WC MUSLOI course welcome the fact that both have escaped further vears in jail Corvalan is well-known among class militants as leader of the Chilean CP and the reasons tor his imprisonment are also well understood.
Vladimir Bukovsky's extraordinarily courageous struggle for the interests of the working people of the Soviet Union is much less well known. A young physicist at Moscow University in the early 1960s, Bukovsky first attracted attention no waen ne was sentenced to one year in a psychiatric hospital for possessing a book by ine Yugoslav dissident and former communist carry leader Dulas.
After his release, Bukovsky paraciparca in demonstrations agains. the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel in 1966. This was the first maior tria of dissidents in Moscow 1960s. and it was the first occasion when a number of Western CPs -including the British. French and Spanish parties — protested against repression in the USSR.
LABOUR Unce again sent to a psycniatric institution, Bukovsky won another onet interlude ourside Jail arter protests from the West. In 1967 he was once more arrested ano tais time sentenced to three years corBetween 1970 and 1972 he emvery dangerous project, which has done more than anything else to bring to light the continuing brutality of the Soviet regime in its drive to crush those who attempt to struggle for democratic rights in the USSR: he compiled a detailed dossier on the use or psychiatric prisons as a means for breaking the wills of the most intransigent fighters for civil For compiling this document and smuggling it out to the West, Bukovsky was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and nve year: exile in 1972. Together with the psychiatrist Gluzman. WHO jailed for protesting against the cuma no sonne or me creat Marxist oppositionist Major Genchaiatric prison, Bukovsky wrote a manual of advice for dissidents subject to psychiatric repression. COr Us HC was SCE LO LIC HOLOEEast German CP had ore, Ine anacked ine oner as outright impudence. This suggests a good understanding of the meaning of accepting the Chilean deal. HIGHEST In the second place, decisions of this kind would be taken at the and the Soviet politburo would be unkey to make such a crass This leaves a second explanation of the deal: the Soviet leadership deliberately wanted to embarrass the Western CPs, particularly the French leadership, warning them in a supremely cynical manner to they stop imagıning that make on behalf of Soviet CYCI HOVC dissidents will bring them political capital at home.
The swap came shortly after the French CP had taken a vigorous stand on behalf of a number of important poutical prisoners, cluding Jiri Muller, Bukovsky and Muller's release had thrown the Czech regime Into contusion - 1 reacted first with new threats against me terrorist crimina muner and then swung round and released him along with Sabata. Hubi. and Rusek. The East German regime was simlarly under Dressure are! its expulsion of Wolf Biermann ana House arrest of NOUCIL Havemann.
INSULT n these conditions the Soviet action involved a direct insult to the Western CPs. with the implied message: we will make deals of this kind as a sign of our refusal to care what campaigns you attempt to organise against us: furthermore. we don't care how much your political standing in France is weakened as a result.
Moscow was deliberately confronting the French Communist Party leadership by linking together the Chilean junta's campaign for the release of Bukovsky with that of the Western CPs.
This explanation of the Soviet action is the most likely one. But if it was intended to show Moscow's matterence to campaigns by tne labour movement in the West for une release or soviet poncal prisoners, the Soviet gesture is unconvincing. number of prisoners there was 'disappeared' prisoners since the coup The verb disappear has taken on a markedly active meaning during ine past months as the junta has been preparing lists of prisoners for release in a renewed attempt to ingratiate usem wit inter national capital, and in partic war me incoming aominista tion of Jimmy Carter. Figures -OV SERE Catholic 'Vicaria de Solidaridad' show that the number of 'disappearances' in proportion to arrests has risen from 5 per cent in January 1976 to 18 per cent in April, to 56 per cent (June), 38 per cent (July), and 57 per cent (August).
After the massive and indiscriminate repression or tne first year, the junta has learnt the value of 'disappearing' evicence trom Is colleagues across the border in Argentina.
The DINA secret police have been built up into the central pillar of the junta's rule.
HAULED Munoz and another Mirista and former prisoner, Cristian Van Jurich, heard from the junta-appointed President of the Supreme Court, Jose Maria Eyzaguirre, how he had been hauled up in front of the DINA chief Contreras in Pinochet's office.
While Eyzaguirre was threatened. and warned to la off the DINA, 'Pinochet merely thing that was said. It was Contields. who seemed to be in charge, they were told.
