How Guantanamo, with book-banning prison, marks Banned Books Week
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba—Big and small libraries across the United States marked Banned Books Week recently with awareness campaigns celebrating the freedom to read in America, and so did this base with two libraries—one for the war on terror prisoners, the other for base residents.
The public library that serves sailors, their families and prison troops offered a quiz, free bookmarks and an educational display of books that have stirred controversy: "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Catcher in the Rye," "Slaughterhouse Five" and others.
"Experience the power of the freedom to read," said a poster in the squat, one-story library not far from the base McDonald's. "Banning books silences stories," said the book display wrapped in tape that read, "Caution! Keep Out!"
The Detention Zone library is a different matter.
The 1,800-staff military prison of 40 captives, just one of them convicted of a crime, recently rejected a book about an anti-war organization called "September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows," an illustrated book of ship cross-sections meant for a captive who makes model ships in his Camp 6 art class, and a Tank Girl 3 comic book.
Prison staff screen out books "for appropriateness, excessive, graphic violence, extremist or sexually explicit content," said spokeswoman Navy Commander Anne Leanos, noting that in addition to the above three donations staff rejected a series of Islamic religious books whose titles suggest they might be radical and Leo Tolstoy's "The Forged Coupon."
To be clear, the federal Bureau of Prisons has a screening policy, too, for the "security, good order, or discipline of the institution: "No books that show how to make weapons or bombs. No books with sexually explicit images although explicit text is allowed unless it features sadomasochism, bestiality or children. A warden "may not reject a publication solely because its content is ... religious, philosophical, political, social or sexual, or because its content is unpopular or repugnant."
On death row in Louisiana, says American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denny LeBoeuf, the prison only accepts paperbacks direct from the publisher. And books with sex and maps are strictly taboo.
But the terror prison run by troops on mostly nine-month deployments has at times left donors puzzled by books that were rejected.
In 2013, a man who lost his father in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center donated about 70 works of literature as an "escape from darkness," and the prison rejected one, Stephen King's "It," presumably as too creepy, until it was mentioned in an article. Then someone in the staff noted that it had earlier been accessioned into the prison collection, and accepted it.
In 2009, the library rejected an Arabic copy of antiwar activist Noam Chomsky's anthology of post 9/11 commentary that was published in The New York Times, prompting the professor of linguistics to remark, "This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes."
Earlier this year the prison library rejected an encyclopedia-style picture book showing cross sections of seafaring vessels, which attorney Beth Jacob had donated. It was from the paperback "Look Inside" series, and titled "Ships: See inside 10 fascinating vessels."
Guantanamo prison policy prohibits people from giving individual captives books. So Jacob gave "Ships" to the detention center library with a specific client in mind—forever prisoner Moath al Alwi, who has for years built model ships in art class as a distraction. The detention center returned the book without an explanation.
Jacob said she wondered whether the book's inclusion of a 1943 vintage U.S. aircraft carrier, the long ago decommissioned Lexington, struck a nerve with somebody censoring books at the Navy base prison. In another perplexing episode, Jacob recalled, she donated two discs about three years ago—one of original speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., the other a DVD featuring teen idol Taylor Swift.
"The DVD of Taylor Swift did get in," she said, but they rejected the civil rights leader's speeches. "They never gave an explanation."
At this prison last week, the Army officer acting as spokeswoman during Banned Books Week, and who insisted on anonymity, was unable to explain the rejections But she said the 34,000-item detainee library collection (with dozens of Harry Potter Books in multiple languages) already had a King "In search of Freedom" CD, as well as a book called "The Words of Martin Luther King Jr."