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3 Stop the French nuclear tests in the Pacific! Vietnamese democrats!
Turkey: Islamic Fundamentalists in local government
Ernest Mandel On 14 June 1995 Vietnamese authorities in Hanoi arrested Hoang Minh Chinh for the third time since
1923-1995 1974. A veteran of the Vietnamese revolution, Hoang
(75) is accused of "propaganda against the socialist regime". The same charge has been made against
Rest of world
auspices of the fourth international.
International Viewpoint #269 September 1995
UN Conference on Women
Marie-Annick Vigan
Erdal Tan
Introduction
Salah Jaber
Do Trung Hieu (57), arrested in Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon) the same day.
Ernest Mandel, 1923-1925
Hoang has already spent 11 years in prison and 9
François Vercammen more under tight parole as a result of his thought
16 A Rapid Survey of a Substantial Body of Text
Salah Jaber
We the undersigned, who have always acted in solidarity with the Vietnamese people's struggle for inde-
18 Ernest Mandel Study Centre Appeal pendence, demand the immediate liberation of these two prisoners. All they have done is express their
22 The obituaries ideas in public.
La Jornada (Mexico), Süddeutsche Zeitung,
Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany), El Pais (Spain),
International protest secured the release of the dissi-
The Guardian (Great Britain)
dent novelist Duong Thu Huong in 1991. It will win the release of Hoang Minh Chinh and Do Trung Hieu
Le Soir (Belgium) Le Monde (France)
in 1995 !
30 Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy
Paris, 10 July 1995 reviewed by Charlie Post
Signatures and contributions to the solidarity campaign can be sent to Dr Jean-Michel Krivine, 97 rue de
35 News Reports
Sannnois, 95120 Paris, France. Make cheques out
Burmese opposition leader freed to FORUM -Hoang Minh Chinh campaign
1.2 m. Mexicans respond to EZLN
[Signatures so far include HA Duong Tuong, HOANG Khoa
British Bosnia Solidarity Campaign
Khoi, Jean-Michel KRIVINE, Yves LACOSTE, Gilles PER-
Dutch Internationalists' congress
AULT, Madeleine REBERIOUX, Laurant SCHWARTZ, Léon
Fourth International Youth Camp
SCHWARTZENBERG, and Pierre VIDAL-NAQUET].
crime.
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Stop the French nuclear tests in the Pacific!
The campaign against the series of test explosions planned for September continues to grow. Jean-Louis Michel of the French weekly Rouge comments from "the belly of the beast" on the character of this new movement.
THE CAMPAIGN is characterised by an original combination of different kinds of action. This is its strength.
Mass movements here, spectacular "happenings" there, economic and institutional pressures elsewhere.
The Pacific is, obviously, host to the strongest and most significant articulation of forces. The initial focus was the departure of [the Greenpeace ship] Rainbow Warrior II from Papeete and its return after being boarded by French marines. The current focus is around the Peace Flotilla. But wherever you look spectacular initiatives are developing in parallel, controlled directly by those involved. There is both an unitary mass movement and an intense lobbying activity directed at parliamentary and governmental bodies. The result is an effervescence of activities, competing to affirm an authentic movement of public opinion. This opinion necessarily expresses itself in very diverse ways. Which means every political and cultural current, every individual can easily find a place. Another strong point of this movement is the way it permits the co-existence and interaction of what were originally quite separate preoccupations. The anti-missile campaigns of the 1980s managed (not without difficulty) to find a point of balance between the pacifist aspirations of a section of young people, and an anti-austerity, anti-cuts and anti-American mobilisation of the traditional political forces. The current campaign has three sources
International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995 3
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STOPUSE DE LINT ARE SULIDARITE AVEC LE * SELUKITE -ANS A LI COMITE ANTINUCLEAIRE
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e
* FRANCE/PACIFIC
* Pacifism. No longer essentially the preoccupation of young people, pacifism is re-emerging as a reaction of those "from below" to their discredited governments and the discredited United Nations. After Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, the pacifist current can only grow in numbers.
* Ecology. Present everywhere in the movement, but in very different intensities and forms. Its growing stronger can be seen in the way cold scientific argument and boycott strategies are becoming central to the campaign.
These two tactics are being borrowed from the environmental struggles of recent years.
