WORLD SRI LANKA Sinhala chauvinists murder internationalist ON MAY 31 M.K. Mettananda, a Sri Lankan trade unionist and a member of the United Socialists, a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Sri Lanka, was murdered by the Sinhala chauvinist organization, the JVP (People's Liberation Front). According to a statement signed by Gunasena Mahanama, Secretary of the United Socialists, comrade Mettananda "was not only a working class leader, but also a genuine revolutionary internationalist.
"He was a deadly foe in the fight against racism. As a true Marxist, he believed in the uninterrupted struggle of the working class in its historical role to overthrow capitalism and for its own emancipation. With this end in view he organized the working class movement away from such narrow tendencies like caste, religion and racism.
"This was a potential danger to those fanatical tendencies carrying the mantle of majority Sinhala chauvinism and directing their operations at the Tamil minority. Though he served at Tangalle, noted for JVP terrorism, he never retreated from his political positions. By murdering such an indefatigable warrior of the workers' movement, the JVP has rendered an immortal service to the capitalist class.
"The murderers entered comrade Mettananda's home from both the front and rear entrances on the night of May 31.... He was shot many times and his body stabbed in five places"
The JVP buried him, but "his comrades proposed to dig up the grave and remove the body to the headquarters of the GCSU [the trade union for which Mettenanda worked]. His revolutionary colleagues paid their last respects to this great son of the working class movement, sang the Internationale' and saluted him with full revolutionary honours....
"While condemning this dastardly murder...the most important task now is for a full mobilization of the oppressed masses under the leadership of the working class to defeat the pseudo-socialist tendencies that are being fostered to perpetuate capitalist rule. It is necessary to direct the people's struggle on a true class basis and wipe out this racialist monster.
"We salute the memory of comrade Mettananda." THIRD WORLD DEBT Campaign launched ON JULY 8 a massive demonstration and concert in Paris called for the cancellation of the debts of the third world countries, a boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the independence of the remaining colonies.
Launched on the initiative of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR -French section of the Fourth International), the demonstration, concert and meeting on the following day gained widespread support from working class organizations and their members in France. Many cultural and political personalities both from France and worldwide gave their support to these events (see IV 166 and 168 for details).
The success of July 8 in France confirmed the message of the demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Berlin in autumn 1988. In the advanced capitalist countries many people, especially young people, are ready to to express their feelings of international solidarity when they can do so in a way which brings together egalitarian, democratic and anti-imperialist demands.
The same sentiment that found expression in the "Third World Aid" concerts or anti-apartheid solidarity, took on a more directly political form on July 8, taking up slogans aimed directly at the heads of state of the seven richest countries who were to assemble in Paris the following weekend.
July 8 also showed that sections of the workers' movement are ready to get involved. Although trade unionists were not present in large numbers on the march, they gave political support to the initiative, while the articles that have appeared in the trade union press and the echo in the workplaces show that it is possible to get the workers' movement to take up the debt issue.
Third Worldist, Christian and Green currents organized a "counter-summit of the poorest countries" on July 15 at the same time as the seven were meeting. Some of these forces were also on the
International Viewpoint #170 • October 2, 1989
July 8 demonstration, and a link was established between the two initiatives. There is no contradiction between demanding the immediate cancellation of the debt and discussing the way to resolve the economic and political problems that would remain after the cancellation of the debt.
But it is the demand for the immediate cancellation of the politically, economically and morally unpayable debt that can form the backbone of a broad campaign.
This is the idea behind the "Bastille Appeal" issued by the united collective coming out of July 8. The appeal aims to bring together everybody throughout the world who agrees with the demand for the immediate cancellation of the debt. It is hoped to get several million signatures, organize mobilizations at every meeting of the IMF, the Group of Seven and the Club of Paris, and react to every popular revolt against IMF-imposed austerity. Next year, the summit of the seven will take place in June in the United States.
Why not simultaneous demonstrations in the USA, and in several capital cities in Europe, Latin America and Africa? No quiet life for those responsible for world hunger! This is what the collective that has come out of the July events proposes to every organization that is prepared to unite for a massive mobilization against the debt. *
LE TERS a ma alourd hui c'est LA RETTE LE TIERS
AROUND THE WORLD
SWEDEN
Socialist Party paper fined
THE WEEKLY of the Socialist Party
(SP, Socialistiska Partiet, Swedish section of the Fourth International), Internationalen, was sentenced for libel on July
6 in Stockholm.
The case arose out of two Internationalen articles dealing with the lack of investigation of possible involvement of police officers in the murder of Swedish
Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was shot in a street in central Stockholm on
February 28, 1986 (see /V 165).
The Attorney-General prosecuted Internationalen for aggravated libel, accusing the paper of describing the policemen as accomplices in the murder. Internationalen strongly denied that the paper had any such purpose. In late July a 48 year old vagrant and drug-addict, Christer Petersson, was sentenced for the murder. Before Peterson's sentence many
Swedes were convinced that he was innocent, and doubts remain even after the verdict against him.
The wide-spread doubts about the drug-addict's guilt helped make the news media interested in the trial against Internationalen.
