Nat Hentoff - Syndicated Columnist
Thu 07/12/2007 11:01AM MST
The unassuming international champion of universal health care, Michael
Moore, was asked (New York Sun, June 29) whether, while filming "Sicko," he
inquired about the condition of Cuban journalist Normando Gonzalez, a
political prisoner since 2003. He has contracted severe chronic illnesses
while in a Castro gulag. Moore answered that he asked only about Cuba's
health care system while he was there.
Among other suffering prisoners in Cuban cells who would have added further
dimension to "Sicko" are independent librarians, put away for more than
20-year sentences for the crime of giving Cubans access to books and other
publications forbidden in state libraries. Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Paneque, for
example, director of a Las Tunas library, is not being treated meaningfully
for intestinal problems, hypertension and other ailments.
The caged independent librarians were, however, at the center of a protest
at an American Library Association conference in Washington in June. These
protesters are themselves long-term members of the ALA and call themselves
Freadomistas, in contrast with Fidelistas (Castro admirers) on the ALA's
governing council.
That council steadfastly refuses to demand the immediate release of Cuban
freedom-to-read librarians, whom Amnesty International designates "prisoners
of conscience." Indeed, the council voted down an amendment to release them.
Bearing such signs as "Book Burning Is NOT A solution to Cuba's Energy
Problems" and "Ray Bradbury (author of 'Fahrenheit 451') Says: 'Free The
Jailed Librarians,'" the Freadomistas also handed out flyers that quoted the
core ALA policy: "The American Library Association believes that freedom of
expression is an inalienable human right ... vital to the resistance of
oppression ... and the principles of freedom of expression should be applied
by libraries and librarians throughout the world." Another ALA policy cited
on the flyers "deplores the destruction of libraries, library collections
and property."
Yet, as I have reported previously, the ALA ignores that Cuban court
documents (validated by Amnesty International and the Organization of
American States) reveal that the entire collections of at least six
independent libraries were ordered destroyed.
Among the burned publications are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(not surprisingly); a book on Martin Luther King Jr.; the U.S. Constitution;
and a volume by Jose Marti, the father of Cuban independence, who was killed
by the Spanish during that struggle to free Cuba.
Despite these facts, the delegates to the June ALA conference were told in
the flyer that the American Library Association, on its Web site article
"Book Burning in the 21st Century," repeatedly refuses to post the lists of
books Castro burned after the Independent Libraries were started in 1998.
They were started in a courageous and perilous answer to Castro's shameless
lie that year at the International Book Fair in Havana: "In Cuba, there are
no prohibited books, only those we do not have the money to buy."
That reminded me of what Che Guevara told me at the Cuban Mission to the
United Nations when I asked him if he could foresee a time -- however
distant -- when there would be free elections in Cuba.
Guevara, who, in charge of a Havana prison, shot and killed many prisoners
of conscience, didn't wait for the interpreter to finish before he burst
into laughter and said to me, "Free elections -- in Cuba?"
At the Washington meeting of the ALA, there were counterdemonstrators with
such signs as "Defend the Cuban Revolution!" and "'Independent' Libraries
Are A FRAUD!" One passerby -- wearing an official ALA identification tag --
looked at the Freadomistas signs, refused to take a flyer and snarled, "I am
on the other side."
The governing council of the ALA says it has expressed "deep concern" about
the jailed librarians but refuses to recognize that book collections in
their libraries were burned.
And the ALA council -- in defiance of a Jan. 25, 2006 poll in the official
American Libraries e-mail newsletter, AL Direct, in which 76 percent of the
rank-and-file membership urged emancipation -- continues its refusal to call
for the release of what some ALA leaders deride as "so-called librarians."
Yet the library associations of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic
and Slovakia have vigorously demanded their release. Those countries know
what it is to live under communism.
At the ALA conference, a Freadomista flyer ended with a reminder from Martin
Luther King Jr., whose biography was burned by Castro judges: "In the end,
we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our
friends."
The next time you visit your local library, you might express your support
for the extraordinarily courageous independent librarians whose devotion to
Cubans' right to read have put them in these gulags.
Next week: How those American librarians who believe in everyone's right to
read can confront their leadership and bring hope to Cuba's caged
librarians.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and
the Bill of Rights and author of many books.
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