AROUND THE WORLD
AROUND
THE resolution in the following terms.
"It is a good document. The most important thing in it is the point about directly agreed economic relations with workers' collectives and regions of Russia. I think
WORLD SENEGAL CENEGA New moves to far left unity LIKE many other black African countries, Senegal has experienced a deep social and economic crisis over the past few years. While the state is increasingly paralyzed, and its principal activity has tended to become the repression of strikes and demonstrations, the democratic opposition has been incapable of developing a coherent strategy for the overthrow of the regime. The revolutionary left is conscious of this problem and is seeking to regroup its forces to maximize its weight in the current political situation. Four organizations of the far left, among them the OST (Socialist Workers Organization, Senegalese section of the Fourth International) have recently officially begun a process of reunification. The other organizations involved are And Jef/Revolutionary Movement for New Democracy, the Union for Popular Democracy, and the Sexuba Readers' Circles.
Senegal is a country dominated by French interests. It is a member of the "Franc Zone" • Several hundred French soldiers are stationed there permanently and the French base at Dakar has been vital to a number of France's military operations in Africa. More than 20,000 French nationals live in Senegal of whom the majority work there as enterprise managers. Finally the regime is controlled by the "Socialist Party" , a member of the Socialist International, supported by the French Socialist Party. The multiparty system is a mere facade, the party in power enjoying undisputed control over all the institutions and repressing all the mass public activities of the opposition.
In their declaration of unification, the four organizations say that their decision is a response to a profound aspiration of the masses, and of the youth in particular, to see the unity of patriots and revolutionaries realized" ', as well as being a result of "the progress realized in the common engagement of our organizations in the popular struggles of recent years, particularly those which have followed the fraudulent elections of February 1988". They commit themselves to the struggle for "a progressive, multiparty, democratic, secular state in the service of the Senegalese masses, within the framework of a pan-African dynamic of struggle for the emergence of a united, democratic, prosperous and socialist Africa". *
SOVIET UNION
Workers back Lithuania
THE following resolution was passed at the April 30-May 2 congress of independent workers' movements and organizations held in Novokuznetsk, the centre of the Kuznetsk coal field, where massive strikes occurred last summer. The text is from the May 4 issue of Russkaya Mysl, a
Russian-language weekly published in
Paris.
Some 143 delegates were reportedly present, representing 40 cities. There were also representatives of the new
Workers' Union of Lithuania. The leader of the Lithuanian delegation, Kazimieras
Uoku, expressed his satisfaction with the
- Trida -
Politických
The board reads:
"In the past this street wa called: Station Street;
Konrad Henlein Street
(after the Nazi Gauleiter);
Marshal Stalin Avenue;
Avenue of
Czechoslovak-Soviet friendship;
Freedom Avenue (in
1968?);
1968?:
Avenue of
Czechoslovak-Soviet
Friendship."
that today a practical blow to the totalitarian regime can be dealt not by strikes but, in the case of Lithuania, by direct horizontal ties. The regime cannot tolerate that". The resolution reads as follows:
"We regret that in the context of his own calls for a peaceful solution of conflicts and disputes among peoples and nations, the president of the USSR [Gorbachev] has taken the initiative of applying forceful pressure, including economic sanctions against an expression of national will [of the Lithuanian people].
"In accordance with the principles of workers' solidarity and social justice, the congress calls for the immediate cessation of the economic and political blockade and the beginning of negotiations between the governments of the USSR and Lithuania without any preconditions, and in a manner conducive to maintaining and reinforcing confidence among the peoples of the republics.
"The congress calls on the workers' collectives having economic ties with Lithuania to maintain and strengthen these ties on the base of direct agreements.
"Only our solidarity with the people of Lithuania will make it possible for Lithuania and the other peoples of our country to become free". *
The sign reads myli "Avenue of political mistakes" TATO ULICE SE L MINULOS JMENOVALA: IS
→ Bahnhofstraße
* Konrad Henlein
Straße
→ TRIDA
MARSÁLA STALINA
→ CESKOSLOVENSKO SOVETSKÉHO
PRATELSTSVI
* TRÍDA SVOBODY
27
Street sign from Cheb on the Czechoslovak / West
German border (from Reportér)
PRATELITY
SWITZERLAND
Abolish the snooper state!
N MARCH 6, some 60 national councillors (MPs), voted in favour of a motion for the abolition of the political police (with 123 voting against the motion). This new shock to the Swiss system comes shock to the Swiss svstem comes after the 35% vote in a referendum in favour of the initiative "For a Switzerland without an army" last December and the verdict in the Kopp corruption trial (See /V 174).
In the background of the initiative on the political police was the presentation of the report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Federal Police and Justice Department. On March 3, more than 35,000 people demonstrated in Bern, while 120,000 requests for access to files have been presented by citizens. In this context, the initiative "for an end to the snooper state" will have a big resonance. While the conclusions of the Committee of Parliamentary Inquiry have opened the doors of the BUPO (Bundespolizei Federal Political Police) only mobilization can prevent them from being sealed again. It is necessary to throw light on all the mysteries and those responsible for them.
The Commission concluded that files were being kept on more than 500,000 of Switzerland's 6.5 million citizens and immigrants. In 1988, we can see the snooper state flourishing. Some 210 new files were opened every day and more than 60,000 in the course of the year. The revelation of these figures came as a shock to the citizens.
Who? About what? How? With whose help? Why? And why did the report find that: "None of the police chiefs we interviewed - neither the Confederal Prosecutor, nor the head of the Federal Police, nor the head of the judicial service of the Federal Public Ministry, nor the head of the internal police service — and not one of the heads of the cantonal information services — felt able to assume responsibility for the contents of the information gathered."
Are we to conclude that the political police has been functioning for more than 40 years in total autonomy and without any control by the higher authorities of the state? The absurdities reached their height 28 when the president of the Confederation and head of federal justice stated that he International Viewpoint #186 • June 4, 1990