"We, the undersigned, therefore call the Soviet government to re-examine the cases against all these victims of the perversion of Soviet justice, as took place with Krestinsky. We are confident that all those accused in the Trials of 1936-38 will be shown to have been innocent. They should immediately be rehabilitated, their honour restored, their families compensated and their graves marked." Britain: Tamara Deutscher, Tariq Ali; Sidney Bidwell MP; Fenner Brockway; Jeremy Corbyn MP; Meghnad Desai; Eric Heffer; Tom Kemp; Eddy Loyden MP; Ian Mikardo MP; Stan Newens MP; Cyril Smith; David Winnick MP. Peru: Hugo Blanco. Mexico: Rosario Ibarra MP; Efraim Calvo MP; Marguerito Montes; Ricardo Pascoe MP; Pedro Penaloza MP; Rosalia Peredo MP; José Luis Diaz Moll MP. Sweden: Göte Kilden France: Alain Krivine; Michael Loewy. Italy: Livio Maitan. Belgium: Emest Mandel. Germany: Jakob Moneta. Sri Lanka: Bala Tampoe. USA: Noam Chomsky.
The campaign is appealing for further signatories of individuals or organizations, and financial donations to extend the appeal worldwide. Write to the Moscow Trials Campaign, c/o Michael Loewy, 34 rue des Lyonnais, 75005
TURKEY "Stop wife-battering!" "WOMEN's solidarity! Stop wifebattering". A crowd of 2-3,000 women marched on May 17 through Istambul, in a demonstration seen by its organizers as a turning point for the Turkish women's movement. Until now the movement has mainly been limited to raising economic demands.
The demonstrators, who were applauded from the windows of the working class districts they passed through, denounced the judges for being soft on the brutalities which "one in four Turkish women is the victim of". They stressed that there is "no essential difference between conjugal violence and the torture" denounced by human rights organizations, and demanded penalties for husbands found guilty of domestic
Statistics making it possible to estimate the number of battered women in Turkey do not exist, but the problem is endemic and has until now remained a taboo. Speeches against the prime minister's wife, who ostentatiously leads a foundation for the promotion of women, and who recently declared to the press that "women can never be the equal of men", gave a political character to a demonstration that was intend. ed primarily to be anti-patriarchal and
Some transexuals, a group of whom
estimated it 70,000. The police, echoed by the mass media, granted only
30,000, but in doing that they wittingly or unwittingly admitted that it was
50 per cent larger than last year's spring action.
Our correspondent and photographer says it could have easily been
100,000. "It took three hours to arrive at the Civic Centre, without any specific holdup other than just the volume of the crowd." *
June 1, 1987 • International Viewpoint are entering the third week of a hunger strike against police brutality, joined the demonstration. Although hesitant at first, support for these strikers grew during the last week with some well-known show-business personalities signing their petition. The press published lengthy extracts from the letter addressed to the prime minister, reminding him of European positions on the question of no sexual discrimination. [From Le Monde, May 18] * SRI LANKA May Day march banned IN RESPONSE to the bombing of the Pettah bus stand in Colombo on April 21, which killed and wounded a large number of people, the Executive Committee of the Ceylon Mercantile, Indusyouth on non-l combattants in
Sinhala villages and against other
Tamil groups had facilitated attempts to attribute the outrage to such organizations, the statesaid.
It ment went on to dethat the clare
CMU Executive
Committee "cannot accept that there is justification for any such terrorist crime, even if it may be in retaliation for acts of terrorism that have been, and are being, perpetrated on the civilian population of the North and East by and General Workers' death and injury to increasing numbers trial
Union
(CMU) issued a statement on April 24 condemning this blind terrorist act. It denounced "those who perpetrated this crime as being cold-blooded terrorists, having no regard whatsoever for other human beings in the pursuit of their ends, whatever they may be."
Attacks by groups of Tamil-speaking the armed forces of the state, including bombing from the air and shelling from land and sea."
Three days later, on April 27, the CMU Executive sent an open letter to the Sri Lanka president, J R Jayewardene, condemning the government for taking reprisals for the bombing by of ordinary people." It stressed: " Such attacks will not serve to remove the continuing danger of further terrorist attacks upon ordinary people elsewhere in the country, but may even provoke them."
At the same time, the CMU executive protested against the ban on public processions and meetings proclaimed in the wake of the bomb outrage, say-
San Francisco in April ing: "To let it stand would indicate that your government is more concerned with preventing any form of public, political or trade-union activity on May Day, in its own political interests, than with the safety of those who may participate..." * US A Protest at Contra Killing IN PORTLAND, Oregon, on April 29 1,500 people held a vigil to protest
UNIDENTIFIED INFANT
RILED by CONTRA, - US
US-sponsored contras in Nicaragua. It against the killing of Ben Linder by was reportedly the largest anti-war action in the area for many years. Linder, who grew up in the area, was working as an engineer building hydroelectric plants in northern Nicaragua.
At a news conference preceding the vigil, the the murdered workers' father, David Linder, said that his son "had a commitment to the revolution there. By the revolution he meant giving people schools, giving them medical care, giving them land. He was trying to give them a little electricity.
John Linder, said: "My brother's
PART OF the crowd at the April 25 demonstration in San Francisco against
US support for apartheid and intervention in Central America. The organizers death was not an accident. His death was policy." He went on to say, "The US government killed my brother," and to urge people to become involved in protests against US aid to the contras. [From The Militant, May 8]*
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
AROUND THE WORLD PEACE! WE'RE TELLING PLANTU
End of an era for Felipe Gonzalez
AT THE CENTER of the recent mobilizations in Spain has been the fight against austerity policies. Workers have been