RECENT NEWS
STOCKHOLM, March 7, 2002 (Liberal Party press release) - The Liberal Party of Sweden has decided to award its Lars Leijonborg Democracy Prize to Berta Mexidor and Gisela Delgado, as representatives of independent libraries in Cuba....Eliades Acosta CENSORED (April 17, 2008)
War declared on Library of Congress by Venezuela (April 10, 2008)
ALA censoring guest speaker, critics say (March 8, 2008)
LEAKED MEMO: "Invasion of the Library Snatchers" (Dec. 12, 2007)
Laura Bush meets Cuban librarians in video conference (Nov. 28, 2007)
Gisela Delgado and Hector Palacios Arrive in Spain, Ordeal Described (Nov. 6, 2007)
Thirty books seized in Morón (Oct. 10, 2007)
Nat Hentoff: Castro's useful idiots (March 4, 2007)
Miami censorship opposed by Friends, Freadom (Feb. 22, 2007)
Open Letter: The ALA's book burning scandal (Jan. 17, 2007)
Photos: Librarians injured by mob (Oct. 31, 2006)
Book Fair surprise: Author defects, condemns repression (Oct. 12, 2006)
Swedish aid flows to Cuban libraries (Sept. 11, 2006)
New wave of library raids in Cuba (August 17, 2006)
Library visitor threatened by police (August 11, 2006)
Cuba attacks Albright for ALA speech (July 2, 2006)
Crisis Among "Internet Police" Revealed in Video (June 1, 2006)
ALA election surprise: candidates polled on Cuba (March 20, 2006)
Cuba rebukes Gorman, makes "Dracula" charge against Codrescu (March 19, 2006)
Friends respond to Gorman's "defamation" charge (Feb. 8, 2006)
U.S. librarians fail to speak out for oppressed peers (Feb. 1, 2006)ALA convention shocker: Keynote speaker Codrescu slams Cuba policy scandal (Jan. 22, 2006)
Labor library confiscated (Dec. 14, 2005)
Cuba, Iran lash out at Internet freedom (Nov. 18, 2005)
Two libraries raided, librarian sentenced for "dangerousness" (Oct. 27, 2005)
Saving a life: Open letter to ALA president (Oct. 20, 2005)
Oslo: Secret documents inspire librarians' revolt on Cuba policy (August 10, 2005)
Ray Bradbury warned of bookburning cover-up in Chicago (June 20, 2005)Polish librarians add Cuba to IFLA agenda (June 5, 2005)
Librarians convicted of being "dangerous" (May 6, 2005)
Che Guevara's grandson endorses uncensored libraries (April 26, 2005)
New library defies censorship (March 2, 2005)
Benjamin Franklin Library raided (Feb. 28, 2005)
New York Times: A Cuban revolution, in reading (Feb. 22, 2005)
Freedom To Read! - A new movement to send a caravan of uncensored books to the people of Cuba (Feb. 14, 2005)
More Spanish support for Cuban libraries (Jan. 26, 2005)
Czechs join protest against library repression (Jan. 19, 2005)LIBRARIAN RELEASED: "We're not going to retreat a single millimeter..." (Jan. 13, 2005)
Regime enraged by Latvian backing for independent librarians (Jan. 12, 2005)Wall St. Journal: Castro's jailed librarians (Dec. 23, 2004)
Polish librarians demand release of jailed Cuban colleagues (Dec. 15, 2004)
Vermillion, South Dakota, Library sponsors a Cuban library (Dec. 7, 2004)
Fourteen new labor libraries created (Nov. 3, 2004)
Nat Hentoff: Castro's Gulag and American librarians (Oct. 10, 2004
Librarian accused of espionage and terrorism (Sept. 28, 2004)
Commentary on a commentary (Sept. 28, 2004)
East Europeans protest library raids in Cuba:
call on world’s librarians to challenge Castro (Aug. 10, 2004)
Text of letter to IFLA signed by Vaclav Havel, Elena Bonner, et al (Aug. 10, 2004)
Cuban librarians in need - where's ALA? (June 24, 2004)Appeal for jailed librarians sent to ALA (June 21, 2004)
Colás and Mexidor receive People for American Way award (June 3, 2004)
"Digital apartheid" - Cuba tightens access to the Internet, e-mail, telephones (May 19, 2004)Paris sponsors the independent libraries of Havana (March 26, 2004)
French city sponsors Cuban libraries (March 19, 2004)
Pinar del Río family besieged: mother, child require medical care (March 5, 2004)
CUBA CAGES LIBRARIANS: But there's still not a dissenting word from America's book publishers and literati (March 5, 2004)CENSORED: the Havana Book Fair, Cuban officials and German "dissidents" (Feb. 13, 2004)
Two more libraries raided: "They aren't going to get away with it" (Jan. 29, 2004)
Nat Hentoff renounces ALA award in protest over Cuba (Jan. 29, 2004)
Cuba says Internet ban deters "satanic cults" (Jan. 27, 2004)
IFLA protests Cuban Internet crackdown (Jan. 19, 2004)
U.S. librarians 'fail' jailed Cubans (Jan. 16, 2004)
Call to conscience: Library group is shamefully silent on Cuba (Jan. 9, 2004)
The ALA: "Castro's favorite librarians" (Dec. 24, 2003)
Nat Hentoff: The ALA's "shameful silence" (Dec. 8, 2003)
Library books burned by court order (Sept. 28, 2003)
Le Monde: "If you travel to Cuba, take a book" (July 24, 2003)
The forgotten 14: The American Library Association embraces Castro (July 22, 2003)
ALA hypocrisy slammed: "It's always 1984 in Cuba" (June 29, 2003)ALA leaders to New York Times: Repression in Cuba? What repression? (June 28, 2003)
Library Association excludes Cuban independents from meeting (June 20, 2003)
CUBA'S JAILED LIBRARIANS GET NO SUCCOR FROM THE ALA (June 20, 2003)Nat Hentoff Blasts ALA on Persecution of Librarians in Cuba (June 5, 2003)
Angry Cuba expresses contempt for FAIFE critique (May 10, 2003)
OUTRAGE: librarians sentenced to 196 years (April 30, 2003)
List of convicted librarians and their sentences
CRACKDOWN: Librarians targeted in massive sweep (April 6, 2003)
Librarian identified as secret police agent (April 6, 2003)
List of detained librarians (April 6, 2003)
Cuban book seizure furor continues (March 9, 2003)
Librarian assaulted, others threatened (Feb, 22, 2003)Internet is "instrument of the devil:" student leader (Feb. 5, 2003)
Uncensored reading: the 2002 Annual Report of Cuba's independent library movement (Jan. 16, 2003)
Angry response as Cuba disrupts book fair event (Dec. 12, 2002)
Bookburning in Havana: another chapter (Sept. 21, 2002)BBC program features Cuban libraries (August 27, 2002)
Journalist/Librarian awarded Hellman-Hammett prize (June 14, 2002)
Jimmy Carter promotes uncensored libraries in Cuba (May 30, 2002)
"Tiny, renegade libraries offer view of world:" Atlanta Constitution (May 15, 2002)
ABC broadcasts interview with Cuban librarian (May 13, 2002)
Library director assaulted
Libraries raided, blind activist beaten and arrested (March 17, 2002)
Cuban librarians win Swedish human rights award (March 7, 2002)
Eliades Acosta CENSORED
NEW YORK, April 17, 2008 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - On November 29 a
government website, Cubarte, published a startling interview with Eliades
Acosta, the former director of Havana's National Library, in which he called for
tolerance and greater freedom of expression in Cuba. Until now, Acosta has
vehemently denied the existence of censorship in his homeland, even while
serving as the spokesperson for the repression of Cuba's independent librarians,
whom he has long denounced as mercenaries, traitors and "informational
terrorists."
But in an apparent turnaround, Acosta used his Cubarte interview to point out
serious problems in Cuban society, comparing them to "red lights indicating a
need for changes," and declared: "We aspire to a society that speaks openly of
its problems without fear, in which the news media report on life as it really
is, without triumphalism, in which errors are publicly ventilated in order to
explore problems, in which people can express themselves honestly..."
On the day following its publication, however, the article was removed from the
Cubarte website, causing whispered speculation among readers as to why it had
vanished down the Memory Hole in the style of "1984," the famous novel by George
Orwell which is banned in Cuba and, for this reason, one of most popular titles
in the island's network of independent libraries.
By way of context, in July 2007 Raúl Castro approved
a series of limited workplace debates on the subject of Cuba's failing economy,
aiming to generate support for modest reforms which deviate from the Soviet
model enacted decades ago by his ailing brother. But as Acosta noted in the
now-vanished Cubarte article, "when you introduce change in one sector, it
reverberates throughout the entire system." Instead of limiting their comments
to economic matters, Cubans impatient for change have begun to broaden their
complaints to forbidden topics such as censorship, free elections, independent
trade unions and the ban on Internet access. At present only a small number of
people, including the independent librarians, dare to voice dissenting views in
public. But increasing numbers of Cubans, some of whom even use their real
names, evade official censorship by e-mailing messages to foreign websites such
as the Madrid-based Kaosenlared (http://www.kaosenlared.net/cuba), where lively
debates take place regarding human rights, future reforms and the achievements
and failures of the Cuban Revolution.
Four months after the disappearance of Eliades Acosta's interview (fortunately
copied abroad before its early demise), questions are still being asked about
his motives. In making an appeal for open debate and pluralist reforms, was he
acting as an opportunist who merely went too far while implementing the new
Party line? (See the article below, "Secret Memo: 'Invasion of the Library
Snatchers,'" Dec. 12, 2007) Or, during the course of the long, one-sided battle
he has waged with Cuba's brave independent librarians, has Acosta been quietly
converted to their vision of a free society? The censorship of his interview
offers evidence that another Cuba is possible and that Cubans, regardless of
their views in the past, are capable of peaceful reconciliation and the
realization of Jose Martí's long delayed dream of a
free, sovereign and prosperous homeland, where everyone's right to freedom of
expression is honored.
Printed below are translated excerpts from Eliades Acosta's interview :
"Cuban Intellectuals Support Revolutionary Changes," interview with Eliades
Acosta by Isachi Fernández, November 29, 2007 (Cubarte)
Full Spanish text re-printed at: (http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia.php?id_noticia=46585)
"One in a while it is healthy to re-think what has been done, to calibrate how
society has evolved, because when you introduce change in one sector, it
reverberates throughout the entire system."
"Criticism can help to resolve our problems, silence never solves anything.
Given a choice, we should opt for criticism. We should leave behind this
practice of silencing problems, which isn't always aimed at helping the
Revolution but rather is aimed at protecting jobs or positions, accomodationist
positions that are harmful to the ethical climate of a society."
"A kind of self-censorship syndrome was created in Cuba: 'I'm going to get into
trouble if I talk about a sensitive subject;' 'To avoid problems, I'll just go
along with the majority.' This has caused a very dangerous vacuum, and although
society can grow economically [under these conditions], it decreases morally.
