Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
IRS Goes
After Pastors for Peace for Sending Aid to Cuba
Nora Gamez Torres
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
In Cuba Today
In Havana,
its founder, the Rev. Lucius Walker, was received like a hero.
Although
the organization never applied for a license from the Office of Foreign Assets
Control to bring aid to Cuba, it did not face reprisals, although U.S.
authorities occasionally tried to withhold the shipments on the Mexican border.
But Pastors
for Peace now faces punishment for its charitable acts from another U.S.
agency: the Internal Revenue Service. The organization was recently informed
that it will it lose its tax-exempt status for failing to declare the shipments
to Cuba.
The
Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization Pastors for Peace (IFCO),
which has been audited by the IRS for the last seven years, said in a statement
that the action is politically motivated.
“The IRS
claimed that our work to bring humanitarian aid and build friendship with the
Cuban people was done in violation of the Treasury Department’s ‘Trading with
the Enemy Act,’ ” the organization said.
“We
challenge the ability of the IRS to make this claim. … OFAC, fully aware of our
annual caravans not accepting government licenses, has never prosecuted us. How
is it that IRS now has the right to strip us of our tax-exempt status?”
Asked about
the IRS audit, the organization acknowledged that they “never declared [the aid
to the IRS] because we had not requested a license,” said Manolo Enrique de los
Santos, IFCO’s Cuba aid program coordinator.
An IRS
spokeswoman declined to comment on the case citing federal privacy and
confidentiality laws.
Since 1992,
the caravans have carried more than 4,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Cuba in
the form of school supplies, medicines and 300 buses. In 2009, when the audit
began, the organization had donated eight school buses and two trucks to
“churches, schools, hospitals and NGOs, as well as more than 100 tons of
medical supplies to centers around the country,” the organization stated.
De los
Santos said IFCO would likely have received the special licenses required by
the U.S. Department of the Treasury if they had applied for them, but that
“probably may have limited what we could take and who I could deliver to, and
we would have not allowed the U.S. government to limit our Christian mission to
help the people of Cuba. … OFAC has consistently limited how to deliver aid and
to whom.”
For
example, he said that “it is easier to deliver aid to a private cooperative
than to a school.”
The
organization also raised questions about the IRS action at a time of change in
U.S. policy toward the island.
Over the
past year, OFAC has expanded the list of humanitarian activities that can be
performed with a general license (without requesting special authorization),
including medical donations and those intended to cover “basic human needs.”
During a
press conference in Havana, Gail Walker, the daughter of Rev. Walker and
current executive director of the organization, stressed her father’s respect
for Fidel Castro, “with whom he had a friendship that lasted forever.”
In an
interview with EFE, the activist referred to the embargo as a “blockade” and an
“anti-Christian and antihumanitarian policy.”
De los
Santos said that the organization will launch a legal battle against the IRS
and will continue sending aid to Cuba “without asking for permission” from the
U.S. government.
“The
intention of this measure is to paralyze us,” he said. “We will continue the
work in other ways.”
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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