Workers' movement must act against apartheid STOP THE HANGINGS!

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dis-invest companies calling on • the Lab apartheid/capitalist under tórture should be mete out heavy penalties to. which prop up the apartheid trolled authorities THE disallowed as evidence. those involved. system! Anything less is a all links with Rownt Last week ANC leader Nelson Mandela completed 20 THE state ot soul dilla uvro -e Quith Afrina Anas not fail to make the anniversaries of its own repression.

As internationallyknown class war prisoner Nelson Mandela entered his third decade of imprisonment on Robben Island, the regime in South Africa marked the occasion by condemning three militants of the African National Congress to death, and by murdering a further black militant in his prison cell at Johannesburg police headquarters.

Ernest Depate, aged 21, was claimed by police to have made a "confession" to charges under the Internal Security Act. He was then allegedly. 'found" dead in his cell, hanging from a strip of blanket.

In February of this year, in the same police headquarters, Dr. Neil Aggett, a white full time official of a black trade union, became the first white prisoner to die in this way. He had been held without trial for three months., Since 1963, 47 people have 'died" in custody, 13 of them by hanging.

Such killings are part and parcel of the climate of torture and terror utilised by the state forcibly to extract "confessions"

from prisoners.

The trial of the three ANC militants last week saw the judge reject appeals from the defence that statements obtained under torture should be disallowed as evidence.

The three men, Simon Mohoerane, Jerry Mosololi and Marcus Motaung, were accused of carrying guerrilla attacks on police THAT solidarity resolutions and action in Britain have a real impact on black trade unionists in South Africa is confirmed by the latest issues of KWASA, the journal of the Media Workers Union of South Africa.

KWASA quotes the resolution of solidarity adopted by this year's Annual Delegate Meeting of the National Union of Journalists. And it reports also on the 'week of action' and demonstration called in Britain by the Anti-Apartheid Movement in solidarity with the 16month strike at Wilson Rowntree in South Africa.

stations at Moroka and elsewhere.

Mohoerane described in court the horrific ways in which he was tortured, and pointed out that he made a statement only because police then threatened to torture his mother. d.

The heroic but isolated armed actions of the ANC's armed wing offer little more than nuisance value to the armed forces of the South African state. But that is a strong additional motive for the regime to mete out heavy penalties to. those involved.

At a time of rising class struggle in the black proletariat of South Africa, the repression meted out to these ANC. militants is designed to terrorise and intimidate leading activists.

It is doubly vital therefore that the labour moyement internationally rallies against this barbaric trial and demands the lifting of the death sentences against brave men who have fought arms in hand against Se member Regional of the London last week, views on of the Executive Greater Joke to giving his how the movement should neip ine ugue dha finht against apartheid. I have no doubt that the articles that have appeared in the Labour Briefing (in two successive issues). in Labour Herald, in Tribune. in The Observer. Time Out. in jail on Rohhen Island the Militant and Socialist Organiser have made the crucial point that there are comrades both in County Hall and in the town halls who are, and in many cases. have been for years, able to decide whether to support the apartheid regime or the oppressed peoples of South Africa.

Whilst the dogma of apartheid itself. represented in South Africa by the forced separation of the races, is a sickening abhorrence to all just and free thinking people. the central struggle for South Africa's blacks remains the fight for economic survival. Paying lip service to the liberation movements by condemning ideological apartheid on platforms and in articles has been the traditional and historical way party comrades have contributed to the anti-apartheid struggle It has never been eough!

If the Labour Party honestly wants to contribute to the struggle of the South African oppressed then it must do so where it counts - by forcing those it has voted into power in County Hail. and the town halls to dis-invest in companies which prop up the apartheid system! Anything less 1s a clear and unequivocal YES to apartheid policies!

This is the point I wish to drive home for once and for all. If we don't attack apartheid when we're clearly able, then we are supporting The irony where we read of comrades calling for the withdrawal of the British Fleet in the South Atlantic (an issue over which we have minimal influence), and continue to invest in RTZ (one over which we have direct control) displays crass hypocrisy.

What support have you received in the labour movement in London?

I have had very encouraging support from the Regional Executive committee of the London Labour Party. And at the last meeting a motion was passed calling for the GLC to disinvest from RTZ.

That went some way to righting the ridiculous situation the GLC seem to have got themselves into, namely, that after one year they had to be reminded of the policy they. themselves had passed men con.

Comrade Ted Knight played a significant part along with comrades like Jeremy Corbyn and others from the Militant Tendency in defeating Mike Ward's and Ken Livingstone's attempt to torpedo the motion.

More important still is the measure of surport l have received to a motion J have submitted for the forthcoming meeting of GLRC trolled authorities to sever all links with Rowntree Mackintosh and support the sacked strikers in South Africa.

