Visions
of Arab
unity
WE publish below the second part of our interview with
Abraham Serfaty, leader of the
Moroccan revolutionary organization lla Al-Amam, who was released from jail in
September 1991 after 17 years imprisonment by the regime of
Hassan ll (see /V221, February 3, 1992). In this section of the
Interview, Serfaty discusses the question of the
Arabo-Berber dentity in
Morocco, Arab nationalism, and the Israell-Palestinian conflict.
N THE first part of our interview (see IV 221), you talked about the progress made by lla AlAmam on some aspects of the questions of nationality or identity in Morocco, and in particular its appreciation of the question of Berber identity. In recent writings you have even characterized Morocco as an Arabo-Berber nation. Can you explain more precisely what you mean by that? How should the relationship between the Arab and Berber identities be defined? And, finally, what do you mean by "nation"? I am referring here to the old debate on the Arab nation. As you know, in Arabic, different terms are used for the communities formed within the existing states (often watan) and for the national identity of all Arabs (umma).
This is a fundamental question. I think that all of us Arab Marxists must make an effort on this question. Up until now, the dominant optic on the Arab national question in the Arab liberation movement has been petty bourgeois, leading to the kind of disasters seen in Syria and Iraq.
Unfortunately, we have not worked out a coherent alternative. The Arab Communist Parties have a tendency to underestimate the problem, while, generally, the independent Arab Marxist or Marxist-Leninist movements which were inspired by the Palestinian or South Yemeni revolutions, have remained more or less within the petty bourgeois framework.
In Morocco we have thought about the
Berber problem, but we are only at the beginning of thinking through the national question.
This thinking, furthermore, cannot be done by one person, nor by one movement in one Arab country. All the Marxists of the Arab world have to apply themselves to it: this is an urgent and important task.
As far as Morocco is concerned, we believe that over the millenia an AraboBerber nation has been formed which amounts to more than just the straightforward juxtaposition of two identities; there has been an integration of the Berber substratum of the Moroccan nation, which began to develop 4,000 years ago, and the Arab contribuIn this latter we include the
In my view, we must start with the roots of the nation, first of all in the formation of human communities and their lands - this is in fact the tribe. Such communities are created at a higher level by the development of trade links, then of urban centres and a town/countryside relationship which gradually creates the substratum of the nation, in a form which, although not structured politically, structured economically and culturally and has the underpinning of a common language. I think that in the very long term the national dynamic is to be found
Before Islam, this national dynamic had
MOROCCO construct another frame of reference in the light of the impasse into which the idealist approach has led. There is an Arab national dynamic (qumya) rather than a formed Arab umma. All Arab internationalists agree that we should talk about the Arab nationalist movement, a term which corresponds to present reali-
We must, at the same time, work for revolution in our different nations where nations exist, which is not evident in some artificial siates - and, at the same time, participate in the Arab national movement from a historic, anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist and of course anti-Arab reaction perspective. This should be in the historic perspective of creating an Arab nation in the future, through the contribution of Islam - its libriel popular element, not the sunna or sharia but the Arab culture and the cultural and marked the rise of the Arab world in the first centuries of Islam. The Arab-Berber symbiosis was realized in the Maghreb (North Africa west of Egypt) at the level of the region's people, rather than through the central states.
Besides, it is necessary to start from the concept of the victory of revolutions in various countries and also through solidarity between our different revolutionary movements which will have to be stronger, lighter and more deeply rooted than the solidarity between the revolutionary movements of the • The distinction that you draw between a national movement and a nation does not seem very clear to nation, which is not a simple "Know your country" — cartoon from Al Hayat (Algeria) one and which has not been sufficiently developed. The dominant concept of the nation is based on the European model — I am not even talking about the nation-state but the implicit reference to fully formed nations. But, in fact, history does not develop like that. Personally, I think that a nation is a dynamic thing. At the beginning there are the first forms of transcendence of tribal structures — which does not necessarily mean the negation of these structures. In the Arab world this process is very different from that seen in Europe where the nations were formed out of the destruc tion of pre-capitalist forms. Here the nations form by the growing together of tribes, not by their destruction. When this process of growing together begins, I think we can start to talk about a national
In the Arab world this process takes place at two levels; a level that we can call the watan, as in the case of Morocco, or at the global level that is known as the итта. The problem is that the Arab nationalist movement has tended to idealize the notion of umma, presenting it as if it has always existed in the modern sense of the term (or at least since the advent of Islam), and basing it on idealist foundations - religion and language. Movements with non-confessional tendencies, such as the Baathists, have stressed the language, without dispensing with Islam, but things have stayed at that point.