Silences are are fatal in a society...."
"Raúl [Castro] himself... has told the people that
this is the moment to discuss our problems... but what do we find? There is
reluctance, there is inertia, the people aren't prepared [to engage in
criticism] because many years have gone by and it is hard for them to overcome
the psychological barrier. But if we read the press and also the great
non-institutional press, e-mail messages, which are here to stay, we see that
the people are participating. One notes the very healthy activation of the civic
spirit in Cubans."
"We aspire to a society which openly speaks of its problems without fear, in
which the news media report on life as it is, without triumphalism, in which
errors are publicly ventilated in order to explore problems, in which people can
express themselves honestly, where the economy functions, where public services
function, where Cubans do not feel themselves to be second class citizens in
their own country because of some measures that once were essential but are not
obsolete or unsustainable, a society where there is much and varied information,
with products of a high cultural level, where we can be in communication with
the world in a natural manner..."
"We are in a moment which all Cuban society is crossing which requires a leap to
another level. We are dealing with that moment of collapse and revolutionary
transformation, which is dialectic. The world isn't going to come to an end
because people make lots of complaints. There is a feeling of share disquiet
which is temporary in the sense that the molds which imprison us are being
broken and we are finding new expression for what we ourselves have created."
"There are many material problems relating to salaries and law which are like
red lights, and they indicate a need for change."
"It is necessary for people to do a lot of listening in order to carry out these
policies [leading to change.] The first step in making an honest decision
concerning human beings is to know how to listen and to be humble; if you begin
with this premise, the people will contribute, participate, and any errors
[resulting from this process] will be minor."
War
Declared on Library of Congress by Venezuela
NEW YORK, April 10, 2008 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - Historian Fernando Báez,
appointed on April 1 as the director of Venezuela's National Library, has
declared war on the Library of Congress.
In a speech delivered to staff of the National Library soon after
taking office, Báez gave assurances he has a "blank check" from Venezuelan
president Hugo Chávez to launch a global campaign against the influence of the
Library of Congress, located in Washington, D.C. Under his leadership, declared
Báez, Venezuela's National Library will "assume a leading role in Latin America
and the world because the U.S. Library of Congress has been converted into one
of history's greatest enemies of libraries."
In outlining his campaign against
the renowned Washington institution, Baez dismissed the Library of
Congress as a "dangerous influence" for allegedly sowing cultural imperialism
throughout the world.
In the process of shaping Venezuela's National Library into "the axis of a
struggle... against the cultural imperialism of the U.S.," said Báez, it will be
necessary to transform the role of Venezuela's librarians by means of a "a
social revolutionary commitment" consistent with "the extraordinary project
being carried out by Hugo Chávez."
A key part of Fernando Báez's plan is the establishment of numerous "popular and
community libraries" in heavily populated areas of Venezuela. Báez visits Cuba
frequently, and to some observers his effort to establish mini-libraries throughout Venezuela is similar to a confidential plan enacted by the
Cuban government to eradicate and supplant the island nation's pioneering independent
library movement, created in 1998 to challenge government control of
information (see below: "Leaked Memo: 'Invasion of the Library Snatchers'")
In 2003 the repression of Cuba's independent libraries was stepped up, and a
number of the volunteer librarians were sentenced to 20-year prison terms. All
of them have been named as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International,
which is demanding their release. Following the 2003 library raids, entire
library collections, including classics such as George Orwell's "Animal Farm,"
were burned by order of the Cuban courts.
At a time when President Chávez is silencing or shutting down
opposition newspapers and television stations, some critics suspect that
Venezuela's newly declared animosity toward the Library of Congress is actually
aimed at the Washington institution's World Digital Library, available to anyone
in the world with access to the Internet.
In response to Baez's declaration of hostilities, Matt Raymond of the Library of
Congress stated: “The purposes of the World Digital Library are to promote
international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, to provide
resources to educators, to expand non-English and non-Western content on the
Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research. Nations that share these
goals will benefit from a remarkable body of knowledge that will be made
available to people everywhere around the globe. It is Jeffersonian in its
truest sense, and it is the antithesis of imperialism.”
Sources: http://www.bnv.bib.ve/desplegar_noticia.php?id=114
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6551558.html
ALA censoring guest
speaker, critics say
NEW YORK, March 7, 2008 (Friends of Cuban
Libraries)
- Critics
charge that comments by Anthony Lewis, a distinguished guest speaker at the
American Library Association's January conference in Philadelphia, are being
censored by the ALA. At a sold-out ALA conference event held at the National
Constitution Center on Jan. 14, Lewis spoke about his long career defending
civil liberties and his new book, "Freedom for the Thought That We Hate."
A notable feature of Anthony Lewis's speech was his call for the ALA to defend
members of an independent library movement who are imprisoned in Cuba. In a
challenge to government control of information, since 1998 volunteers in Cuba
have opened more than 200 libraries offering public access to uncensored books.
Following secret police raids and one-day trials, several of the librarians are
serving 20-year jail terms. Cuban courts have ordered the burning of book
collections seized from the independent librarians, including classics such as
Orwell's "Animal Farm."
"I just urge you not to take that lightly," Anthony Lewis told his ALA audience.
"I think there can't be anything worse than putting librarians in prison because
of their being librarians and giving people books to read. So please don't
ignore the issue. That's from my point of view, even if you don't like the
librarians or you don't like Cuba or whatever it is you don't like, its 'freedom
for the thought that we hate.'" In a question-and-answer period following his
speech, Lewis added: "Cuban librarians who have been in prison are entitled to
the utmost support from this organization."
Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and
International PEN are demanding the release of the jailed library workers.
In contrast, the ALA has refused to condemn the repression of the Cuban
librarians or the court-ordered burning of their books. Critics say the ALA,
which often takes a stand on international issues concerning intellectual
freedom, is guilty of hypocrisy on the Cuba issue. The critics assert that the
ALA's "refusal to take meaningful action" on Cuba is due to the seizure of key
ALA offices by a pro-Castro faction which refuses to condemn or even acknowledge
the existence of censorship, library raids, book burning and a ban on Internet
access in Cuba.
In post-conference coverage of the Philadelphia event, no ALA publication has
mentioned Anthony Lewis's criticism of the library group's Cuba policy. Two ALA
journalists were present at Anthony Lewis's Jan. 14 speech, and according to a
witness they promised to report on Lewis's Cuba-related comments. But the only
mention of Cuba in ALA publications since the conference has been a link in "AL
Direct," the ALA's online magazine, to a reprint of a 2-year old article
attacking Cuba's independent librarians and their defenders abroad. Critics
question the accuracy of the article's author, John Pateman, who was awarded a
medal by the Cuban government for his past denials of human rights violations on
the island; Pateman also denies that the Khmer Rouge were responsible for mass
killings in Cambodia.
In addition to Anthony Lewis at the January conference, other speakers at past
ALA conferences have spoken out on the ALA's Cuba controversy. Andrei Codrescu,
Ray Bradbury ( the author of "Fahrenheit 451") and Madeleine Albright have also
used ALA conferences as a venue to call for an end to library repression in
Cuba. But critics complain that "entrenched pro-Castro zealots" in the ALA have
steadfastly ignored appeals on behalf of Cuba's embattled independent library
movement.
"It is sadly ironic," said Robert Kent, a spokesperson for the Friends of Cuban
Libraries, a support group for the jailed Cubans, "that zealots within the ALA,
an organization which upholds opposition to censorship as its highest ideal, are
suppressing comments made by Anthony Lewis at, of all places, an ALA conference.
Sadder still, many rank-and-file ALA members are completely oblivious to this
travesty of justice and the need to restore the ALA's damaged honor and
integrity."
LEAKED MEMO:
"Invasion of the Library Snatchers"
NEW YORK, Dec. 12, 2007 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - Many fans of science
fiction are familiar with a classic movie from the 1950's, "Invasion of the Body
Snatchers," involving a nefarious scheme by space aliens to take over a remote
town by replacing the inhabitants, one by one, with cloned replicas.
But at the end of the film justice triumphs when the awakened townsfolk foil the
plans of the alien evildoers. A variation on this theme, which could be entitled
"Invasion of the Library Snatchers," is unwinding in Cuba.
Javier Gómez, a correspondent for the Madrid-based publication "Encuentro en la
Red," has obtained details of a secret memo written by the island's Ministry of
Culture, known as "MINCULT" in Cuba's Orwellian terminology. The memo outlines a
plan to forcibly shut down branches of Cuba's thriving independent library
movement and replace them with government-run clone libraries stocked with
censored books. For
understandable reasons, the MINCULT official who provided this information to
Gómez wishes to remain anonymous.
The MINCULT memo calling for a "confrontation with the independent libraries"
was devised at the urging of the newly-created cultural department of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party, headed by Eliades Acosta. Mr. Acosta
is the former director of Havana's National Library, in which post he served as
the spokesperson for the repression of Cuba's pioneering independent library
movement, founded by volunteers in 1998 to offer public access to uncensored
reading materials not available in the island's official library system. A heavy
blow was struck against the indie libraries in 2003 when many of them were shut
down during police raids. The detained librarians were sentenced to 20-year
prison terms, and their library books were burned by court order. Additional
indie libraries closed during this period when frightened directors bowed to
government pressure to abandon their work.
But in recent years the movement has undergone a resurgence, resulting in the
creation of more than 200 independent libraries. Javier Gómez was told by his
MINCULT source that the Castro government is once again "worried by the spread
of independent libraries throughout the country" and wants to intensify police
raids against them to "replace every one of the independent libraries after they
have been shut down." Funds for new books and electronic games have been
appropriated to found a network of new government-run libraries and programs in
the neighborhoods where indie libraries formerly existed.
"Statistics on the number of independent libraries now functioning in Cuba as
well as details on the libraries already dismantled by the secret police, the
names of their directors and even a listing of the books confiscated from them,
are included in the document being discreetly circulated among government
officials," emphasized the source. Internal memos written by MINCULT staffers in
2008 have focused on young people who are unemployed and not attending school,
"a category which exactly describes the kind of people who patronize the
independent libraries and encourage their growth," emphasized the anonymous
MINCULT official.
"The pretext given for this plan by the government is the promotion of reading
through innocuous-sounding programs with names like 'Let's Read More' and
'Friends of Reading Clubs,' said the source, "but the real purpose for
orquestrating the plan is to counter the growing influence of the independent
libraries."
