the regime’s repressive forces to prevent anyone from arriving.
“Surely more arrests must have been made,” he denounced.
Reactions after arrest
Lawyer Marcell Felipe denounced what happened through a video: “This morning, a patrol car marked with the number 91, with four police officers, two uniformed and two unidentified, kidnapped Dr. Biscet and took him to an unknown location until now. moment”.
As the founder of Inspira América said, Biscet sensed that this was going to happen.
Antonio Ledezma, former mayor of Caracas, sent his statement on video.
The congressman Carlos Gimenez He also criticized the arrest through his account on the social network X. “The Castro regime in #Cuba has just kidnapped and arrested opposition leader Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet. Dr. Biscet has been nominated for the Nobel Prize and received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. We demand his immediate release!”wrote.
The congressman Mario Diaz-Balart joined the demand for freedom for Dr. Biscet.
For his part, the mayor of Miami Lakes, Manny Cidshared some photos with Biscet and criticized what happened this Tuesday: “Dr. Biscet is an inspiration for all those in Cuba and around the world who seek freedom. Therefore, we demand his immediate release!”
Juan Luis Bravo Rodríguez reported from Cuba on the arrest of Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet by officers of Section 21 in Havana. Likewise, it was learned of the house arrest of José Elías González Agüero, who was informed of the intention not to let him leave his house and that no one would visit him for reasons of the celebration of the 11th anniversary of the Emilia Project.
Roger Pérez Torres, a resident of the Bartolomé Masó municipality, reported the same fate. All persecutions and arrests are being carried out against the managers of the Union for Free Cuba Party and the Emilia Project with the purpose of avoiding any type of meeting as part of the celebrations of the eleventh anniversary of said Project.
Declaration of the Center for a Free Cuba
“The following message was sent to international human rights organizations, civic leaders and members of parliament. Oscar Elías Biscet, Cuban human rights defender and former political prisoner, was detained by the Cuban political police in Havana early this morning in the anniversary of the founding of the Emilia Project, her human rights organization.
Other members of the Emilia Project were also detained in a large police deployment. His whereabouts are unknown and the authorities do not respect the writ of habeas corpus.
Several Cubans have died while in police custody. Biscet is a doctor who has received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is a follower of the civil disobedience doctrines of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Cuba has more than a thousand political prisoners arbitrarily sentenced by kangaroo courts. Havana refuses to allow visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Cuban prisons, and the entry of other human rights organizations such as Amnesty International to the island.
The Center for a Free Cuba calls on the international community to demand his immediate release. The European Union should suspend its economic assistance treaty with Havana until the Cuban political prisoners are released. In a petition circulating in several capitals, thousands of people demand that Cuba be withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council.
Oscar Elías Biscet under extra-penal license
Dr. Biscet, since his release in 2011, following the agreements signed between the Cuban regime and the Catholic Church, has been kept under a legal figure known as extra-penal license, which means that at the discretion of the repressive forces they place him under arrest whenever They decide, without the need for an order against them or any type of accusation.
Biscet is a doctor by profession, whose definition as an opponent of the policies of the Cuban dictatorship gained strength to the extent that his conviction as a man of Christian faith and his profession as a doctor prompted him to denounce the indiscriminate way in which Cuba allows the practice of abortions, even among young people and adolescents.
Dr. Biscet, after being released from prison in 2011, has received the exhortation and remains under pressure to leave the country, but under his convictions, becoming an exile is not an option, as he has reiterated.
On the occasion of commemorating the ninth anniversary of the Emilia Project, Oscar Elías Biscet, who is a columnist for this newspaper, wrote in one of his articles:
“The Emilia Project has a perfect interrelation with the political and humanitarian opinions of the people. In Emilia, the regime and its administrative sources of power are declared illegitimate and illegal, from the National Assembly of People’s Power, the Government, the Judicial System, and even its only source of law, the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). “All of that is the feeling of the Cuban people.”
@IlianaLavastida
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