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Subject:

Re: Paris Sponsors Libraries in Havana

From:

Robert Kent <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Fri, 2 Apr 2004 09:08:04 EST

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (92 lines)

In a message dated 4/1/04 7:11:13 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
[log in to unmask] writes:

>  I found Kent's latest contribution a touch arrogant.  I'm not sure whether
>  to even bother to refute what he writes as the world is irrevocably divided
>  into those who support Cuba and those hell-bent on destroying Cuba.

    Is it arrogant to provide information about growing worldwide support for 
the only people in the world who are being imprisoned for the alleged "crime" 
of opening uncensored libraries?  The Friends of Cuban Libraries and other 
human rights organizations which condemn the persecution of Cuba's independent 
librarians, such as Amnesty International, are concerned with violations of 
intellectual freedom.  We do not support or oppose any particular government. Ms. 
Harris fails to explain how reading uncensored books will result in 
"destroying Cuba."
>  

>  
>  As for Pax Christi Holland, the organisation initiating this - according to
>  Hernando Calvo and Katlijn Declercq (in their book "Dissidents or
>  Mercenaries? The Cuban Exile Movement") : "One of the goals of Pax Christi
>  Netherlands is to help destroy  the present Cuban system....".

    The new movement to provide Spanish, Dutch, Italian and French tourists 
with books for delivery to Cuba's independent librarians is organized not only 
by Pax Christi, but also by other Dutch human rights organizations, trade 
union activists, and journalists, in addition to Reporters Without Borders. Nor 
does Ms. Harris explain how the twinning program between the independent 
libraries and the municipal libraries of Paris and Strasbourg can be construed as a 
means of "destroying Cuba."

>  However, it has to be said that books by Orwell, Gandhi and Llosa can be
>  found in most Cuban public libraries and the National Library and do not
>  need to be smuggled in by tourists. Orwell is not banned because he wrote
>  1984 or Animal Farm. These books are studied by Cuban school children and
>  university students, in the same way they are studied anywhere else.

    The vast majority of the Cuban people are forbidden to read any book 
critical of the Cuban regime.  In imitation of the Soviet model of librarianship, 
a few Cuban libraries such as Havana's National Library provide restricted 
access to banned books to the few Cubans, such as reporters for the official 
press, considereed "trustworthy"  by the government.  As to further details on the 
regime's court-ordered burning of books seized during raids on the 
independent libraries, please refer to articles, such as the one below, from the Recent 
News section of the Friends' website (www.friendsofcubanlibraries.org):

LIBRARY BOOKS BURNED BY COURT ORDER

NEW YORK, Sept. 28, 2003 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - On April 5, after a 
one-day trial before the State Security Court in the city of Santiago, Cuban 
dissident Julio Valdés was convicted of conspiring with U.S. diplomats to commit 
"crimes against the national sovereignty and economy of Cuba" and sentenced 
to 20 years in prison. One of the accusations made against Julio Valdés was the 
founding of a "self-proclaimed Independent Library" to "ideologically subvert 
the reader with the clear purpose, by means of inducing confusion, to recruit 
persons for the counter-revolution..."  After sentencing the defendant to 20 
years in prison, the judges also condemned Valdes' library materials as 
"lacking in usefulness" and ordered them to be destroyed by fire. 

These startling details are contained in leaked court documents on the case 
of Julio Valdés and other dissidents convicted during the Castro regime's 
spring crackdown on the island nation's emerging civil society. The voluminous 
legal documents relating to these trials, smuggled off the island and recently 
published on the World Wide Web by Florida State University, can be seen at: 
(www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu).... Since 1998, approximately 200 independent 
libraries have been established across the island with the goal of challenging the 
Castro regime's system of censorship.

The court papers published on the Internet detail a March 19 raid on the home 
of Julio Valdés....  Among the "subversive" library materials cataloged in 
the trial proceedings were copies of "Cuba's Repressive Machinery" by Human 
Rights Watch, issues of TIME magazine, pamphlets on the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights, Catholic periodicals, [and] "Letters from Burma" by Aung San Suu 
Kyi....  The court condemned Julio Valdés for "accumulating books, magazines 
and pamphlets by counter-revolutionary authors in foreign countries, 
principally in Miami, Florida, United States of America, which exhort civil 
disobedience, twisting historical events and the achievements of illustrious thinkers and 
revolutionary patriots..." in order to "provoke the destruction of the 
political, social and economic order now existing in Cuba...."

After sentencing Julio Valdés to twenty years in prison, the presiding judges 
in his case also decreed: "As to the disposition of the photographic 
negatives, the audio cassette, medicines, books, magazines, pamphlets and the rest of 
the documents [confiscated from his independent library], they are to be 
destroyed by means of incineration because they lack usefulness."

Sincerely,

The Friends of Cuban Libraries
(WWW.FRIENDSOFCUBANLIBRARIES.ORG)
 

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