AROUND
THE
WORLD
CUBA International congress held in A CONGRESS of solidarity with Cuba, held on Saturday May 23 at the Stadthalle in Bonn-Bad Godesborg, assembled more than 2,000 people: the size of the attendance and the quality of the interventions made it a real success.
Twelve speakers, from Latin America, the United States and Europe, denounced the embargo imposed on Cuba for the past 30 years, and its increasingly dire consequences since the fall of the regimes in Eastern Europe.
This particularly concerns Germany, given the importance of the previous trade between Cuba and the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).
The latter furnished substantial food aid to Cuba, notably in the form of powdered milk: to this day, the authorities of the unified Germany refuse to honour past agreements, even in the form of purely humanitarian aid. And the European Community has adopted the same attitude.
This policy was strongly denounced by Rosario Navas, Cuban ambassador to the European Community, and by Dorothy Piermont, a member of the European par-
Ulrich Bojé, a solidarity activist in the former GDR, also intervened on this question.
Daniel Algeria, for the Sandinista Front, Frei Betto, Brazilian liberation theologian, Hugo Diaz, for the Commission of Human Rights in Costa Rica, Teresa Gutierrez, in the name of the United States Peace for Cuba Committee, Janey Buchan (a member of the European parliament from Scotland), and Herman Veerbek (a Dutch MEP), spoke on the situation in Cuba created by the blockade, and denounced the hypocrisy with which the question of "human rights" was used to justify the strangulation of the Cuban revolution.
Irma Barrera, a deputy in the Cuban National Assembly, described the gains of the past 30 years in the fields of education, health and womens' liberation.
Finally, Roberto Robaina, general secretary of the Young Communists and a member of the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party, stressed the will of the Cuban people to preserve their independence.
He also spoke of the Cuban people's desire to continue along the road already traced while making the changes necessary for the preservation of the revolution -the struggle against the "internal blockade". , the "bureaucratic blockade" - and spoke of their confidence in their capacity to resist.
The importance accorded to this initiative by the Cuban leadership was underlined by Fidel Castro's lengthy message to the congress.
Heinz Dietrich, a lecturer at the University of Mexico, concluded the congress by talking of the solidarity tasks ahead. * FRANCE The crime of solidarity FORTY people were arrested in the course of a raid in Brittany in May 1992, for having given shelter to Basque militants who were supposedly members of the revolutionary nationalist organization ETA. Some have been charged or are still being held in the Parisian region. This is not the first case in which the French police have acted in this manner to crack down on solidarity with the Basque struggle — the priest in the village of Espalet, in the - French Basque country, accused
AROUND THE WORLD of having sheltered a Basque refugee without papers, has recently been released from prison, thanks to pressure from the inhabitants of Espalet and the religious
But this time the French state has decided to set an example: the Bretons charged are accused of "association with wrongdoers" and of assisting people without proper papers "in liaison with a terrorist enterprise": they could thus receive heavy
In the course of April and May, some leaders of ETA had already been arrested in the French Basque country as a result of closely coordinated operations between the French and Spanish police.
Police intimidation has however not succeeded in blocking all demonstrations of support for the Basque refugees.
In Brittany, committees of support have been formed in several towns with the participation of numerous individuals and different political forces — Breton nationalist organizations, the Greens, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (French section of the Fourth International), and others — while a variety of personalities have pledged their support to the imprisoned Bretons. A demonstration of 2,500 people took place at Quimper on May 23.
Finally, the trial of 20 Basques, residents of the Spanish or French states, will open in Paris on June 19, 1992 — the French police are trying to lump together the cases of these militants, who were arrested in the course of different operations between 1989 and 1991, under the same heading, called "Operation Delta". * EGYPT Farag Foda assassinated FARAG FODA was an internationally known Egyptian writer, famous in particular for his struggle for democracy and secularism. On June 8, 1992, he was assassinated in Cairo - by fundamentalists, according to all the evidence. Many demonstrations condemning this crime have taken place in Egypt and abroad. The text below has received numerous signatures from personalities in the Arab world.
"On June 8, 1992, assassins killed one of the most courageous Egyptian writers. The terrorists fired on the freedom of expression for which Farga Foda fought. "We denounce this aberration which amounts to replying to reasoned argument by physical violence, undertaken by a tiny group which represents neither Egypt nor religion and which attempts, in the name of religion, to terrorize free thought, culture and art, following the numerous crimes which it has committed recently against the non-Muslim minorities and is threats 1 1 against supporters of secularism."* July 6, 1992 # 232 International Viewpoint
The prophet
International Viewpoint # 232 • July 6, 1992
HAITI
RECENT weeks have
The National Federation of Students of
Haiti (FENEH) celebrated university been eventful in