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Special Report on the

ALA & Cuban Repression of Librarians


Betrayal of Core Values:

A Four Year Saga

 

June 19th  2007

By Steve Marquardt, Co-Chair, Freadom

 

The American Library Association loves books, intellectual freedom, the freedom of expression and the freedom to read, not only in the USA but also "throughout the world," according to ALA policy 53.1.12: "The American Library Association believes that freedom of expression is an inalienable human right, necessary to self-government, vital to the resistance of oppression, and crucial to the cause of justice, and further, that the principles of freedom of expression should be applied by libraries and librarians throughout the world. [Emphasis added] Adopted 1989."

The ALA promotes reading and defends books against those who would ban or burn them. The Association has a web site devoted to exposing book burning.

However, ALA book lovers have jilted one group that has appealed to them for solidarity in the face of repression. This abandonment has been condemned by the writers Nat Hentoff,  Ray Bradbury, Andre Codrescu, Madeleine Albright, Carlos Eire, and many more. (See Burned Book Campaign for a long list of writers.)

Many ALA members join in these writers in their great disappointed at the actions or inaction of ALA on the following two issues, the second of which – book burning – is the more troubling. 

1. Prison time for setting up a library.


Eighteen individuals who had created independent lending libraries were arrested and sentenced by Cuban provincial courts to double-decade prison sentences as part of the March 2003 crackdown on dissidents.

Major human rights organizations, political groups, governments, library associations, writers and other intellectuals responded by calling for the release of the prisoners, as shown in the next two sections. Over the last four years, however, the ALA has remained aloof and noncommital to these violations of human rights and core ALA values: such that major newspaper editorials and even invited speakers have spoken out about this betrayal of the principles of intellectual freedom. Looking at the extensive list of international organizations represented below, the question which ALA officials need to address is: Why hasn't the ALA joined their voice with these groups?

Organizations Calling for Release of the Cuban Library Workers

as of 15 March 2007:

 

Campaign for Peace and Democracy (March 2003)

http://hnn.us/comments/11516.html and at www.cpdweb.org.

 

Presidency of the European Union (26 March 2003 and 5 June 2003) http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/cfsp/75232.pdf and http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/cfsp/76075.pdf

 

French Communist Party (8 April 2003)

http://www.pcf.fr/?iddoc=2565 and http://www.pcf.fr/?iddoc=2567

 

Italian legislature (29 April 2003)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/americas/2986897.stm

 

Amnesty International (beginning 3 June 2003, then in 2004 and again in 2005)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR250172003?open&of=ENG-CUB

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR250052004

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR250022005

 

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (27 June 2003)

http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2003/db062703.doc.htm

http://www.hri.org/news/world/undh/2003/03-06-27.undh.html

 

German Bundestag Commission of Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid (11 Nov. 2003) http://www.netforcuba.org/News-EN/2003/Nov/News277.htm

 

179 American leftists, in a Letter to the Editors of New York Review of Books, vol. L, no. 19 (December 4, 2003), p. 62.  http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0420-10.htm

 

International PEN (5 December 2003 and during its campaign of 6-12 September 2004)

http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/index.php?pid=33&aid=36&query=cuba

http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/dev/viewArticles.asp?findID_=191

 

International Society for Human Rights (Germany) (early 2004)

http://www.ishr.org/activities/countries/cuba/hrcuba2003.htm#5

 

Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and Freedom House, et al (17 March 2004) http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/03/17/cuba8126_txt.htm

Freedom House

International League for Human Rights

Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights

Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights,
Physicians for Human Rights,

Human Rights First (called renewed 31 March 2007 at http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/CubaFourYears/8bd5d7brrt555e8?), and

Human Rights Watch (2004 March 17)

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=52

 

Council of the European Union (14 June 2004)

http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/gena/80951.pdf

 

Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Association of Library and Information Professionals of the Czech Republic (2005 January 18)

http://skip.nkp.cz

 

Committee to Protect Journalists (16 March 2005 and 14 March 2007)

http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/cuba_crackdown_05/cuba_crackdown_main.html

http://www.cpj.org/protests/07ltrs/americas/cuba14mar07pl.html

 

Human Rights First (21 March 2005)

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/2005_alerts/hrd_0321_cuba.htm

 

