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BASQUE COUNTRY Attacks on Basque refugees A FRENCH judge investigating murders of exiled Basques in the French Basque country will demand testimony from Jose Amedo Fouce, deputy commissioner of police in Bilbao, in the Spanish Basque country, the Madrid daily El Pais reported on May 4. Amedo is accused of having had contact in Lisbon with Jean Philippe Labade, who fled to Portugal to avoid prosecution for involvement in terrorist attacks on refugees from the Spanish Basque country living in the part of the Basque country incorporated in the French state.
Labade was arrested in France on June 16, 1984, a few days after he met with two men who travelled in a car with license plates reserved for the Information Brigade of the Jefatura Superior [Command] of the Bilbao police. Labade admitted to the investigating judge that he was working for the Spanish police and had hidden the murderers of Perez Revilla. But he was then released in a decision later revoked as improper by the Supreme Court. Labade fled to
In February 1987, French police arrested Paulo Fontes, an ex-Spanish Legionary born in Portugal, who revealed that two terrorist attacks on Basque refugees had been carried out by mercenaries recruited by Labade in Portugal. The first took place on February 9 in Bayonne, when three men opened fire on the people in the Batzoki bar. Two children were wounded, along with two Spanish Basques and a French citizen. Five days later, another man opened fire on an alleged member of the Basque revolutionary nationalist organization ETA in a bar in Saint Jean de Luz.
investigating these incidents issued an order for the arrest of Labade and his companions. One of those arrested in Portugal, Mario Correia da Cunha, admitted that he recruited Portuguese mercenaries for the the self-proclaimed terrorist" organization that has claimed responsibility for a series of gangsterlike attacks on Basque nationalists He said that he had contact with Labade and two Spanish individuals in the Hotel Ritz in Lisbon on January 31 and
February 1. Deputy commissioner Amedo Fouce was staying at the hotel at that time with another person. He reportedly paid the bill for his hotel room, that of the other person and La bade's with his credit carc JAPAN Rail union attacked THE FIRST stage of the privatization of Japan National Railways began on April 1, with the transformation of the JR into Japan Railways (JR), a conglomerate of 12 regional companies. Later the stock of the new companies is to be put on the private market. But, according to the Globe and Mail's Tokyo correspondent, Thomas writing in the April 1 issue of the Toronto daily, privatization primary goal. "In fact, it is an object lesson of how a government can quietly break a troublesome union."
The beauty of the scheme for the bosses is that when the JR was broken up, all its agreements with its employees were null and void. "Strictly speaking," Walkom 270,000 were out of work on the stroke of midnight.
"One minute after midnight, 205,000 of those 270,000 were automatically rehired by the constituent companies of the new JR [Japan Railways]...The point is that it was the new company alone that decided who to hire and who would leave."
The old unions also lost their bargaining rights at the same time. Moreover, the establishment of the JR allowed the rail bosses to establish a new set of work rules and wage levels. Walkom noted: "Some workers, according to a spokesman for the JR's preparatory committee may face a 'slight' reduction in pay."
This operation was aimed first of all at the militant rail union, Kokuro. Of 43,630 Kokuro workers who have asked for their jobs back, the new companies have already refused to hire about 10%, 4,771. But about 130,000 workers belonging to the right-wing unions have been rehired, and only 29 Roused kees are been assignini to "re-education centers."
"The union [Kokuro] produced photos
AROUND THE WORLD of veteran railwaymen relegated t toiling, bamboo bird cages or cleaning
This cynical and ruthless operatio has already had a terrible effect on Jap SWITZERLAND Funding apartheid IN ITS April 24 issue, La Breche [the French-language paper of the Swiss Socialist Workers Party (PSO/SAP)], P. Girardet added up the investment of Zurich's gnomes in apartheid:
"In four years (1980-1984), credit from all Swiss banks to South Africa increased by 227%, and that of the big banks (SBS, UBS, CS, Banque Leu, Banque populaire) by 338%. In step with this, the Swiss share of the total South African debt rose from 15% in 1979 to 35% in 1984. It is no accident that the three biggest Swiss banks are participating in the Coordinating Committee (34 banks) that is negotiating the apartheid system's debt of $24,000 million. At its March 24 meeting in London, this clique of profiteers decided to reschedule the debt, with the help of a $14,000 million loan. The Swiss contribution amounted to $1,400 mil-
But that is not all - 59% to 60% of all the gold exported by the racist regimes passes through Zurich (where profits are of the order of 10% on the gold traded). This flow of gold represents 50% of South African exports. In other words, the Swiss banks are supporting apartheid by graciously giving it 25% to 30% of its total resources in currency. That is a decisive support for the survival of the regime!
This vulture-like behavior has a name — complicity with apartheid's racist club-wielders. ISRAELI STATE Fight for academic freedom [From an article by Stig Järhult in the April 9 issue of Internationalen, newspaper of the Swedish section of th Fourth International. THE HILLS that surround the Palestinian university of Bir Zeit are covered with blooming almond trees — and Israeli soldiers.
