French Government Admits to Torturing to Death Algerian Communist Leader in 1957: ‘My Father’s Murder in Algeria Shaped My Life. That’s Why Macron’s Apology Is So Important’

The president has admitted to French brutality during the Algerian war of independence. Michèle Audin speaks of the fight for justice

Kim Willsher in Paris
Guardian, UK
Sun 16 Sep 2018 01.00 EDT

Photo: Maurice Audin pictured in 1950. A maths teacher and member of the Algerian Communist party, he went missing after being arrested on 11 July 1957. Photograph: STF/AFP/Getty

Michèle Audin was three years old and fast asleep with her two younger siblings when French paratroopers burst into her family’s flat on the third floor of an apartment block in Algiers and dragged her father away. She never saw him again.

Following his late-night arrest, on 11 July 1957, Maurice Audin, 25, a mathematician, was tortured and killed by French soldiers operating under special orders to do whatever it took to crush Algeria’s struggle for independence. His body was never found. His assassins were never identified, never officially investigated and never punished.

Last week, after a relentless 61-year campaign by Audin’s widow Josette, now 87, President Emmanuel Macron admitted the state was responsible for his death and acknowledged for the first time that France had used systematic torture during the Algerian war.

For Michèle, the declaration has been almost a lifetime coming. For France, it has taken more than 55 years to confront the unpalatable truth about a conflict that has long cast a shadow over the republic, its history and successive leaders.

“From the day my father disappeared, my mother thought of nothing else. We, the children, lived with it. My whole life, my identity, was linked to it; to who my father was and what happened to him,” Michèle told the Observer. “My mother never once stopped fighting, and it’s because of her we are talking of Maurice Audin today. My mother wrote to people, she wrote letter after letter in the days when there were no photocopiers. She wrote to everyone and she kept on writing.”

At the time of his arrest, Audin, a pro-independence activist member of the outlawed Algerian Communist party, was accused of harbouring members of the nationalist Front de Libération Nationale, whom French forces suspected of bombings. When he failed to return home, Josette was told he had been shot trying to escape. “Everyone knew what that meant; I knew what it meant too,” she said.

Like France’s role in the deportation of Jews under the Nazi occupation and collaborationist Vichy government – publicly acknowledged by the state only in 1995 – the Algerian war is an event that France would rather forget. Paris reluctantly relinquished its colonial grip on Algeria in 1962 after a seven-year conflict in which French soldiers brutally crushed any hint of rebellion, prompting pro-independence militia to respond in kind.

For decades, French officials talked of “les événements” – events – in Algeria, not “war”, which, like Northern Ireland’s “troubles”, cloaked savagery in euphemism. Historians pieced together tales of torture and assassinations. Film-makers made movies, among them Jean-Luc Godard, whose Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier) in 1960 was banned for three years because it denounced the use of torture by both sides. In 2005 Michael Haneke’s psychological thriller Hidden took a critical look at colonialism, including the 1961 massacre of 300 supporters of Algerian independence in Paris that was hushed up for 37 years.

Official investigations into what went on in France’s former colony were quashed as the state threw a blanket amnesty over atrocities by its forces, and each president found it politically expedient to avoid mentioning the war.

Josette Audin, who never remarried, wrote to each new French leader renewing her appeal for information. Shortly after he was elected in May 2017, Macron called her to say he was willing to do something. On Thursday, the Elysée Palace issued an official statement and the president visited Audin’s home with an apology.

“What Emmanuel Macron has done is a very big step and hugely important, because it concerns so many people in France, particularly those of Algerian origin,” Michèle said. “There was such distortion of the truth for such a long time. The gap between the historical reality and the official version given by the republic was enormous. At last this has been recognised. It’s a pity it’s taken so long for this historic moment to come, but it’s definitely the start of something, not the end.”

In Algeria, Macron’s mea culpa has been welcomed. In France, academics hope his statement and promise to open official archives will encourage witnesses from the period, protected by the amnesty, to come forward. A historian, Gilles Manceron, said Macron had made a “break with the attitude of denial, silence and lies we’ve long had from the state”.

France’s conservative right, historically less enthusiastic about Algerian independence, has accused Macron of scratching old scabs. Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right Front National and a former paratrooper in Algeria – who has repeatedly denied accusations he was involved in torture – dismissed Audin’s assassination as “an event in a war, a civil war … where the rules aren’t the same as in the League of Nations”.

Michèle said she was “satisfied”, even if the truth of her father’s death remained elusive. “We knew my father was tortured and killed, we don’t know exactly how or who killed him, and it’s possible we never will, but to me that’s not the most important thing. For me, it’s important that the system, the state, recognises its responsibility.

“My mother feels differently. She was 26 years old. She had three children. My father was the love of her life. She wants to know who killed him and how. Most of all, she wants to know what they did with his body. She has fought this battle throughout her life until now, and she will continue it.”

A brutal conflict

The Algerian war of independence (1954-62) was a complicated colonial war marked by the brutality of both sides and their use of torture and terror against both military and civilian populations.

France was determined to keep control of its large and longest-held north African colony, invaded in 1830, which it considered an integral part of the republic and home to thousands of French expatriates. The Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) wanted full independence. The conflict also degenerated into a civil war between and within different communities.

In 1962, after negotiations with the FLN, President Charles de Gaulle signed the Evian accords granting Algeria independence, but the killing went on. Algerians who had worked for the French, known as Harkis, were regarded as traitors and many were killed by the FLN or lynch mobs.

