Cuba Bono
U2's Bono urged support for Cuban dissident Biscet
Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet says the praise from Bono at a Miami
South Florida concert was for the Cuban people overall.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
Cuba's leading dissident, Oscar Elias Biscet, said he "was shaking with
happiness" as he learned Thursday that rock star and social activist
Bono had sung his praises during a jam-packed U2 concert in Miami.
The 73,000-strong audience at the Sun Life stadium roared with delight
Wednesday when Bono urged support for the 49-year-old Biscet and
declared that "some day soon Cuba will be free."
"As you read me what he said, I was shaking with happiness because it
showed it's good when one is chosen as a symbol of his people," Biscet
told El Nuevo Herald, which first told him of Bono's comments.
"He's praising not me but all my people, all Cubans," he added in a
telephone interview from his home in Havana. "And I agree that Cuba will
be free, if people like Bono join the cause" of human rights on the island.
Biscet, a physician awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by
President George W. Bush in 2008, was released from prison in March
after serving eight years of a 25-year sentence for "acts against the
sovereignty and independence" of Cuba.
Bono praised Biscet during a segment of the U2 concert where the Irish
band pays homage to human rights and people walk around the stage
carrying paper lanterns with the symbol of the London-based Amnesty
International.
"We'd like to do something we've never done before," Bono announced as
he asked the audience to hold up their hands during the song Walk On. "A
beautiful man, a doctor who spent time in the prisons of Cuba. He was
released. His name is Doctor Biscet.
"I want you to hold him up and let everyone in Cuba know he is special
to us and we are watching, we are watching. Hold him in your thoughts.
Hold him in your prayers," Bono declared.
"It was a very moving moment," said Republican Party consultant Ana
Navarro, who was at the concert. "Obviously, a lot of the people in the
audience were Cuban American and were Hispanic, and felt good about the
expression of solidarity."
Bono had met last week in Washington with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and
Sen. Marco Rubio, both Florida Republicans who urged the multi-cause
activist to take note of Cuba's long history of human rights abuses.
Diaz-Balart wrote in an email to Navarro that he had specifically spoken
with Bono about Biscet and Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the political prisoner
who died in 2010 following a lengthy hunger strike.
Diaz-Balart and his brother, former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, also had
met with Bono last year just before a concert in Miami, part of the
band's "U2 360 Tour,'' which was cancelled when the lead singer
underwent emergency back surgery.
During Wednesday's concert, a video showing images of political
violence, including the so-called Arab Spring uprisings against Middle
East dictators, was projected over the stage as the band played the song
Sunday bloody Sunday.
Another video of Myanmar dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, only recently freed
by her Asian country's military rulers after years of house arrest, was
shown during the song Walk On.
Bono sparked a loud roar and applause from the audience when he
mentioned Biscet, even though there was no image or video of the Havana
doctor, according to concert goers.
"That was really powerful," said Alvaro Hernandez, a Miami Dade College
student who left Cuba eight years ago. "That guy is famous around the
world, and his mention of Cuba is like shinning a big light on the
Castro dictatorship.''
Biscet is one of the more than 125 political prisoners freed over the
past year as part of the Cuban Catholic Church's unprecedented mediation
with the communist government of Raúl Castro. Almost all went directly
from prison to exile in Spain, but Biscet and 11 others insisted on
staying in Cuba — and were the last to be released.
Now chairman of the Lawton Foundation for human rights, Biscet became a
dissident in the mid-1990s, when he alleged that many infants were being
killed after being delivered alive during abortions. Cuba has Latin
America's highest abortion rate.
Police detained Biscet 27 times for brief periods between February of
1998 and November of 1999, when he was sentenced to three years in
prison for organizing a peaceful march just before a Havana summit from
leaders of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking nations.
He was freed in late 2002 but was arrested again 37 days later and was
tried during the massive crackdown in 2003, known as Cuba's Black
Spring, when 75 dissidents were sentenced to lengthy prison terms after
trials that seldom lasted more than a few hours.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/30/2293574/u2s-bono-urged-support-for-cuban.html
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