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Subject:

FW: Protest Erupts at Book Fair

From:

Lucy Hastings <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Lucy Hastings <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 4 Feb 2000 09:44:07 -0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (95 lines)



----------
From:  [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:  03 February 2000 23:11
To:  [log in to unmask]
Subject:  Protest Erupts at Book Fair

Attached below is information on the growing worldwide protest against 
the repression of independent librarians in Cuba.  The protest at the 
Havana Book Fair is likely to result in a crackdown against the 
librarians.   You  (yes, you personally) can help to prevent this 
injustice if you will only take the brief amount of time needed to 
send a message to your Member of Parliament or Member of Congress, 
urging them to take action.  In addition, please write to the Cuban 
Embassy or Interests Section in your country.  To send an immediate 
appeal to Cuba, please fax courteous messages to  the chief of the 
State Security police, General Colome-Ibarra (fax number:
011-53-7-33-5261) and to Mr. Abel Prieto, the Cuban Minister of 
Culture (fax number: 011-53-7-33-3013).   Please post this message on 
listserves.
Robert Kent
Friends of Cuban Libraries

PROTEST  ERUPTS  AT  CUBAN
BOOK  FAIR
Today, February 3, as foreign publishers made travel plans to attend 
the Havana International Book Fair (February 9-15), the Friends of 
Cuban Libraries released an Open Letter to the publishers signed by 
more than thirty authors.  The letter, entitled "Book Fair or Carnival 
of Persecution?," urges publishers at the Fair to make protests to 
government officials against the "scandalous" oppression of Cuba's 
independent librarians, whom the authors describe as "the only 
librarians in the world who are being subjected to systematic 
persecution."
In an attempt to establish a civil society in Cuba, the island nation 
has recently seen the opening of more than thirty independent 
libraries with the goal of offering access to books that are banned 
under Cuba's harsh system of censorship.  Citing reports and 
statements by Amnesty International, the International PEN 
organization of writers, and the International Federation of Library 
Associations (IFLA), the authors signing the the Open Letter condemn 
the government's effort to suppress the independent librarians through 
a campaign of harassment, intimidation, death threats, police raids, 
evictions, short-term arrests, and confiscations.  "To remain silent 
on this important matter...," the authors admonish the publishers, 
"would be an act of moral cowardice and would constitute silent 
support for this unprecedented violation of intellectual freedom on 
the part of the Cuban government."   In addition to public and private 
protests, the authors also urge the publishers attending the Book Fair 
to carry out other acts of solidarity such as visits to the 
independent librarians in Havana.
Another cause of dismay surrounding the Book Fair is the fact that it 
will be held in Havana's La Cabana fortress, notorious as the former 
site of a harsh prison where the Castro administration carried out 
hundreds of executions.  Jorge Valls, one of the authors signing the 
Open Letter, spent part of his 20-year prison term in La Cabana prison 
after being convicted of refusing to register for the military draft. 
 In his published memoirs, Mr.  Valls recalled his grim experience in 
La Cabana prison:  "Night was no time for rest.  On the contrary, that 
was when the horrors began.  At nine or so the executions would 
start....   We could hear the prisoner being tied to the pole, his 
last cries, the command to fire, the volley....  The last sound would 
be the screech of the night bird coming to peck at the pieces of flesh 
that still clung to the pole and the wall."
Mr. Valls, now a member of the Friends of Cuban Libraries, says, "A 
number of the publishers going to the Book Fair have already agreed to 
carry out actions in support of the independent librarians, and we 
hope others will bravely follow their example."
Among the many prominent authors signing the Open Letter are Guillermo 
Cabrera Infante, a winner of Spain's prestigious Cervantes Prize for 
literature, Heberto Padilla, a renowned poet whose arrest and show 
trial in 1971 sparked worldwide indignation, Carlos Franqui, a former 
editor of the Cuban newspaper "Revolucion," Zoe Valdes, a rising star 
among the younger generation of Cuban writers, Maria Elena Cruz 
Varela, a poet who suffered permanent injuries after being attacked 
during a government-directed mob assault, and the noted Mexican 
writers Carlos Monsivais and Jorge Castaneda; the latter is an 
acclaimed biographer of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
The Friends of Cuban Libraries, founded in June, 1999, is an 
independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit support group for the independent 
librarians.  The organization opposes censorship and all other 
violations of intellectual freedom, as defined by the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, regardless of whatever administration may 
be in office in Cuba.  The Friends are funded entirely by their 
members and do not seek or accept contributions from other sources. 
 For more information, contact Robert Kent: telephone (USA) 
718-340-8494; e-mail: [log in to unmask]; or by mail: 474 48th Avenue, 
Apt.
3-C, Long Island City, NY 11109 USA.



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