PERU • AROUND THE WORLD
Blanco!
AS WE go to press, we have just heard from the Peruvian Peasant Confederation (CCP) about the disappearance of Hugo Blanco and
The lives of these two peasant leaddepends on a rapid national and inter-
Luis Tuesta de la Torre, kidnapped national reaction. This is a veritable by the police on February 9 at kidnapping, with no legal basis. The fate of the disappeared in Peru, as in
Hugo Blanco was a former deputy many other Latin American countries, in the Constituent Assembly, who is too often death. Hugo Blanco and
Luis Tuesta have to be saved from this was imprisoned for many years by the Peruvian military dictatorship. A long-standing leader of the peasant movement, Hugo is now the organihuman rights figures, MPs and so on zational secretary of the CCP and a member of the to contact Peruvian embassies, consulates, and the central committee of the Partido Unificado Mariate-
Peruvian government to demand information on the guista (PUM).
whereabouts of Hugo Blanco and Luis Tuesta. For ex-
Luis Tuesta de la Torre is the general secretary of ample, in France the LCR and the national human the Huacali federation of the CCP and also a member rights organization Ligue des Droits de l'Homme have of the PUM. They were both arrested by the national demanded and obtained a meeting with the embassy.
police on February 9. The police deny that they are
In Sweden a vigil will be organized outside the emholding them and there has been no news since.
bassy. British, West German and Dutch MPs will be
Since January 25, the peasants of Pucalpa (Huacali)
asking the Peruvian government to make a statement have been on strike, demanding better prices for their on the whereabouts of Hugo Blanco and Luis Tuesta agricultural products as well as bank loans at afforda-
Telegrams of protest can also be sent to Alan ble rates. The police have carried out violent repres-
García, Presidente de la Repubblica, Palacio de Gosion against this movement. Eight peasants were bierno, Plaza de Armas, Lima, Peru. * killed during the first confrontation with the forces of
STOP PRESS: The Peruvian Ministry of the Interior law and order, and 20 during the second.
has made a statement that Hugo Blanco was arrested
On February 9, 200 peasants were gathered in the and is being held in Pucalpa prison (Huacali region).
headquarters of the CCP in Pucalpa for a communal
Extremely serious charges of inciting armed rebellion and carrying arms have been made against him, makmeal, a common practice in these poverty-stricken zones. The police attacked, machine-guns in hand, ing solidarity initiatives even more urgent.
AROUND
THE
WORLD
BRITAIN
Viraj Mendis deported
A MASSIVE police squad smashed their way into the church where Sri
Lankan-born Viraj Mendis had been living in sanctuary for over two years to avoid deportation, claiming political refugee status (see IV 112).
Following the raid (the first ever of its kind) on January 18, Viraj was finally deported to Sri Lanka after a long campaign to defend his right to stay. In the February issue of Socialist Outlook, Finn Jensen looked at the implications of this latest move:
The government has sent a clear message to all those opposing immigration and
26 nationality laws. Both the deportation and the way it was carried out are intended to scare the Black community and the churchcs, temples and mosques considering giving sanctuary to those facing deportation. The government wants to teach all anti-racists a lesson. That is why the police smashed their way into the church, more than a week after Viraj had formally applied to go to Denmark, and when he was still awaiting a reply from the Danish authorities....
It is becoming clear that immigration officials planned to follow this action with a swoop on other "illegal" immigrants, and had decided that it was necessary to get rid of Viraj first. They have been building up information for sometime about people's whereabouts and have a special squad of police officers whose sole responsibility is
It is very urgent to contact prominent
The government will pay a political price for their actions - support for Viraj's right to stay in Britain is still strong. Many people are outraged at the way the police broke into the sanctuary, and cannot accept that the Home Office could not send him to a third country.
For months, civil war conditions in Sri Lanka have been evident from news broadcasts. The right-wing JVP have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people who they believe have made concessions to Tamil separatism. Viraj could well be on their death list because of his well-known support for Tamil self-determination....
The Sri Lankan government itself is unlikely to move against Viraj Mendis because of the publicity around his case, and while they are trying to clean up their image and pretend that violence is on the ebb. However, the position of the Home Office that he and others are not in danger is a bare-faced - and conscious - lie.
In a last-minute attempt to stop the deportation, Labour MPs tried to raise the debate in parliament. A leader of the transport workers' union went to Gatwick airport to try to get his members not to prepare the plane on which Viraj was to leave. All of this was too little, too late, but it gives a
February 20, 1989 • #157 International Viewpoint glimpse of what the labour movement could do if it mobilized against deportations.