The two big Stockholm morning papers, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska
Dagbladet both printed articles by
Internationalen editor Hakan Blomqvist, and Svenska
Dagbladet published an editorial criticizing the prosecution argument that police officers should be treated in a less critical fashion than other citizens.
The day before the trial a support meeting for Internationalen was held in Stockholm.
Among the speakers was well-known
Swedish author
Jan Myrdal, noted documentary filmmaker Maj Wechselmann and Lars
Isaksson, radical chairperson of the printers' union at
Svenska Dagbladet.
Hakan Blomqvist himself and representatives of two other papers which were prosecuted for writing about the
Palme murder also spoke.
The prosecution wanted a jail sentence for Blomqvist. According to the prosecutor, material in both articles should be characterized as aggravated libel. In the trial four policemen were heard. They were effectively cross-examined by Internationalen's defence attorney, Lars Viklund. He showed that the paper had reason to report information on their strange conduct and that the policemen had probably not suffered the psychological damage they tried to convince the court about.
The prosecution called Jörgen Almblad, prosecutor in the Palme murder investigation, as a witness. The intention was that he should describe how thoroughly all information concerning possible police involvement had been checked. The feeling amongst the audience was that his vague and contradictory statements gave the opposite impression.
The jury found the information in one of the articles to be legally justified. Passages in the other article were considered to be libellous, but did not amount to aggravated libel. The court and jury agreed that Internationalen should pay the policemen a tenth of what they had demanded. Both sides had to pay their own costs, and a small fine was imposed on Blomqvist. In all, Internationalen will have to pay 50,000 Swedish crowns (about 50,000 French francs or £5,000).
Internationalen considers the judgement unjust, but far less dangerous to freedom of speech than if the line of the Attorney-General had won support from the court. The Socialist Party and Hakan Blomqvist are considering an appeal. *
Gunnar Wall NICARAGUA Lesbian and gay collective A SMALL lesbian and gay contingent took part in the massive rally marking the 10th anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution (see /V 169 for full report). "For a first experience and without much prior organization, I'd say this has gone well," commented Rita Arauz, a Nicaraguan lesbian activist.
Rita is one of the leaders of a Nicaraguan lesbian and gay collective currently working with the Health Ministry on a sex education project aimed at promoting safer sex practises and avoiding the spread of AIDS. The Health Ministry supports this crucial work, but has no funds to carry it out.
This Nicaraguan and gay collective needs supporters abroad to show practical solidarity with their work. For further information contact ¡PRESENTE! c/o Unit W55 TEC 506, High Road Tottenham, London N17 9TA, Britain. * [From The Pink Paper 85, published in 27 [From The Pink Paper 85, published in London.]
MONDE
USSR Bureaucracy finds allies against national movements THE SOVIET CENTRAL PRESS has been quick to enlist Western allies in its campaign to warn the national-democratic movements in the USSR against going "too far." For example, a TASS dispatch published on the front page of the September 9 Pravda featured the following quotation from a leading voice of English right-wing Toryism, a publication used to decrying the difficulties that stiff-necked small nations can cause for "great powers":
" 'The leaders of the nationalist movements in the Baltic republics,' the Daily Telegraph wrote unambiguously, 'should not exaggerate the importance of their problems for the entire world.' " GERRY FOLEY ment for national rights with "foreign intervention," usually of the Western "special services." Zhukov says in his next to last paragraph:
"The statement of the CC of the CPSU, states with stern directness what serious results a further strengthening of the negative processes in the Baltic, which are aggravated and supported by foreign instigators, could have. This affair could go as far as direct intervention in the life of the Baltic republics, as was already undertaken by the Western special services in the postwar years."
At the same time, because they themselves lack credibility with the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union and because of Gorbachev's opening to the West, the Soviet propagandists make more and more systematic use of statements by Western publications and politicians that assert a common great power interest in keeping international politics free from the "complication" of the self-determination of peoples. Capitalist powers blowing hot and cold
There is a certain basis for the Soviet press talking about both voices of "responsibility" in the West and "instigators." The capitalist big powers, especially the US, are quite capable of blowing hot and cold about the rights of small nations. And a minority wing of the national movements in the USSR seems to have been taken in by right-wing big mouths, such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, who have an interest in encouraging hard antiCommunist rhetoric for domestic consumption.! But there is no capitalist govemment or political force anywhere that supports a democratic solution guaranteeing self-determination of the peoples either in the East or the West.
The Baltic peoples have already had some experience of this. In the revolutionary period, even the bourgeois nationalist movements found that the big capitalist powers allied themselves with forces that sought to restore capitalism in the Russian empire as a whole at the expense of claims to national independence. At least one widely used Latvian exile history text (quite anti-Communist) makes a special point of this. 2
A new generation of fighters for national rights are getting an education in the hypocrisy of the capitalist powers as regards their aspirations. This is being helped along as well by the contradictions of Moscow's propagandists. * 1. See the report on a meeting of representatives of "national and democratic movements, " mostly involving independence parties, in Paris in May, at which L'Est-Européen (September 1989) noted that Kirkpatrick spoke and was well received. 2. Germanis, Uldis, Latviesu Tautas Piedzivovumi, Greenwood Printers, Canada, 1987 (first edition 1959).