Freed dissident blasts “totalitarian” Cuba

Days after leaving prison Cuban dissident (and Nobel Prize nominee) Oscar Elias Biscet blasted the Castro regime.

The Cuban government is a “totalitarian dictatorship akin to Hitler or Stalin” said the physician in an Internet-based press conference from his Havana home. Biscet denounced the government as “anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-black” and he called for the resignation of president Raul Castro.

Biscet also discussed the Cuban opposition movement and claimed that it’s “strong” yet “scattered”. He praised his fellow dissidents for advocating what he viewed as “advances” such as “slowing down” the use of death penalty and the number of abortions.

Biscet was allowed to leave prison on Friday after having served eight years of a 25-year prison sentence for "counter-revolutionary activities." He was the last of a group of 52 prisoners freed by Cuban authorities under an agreement reached with the Catholic Church last July.

Biscet was freed one day before a Cuban court sentenced U.S. contractor Alan Gross to 15 years in prison for allegedly supplying the opposition with computer equipment.

Image- AFP via BBC News (“Oscar Biscet said he would continue fighting for human rights.”)
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, El Nuevo herald, ABC.es, Al Jazeera English, CNN