begun to give rise to what one could call watan nations (this is very clear in the case of the Egyptian nation which existed in a very personalized form). In the Maghreb the process was still at an earlier stage for the developing Berber nation; here the town/countryside networks were not sufficiently structured, and culture, especially writing, was not yet sufficient-
It is incontestable that the AraboIslamic graft, with its contradictions, antagonisms and struggles, gave a new dynamic to this development. In the long term, a symbiosis of peoples — and not of the empires, whether Moroccan or Ottoman, that sought to dominate them — was created in the Maghreb, from which have arisen the two Arabo-Berber nations of Algeria and Morocco.
However the Arab graft was not local; it was tied to other developments elsewhere throughout the Arab world and this has attached the formation of these Arabo-Berber nations to an Arab national dynamic. For five or six centuries this on a rising path, but then it regressed; it was not able to structure itself any more. About a century ago it resumed its course within intellectual and as a platform for anti-imperialist action, marked by the idealist conceptions I have mentioned.
Arab revolutionary militants, Marxists in particular, need to
You talk of the dynamic towards national unification and come out in favour of that unification in state form. But if, as you said at the beginning, the nation should not be confused with the nation-state, and if there exists a will to create a common state framework and realize unification, this will is aimed at unifying a human totality tied by a common sense of belonging to a single nation.
In any case, I think that the unification process at the level of states can only result from states that, to simplify matters, one could call revotionary, free from any imperialist, feudal or reactionary grip. On this point we agree. Even if there are differences of social and politistructuring from one country to another, from the moment when the people conquer such revolutionary states, they can engage in a process of unifica-
In my opinion, in the historical medium term, this may become possible for the Maghreb which might enter on a road to state unification. At the same time, such a perspective, since it meets popular aspirations, is a factor of mobilization for the revolutionary struggle. When I say that we must make the revolution in each of our countries, this does not mean that we should forever close off such a perspective for them, both because it is not just and also because we are talking about a dynamic revolutionary ferment. This is a
International Viewpoint #222 • February 17, 1992 the Black African regions of southern Mauritania and Sudan, of course, the Kurds, have the right to self-determination, including separation and the formation of their own nation on their territory, if that is what they wish.
On the other hand, when one looks at the history of Morocco one sees that there is a real mingling, forming an Arabo-Berber mosaic. It is very difficult to speak of a territorial distinction between an Arab and a Berber region, as one could for example speak of the Kurdish region of Iraq. This does not mean that separatist ideas do not exist, they exist for example in the Rif ing harder for children.
The problem is more complicated in Algeria: it is only if an Algerian revolutionary and democratic movement can develop an adequate perspective that militants could help Kabylie militants to move towards a perspective such as I have just described. But this would be on one major condition: the problem of the Arab nation has to be seen from the viewpoint of the dynamic towards national unification, and not in opposition to the nations which already exist in Algeria or Morocco.
This dynamic must not involve a dissolution of the national personalities of each country, such as Algeria or Morocco or the Maghreb as a whole: the future Arab nation will not mean uniformity. Within the greater Arab nation, the Maghreb as a whole will retain its Arabo-Berber specificity. And even in our conception of a
Kererux deep aspiration of the Arab and AraboBerber peoples, on the condition that every specific personality is respected and is not dissolved in a mythical unity.
At the level of the Arab world as a whole the process may be much more protracted than for the Maghreb, given all the divisions that exist in the Mashreq and the very great difficulty in liberating the whole of Palestine (meaning the suppression of the Zionist state, not "throwing the Jews into the sea!")
But we must also take into account the enormous strategic importance that Gulf oil has for imperialism. The battle here will thus be a long term one. The Gulf must be encircled by revolutionary states - something that we are obviously far from - before we can weigh more directly, not by classical war, but through revolutionary movements and revolutionary solidarity with the militant forces of that region. We also need a parallel action in the direction of international public opinion, particularly in the Wester countries, to isolate the most aggressive and warlike forces. • The aim of Arab unification, the Arab national dynamic that you talk of, is not accepted in some Berber regions, such as the Kabylia in Algeria. How do you see the relation between the possible rejection of this orientation in certain regions and an eventual voluntary unification? To put it another way, how do you pose the problem of determination for regions with ethnic specificities? On the other hand, do you see the Berber question as a "pan-Berber" question, or are there rather regional characteristics that will crystallize in different forms in this or that region?
