AROUND THE WORLD
Swiss council gives practical aid to El Salvador
On May 10 the city council of Zug voted 6,000 Swiss Francs (2,400 dollars) to an agricultural workers organisation of the People's Revolutionary Block in El Salvador. This money is to go towards a project for improving the seeds, fertiliser and tools available.
This measure of practical solidarity with the Salvadoran people came about as a result of the continuous solidarity work cluding the SAP (Socialist Workers Party, Swiss section of the Fourth International). A member of the SAP has been a member of the city council since last autumn and, along with a member of the Socialist Party, moved the resolution at the council.
The local Salvador solidarity committee made a statement after this resolution approved pointing out the
12, 1980, one hundred more than thousand people have been imprisoned in committee and political organisations in- thanking the two councillors.
Turkey for political reasons. Special new with El Salvador conducted by the local success of their consistent work, and
'E-type' prisons have been built to
Hundreds of people accomodate them.
have been slaughtered in the streets, and
Persecution of Danish dockers leader
43 people hanged. Some 6,000 prisoners are currently facing death sentences.
On April 6 the Consultative Assembly approved death sentences on seven The right-wing government in Denmark a series of dockers leaders about the revolutionaries. When the National Security Council ratifies their sentences they will be executed within a matter of hours (see IV No 29, May 2, 1983).
On April 11 Amnesty International called for a worldwide protest campaign to stop these executions. In France a Committee for the Defence of Democratic and Human Rights in Turkey has been established. This committee has been organising to get influential figures from around the world to send messages to the Turkish head of state, General Evren, calling on him to stop the executions.
This committee has succeeded in getting such messages from two American congressmen, 31 members of the European parliament, and the French Socialist Party.
Saving the lives of these seven will help to save the lives of hundreds of other political activists presently in Turkish prisons.
Send your messages calling for a stop to the death sentences to: General Kenan Evren National Security Council Ankara Turkey and a copy to the committee: Comite pour la defense des droits democratiques et humains en Turquie Librairie La Breche 9 rue de Tunis 97011 Paris France 26 inaugurated a new period of police violence in Denmark in its campaign to break the dockers strike last January and February.
For example, on January 16, police broke up a dockers demonstration with clubs, dogs, and tear gas.
After the end of the strike, on March 17, police arrested one of the major dockers leaders, Karl Jorgensen, accusing him of being responsible for burning down a warehouse on the Esbjerg docks.
Jorgensen has been held since on a series of detention orders in what amounted to solitary confinement. The Danish courts resorted to a practice that has become infamous in Ireland, the continual renewal of detention orders without any trial.
After many weeks in solitary confinement, Jorgensen, an older family man, suffered a nervous breakdown. He is now in isolation in the psychiatric ward at Hvidding hospital. His lawyer, Heibell Jensen, has raised the question: "Do the courts have the right to make a person mentally ill by unjustified confinement?"
The June 9 issue of Klassekampen, the weekly paper of the Danish section of the Fourth International, interviewed
Jorgensen case: Brian Berggren, a shop steward on the Esbjerg docks, said:
"If there is any reason for jailing Karl, I should be locked up too. A lot of things were said during the conflict.... That was the expression of the bitterness we felt."
William Wintherberg, a shop steward on the Copenhagen docks, said:
"The treatment of Karl is intended to intimidate others who take the lead in strikes. This case is a threat to the entire labor movement; they are trying to deprive our leaders of all rights."
In May, the government introduced a bill that would enable the police to get "preventive detention" orders against persons they say are a "threat to public order." (See "Rightist Government seeks to Introduce Preventive Detention,' " IV, June 13, 1983)
The attacks on the Danish dockers have an international importance, in particular because the dockers have been pace setters in developing links with • unions in other countries.
A petition campaign has been started in defense of Jorgensen. Further Information can be obtained from Klassekampen, Blegdamsvej 28-32, opg. C 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark.
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Worldwide campaign to save Turkish prisoners Since the military coup on September
Solidarity with the imprisoned members of the Syrian Communist Action Party Every diplomatic offensive of Hafez el Assad's regime is accompanied by a wave of repression directed against internal opponents. The Communist Action Party, (CAP) one of the most radical oppositions to the Syrian regime, is the favourite target for this repression.
arrests; finally condemnation of the massacre at Hama in March 1982 also provoked a new wave of
The reason for the new arrests today is because the CAP has not given up publishing its journal and organising its clandestine cells. The special services of the Hafez el Assad regime are increasing arrests and preparing to hit yet harder in order to make this revolutionary organisation keep quiet.
