Thousands Participate in Campaign Against ‘Proposal’ to Transfer Kanoon Libraries

Thousands of people in Iran signed a petition against the transfer of Kanoon Parvaresh Fekri libraries, asking the Islamic Republic’s president and the minister of education to prevent the implementation of the Culture Ministry’s ‘proposal’.

Meanwhile, one day after the Culture Ministry released its proposal to transfer Kanoon Parvaresh Fekri libraries to public libraries ‘due to financial losses’, the Culture Ministry defended its proposal on Tuesday, September 22, by issuing a statement.

The Culture Ministry’s public relations office called the published reports about the transfer ‘false and fabricated’ while stating that this proposal is ‘an expert report’ whose ‘legal review’ is set to begin.

This comes as the Association of Writers for Children and Young Adults strongly opposed the proposal, declaring that the consequences of this action would be the closure of the organization and ‘the destruction of specialized cultural and artistic activities for children and adolescents’.

The association also stated in its declaration that, emphasizing Kanoon’s cultural-artistic centers are a state-owned company affiliated with the Ministry of Education, issuing a permit to transfer it to a non-governmental institution would be ‘illegal’.

However, the reaction to the Culture Ministry’s plan has been far more widespread than the objections of this association.

One of these reactions is a campaign that began on Monday in cyberspace and had collected over 51,000 signatures by Tuesday when this report was being prepared.

The campaign’s signatories wrote to Ibrahim Raisi, the president, and the education minister in his government: ‘We, the signatories of this campaign, object to the transfer of this organization to public libraries under the pretext of it being loss-making, and we ask all people and lovers of culture and art of this land to show their concerns about this move by signing this campaign and prevent the destruction of one of the main pillars of culture and art of this region.’

According to the Culture Ministry’s proposal, the government can issue a permit to transfer Kanoon Parvaresh Fekri’s libraries to public libraries in order to ‘reduce losses’, ‘cover part of expenses through cost reduction and savings’, and ‘increase and equalize employees’ salaries’.

Kanoon Parvaresh Fekri for Children and Young Adults, whose establishment dates back to 1965 under the management of Leili Amir Arjmand, currently has approximately one thousand libraries and nearly three thousand employees.

This organization, which before the 1979 Revolution was a place of activity and emergence of renowned cultural and artistic figures such as Abbas Kiarostami and Noureddine Zarrinkoob, was one of the few state institutions that did not close after the revolution’s victory. However, especially in recent years, through extensive changes in its management, it has attempted to operate in greater alignment with the Islamic Republic’s cultural policies.

The Culture Ministry in its statement today declared that the goal of drafting and proposing the transfer of Kanoon libraries includes ‘strengthening and synergizing authentic cultural flow’.

Following the publication of news of this proposal on social media, most users recalled their memories of Kanoon libraries and compared the transfer of these cultural centers due to financial losses with the activities of government propaganda and political institutions that enjoy massive budgets.

Source: Radio Farda