Freedom activist Robert Kent and the Friends of Cuban Libraries has published an open letter ahead of the annual mid-winter meeting of the American Library Association (ALA), calling on the association to take its role as a defender of intellectual freedom seriously.
In their zeal to deny, ignore, cover up and lie about the repression in Cuba, the ALA's pro-Casto faction insists '''there is no censorship in Cuba," just as it contemptuously ignores appeals for justice on behalf of Cuba's independent librarians made by living icons of freedom such as Ray Bradbury, Nat Hentoff, Andrei Codrescu, Vaclav Havel and Madeleine Albright.Posted by Alan at January 21, 2007 01:07 AMAs pyres of burning library books have blazed more intensely in Cuba, as library workers are assaulted by government-directed mobs, and as reputable human rights groups such as Amnesty International vigorously condemn the persecution and demand the release of the jailed volunteer librarians, all three (3) of the ALA's fraudulent investigations have failed to condemn, or even acknowledge the existence of, these outrages. Instead, the ALA's three (3) investigations have limited themselves to brief and vague expressions of general concern, without even deigning to note the names of any of the Cuban library workers enduring life prison terms for the alleged crime of opposing censorship. Sadly, the well-intentioned but unfocused majority on the ALA governing Council has accepted, virtually without question, the fraudulent reports stage-managed by the ALA's pro-Castro faction, despite an ALA membership poll in which 76% of the respondents called on the ALA to condemn the repression in Cuba.