At the. . ILEA Labour Group meeting on July 12 a motion was carried about Rowntree Mackintosh these lines. I was particularly encouraged by the attitude and support of comrades Bryn Davies, Frances Morrell, Deidre Wood and Keith Veness who went out of the way to speak out in support of my call for action against Rowntree Mackintosh.

Where do you go from here?

Widening the battle for disinvestment and linking it with the TUC's own campaign to bring the public sector into play on the side of disinvestment - trade union, Co-op and local authority pension funds. Pressure can and should be applied to link up with the Co-op Bank rather than those banks such as Barclays (who had at one time actually invested in South African • Bonus Bunds -South African Army shares!) and Nat West, (also directly connected with the apartheid regime).

We must follow the example of Camden on Rowntree Mackintosh, and the Labour Group Lewisham which transferred its account from Barclays to Coop. It can be done. It must be done.

The best practical form of action we can take is to sever all links with the South African apartheid regime and those who give succour to such despicable policies.

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Socialist Organiser no. 95 August 121982. Page 5 what the charges were, or Ior the irst charge consists even if they were dead or simply of the fact that alive. Wang wrote to the National There is still no news of People's Congress to over two dozen other activ- protest at the three year ists arrested in April 1981 labour camp sentence A LEADING activist of the Chinese Democratic Movement, Wang Xizhe, was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment by Guangdong People's Court on May 28.

The court further stripped him of all political rights as a citizen for 4% years after completion of the sentence.

Another leading activist, he Qiu, was sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

Both Wang and He were central in setting up the National Association of Unofficial Journals of China, the umbrella organisation for dozens of democratic movement magazines thranahnut China The latest bulletin of the Hong Kong-based Chinese Democratic Movement Resource Centre (CDMRC) gives details of the trials. The Chinese. authorities stressed to a Hong Kong student delegation that they were properly conducted public trials, with 40 people in the courtroom. Yet the two men's families were not informed of the trial, let alone allowed to attend!

The authorities have refused to make available court transcripts specifically demanded by the deleations of the torture inflicted by the military regime in El Salvador on a volunteer worker for the Green Cross, Ronald Reagan has been attempting to certify that the junta is respectful of human rights and implementing land reforms.

The victim of the torture was committing the "crime" of distributing medicines to displaced people. He was arrested Latest issue of Polish Solidarity Campaign News - articles on resistance in Poland and solidarity in Britain and abroad. • 3 30 nÕ aH gation from Hong Kong's two university student Since Wang and He were arrested in April 1981, their families and friends have repeatedly asked for news and visiting rights, to no avail. They have not been told their whereabouts, and earlier. and subjected to savage torture sounaprout rooms at military headquarters.

The Washington Post has revealed that he was strapped to a rotating wheel, similar to a mediaeval rack, beaten, forced to inhale iime, and suspended by ropes while wire was used to apply pressure to his testicles.

The case is not unique. But it is publicised in the USA at the very time that Reagan is fighting in ConWang Xizhe 1)Agitating to subvert the country's legal system.

2) Making counterrevolutionary agitation and propaganda.

3) Organising a counterrevolutionary organisation.

The authorities' evidence minda imposed on Liu Qing by the gress for renewed aid to the junta.

All of the evidence points to an unending tide of military violence by the Salvadorean regime in its struggle to repress the workers and poor peasants. And in this war, the overt military and economic aid provided by Washington has been supplemented by clandestine aid through the CIA.

As CIA director William Casey has publicly admitted, the agency has:

"provided the Salvadorean government with information and capabilities which helped it to reduce the supply of weapons from Cuba and Nicaragua and to break up guerrilla formations intended to destroy the election by creating disruptive violence.

In addition to CIA "dirty tricks"., * the Salvadorean junta has been able to enlist the aid of the Honduran army, patrolling the long common border with El Salvador - and in some areas linking up with Salvadorean troops inside the country itself.

The final week of July saw this combination of forces begin a renewed offensive against positions held by the left wing guerrilla forces of the FMLN.

Earlier such offensives have wound up costly failures for the junta. Perhaps expecting that further failure is already in the making, US Democratic Party Senator Christopher Dodd has warned of the Peking Bureau of Public Security for publishing the court transcripts of the trial of Wei Jingshen.

As evidence • for the second charge, the authorities cited Wang's numerous essays and articles.

As a veteran of the movement, Wang had already served a prison sentence in 1974 (during the days of the Gang of Four) for his contribution to the famous "Li Yizhe" wall posters, urging China's rulers to implement a system of likelihood that the Reagan administration will soon be forced to send troops as well as weapons to prop up their bloodthirsty client regime in El Salvador.