In its constant battle for academic 2,400 students, this university has freedom and with its concentration of 1 been an important instrument in the struggle against the Israel occupation March 9, 1987 • International Viewpoint
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AROUND THE WORLD authorities.
The fact that the daily clashes on the West Bank in February were centered in the nearby city of Ramallah is no accident.
One day at the beginning of the month, when I was to visit Bir Zeit to attend a solidarity rally with Lebanon, the military set up barricades. Some got through, others did not.
Last year, the roads were blocked 36 times. The objective, among other things, was to disrupt education.
On December 4, the military killed two students at a similar road block. The soldiers fired directly into the crowd that had gathered in front of the barricade in a peaceful demonstration. On Israeli TV, the local military commander, Ehud Barak, said:
"We are sorry for any person who is killed or wounded, even if it is an Arab [emphasis added]. But it is important to understand — students must study and teachers, teach. We will we do everything in our power to keep the roads open."
Road blocks are not the only way that the Israeli authorities use to disrupt activities at the university.
• Around the new year, Bir Zeit was closed for a month as a collective punishment for demonstations. In 1982, Bir Zeit was closed for six months.
• Locally published books in Arabic are censored. Today, 400 books are on the banned list.
• Few Arabic periodicals are permitted at Bir Zeit. Many of these periodicals are permitted and available at the Hebrew University!
• At present, 14 students are under travel bans (or forbidden to visit certain regions). A whole village or town can get a collective "confinement to the locality." Researchers are prevented from travelling abroad.
• Before 1967, all higher education was exempted from taxes and charges. In the last academic year, Bir Zeit paid thousands of dollars in various charges.
Those are just some examples of the
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daily Israeli oppression. But the worst thing is the unemployment the students face.
"I studied to be a sociologist," said a 25-year-old woman, a former Bir Zeit student. "Now I am unemployed, because no state authority will hire Bir
Of course, there is no official ban on hiring Bir Zeit students. On the other side, in fact very few are hired.
The unemployment problem has been aggravated by the fact that in the last two years Bir Zeit has been forced to charge high fees. The university is in economic difficulties. This problem is said to be related to the conflicts between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Jordan from 1984 on. Earlier, Bir Zeit was financed by the Joint Palestinian-Jordanian Committee, based
On February 15, the University Committee had its first meeting in over a year, since Saudi Arabia contributed 9.5 milllion dollars.
(If any Swedish readers think that the university gets money from Israeli, since it is on Israeli-controlled territory, they would be quite wrong. Not a shekel of state money goes to Bir Zeit or any one of the five other Arab universities in the occupied territories.)
As I write this, there is extensive student unrest in all these universities. Bir Zeit has been closed for four days by the military authorities.
Some people are asking whether education for Palestinians is really possible under the occupation.
"Education is always a challenge," answers Dr. Gabi Baramki, Bir Zeit's administrative chief. "We have not only the usual challenges, but also one from the Israeli occupation.
"Giving up higher education is easy. That means turning away from reality. But giving up is an absurd idea. Sooner or later we will get our own state, and
"History will not forgive us if we are not prepared when liberation comes." *
SANCTIONS WOULD ONLY HURT YOU.
ISRAELI STATE
Arab war losses
ON APRIL 30, the Israeli Ministry of Defence announced that from the
1948 war onward, the total number of Israeli soldiers killed in the defence of the Zionist state was
This figure breaks down as follows, dead in the1948 war, 6.087
(1% of the Jewish population at the time); in the Suez invasion of
1956, 232, in the June 1967 war,
785, in the ensuing "war of attri.
tion, 2,676; in operations against
Palestinian fighters between 1974 and 1982, 1,936 in the Lebanon war, 1,154, Since the retreat from
Lebanon, according to the Ministry, 294 Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes of various sorts,
(From Le Monde, May 3, 1987.H* NICARAGUA Award for Cardenal THE POET and priest, Eresto Cardenal, minister of culture of Nicaragua, received an honorary doctorate April 30 from the University of Valencia in the Spanish state. In his acceptance speech, Cardenal noted that he had been offered an honorary doctorate in Chile during the Allende government but had refused to accept it because "I represented no one." But today, "I have accepted this honor because it is not for me but for the people of Nicaragua who do deserve it."
### Cultural renaissance in Nicaragua
Cardenal said that the democratization of culture was one of the Sandinista regime's major objectives. He took note of a great cultural renaissance in Nicaragua since the triumph of the Sandinista revolution. He also pointed to the role played by Christians in the revolution: 'There is no conflict between Christianity and revolution."
But, he continued: "This is the revolution that the world's greatest economic power is trying to destroy, is sworn to to destroy." He said that the cost of the US military, dipomatic, economic, ideological and technology aggression against Nicaragua "can nevi be calculated." [From El Pais, May