[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 22]
[House]
[Page 30167]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2100
  CASTRO SEEKS TO KILL PEACEFUL CUBAN DISSIDENT DR. OSCAR ELIAS BISCET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I try to come to 
this floor every week to highlight the existence of the individual 
cases of political prisoners on an island only 90 miles away from the 
United States, thousands of political prisoners, thousands upon 
thousands. Tonight, I speak of perhaps the most, or certainly one of 
the most respected of the political prisoners in the enslaved island of 
Cuba, Dr. Oscar Elias Bisect.
  Dr. Biscet, prisoner of conscience, declared a prisoner of conscience 
by Amnesty International, is an extraordinary man. He maintains a 
philosophy of nonviolence, and yet his nonviolence has been responded 
to continuously by the violence of what is without any doubt a gangster 
regime run by the gangster in chief, the totalitarian tyrant of Cuba.
  Now, Dr. Biscet was sentenced to 3 years in the Cuban gulag. He was 
sentenced in 1998 to 3 years in a Cuban gulag. When he was released 
last October, October of 2002, he was out of prison only a few weeks 
when he was rounded up again and sentenced this time for ``association 
with enemies of the State,'' and he was sentenced, along with over 75 
other peaceful dissidents and independent journalists, to 25 years in 
the Cuban gulag.
  A few weeks ago, they told Dr. Biscet that he was going to be placed 
with a serial killer, someone who was a common criminal and who had 
murdered many, many people. He objected to that. As a consequence of 
his objection, Dr. Biscet has been placed in what is called the tomb. 
He is underground in solitary confinement, in a punishment cell. And so 
that he fully understood the dimension of his punishment, a serial 
killer was placed along with him in the tomb. So Dr. Biscet is at this 
moment in a tomb in the Cuban gulag because he believes in freedom and 
democracy, and he has espoused support for Mahatma Gandhi and for 
Martin Luther King and the peaceful methods to achieve the change that 
those great leaders represent.
  The question I ask this evening, the one question which begs to be 
asked of our colleagues, is how can they come here time and time again 
to this floor and in the other House to ask for measures that would 
provide additional revenue to that dictatorship; some of them after 
having received one of the 8-hour or 10-hour banquets that the Cuban 
dictator likes to offer to his friends, they have come here and been 
zealous advocates for someone who they consider so charming, so 
admirable, so intelligent? In fact, one of our colleagues was so 
impressed with the Cuban tyrant when Castro told him that his shoes 
were dirty, that he should shine his shoes, that he melted in 
admiration before the charming tyrant, who has such interesting 
comments, this tyrant who maintains thousands of men and women in the 
gulag because of their support of men and women believing in freedom 
and democracy.
  Another question is begged, Mr. Speaker: Where is the free press that 
we enjoy in this country and in the international community and in the 
community of democracies? Where are the reporters, the members of the 
media who are talking about what is happening to Dr. Biscet? Is there 
not an elemental, an elemental duty and responsibility to talk about 
these facts by the free press? There is. They know it, and they are 
failing in that elemental duty.

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