They also believe that when WHEN LUIS MUNOZ arrived at the notorious DINA interrogation centre of Villa Grimaldi in Chile in December 1974, he was given the number 676. When he was transferred on 1 March 1975, the up to 1,050. collating information in the several jails and concentration camps he was to pass through in the following 18 months, he was able to figure out that less than a hundred of the new detainees had subsequently reappeared, bringing to over 2,000 the number of demanding that the DINA's excesses be curbed, the DINA pressured Pinochet by threatening members of his family carrying WaVE killings, including that of the Spanish UN employee and CP sympathiser Carmelo Soria.
Reciprocal 'national security agreements with neighbouring dictatorships have institutionalised DINA-type tersouthern cone of Latin America. case ormne Bolivian miners leaders, now doing forced labour in southern Chile been the subject of an official protest from the British NUM executive. A delegation led by Lawrence Daly told the Bolivian ambassador that Bolivian COOUS would be blacked. It action to repatriate them was not forthcoming.
The catalogue -OT THIS CO ordinated savagery. bent of the van quard of the Latin American working class is endless. The practice of fitting the names of Chilean prisoners to corpses in Argentina is svmotomatic and shows the urgent need to fight for and generalise actions of the type suggested NUM throughout the labour movement.
The concentration camps of Chile had to be closed down (although not permanently) not merely because of international solidarity action. intransigent struggle of the prisoners inside the camps made their retention untenChilean political prisoners are released from Tres Alamos.
organising centres for action that reached into the working CASS neignooumoods •Wildl remained of the independent trade union orcanisations. and PUBLIC MEETING * For Workers Democracy Workers Revolutionary Party Hear Chairperson EUSTON ROAD even the armed forces themselves. It would be shameful if hens on were OL act on such an example.
David Gardner * Against the Frame-ups and Slanders of the TARIQ ALI FRIDAY 14th JANUARY FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE LONDON NW1 (opposite Euston Station) 7pm (doors open 6.30pm) admission 50p.
In the care of.... IRISH P.O.W/s IN ENGLAN Centre in England and Scotland. As well as Hugh's own experiences, the pamphlet draws on accounts by other prisoners, accounts because of prison censorship had to be smuggled out.
It is a record of brutality and humiliation meted out by warders, demonstrates beyond doubt that Republican prisoners are totall without rights means or rearess RULINGS The pamphlet describes how prison conditions flagrantly contravene the rulings of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights; reveals tne existence Deprivation Units in British prisons, including Wakefield in Yorkshire and Wormwood Scrubs in London: tells ot required psychiatric after being confined in these units.
Irish Republican prisoners refused rights of association with other prisoners, a regulation which is only broken when warders wish to incite attacks on Irish prisoners by fellow inmates. the depressing isolation which is the Republican's lot: sweep out your cell, 'slop-out' and -herween collect your drinking water. Every exercise you carry out slowly for they all represent a devouring of time. Even urinating in the po in the far corner of the cell is doing something to devour time.
Every minute of this isolation drags out like an hour and every hour of the day is spent in a tiny cramped cell, except for the miserable half-hour's ously permed by Secretary.
PRISONERS There are now about 140 Republican prisoners conditions in English and Scottish which GOCLOES.
For of sensors Iran: Briefing.
the Shah's Empire of prisoners who ovine treatment ression in iran ted political held incommunicado periods Detore bene tried; Hugh tells of (b) the use of torture;
unsatisfactory trial procedures; darknesses you executIons deaths.
Declaration 7940 and the Shah Tenant produced by Am nesty International, is a pamphlet OrOTHURS TUFLUIS much narrower in scope than Iran: However Amnesiv Damonier Against Rer mation received WHICH fact month. Amnesty niematona e particularly concerned with suspecopponents who are reported long charged or conviction Black of legal safeguards and contessions unofficial WHIPPING aniu Iran voted for the Universal of Human which forbids the use of torture, in spoke in sup all has all ratified the internationar covenan hung on Socia and Cutua Rights, and the International Cov Political WAITE neal Rights, which is a treaty binding Iranian Penal Code also expressly in the words of the 'all the inforpast decade confirms that torture occur during the period between arrest and trial. All observers to trials since 1965 have anegaton. which have been made ov cerend ants and have expressed their own that prisoners are tortured for the purpose of obtaining Alleged methods of torture in. clude whipping and beating, elec tric shocks. the extraction or nall heavy weions tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to bottle into the anus, and tape
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GEORGE NOVACK PIERRE LAMBERT MICHEL PABLO TIM WOLFORTH