International Viewpoint and its international collaborators has immediately launched a campaign to put pressure on the Colombian government to release Libreros and the other imprisoned militants.
Support has come from lawyers' organizations to defend a colleague who was exercizing his professional responsibilities at the time of his arrest, human rights organizations and other associations and personalities.
It is urgent to send messages of protest to:
Presidente Virgilio Barco
Palacio de Nariño
Bogotá - Colombia
General José Manuel Bonnet
Tercera Brigada
Avenida 4 Norte - Calles 18-19
Cali - Colombia
T HE COMMUNIST PARTY and the Communist Youth have gone through major crises in recent months as a result of the KKE's political evolution and the electoral coalition, the Synaspismos, that it formed with the small Greek Left (former Eurocommunists) and some personalities. After focusing its campaign against PASOK (Andreas Papandreou's PanHellenic Socialist Movement, which was in power from 1981 to 1989), the Synaspismos participated with the right in the first "clean-up" government June to November 1989).
In this way, the coalition claimed to be combating the real scandals in which PASOK was mired. Then, finally, after last November's elections, it ended up alongside PASOK and the right in a class collaboration government allacking the workers.
Communist Youth reject coalition
The Communist Youth rejected the Synaspismos orientation outright, and then had its majority expelled by the KKE leadership in September 1989. Thousands of young activists found themselves in the KNE-Grapsas (called by the name of its secretary, which led very militant mobilizations (of students and young workers).
At the same time, members of the KKE Central Committee resigned, without the party leadership being able to conduct a campaign to discredit them in the eyes of the ranks. Some of those who resigned were too popular for the leadership to be able to afford that sort of counterattack. One such was Kappos, who resigned from the Political Bureau (See box.) Moreover, the poor election results obtained by the Synaspismos marked the failure of the new course - unbridled class collaboration following splendid sectarian isolation.
The current that left the KKE included 28 › party intellectuals such as Kotzias, as well as working class and young and not won as worg css and young and not International Viewpoint #182 • April 9, 1990 so young activists. The NAR arose from these two currents (ex-KNE and exKKE). Its appearance seems to have been a sufficiently disturbing phenomenon for the press to keep quiet about it. Of course, the NAR is not homogeneous on many points, notably the USSR and East Europe. The extent to which its members have broken with the heritage of the KKE is uneven. From this standpoint, the activists coming from the Young Communists are more advanced.
However, because of its desire for an opening to the left, its project of building a revolutionary party, its roots in the struggles and its composition, the NAR has a dynamic that has already outdistanced the united-front groupings that have been launched in recent months to the left of the traditional organizations.
The congress took place in a period
Demand the release of
Daniel Libreros and other arrested
Colombian militants! DANIEL LIBREROS, member of the National Executive Committee of A Luchar in Colombia was arrested at the airport of Cali on March 27. Libreros, who is a lawyer and university professor, was in Cali to visit imprisoned militants of A Luchar as their defence lawyer.
This arrest comes in the context of a campaign of harassment of A Luchar led by the newspaper El Tiempo, and involving a wave of arrests of A Luchar militants. Some 80 militants of A Luchar in Cali have been arrested in the last month, nine of whom are still in prison, including a number of trade-union leaders. The reports received are that these nine have all been tortured and the only woman among