Around 800,000 European-Algerians, known as Pieds-Noirs (black feet), fearing reprisals, fled to France, where the mass exodus was unexpected and often unwelcome. Many had never been to France and their families had lived in Algeria for generations, leaving a sense of alienation that endures among their children and grandchildren born in France.

Both countries still dispute the war’s death toll: France claiming 400,000 people, Algeria 1.5 million. Until last week, France refused to publicy admit it sanctioned the use of torture and summary executions against FLN militants and French sympathisers like Maurice Audin.

The Socialist Party of Nigeria and Osun 2018 Election: Matters Arising

Segun Sango, Chairman Socialist Party of Nigeria
Photo credit: PM News Nigeria

Wole Olubanji
Sep 13, 2018

The Socialist Party of Nigeria sees the current internal fighting among the Nigerian ruling elite, as an opportunity to offer an alternative that is pro the masses working people of the country.

We are lucky and very fortunate that the members of the ruling class are fighting among themselves – conspicuously at the national level, which has percolated through to the states of the federation. There is no doubt that this crack in the ruling class shall significantly alter the character of the 2019 general election. And before 2019, it could determine the Osun 2018 gubernatorial election as it helped shaped too the Ekiti election a month earlier.

This is also the ripest moment for the people to reject the rich-politicians from the mainstream political parties, who are ably experienced in deceiving and disappointing the common people every four years. And the masses can do this by uniting against these elites while they are busy fighting themselves over matters of no significance to the growing rate of inflation or unemployment.

But who shall the masses replace these exclusive class of politicians with? How would the people determine a genuine and clear-headed candidate from a lying one? After all the good people of Osun have been deceived in the past by politicians who promised heaven on earth, and even identified with the common people by wearing the simple attires of average citizens, and even patronising, to frenzied showmanship, the street-side “bukas” where the artisans and students have their breakfast and supper.

There is an emerging light in this election that glows differently from the rest. This statement is intended as both figurative and literal expression. There is a light in the candidate of the Socialist Party of Nigeria, in the person of Barrister Alfred Adegoke, whose participation in the 2018 Osun election has illuminated the issues of importance to the survival of the average households in Osun State, and the sustainable growth of the Osun economy. This particularly unusual candidate, Barrister Alfred Adegoke, has been busy over the decades condemning the callous and oppressive policies of the Oyinlola and Aregbesola’s governments. There is also the symbolic coincidence that those with interests in astrology might find intriguing that the logo of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) and the party of Alfred Adegoke is a shining bulb.

Alfred Adegoke is not a new comer to the political stage of Osun, only that he is taking up a role different from an activist and human right lawyer this time around. At a time Aregbesola was vaunting his record as a former student union leader of The Polytechnic, Ibadan; at the same time the outgoing governor of Osun State was displaying to the public his friendship with the top of the organised labour and transforming the cream of many civil society organisations, as courtiers in his government.

Alfred Adegoke stood apart and refused to join a government that was only pro-people in the propaganda of the state’s Ministry of Information. While many of the deserters of the pro-democracy struggle were attempting amusingly to justify, for example, the “half salary” policy in Osun, Alfred Adegoke was churning out from his Station Road, Osogbo Chambers tons of statements and declarations to rouse Osun workers to struggle for full payment of their salary like the activist he has been since his undergraduate days as the Secretary General of the Students’ Union of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, a school where he had studied law.

As the Osun State Coordinator of the Campaign for a Democratic Workers’ Rights, Alfred Adegoke would join the march of workers on May Day (Workers’ Day), raising placards to his former comrades and acquaintances, who by that time have transformed unconscionably to the new oppressors and exploiters in town. We should all be wondering what might be going on in the minds of these former acquaintances of Alfred Adegoke – perhaps, they could have been assuring themselves how asinine Alfred was for shunning the short cut to sudden wealth – political appointment – by refusing to curry appointment from the Aregbesola government.

He was later to be embarrassed, harassed and even physically assaulted by his former acquaintances in the struggle, who employed the Police and Department of State Services (DSS) at their disposal to attempt to stifle his loud and clear voice of opposition to the Aregbesola’s regime. Sometimes in July 2015, that was exactly what happened when the men of the DSS invaded his office, tore his clothes and ransacked his files and documents – violating the sacred principle of attorney-client confidentiality by unlawfully looking through the files he kept of his legal representation of his several clients.

At the DSS detention facility in Osogbo, he was detained and told to stop issuing statements in support of the struggles of workers and pensioners of the state in his capacity as the then Chairman of the SPN in Osun. At the time Alfred Adegoke was lending his voice and articulating the demands of the oppressed strata of the Osun society, the SPN was at the federal high court Abuja challenging the refusal of Independent National Electoral Commission to register the party officially. Alfred was also at this time challenging at the Federal High Court Osogbo the unlawful invasion of his chambers at Station Road, Osogbo by men of the DSS. Both parties won their respective suits before the courts – the courts ordered the immediate registration of the SPN and the payment by the DSS of N500, 000 (about US $ 1380) in damages to Barrister Alfred Adegoke for the physical and psychological losses he incurred during that Gestapo-styled invasion of his chambers.

In a twist of fate that should underline the essence of steadfastness and consistency in human endeavours, Alfred Adegoke won the nomination ticket of the SPN to stand as the gubernatorial candidate of the party in the forthcoming Osun state gubernatorial election. He is presently going around the streets of Osogbo, from market places to the “unmotorable” communities hidden behind the facade of the city-centres, sensitising Osun people on his programmes and unique political ideology as a socialist contestant.

