AROUND THE WORLD
CREATION OF THE POR-UNIFICADO
On July 2 and 3, 1983, a unification congress of the POR-Combate (Revolutionary Workers Party - Bolivian section of the Fourth International and Vanguardia Comunista munist Vanguard of the POR) took place. The new organisation has taken the name of POR-Unificado. The first issue, in July, of the newspaper of the new organisation, called Bandiera Socialista, was entirely given over to the analysis of the congress. The unification has come after four years of discussion and joint activity between the two organisations.
The congress took place in the headquarters of Radio Nueva America, who broadcast the first hour of the proceedings. There were 150 delegates present, miners, workers, peasants, teachers and students, coming from La Paz, Huanuni, Siglo XX, Potosi, Oruro, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Escoma, San Jose. Fraternal greetings were given by a representative of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International and the PRT (Revolutionary Workers Party), Mexican section of the Fourth International. Representatives of Bolivian organisations, the PRIN (Revolutionary Party of the Nationalist Left), and the Revolutionary Front of the Left (FRI), and a leader of the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB), also addressed the conference.
In his address, the representative of the PRIN, who brought the greetings of Juan Lechin to the congress, stated that, 'Our presence is neither casual nor just for form... We are realistic and modest,
'their own organisations, through the Bolivian Workers Confederation, a people's assembly, a workers and peasants parliament.
A praesidium of six union leaders including Felipe Vazquez and Augusto Leon, miners leaders from Huanuni and Siglo XX, organised the discussion, which concluded by adopting the general line of the programme, the statutes, and the political resolution for POR-Unifi. cado. It was also decided to maintain the new organisation as the Bolivian section of the Fourth International. A central committee of 17 full members and two alternatives was elected
The political resolution, extracts of which are published in Bandiera Socialista No 1, outlines the way in which the austerity policy carried out by the Democratic People's Union (UDP) government and the pressure of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sharpen the anti-worker measures being taken, and underlines the weakness of the UDP governmental coalition, shaken by numerous internal crises. The document looks finally at the most recent workers actions, the occupation of COMIBOL by the miners, and the appeal by the second congress of the Single Confederation of Rural Workers in favour of a co-government between the COB, the CUTCB, and the UDP. These events allow the comrades to affirm that 'the workers are not defeated.'
The POR-Unificado proposes to launch a national campaign against the austerity policy of the UDP government on the following lines, 'Against the economic measures that the IMF wishes to impose. For the rejection of the foreign debt. Against unemployment and for the right to work. For the minimum living wage and sliding scale of wages. For the workers, through the COB, to revise and determine the price rises of necessary articles. For the workers to decide the rate of production. For workers majority co-management in state enterprises, and for workers control and their right of veto in private enterprises?
The other axis of the political work of the POR-Unificado will be the fight for 'the constitution of a united front of the workers parties and people's organisations around the COB, concentrated on the need to deepen the present demodetat process and prevent a fascist coup 1. The COB has recently proposed to the UDP government a co-government formula, along the lines of the workers majority co-management in the mines.
STRIKE IN THE HAMBURG SHIPYADS but the PRIN undertakes to take an active part in the programmatic unity of the left.' The FRI delegate declared that, 'co-government (1) requires a powerful instrument that the left forces must create....The working class needs a driving force, and a first step towards this has been taken here.' Comrade Karina spoke to the conference on behalf of the revolutionary women of the POR-Combate to highlight the important role of organised women in the revolutionary process.
After the opening contribution by Victor Sosa, leader of the former VC del POR, the long time Bolivian Trotskyist leader Hugo Gonzalez Moscoso, member of the former POR-Combate, opened the debate of the unification congress. At the end of this contribution he stated that it is necessary to pose the question of power for the popular masses through 26
On September 12, the workers at the Hamburg shipyards voted to begin an indefinite occupation to stop threatened mass layoffs. The action is being supported by the engineering union, IG Metall. The workers hung the flag of Solidarnose outside the yard as the symbol of their action. There is a possibility that this action may spread to the shipyards in Bremen as well. The shipyards in question are owned jointly by the German federal government and the states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holdstein. workers decide every day by vote whether to continue the occupation. They are doing no work in the yard itself, only small tasks to assure their right to use the canteen. This action is being supported both by the official union and by Aktive Metaller, a grouping expelled from IG Metall two years ago when it won the majority on the factory council (Betriebsrat). This split has now been healed in this action.
The workers have won an initial victory with a labor court decision rescinding 1,300 layoffs. These layoffs, however, are not definitely called off; the final outcome depends on the owners decision about the future of the yard.
Messages of solidarity for this action are important and should be sent to the following address: Betriebsrat, Howaldtswerke, Deutsche Werft, Rossstrasse 20, 2000 Hamburg 11, Federal Republic of Germany
### HUGO BLANCO
SUSPENDED FROM PARLIAMENT Partido Revolucionario Trabajadores, Workers Party), Peruvian section of the Fourth International, has been the victim of repression several times over the last few years. In 1981 Teofilo Inga Quispe, a member of the PRT, was murdered by the hired thugs of the mayor of San Luis. In June 1981 Hugo Blanco was beaten up during a demonstration by the street my parliamentary immunity for this period. Furthermore this procedure flagrantly disregards article 10, Chapter 9 of the internal Parliamentary Regulations, which stipulate that such a suspension cannot exceed 15 days.