About 50 people are deported from Britain every week. Industrial action at the airports and high profile campaigns against the immigration and nationality laws could prevent many of these. It is necessary, especially if the crackdown occurs, to mobilize all of those who have been involveu in Viraj's campaign and all of those angry at his deportation against all of these cases. * CHINA Trotsky's role "outstanding" AN ARTICLE by Li Dian, in Nanchong Shiyuan Xuebao ("Nanchong College Review") 2, 1988, points out that Trotsky's role in the October revolution was outstanding, that it was in no way "sabotage", and moreover that it was not just one of "carrying out every action under relevant leadership". The article, summarized below, was taken from Xinhua Wenzhai, Beijing, 1988:11,
Apart from Lenin, his contribution was greater than that of any other Bolshevik leader. This is a historical fact. In 1917, at a crucial point in the Russian revolution, Trotsky closely linked his own fate to that of the Bolsheviks and Lenin, and displayed the fearless spirit of a proletarian revolution. On July 10, Trotsky publicly wrote to the Kerensky government unmasking the reactionary face of the bourgeois provisional government, and was arrested as a result. After the smashing of the Kornilov rebellion, the Party recommended that Trotsky, having demonstrated his outstanding activiiTALYA FRANSA
SiNGiLTERE
ty, should be chairman of the Petrograd
In this period Trotsky worked hard to prepare and develop the revolution, especially with his gift for oratory, and won masses of loyal and reliable followers for the Party. At Central Committee meetings he resolutely backed Lenin's proposals, and voted for the resolution on an armed uprising in the near future. He was elected onto the leading Politburo. Later he chaired and led the work of the Revolutionary Mili-
During the October insurrection, he was in the front line at the Smolny Palace. In the first Soviet government under Lenin, Trotsky was foreign minister. During the struggle to defend the newly-born Red Government he put down the counterrevolutionary rebellion in Petrograd and smashed the White offensive organized by Kerensky. Trotsky also played an extremely important role during the three-year revolutionary civil war in Soviet Russia. * BOOKS Trotsky's Notebooks PHILIP POMPER has recently published Trotsky's Notebooks 1933-1935 (Columbia University Press, New York), which were discovered in the Trotsky Archives (Houghton Library) at Harvard University. This is the first time that they have been published in any form.
The texts, about 40 pages, are essentially notes on Hegel's dialectic, some notes on Lenin and on evolutionism. They have been published alongside the original Russian text, with a lengthy introduction that contains an interesting analysis of the differences between Bukharin and Trotsky's interpretation of the dialectic.
All in all, the book is 175 pages long. This new contribution is indispensable
ALMANYA "Just like I promised, we'll soon have free circulation of Turkish workers in the EEC"
AROUND THE WORLD reading for all those who are interested in Marxist philosophy. * VIETNAM Rehabilitate Vietnamese Trotskyists! A TIME when rehabilitations are underway in the USSR is a good opportunity to remember that the dead hand of Stalinism reached out all over the world - including France, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Greece, China and Vietnam the regime's opponents, and in particular Trotskyists. Below we are publishing an international appeal for the rehabilitation of Ta Tu Thau and other Vietnamese Trotskyists massacred in their country in 1945.
"The undersigned, having actively participated in the solidarity movement with the Vietnamese people's struggle for their independence, demand that justice be finally given to Vietnamese Trotskyist leaders Ta Thu Thau, Tran Van Thach, Nguyen Van So, Phan Van Hum, Phan Van Chanh, Huynh Van Phuong...
"These men, survivors of the French colonialist penal colonies, had a wide audience among the working class of Saigon during the 1930s. They played an important role in the trade unions and the IndoChinese Congress at that time. On various occasions, they were elected to the Saigon municipal council. They were all arrested by the Vietminh and disappeared in 1945.
"The accused of the three Moscow Trials, Stalin's victims, have been rehabilitated, and Trotsky's file is now open in the Soviet Union. In Hanoi, voices are being raised to demand that the members of the Nhan Van Giai Pham movement, calumnied in an indescribable fashion in 1956, be given back their dignity. Alongside these changes, it is high time to fill in the blank pages of the Vietnamese communist movements history - or rather to replace those that were ripped out: we demand the articles and works of the disappeared Trotskyist militants be republished. Vietnam cannot go forward without knowing its own history, but this history cannot be written if certain truths remain hidden."
The numerous signatories to this appeal from all over the world include Noam Chomsky (USA); Pierre Broué, Pierre Naville, Dang Van Long (editor of Chroniques Vietnamiennes), Zbigniew Kowalewski, Alain Krivine, Pierre Lambert (France); Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn, Ken Coates, Tamara Deutscher, Cliff Slaughter (Britain); Ernest Mandel and Livio Maitan (Fourth International).
Further signatures can be sent to:
Preparatory Committee, PO Box 735, London SW9 7QS or to Chroniques Vietnamiences, BP 746-75532, Paris Cedex 11, 27 France. *
José Ramón García is
International Viewpoint #157 • February 20, 1989