We should undertake all the various types of international solidarity action with the imprisoned members of CAP, and do everything possible to win their
On March 21, during a traditional festival of some of the Kurdish regions in The Fourth Internationalist Syria, the Festival of Roses, the mukhbarrats — the Syrian information ser- candidates in the Italian elections vices - arrested more than one hundred young people. This festival is very much disliked by the regime because it is extremely popular and gives all the political parties an opportunity to put their views forward. In addition, the young people had shown a wish to resist the repression.
The police round-up was carried out in the villages around the towns of Alep and Hama which are the traditional areas of resistance to the regime. Hama in partieular is a centre of resistance; in March 1982 a revolt there was bloodily repres-
Most of the young people arrested, including a dozen young women, freed in the next few days. All of them talked of their interrogations and nounced the use of torture to get information from them, particularly on the
But fifteen of them are still in prison, with no news of their whereabouts.
repression was clearly aimed against the CAP, several young members this organisation were
This is the eighth round of More than a hundred of its militants have been in prison for years, and some are now very physically debilitated by the conditions of their detention. Each new phase of repression has corresponded to a particularly determined political stance taken by the CAP, for which the regime wants to make its militants 'pay'.
In March 1977 it was the condemnation of the Syrian invasion of Lebanon (30 imprisoned); in 1978 publication of pamphlets and journals by CAP; in 197980 the CAP denounced the struggle between the ruling Ba'athist party and the opposition Muslim Brotherhood as a confrontation between differing bourgeois interests, and called for the constitution of a united people's front to put an end to the exploitation of the Syrian people - more than 100 militants were arrested and tortured in prison; the announcement of the CAP congress in September 1981
In the campaign for the June 26 Italian general elections, the Italian section of the Fourth International is running canin a number of areas framework of a united class-struggle slate.
"Revolutionary Agreement for Italian Elections, " IV, June 13.)
The May 29 issue of Bandiera Rossa, the weekly paper of the Italian section, the Fourth Internationalist
In choosing candidates for the Democrazia Proletaria slate, the LCR (Lega Comunista Rivoluzionaria - Italian section of the Fourth International) tried to run as many worker comrades as possible who are involved in battles against austerity and against attempts to sell out the union movement based on factory coun cils, as well as the gains the workers made in the 1970s, in particular the sliding scale of wages. candidatures of LCR worker militants in
It was in Turin that the bosses launched their frontal attack against the strongest bastions of the Italian working class, against the unions based on factory councils that were most representative and best organized in this area.
Angelo Caforio was the spokesman of 61 workers fired in 1979. Cristofari and Raffaello members of the Coordinating Committee of Laid-Off (Cassintegrati) Fiat Work-
And we are also running other work. er comrades from the major Turin fac-
Our objective is to demonstrate the link between our involvement in the struggles and in the struggle we are waging in this election campaign to defeat the plans of the bosses and the Christian Democrats, to reinforce the unity of all those who today are fighting in the unions and in all the workplaces against the capitulationist policy of the majority leaderships in the workers movement.
This is what we are trying to do in
In Milan, we are running Comrade Gigi Malabarba, a delegate to the Alfa Romeo, who is today laid off, and Comrade Gino Perri, a delegate to the factory council Standard. Both have played leading roles in several important opposition struggles
In Taranto, Comrade Ciccio Maresca, a delegate to the Italsider factory council, heads up the DP slate. He led the massive protest of the workers in this factory against the sell-out of the sliding scale of wages.
The work of our factory activists in Taranto helped to win particularly strong support among the workers in this city for the petition campaign that collected signatures for maintaining the provisions of the 1975 contract [including the sliding scale].
A number of national leaders of the LCR are also running on the DP slate: Livio Maitan (running in both Milan and Rome) is a member of the Central Comof the LCR and of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. Comrade Edgardo Pellegrini is editor of Bandiera Rossa and a member of the Political Bureau. Lidia Cirillio is also a member of the Political Bureau.
In the Verona-Vicenza-Padua district, are running Comrade Battain, a lawyer who devotes himself to defending workers.
The June 5 issue of Bandiera Rossa also carried interviews with a teacher candidate in Livorno and a public worker candidate in Milan, as part of a continuing series of interviews with LCR