Source: http://www.cubaencuentro.com/es/encuentro-en-la-red/cuba/noticias/el-gobierno-pone-en-marcha-un-plan-de-enfrentamiento-a-las-bibliotecas-independientes/(gnews)/1197396360
Laura Bush meets Cuban librarians in video conference
NEW YORK, Nov. 28, 2007 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - On
November 27 Laura Bush held a video conference with members of Cuba's
independent library movement. Since the founding of Cuba's independent library
movement in 1998, volunteers on the island have established more than 200
uncensored libraries in an innovative challenge to government control of
information. According to human rights monitors, the Cuban government has
responded to the free library movement with police raids, arrests,
confiscations, mob attacks, physical assaults and the court-ordered burning of
entire library collections. Several Cuban librarians arrested during a 2003
crackdown are serving 20-year prison terms. All of them have been adopted as
prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, which is calling for their
immediate release.
The Cuban librarians in Havana who conversed with Mrs. Bush by video conference
on November 27 were Noelia Pedraza Jiménez, Roberto
de Miranda, Iraida Rivas and Nereida Rodríguez.
According to a White House statement, during the conversation Mrs. Bush "spoke
of her admiration for the work of the independent librarians in Cuba who provide
a source of uncensored information to their countrymen at great personal risk,
and expressed solidarity with them and their cause."
A photo of Mrs. Bush during the video conference can be seen at: (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/images/20071127-3_p112707sc-0344-515h.html).
Laura Bush is the only First Lady who has chosen librarianship as her career. In
April 2005 she was honored by the American Library Association for promoting
reading and libraries. ALA president Carol Brey-Casiano praised Mrs. Bush as a
"tireless supporter of libraries and library workers during her tenure in the
White House.... Librarians and library users everywhere owe her thanks."
In contrast to Laura Bush, however, the ALA has declined to speak up in defense
of Cuba's independent librarians or to acknowledge their persecution by the
Castro government. Human rights groups such as The Friends of Cuban Libraries
complain that key ALA offices are dominated by pro-Castro activists who ignore,
deny and cover up library repression and documented book burning in Cuba.
Critics of the ALA say the library association has "contemptuously ignored"
appeals on behalf of Cuba's embattled independent librarians by human rights
groups and celebrities such as Ray Bradbury (author of "Fahrenheit 451"), Vaclav
Havel, Elena Bonner, Nat Hentoff, Andrei Codrescu and former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright.
Gisela Delgado and Héctor Palacios arrive in Spain, ordeal described
NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2007 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - Gisela
Delgado and her husband, Héctor Palacios, have arrived in Spain on a 3-month
medical pass. Ms. Delgado is the director of the Independent Libraries Project,
the largest group of non-state libraries on the island. Her husband is a
prominent dissident who was arrested in March 2003 during a police raid on their
home, which also serves as the site of the Dulce María
Loynaz Library. After a one-day trial, Héctor Palacios received a 25-year
sentence and was named as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. He
was released early due to health problems arising from the harsh conditions
endured during his imprisonment.
At the request of the Spanish government, the Cuban authorities have permitted
the couple to leave the island so that Hector can receive medical treatment.
They plan to return to the island when their 3-month permit expires, assuming
they are allowed to do so by the Cuban regime.
Here is a portion of an article by Carlos Alberto Montaner, one of the first
journalists to interview the couple after their arrival in Spain, describing
Héctor's ordeal in prison:
"What did they do to him in prison? Héctor Palacios is 6 feet 3 inches tall, a
corpulent man. For two years, he was kept in a metal-and-concrete box, 5 feet 4
inches high, 5 feet 10 inches long, and 4 feet wide. The cell, a kind of
catafalque shaped like an igloo, built by the Russians in the 1960s, sits in the
yard of a prison known as Kilo 5.5 in Pinar del Río province. It has no windows
and the Cuban sun turns it into an oven. Héctor lived semi-recumbent and in
semi-darkness. He lost 88 pounds. He breathed through the door slit. His company
were the rats and the cockroaches that emerged from the hole into which he
defecated. Eventually, he became indifferent to these vermin. In effect, he
became indifferent to life and several times thought he was dying.
"Once a day, for a few minutes, his jailers ran a water hose inside, so he could
drink and flush the unsanitary toilet hole. Héctor was able to mentally resist,
because he is a psychologist and was prepared for that calvary. Physically,
however, his organism shattered; the immobility, thirst and bad food destroyed
his circulatory system. When he left that hell, he suffered from cardiac
insufficiency and his weakened leg veins could barely pump blood. All the valves
in his return circulation were damaged. When I saw him, I asked: 'Did you think
you would pull through?' Without boasting, he answered something else: 'What's
important is that they couldn't crush me.' I didn't know what to say."
Source: (http://www.firmaspress.com/834.htm)
Thirty books seized in Morón
MORÓN, Cuba, Oct. 10, 2007 (Félix Reyes Gutiérrez/ Cubanacán Press) - On October
7 the secret police seized about thirty books from the William Morgan
Independent Library in Morón, Ciego de Avila Province. Celina Casadebal Carabeo,
the mother of the Morgan Library's director, Rolando García Casadebal, said that
at about 6:00 P.M. three members of the secret police, dressed in civilian
clothing, appeared at the family's home at 102 Margarita Street in Morón, which
also serves as the location of the independent library.
When the police, who refused to identify themselves, entered the house, they
went to Rolando's room and confiscated about 30 library books. Among the seized
titles were "How the Night Arrived" by Huber Matos and "The Cubans: A History of
Cuba in One Lesson" by Carlos Alberto Montaner. They also confiscated volumes
such as "Open Eyes," published by the independent libraries project, the manual
of librarianship also produced by the library movement, and copies of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Before leaving the house, the police agents warned Ms. Casadebal that her son
would be arrested if he did not cease his dissident activities. The William
Morgan Library was inaugurated in June 2006 and held about 300 volumes before
the raid.
Nat Hentoff: Castro's useful idiots
WASHINGTON,
D.C., March 4, 2007 (Nat Hentoff/Washington Times) - Although the American
Library Association proclaims its commitment to the "Freedom to Read"
everywhere, its leadership abandons Cuba's independent librarians whom Fidel
Castro had locked into his gulags, under brutal conditions, because of their
courageous insistence that the people of Cuba should also have the freedom to
read books the dictatorship has banned. A majority of the ALA's rank-and-file
members disagree with their leadership.
Among the many organizations demanding that Castro and his successors release
these courageous Cubans -- who have opened their homes and libraries to offer
books censored in the Cuban state libraries -- are such groups as the library
associations of the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. All these
librarians, finally freed from communism, agree with their colleagues in the
Polish Library Association, who say in their declaration: "The actions of the
Cuban authorities relate to the worst traditions of repressing the freedom of
thought and expression." Also calling for the liberation of Castro's many
prisoners of conscience, including the librarians, are the Organization of
American States, Amnesty International and Freedom
House.
However, the top officials of the American Library Association -- as well as the
majority of its Governing Council -- speak derisively of these "so-called
librarians" in Castro's gulags.
It's true that these prisoners, many brutalized and in failing health,in their
cells, don't have master's degrees in Library Science; but as
poet-novelist-educator Andrei Codrescu told last year's ALA Midwinter
Conference: "These people have been imprisoned for BEING librarians!" Why
dismiss them "as 'so-called librarians' when clearly there is no one (in that
dictatorship) to certify them." So bizarre is the ALA leadership (along with a
cadre of Castro admirers on the Governing Council) in its abandonment of their
fellow librarians that it refuses to post on its "Book Burning in the 21st
Century" Web site the extensive, documented court transcripts of the "trials"
that sent the librarians to prison. Those judges ordered the "incineration" of
the prisoners' libraries, including works by Martin Luther King Jr. and George
Orwell's "Animal Farm." But these sentencing documents are verified on the Web
sites of Amnesty International, the organization of American States and Florida
State University's Center for the
Advancement of Human Rights. Officials of the ALA -- conjuring up a fake
conspiracy by the Bush administration to overthrow Castro by using the
independent librarians -- disdain this verification of the book burnings. They
insist, for example, that the Florida State University Web site is funded by
grants from the U.S. government.
Yet, that Rule of Law and Cuba Web site project doesn't get a dime from the U.S.
government. Says director Mark Schlakman: "We place a premium on our
independence." Recently, I left a long, non-adversarial, detailed message for
the president of the ALA, Leslie Burger, director of the Princeton, N.J., public
library. I asked for her reasons and the ALA's for this refusal of support for
the imprisoned librarians. (Some are in cage-like enclosures.) I have received
no response from her; but, indicating she will not speak to me, Michael Dowling,
director of ALA's International Relations Office, fielded my call by referring
me to the ALA's 2004 expression of "deep concern" for Castro's prisoners, which
carefully omitted any mention of the independent librarians among them.
But, acting out of "a moral obligation," the small Vermillion, S.D., public
library has made the independent Dulce Maria Loynaz Library in Havana a sister
library -- sending books to it, including a collection of freedom writer Mark
Twain. (Other libraries and readers around the world send books to the
independent libraries.)
As for rank-and-file American librarians: In January 2006, American Libraries
Direct -- an online newsletter of the ALA's own magazine, American Libraries --
published a poll of its members in which 70 percent answered "Yes" to the
question: "Should ALA Council pass a resolution condemning the Cuban government
for its imprisonment of dissident 'independent librarians?'" A key ALA official,
Judith Krug, heads its office of Intellectual Freedom. In my many years of
reporting on the ALA's sterling record of protecting American librarians from
censorship, I often quoted her in admiration. But now, she said at an ALA
meeting about supporters of the caged librarians, "I've dug in my heels... I
refuse to be governed by people with an agenda." The Cuba issue, she continued,
"wouldn't die," though she'd like to "drown it."
The agenda, Miss Krug, is freedom. "Every burned book," wrote Ralph Waldo
Emerson, "illuminates the world." But ALA's leadership refuses to bring light to
the cages of these Cuban prisoners of conscience. The ALA's membership booklet
proclaims "the public's right (everywhere) to explore in their libraries many
points of view on all questions and issues facing them." An issue facing all
members of the ALA is their leaders' shameful exception of the Cuban people's
freedom to read.
Miami censorship opposed by Friends, Freadom
MIAMI, Feb.
22, 2007 (Ketty Rodriguez/El Nuevo Herald) - National organizations that condemn
the "kidnapping" of the books Discovering Cultures, Cuba and Vamos a Cuba will
send a copy of each to the school library from which they were taken, along with
others which, according to them, will serve as a counterweight to the challenged
facts in the books being held by the Cuban exile organization in Miami.
The groups, Freadom and The Friends of Cuban Libraries, which defend libraries,
human rights and intellectual freedom in
Cuba, strongly criticized the actions of the Committee of Concerned Cuban
Parents of Miami (CCPP), which removed a copy of the books from the Norma Butler
Bossard elementary school.
The CCPP has stated that it will keep the books in "a legal limbo," and it will
not return them to the school.
At the same time, these organizations, which said they are not connected to
political groups, want to replace the removed books and also contribute others,
such as the latest book by Armando Valladares, Los Niños de Cuba, and the
classic Animal Farm, by George Orwell, which criticize communism and [other]
totalitarian systems.
