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IFTPC Advocacy Campaigns

Since its founding in 1975, the committee has undertaken numerous letter, phone, and publicity campaigns, as well as filing legal briefs in free-expression cases. The committee has campaigned:

  • For promotion of Banned Books Week with ABA and ALA
  • For the defense of Salman Rushdie (from 1989 on)
  • For the release of Soviet writer Anatoly Marchenko, who later died in the Gulag (1983).
  • For repeal of ideological exclusion provisions of the US's McCarran-Walter Act (1981).
  • For the release from house arrest of Jacobo Timmerman, Argentine editor and publisher (1979).
  • For freedom to travel for Dr. Gholamhossein Sa'di, Iranian writer and former political prisoner (1977).

IFTPC Fact-Finding Missions

Missions include meetings with writers, publishers, journalists, governments officials, and human rights activists.

Members have been sent to:

  • Iran, 1999
  • Indonesia, 1990, 1996
  • Albania, 1996
  • Cuba, 1990, 1995
  • Egypt, 1993
  • South Africa, 1986, 1989
  • The former Soviet Union, 1977, 1979, 1985, 1987, 1989
  • Yugoslavia, 1986
  • China, 1981

IFTPC Seminars and Receptions

  • New York, 1997. Co-sponsored reception honoring released Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng.
  • Jakarta, 1996. Seminar on free expression in Indonesia.
  • Havana, 1995. Seminar and debate with Cuban Writers' Union.
  • New York, 1983. Reception in support of Soviet writers.
  • New York, 1981. Reception-in-exile for Soviet writers banned from Moscow Book Fair.

IFTPC Exhibitions

  • Cuba, 1995. "Libros/USA," Havana International Book Fair.
  • Soviet Union, 1979, 1985, 1987, 1989. "America Through American Eyes," Moscow International Book Fair.
  • New York, 1981e. "Soviet Books in Exile."
  • China, 1981. "America Through American Eyes."

IFTPC Publications

  • Libros/USA '95, a compendium of impressions of Cuba by US publishers visiting the Havana International Book Fair.
  • Forced Out, on the plight of refugees worldwide, 1990.
  • The Starvation of Young Black Minds: The Effect of Book Boycotts in South Africa, 1989.
  • Paying the Price: Freedom of Expression in Turkey, 1989 (published with Helsinki Watch).
  • America Through American Eyes, exhibition catalogues (Soviet Union, 1987, 1989; China, 1981).

IFTPC Visitors

The committee maintains open invitations to writers and publishers in repressive countries who are having difficulty obtaining official permission to travel. Visitors have included writers, editors, and publishers from the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Argentina, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia, Kenya, the Philippines, Iran, Turkey, Vietnam, and Indonesia, among others.