Many of the Osun electorate are hearing the term “ideology” or “socialism” for the first time in their entire life to show the level of ideological vaporisation in the state politics, and even in Nigeria as a whole. Alfred is campaigning on the programmes to cut the outrageous cost of governance in an agrarian economy like Osun State by abolishing the contract system of implementing government’s policies and earning the same salary as professional civil servants in the Osun State civil service. He has sworn to an affidavit to give Osun people the locus standi to hold him legally accountable for his manifestoes and programmes.

The present government claims, without evidence for that matter, that its political office holders are earning half salary in “solidarity” with the workers who are being paid only a fraction of their paltry wages that are not commensurate with the level of inflation and cost of living obtainable across the country. In reality, these political office holders draw outrageous allowances that the average civil servant does not earn, including the governor himself benefiting from the sinecure of a security vote of N400 million (US $ 1.1 million) on monthly basis for example.

In four years, these amounts to a scandalous amount that a professional engineer for example in the Osun State Civil Service cannot earn even if he saves his wages from the day he started work until his retirement. It is this wide gap that Alfred Adegoke and the SPN are campaigning to erase, on the basis of the principle that the lifestyle of political office-holders must also reflect the standard of living of the people they are representing – there is no way people who live in palaces can know the pains of household in mosquito-infested slums.

The present governor, Rauf Aregbesola, is a vocal opponent of the call for a review in the minimum wage laws of the country, and has adduced the argument that payment of salary is not the only responsibility of the state government. While the governor has serially defaulted in paying workers the lawful value of their monthly labour for the government, one prominent explanation of the Aregbesola administration is the quick reference to the construction works he carried out in the state as an excuse for this breach of contract.

Aregbesola’s conduct has made it appear that for an agrarian or low-income state to embark on infrastructural growth, it must starve workers of their salaries and force them into making unwilling sacrifice for the state, which the ruling class cannot boldly make. Alfred Adegoke and his party are rejecting as fraudulent this excuse, and have identified the practice of contracting government’s projects to private firms as a conduit pipe for siphoning state funds – which has turned ironically every project undertaken by government into Greek gifts that come with excruciating consequences for the people.

The Punch newspaper reported that construction works in Nigeria are the costliest in world, at a billion naira (about US $2,758,620)  per one kilometre of road while the World Bank benchmark for such projects in Africa is N238 million (US $ 656,552) per kilometre. Behind the scene of this practice of awarding contracts is the unholy alliance against the people’s economy existing between the politicians and contractors who carry out these projects, which sometimes involve that the contractors inflate the budget and share the differences between the politician and the contractors.

For starters, projects carried out in Osun by both the All Progressives Congress and its People’s Democratic Party predecessor could have been constructed at well below one-fourth of the cost expended by the state government. And this is an ideology of governance shared similarly by other mainstream political parties, which perhaps explains the unprincipled cross-party defections that have saturated the news recently. Alfred Adegoke begs to differ; he wants to abolish the contract system and in its place utilise the government’s ministry of works and its personnel to carry out such construction works.

The economic benefits of such radical departure from the status quo include the massive employment of more skilled and unskilled workers into the state’s civil service, and the abolition of the costly and unimportant roles of middlemen. This would mean more money retained in circulation within the state’s economy than to be holed up in their chunks in the offshore accounts of corrupt politicians and their cronies in the big construction firms. Rather than the redundancy that the fraudulent contract system has caused in the civil service, Alfred Adegoke intends to revamp the civil service and make it the artery of economic and infrastructural growth in the state of Osun.

Wrongly workers in the nation’s civil service have been given a bad name in order to make them appear inefficient in carrying out their patriotic responsibility of building society, when in actual fact it is the politicians, acting as ministers and commissioners, who make all the decisions and should be held responsible for consciously wrecking the civil service in order to foster a self-serving alliance with big private firms. The first military coup in the country cited as one of its motivations the need to end the era of those who receive ten percent from government’s businesses; but the military never had the will to tackle this problem at its root by abolishing the contract system, but instead embraced it and enmeshed itself in corruption as its civilian predecessors and subsequent successors.

Alfred Adegoke is articulating in this campaign those ideals he has consistently fought for as an activist. If his unswerving record of solidarity with the oppressed or his consistent defence over the years of the same ideals he is now advocating during this campaign is not enough to earn him the trust of the public, then the logical coherence of his programme, being rooted in a mathematically-styled precision, would endear him to the masses whose primary characteristic as human beings is their intelligence and inherent nature of critical thinking.

The Ekiti people did not have this unique opportunity of a candidate like Barrister Alfred Adegoke inspiring ideologically based debates that are challenging the fraudulent basis of governance that has long been taking them for granted. This could be a watershed moment in the history of politics in Nigeria, where Alfred Adegoke would bring our society up to speed with the dynamic changes taking place in international politics, with a new breed of left-inclined, politician-activists like Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, Kshama Sawant, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are inspiring a new generation of voters to taking charge of democratic institutions for the purpose of a human-centred and honest politics.

*Wole Olubanji is the Organising Secretary of Alfred Adegoke Campaign Organisation. He writes from Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria.

PUDEMO Elects New Leadership

Mario Masuku and Mlungisi Makhanya
Photo credit: PUDEMO

Peter Kenworthy
Sep 13, 2018

The People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), the largest democratic movement in Swaziland, recently elected a new leadership at its General Congress. Mlungisi Makhanya was elected new President.

