4 Florida United Methodist Review Online

In The News

Floridians react to Cuban refugee’s death

By Michael Wacht

LAKELAND — Recent clashes between the United States Coast Guard and Cuban refugees trying to reach the United States have once again focused attention on American immigration policy.

While President Bill Clinton condemned the actions of Coast Guard personnel in those incidents, United Methodists from the Florida Conference say the problem is with government policies.

Coast Guard personnel used a water cannon June 29 to sink a small wooden rowboat carrying six men. Then, as the Cubans tried to swim to shore, one Coast Guardsman doused them with pepper spray, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. A Cuban woman drowned July 9 when the boat she was on collided with a Coast Guard cutter off Florida’s east coast and sank, according to Reuters, a private British news agency.

"We need to take a good look at our policy in relation to Cuban refugees and explain it to the Cuban people here and there," said Roberto Perez, a part-time local pastor at First United Methodist Church, Coral Gables. "It is a very unclear policy. There are a lot of politics, and there are a lot of people losing their lives."

Under a 1995 accord between the United States and Cuba, Cubans who are intercepted at sea are returned to Cuba, according to the United States Information Agency, an independent foreign affairs agency within the executive branch of the United States government.

Perez said he believes what is driving people to leave Cuba is the failure of Fidel Castro’s regime. "The system in Cuba is not working," he said. "It’s not getting the people what they need."

Ricardo Pereira, bishop of the Methodist Church in Cuba, agrees, but says the Cuban government teaching atheism and materialism is the cause.

"It’s [the recent conflicts] news that hurts all of us, but I’m convinced that few of those people [refugees] are Christians," Pereira said at a July 20 meeting with Lakeland District pastors. "Some people come to church to seek God, others seek the promised land in the United States."

J. Lloyd Knox, retired United Methodist bishop and chairman of the Cuba/Florida Covenant Task Force, said the Cuban refugee situation has recently been complicated by the emergence of smugglers.

"It’s not just people getting into small crafts and inner tubes, but people spending thousands of dollars to get dropped off," Knox said. "It points out the need for an altogether new policy on the part of the U.S. government and the Cuban government."

Koreans hope death makes church aware

By Michael Wacht

LAKELAND — Won-Joon Yoon, a 26-year-old doctoral student at Indiana University, was shot in the back July 4 as he walked to morning worship at the Korean United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Ind., according to a story by United Methodist News Service.

The killing was part of Nathaniel Smith’s two-state shooting spree targeting Jews, African-Americans and Asian-Americans. Smith was a member of the World Church of the Creator, a white-supremacist group.

Joseph Ha, a member of the Korean United Methodist Church of South Florida in Ft. Lauderdale and a delegate to the 2000 Jurisdictional Conference, said he hopes the racially-motivated killings will spur the United Methodist church to take a more active stance on racism.

"We [United Methodists] should do something at the general church level about racism, not only in the secular community, but also in the church community," Ha said. "It is very completely and entirely anti-Wesleyan Methodism."
The Rev. JinHo Kim, a member of the Florida Conference now serving in Minnesota, said he was shocked by the killing, but even more hurt by the lack of attention it received in church and secular media.

"We, all of the Korean-American community, are shocked and saddened by this violent hate crime," Kim wrote in an e-mail to the Florida Conference. "However, the reaction from the news media and from fellow United Methodist Churches is making us more saddened."

Kim said he has not heard any expressions of concern from United Methodists for a member of their own denomination.
Nor, says Kim, has the secular media focused attention on Smith’s victims. "…as you may have read, all newspapers and TV news talked about who the killer was…But not even a single news expressed a sympathy for the victims," he said.

Ha says although the United States is often called a melting pot of cultures, this event has demonstrated that a true blending of cultures has not been achieved in society or the church.

"If the United Methodist church wants to welcome and embrace all ethnic groups…we have to tear down those walls through ministry and worship," Ha said. "If we are split all the time, that won’t be good before God. Without working together and rubbing shoulders, we won’t be able to melt together in the melting pot of [United] Methodism."