National Congress of Delegates of the Polish Librarians Association (2005 June 5)

http://ebib.oss.wroc.pl/sbp/interwen10_6.html

 

President of the Estonian Librarians Association (2005 August 4)

Letter to Robert Kent

 

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy (2005 October 12)

http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/cgi-bin/GPrint2002.pl?file=2005/10/12.release.shtml

 

Library Association of Latvia (2006 February 28)

http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/Cuba-Resolution2006.pdf

 

Pax Christi of the Netherlands (which has also adopted individual prisoners) (18 March 2006)

http://www.paxchristi.nl/ons_werk_campagnes_campagne_open_de_wereld_voor_cuba_adoptieactie.htm

 

People In Need (Czechoslovakia) (undated)

http://www.clovekvtisni.cz/english/humanitarnipomoc/cuba/international.php.

 

Organization of American States, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

(21 October 2006)  http://www.cidh.org/annualrep/2006eng/CUBA.12476eng.htm

 

Expressions of "deep concern," etc., falling short of calls for release:

 

American Library Association

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=News&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=53695

 

American Bar Association

http://www.abanet.org/humanrights/docs/rule_cuba.pdf

 

International Federation of Library Associations

<http://www.ifla.org/V/press/faife-cuba03pr.htm>

 

The Vatican

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB071FFF39590C748EDDAD0894DB404482.  Pope John Paul II É sent a letter to Mr. Castro expressing deep pain and sorrow É

 

UNESCO Director General

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=8979&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

 


Amnesty International adopted all 75 dissidents as "prisoners of conscience" three months after their summary trials. The French Communist Party demanded their release no more than two weeks after their arrests. But not the American Library Association.

The ALA still has not called for the release of the independent library organizers.  An expression of "deep concern" was the best that the ALA has ventured in the defense of these prisoners. Here is the entire text of the "conclusions" from ALA's January 2004 report on the crackdown on independent libraries. It should be noted that the officials in charge of this "investigation" which led to this report ignored offers from Amnesty International to document the destruction of libraries and book burning in Cuba.

CONCLUSIONS

Since the commitment to intellectual freedom is a core value of the library and information profession worldwide, ALA joins IFLA in support and assistance to the Cuban library community in safeguarding free access to print and electronic information, including the Internet. IFLA has also called on Cuba's librarians to implement a code of ethics for its library profession developed by ASCUBI.

At the IFLA General Conference and Council in August 2001, ALA and ASCUBI presidents signed "A Protocol to Cooperate" that included plans for exchanges of materials, professional exchanges between American and Cuban librarians, attendance at conferences, and many other cooperative activities.  Work continues on these initiatives intended to build mutual respect and trust among librarians and library workers in the two nations.

ALA supports IFLA in its call for the elimination of the U.S. embargo that restricts access to information in Cuba and for lifting travel restrictions that limit professional exchanges.  ALA also supports IFLA's call for the U.S. government to share information widely in Cuba.

ALA joins IFLA in its deep concern over the arrest and long prison terms of political dissidents in Cuba in spring 2003 and urges the Cuban Government to respect, defend and promote the basic human rights defined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [Emphasis added.]

ALA supports IFLA in urging the Cuban government to eliminate obstacles to access to information imposed by its policies, and IFLA's support for an investigative visit by a special rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights with special attention given to freedom of access to information and freedom of expression, especially in the cases of those individuals recently imprisoned and that the reasons for and conditions of their detention be fully investigated.

Proclaiming the fundamental right of all human beings to access information without restriction, ALA joins with IFLA in urging the Cuban library community to monitor violations of freedom of access to information and freedom of expression and to take a leading role in actively promoting these basic rights for all Cubans.


When the above language came before the full governing Council of the Association, Councilor Karen Schneider moved and Council DEFEATED, A motion to add
the following words: ".... and calls for their immediate release.  ALA.... to ALA CD#18.1, International Relations Committee and Intellectual Freedom Committee's Report on Cuba, Page 4, 4th paragraph." (From http://www.ala.org/ala/ourassociation/governanceb/council/councilminutes/ac2003.htm)

Judith Krug, Director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, in her letter of February 6, 2007 to me, said of the January 2004 report – despite the Association's governing Council  having voting down a call to release the prisoners – that "We believe this is a strong and meaningful statement of support for these individuals."