In his opening address, outgoing President Mario Masuku highlighted the need for the rebuilding of PUDEMO and condemned the corruption of Swazi King Mswati’s absolute rule at PUDEMO’s 9th General Congress, held in Witbank, South Africa.

“No amount of ritual pseudo electoral processes can redeem such an inherently flawed system”, Masuku said in a press release from PUDEMO.

According to the press release, PUDEMO will launch campaigns against land evictions, the Swazi government’s corruption, gender based violence and unemployment.

Sacrifice and resilience

Mario Masuku was PUDEMO President for many years. He has been arrested on many occasions and charged, though never convicted, with terrorism and sedition, the latter for shouting “Viva PUDEMO” at a May Day rally. He has spent several years in prison awaiting trial.

He was, however, a well-respected figure outside Swaziland, meeting with heads of state in the region and receiving a democracy award in the Danish Parliament from former Danish Speaker of the House, Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the United Nations General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft.

“This congress was an historic moment indeed, also for Comrade Mario Masuku, who is now ready for different roles as the epitome of sacrifice and resilience in the struggle for freedom in Swaziland,” said new Secretary General Wandile Dludlu.

Masuku is currently working at a home for orphans and vulnerable children here at Mbabane on a daily voluntary basis and plans to continue his work to promote human rights in Swaziland. 

New leadership

Former Secretary General Mlungisi Makhanya was elected President of PUDEMO, and Zodwa Mkhonta Deputy President.

Mlungisi Makhanya and Mphandlana Shongwe sing The Internationale at the Red Green Alliance annual congress 2016. Photo by Peter Kenworthy

Former youth leader Wandile Dludlu was elected new Secretary General and Jabulani Malinga National Organising Secretary.

Stalwart activist Mphandlana Shongwe remained on the National Executive Committee.

Swaziland is a small semi-feudal absolute monarchy with a population of 1.3 million. More than two thirds of the population live in poverty, many on food aid.

Amnesty International has called the Swaziland’s Suppression of Terrorism Act, which is used to charge many PUDEMO members for trivial offenses, “inherently oppressive” and Freedom House ranks Swaziland as one of the repressive countries in the world in regard to political rights.

*  Peter Kenworthy is a freelance journalist.

Speech by African American Leader Robert F. Williams in the People's Republic of China on Aug., 8, 1966

This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Volume 9, #33, Aug. 12, 1966, pp. 24-27. Robert F. William's address was given at a demonstration in Peking on Aug. 8, 1966 condemning discrimination in the U.S. against African Americans, and in support of their right to use revolutionary violence in response to the counter-revolutionary violence of the U.S. and local governments and other racist reactionaries against them. The rally was held on the third anniversary of Mao’s “Statement Supporting the American Negroes in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism”.

Brothers, Sisters, Patriots, Revolutionaries:

Once again, I want to thank Chairman Mao Tse-tung and our brothers, the great Chinese people for their support of our struggle. Commemorating the third anniversary of Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s statement calling upon the people of the world to unite against racial discrimination by U.S. imperialism and support the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination, the greatest tribute that can be paid to the correctness of his immortal words lie in a current analysis and assessment of the present development of struggle being waged by the Afro-American people.

Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s statement of August 8, 1963 gave inspiration to a people long and brutally oppressed and dehumanized, then laboring under the masochist-like philosophy of neo-Gandhism. His words gave impetus to a floundering and feeble movement of armed self-defence. And today all of the reactionary world is shocked and terrified by the turbulent winds of ever increasing armed resistance now sweeping the mighty fortress of savage imperialism and beastly racism. In racist America’s mighty northern cities, in the small towns, in the countryside, in the dark and deep jungle wilderness of the southland, from coast to coast, oppressed and dehumanized black people are meeting oppressive racist terrorist’s violence with revolutionary violence. The thunder of BLACK POWER echoes throughout the land. A mighty firestorm sweeps through the ghettoes rife with rebellion. In their paradise of stolen wealth, ringed by massive arsenals of horrible death weapons, the tyrannical kings of imperialism tremble from the terrifying shock of a confrontation with wretched and angry slaves, armed with a common household match and a bottle of gasoline.

What is the meaning of this cry BLACK POWER in a land dominated by the unmerciful power of white intruders who murdered and all but exterminated the rightful owners, the American Indians? Black Power means that black men want to have some control over their own lives, to have a respected voice in public affairs that affect them. We resent being a colonial people, treated as third class citizens in our native land. We resent being forbidden to speak for ourselves, even in black belts where we constitute as much as 85 percent of the population. We resent being deformed by a white man’s mold in a degenerate white supremacy society that derides and belittles our African heritage and make us ashamed of our ethnic characteristics. Black Power is the vehicle by which we hope to reach a stage wherein we can be proud black people without the necessity of an apology for our non-Anglo-Saxon features. The dominant society in racist America is reactionary, imperialist, racist, and decadent and we wish to disassociate ourselves from it. Black Power is a dissident force challenging the racist white power structure that is so heinously exterminating the people of Vietnam and threatening the world with nuclear destruction.

We have been victims of white racism for 400 years in the new world. We have been victims of racist barbarism for almost 200 years under the present form of government. Our people are slaughtered like swine on the main streets of racist America. Our churches and homes have been bombed. Our women raped with impunity. Our men have been emasculated. We are hated and murdered for no other reason than being born black and because we refuse to commend and love our savage oppressors, we are called racists.

