Call to conscience:
Library group is shamefully silent on Cuba
Union-Tribune
Staff Writer. January 9, 2004.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, January 9, 2004
(Union-Tribune Editorial) - The American
Library Association, officially pledged
to promote freedom of information and expression,
begins its midwinter meeting today in San
Diego shamefully silent on just that issue.
Since 1998, bands of courageous Cuban citizens
have defied Fidel Castro's dictatorship
by creating an independent library movement.
In a country where most people can read
only what the Cuban state and the Cuban
Communist Party approve, the independent
library movement offers citizens free access
to books featuring alternative ideas.
Ideas like democracy and human rights,
for example. Or the works of Cuba's many
banned writers and poets. Or volumes on
free-market economics. Or works on religious
faith. Or biographies of anyone out of favor
in the world's remaining communist holdouts.
These are books that have been effectively
banned in Cuba for decades.
The independent library movement seeks
to circumvent that ban by opening book collections
in private homes to the Cuban public. By
2003, about 200 of these private, free libraries
(typically containing several hundred books
each) were operating across Cuba.
That was too much for the aging Castro,
still vigorously suppressing any hint of
opposition to his 44 years of one-man rule.
Among the 75 Cuban dissidents rounded up,
summarily tried and sentenced to long prison
terms by Castro's regime last April were
10 independent librarians. Their collective
sentence for daring to offer Cubans a free
choice of library books - 196 years in Cuba's
gulag.
One might imagine that the American Library
Association would leap to condemn this atrocity
against defenseless librarians and the basic
human rights of 11 million Cubans. Incredibly,
the ALA said nothing.
At its annual meeting last June in Toronto,
ALA delegates dithered over inane technicalities.
Were Cuban citizens without degrees in library
science really librarians? ALA delegates
allowed Cuban government representatives
to speak for three hours. The sole Cuban
dissident who showed up to represent the
imprisoned librarians was denied the right
to speak.
In the end, moral blinders and the influence
of a handful of left-leaning ALA activists
sympathetic to the Cuban revolution prevailed.
An association supposedly dedicated to freedom
of information, inquiry and expression said
nothing about Cuba's brutal crackdown against
private home libraries and librarians.
The American Library Association has a
chance at its San Diego meeting to correct
this disgraceful silence. An ALA task force
report reportedly will include the option
of condemning Castro's suppression of private
libraries and expressing solidarity with
peaceful librarians now languishing in Cuban
prisons on sentences of up to 28 years each.
If the ALA cannot manage that, its moral
and political credibility on human rights
issues will be irrevocably damaged.
For more details, please refer to the
"Recent News: section of our website:
(www.friendsofcubanlibraries.org)
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