AROUND
THE WORLD INTERNATIONAL Moscow Trials Carpaign update THE CAMPAIGN to "Clear the names of the accused in the Moscow Trials" has been collecting signatories from all the world (see IV 129 for full appeal and list of signatories). Below is a list of the latest supporters, followed by an article on the rehabilitations by a leading member of the Belgian Communist Latest signatories:
Argentina: Guillermo Almeyra.
Belgium: Michel Davaivre, FGTB; Jeff Sleeckx, MP; Claude Dejardin, MP, vice-president European Assembly; Prof. Leo Apostel.
Brazil: Antonio Angelo Maschera, MP; J Oliveira, MP; A Pretto, MP; Flavio
Canada: Michael Cassidy, MP.
Chile: Prof. Luis Vitale.
France: Henry Hirsch; Thérèse Lagoutte; Paul Parigot; Luc Roy; Prof. Bejamin Stone; Antoine Vitez, film producer; Jean-Paul Zana; R Prager. Prof. Yves Sertel.
Italy: Rossana Rossanda, ed. Il Manifesto; Dario Fo, playwright and producer; Franca Rame, actress; Fulvio Aurora; Aldo Natolie; Edgardo Pelligrini; Andrea Rivas, director Radio Populare.
Brussels demonstration
TWO hundred people responded to the call of the
POS/SAP, Belgian section of the Fourth International, to demonstrate in front of the Soviet embassy in Brussels on Saturday, November
7.
A delegation delivered the
International appeal for the rehabilitation of the Moscow
Trials' victims to the Soviet ambassador. *
The campaign is appealing for further signatories of individuals or organizations, and financial donations to extend the appeal.
Write to the Moscow
Trials Campaign, c/o Michael Löwy,
34 rue des Lyonnais,
75005 Paris.
Netherlands: Maurice Ferares, secretary artists' and musicians' union.
Portugal: Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho; Jorge Sampaio, MP, pres. of Socialist Parliamentary Group; Pezarat Correia; Fernando Loureizo, nat. sec. CGTP; Manuel Alegre, MP; Sottomayor Cardia, MP; Lopes Cardoso, MP; Arons de Carvallo, MP; Helena Cidade Moura, ex-MP; José Luis Nimes, MP; Eduardo Pereira, MP; Nuno Grande; Maria José Lopes; Francisco Louça.
Senegal: Prof. Samir Amin.
Spanish state: Mario Onaindia, MP, Euskadiko Esquerra.
Sri Lanka: Butty Weerakoon, gen. sec. Ceylon Workers' Federation.
Uruguay: Raul Sendic, leader MLN (ex-
ÚSA: Prof. Egbae Ahmed; Prof. Rosalyn Baxandall; Abraham Bloom, National Board Grey Panthers; Mary Boger; Prof. Walter Cohen; Dr. Louis Harap, Ph.D.; Bill Henning, vice-pres. CWA Local 1080; Assoc. Prof. James Kavanagh; Conrad Laynn, NAACP attorney; Harold Leventhal, producer; Raymond Markey, treasurer NY Public Library Guild Local 1930; Asst. Prof. Craig Reinerman; Morris U. Schappes, editor Jewish Currents; Asst. Prof. Ellen W. Schrecker; Juliet Ucelli; Prof. Alan Wald; Prof. Emeritus George Wald, Nobel prizewinner; Stsn Weir, pubBelgian CP statement UNDER THE headline "Demands for a review of the trials are increasingly being made. With just reason", leader of the Belgian Communist Party (PCB) Jan Debrou-
NOTHING BASICALY WRONG
01981 were wrote an article on the Moscow Trials in the PB's Flemish journal, De Rode Vaan [The Red Flag], on October 15, 1987.
He began by putting down all the pretexts used during many years in the CP in order to confuse the issues. "In the communist ranks," he wrote, "we have had more than our fair share of losing ourselves in generalizations and abstractions.... On the basis that it is better not to stir up old troubles."
He continued by denouncing Stalin's dictatorship, which "demanded the death sentences and the executions" with the consequence that "most of the leadership, the leaders of the October revolution, did not survive the trials....The victims were first and above all communists."
The author refutes the accusations of sabotage, terrorism, treason and so on. "Most of the time, if not always, it was only a question of political differences." Even if these divergences were fundamental and serious ones. "But the differences, the battle of ideas, even around the questions of the temporary hardships or where the final responsibilities lay, did not pose the question of personal honour. They should not raise the question of personal honour. Neither should they be resolved in an atmosphere of criminality, or be taken to tribunals, to interrogation cells or in front of a firing squad.
"Political preference has not gone to Bukharin or Trotsky; it is not a matter of whether they were right or wrong,' " he concluded. Jan Debrouwere, as a member of the PCB's political bureau, has thus taken a step forward. But this gesture would
DART make more sense if the PCB, the party as a whole, took the same position. *
[From La Gauche, newspaper of the POSISAP, Belgian section of the Fourth International.] SENEGAL Electoral code denounced FIVE Senegalese opposition parties have again denounced the electoral code, five months before the presidential and legislative elections, mainly because it allows all kinds of fraud before, during and after the count.
During a public meeting on September 26 in Dakar, a spokesperson for the Senegalese Democratic Alliance (ADS) — an informal structure grouping five of the fifteen opposition parties - denounced the policy of President Abdou Diouf, who "gives a democratic image of the country to the outside world, whilst strangling possibilities for democratic expression inside the country."
The ADS is comprised of the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), the Democratic League (LD-MTP), the Union for Popular Democracy (UDP), the Workers' Socialist Organization (OST, Senegal section of the Fourth International) and the Revolutionary Movement for New Democracy (MRDN).