We are oppressed people. Our objective is to destroy the hurtful stranglehold of our enemy oppressors. An opponent without the courage to designate his enemy by his true characteristics cannot expect to confront and defeat him. We propose to call our enemies what they are. We propose to rally our people and fight on this basis. We do not propose to mince our words for the sake of peaceful coexistence. It is a natural law that a humble lamb cannot peacefully coexist with a rabid wolf in close proximity.

Yes, we have some white Americans with us in our struggle. They are our true brothers. These revolutionaries understand and share our anger. They know it is justified. Their spirit is an extension of the glorious spirit of the great and noble antislavery fighter, John Brown. Yes, they too are a hated and persecuted minority people in Johnson’s majority mob rule Hitlerite jungle society. Yes, and like all other peoples we have enemies in our ranks. We have black traitors who practice treason for 30 pieces of silver. We have black Judases, insensate running dogs for the Johnson administration and its racist white power structure. Like their white puppet masters, these black puppets too have days that are numbered.

Our wrath is as intense against the black lackeys of our white oppressors as it is against the white supremacy oppressors themselves. These mercenary Uncle Toms are the most vocal nonviolent peace peddlers in the storm centers of racist America today. The ghettoes are ablaze but they advocate peaceful submission to continued tyranny and oppression.

Johnson, the great civil rights advocate, the former senator from the racist state of Texas, who as senator voted against every civil rights bill that came before the U.S. Senate, claimed to be a modern day Moses to black Americans so long as they passively allowed themselves to be mauled and maimed by white supremacy brutes and thugs. But now, with brutal white supremacy Federal Power, he threatens those who defend themselves, their homes, and their women and children. Mr. Johnson, the big daddy white supremacist, would remind our people that we are a minority and the brutal racist white savages are a majority. Like his fellow-traveling Ku Klux Klansmen, he endeavors to frighten and intimidate us by the mere numbers of our eternal oppressors. In the same fashion that Mr. Johnson would like to intimidate the Chinese people with a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, he is endeavoring to intimidate the black American by alluding to great hordes of white supremacists who are ready and willing to exterminate our people. We say to Mr. Johnson that intimidation, violence, and brutality will not stop the raging fires in the people’s liberation struggle. The only force on earth powerful enough to halt the flames engulfing ghettoes and main streets of racist America consists of fair play, brotherhood, equality, and justice.

We serve notice on big daddy Texas Lyndon B. Johnson that he can no more intimidate the Afro-American people with his threat of unleashing his great hordes of mad-dog racists than he can intimidate the Chinese people with the threat of unleashing a nuclear attack. The day when brutal white racist oppressors and imperialists can frighten colored peoples into submission by threats of savage violence are gone forever!

We revolutionary Afro-Americans respond to Mr. Johnson and his Ku Klux Klan fraternity of white supremacy with the cry of BLACK POWER, FREEDOM NOW! JUSTICE! We proclaim our inalienable right to live as human beings and we shall implement our demand with blood and fire. Yes, Mr. Johnson, we are a minority but more than that we are an oppressed minority determined at all costs to be free, and we are resolved to pay any price, to perform any task, and to go to any length for our freedom.

Yes, we are a minority but we are a minority with the power of a righteous cause and justice on our side. We are a minority marching in the endless files of the great multiracial masses of the invincible anti-imperialist and antiracist forces of the world. For the benefit of Mr. Johnson, who puts so much stock in numbers, we remind him once again, in the words a great people’s leader a liberator whose words, thought, and teachings stand as impeccable in the turbulent winds of time as the mighty Rock of Gibraltar, yes, we remind him once again that our great leader and teacher, Chairman Mao Tse-tung has said:

“... We are in the majority and they are in the minority. At most, they make up less than ten percent of the three thousand million population of the world. I am firmly convinced that, with the support of more than ninety percent of the people of the world, the American Negroes will be victorious in their just struggle. The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people.”

Today, in the social jungle of racist America the rights of colored people are less respected than those of common street dogs. The law and the kangaroo courts of the so-called free world of “Christian” democracy protect the rights of common street dogs and other dumb animals but there is not a single court of law that dispenses even-handed justice and unbiased constitutional and human rights to colored Americans. The long, brutal, and miserable plight of our people throughout the history of barbaric America encompasses one of the most shameful and savage chapters in the history of slavery and man’s injustice to man.

The dominant class in racist America is one of the most hypocritical the world has ever seen. It captured the African in Africa, enslaved him, ripped his culture from him, raped him, reproduced from him, completely dehumanized him, and reduced him to the level of beast of burden and stamped him with the name Negro as a tribute to the white man’s creation and invention of a new implement of agriculture and an instrument of labour. And all the while, he promoted this brutal slavery, he proclaimed himself architect of democracy and a Christian society. All the while, he brutally and savagely exterminated the American Indian and piously proclaimed Thanksgiving to his white god for being so generous in blessing him with the bounty of the Indian’s rich land and paradise. He built a brutal imperialist prison wall around the peoples of Latin America and piously named it the protective Monroe Doctrine. He stretched his bloody hand to Asia and arrogantly called it an “Open Door Policy.”

The Open Door Policy was the policy of an armed bandit at the door of a peaceful man. Today, the same bandit rapes and plunders the land the Vietnam, murders defenseless women and children and exterminates the people in the name of “free world Christian democracy”.