"The best way to counter books considered objectionable is to offer library
patrons access to books expressing diverse points of view, and in this manner
the readers can examine the evidence and draw their own conclusions," affirmed
[Robert Kent], a co-chair of the Friends of Cuban Libraries.
Nevertheless, the spokesperson for the Miami-Dade public school system, Felipe
Noguera, noted that any person or organization that wants to add a book to the
school libraries should follow established procedures.
"Just as no one should take away books without following the rules, neither can
we permit the introduction of books without following the rules," declared
Noguera.... In this respect, the two organizations that want to replace the
texts assured the Nuevo Herald that they will comply with the established
procedures.
"We will be pleased to follow the rules of the system to replace the books,"
assured Robert Kent, co-president of The Friends of Cuban Libraries, an entity
which has its headquarters in New York.
The activist stated that he was "saddened" by the manner in which the CCPP
removed the books, and he noted: "They are doing the same as the Castro regime."
On the other side, Kent explained that the efforts of some Cuban Americans who
censor books found in school libraries are "distracting attention from the sad
situation in Cuba, where the secret police attack [independent] libraries, burn
thousands of books and condemn librarians to 20-year prison terms."
Emilio Izquierdo, of the CCPP stated: "Any action which doesn't result in the
removal of lying books, which distorts reality and is used as a message of the
enemy, constitutes a [political] maneuver." Also, Izquierdo urged other parents
to go "into school libraries, to remove [challenged] books and to place them in
a legal limbo."
The Freadom group will send a copy of Animal Farm, for which it gave assurance
that it had been in contact with the librarian of the Norma Butler Bossard
elementary school.
Nevertheless, Noguera indicated that although Animal Farm is a classic..., "it
is not necessarily appropriate for the students of elementary schools."
Skold, and activist and librarian, stated that Animal Farm is a book "easily
read and adequate for elementary school students," and that many primary schools
in the U.S. have a copy of the book in their libraries.
"It is important for American children to know that in Cuba books like Animal
Farm have been burned in recent years, and that no freedom exists there to
protest the censorship imposed by the government," said Skold.
[Translated by The Friends of Cuban Libraries]
Open Letter: The
ALA's Book Burning Scandal
NEW YORK, January 17, 2007 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) -
Dear Ms. Burger: January 17, 2007
The midwinter meeting of the American Library Association in Seattle (Jan.
19-24) is the first conference at which you will serve as ALA president. The
conference will also provide an opportunity to take decisive action to restore
the ALA's principled role as an unbiased defender of intellectual freedom in the
U.S. and around the world.
Since 1998 the ALA has been mired in a profound ethical crisis due to the
efforts of a small, militant pro-Castro faction to ignore, deny, cover up, and
lie about the systematic persecution of Cuba's independent library movement, an
innovative challenge to government censorship which has opened hundreds of
libraries offering public access to books reflecting all points of view. The
Castro regime has responded to the independent library movement, founded by
Ramón Colás and Berta Mexidor, with an unceasing campaign of persecution. The
ALA has now conducted three (3) official investigations of the cruelties being
inflicted upon Cuba's volunteer librarians. All three (3) of the ALA
investigations have been dominated by a small faction which has tried to ignore,
cover up and lie about the repression of Cuban library workers, including the
Castro regime's use of threats, mob attacks, secret police raids, 20-year prison
terms and the court-ordered BURNING of thousands of library books.
During a meeting with a representative of the Friends of Cuban Libraries in June
2006, you were presented with information on Cuban sentencing documents proving
the court-ordered burning of thousands of books seized from the independent
librarians. As noted during the meeting, the existence of these damning
documents, along with reports by Amnesty International and other reputable human
rights groups which were based on these key documents, has been studiously
ignored by the persons conducting the ALA's three (3) investigations of Cuba.
In their zeal to deny, ignore, cover up and lie about the repression in Cuba,
the ALA's pro-Casto faction insists '''there is no censorship in Cuba," just as
it contemptuously ignores appeals for justice on behalf of Cuba's independent
librarians made by living icons of freedom such as Ray Bradbury, Nat Hentoff,
Andrei Codrescu, Vaclav Havel and Madeleine Albright.
As pyres of burning library books have blazed more intensely in Cuba, as library
workers are assaulted by government-directed mobs, and as reputable human rights
groups such as Amnesty International vigorously condemn the persecution and
demand the release of the jailed volunteer librarians, all three (3) of the
ALA's fraudulent investigations have failed to condemn, or even acknowledge the
existence of, these outrages. Instead, the ALA's three (3) investigations have
limited themselves to brief and vague expressions of general concern, without
even deigning to note the names of any of the Cuban library workers enduring
life prison terms for the alleged crime of opposing censorship. Sadly, the
well-intentioned but unfocused majority on the ALA governing Council has
accepted, virtually without question, the fraudulent reports stage-managed by
the ALA's pro-Castro faction, despite an ALA membership poll in which 76% of the
respondents called on the ALA to condemn the repression in Cuba.
Ms. Burger, you did not create the book burning scandal in which the ALA has
become embroiled, but as ALA president you now have not only an opportunity but
a duty to put an end to this scandal. You did not create the current ALA policy
toward Cuba, founded on lies and deception, but you are under no obligation to
defend the ongoing cover up or to repeat the pro-Castro faction's lies as if
they are the truth. On the contrary, you have not only a right but a duty to
tell the truth and to defend victims of injustice. In the 1930's ALA members
forthrightly condemned the Nazi regime for hurling thousands of library books
into the flames, and we can do no less today when the Castro regime commits the
same outrage.
Accordingly, we in the Friends of Cuban Libraries respectfully ask you to use
your authority as ALA president to restore the ALA's reputation as an honest,
impartial and principled defender of intellectual freedom in the U.S. and the
world. We specifically ask you to:
* Declare the paramount duty of the ALA to impartially defend intellectual
freedom everywhere, with an emphasis on those nations where governments are
committing the ultimate outrage of burning books and persecuting library
workers,
* Remind the well-meaning but distracted majority on the governing ALA Council
of their responsibility to safeguard the honesty of investigations conducted
under ALA auspices,
* Order the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom to quit stalling and post on its
anti-book burning website the Cuban court documents which ordered the burning of
confiscated library books,
* Use the president's authority to re-focus the ALA's annual conference by
mandating speakers, panel discussions and other events centered on book burning
in the contemporary world,
* Organize an unbiased ALA committee which will restore the ALA's integrity by
telling the truth about book burning, censorship, the repression of library
workers, and the criminalization of computer ownership and Internet access in
Cuba.
Sincerely and respectfully yours,
Robert Kent
Co-chair, The Friends of Cuban Libraries
Photos: Librarians injured
by mob
NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) -
On October 10 the Assembly to Promote a Civil Society (APSC), a dissident
organization in Cuba, began a series of meetings at independent libraries
affiliated with APSC. Cuba's award-winning independent library movement
challenges government control of information by offering public access to
uncensored books. The Friends of Cuban Libraries have received reports of a
major campaign launched by the Cuban government to prevent the APSC library
meetings from taking place. Actions to block the meetings have included threats,
interrogations, police raids, arrests, the confiscation of library collections
and acts of violence. Photographs of injuries inflicted on two people who
attended one of the library meetings have been published on the Internet:
http://bitacoracubana.com/desdecuba/portada2.php?id=3166
Pictured in the photos are facial injuries inflicted on Orestes Suárez and his
wife Nancy Suárez García, directors of the Diosdado Manrique Independent
Library. According to news reports, on October 10 the couple attended an APSC
library meeting held in Santa Clara at the house of Noelia Pedraza Jiménez. The
house was besieged by a group of government supporters known as a "Rapid
Response Brigade." The leader of the mob was Yormany Junco, a martial arts
instructor. Rapid Response Brigades are government-organized mobs assigned the
task of harassing and sometimes assaulting dissidents.
When the ten persons assembled at Noelia Pedraza Jiménez's house tried to leave
at the end of the library meeting, they were attacked by the pro-government mob.
Accompanied by several of their persecutors, Orestes and Nancy Suárez were
forced into a taxi and driven to their home in Ranchuelo. During the taxi ride
they were again assaulted by members of the Rapid Response Brigade, inflicting
cuts and bruises on the victims. Orestes Suárez also suffered three cracked
ribs. Upon arrival in Ranchuelo, members of the Rapid Response Brigade refused
to allow Orestes and Nancy Suárez to leave their home or to receive medical
attention. The photographs of their injuries were taken a week after the attack.
The October campaign launched against the APSC-sponsored meetings marks the
first major offensive against Cuba's independent library movement since 2003,
when numerous libraries were raided, thousands of books were seized or burned by
court order, and about a dozen librarians were sentenced to 20-year prison
terms. The independent librarians jailed during the 2003 crackdown have been
named as Prisoners of Conscience by Amnesty International, which is calling for
their immediate release. Cuba's innovative independent library movement also
receives the support of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders,
International PEN and Pax Christi. With the goal of providing public access to
uncensored books, the first of a network of independent libraries was formed in
Cuba in 1998 by Ramon Colás and Berta Mexidor.
Despite ongoing harassment and persecution, hundreds of independent libraries
have been established on the island.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: The Friends of Cuban Libraries are asking people around the
world to express concern over the brutal attacks on Orestes Suárez and Nancy
Suárez García. Please send messages protesting the repression of Cuba's
independent librarians to Mr. Felipe Pérez Roque, the Cuban Minister of Foreign
Affairs. His e-mail address is: (cubaminrex@minrex.gov.cu) with COPIES to (martat@loynaz.cult.cu)
and (rkent20551@cs.com).
Sources:
(http://www.nuevoaccion.com/octubre2006.html)
(http://www.PayoLibre.com), Oct. 12, 2006
Book
Fair surprise: Author defects, condemns repression
FRANKFURT, October 5, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - Amir Valle, a Cuban
author invited to attend a PEN Club event at the Frankfurt Book Fair, used the
speaker's platform to condemn censorship and repression in his native country.
Valle said his comments would make it impossible for him to return to Cuba.
"They let me out, but they won't let me go back home," said the author.
Valles' latest book, "Jineteras," has been published abroad but has been banned
within Cuba. "Jineteras" received an award from the Casa de las Americas
cultural center in Havana, but the award was quickly withdrawn and the book's
publication was prohibited on the island. The banning of some of Amir Valle's
works has had an ironic counter effect. "The repression of my books has caused
them to be among the most sought after and read in Cuba," the author noted.
The theme of the PEN Club event at the Frankfurt Book Fair was Writers in Exile,
with a particular emphasis on Zimbabwe and Cuba. In his presentation, Valle
warned that the Cuban government is preparing a crackdown against writers on a
scale reminiscent of the 1970's, the most repressive decade in the island's
recent history. "All of the violations against freedom of expression in Cuba are
permitted by the system and the Constitution," said Valle. He described Cuba as
a country which has converted art and culture into a political weapon.
