Havana, Aug. 25, 2006 (CNA) - Jailed Cuban dissident leader Oscar Elias Biscet has sent a letter to all Cubans urging them to continue to pray and fast until the government signs the international human rights treaties that have been established by the United Nations.

Writing from a prison in eastern Cuban, Biscet underscored that the demands were meant for “the government of Cuba, regardless of who is in power, because as the people of Boston once said, we also say: ‘Tyranny is tyranny, no matter where it comes from’.”

“The people of Cuba have been suffering the scorn of a totalitarian tyranny, Communism, throughout four decades.  Due to this inhumane treatment whereby the decorum of a people is violated, many Cubans are indignant and have risen up to pray and fast, beseeching the God of the Bible,” said Biscet, who is also the president of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights.

Cubans, he said, “have the right to be free,” and to exercise “our sovereignty” as a people.  In his letter he recalled the words of Jose Marti, the father of Cuban independence: “Only freedom brings with it peace and wealth.”

Thus he called on all Cubans “to accelerate the conquest of these basic human rights through civil disobedience,” using “every method to achieve our humanitarian end.”

Biscet, who has been imprisoned for defending civil rights and for his pro-life work, pledged that “here, in this dark jail where they force me to live, I will be resisting until the freedom of my people is obtained.”

The renowned Cuban dissident has been imprisoned on several occasions, the last of which was in 2002.  The government’s persecution of Biscet intensified after 1998, when he and another well-known dissident published an exposé on the abortion practices at a prominent Cuban hospital.  The report was sent to Fidel Castro with un-official statistics and testimonies from mothers who described the methods used to kill their children after giving birth.