The opposition spokesperson attacked the "laxity" of the electoral code, in particular that unused voting cards were distributed to sympathizers of the ruling Socialist Party. He denounced the fact that electors
AROUND THE WORLD LOOK AT THAT' WHO SAYS HE CANT LEAD* could vote without presenting identity cards, the absence of opposition representatives from polling stations, the optional use of polling booths and the lack of announcements of the results at each polling station.
Lastly, the opposition demanded the lowering of the electoral age from 21 to 18, and the possibility of Senegal nationals abroad being able to vote. * GREECE Spartakos republished THE JOURNAL of the Greek section of the Fourth International, Marxistike Seispirosi (Marxist Regroupment) reports in its September/October issue on the reprinting of an early publication of the Trotskyist movement in Greece.
Soon to be issued is a reprint of the collection of Spartakos, which was published from July 1930 to September 1932. This makes accessible for study and debate one of the sources for Greek social and political history in the inter-war period. Spartakos appeared in January 1928 as a monthly magazine "of Marxist-Leninist theory and action."
It was published by the "Greek Communist Party-Opposition," which came out of a conflict in the party after the fall of the Pankalis dictatorship and allied itself with the Opposition in the post-Lenin phase of building the USSR.
With its fifth issue, Spartakos took the form of a four- paze fortnighly and later of 1 3 a weekly paper. * November 23, 1987 • International Viewpoint
LIBERATION THEOLOGY • LATIN AMERICA
W E ALSO SEE a strong diffe-
rentiation in the Latin America-wide structures of the Catholic Church. On the one hand, the Latin American Conference of Bishops (CELAM), controlled since 1972 by a Colombian team, is distinctly conservative. It has waged a furious battle against liberation theology. On the other hand, the Latin American Conference of Members of Religious Orders (CLAR), which includes the Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and other orders, does not hide its sympathy for the ideas of the new Latin-American theologians.
Divisions also appear in the church in the individual countries. The best known example, obviously, is Nicaragua, where there is a split in the church between many priests, members of religious orders and lay people who support the revolution. Three priests hold ministerial posts, Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal and Miguel d'Escoto, but the hierarchy around Cardinal Obando y Bravo is closely lined up with the contras and Reagan's policy.
In El Salvador in 1980, one bishop, Monseigneur Alvarez de San Miguel, was an army colonel, while another, Monsignor Oscar Romero, denounced the crimes of the military and solidarized with the people's movements. Shortly afterward, Romero was murdered by the death squads.
Four tendencies in the
Latin American churches
Four tendencies can be distinguished within the Latin American Catholic churches:
• A rather small traditionalist semi-fascist current, for example the Brazilian "Tradition, Family, Property" group.
• A powerful conservative current hostile to liberation theology and linked to the ruling classes, represented by Monsignor Lopez Trujillo, the chair of CELAM, for example.
• A reformist, modernist current prepared to defend human rights and support certain social demands. This is the position that predominated in the Puebla Conference in 1979.
• A small but influential radical current close to liberation theology, which supports the workers', peasants' and people's movements. Its best known representatives are bishops and cardinals such as Mendez Arceo in Mexico, Pedro Casaldaliga and Paulo Evaristo Arns in Brazil, Proaño in Ecuador and so on. Within this current, the most advanced section is the one represented by the Christian revolutionaries, the Christians for Socialism movement and other tendencies that identify with Sandinism, Camilo Torres or a Christian Marxism.
It is evident, therefore, that the division in the church amounts to more than the tra14 - the peories Christian e on ements, the ditional vertical one: those on the bottom International Viewpoint • November 23, 1987 base communities and Christian trade unionists — against "those on the top" - the hierarchy, the summit of the institutional church. It is also horizontal, running across the church from the conferences of bishops to the diocesan clergy, the religious orders and the lay movements. However, it should not be forgotten that these are differences within an institution that despite everything remairs united, inasmuch as its religious objectives are not reducible to political or social ones.
Mass influence of radical current
The new and surprising element is undoubtedly the radical current and the mass influence it wields, notably in the Brazilian Church. Two examples indicate the extent to which the Brazilian Church has changed its position in the confrontation between classes.
Gregorio Bezerra, the Brazilian communist leader, tells in his memoirs how at a rally in a village in the north-east in 1946 (the CP was legal at the time), he was threatened by a fanatical crowd led by a local priest, shouting "Death to communism, long live Christ, the king!" He had to take refuge in a police station.
Thirty-five years later, exactly the opposite happened. During the auto workers' strike in 1980, a trade-union demonstration in Saõ Bernardo (in the industrial suburbs of Saõ Paulo) was attacked by the police and they had to seek refuge in a church. The bishop opened it up to them. Several sections of the Brazilian Church have thus gone over lock, stock and barrel to the other side of the barricades in the conflict between the capitalists and the landlords and labor.
The change among Brazilian Christians began even before Vatican II (1962-65). From the beginning of the 1960s, the Christian University Youth, influenced first by Emmanuel Mounier's personalism and Father Lebret's humanist economics, evolved rapidly toward socialist ideas. This led to the formation of People's Action, a Marxist-inspired organization, in 1962. A few years later (1968-69), a group of Dominicans organized an underground support network for Carlos Marighela, the leader of the ALN, a Castroist armed organization. The monks suffered brutal repression. They were imprisoned and tortured.
Similar events have occurred in other countries. The best known, of course, is the case of Camilo Torres who joined the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Colombian Castroist guerrillas, in 1965. His martyrdom had a profound political and emotional impact on Latin-American Christians, giving rise to a current identifying with his legacy. In Chile in 1969, the JUC and the Christian Democratic Youth formed the United Marxist People's Action Party (MAPU).