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."
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)
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
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.
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
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
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