From Babalu Blog comes a translation of Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet's latest letter from his Cuban prison cell. Read it and weep...and pray...and hope.Fidel Castro has left power. He should have done it 20 years ago when Mikhail Gorbachev traveled to the island. He wisely recommended it to him, that way it would have reduced the years of misery, lack of freedom and cruel suffering of the Cuban people under a prolonged, unnecessary and poorly run government.
His brother, Raul, inherited his job and his Communist party maintains a totalitarian, one party system, with the only change being that of imposing more laws on the population during his short time in office.
The Cuban people and their opposition leaders should fast and pray to God and demand that the authorities of the country sign and carry out the International Covenants of Human, Civil, Political, Cultural and Social Rights.
Thanks to the support from the Cuban exile community and of the governments of free and democratic countries, after a year and five months of demands, the regime in Havana promised to carry out these objectives, although they have yet to materialize. When the previously issued complaints are addressed and the following rights are granted:
1. Freedom of all the political prisoners and prisoners of conscience without deportation.
2. Participation with the same rights for all Cubans, including the exiles, without exception, in the political and economic life of the country.
3. To allow the legalization of various political parties in accordance with the interests of the Cuban people.
4) To revoke the constitution and the absolute rule of the communist party over society.
5) Commitment to carrying out free and democratic elections.
Then we will be able to say that the period of democratic transition has begun in Cuba.
Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union, Pinochet in Chile, and DeClercq in South Africa, had the courage and the pragmatism to make democratic reforms. The goals of the Cuban people are to live in peace, well-being happiness, and to achieve the goals, freedom is needed.
The current government should make openings to reach these objectives and the citizens should continue to search for them by means of civil disobedience.
"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives or fall among the slain. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised." (Isaiah Chapter 10, v. 1-4.)
Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet
President of Lawton Foundation for Human Rights