First of all, one must see the problem of all the marginal units in the Arab world, 24 who are politically included in it, but are not part of the Arab nation. We agree that where there are currents in favour independence for that region.
A response to such currents can only be found in the common struggle. If the Moroccan revolutionary movement has a correct platform on the Arab-Berber question in their country, I am convinced win Rifian pro-independence militants to a non-separatist view of their
But the essential thing is that the question must be resolved democratically. In Algeria, even if the Berber problem is less widespread than in Morocco, in Kabylia it has taken on a more crystallized form for historical reasons — particularly the very old immigration from
There is among the Kabylies a much more widespread sense of their specific personality and a rejection of the Arab connection. It is, furthermore, not easy for Moroccan Berber militants to admit that we are Arabo-Berbers and an integral part of the Arab national dynamic. This is impossible, in any case, if you start from the petty bourgeois idealist vision of the Arab nation; it can only be achieved if one opposes to this vision a historical and dynamic materialist vision of the conof the Arab nation, and of Morocco as an Arabo-Berber nation.
In this sense, if it is not correct to talk about "pan-Berberism", it is nonetheless correct to talk about a Berber language, the tamazigh, for all the Berber speaking population of the entire Maghreb. Presently there are several Berber dialects which could come together to form a written Berber language. My only difference with certain Berber militants and linguists is that I would prefer this language to be written in Arab characters, purely and simply for pedagogic reasons and not in order to uphold some form of Arab domination. This would make it easier for Berber speaking children to learn their language and pass without difficulty to the study of Arabic. Morocco, like Belgium, should have two national languages, but one should not make writfree Morocco as an Arabo-Berber nation, there is a place for regional autonomy. • Do you see regional autonomy as a possible solution to the Kabylie question?
Yes, regional autonomy at the level of the political management of the Kabylie and equality for the Berber language, developed as a language of high culture for all the Berbers of the Maghreb, along with the Arab language. • What would be the place of Israeli Jews of Arab origin in relation to the Arab nation? You have often raised this issue, but, seen from Israel, the way in which you underline the Arab identity of Israeli Jews who have come from Arab countries, and especially the large number of them who have come from Morocco, seems to have been rendered largely irrelevant by the integrating force
Today, what was once Arab Judaism is in its great majority concentrated in what are known as the Oriental Jews of Israel. The Moroccan Jewish community, in particular, is also significant in other countries, including in France and Canada, and indeed in a small way in Morocco itself.
I myself devoted a lot of attention to this problem at the start of the 1980s, and the information I have received makes me think that my analysis remains valid Potentially, if not in terms of immediate political reality, there is a contradiction between the defence by Oriental, and more precisely Arab, Jews of their identity as Arab Jews and the Zionist structure of the Israeli state.
This is not only because of the inherent nature of Zionism, but because it is essentially the ideology of the rule of the Zionist establishment, dominated by big capital attached to Ashkenazi - in fact Euro/American - international capital, set up in Israel, into which the Sephardic bourgeoisie has been integrated. This is
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MOROCCO
February 17, 1992 • #222 International Viewpoint especially clear for the leaders of the Moroccan Jewish community who are in fact international business people, at the same time as being courtiers of Hassan II.
The Oriental Jews are second class citizens in the state of Israel, both from an economic point of view and from the point of view of their cultural identity and their religious specificity, which is not the same, for example, as that of Jews from
They suffer not only economic exploitation but also cultural oppression. are many contradictions between mass of Arab Jews in Israel, and more particularly the Moroccan Jews who form a coherent community, and the Zionist structure of the Israeli state.
We must identify what is responsible for the fact that, nevertheless, Arab Jews support the state. First of all, of course, there is the integrating force of Zionism; but there is also the fact that any project for peace which involves recognition of Israel as a Zionist state blocks any perspective for Israel's Oriental Jews. The latter are trapped by such a project; the expression of their identity can only come through the revolutionary struggle against the Zionist structure of the state of Israel.