The leadership of the ALA remains satisfied to this day with the above response to the crackdown on the attempt to create independent libraries in Cuba – libraries intended to be ideology-free spaces free from the control of the communist government.

Why such a timid response, in marked contrast to so many other voices demanding release of the prisoners?  The most plausible rationale for this timidity was provided by the then ALA President Michael Gorman, in his discussion of the issue with Andrei Codrescu in January 2006: " we do not want to get involved with the kind of politics which grows up around the Cuban exile community, the Republican Party, and the Cuban government."  In other words –

Anti-anticommunism, Si! 

Freedom to read, É well, maybe next time.

The ALA's traditional defense of the freedom to read is trumped in this circumstance by the ALA's tradition of anti-anticommunism.  (For more on this subject, see Stephen Karetzky's Not Seeing Red: American librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002.)

Other ALA members have expressed the belief that the independent librarians were in the pay of the U.S. government, as part of a program to achieve regime change in Cuba, apparently by bringing the government down under a fusillade of books. 

The facts are seen from a compendium of Cuban court documentation of the quite less than exorbitant funds received and in the possession of the library activists – amounts that are no more than remittances sent to Cuba by friends and relatives, or sent by immigrant workers in the USA to other Central American and Caribbean nations.

Funds Received by the Library Prisoners

In his "Savage Justice: An Indictment of Fidel Castro," in the April 18-24, 2003 issue of LA Weekly, Marc Cooper wrote the following:

The Bush administration's top diplomat in Cuba, James Cason, has indeed been quite assertive. Publicly challenging Castro, he had made a point of visiting the homes of many of these dissidents and had also brought many of them to his own residence. He freely admits to giving them newspapers, books and Internet access as part of his "normal duties." Whether he actually gave them money or not — who knows?

No one knows, because the "trials" of these unfortunate folks were also sealed and secret. And conducted on greased rails. Within a few weeks of their arrests, all six dozen had been given prison sentences of six to 28 years. [from http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0420-10.htm]

 

Secret no longer, the following amounts are citied in the sentencing documents of the Cuban provincial courts, available on the Web http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/.

Summary of Funds Received by wire or transfer from U.S. shores:

Ariel and Guido Sigler Amaya:                     Received $500 in 2001, $2400 in 2002 and $200 in 2003, from antirevolutionary Angel DÕFana.

Blas Giraldo Reyes Rodriguez:                     No dollar amount stated, but accused of receiving Òdollars and other goods.Ó

Carmelo Augustin Diaz Fernandez                 No funds mentioned.

Felix Navarro Rodriguez and                        ÒÉ through supposed friends and family

      Ivan Hernandez Carrillo:                           members É receiving É $3352 between                             November 2001 and March [2003].Ó

Fidel Suarez Cruz:                                      No funds mentioned.

Hector Palacios Ruiz:                                  Wrote articles Òin exchange for $15 to $100 ... magazines, newspapers and web pages É paid him between $15 and $25.Ó

JosŽ Gabriel Ramon Castillo:                       $7,000 during 2002 and forward.

JosŽ Luis Garcia Paneque                             receipt of a bank transfer in the branch office 6411, Las Tunas in the amount of $300

JosŽ Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernandez:                  $2,000.

Julio Antonio Valdes Guevara:                      No funds mentioned.

Leonel de Peralta Almenares:                        No funds mentioned.

Luis Milan Fernandez:                                 No funds mentioned.

Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos:                        $1,300.

Ricardo Severino Gonzalez Alfonso:              No funds mentioned.

Raul Ramon Rivero Casta–eda:                     No dollar amount stated, but accused of receiving Òpayment for his harmful writings.Ó

Victor Rolando Arroyo Carmona:                  Deposited $315.03 (USD) in a Cuban bank. Received 2001 through 2003 a total of $2070.10.

NOTE: "Remittances are an important part of Cuba's wealth; between one-third and two-thirds of the island's 11m inhabitants are believed to receive money from abroad."  -- from ÒCuba: SpellboundÓ on page 32 of the January 6, 2007 (vol. 382, no. 8510) print edition of The Economist.


