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American librarians silence Cuban pleas. Question legitimacy of book
lenders imprisoned in crackdown by Castro
By Art Moore. WorldNetDaily.com.
Posted: June 24, 2003. 1:00 a.m. Eastern
The co-founder of a movement that put George Orwell's anti-totalitarian
classic "Animal Farm" in the hands of Cubans says the American Library
Association is ignoring the plight of 14 colleagues imprisoned in a March
crackdown by the Castro regime.
Ramon Colas, who launched the Independent Library Project of Cuba with his
wife in 1998, came to the ALA's annual conference in Toronto last weekend in
search of "solidarity" but went away disappointed, he told
WorldNetDaily.
"The behavior of the ALA in Toronto showed the level of its complicity
with the Havana regime," said Colas, who left Cuba in December 2001 with
his wife, Berta Mexidor, and now lives in Miami.
Colas brought to Toronto an official request from the executive director of
the library project, Gisela Delgado Sablon, asking the ALA to demand that Castro
release independent librarians imprisoned for up to 26 years.
An ALA subcommittee, however, is prepared to submit a resolution to the
broader council that only expresses "concern" for recent arrests,
without specifying the targets.
The influence of a delegation of five officials sent from Cuba's state-run
libraries has much to do with that, said Colas, who spoke through an
interpreter.
Eliades Acosta, Cuba's national libraries director, accuses the independent
book lenders of being tools of the United States to topple Havana's communist
government.
"The independent libraries have ... demonstrated they are receiving
money to subvert the institutional order of Cuba," Acosta said in a speech
Saturday at a book convention in Toronto, according to the Associated Press.
Colas insists his peaceful movement has no weapons or plans to overtake
military bases, but focuses on opening the minds of "people so they can
choose the culture they want."
"The one who is subverting the cultural order of Cuba is Fidel Castro,"
he said. "While Castro is imprisoning civilians, the librarians are opening
their homes to allow Cubans to read things they wouldn't be allowed to see
otherwise."
Titles barred by the regime include biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document Cuba has signed.
Fidel's discourse
Colas said it was clear the official librarians were acting in the Cuban
dictator's interest in Toronto, noting he was to be part of a debate that was
called off at the last minute.
"I heard from them Fidel Castro's discourse, not their individual
thinking," he said.
But similar sentiments were heard from ALA members, including an influential
policy-maker on the international relations committee, which will decide on a
resolution today.
"This is not, and never has been, an issue of intellectual freedom,
books or libraries," said Ann Sparanese, an ALA board member who also
belongs to the Venceremos Brigade, a U.S. group that has supported Castro's
revolution for three decades.
"The people who were arrested were not arrested because they had books,
or because they are 'librarians,' 'library workers' or 'journalists,'" she
said in an e-mail to an ALA colleague, "but because they broke the kinds of
law against serving as an agent of a foreign power, for which the U.S. also
imposes harsh prison time."
Sparanese noted under the Torricelli and Helms-Burton acts, millions of
dollars have been poured into Cuba in an effort to change the government.
She wrote: "Unless you believe and promote the idea that no country has
the right to protect its sovereignty – including our own – and that
every country is required to allow the free infusion of foreign funds to corrupt
its political processes – including our own – then you need to
categorically reject the argument that this is an intellectual freedom issue."
That approach is an "outrage" to Robert Kent, a New York City
librarian who supports the independent book lenders with a group called Friends
of Cuban Libraries.
"For several years the ALA has ignored, covered up, or denied the fact
that Cuba is the only country in the world which imprisons people for the
alleged crime of opening uncensored libraries," he told WND.
The ALA, with 64,000 members, is run by an elected board of 175 councilors.
Kent insists ALA's rules require that requests of the kind made by the
independent librarians be heard.
"The statutes have a provision that when foreign nationals complain
about human rights violations, the international relations office of the ALA is
required to bring it to the attention of the ALA council," said Kent, who
notes Amnesty International has declared the librarians and the other 61 people
arrested in March "prisoners of conscience."
Delgado's request, addressed to Michael Dowling, director of the ALA
international relations office, said the project was founded "due to four
decades of literary censorship to which our nation has been subjected."
The movement has established 103 libraries in homes throughout the country,
she said, in addition to about 100 independent libraries founded by other
groups.
She wrote to Dowling:
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.
Attempts to reach Dowling yesterday for comment were unsuccessful.
Walter Skold, a library science graduate student from Brunswick, Maine, has
drafted an alternative resolution that he believes fulfills Delgado's plea.
The key paragraph in his document reads:
The American Library Association joins with library colleagues around the
world, Amnesty International, various non-governmental organizations, and
numerous individual writers and human rights activists from all walks of life in
deploring these actions, and we call on the government of Cuba to immediately
release all [14] of the independent librarians who have been jailed for
exercising their rights to free expression, and to return all books which have
been confiscated from the book collections.
Skold said the ALA is reluctant to simply add to its resolution: "We
call on the government to release the librarians."
"The rest of the resolution is fine," he told WND.
He believes the ALA is putting itself in a unique situation.
"What other professional group has failed to come to the aid of
colleagues who are jailed?"
Final stage?
Colas believes a strong statement by the ALA can help hasten democratic
change in the island nation.
"In Cuba today, already there is a transition taking place and the
Castro regime is in the process of collapse and agony," he said. "This
is the final stage."
He cites the fact that Castro has been forced to acknowledge the existence
of an opposition movement within Cuba as evidence he is losing his grip.
Even Castro's inner circle sees the collapse coming and wants change, he
said, but they are still under the dictator's power.
"That's precisely why it's important for the rest of the world to
support the opposition movement," he said. "The vast majority of
Cubans don't want the transition to be prolonged.
Meanwhile, Cuba's high court has upheld tough sentences handed to the 75
dissidents in April. Among them are Delgado's husband, economist Hector Palacio,
who is serving a 25-year term.
Colas said Delgado, who has a young daughter, is periodically visited by
state security agents who threaten that if she continues in her opposition, they
will bar her from visiting her husband in prison and will jail her also.
In Cuba, prisoners depend on their relatives for food and clothing.
"The interesting thing is she is not conceding at all and continues
denouncing what the government is doing and fighting for the rights of those in
prison," Colas said. "It's because of people like Gisela and what they
stand that this opposition will succeed."
Art Moore is a news editor with WorldNetDaily.com. | 