There are some small militant groups working among the Oriental Jewish masses of Israel towards this goal. But they are constantly stifled by the recuperative system of the Israeli political apparatus, as well as being politically confined by what appears at the moment as the only peace
The Oriental Jews have no perspective; their natural allies, who would be the Palestinian revolutionaries, are abandoning them. This is another reason why the Madrid Conference and the illusions about it lead inevitably into a blind alley. The Palestinian revolution must work out a strategy that integrates this objective contradiction in the state of Israel. It will not be possible to overcome Zionism without an explosion of its inner contradictions. And the major contradiction is that lying at the very heart of the Zionist entity: between Oriental Judaism and the
Exploding this contradiction is the task of the Israeli revolutionaries, but also of all Arab revolutionaries, and particularly the Palestinians, as well as of the revolutionaries of the whole world. It is only on this condition that there will be a renaissance of Arab Judaism, something to which a real revolution in an Arab country could also contribute.
Personally, in June 1967, one of the reason why I became aware of the need to take up a new revolutionary path was first of all the discovery that all my former comrades in arms, with hardly any exception, were racist. They had fallen into the most racist, anti-Jewish and not merely anti-Zionist, Arab nationalism, on the basis of which nothing can be achieved.
Now, the only way to revive Moroccan Judaism is to have a revolutionary Morocco.
Only in the dynamic of a Moroccan revolutionary movement could one create a pole of attraction for Moroccan Jews oppressed in Israel, both in terms of stimulating their struggle there and winning them to the anti-Zionist struggle, but also for them to one day return to Morocco. • How can the contradiction that you consider fundamental between Oriental and Ashkenazi Judaism in the state of Israel be related to the "classical" contradiction between the proletariat, of all ethnic origins, and the bourgeois state?
The contradiction does not lie between between Oriental Judaism and the Zionist structures of the state of Israel, which draw on the historic sources of what happened in Eastern Europe during the Second World war and the Nazi genocide.
But this fact is not inherent in Ashkenazi Judaism - many Ashkenazi Jews are revolutionary militants or anti-Zionists. Within Israel's racial structure Ashkenazi Judaism is privileged, for example in the Histadrut and in such structures as the Kibbutzim. It is thus harder to make the anti-Zionist struggle understood to the Ashkenazi Jewish workers in Israel.
It is necessary to take the question of identity into account without opposing one identity to another. In the last analysis the Zionist establishment is the enemy 1. The Fez plan is an eight-point plan adopted by the Arab summit held in the Moroccan town of the same name in October 1982. It followed the evacuation of Palestinian combatants from Beirut and the announcement by the President Reagan of his plan to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict - to which the Fez plan was a response. The Fez plan is also known as the Fahd Plan, the Saudi king having formulated its essential
MOROCCO of both the Oriental Jews and the Ashkenazi Jewish working class. • What is your approach to the question of the future status of the Israeli Jewish population, the groups within it, in a programmatic perspective of the dismantling of the Zionist state by the revolutionary movement?
For a long time I have believed in a democratic Palestinian state without an intermediate stage. It was only the rethinking I went through in 1982 before the war in Lebanon that I realized that this objective could not be grasped by the Israeli Jews as a whole. There needs to be a democratic process moving in this direction; if we want to arrive at a democratic state, it cannot be imposed by war. Unfortunately the issue has not always been presented in
It is necessary that the majority of Israeli Jews make the concept of a democratic Palestinian state their own. But this is not possible at the moment, and that is why there will have to be an intermediary stage. I believe that this stage means ian - with international guarantees (the Fez Plan of September 1982 corresponds to this idea with it being impossible for a war to take place on the basis of the institutions of these Insofar as the Israeli state accept such a solution; it is necessary therefore that peace activists in Israel get rid of the Zionist institutions. This is why needs to be made aware of the fact that while the state of Israel remains
Zionist, peace will not be possible in the Middle East. The major share of the struggle for the de-Zionization of Israel falls to the revolutionary militants and the Jewish masses of the Israeli state.
When international public opinion and the internal progressive movement among Israeli Jews become strong enough to bring down the Zionist structures of the Israeli state - not that state itself - the conditions for peace will exist for two states — the state of Israel in its pre-June 1967 frontiers and the Palestinian state on the the totality of Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, including Al-Quds (Jerusalem).
The Fez Plan leaves the way open for the future. It does not envisage mutual points — Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 in retum for a UN Security Council guarantee of the rights of all states in the region to live in peace - in August 1981. An initial attempt to have this plan adopted by an Arab summit was defeated by the PLO, Syria and Libya, who boycotted the meeting. 25 The second attempt succeeded in a context marked by the new Palestinian defeat in Lebanon.