The same bandit who exterminated and starved the American Indian on his own native soil now piously proclaims to practice charity to the nation of India in a hypocritical effort to use them in his campaign to subdue and enslave the peoples of Asia. What is the nature of his democracy? What does such a beastly, imperialist, racist savage know about democracy? Should not democracy, like charity, start first at home, and then spread abroad? What is the democracy of the Black American captives in the miserable ghettoes, in the cotton fields of Mississippi, battered by the savage policeman’s club in Washington, D.C.? What is the democracy of the Puerto Ricans, of the Mexicans, and of the American Indians in racist America? Only the most naive can believe the empty words and promise of such a morally bankrupt charlatan.

Deceptive American white supremacy is personified by hypocrites like Bobby Kennedy, a sophisticated huckster and charlatan of the first magnitude who struts and sways into the hotbed of African white supremacy and colonialism, hugging and kissing black babies and masquerading as a great white father and savior of the black Africans. Mr. Kennedy’s actions in racist America are quite a contrast to his deceitful conduct in Africa. When Mr. Kennedy served as the attorney general of the U.S.A. he was sworn to uphold the right of equal protection under law, yet he collaborated with the most barbaric racists in the nation. He entered into a “white gentleman’s agreement” with the notorious racist governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett. Defenseless and helpless black women and children were bombed, gassed, clubbed, raped, and murdered on the main streets of racist America and Mr. Kennedy is yet to punish a single white supremacist heathen transgressor. As attorney general he did nothing about the fact that Africans were being beaten in the United States, even the diplomats assigned to the United Nations.

It is strange indeed how Mr. Kennedy can perform in the racist chorus of those who chant slogans of hatred, vilification, and dehumanization for black people in America while proclaiming his pretended great love for black humanity in Africa. Such is the nature of a deceptive and barbaric Yankee.

In America, Mr. Kennedy publicly proclaims himself to be opposed to black nationalism. In his white supremacy logic, he calls it racism in reverse. Black nationalism is a survival reaction to white nationalism. White nationalism transcends religious, class, social, and political lines. The reason that no massive black-white unity on a national scale exists today is that the white supremacy ruling class has poisoned the minds of white workers. Most white workers identify with their white imperialist rulers. White liberals insist on paternalism. Even bourgeois minded so-called socialists are more and more identifying and grouping on a racial basis rather than on a class basis. We Afro-American revolutionaries have discovered that some so-called socialists, we thought to be our comrades and class brothers have joined the international Ku Klux Klan fraternity for white supremacy and world domination. To our consternation, we have discovered that the bourgeois orientated power structure of some socialist states, even one with a black and white population, would prefer to preserve the white reactionary anti-communist power structure in racist America, their natural national enemy, than to see a just, democratic, fraternal socialist state brought about by the revolutionary action of oppressed blacks that would serve the best interests of all peoples and races. Like their Yankee counterparts that they love to ape so well, even to the point of emulating their racism, they are moving might and main to frustrate and defeat the revolutionary movements of the oppressed peoples throughout the world.

We of the Afro-American liberation movement resolutely condemn and oppose all counterrevolutionaries and purveyors of white supremacy whether they cloak their treachery in the garb of Marxist-Leninist phraseology or the hideous bed sheets of the Ku Klux Klan and its phoney Christian doctrine.

We who are engaged in the struggle for liberation and survival vehemently condemn the use of black dehumanized troops as cannon fodder in a white man’s war of imperialism in Vietnam. We oppose Johnson’s vicious crusade to dehumanize, emasculate, and enslave the great Vietnamese people.

Black boys — from the slum housing of black ghettoes, ill-educated in segregated schools, emasculated and dehumanized by police brutality and a savage white power structure — yes, black, boys who cannot find employment, black boys who are victims of white racists who hate them because of the color of their skin — black boys who mothers, sisters, and loved ones are being savagely clubbed, gassed, raped, maimed, lynched, and railroaded to prison in racist kangaroo courts simply for begging and praying for elementary justice are forced to share foxholes and and shed their blood alongside racist Negro haters in Vietnam, who like in racist America refuse to fraternize with them in places of amusement in Tokyo and Saigon. Even out of proportion to the self-styled master race, vast numbers of black soldiers are forced to suffer and die in that vain effort to prolong and extend the brutal racist white man’s imperialism. They are forced to suffer and die in the cause of a racist power structure that is as much the enemy of black people in America as it is the people of peace and freedom loving Vietnam.

And why do we call the massive Ku Klux Klan type action in Vietnam a racist white man’s war of imperialism while many black men are fighting there? It is because in racist America no black man is part of Johnson’s policy-making clique. The United State is governed by white power. The Pentagon is a white-dominated repressive arm of a ruthless elite white power structure. Wall Street is an exclusive club of the great white chiefs of business and industry. Black Americans are resisting the racist and imperialist lily-white power structure. How can a people who are fighting and dying simply to wrest the most basic of human rights from an intransigent and tyrannical power structure be said to be partners of that power structure and willing participants in its racist and imperialist ventures and crimes against humanity?

The United States today is a fascist society more brutal than any the world has ever known. It has all but exterminated a whole people. It has robbed and raped an entire continent with impunity. It has divided the peoples of the world into national factions and set them against themselves and their brothers. With no more authority than the wave of its bloody imperialist hand it has abrogated the right of self-determination of small nations. It has appointed and crowned itself both king and armoured knight of the whole universe. It threatens the globe with annihilation. It is a super colonial power that is colonializing the colonials.

The world famed and brilliant philosopher, Lord Bertrand Russell has justifiably stated that racist America has exterminated more black people than Hitler exterminated Jews in Nazi Germany. Lord Russell and many other fair-minded humanists throughout the world have justifiably stated that the U.S. military aggression in Vietnam is executed in a more cruel and barbarous manner than even the horrible campaigns of aggression, genocide, and conquest carried out by Hitler’s fascist Germany.