The result of this situation, according to Valle, is the total politicization of
culture, in which only conformist literature is allowed. In Cuba, he declared,
there is a permanent violation of the right to freedom of information,
prohibition of the Internet and restrictions on access to books. He said Cuba's
National Library plays an important role in preventing uncensored books from
being acquired by local branches of the official library system.
As an antidote to the regime's effort to ban books, Amir Valle praised the
development of Cuba's pioneering independent library network as "one of the most
beautiful ideas of recent years." With the goal of making uncensored books
available to the general public, volunteers throughout Cuba have opened hundreds
of independent libraries offering books that are unavailable in the official
library system. "In Cuba..., he stated, "it is disgraceful that these people
have been branded as foreign agents, worms and tools of the enemy." In addition
to defaming the independent librarians, said Valle, the regime also subjects
them to imprisonment and forced exile and has exerted pressure against their
family members. Despite this repression, he noted, the independent library
movement continues to grow. Many of the librarians jailed in Cuba have been
adopted as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, and International
PEN has also campaigned to win their release from prison.
Source: (http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/oct06/06o2.htm)
NOTE: After this press release was issued, Amir Valle stated that he does not consider himself a defector. Instead, the Cuban government refuses to give him permission to return to his homeland. Valle and his family are now living in Berlin.
Swedish aid flows to Cuban libraries
STOCKHOLM, Sept. 11, 2006 (www.miscelaneasdecuba.net) -
Introduction: On Sept. 2 Erik Jennische, the secretary general of the Swedish
International Liberal Center (SILC), was interviewed on a cultural program
broadcast by Swedish National Radio. Much of the program dealt with SILC's
support for Cuba's independent library movement. Printed below are excerpts from
the interview, translated from the Spanish version published by Alexis Gainza,
editor of the online journal Miscelaneas de Cuba:
The power of literature consists of opening the eyes of people and making them
aware of the situation in which they live. In totalitarian countries it is
impossible to obtain uncensored books and magazines. For this reason, reading
materials have to be brought into the country clandestinely. SILC, the Swedish
International Liberal Center, dedicates itself to this purpose. SILC helps to
send books to Cuba clandestinely. The secretary general of SILC is Erik
Jennische....
Erik Jennische is showing me books written by [Cuban exiles]. For Cubans living
on the island, it is in principle impossible to have access to them. The books
are not necessarily of a political nature; they can be any type of literature,
says Erik, and he believes the intention of these authors is not to criticize
Cuba, but rather their goal is to freely describe the country and what is
happening there. In Cuba there are two types of libraries: the [state-run]
public ones and the illegal ones, free libraries, also known as independents.
The books by authors whose works are sent to Cuba by SILC wind up on the shelves
of the independent libararies. In the public libraries it is impossible to find
works by authors who question the ideology of the Cuban regime, he says....
"The independent libraries in Cuba and our collaboration with them," says Erik
Jennische, "began with a statement made by Fidel Castro at the Havana
International Book Fair in 1998. He said that there are no prohibited books in
Cuba, only a lack of money to buy them. We took him at his word.... We have
plenty of books, and we send them to Cuba. We have gathered hundreds of books in
Sweden through donations, and we have collected a lot of money to buy even more;
we send them with tourists and other persons traveling to Cuba, who then deliver
them to the independent libraries. The Cuba regime claims that it alone has the
right to describe what is happening in Cuba. Only one version of the truth is
allowed in Cuba, the image put forward by the regime, and it is this version
which is being challenged by the dissident literature [supplied to the
independent libraries]...."
The word "smuggler" isn't used very often these days. We say we are "supplying
books," says Erik Jennische, who thinks "smuggling" is a crime, but that in a
country like Cuba... there is nothing wrong with violating laws [which make it a
crime to read uncensored books].
In principle, anyone can take books to Cuba. They make a telephone call to SILC,
say they are traveling to the island, and then pick up between 15 and 20 books
and magazines. They also receive a list of addresses indicating where the books
can be delivered. Of course, one can run into problems in Customs. The Customs
officials may ask why the books are being brought into the country and how they
are going to be used; in such a case, one can reply that they will be given to a
friend....
Interviewer: "I am very curious about this because I know that people going to
Iran have hidden compact discs or other things of this kind; but you're talking
about simply placing books in your suitcase and entering the country with them."
Jennische: "I believe that after tourism began to expand enormously in Cuba in
the early 1990's, the Customs officials have been much less active, which means
they are searching luggage less thoroughly...."
Interviewer: "What risks are run by the persons who clandestinely take books to
Cuba?"
Jennische: "In my opinion, they run very little risk. Nevertheless, we can't say
that there is no risk. In theory, for example, it could happen that the books
are prevented from being allowed into the country. This is more likely when a
person has traveled to Cuba many times. But until now no one has gone to jail
for this reason, and no one has even been expelled from the island [for bringing
in books]....
The independent libraries are in the houses of people who take on great risks.
For example, they can be sentenced to 25 years in prison, their children can be
denied entrance to a university, and their relatives can lose their jobs, says
Erik. In the summer of 2003, a wave of arrests took place in Cuba in which 21
libraries were raided and 20 librarians were arrested, according to Erik
Jennische.
"All of the books," says Erik, "from children's literature to dictionaries and
political works, were carried away in large plastic bags. Many of the libraries
were destroyed; and when scarce books are destroyed, especially when they have
an important role in cultural life, when these are destroyed a kind of cultural
assassination is taking place, which has a powerful symbolic impact in Europe,
where there are persistent memories of books being thrown onto bonfires in
Germany in the 1930's."
Interviewer: "The people who take books to Cuba: Are they smugglers or
visionaries? What do you say?"
Jennische: "Of course they are visionaries. They are defending the vision that
Cubans also have a right to read any book they want. This is primarily a
visionary act."
An
open letter to library associations
NEW YORK,
August 12, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) -
Dear colleagues:
The Secretary General of IFLA is inviting library associations to join FAIFE-L,
the listserv of IFLA's intellectual freedom committee.
FAIFE-L is the main forum where IFLA members can read discussions of the
resolutions on Cuba placed on the agenda of the IFLA 2006 conference in South
Korea. Subscribing to FAIFE-L is one way for IFLA delegates to become
well-informed on this important issue in preparation for deciding how to vote on
the Cuba resolutions.
The organization of which I am co-chair, the Friends of Cuban Libraries, invites
IFLA delegates to subscribe to FAIFE-L, and we would be pleased to answer your
questions and comments regarding this important issue on the IFLA 2006 agenda.
In 1999 IFLA/FAIFE published a report which documented and condemned the
repression of Cuba's independent library movement. The report can be read at:
(http://www.ifla.org/faife/faife/cubarepo.htm). Unfortunately, however, the
FAIFE committee has had little to say on this issue since 1999, even though the
repression of library workers and book burning have become more severe in Cuba
since 2003.
The proposed IFLA resolution on Cuba sponsored by the Latvian Library
Association concerns the persecution of the island's independent library
movement and the court-ordered seizure or burning of thousands of library
books.The Latvian resolution is based on two forms of evidence: (1) Reports by
human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and
Amnesty International, which has declared the jailed Cuban library workers to be
prisoners of conscience, and (2) Cuban court documents on the one-day trials
which sentenced the library workers to 20-year prison terms and ordered the
seizure or burning of thousands of library books, including classics such as
George Orwell's "Animal Farm" and copies of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
The Cuban government is trying to ignore the existence of reports by respected
human rights groups such as Amnesty International, just as it is trying to
ignore the shocking Cuban court documents, removed from the island and published
on the Internet (http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu) which prove, in the words
of the government itself, that Cuban citizens are being imprisoned for the
alleged crime of opening libraries to challenge censorship. The Cuban court
documents also reveal that the Cuban government is ordering the confiscation and
burning of thousands of library books. Despite the documentation of human rights
groups such as Amnesty International and the government's own court documents,
the Cuban government claims that intellectual freedom already flourishes in Cuba
and that the independent library movement is "a tool of the CIA." At the same
time, the Cuban government is trying to ignore the moral and material aid sent
to the independent libraries from countries all over the world. Instead, the
Cuban government is focusing exclusively on aid openly sent to the independent
libraries from the U.S., as if the desire of Cubans to read uncensored books is
some kind of crime or conspiracy.
For translations of the Cuban court documents and reports by groups such as
Amnesty International, please see the website of our organization: (http://www.friendsofcubanlibraries.org).
New wave of library raids in
Cuba
NEW YORK, August 17, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - The Friends of Cuban
Libraries have received information on a new wave of repression being directed
against Cuba's independent library movement since early 2006. Juan Carlos González
Leiva, a librarian, lawyer and human rights activist in Ciego de Avila, provided
information on the heightened repression to the Independent Libraries Project,
directed by Ramón Colás and Berta Mexidor.
According to a preliminary report issued by the Independent Libraries Project,
Mr. González Leiva states that since early 2006 "the Cuban government... has
been carrying out a wave of violent and arbitrary raids on independent libraries
and peaceful dissidents throughout Cuba. On repeated occasions, these raids have
been conducted by paramilitary mobs during 'acts of repudiation' and at other
times by the combined forces of the National Revolutionary Police and the State
Security police."
Cuba's independent library movement, founded in 1998, challenges government
control of information by opening libraries offering public access to uncensored
books. In addition to loaning books, the nationwide network of independent
libraries, operating out of private homes, offer public space for uncensored
classes, debates, art exhibits, video programs, literary contests and children's
programs. The volunteers who staff the libraries have been the target of
harassment, threats, raids, assaults, confiscations and arrests.
In a major crackdown against Cuban dissidents in 2003, about ten of the
librarians were arrested, subjected to one-day trials and sentenced to 20-year
prison terms. According to trial documents taken off the island and published on
the Internet, many of the library books seized during the 2003 raids, including
classics such as George Orwell's "Animal Farm," were ordered to be burned. The
jailed Cuban librarians have been adopted as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty
International, which is demanding their immediate and unconditional release.
In the preliminary report issued by the Independent Libraries Project on the new
wave of repression begun in early 2006, details of raids on thirteen independent
libraries are presented. Among these incidents was a mob invasion of the library
operated by Dr. Arturo Pérez Gómez in Cienfuegos, resulting in vandalism of the
library's interior and the confiscation of more than 200 books, many dealing
with the subject of medicine. Another raid was reportedly conducted on February
23 against the El Mayor Library in Camagüey. During this incident numerous books
were confiscated and the library director, Eduardo González Vásquez, was
arrested and held in a darkened, unventilated cell before being sentenced on
March 10 to a term of two years under house arrest.
Other institutions reportedly raided in 2006 include the Abraham Lincoln and
José de la Luz y Caballero Libraries in Camagüey, the Ernest Hemingway Library
on Isla de Juventud, the Félix Varela, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Calixto García
Iñiguez and Gastón Baquero Libraries in Holguín, and the Guillermo Cabrera
Infante Library in Ciego de Avila.