Repeated appeals to release the prisoners have been issued by human rights organizations and others, but ALA has issued only the above cited report of January 13, 2004, and one subsequent official statement in response to an appeal from the Director of the Independent Library Project of Cuba. On June 4, 2003, Gisela Delgado Sablon wrote to Michael Dowling, Director of the ALA Office of International Relations, concluding her appeal with these words:

What we are asking, sir, is that your association show solidarity with our project and with the innocent persons who are now in prison.  We would like you to ask the Cuban authorities to immediately release these detained persons.

The ALA took its time to carefully craft its response. Senora Delgado, having heard nothing from ALA for one year, sent a second letter on June 18, 2004, "to urgently request the international solidarity that your organization has come to demonstrate in so many cases throughout your long history."

Fully thirteen months after receiving Senora Delgado's first appeal for solidarity, John W. Berry, Chair of the ALA International Relations Committee, responded on July 27, 2004, by 1) sending Senora Delgado the January 2004 ALA report and 2) by writing to the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs – not to call for the release of the prisoners or to ask for the return of confiscated books, but instead saying "ALA also joins IFLA in its "deep concern over the arrest and long prison terms of 75 political dissidents in Cuba in spring 2003. We thank you very much for your attention and assistance to ensure the health and welfare of these detained individuals." In other words, his message to prisoners such as GiselaÕs husband, Hector Palacios Ruiz, amounted to ÒHave a nice twenty years in prison."

(See the complete text of all four letters in the following sections.)


Appeal from Gisela Delgado to Michael Dowling

Director of the ALA International Relations Office

 

Michael Dowling, Director
mdowling@ala.org International Relations Office
Phone: (312) 280-3200
Fax: (312) 280-4392

Havana, June 4, 2003

 

Sir,

 

I send you this recorded message due to the fact that my fax was seized during a raid on my home, during which my husband Hector Palacios was arrested.  They also seized materials related to the Independent Libraries Project.  Sir, I would like to send this message seeking your solidarity with this library project and because of the repression to which we have been subjected.  Many Cubans have been arrested because of their manner of thinking and for their promotion of culture within Cuba.

 

Sir, I greet you and other members of the ALA on behalf of the members of the Independent Library Project of Cuba.  Our project was founded on March 3, 1998, due to four decades of literary censorship to which our nation has been subjected.  Our library movement was founded with the goal of offering the Cuban people access to uncensored reading beyond the limits imposed by a required ideology.  We have now established 103 libraries throughout the country [in addition to about 100 independent libraries founded by other groups - editor's note].  I append an annual report that was completed at the end of the year 2002 in which we explain the varied activities that we carry out and the achievements of this project in favor of a civil society in Cuba. 

 

Since March 18th of this year numerous Cubans were detained, including about a dozen librarians and dozens of human rights defenders, independent journalists and dissidents. 

This was accompanied by raids on the homes of these persons and the seizure of books, typewriters, cameras, radios, computers, etc. These raids have impacted more than thirty libraries, and other librarians were taken to detention centers by the political police and warned that if they if they continued their work to promote independent cultural activities they would be imprisoned.

 

What we are asking, sir, is that your association show solidarity with our project and with the innocent persons who are now in prison.  We would like you to ask the Cuban authorities to immediately release these detained persons.

 

Sincerely,

 

Gisela Delgado Sablon

Director Independent Library Project of Cuba

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOTECAS INDEPENDIENTES DE CUBA

Calle 25 #866, Apt. 3, entre A y B, Vedado, Ciudad Habana, Cuba

 www.bibliocuba.org

 

June 18, 2004

 

Mr. John W. Berry

Chairman

International Relations Committee

American Library Association

50 E. Huron

Chicago, IL 60611

 

Dear Mr. Berry,

 

I extend my congratulations and best wishes for success on the ocassion of your upcoming annual meetings.  It is, indeed, a proud moment for the American people and librarians worldwide when your organization meets to openly address issues affecting the profession charged with preserving the historic memory of every society and of disseminating information within it. 

 

            Unfortunately, that type of meeting is not possible a mere 90 miles from the shores of the state in which your gathering is to be held.  Such is the case in my own country of Cuba, where the Cuban people, having learned to read, are not able to freely exercise their right to do so.  Hence the value of projects such as ours, the Independent Libraries of Cuba.  This project, which  I am honored to direct, promotes reading and access to information of all kinds, to whomever wishes to approach it, as I have described in prior letters to members of your organization.

 

            I now find myself in the obligation to write you once again – unfortunately not to report on our successes, as I would like – but to urgently request the international solidarity that your organization has come to demonstrate in so many cases throughout your long history.

