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National Post.
Canada, June 20, 2003.
A cold war has broken out at a librarians' conference in downtown Toronto as
accusations fly that pro-Castro elements within the American Library Association
are trying to silence debate over Cuba's crackdown on independent libraries.
The battle has laid the groundwork for the improbable scenario of a shouting
match among librarians at a meeting tomorrow. The ALA has "secretly
manoeuvered to have only pro-Cuban voices" on a discussion panel, said
Robert Kent, a co-founder of the Friends of Cuban Libraries and a librarian with
the New York Public Library. "And the extremists within the ALA are going
to try to pack the meeting to exclude people who might be critical of the Cuban
government."
Fearing the panel will ignore the plight of Cuba's independent librarians,
many of whom have been imprisoned, some delegates have vowed to force their way
into the debate tomorrow.
The joint conference of the Canadian and American Library Associations is
meeting this week at a convention centre in downtown Toronto. "Those few of
us who are going to Toronto to publicly challenge the library groups to speak
out on behalf of intellectual freedom have been threatened that we would be
expelled from the one-sided panel discussion if we 'made trouble,'" one
librarian told the National Post.
Their concern is for the 14 self-styled librarians, many of them journalists
or writers, who open their private collections to the public, and who were
jailed with 64 others in March for treason, while the world was preoccupied with
Iraq.
No books are officially banned in Cuba, but access to state libraries is
controlled and monitored through written requests. The Cuban government has
dismissed the informal household collections, which now number around 200, as
neither libraries nor independent, casting their owners instead as counter
revolutionaries.
Last December, the founders of the independent library movement emigrated to
Miami, citing state harassment. Then in March, with the world preoccupied with
Iraq, the 14 who were arrested were sentenced in cursory trials to as long as 26
years in jail for treason, and their books and circulation records were
confiscated.
Without library degrees or state sponsorship, they have had difficulty
pleading their case outside Cuba.
Michael Dowling, director of the ALA International Relations Office, who is
responsible for Cuba, denied the panel has been stacked, despite the fact that
all five Cuban delegates are librarians in official, state-owned libraries, and
many are openly critical of the independents.
"The grant [to form the panel] is to get Cuban librarians here so they
can interact with their profession colleagues and make presentations on Cuban
libraries," he said, noting that he has not been told of any protests, but
expects a strong debate in the question and answer session.
"I'm not sure what will occur," he said. He said a condition of
the grant to form the panel, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council, was that all delegates should be professional librarians.
Mr. Kent, however, cast doubt on the professionalism of the Cubans. "In
our opinion, a librarian without a degree who endures persecution for defending
intellectual freedom is more 'professional' than a librarian with a degree who
does not defend intellectual freedom," he said.
Don Butcher, executive director of the Canadian Library Association, said a
resolution will be debated over the next few days, and sent to the CLA council
by next week, to take a position on Cuban libraries.
The ALA also has a draft resolution urging the Cuban government "to
respect the rights of all individuals to freedom of expression and access to
information and to eliminate policies that infringe on those rights." | 