Yet, there is a mighty tendency, promoted by the sinister American devil himself, to engender more sympathy and fraternalism for the so-called “good reasonable Americans” than for the wretched victims of vicious and brutal U.S. imperialism. The U.S. constitutes one of the greatest fascist threats ever to cast its ugly shadow across the face of the earth. When the butchers of Nazi Germany were on the plunder, the world cry was “Crush Nazism!” “Crush the Fascist Power Structure!” “Crush Germany!” Total war was unleashed without deference to any who may been considered “good Germans” inside Nazi Germany. No sane person opposed to fascism pleaded for a soft policy toward Nazi Germany or pleaded for victims to wait for deliverance through the benevolence of “good German workers and liberals.” Racist America didn’t give a damn about sparing the good Japanese people when they dropped their horrible and devastating atom bombs.

What is the motive of those who plead for the exemption of liberal Americans, whose feigned liberalism merely serves as a cloak and shield around the naked power of savage and racist U.S. imperialism? The time is fast approaching when the so-called good reasonable American must make a decision either to overtly side with American chauvinism and jingoism or to take a resolute anti-imperialist and anti-racist stand that will be a firm basis for a just and lasting world peace.

We who are brutally oppressed and victimized cannot forever afford to spare the fortress of social reaction and tyranny because there are allegedly silent dissenters within its gates. Those who are without righteous cause of the oppressed must be prepared to suffer the consequences of the gathering storm of the violent and turbulent winds of retribution. A good man who is silent and inactive in times of great injustice and oppression is no good man at all. He is no ally to freedom and justice but is a silent partner to tyranny and condemnation. He does not deserve exemption from the condemnation and the vengeance of those whom his silence allows to be victimized. The myth of the good reasonable American who is yet to be heard is a ruse perpetrated by the psychological arm of the imperialist forces of tyranny. It is one minute to zero in racist America. Four hundred bloody and gruesome years have passed. For 400 years, our good silent partners have remained silent and inactive. Time is running out and they stand at the dividing line still beseeching patience, still beseeching the slave to leave his fate to his silent friends ever infected with inertia. They plead for deference on behalf of the good people who yet stand at one camp. We call to them to separate themselves from the devil’s legions. We inform them that they have not 400 more years to make a decision but one minute before the hour of zero, before the Armageddon between the slavemaster and the slave.

Once again, in closing, let me thank our great leader and teacher, the architect of people’s warfare, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, for his great and inspiring statement in support of our struggle. And to our great Chinese brothers and true revolutionaries throughout the world, we revolutionary Afro-Americans vow that we shall take the torch of freedom and justice into the streets of racist America and we shall set the last great stronghold of Yankee imperialism ablaze with our battle cry of Black Power! FREEDOM! FREEDOM! FREEDOM! NOW OR DEATH! For our people, for our country, and for our compatriots throughout the world, we shall reclaim the nobility of the American Revolution. We shall raise our flag in honor, true peace, and brotherhood to all the world!

Long live the People’s Republic of China!

Long live Chairman Mao Tse-tung!

Long live the people’s resistance to imperialism, racism, and tyranny!

Long live the militant friendship between the Chinese and revolutionary American people!

Statement Supporting the American Negroes In Their Just Struggle Against Racial
Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism

August 8, 1963
Mao Tse-tung

This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Volume 9, #33, Aug. 12, 1966, pp. 12-13. The statement was published in commemoration of the-then third anniversary of the day Chairman Mao made it. —Peking Review Ed.]

An American Negro leader now taking refuge in Cuba, Mr. Robert Williams, the former President of the Monroe, North Carolina, Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, has twice this year asked me for a statement in support of the American Negroes’ struggle against racial discrimination. On behalf of the Chinese people, I wish to take this opportunity to express our resolute support for the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.

There are more than 19 million Negroes in the United States, or about 11 per cent of the total population. They are enslaved, oppressed and discriminated against — such is their position in society. The overwhelming majority are deprived of their right to vote. In general, only the most backbreaking and despised jobs are open to them. Their average wages are barely a third or a half those of the white people. The proportion of unemployment among the Negroes is the highest. In many states they are forbidden to go to the same school, eat at the same table, or travel in the same section of a bus or train as the white people. Negroes are often arrested, beaten up or murdered at will by the U.S. authorities at various levels and by members of the Ku Klux Klan and other racists. About half the American Negroes are concentrated in eleven southern states, where the discrimination and persecution they suffer are especially shocking.

The American Negroes are awakening and their resistance is growing stronger and stronger. Recent years have witnessed a continuous expansion of their mass struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.

In 1957 the Negro people in Little Rock, Arkansas, waged a fierce struggle against the barring of their children from public schools. The authorities used armed force against them, creating the Little Rock incident which shocked the world.

In 1960 Negroes in more than twenty states held “sit-in” demonstrations protesting against racial segregation in local restaurants, shops and other public places.

In 1961 the Negroes launched the “freedom riders” campaign to oppose racial segregation in public transportation, a campaign which rapidly spread to many states.

In 1962 the Negroes in Mississippi fought for the equal right to enrol in colleges and met with bloody suppression by the authorities.

