Wednesday, July 2, 2003
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Wednesday, July 2, 2003 |
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Peachtree City's Nelson currently in Cuba seeking human rights violations The Rev. Edward B. Nelson, a retired minister and part-time resident of Peachtree City, is currently on a fact-finding mission in Cuba with "Witness for Peace," a faith-based organization committed to global peace, economic and social justice, and the resolution of international conflicts by peaceful and non violent negotiations. Seventy-one delegates, age 17-78, from 28 states, are currently visiting Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia and Cuba on a summer's peace mission. The Cuban delegation is meeting with community leaders and government officials and plan to observe a broad spectrum of Cuban society, including schools, health centers and churches. Their primary purpose is to study the effect of U.S. economic and trade embargo upon the Cuban people for the past 42 years. "Obviously," Nelson says, "U.S. foreign policy has created immense human suffering, economic hardships, and social deprivation in Cuba which most religious leaders and persons of conscience around the world believe is immoral and unethical. In his visit to Cuba in 1998, Pope John Paul II denounced the U.S. embargo as 'unjust and ethically unacceptable.'" While staying in Havana at the Martin Luther King. Jr. Memorial Center for Internal Peace and Non Violence, Witness for Peace will be looking for signs of police brutality, political oppression, and denial of basic human rights to Afro-Cubans, Chinese and Jews living in Cuba. The delegation is composed of students, writers, pastors, college professors, homemakers, counselors, Latin American specialists, social workers, a lawyer, historian, environmental chemist, college chaplain and a Catholic nun. The group will lobby with congressional leaders in Washington, D.C., upon their return to the United States. For 22 years, Nelson was the campus minister and director of the Wesley Foundation at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville. He also is a retired pastor of the First United Methodist Church of East Point, former pastor of Hopewell United Methodist Church in Tyrone, and, from 1966 until 1968, served as religion columnist for the Fayette County News. He has worked in Methodist churches across the North Georgia conference for 45 years and says he has been a "progressive and prophetic voice for the Methodist Social Creed and Principles, civil rights and liberation theology." He also has been a longtime advocate for children, youth, women, minorities and the poor. Nelson currently is a retired member of the North Georgia Conference, living part-time in Peachtree City. |