International Viewpoint #222 • February 17, 1992
MOROCCO recognition, which I do not agree with. If the utopia of the democratic Palestinian state proves viable for all the inhabitants of the land of Palestine - and I consider this a higher form in a moral sense of the term than two states on that land — it is the historic duty of the populations to • You have talked about the bad consequences, particularly developments in Israel itself, of the perspective of peace with the Zionist state. But the Fez Plan involves exactly that. I think that you give the Fez Plan a value that it does not in reality have, above all when we see who thought this plan up.
The Fez Plan says nothing one way or the other about the Zionist nature of the state of Israel. But until that time, even until the eve of the meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers in 1988, the PLO talked of a non-Zionist state. In my view it should have continued to say — even on the basis that it was not for it to demand that the Israeli state should not be Zionist - that so long as it was, no peace would be possible. PLO should have maintained the political and ideological struggle against Zionism. But at this point it is necessary to distinguish the diplomatic level: it is not for states or even a national liberation organization such as the PLO to demand in advance that the opponent state has this or that character; it is for the revolutionary militants of that state to fight against its Zionist character, and for the militants throughout the world to explain that there can be no peace while that state remains Zionist. • But there is a further problem which still remains even if you have a non-Zionist Israel within its pre1967 frontiers. That is, what is to become of the right of return of the Palestinians most of whom originate from the territories on which the state of Israel was established in 1948. They have the right to continue their struggle in all its forms, and the struggle remains legitimate until the right to return is won. Plans such as the Fez Plan, including international guarantees for the frontiers of the Israeli state, contradict this right. Another right which is left out of account is that of the Arab Palestinians who remain under Israeli jurisdiction within the 1949 frontiers; if one accepts these frontiers then one rules our in advance their right to self-determination in the regions where they are the majority, such as the Galilee, and even in their towns and villages.
The Fez Plan does not involve recognition of the state of Israel. It aims for the establishment of what has been called a
"state of non-belligerence" between the Israeli state and its neighbours. Furthermore I have always written that the Fez Plan was valid apart from its preamble which accepts the 1947 UN resolution on the partition of Palestine.
In this regard, it is self-evident that the right to return is an integral part of the Palestinian struggle. It remains inscribed in some UN resolutions, in contradiction with others. But the PLO and all Arab revolutionaries must be consistent here; we must not make any concession to UN resolutions which ratify the state of Israel in one form or another. We can accept the Fez Plan as our objective, but on condition that we do not accept the preamble or anything that ratifies the state of Israel as a Zionist or even as a non-Zionist state.
We say that the sovereign Palestinian must be set up on the territories occupied in 1967 because the international situation allows us to only pose this question, because we must communicate with international public opinion and win it over, in order to win the battle with the
Having said this, the 1967 frontiers are quite unjust, as are those of the 1947 plan; however, public opinion cannot yet grasp that. We also have to win over a majority of Israeli public opinion taking into account the contradictions within it I
The right of return of the Palestinians must be recognized in the state of Israel. If this is to be a non-confessional and non-Zionist state, this means full citizenship for all, with all the contradictions that may flow from that.
The Fez Plan is the bearer, in my opinion, of a future unification of Palestine through political struggles within state of Israel itself which will lead on to a united state, including the right of return, full citizenship for Palestinians and big contradictions between Zionists and anti-Zionists. To carry through the Fez Plan I think that a political struggle inside the Israeli state is needed which could provoke a civil war and an acceleration of history.
The Fez Plan, without concessions on principle of the sort that the PLO are making today, can lead immediately to a growing over in the dynamic of the strug• But the regions of Arab Palestinian population within the 1967 frontiers must have the right to leave Israeli jurisdiction, even if that state is non-Zionist, and join the larger Arab Palestinian entity.
This demand is just and should be raised at the negotiating table when a change in the relationship of forces creates healthy conditions — not what we see in the Madrid conference. • We cannot exhaust these debates in one interview! They must be continued. A final question; how has the collapse of the Soviet Union affected your thinking, as a long-standing communist militant?
As you know I broke with the Soviet dogma and model at the start of the 1960s. But even then, until August 1991 I thought that there was some potential, especially in Russia and Ukraine, given the history of the working classes of these republics, which were won to the ideas of Marxism more than a century ago and had a revolutionary party. I did not think that things would have decayed
Unfortunately, the collapse of the former USSR is painful; I had hoped that the proletariat would show more potential than appears today. I have not given up hope that such potential may reappear, particularly in Russia and Ukraine, but this will be a long and difficult road.
