[By Our FOREIGN STAFF THERE is • no…]

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By Our FOREIGN STAFF THERE is • no difference fc bat ererhe lid erIce he ee ts. ok he ng sal rt, fic he ICes ey of in of to to ainst missiles Europe. "We are for a simple and clear I US principle-equal security for all. or a they US, British or French missile it soviet they are ovites can hit the USSR and its allies,"

the resolution added. vound "It is our inalienable right i Soviet defence • against seven have theD.

calls 'the peace movement' in the "marchers' there through their own y the bureaucracy?

of the "Peace Weeks" is now: ing numbers takine « Peace, decreasing, owing to the grow13,000 turned up to a Week" forum in Halle last year, compared with 700 the previous year. But, as support for the peace movement grows, the East German Church, anxious to maintain its modus vivendi with the bureaucracy, is becoming increasingly hostile to the peace movement and to the exploitation of its "Peace Weeks" by the autonomous peace movement.

But the activity of the peace movement which causes the state authorities most concern is the organisation of unofficial rallies and demonstrations.

The best-known of such rallies was the Dresden Peace Forum, 'attended by more than 5,000 youth in February 1982. But similar rallies and demonstrations have also been held in other cities in the GDR, particularly Leipzig; Jena and Magdeburg, and at Whitsuntide last year the peace movement even managed to organise a contingent for an unofficial peace demonstration being held in Prague.

The response of the Stalinist bureaucracy to the emergence of an autonomous peace movement has been the predictable and inevitable one of varying forms of repression.

In the Stalinist press, the peace movement has been subject to a vicious tirade of abuse. It has been accused of being "blind, deaf, hypocritical and incapable of thinking clearly" of being "hostile to peace socialism and the constitution" and its members have been described as "asocial elements, rowdies and hooligans"

Hand in hand with the propaganda offensive against the peace movement has gone physical repression by the state.

House-searches, searches in the street, interrogation, arrest and phone-tapping have all been used to try to break the back of the independent peace more.

ment. Rallies organised by the peace movement nave been broken up by the police. and contingents of supporters of the autonomous peace movement attempting to take part in official "peace" demonstrations have been attacked and arrested.

And. as tbe threat posed by the autonomous peace movement grows. so too does the level of repression.

virtue marial la was imposed on dena to try to prevent the observance of an unofficial one minute's silence for peace. In the days leading up to the event, youths were picked up off the streets for interrogation.

Checkpoints were set up on the roads leading into Jena. Searches were made of all trains arriving. "Suspicious-looking" youths were banned from entering Jena or arrested if they refused to do so. Hundreds of secunty police sealed off the town centre, and the "working class combat groups" were placed on alert for a "major action against the class enemy".

Despite this, 200 managed to take part in the minute's silence. All were photographed, and most subsequently visited by the security police. Fourteen were imprisoned for their involvement in the peaceminute.

Similarly elaborate precautions were taken in February of this year to prevent a repeat of last year's Dresden Peace Forum. Students and school students were warned by their teachers on the orders of the SUPG, not to take part in any unofficial peace event, and the scene of last year's peace forum was used as the site for an official "peace" rally, opened by a fanfare of the NVA orchestra, illuminated by the torches of an NVA guard of honour, and addressed by the President of the Peace Council of the GDR.

But the object of the greatest repression by the state authorities has been a sew-on badge bearing the words "Swords into Ploughshares" around a logo of a sculpture depicting a man carrying out such an action.

Immediately after its appearance in autumn 1980, the crackdown began on those wearing the emblem. Police tore it off clothes Teachers orned their pops not there it, nor use the symbol as a bookmarker. In September 1981 20 East Berlin youth were imprisoned for wearing the emblem, and the Mayor of East Berlin Ul a NIC"

warned: 'those who wear this emblem will tomorrow be:

waving the West German flag, and the next day the swastika."

In March of last year the SUPG (Communist Party)

banned the wearing of the emblem. Failure to comply meant possible loss of apprenticeship, place at university, school or job. More recently, failure to comply has also led to withdrawal of identity papers and replacement by a "PM12'' card, holders of which are classified as "unreliable elements"

The independent peace movement in the GDR, as in other Eastern European countries, is subject to the extremes repression and isolation. Denied, by definition, any support from the ruling bureaucracy and its various mass organisations, the peace movement now faces the hostility of the Church also, which, after an initially sympathetic attitude, quickly linked up with the bureaucracy when confronted with the growing radicalisation and determination of the autonomous peace movement.

In the West, the response of the Right to the genuine peace movements has been a parallel to its response to the emergence of Solidarnosc. Just as the right wing claims hypocritically to support Solidarnosc while attacking trade union rights in the West, so too it hypocritically mouthes support for independent peace movements whilst at •the same time supporting imperialism's war drive.

Socialists in the West must demonstrate in practice to the independent peace movements that their real allies are not warmongering right wingers but the Left and the working class as a whole.

Instead of lining up with the Stalinist bureaucracy and its fellow travellers in the West by attacking the genuine peace movements and organisations 'such as END which support fore in silists support the these peace movements and helping defend them from the daily repression they face from the Stalinist ruling bureaucracies.

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Socialist Organiser no.150 October 13 1983 Page 11

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