Library visitor threatened by police
HOLGUIN, Cuba, August 11, 2006 (Liannis Meriño Aguilera,
www.cubanet.org) - One of the patrons who visits the Gastón Baquero Independent
Library, located in the city of Banes, was intercepted by the police on August
5, according to the library director, Martha Díaz Rondón.
The officials asked the patron for his identity card and made a note of it; they
told the library visitor that this information would be sent to the chief of his
zone of residence, so that an official warning would be issued, and that he
would be prosecuted for the crime of "social dangerousness" if he continues
visiting the library.
The Gastón Baquero Library is well-established in the community, and a large
number of people visit it to find reliable and uncensored information, but the
secret police send agents to harass people visiting the library.
Cuba's independent libraries have developed into a source of information for
members of the civil society. In the libraries readers can enjoy literature
without restrictions or censorship, and for this reason the government
confiscates their books and uses repressive measures to try to prevent people
from visiting them.
The library director, Ms. Díaz Rondón, stated that this isn't the first time
such intimidation has occurred. On previous occasions readers have been
photographed and videotaped while entering and leaving the library. She said
this is a maneuver used by the secret police to prevent people in Banes from
accessing this kind of information; the police intimidate patrons in an effort
to prevent them from returning to the library.
Díaz Rondón declared: "The Gastón Baquero Library is located at 2007 Céspedes
Street, between Cárdenas Avenue and General Marrero St., in the city of Banes,
and it will continue offering services to the public whether the current
government likes it or not."
Cuba attacks Albright for ALA
speech
NEW YORK, July 2, 2006 (Friends
of Cuban Libraries) -
The June 30 issue of Librinsula, a weekly magazine published in Havana, contains
an article by Cuban National Library director Eliades Acosta attacking Madeleine
Albright for a speech she delivered on June 24 at the American Library
Association conference in New Orleans. Acosta serves as Cuba's spokesperson on
library issues.
In her speech at the New Orleans conference, former Secretary of State Albright
called on libraries to be "laboratories for freedom" and defended the right of
Cubans to loan books and to open independent libraries free of government
control.
Some observers believe Albright's June 24 comments implicitly criticized the ALA
for failing to condemn the Castro government's repression of a citizens'
movement to establish libraries offering public access to uncensored books. Many
of the independent libraries founded in Cuba have been raided by the secret
police. According to Cuban court documents, the existence of which has not been
acknowledged in ALA reports on the situation, among the library books seized and
ordered to be burned in Cuba are classics such as George Orwell's "Animal Farm"
and copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. About a dozen of the
Cuban librarians, condemned to 20-year prison terms, have been named as
prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.
Critics of the ALA, such as the Friends of Cuban Libraries organization, charge
that the ALA's governing Council has inattentively approved reports by ALA
committees, allegedly controlled by a pro-Castro faction, which ignore library
repression and book burning in Cuba. Some ALA members accuse the independent
librarians of being agents of the CIA.
When Madeleine Albright ("this bitter and elegant woman") presented her speech
at the library conference in New Orleans, Acosta reported, she spoke "with a
scornful grimace, in the style of Betty Davis" [sic], which the author reports
she had acquired during her term as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
before being named Secretary of State by President Bill Clinton.
Albright's speech before the ALA, Acosta charged, was intended to "convince
American librarians, traditionally friendly toward their Cuban colleagues, that
they should 'convert their institutions into laboratories for freedom.'" While
discounting Albright's criticism of the Bush administration, dismissed by Acosta
as "a hypocritical fig leaf designed by Versace," the author said Albright then
"launched directly toward her objective: a call to support the misnamed
'independent libraries', a delicious euphemism with which the CIA has
denominated this particular version, in the Imperial style, of the battle of
ideas [to overthrow the Castro government.]"
Acosta also charged Albright with a commercial motive for delivering her speech
at the ALA conference in New Orleans: "Waving her pedigree as an anti-Communist
Czech emigre, Ms. Albright concluded her performance by making astute propaganda
for her latest book [on religion and politics] before an audience which has,
among its other functions, precisely the task of acquiring books.... I leave it
to the readers' sagacity," continued Eliades Acosta, "to imagine the manner in
which this pious personage concluded her speech, elevating her eyes toward
heaven, as if her well-coifed head, the pride of Washington hair stylists, were
surrounded by the divine splendor of a halo, exactly as appears in the paintings
of El Greco."
"Ms. Albright failed to achieve her objective," concluded Eliades Acosta, which
was allegedly "to poison relations between Cuban and American librarians,
despite having employed all of her histrionic skills in the New Orleans theater.
There was no change whatsoever made in the traditional position of the ALA
toward Cuba." Outside of the hall where Albright delivered her speech, Acosta
noted approvingly, members of the ALA's "Radical Reference" group handed out
leaflets denouncing the Clinton Administration's ex-Secretary of State as a war
criminal.
Following Albright's keynote speech, ALA Councilor Mark Rosenzweig, formerly the
librarian for the U.S. Communist Party, demanded that the ALA screen potential
speakers to eliminate critics of the association's Cuba policy. Romanian-born
author Andrei Codrescu, an invited speaker at the last ALA conference, held in
San Antonio in January, had used his speech to challenge the ALA's alleged
complicity in the persecution of Cuba's independent librarians.
Crisis among
"Internet Police" revealed in video
NEW YORK, June 1, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) -A video filmed at Cuba's
University of Information Sciences has revealed a crisis within the elite being
trained to administer the island's high-tech industry, including the branch of
the security police which tries to suppress access to the World Wide Web. The
secret video, filmed on Feb. 18 and designated for restricted viewing among the
island's ruling elite, was smuggled out of Cuba and placed on the Internet by La
Nueva Cuba, an electronic journal critical of the Castro government. The
58-minute long Spanish language video, entitled "Necessary Point of Reflection,"
can be seen at: (http://lanuevacuba.com/video_Ucien_info_asp/guerra_cibernetica.wmv).
The video shows a panel consisting of the University's rector, Melchor Felix
Gill, and three student leaders, including the head of the local Communist Youth
organization, lecturing an assembly of students and faculty. The panel members
sternly denounce "serious violations" of university regulations: large numbers
of students and faculty members have been detected surfing the Internet,
distributing passwords allowing other persons to access the World Wide Web,
e-mailing people outside of Cuba without authorization, and setting up
clandestine chat rooms. These "serious security violations" are a breach of
Cuban laws which outlaw access to the Internet and the possession of unlicensed
computers, except for a small number of persons considered trustworthy by the
regime.
The secret video contradicts public claims by the Cuban government that the
Internet is readily accessible to all Cuban citizens. Many nations devote
resources to censoring or blocking individual websites, but the Castro regime is
one of the few governments which tries to completely ban all access to the World
Wide Web, except for a privileged few. Foreign tourists are allowed to surf the
World Wide Web at a few Internet cafes, to which the average Cuban is denied
entrance, but the tourists are charged six dollars per hour or more for this
privilege. Cuba has been named among the world's "Ten Worst Enemies of the
Internet" by Reporters Without Borders.
In addition to criminalizing access to the Internet, Cuba also persecutes a
group of volunteers who have opened uncensored libraries throughout the island
in an innovative challenge to government control of information. A number of
Cuba's independent librarians, now serving 20-year sentences following one-day
trials, have been adopted as "prisoners of conscience" by Amnesty International,
which is demanding their immediate release. Thousands of books seized from the
independent librarians, including classics such as George Orwell's 1984 and
Animal Farm, have been burned by the secret police in Cuba. The American Library
Association has been criticized for allegedly failing to defend the Cuban
librarians from persecution.
In the video smuggled out of Cuba, the offending students and faculty at
Havana's prestigious University of Information Sciences are accused of using
their expertise and government-supplied equipment to circumvent the information
security laws they are being trained to enforce. The regime is especially
alarmed by the fact that these alleged crimes are being committed by the
students of an elite university, who are subjected to intense scrutiny by the
State Security police before admission; 80% of the students at the University of
Information Sciences are members of the Communist Youth organization.
In the course of the video, as the camera scans members of the audience whose
facial expressions range from impassivity to defiance, the students and faculty
are rwarned that they are banned from surfing the Internet outside of supervised
classroom exercises. Details on the cases of four students expelled for breaking
the rules, complete with mug shots, are highlighted by the panel members. The
assembled students and faculty are told that new legislation will make such
security breaches punishable by prison terms of up to five years, and they are
urged to serve as informers against any colleagues who commit "crimes" such as
surfing the World Wide Web outside of class.
ALA election
surprise: candidates polled on Cuba
NEW YORK, March 20, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - Steve Marquardt of the
Freadom organization has sent a poll to many of the candidates now running for
election to the ALA Council. The subject of the poll is ALA policy on Cuba, and
early returns from the candidates are overwhelmingly in favor of defending
Cuba's independent librarians from persecution. Steve Marquardt's poll asked the
candidates how they would vote on two questions:
1) an ALA Council resolution calling for the release of Cuba's imprisoned
independent library operators, and
2) an ALA inquiry into the burning of books seized from the Cuban libraries....
Of the nineteen candidates for ALA Council who responded to the poll as of March
17, fifteen of them said they would vote "yes" on one or both questions. These
dramatic results, suggesting a dramatic turnaround in ALA policy on Cuba, are
consistent with the recent poll conducted by "AL Direct" magazine in which 76%
of the respondents voted for the ALA to condemn the Castro regime.
As of today, the ALA Council candidates listed below voted "yes" to one or both
of the Cuba poll questions and have given permission for their names to be
publicized:
Hill, Elizabeth
Hines, Samantha
Kem, Carol Ritzen
McClay, Gregory
Olson, Sandra
Wen, Shixing
Cuba rebukes Gorman, makes "Dracula" charge against Codrescu
NEW YORK, March 19, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - The March 17, 2006,
issue of "Librinsula," the weekly online publication of Havana's National
Library, published a lengthy attack against Andrei Codrescu for challenging
Michael Gorman over the ALA's Cuba policy. In the first of a connected series of
articles, Librinsula republished a scathing Wall Street Journal editorial (Feb.
10) which cited Codrescu's San Antonio speech as evidence of the ALA's hypocrisy
in claiming to be a principled defender of freedom. Librinsula praised Gorman's
indignant response to the WSJ editorial but, in the process, gently rebukes him
for referring to Cuba's independent librarians as dissident librarians. Gorman's
error in terminology was a violation of the ALA party line which (in the case of
Cuba, unlike other countries) studiously ignores the repression of Cuban library
workers on the grounds that they do not have university degrees.
Below is a translation of excerpts from Librinsula's mild rebuke of
Gorman, followed by its attack on Andrei ("Dracula") Codrescu and the Friends of
Cuban Libraries:
THE ASSOCIATION OF NORTH AMERICAN LIBRARIANS (ALA), CUBA AND THE FRIENDS OF KENT
(Librinsula, March 17):
During the past month of February, this bulletin published a re-print of the
response of the current President of the American Library Association to a
malicious report by Robert Kent celebrating the insulting attitude of the
Romanian writer Andrei Codrescu, his new acolyte.
