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CUBAN CHRISTIAN PERSECUTED FOR PRO-LIFE VIEWS

HAVANA, In their latest newsletter (July 1999), Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), an international organization which monitors Christian persecution, reports on a Christian leader in Cuba who is suffering at least in part due to his openly pro-life views.

The country's communist leader, Fidel Castro, has recently permitted evangelicals to hold special public meetings "in an attempt to convince the world that religious freedom exists in Cuba", reports VOM. The organization, however, hopes that Western Christians won't naively accept Castro's behaviour at face value, and it uses the experience of Dr. Oscar Biscet, President of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, as an example of their concerns.

Unlike most advocates of "human rights" in countries like Canada and the U.S., Dr. Biscet's outspokenness on human rights violations includes the condemnation of abortion. Cataloguing the doctor's recent persecutions, VOM notes that on November 26 of last year he read publicly an open letter he wrote to the United Nations, in which he said: "We honour posthumously the thousands of innocent victims who have been assassinated in this 'concrete pile' [the maternity hospital where he works] ... Here as well as in other hospitals in Cuba, day after day hundreds of children are sacrificed who never were given the opportunity to receive a name, to hear a caressing word nor feel the love of their mothers ... We say: 'No' to abortion and 'Yes' to life."

Less than two weeks later (December 7), he was arrested and, according to VOM, "threatened and pressured to retract publicly the convocation sent to the United Nations."

Dr. Biscet is in the middle of a 40 day fast which he launched publicly on June 7 on behalf of his country.

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