In the immediate term we are seeing the triumph on the world scale not only of American imperialism, of Bush Imperator, but also of the idea that the triumph is that of liberalism, capitalism and the market economy and that they provide the
We, the peoples of the Third World, must take into account the lessons of the failures of bureaucratic planning out for all that falling into an idealization of the market - for the problems of national liberation, including on the eco-
As for the rest of the former USSR, besides Russia or the Ukraine, for example Azerbaijan and the four Central Asian Republics, which are closer to us in many respects, I am not able to say how they are going to evolve.
The fact that they have broken free from the Russian grip, whatever the risks this may present in the present situation, may in the medium and long term be a positive thing: they may rejoin the broad movement for the liberation of the region's peoples; but this will be difficult.
All consistent Marxists had begun to go beyond the old ideological sectarianisms some time ago. Now we must together and fraternally begin to reflect on the lessons of the dramatic experience that began with the October revolution. criticisms contributed by the Fourth International have certainly something to say in this process, as have those of Marxist-Leninist militants such as myself who have broken with Stalinism, Khrushchevism and with the idealism of Maoism, and who also know how to go beyond their former sectarianisms.
It is also necessary to take account of the Chinese experience, as a revolutionary experience but also as an experience of the construction of socialism with its limits and positive contributions. These latter must feed out joint thinking, which is now necessary to map out the perspectives for the revolutionary militants of the whole world. *
France and Italy:
200,000 march against racism
UP TO 100,000 people marched against racism in Paris on January 25,
1992, in a demonstration called by a collective of 70 organizations. All the major anti-ravist associations, trade unions, left and far left organizations, and anti-fascist associations were represented on the march.
This success followed a series of powerful mobilizations in the provinces against Jean-Marie Le Pen, president of the National Front (FN), who has been
EUROPE: Anti-racism touring the country as part of his party's current electoral campaign. The masagainst the British government's sive presence of youth on the Paris demonstration shows an increasing awarenew Asylum Bill. On the same ness of the danger represented by a National Front.
day several hundred
Popular demands on the march were the right to vote for immigrants, respect for the right of asylum and the suppression of the "double penalty" (by which demonstrated in Edinburgh in immigrants who have served a sentence for a crime are then expelled from
Scotland. The two
France).
demonstrations reflect
The Socialist Minister of the Interior, Philippe Marchand, author of a perniwidespread opposition to the bill cious law allowing the arbitrary incarceration, for a period of 30 days, of foreigneven among traditional ers wishing to enter France - a measure reminiscent of one of the proposals
Conservative supporters.
on immigration put forward by the National Front was roundly barracked by
Nevertheless, the bill went through its final reading in
The depth of the unpopularity of the governing Socialist Party (PS) was evident on the march. Having supported the rally on the basis of the single theme
Parliament and has now gone to of the struggle against the National Front, it did not sign the appeal of the 70 inithe House of Lords for final tiating organizations, but intended to join the demonstration and participate in approval.
strength. However it was so isolated, at the very back of the demonstration, that its contingent ultimately gave up the idea of marching.
FINN JENSEN
The success of January 25 and the local anti-Le Pen mobilizations should serve as a trampoline for initiatives of still broader scope. Already, the antiracist associations have set up a permanent unitary collective. Everybody is aware that, on the basis of the electoral collapse of the Socialist Party, the
T THE London demonstration,
A regional and cantonal elections for March 1992 will see a new and significant left Labour MP Tony Benn conincrease in the NF vote — the far right could emerge ahead of the PS in some demned the Asylum Bill as departments.
being about "building a wealthy
In these conditions, the First of May is the next important date for anti-racists
Fortress
Europe, surrounded by barbed and anti-fascists. For several years, the NF has attempted to hi-jack this symwire, to keep out the poor and oppressed of bolic date with its own march. A large scale mobilization will be necessary to the Third World". All the speakers warned reappropriate this day of struggle and take the street back from the advocates against the rising tide of racist and fascist of segregation and hate.
attacks and called for unity among antiracist forces. The government accepted various amendments to the bill during its final
ON Saturday January 25, 1992, a very important demonstration against reading to accommodate criticisms made by racism brought 100,000 people onto the streets of Milan. The idea of a second immigrant welfare organizations, human national anti-racist demonstration (the first took place in autumn 1989 in Rome)
rights groups, lawyers and the churches.
was launched at the beginning of September 1991, by the Senegalese Associ-
However, the substance of the Bill has not ation of Lombardy, following the murder of a Senegalese worker by fascists.
changed. The main points are:
This call received the immediate support of numerous solidarity associations