Also in February, [an editorial] appeared in the Wall Street Journal which
continues the campaign against the ALA. Unfortunately, in his honest effort to
cleanse the image of the Association [in his response to the WSJ], Mr. Gorman,
while defending the just and professional posture of the ALA, together with the
rest of the world community of librarians affirmed in the 2001 Resolution on
Cuba at Boston, mistakenly errs in his argument and seems to accept that [the
independent librarians] are Cuban librarians, and not false librarians who
represent the political agenda of the U.S. against Cuba, for which they receive
salaries. In doing so, he [Gorman] contradicts what was expressed in his letter
to Kent, where he states that merely loaning out books does not make a person a
librarian: "Mr. Codrescu seems to share the curious illusion that everyone who
loans a book to another person is a 'librarian.' Few others do."
"...INDEPENDENT" LIBRARIANS: From the country of Dracula, support for agent
Robert Kent
by Jean Guy Allard
CIA collaborator Robert Kent, the inventor of the tiny group "Friends of Cuban
Libraries" which is dedicated to disinforming library organizations on the theme
of Cuba, has been assigned a new helper. Pursuing his plan of associating
himself with Eastern Europeans to attack Cuban socialism, the obsessive New
Yorker has carried out his latest operation against the American Library
Association (ALA) in the company of the North American poet of Romanian origin
Andrei Codrescu.
This individual is the third pseudo-Eastern European recruited by Kent in
accordance with his fixed idea of creating a parallel between Eastern Europe and
Cuba at any cost, a maneuver that doubtlessly corresponds to a strategy of the
anti-Cuban think tank that maintains its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the
Central Intelligence Agency. Codrescu is, in fact, the name chosen one day by
the Romanian Andrei Perlmutter when he created a new image. A Jew by birth and
religion, he judged it convenient - for some reason that only he knows - to
eliminate the family name that associated him with his community. He chose
another one that identifies him with the nation where he was born, on the 20th
of December, 1946, in Sibiu, located in Transylvania, a region famous for a
personage whom he is always pleased to refer to: Dracula.
As an adolescent, Perlmutter/Codrescu is already in disagreement with the
political regime of his country, which he left in 1965, at 19 years of age, to
go to Italy and France, where he tried to establish himself without success
before crossing the Atlantic to discover his new homeland. To better set the
scene, we remember that it is in 1965, the year of his departure, that Nicholas
Ceaucescu will arrive at the leadership of Romania.
In the U.S., where he appears in 1966, the young Codrescu begins his immersion
by attaching himself, in New York, to Allen Ginsberg and his crowd, who were
then fashionable in the East Village. Then he uses, for the first time, a
fictitious identity to publish some poems that are characterized as mediocre. He
signs them [using the name] Maria Pardfenie and he will continue using women's
names before his ultimate transformation. In fact, it is not his literary
exploits that will make the Romanian exile known in the U.S., but rather a
program on National Public Radio (NPR) entitled All Things Considered by which
he creates a certain fame. Andrei Codrescu will always use to his benefit his
status as an "emigre from a communist country" to seek a clientele in a nation
where McCarthyism has apparently indestructible roots. He will obtain U.S.
nationality in 1981.
It is undoubtedly his virulent anti-communism that procured him opportunities
such as his present position as a university professor at the University of New
Orleans, despite the fact that he never graduated from an institution of that
level. And this explains his presence at the side of a personage like Robert
Kent, the itinerant agent of the "Friends of Cuban Libraries."
Two missions in particular have illustrated the political trajectory of
Codrescu. In December 1989 the poet-commentator is assigned the task of
observing from inside the changes that occurred in Romania. The book that
results from this pilgrimage, "The Hole in the Flag," is received with a flood
of criticism, especially for the numerous chronological and geographical errors
that it contains.
In 1998 he stages a relapse after visiting Havana with "Ay, Cuba: A Socio-Erotic
Journey," a rather repugnant work which details his fascination with
adolescents. Codrescu, who doesn't even speak three words of Spanish, visited
the Island for twelve days to write a text full of contempt and, once again,
foolish comments.
MILLIONS FOR THE DIRTY WAR
The U.S. annually spends tens of millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money to
attack Cuba. The administration that abandoned the black population of New
Orleans is the same one that maintains a costly propaganda apparatus, from the
South of Florida, to damage the image of the Island. In executing his campaigns,
Kent claims to possess mysterious "support" from Eastern Europe. At the last
world Congress of librarians, in Oslo, it became known that a "Czech Connection"
which Kent wanted to utilize was composed of a North American military
intelligence agent of Czech origin, "Stanley" or "Stan" Kalkus, who immigrated
to the U.S. in 1951... The Eastern European connection, of which Kent boasted on
various opportunities, is composed of additional personalities such as Silvia
Stasselova of the Technical University of Slovakia....
Another Eastern European pal of agent Kent in his anti-Cuban adventures and
misadventures is Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz, a Pole from Cracow who was a
professional "dissident" in his time. A colleague of Kent at the New York Public
Library, he lives in New Jersey, where he is known for extreme right-wing
proselytizing. In that state close to New York he tried in 2001 to obtain the
Republican candidacy for the Senate. He failed.
The complete Spanish text of the Librinsula article may be found at: (http://www.bnjm.cu/librinsula/2006/marzo/115/dossier/dossier201.htm).
Friends respond to Gorman's "defamation" charge
NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 2006 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) -
Dear Mr. Gorman:
Feb. 8, 2006
Thank you for your letter of January 27 regarding The Friends of Cuban
Libraries' report on Andrei Codrescu's speech at the ALA conference in San
Antonio. Your response to our numerous attempts to communicate, belated as it
is, offers added proof that the effort by a small extremist faction within the
ALA to deceive, cover up and lie about the systematic persecution of Cuba's
independent librarians, and the burning of their library collections, is finally
unraveling. Your letter is an indirect acknowledgement that the ALA is beginning
to repair and reclaim its proud heritage as an impartial defender of
intellectual freedom as a universal human right.
> Your "report..." is entirely typical of your many utterances in
> the past and of the behavior of your friend Mr. Codrescu. That > is, it
is tendentious, riddled with inaccuracies, defamatory, and > motivated by
the kind of foaming right wingery that is, alas, all > too common in
political discourse these days.
If Andrei Codrescu and The Friends of Cuban Libraries have engaged in
defamation, then a lawsuit is called for. Although I am not a lawyer, to a
layperson telling the truth would seem to be poor grounds for a successful
defamation lawsuit.
"Every burned book enlightens the world," wrote Emerson, and thanks to the
intervention of "foaming right-wingers" such as Andrei Codrescu, Nat Hentoff and
Ray Bradbury, at long last the thousands of Cuban library books seized or burned
by Castro's secret police are beginning to enlighten the general public,
including the well-meaning but inattentive majority on the governing ALA Council
who until recently have accepted the assurances of "experts" on
extremist-dominated ALA committees that nothing of interest is happening in
Cuba. We all know what the public would have thought of fluent German-speaking
"researchers" who visited Berlin in the 1930's and proclaimed that they could
find no evidence of repression or censorship in Nazi Germany. Did you really
believe, Mr. Gorman, that the public would not catch on to the ALA's
Spanish-speaking "researchers" who visit Havana and try, with a straight face,
to make similar claims about the Communist regime in Cuba?
And, in addition to Andrei Codrescu, Nat Hentoff and Ray Bradbury, let's not
forget other "foaming right-wingers" such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Cornel
West and Howard Zinn who have also spoken out against the repression of Cuban
dissidents, including the independent librarians now serving life sentences for
daring to open uncensored libraries in an historic challenge to a totalitarian
regime. All of the librarians convicted after Castro's 2003 crackdown have been
adopted as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International and other renowned
organizations, which is just another of the inconvenient facts systematically
ignored or covered up by extremist-dominated ALA committees in their fraudulent
"investigations" of Cuba.
> I am old-fashioned enough to think that it is both
> rude and devious to accept an invitation to speak on a topic and > use the
opportunity to attack your host (ALA).
Is it really rude to inform one's host that his/her house is on fire? On the
contrary: ignoring, lying about and covering up the truth about the rising
flames in a host's house would be the true outrage. Nor is it inappropriate to
inform ALA members, including the well-meaning but inattentive majority on the
governing ALA Council, that they have been deceived by a small, scheming faction
of extremists who are trying to destroy the ethical basis of the ALA.
> I have not "repeatedly dodged" questions about Cuba. I have not > chosen to
answer your fulminations but, then, I would have no > time for my many
other duties if I were to engage in
> correspondence with every half-wit and crackpot who
> communicates with me.
This passage in your letter requires an explanation for the uninformed reader.
In October 2005 the Friends of Cuban Libraries issued an emergency report about
Victor Rolando Arroyo, a jailed Cuban reporter and independent librarian who was
near death due to a hunger strike called to protest prison conditions. Victor,
the director of the Reyes Magos Library in western Cuba, was arrested in March
2003 and the 6,000 volumes in the Reyes Magos Library were confiscated by the
secret police. After a one-day trial, Victor Rolando Arroyo was sentenced to a
20-year prison term. When his life was in danger because of a hunger strike, we
made a public appeal to you, Mr. Gorman, hoping that you would compassionately
agree to help save the life of a fellow human being, regardless of his beliefs,
real or perceived. Sadly, our hopes were misplaced, as you repeatedly refused to
respond to our letters or to make any effort whatsoever to save Victor's life.
Fortunately, Victor's life was saved thanks to the intervention of several human
rights organizations. Did you act in this way because Victor, too, should be
scorned as a "foaming right-winger?" One of the charges made against Victor
during his one-day trial was that he had been awarded the Hellman-Hammett Prize,
issued by Human Rights Watch to honor victims of repression. The award is named
for Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, two more "foaming right-wingers"
harassed for their beliefs during the McCarthy era in the U.S.
> Mr. Codrescu seems to share your curious delusion that
> everyone who lends another person a book is a "librarian." Few > others
do.
Mr. Gorman, efforts to ignore the facts by taking refuge in semantic quibbling
are beginning to fail. It is irrelevant whether a library worker has a library
degree or not, as shown by the ALA's championing of Eliades Acosta, the
despicable director of Havana's National Library who serves as Castro's
spokesperson for the persecution of the independent librarians. Mr. Acosta does
not have a library degree, just as many ALA members and the U.S. Librarian of
Congress also lack a library degree. It can never be a crime to oppose
censorship or to open a library, with or without a university degree, no matter
what the ALA's extremist minority may claim to the contrary. The same goes for
nonsensical claims that Cuba's independent libraries are somehow not real
libraries, even though the ALA's own mandate defends the legitimacy of "all
libraries." Is there some aspect of the phrase "all libraries," Mr. Gorman,
which is ambiguous? And just as the ALA extremists claim, or pretend to claim,
that a library worker is not a library worker and a library is not a library,
will they also dare to claim that a book is not a book, just because it is held
by an independent library in Cuba? Or can we safely scorn and disregard the
existence of a pile of ashes that used to be a book, as has been the fate of
thousands of library books seized by the secret police in Cuba?