 

            Since March of 2003, the Cuban government has unjustly imprisoned, because of their ideological positions, members of our organization that defend intellectual liberty.  My own husband, Hector Palacios, was arrested when state police raided the Dulce Maria Loynaz library, of which I am director.  He and fifteen independent librarians, and a large number of human rights activists find themselves detained, in abhorrent conditions, that have been described by the international media and several international organizations.

 

            Amnesty international, which is seeking the release of the imprisoned librarians, has declared them to be Prisoners of Conscience.  Their report (ÒCuba:  One Year Too Many:  Prisoners of Conscience from the March 2003 Crackdown") describes this unconscionable reality.  Alarming details of abuses perpetrated against those who participate in our cultural project, many of whom are suffering serious health problems, are contained in this report.  Thanks to international attention, three librarians have been liberated, including Leonardo Bruzon Avila, Julio valdez Guevara, and Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, all of them in serious health condition.  Still more international attention is required to bring about the release of those remaining. 

 

            Your organization has an important role to play.  As a world leader among lirarians, grounding yourselves in your principles of defending intellectual liberty, ALA could become a catalyst for change by shedding further light on these abuses of fundamental human rights.  I trust and hope that it will be so.

 

Sincerely,

 

Gisela Delgado Sablon

National Director

 

Biblioteca Dulce Mar’a Loynaz

Calle 25 #866, Apt. 3, entre A y B, Vedado, Ciudad Habana, Cuba

 www.bibliocuba.org

 

 

July 27, 2004

 

Mrs. Gisela Delgado Sablon

Calle 25 # 866, Apt. 3 Entre A y B

Verdado Cuidad

Habana, CUBA

 

Dear Mrs. Delgado Sablon:

 

We are responding to your letter of June 18, 2004, which was delivered by Mr. Ram—n Col‡s at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida on June 28, 2004.

 

As you know, in January of this year, the American Library Association (ALA) Council, ALA's governing body, adopted the report of the association's International Relations Committee and Intellectual Freedom Committee on Cuba. This report was sent to the Cuban government and distributed widely as a press release. I am attaching the report with this letter.

 

Since 2001, ALA has supported the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) call for the U.S. government to share information resources widely in Cuba, and not restrict its provision to just a few individuals.

 

The ALA report calls for the elimination of the embargo by the United States government that restricts access to information in Cuba and for lifting travel restrictions that limit professional exchanges.

 

The unfortunate political climate between our two countries is not cause for indifference to the fundamental rights of all people as defined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

 

Therefore, ALA joined IFLA in its "deep concern" to the Cuban government over the arrest and long prison terms" of 75 political dissidents, including your husband.

 

We are again sending the report adopted by the ALA Governing Council to the Cuban government.

 

Respectfully,

 

John W. Berry

Chair, International Relations Committee

Past President, American Library Association

 

 

July 27, 2004

 

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Sr. Felipe PŽrez Roque

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores

Calzada No. 360

Vedado

La Habana, CUBA

 

Dear Minister:

 

In January of this year, the American Library Association (ALA) Council, ALA's governing body, adopted the report of the association's International Relations Committee and Intellectual Freedom Committee on Cuba. This report was sent to the Cuban government through the Cuban Interests Section in the United States, and distributed widely as a press release. I am attaching the report with this letter.

 

ALA signed an agreement in 2001 to cooperate with the Asociaci—n Cubana de Bibliotecarios (ASCUBI) on an array of issues including exchanges of materials and professional exchanges.

 

Since 2001, ALA has supported the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) call for the need for the U.S. government to share information resources widely in Cuba, and not restrict its provision to just a few individuals.

 

The ALA report calls for the elimination of the embargo by the United States government that restricts access to information in Cuba and for lifting travel restrictions that limit professional exchanges.

 

The unfortunate political climate between our two countries is not cause for indifference to the fundamental human rights of all people as defined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, in the report ALA also joins IFLA in its "deep concern over the arrest and long prison terms" of 75 political dissidents in Cuba in spring 2003.

 

We thank you very much for your attention and assistance to ensure the health and welfare of these detained individuals. [Emphasis added.]

 

Respectfully,

 

John W. Berry

Chair, International Relations Committee Past President, American Library Association<