Who are the "anti-terrorist" measures aimed at? THE WAVE of terrorist bombings in Paris has enabled the rightist government to speed up a long-planned repressive offensive. That, fundamentally, is what is involved. Otherwise, the measures taken by Jacques Chirac's government would make no sense. The most important of these measures was the imposition of a visa requirement for all citizens of non-EEC countries except ting nationalists in the North of Ireland.
Chirac has talked about "retaliating" against terrorists. There is already an example on French soil of what such "retaliation" could mean. It is the operation of killer gangs against Basque nationalist refugees in the south of France.
These death squads are made up of French gangsters recruited by the "democratic" government of Spain, with the toleration of the French government, which itself hands Basque refugees over to the very government that hires killers to assassinate them on its territory.
"Retaliation" means simply state terrorism. The French secret services are already organized for that, as the Rainbow Warrior bombing showed. Moreover the assassination of alleged Moreover, the assassination of alleged terrorists internationally would inevitably mean widening the pattern of para-police executions perfected in Latin America. Latin America. It is an index of how much French liberals have lost their heads that Le Monde's editorialist wrote in the September 16 issue that the visa system had probably stopped "Middle Eastern Terrorism" in the US. Not only is there no evidence for that, but it ignores the political role of this provision. The use of the US visa system for political discrimination and intimidation has been well-known and deplored by defenders of human rights in France for decades.
After all, the threat that terrorists can pose to the general public is limited. It is the capitalist press and governments that have whipped up a general fear in response to these outrages. In its September 17 issue Rouge, the paper of the French section of the Fourth International, wrote:
"Once again blind terrorist acts are serving as the pretext for unleashing a campaign that is all the more hysterical because it is being fostered by a climate of national union. "This is war,' Jacques Chirac tells us flatly, while the editorialist of the Quotidien de Paris already favors establishing a state of siege....
"These ravings might seem funny. But they should raise the alarm. They show that the rulers will do anything to try to impose what they have had difficulty in getting accepted before - the reduction of individual freedoms, criminalization of solidarity with third world peoples, making anyone with a dark skin a suspect."
The French government's measures are part of an international conspiracy by the imperialist governments to turn frontiers into prison walls. They should be answered by an international campaign of exposure and protest.
Switzerland. The vast majority of Scandinavian tourists. GERRY FOLEY
The results of this measure, at least for several months, will be to overwhelm the French border guards so they will be even less effective in stopping any "terrorist infiltration"
Nonetheless, the Chirac government was prepared to pay a great price to impose the visa system. In 1985, 2.4 million American tourists visited France. That is equal to about 4 per cent of the total French population. Swedish tourism cannot be unimportant either given the visibility of Swedes in Paris this summer. And that is to say nothing of the Japanese, who are a growing presence during the tourist season.
American tourism was already sharply down this year, both because of the terrorism and the fall of the dollar against the franc. If Americans were frightened away by a few incidents on airliners, what sort of reaction can be expected from the French government itself declaring the country a war zone?
The political meaning of the French government's measures is clear from the contrast between the attitude of the US government toward them and that of the Norwegian, Swedish and Austrian authorities.
The US approved measures discriminating against its own citizens, while the other governments affected protested strongly on behalf of theirs.
"In principle, the United States supports all effective acts to counter terrorism," state department spokesperson Bernard Kalb commented.
Why should the US consider that measures mainly affecting its own citizens are "effective acts to counter terrorism?"
The obvious answer is that the those affected are American and main imperialist power wants to spread a net of political surveillance internationally. The US itself maintains a massive political police operation on its own territory.
How extensive US political surveillance has been was attested to recently in the court judgement on the suit of the US Socialist Workers Party against the government for harassment (see page 22). It involved tracking SWP members in every aspect of their personal lives, as well as a series of break-ins into SWP offices, in at least one case through the services of a criminal.
The US has sought collaboration in this sort of surveillance from European governments, as the harassment experienced by American radicals passing through Thatcher's Britain indicates. Now, obviously, it hopes that this will be extended to the continent.
The proposal for computerized identity cards is being raised both in France and in the US. This has been one of the French right's more prominent "security proposals." It could make a system of political surveillance airtight.
Strict checks at frontiers could be a pillar of a system of general political surveillance, especially with the growth of international travel. There is already talk of tougher border controls in other EEC countries, modelled on the French measures.
Some ominous implications of "collaboration against terrorism" by the European imperialist powers are pointed up by Britain's offer to send SAS teams to France. These elite forces, similar to the US Green Berets, have carried out a policy of assassina-