Fides Agency.
25/11/2000.
Havana (Fides) - Government intolerance and repression towards Catholics
grows. The latest move is a law which suspends diplomas or degrees of
professionals who enter a seminary or Religious Order. In recent years a number
of medical doctors have entered a seminary or joined a Jesuit or Franciscan
community. Under this new law, as priests or Religious these physicians will be
barred from practicing their profession.
The success the Church is having with young Cubans generates episodes of
intolerance. On November 21 in a high school in the Havana suburb of Aguada de
Pasajeros, when a holy picture of the Island's patroness Our Lady of Charity,
dropped out of a book belonging to one of the grade five pupils the enraged
teacher, Olga Lidia, tore it to pieces and warned the class not to bring
religious pictures to school. When the pupils parents complained to the
headmaster, the reply was "in Cuba education is the duty of the state and
not the right of the parents".
In the meantime human rights organizations denounce violations on the part
of the government. Around mid November a document circulated by the Study
Commission for Freedom in Cuba, was signed by several political prisoners
detained in Havana prisons, including Catholic dissident Maritza Lugo Fernandez.
"I support this document 100 percent, as a dissident, a Catholic and a
woman", said Ms Fernandez arrested arbitrarily more than a dozen times.
Cuba's most well known political prisoner is Catholic doctor Oscar Elias Biscet
Gonzales, detained since November 3, 1999. He is president of the Lawton
Foundation for Human Rights, and has been put in prison 26 times in 16 months.
He is now serving two years at Cuba Si prison in east Havana for "dishonoring
national symbols", "disturbing public order" and "instigating
to criminal action". Biscet took part in an anti-abortion demonstration
outside a hospital in Havana in February 1999. |