* Democracy. The democratic aspect was already present in the [French] anti-nuclear mobilisations of 1982-
3. But this time round democratic demands have appeared as the horizon with which the French government cannot tamper. The pro-independence currents in the Pacific colonies (Polynesia and
Kanaky/New Caledonia) and the governments of the
Pacific Forum countries have placed democratic demands at the centre of their demands. How else could it be? How to evade the conclusion that the populations most directly concerned should have their say about any tests planned for their territory and region. In the current context, the
"subversive" content of these democratic demands is very real. If it continues to insist on the tests, the French government will expose itself to a series of considerable risks. The antibomb campaigns will grow in intensity throughout any series of tests. This will create an international climate which the government will not be able to ignore indefinitely. Government meetings, cultural and sporting events, each will be seized as a moment to accuse the Chirac government. The industrial and commercial milieu is increasingly concerned about the boycott of French products and companies under way in several countries. And on the home front, each budget cut demonstrates the waste represented by investment in the bomb and nuclear tests, at a time when austerity is supposedly the order of the day. All this leaves little room for manoeuvre for the French government: give way quickly in the face of the wave of protests, or continue being obstinate, and go down to a humiliating defeat in a few months from now. This piece forms a fragment of a longer article appearing in this month's edition of Inprecor, our sister publication in French. For a full version of the article, contact us at the address on page 2. 4 International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995
New Zealand
Keith Locke, foreign affairs spokesperson for the New Zealand Alliance, told Green Left Weekly that the Alliance "supported calling an urgent meeting of the South Pacific Forum countries to co-ordinate a response to end all military ties with the French". The recent cross-Tasman exercises involving the Australian navy, tour French and six N navy ships was evidence of expanding military relations that ought to be cancelled, he said. Apart trom supporting the Rainbow Warrior, the Alliance has also been involved in various protests, outside the rais test be iven maton France on
June 16. " With a lot of working class support, we are trying to make an appeal to French workers and link up with protests there." The national trade union federation is backing a campaign to boycott French goods and companies.
Background
French nuclear testing in the Pacific goes back a long way. Between 1960 and 1989, France staged 184 nuclear tests. Prior to 1966, when testing in the Pacific began, France used another of its former colonies, Algeria, to stage 17 tests - four atmospheric and 13 underground blasts. From 1966 France moved its tests to the Pacific, conducting 44 atmospheric tests over Moruroa and Fangataufa Atolls before international pressure forced an end to the blasts. Part of the success of that campaign was due to the New Zealand government's dispatch of a frigate to Moruroa, with support from the Australian government which sent a ship to refuel it. From 1974, French tests were conducted underground at both Moruroa and Fangataufa. The last test took place in October 1991 before the government announced, in April 1992, that it was joining the unilateral Soviet moratorium begun in the mid 1980s. Altogether 123 underground tests has been carried out, almost all at Moruroa which, by 1989, had been the site of 118 underground blasts. French governments have not only refused to take responsibility for the environment and health consequences of the underground tests, they have actively tried to obstruct scientific research into the effects of radioactive contamination. Source: Green Left Weekly, 21 June 1995
Anti-nuclear protest in the Pacific
The left response
### Fiji opeti Senituli, director of the Pacitic Concerns Kesource Centre PCRC) in Fiji, has called on all non-governmental organisation to join in the campaign. He wants the immediate suspension of the French government's partner status in the South Pacific Forum. By doing so, "the Pacific governments will prove to France and the rest of the world that they mean business when they oppose French nuclear testing in the South Pacific Forum's annual communiqué" He urged Pacific Island countries to boycott the South Pacific games scheduled tor August in the capital of French Polynesia, Papeete. The boycott is being supported by the indigenous Maohi people of French Polynesia. "I have spoken to Oscar Temaru, the leader of the largest pro-independence and anti-nuclear political party, who is also mayor of Faaa, the largest city in French Polvnesia and he has expressed their total support tol the boycott." The PCRC, which is the secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, wants to be kept in touch with regional campaign actions. It can be contacted on (+679) 304 649, fax (+679) 304 755.
### Australia
The main enemy is always the one at home, and the Australian uranium mining programme has come in for a thoroughly justified bad press. Australian uranium may well end up in the French weapons program, says Max Lane, Democratic Socialist Party senate candidate in New South Wales (NSW). It may also be sold to Indonesia and other countries in the region. "The Keating government is also firmly linked into the nuclear cycle through its hosting of US military bases which are key communications installations for the targeting of nuclear and other weapons". Western Australia Greens (WA Greens) Senator Dee Margetts agrees. "The community must demand that the Australian government not sell our uranium stockpile to France when it is being made into nuclear bombs and tested in our region!" Dockers are refusing to unload French ships, postal workers have refused to handle French embassy mail, and some French planes have been boycotted by airport workes
(hased on report in Green Left Weekly)
LA BOMBEOu
ONE PUTSCH
JEAN
MARTE
Cabu
President Chirac's choice: the bomb or the putsch?
The tatoo on the soldier's arm refers to many career soldiers' support for the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen
Kanaky
As in Polynesia, the independence movement in this French colony ("New
Caledonia") refuses to separate the nuclear issue from the other institutional, political and economic effects of French colonial government. "The Kanaks and other peoples of Oceania experience this decision as a
Pointles provocaL ays Paul outine, says Paul Néaoutine,
Front for a Socialist Kanaky). "This will impact on the relations of out territories with the neighbouring countries"
International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995 5
China