Alongside the vigorous protests of Amnesty International against repression in Syria (Amnesty published a dossier on torture in Syria in October), an international petition of solidarity with the Syrian communist activists suffering from repression, and particularly comrades of the PAC, will be launched. We publish here extracts from an information bulletin published by external representatives of the PAC to aid the organization of this vital campaign that the Fourth International has decided to launch. * Communist Action Party statement S INCE LAST August the Syrian security services have been engaged in a campaign of arrests aimed at the Communist Action Party. This continuing offensive aims to destroy the party. It continues the long struggle of the security forces since March 1977, a few months after the foundation of the PAC. Since then, there have been around a dozen crackdowns against the PAC, all with the same objective: the definitive elimination of the most active leftwing opposition party in Syria, the party which has stood up the best to the general repression. Although more than 300 members and sympathizers have been arrested,
including most of its leaders, the party has been able to continue its political activity.
The present crackdown started on August 11 with the arrest of two members of the Central Committee of the party who have been hunted for several years: Akram al-Bunni and Wajih Ghanem. In the following weeks the security services arrested hundreds of people, most of whom were not in any organized political activity. Apart from those accused of belonging to the PAC, and kept imprisoned for this reason, dozens of others were kept as hostages so that their friends and relatives who were being sought by the repressive state forces would give themselves up.
It goes without saying that those detained have not had the right to any form of trial, and during the interrogations have been submitted to differing degrees of torture: from the most "banal" methods such as whippings, beatings or electrocutions to more perverse methods like sexual cruelty or the use of racks which cause paralysis or a rupture of the spinal column.
Serious injuries from torture
Several prisoners have suffered serious injuries from this torture, which is of course intensified when the victims hold out and refuse to give information that they are supposed to have. Wajih Ghanem for example had a paralyzed right hand and internal bleeding. Adnane Mahfuz was taken into intensive care at hospital after three days imprisonment. Akram al-Bunni had a damaged back. Lina al-Mir, a woman detainee, is in danger of dying from cardiac insufficiency. Some considerations:
• The security services are for the first time in this crackdown raiding public places, aiming to create a climate of fear
• A large number of people, a majority women, are being held as hostages. This is the second time that this method has been used against the PAC since the wave of arrests in 1986 targetted on the party and the Palestine Popular Committees linked to it.
• The number of people arrested since August, including those who were released after a few days, tops 450. More than a third are still detained. • Although the destruction of the PAC is undoubtedly the main goal of the crackdown, the aim is also to terrorize the population and the opposition as a preventive measure, faced with the brutal drop in the standard of living.
• Despite the scope of the crackdown and the violence of the torture, the security services have not succeeded in seizing the PAC's underground printshop. The last time it was seized was in 1982. *
SYRIA THE COMMUNIST ACTION PARTY
THE Communist Action Party (PAC) is a proletarian revolutionary oriented organization, founded in August 1976 as the Communist
Action League out of Marxist circles that appeared in various parts of Syria from 1970. Its present name was adopted at its first congress in 1981. The PAC Is independent from any States.
it is in tavour of building an international Communist movement, with the Fourth International as one of its component parts.
At the moment the PAC fights for overturning the dictatorship in
Syria and for winning political freedom. With this immediate goal in mind it refuses all alliances with reactionary forces, such as the
Muslim Brotherhood, in distinction from the orientation of the dissident fraction of the Syrian Communist Party (known as the "Political Bureau*), The PAC was the first organization in Syria to denounce the intervention since 1976 of President Hafez el-
Assad's troops in Lebanon.
The PAC's publications are The Red Flag, its main journal; The
Communist, its theoretical revue; The Call of the People, an agitational bulletin; and The Proletarian, its internal discussion bulletin.
In addition, the PAC has published a number of pamphlets. *
Notebooks for Study and Research
CLASS STRUGGLE AND TECHNOLOGICAL
CHANGE IN JAPAN SINCE 1945 FREE ENTERPRISE ideologues often present Japan as a model of social harmony and economic dynamism. In NSR Nº5, Muto Ichiyo, an independent Marxist, describes the real situation of Japanese workers and unravels the mechanisms of this apparent consensus. He explains how the strategic choices of the labor movement in the 1950s and 1960s laid the basis for the current rightward shift. In the framework of a Marxist analysis. he deals in an original and dialectical fashion with the changing relations between US and Japanese imperialisms, the links between the Liberal Democratic Party and the masses, and the effects of Japanese-style rationalization (gorika) on workers' power on the shopfloor. 48 pages. $2.50. $4.00.25 FF.
### Also available:
N°1 - The Place of Marxism in History, Ernest Mandel. 20FF, §2, S3.50. N°2 - The Chinese Revolution - Part I: The Second Chinese Revolution and the Shaping of the Maoist Outlook, Pierre Rousset. 20FF, $2, $3.50
N°3 → The Chinese Revolution - Part Il: The Maoist Project Tested in the Struggle for Power. Pierre Rousset. 25FF, $2.50, $4.00.
Nº4 - Revolutionary Strategy Today, Daniel Bensaid. 20FF, £2, $3.50 Forthcoming: Populism in Latin America, Michael Lôwy et al.; Stalinism, Ernest Mandel; The Bourgeois Revolutions, Robert Lochhead; Marxism.
Feminism and the Labor Movement. Marijke Colle. Subscribe to NSR (9 Issues): 180FF, £18, S31; airmail add 20%. Indicate first issue of subscription. Payments to Pierre Rousset. Preferred: French francs payable in a bank located in France. Also: bank transfers to Crédit Lyonnais 30002/816/47170C/44, or postal giros to CCP Paris 11 541 97 T. (Please indicate amount for NSR on combined payments).
Mail to: CER/NSR, 2, rue Richard-Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France. 27
November 23, 1987 • International Viewpoint
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