_WORLD WATCH______________________________
______________________CUBA____________________
Restricting Catholic action
Government squeezes Church workers
Catholic leaders have denounced a campaign launched by Cuban health authorities to prevent Cubans from receiving medicine through the Catholic Church organization Caritas.
According to a report by Cuba Prensa Libre, an independent news organization, the Ministry of Public Health in Aguada de Pasajeros, near the southern city of Cienfuegos, has forbidden doctors to provide patients with the needed prescriptions to obtain free medicine distributed by Caritas. “Any doctor who issues a prescription for the Catholic Church will be severely punished,” said municipal health director Gilberto Ramos in a recent assembly with health workers. Caritas dispenses medicine—donated by US Catholic organizations and European countries—that are usually unavailable in Cuba unless paid for in American dollars. According to Cuba Prensa Libre, family doctor Osvaldo Naranjo Paz was recently threatened with sanctions for helping Caritas in the distribution of the medicines.
In another development, parents of primary-school children in Havana have been told that children wearing religious objects such as crosses, medals, or scapulars will no longer not be allowed to attend classes. When a group of parents went to the ministry of education to protest against the new regulation, they were told that religious objects “hinder” the government’s political-ideological work with schoolchildren. One of the parents said that ministry officials agreed that each case must be taken separately, assuring the angry parents that “the matter will be given due consideration with those who have to carry out the ministry instructions, because it would not be good for children to miss lessons.”
In January, in yet another sign of rising tension in Church-state relations, the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Havana made an unprecedented visit to see two prominent Czechs who had been arrested after meeting with Cuban dissidents. Msgr. Carlos Manuel de Cespedes visited the Villa Marista detention center after an appeal by Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague. “The Cuban authorities gave a positive response to the cardinal’s request for a visit to the detainees, so Msgr. Carlos Manuel de Cespedes was able to visit them,” Havana archdiocesan spokesman Orlando Marquez said.
The two men—Ivan Pilip, a former finance minister and now a parliamentary deputy, and Jan Bubenik, a former student leader—were arrested in the central province of Ciego de Avila, and seem likely to be tried by Cuba for helping “counter-revolutionaries.” Pressure on Cuba’s Communist government over the case of the Czechs is growing, particularly from Europe. The head of the 41-nation Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly wrote to Fidel Castro demanding their release. “I strongly protest against the alleged reasons for and the conditions of their detention,” Lord Russell-Johnston, the parliament’s president, said in the letter.
Havana has alleged that the pair, on the instructions of anti-Castro groups in the United States, violated their tourist status by having “subversive contacts” and handing over unspecified “resources” to dissidents.