Meanwhile . the united front of extreme right wing parties, which has been constructed since the so-called "elections" to the Constituent Assembly in March, has agreed a common platform -consisting of largely meaningless pledges to end human rights abuses, continue with land reform, and announce a timetable for general elections.

With the escalation of repressive violence by the right wing regimes in Guatemala (61 left wing guerrillas killed in the last two days of July) and Honduras, and continuing US pressure on Nicaragua, the struggles of the workers and peasants of El Salvador remain key to the development of the struggle against imperialism in the whole of Central America.

Reagan's administration is plainly prepared to pull out all the stops in order to lend its material and political support to the junta: it is more vital than ever that the workers' movement rally behind the workers and peasants of El Salvador, taking action to block the imperialist war effort, and demanding that Cuba's Stalinist government turn some of its endless windy rhetoric into tangible arms and aid for the forces fighting imperialism in El Salvador. socialist democracy. Even after the Gang of Four were deposed in 1976, it took much petitioning of the new leadership before he and his comrades were eventually freed (and their convictions annulled) in late 1978. - Wang became the most active campaigner in the 'Li Yizhe wallposter" group, and threw his energles into the new-bor democracy movement. He and He Qiu were both on the editorial board of the TURKEY's military junta headed by General Evren is picking up the pieces of a disastrous failure of its monetarist economic policy.

Finance Minister Turgut Ozal has resigned following the collapse in June of Banker Kastelli, the country's largest moneybroker which had mushroomed under Ozal's policies of high interest rates.

Source

Kastelli had represented an attempt to generate a domestic source of finance capital for the development of Turkish industry. It siphoned off the savings of over five million small svers - one in eight of the Turkish population, many of them the officers of Evren's military apparatus. But it crashed, owing $1 billion, leaving the government to take emergency steps to preserve confidence both in the banking system and in the founding issue of "Responsibility" National journal of the Association of Unofficial Journals of China, campaigning for socialist democracy and characterising the Chinese Communist Party. as bureaucratic and oppressive. This is wht the Chinese state calls "counter-revolutionary"!

As for the third charge, the authorities used the pretext of national security to refuse any information regarding their evidence.

Clearly Wang is once again being imprisoned for his political views.

He Qiu has also been changed with 'counterrevolutionary' agitation and organisation on the same sort of 'evidence"

He, who like Wang was a Red Guard in the days of the Cultural Revolution, became disillusioned with China's domestic and foreign policies. A letter to his brother in 1972, expressing his critical views, was intercepted by the authorities and he was sentenced to three years' jail.

When the democratic movement began after the 100,000-strong Tianenmen demonstration and the fall of the Gang of Four, Ho became active in unofficial journals.

He later founded "Road to the People" , the most influential journal in Southern China.

Palicia \policia

I NAcionAL "HACIENDA) military junta itself.

Indeed the collapse of Kastelli has been followed by publication of a draft constitution which appears to offer an extension of democratic rights - to all but trade unionists and communists!

And Ozal - seen by the international banking fraternity as a model Friedmanite monetarist, has been replaced by Adnan Kafaoglu, who describes himself as a "liberal pragmatist" - but has declared his commitment to stick to Ozal's agreements with the IMF and to a continuation of tight monetarist policies.

Junta

The acute economic weakness of Turkey is the factor which continuously raises problems and contradictions for the Evren junta as it struggles both to contain the strength of the working class and to solve the problems of Turkish capital.

Both Wang and He, along with two dozen others have been adopted as political prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International since their arrest in April 1981.

Wang has demanded the right of appeal against his sentence. Hong Kong literary and student groups have demanded the following:

1) that the appeal proceedings be fully public, allowing Wang full rights to defend himself in open 2) that Wang's family, and delegates from Hong Kong academic and student organisations, be allowed to attend the appeal.

3) that the Hong Kong delegation be allowed to meet and discuss with Wang's defence counsel.

5) that full court transcripts of the entire case and appeal be made available to the public.

All socialists should further demand that Wang Xizhe and He Qiu be released immediately, alongside all others in the democratic movement now in detention.

Send letters, telegrams to the Chinese Embassy, Portland Place, London W1 (with copies to Socialist Committee for the Defence of the Democratic Movement in China, 41 Brondesbury Rd., London NW6 and to CDMRC, Kowioon City Od ход 89278, Hong Kong).

Get your Labour Party and trade union branch to ask for a speaker to its Subscribe to the UKbased Committee newsletter, £3 a year.

Send for copies of the petition demanding the release of Wang and He.

But no answer to this situation can be found within the framework of capitalism - the defeat of the junta and establishment of a workers' and peasants' government is the only way in which a planned economy can be developed.

Turkey Solidarity Campaign Contact: BM ox 5965, London WC1N 3XX.

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Organiser no.95 Augus.

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