The form of this suspension is illegal according to the very rules of the Peruvian Parliament. The vote must be organised by calling on the members of parliament to stand up or remain seated. Abstentions are not allowed. (named) vote has to be taken if a member requests one. The vote which suspended me was a complete farce which is a dis anonymously since the members were asked only to approve the proposal by their fists on their desks, by
FREEDOM FOR THE COTTBUS PEACE ACTIVISTS
The East German bureaucracy has launched a counter attack on the development of the independent peace move men in the country supported by the Protestant churches. Wearing of peace badges has been banned, their slogans taken up by the government and activists imprisoned, or expelled from the coun
We publish below a letter-petition signed by intellectuals resident in France
In the same year there was the arrest and torture of several militants of the PRT in Ayacucho, the murder by the 'sinchis' (a particularly chairperson to provide a figure for vot- Cottbus.
section of the police of Raimundo Mitma, a member of the PRT in Ayacucho, the arrest of a journalist from Combate Socialista the PRT's newspaper, etc.
These various attacks clearly show that the repressive forces have the PRT in their target sights. This wave of repres sion has recently taken the form of the suspension of Comrade Hugo Blanco from his parliamentary functions until the end of the present session. contrary to the legal statutes which only allow for such a suspension for two
This measure is an open attack on the democratic rights of a current in the workers movement. But it is also, for a revolutionary party based in the popular layers of a society where the economic crisis is in full swing, a direct attack on its parliamentary salary of our comrade will not be paid throughout this period.
We ask you to publicise this flagrant attack on the democratic rights of our comrades of the PRT and to send messages of protest to;
Presidente Belaunde Terry
We publish below the statement made by Hugo Blanco on the occasion of his
On August 29, 1983 I was suspended as a member of the Peruvian parliament for having accused, on the floor of Parliament, General Clemente Noel, military commander of the Ayacucho region, of being an assassin.
I protest against the form and the whole basis of this peremptory procedure which suspends me from parliament until the end of this parliamentary session (December) and thereby deprives me of
'acclamation', a sort of noise level test!
possible for the
The request for a rollcall vote made by the member, Enrique Fernadez Chacon, did not even get an answer from the parliamentary chairperson.
As to the substance of the affair, I stand by my accusations of assassination and genocide. I can give the lists of the names of peasants who have been executed and the villages bombed on the orders of General Noel. And I am not the first to publicise such information. Already at the beginning of this year the prosecutor of Ayacucho province manded that charges be brought against
Also at the end of June the vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights had made result in a legal investigation due to the simple fact that the General is covered by his military functions and journalists no longer have access to the zone of mili-
My suspension is the most elementary denial of democratic rights. It is part of which has been characterised by a campaign denouncing Amnesty International, by a restriction on democratic guarantees for the next election campaign and by a systematic harassing of my party, the Partido Revolucionario do los Trabajadores - Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT). The offices of the PRT have been attacked, one of its members of Parliament has been physically beaten and one of its trade union leaders has been detained and tortured.
Experience has taught us that faced with this type of escalation from the right wing, any stepping back serves only to reinforce its arrogance. We must stand up and defend inch for inch, each of the democratic gains of the masses - without bending to threats or blackmail.
once again, I want to draw these facts to the attention of world call for protests against a flagrant violation of parliamentary rights by a body which is supposed to defend
Hugo Blanco Galdos, August 31, 1983.
against this repression, and for therelease of activists from the peace circle in
Peter Knotter, 25, sentenced to 3 years six months; Petra Knotter, 25, sentenced to 2 years ten months; Bernd Dewards, 21, sentenced to 3 years; Peter Nowick, 25, sentenced to 3 years; all arrested since November 1982
Franck Fischer, sentenced to 2 six months; Christa Fischer, 30, sentenced to 2 years hold Kauczov, 28, sentenced to 3 years; sister Regine tenced to 3 years; and the singer Charlie Scheithauer, 40; all arrested since January
These people are in prison at Cottbus, in the German Democratic Republic, for having infringed Article 99 of the East German penal code 'Divulging information dangerous to the country. They are all, with the exception of two, employed by the Evangelical Church in Cottbus.
The real reason for their arrest is that people from this group of friends have publicly declared themselves to be from the movement 'Schwerter scharen' (Turn the swords into ploughshares) for peace, and have printed posters against the war toys and for hu-
In Apolda, in February 1983, Reinhard Linzke, a lorry driver, was arrested for having refused to do his service as a
In Brandenburg Uwe Keller, 28 years old, and an artist, has been in prison since October 1981. tenced to 6 years and eight months in a closed prison for having 'attacked security of the state and denigrated the GDR'. Until his arrest he was a Bausoldat (a soldier who does not carry weapons) in a military hospital near Leipzig. He has for a long time been considered as a 'nuisance' by state representatives because of his public appearances as a composer and singer (for example at the "Blues Mass' in East Berlin). For that he has already served a sentence of one year at the end of the 1970s. At the present time Uwe Keller is in the psychiatrie service of the prison in Brandenburg. He is kept under drugs.
The signatories of this letter demand their immediate release.