Cuba: Oscar Elias Biscet still jailed

The World Medical Association is pressing the Cuban government for information on four physicians and two dentists who have been in prison in Cuba for the past two years for human rights activities.

This month marks the second anniversary of their imprisonment.

The WMA is urging its 80 national medical association members to write to their governments and to the European Commission requesting them to put pressure on the Cuban government to disclose information about what, if any, trials the six are facing and the exact nature of their sentences, and to ask for their fair and humane treatment in prison.

Depending on the answers it receives, the WMA says it might then call for the six to be released from prison. The organization also is asking the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights to intervene.

The WMA has written to the Cuban High Commissioner in Geneva requesting a meeting with the six doctors and dentists.

Dr. Delon Human, secretary-general of the WMA, said, "We are particularly concerned about one of the six, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who has been in poor health, and this has been exacerbated by his imprisonment in an underground dungeon."

The other five are Dr. Marcelo Cano Rodriguez, Dr. José Luis Garcia Paneque, Dr. Luis Milàn Fernàndez, and the two dentists, Alfredo Manuel Pulido Lopez and Ricardo Enrique Silva Gual.