In summary, Mr. Gorman, the long "reign of error" enjoyed by the ALA's extremist
minority is beginning to collapse. In growing numbers, ALA members realize that
they have been deceived. We are confident that the majority of well-meaning ALA
Council members will now begin to pay overdue attention to this important
subject and, acting in a principled and impartial manner, restore the ALA's
ethical basis by supporting Cuba's brave independent librarians and their
historic defense of intellectual freedom. We also hope that you, after
re-assessing the facts, will disavow the elaborate lies and cover ups of the
extremists by siding with the vast majority of ALA members who support truth and
justice.
Sincerely,
Robert Kent
Co-chair, The Friends of Cuban Libraries
U.S.
librarians fail to speak out for oppressed peers
SAN ANTONIO , Feb. 1, 2006 (Jonathan Gurwitz/San Antonio Express-News) - Michael
Gorman, the president of the American Library Association, was mugged recently
in San Antonio. Gorman was in town for the ALA's annual midwinter meeting.
Ordinarily, I would be horrified to hear that a visitor to this fair city had
been the victim of such a misdeed. But in this case, it's the ALA that's
committing the crime and the truth that fittingly mugged Gorman.
At the ALA's President's Program on Jan. 22, Romanian-born author Andrei
Codrescu delivered the keynote address about the importance of books, libraries
and librarians.... I was born in a place [Romania] where people were forbidden
to read most of what we consider the fundamental books of Western civilization,"
he told the audience.....
Codrescu spoke about the librarian who changed his life — Dr. Martin, a retired
professor who had managed to accumulate a collection of works blacklisted by the
communist authorities. "Books forbidden by an authoritarian government are the
only reason I am now standing before you," he said.
Codrescu recounted how, in those dark days in Romania, the ALA — along with the
ACLU and the Helsinki Federation for Human Rights — offered a beacon of hope for
democracy and freedom. Then, by President Gorman's lights, Codrescu's speech
turned down a criminal path.
Codrescu recounted the plight of independent librarians in Cuba....
The risks to the librarians were and are real. Human rights groups have deplored
the imprisonment of scores of librarians in Cuba's gulag. Amnesty International
calls them prisoners of conscience. As early as 1999, the International
Federation of Library Associations, based in Denmark, called on the Cuban
government to "put an end to the intimidation of the Independent Libraries in
Cuba."
Yet the leadership of the ALA, basking in freedom 90 miles away in the United
States, has refused to this day to defend their librarian colleagues.
Investigations by the ALA have found no conclusive evidence for repression of
intellectual freedom in Cuba, no marauded libraries and no imprisoned
librarians....
Codrescu, in his speech in San Antonio, chided the ALA. "Am I hallucinating? Is
this the same American Library Association that stands against censorship and
for freedom of expression everywhere? This organization cannot logically ignore
imprisonment and torture of librarians — act against provision 215 of the
Patriot Act and approve of Fidel Castro's order 88, which denies all the rights
we cherish."
The Library Journal reports the speech "earned strong, if not unanimous
applause." It also reports on Gorman's criminal indictment of Codrescu: "I was
mugged. He did not deliver the speech he told us 10 days earlier that he would
deliver."
"Several librarians congratulated me on saying what needs to be said — kind of
whispering congratulations," Codrescu told me in his thick accent. "They should
be in solidarity with librarians in Cuba. Cuba is Romania in 1968. Actually,
it's worse off, more dictatorial, more of a police state."
There are certainly victims in this story, but Gorman is not one of them. The
trespass and the travesty here is that the ALA, under his leadership, has
refused to defend the imprisoned Cuban librarians.
ALA convention shocker: Keynote speaker Codrescu slams Cuba policy scandal
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, January 22, 2006 (Andrei Codrescu) - Here
are excerpts from Andrei Codrescu's electrifying keynote speech, "The Make It or
Break It Century," presented at the ALA's Midwinter 2006 conference:
Thank you for – once again - giving me the opportunity and pleasure to address
some of my favorite people. I feel that you and I, writers and librarians, along
with publishers and booksellers, are keeping the flame of literacy flickering in
these pixilated times.....
I was born in a place [Romania] where people were forbidden to read most of what
we consider the fundamental books of Western civilization. Not only were we
forbidden to read authors like James Joyce, but being found in possession of a
book such as George Orwell’s “1984” could lend one in prison for years. My good
luck was to meet Dr. Martin in my adolescence. Dr. Martin was a retired
professor who had collected and kept in his modest three room apartment the best
of inter-war Romanian literature..... Also among his treasures were translations
of Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil, Klebnikov, George Orwell, and Paul Claudel.....
Dr. Martin’s library could have earned him years of hard labor. In addition to
owning them, he lent them to us, young high-school writers, who absorbed them
thirstily and read them deeply because we knew what risks our older friend – and
ourselves - were taking. Those books influenced me profoundly because they were
essential to my intellectual development. I became a writer because I read
forbidden books. Books forbidden by an authoritarian government are the only
reason I am now standing before you.
I knew about the American Library Association for a long time.... The ALA fight
for the freedom to read, against censorship and the Patriot Act has been one of
its magnificent accomplishments. Another has been the promotion of human rights
and intellectual freedom worldwide. To quote from the ALA policy manual,
“freedom of expression is an inalienable human right, necessary to
self-government, vital to the resistance to oppression, crucial to the cause of
justice, and further, that the principles of freedom of expression should be
applied to libraries and librarians throughout the world.”
Given these crystal-clear positions, it was with a great deal of dismay that I
learned that the American Library Association has taken no action to condemn the
imprisonment of librarians, the banning of books, the repression of expression
and the torture of dissidents only 90 miles away from our shores, in Cuba. In
March 1998, two residents of Las Tunas, Ramón Colás and Berta Mexidor, opened a
private library in their home, dedicated to offering Cubans books not officially
available. The Félix Varela Library was the first of a network of private
libraries that were established by volunteers in Cuba to bring light to the
oppressive darkness of Castro’s police state. 103 libraries and 182,000
registered patrons were affiliated with the expanding Independent Libraries
Project by the end of 2002. From the very beginning of their existence, the
private librarians were subjected to threats, harassment, evictions, arrests,
police raids, and the seizure of book collections, books that disappeared so
quickly they could have only been burned..... Since then, those “individuals”
have been subject to brutal imprisonment and their books have been disappeared.
The ALA councilors have remained silent on the issue to this day. Am I
hallucinating? Is this the same American Library Association that stands against
censorship and for freedom of expression everywhere? There are some people like
the civil liberties columnist Nat Hentoff, and Robert Kent, founder of Friends
of Cuban Libraries, who have accused the ALA leadership of a cover-up. I hope
not. This organization cannot logically... act against provision
215 of the Patriot Act and approve of Fidel Castro’s order 88, which denies all
the rights we cherish.
I went to Cuba in 1997, just before a papal visit later that year, and I was
appalled by the lack of books. I was reminded of my poor, sad Romania in the
1950's, a dismal prison where food for body and mind were nearly inexistent.
Cubans were literally starving physically and intellectually. Looking through
the desultory pages of the Communist Party’s official paper, Granma, reminded me
also of the pathetic simulacra of phony writing that stained the
pages of Romania’s official papers during the years of the dictatorship.... Cuba
today is the Romania of my growing up and I only hope for the sake of the Cubans
that a hundred thousand Dr. Martins are ready to rise to take the place of those
who had been arrested and tortured by the Cuban regime. I also hope that, in
keeping with its tradition and charter of defending the freedom to read and
freedom of expression, the American Library Association will immediately pass a
resolution condemning the Castro regime for flagrant violations of basic human
rights. To not do so is self-defeating and wipes out any credibility the ALA
might have in fighting the much milder provisions of the Patriot Act. Not to
speak of the fact that it’s much easier to fight for freedom to read in a
country where every book is available, while it is much more difficult to make
meaningful a statement in a place where books are an enemy of the state.....
Labor library confiscated
HAVANA, Dec. 14, 2005 (Víctor Manuel Domínguez, Lux Info Press
/ www.cubanet.org) - Last Saturday the secret police confiscated approximately
300 books, a typewriter and documents belonging to the Cuban National
Confederation of Independent Workers (CONIC) in the city of Bayamo, according to
telephone reports phoned in from Granma Province.
Francisco Juan Benítez Reyes and Gabriel Díaz Sánchez, provincial delegates of
CONIC, reported that the raid occurred at about 8:30 A.M., with the goal of
preventing the celebration of International Human Rights Day in the homes of
various trade union activists.
The labor library located in the home of Yoandris Montoya Avilés, located at 217
Raúl Gómez García St., Bayamo, was confiscated. Among the seized library
materials were books on politics, society, trade unions, labor issues, and
pamphlets and manuals published by the U.N.'s International Labor Organization.
According to the CONIC delegate, the illegal seizure of books, documents and
other materials was accompanied by threats of imprisonment and "acts of
repudiation," such as those carried out in front of labor organizers' houses by
government-directed mobs on the eve of International Human Rights Day, which is
commemorated every 10th of December....
"We will obtain multiple copies of the books that were confiscated," declared
Gabriel Díaz Sánchez. "We will acquire a better quality typewriter, and
independent trade unions will flourish in Granma Province with a degree of
success beyond the wildest expectations of the authorities of this country who
want to make us disappear."
Cuba, Iran lash out
at Internet freedom
TUNIS, Tunisia, Nov. 18, 2005 (Declan McCullagh/CNET Networks, Inc.) - Cuba,
Iran and African governments lashed out at the U.S. government this week,
charging that the Internet permits too much free speech and that the way it is
managed must be reformed immediately.
The U.S. and other Western nations "insist on being world policemen on the
management of the Internet," Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who has been the
country's leader since 1987, said at a United Nations information society summit
here.
"Those who have supported nihilistic and disorderly freedom of expression are
beginning to see the fruits" of their efforts, Mugabe said, adding that Zimbabwe
will be "challenging the bully-boy mentality that has driven the unipolar
world...."
"Fidel Castro, the unflinching promoter of the use of new technologies,"
believes "it is necessary to create a multinational democratic (institution)
which administers this network of networks," said the WSIS delegate from Cuba.
In Cuba, only people with government permission can access the Internet, owning
computer equipment is prohibited, and online writers have been imprisoned,
according to Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based free speech watchdog
group.
Too often, the Internet is used for the "propagation of falsehoods," said
Mohammad Soleymani, Iran's minister of communication and information
technology....
Two libraries raided, librarian sentenced for "dangerousness"
HAVANA, Oct. 27, 2005 (Assembly to Promote a C