Birmingham church caught in Cuba travel-violation dispute

Birmingham’s Baptist Church of the Covenant is at the center of a dispute about travel violations to Cuba and the Alliance of Baptists being fined for the action. 
   
The Washington-based Alliance received a $34,000 fine for allegedly engaging in tourist activities while in Cuba for religious purposes — a charge the Alliance denies. The fine came from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the government agency charged with enforcing the United States’ ban on travel to Cuba.
   
Stan Hastey, executive director of the Alliance, notified members of the organization’s board July 25 he had received the fine notice dated July 5. It informed Hastey the organization would receive the fine for violating the terms of its license for religious travel to Cuba.
   
More than a year ago, OFAC officials told the Alliance that its license had been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations Baptist Church of the Covenant had misused the license to visit Cuban tourist sites. Hastey said OFAC did not inform him any further about the investigation’s progress. In the meantime, the original license expired.
   
The July 5 fine notice informed Hastey the group would be fined not only for the alleged violations by the team from Baptist Church of the Covenant but also for alleged violations by four other Alliance churches that traveled to Cuba under the license between 2003 and 2005. Those congregations are First Baptist churches of Washington; Savannah, Ga.; and Greenville, S.C.; and Glendale Baptist Church in Nashville.
   
The Alliance provided the Treasury Department with copies of group-travel itineraries “that did not reflect a program of full-time religious activities,” according to the OFAC letter Hastey received. Government regulations require that such groups traveling in Cuba spend the entirety of their trips engaged in religious, rather than tourist, activities.
   
When first notified of the license suspension and investigation, Hastey said many of the itinerary items Treasury Department officials apparently interpreted as tourist activities were actually religious work. For example, the team from Alabama stayed in Varadero, a beach town near Havana, one night. However, Hastey said, that was because a Presbyterian guesthouse is located in Varadero and is convenient to a nearby Baptist church the team had visited.
   
The Alliance, a fellowship of 117 churches with a budget of $374,000, has a long-standing missions partnership with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba, which pairs local Alliance congregations with Cuban churches.
   
Due to the U.S. economic and travel embargo on the island nation’s communist regime, religious groups must use renewable travel permits for religious activity to enable U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. The permits are granted through OFAC.
   
The Treasury Department’s fine for the Alliance came shortly after administration officials issued a report calling for further restrictions on religious groups in Cuba with which Americans could work. 
   
On July 10, the Commission on Assistance to a Free Cuba made several recommendations for U.S. officials to follow in enforcing the Cuba embargo in ways that, according to the commission, would smooth the transition from President Fidel Castro’s regime to a more democratic one.
   
They included a specific recommendation that U.S. groups no longer be allowed to provide humanitarian aid through the Cuban Council of Churches, which the commission considers to be controlled by Castro’s regime.
   
Hastey said Alliance leaders have until early September to respond to the fine notice. It outlined a procedure by which the group may officially appeal the ruling or negotiate for a settlement. He said the group was exploring “all options” as of July 7 but had not yet reached a decision.
   
Hastey was not encouraged that the administration’s Cuba policy — which the Alliance has publicly opposed — would soften soon. “I think this is a further indication … that the administration is firm in its posture with respect to Cuba,” he said. “And, if anything, President Castro’s illness reinforces that determination with respect to the administration to hold to a hard line.” (ABP)