This year, the American Negroes-started their struggle early in April in Birmingham, Alabama. Unarmed and bare-handed Negro people were arrested en masse and most barbarously suppressed merely for holding meetings and parades against racial discrimination. On June 12 Mr. Medgar Evers, a leader of the Negro people in Mississippi, was murdered in cold blood. Defying brutality and violence, the indignant Negro masses waged their struggle even more heroically and quickly won the support of Negroes and other people of various strata throughout the United States. A gigantic and vigorous nationwide struggle is going on in nearly every city and state, and the struggle is mounting. American Negro organizations have decided to start a “freedom march” on Washington on August 28, in which 250,000 people will take part.

The speedy development of the struggle of the American Negroes is a manifestation of sharpening class struggle and sharpening national struggle within the United States; it has been causing increasing anxiety among U.S. ruling circles. The Kennedy Administration is insidiously using dual tactics. On the one hand, it continues to connive at and take part in discrimination against Negroes and their persecution, and it even sends troops to suppress them. On the other hand, in the attempt to numb the fighting will of the Negro people and deceive the masses of the country, the Kennedy Administration is parading as an advocate of “the defence of human rights” and “the protection of the civil rights of Negroes,” calling upon the Negro people to exercise “restraint” and proposing the “civil rights legislation” to Congress. But more and more Negroes are seeing through these tactics of the Kennedy Administration. The fascist atrocities of the U.S. imperialists against the Negro people have exposed the true nature of so-called American democracy and freedom and revealed the inner link between the reactionary policies pursued by the U.S. Government at home and its policies of aggression abroad.

I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened elements of the bourgeoisie and other enlightened persons of all colours in the world, whether white, black, yellow or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practised by U.S. imperialism and support the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination. In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the Negro people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present, it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United Slates, and their supporters, the reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the majority and they are in the minority. At most, they make up less than 10 per cent of the 3,000 million population of the world. I am firmly convinced that, with the support of more than 90 per cent of the people of the world, the American Negroes will be victorious in their just struggle. The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people.

DECISION OF C.P.C. CENTRAL COMMITTEE AND STATE COUNCIL: On Reform of Entrance Examination and Enrollment in Higher Educational Institutions

This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Volume 9, #26, June 24, 1966, p. 3.

THE Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council issued a notice on June 13 announcing that, to ensure the successful carrying out of the cultural revolution to the end, and to effect a thorough reform of the educational system, a decision had been made to change the old system of entrance examination and enrolment of students in higher educational institutions and to postpone this year’s enrolment of new students for colleges and universities for half a year.

The full text of the notice follows:

Considering that the great cultural revolution is only now developing in the colleges, universities and senior middle schools, a certain period of time will be needed in order to carry this movement through thoroughly and successfully. Bourgeois domination is still deeply rooted and the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is very acute in quite a number of universities, colleges and middle schools. A thoroughgoing cultural revolution movement in the higher educational institutions and senior middle schools will have most far-reaching effects on school education in the future. Meanwhile, though it has been constantly improved since liberation, the method of examination and enrollment for the higher educational institutions, has failed, in the main, to free itself from the set pattern of the bourgeois system of examination; and such a method is harmful to the implementation of the guiding policy on education formulated by the Central Committee of the Party and Chairman Mao, and to absorption into the higher educational institutions of a still greater number of revolutionary young people from among the workers, peasants and soldiers. This system of examination must be completely reformed. Therefore, time is also needed to study and work out new methods of enrolment.

In view of the above-mentioned situation, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council have decided to postpone for half a year the 1966 enrolment into the higher educational institutions so that, on the one hand, they and the senior middle schools will have enough time to carry out the cultural revolution thoroughly and successfully and on the other hand, there will be adequate time for making all preparations for the implementation of a new method of enrolment.

In order that enrollment and the opening of a new semester in the senior middle schools shall not be affected, the students graduating from senior middle school this term in schools where the cultural revolution is still under way should be properly accommodated and their time-table arranged by the school authorities so that the movement may be carried out thoroughly and successfully; in the case of students in schools where the movement is completed before enrollment into the higher educational institutions has begun, their schools should organize them to participate in productive labour in the countryside or in the factories.


Carry Out the Cultural Revolution Thoroughly and Transform the Educational System Completely

This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #26, June 24,
1966, pp. 15-17.

On June 13 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council issued a notice announcing the decision to transform the existing entrance examination method of enrolling students in institutes of higher learning and to postpone the 1966 enrollment in these institutes for half a year. This decision is an important measure for carrying out thoroughly the great cultural revolution in the field of education and completely transforming China’s educational system.

Today the vast numbers of revolutionary students, administrative and other staff, and teachers in many universities, colleges, and middle schools in Peking and other places are holding aloft the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought, breaking through all the obstacles and restraints imposed by the bourgeois royalists, and directing a fierce barrage of fire at the black anti-Party and anti-socialist line in the field of education. However, the struggle has only just begun and there are still many stubborn bourgeois strongholds which have not yet been breached. If the entrance examination of enrolling new students went ahead as usual just now, this would undoubtedly bring the great proletarian cultural revolution in the field of education to a stop halfway, cripple the revolutionary enthusiasm of the Left students, and encourage the counter-revolutionary arrogance of the bourgeois Right. This decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council is an enormous support to the development of the great proletarian cultural revolution, a tremendous encouragement to the Left students and a heavy blow for the bourgeois Right.

For a long time now the broad masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, and revolutionary students and teachers have made it clear that they are very angry about the old entrance examination system of enrolling students, and have been urgently demanding that it should be scrapped once for all. The two letters to the Central Committee of the Party and Chairman Mao which are carried in our paper today, one written by students of the fourth class in the senior third grade at Peking No. 1 Girls’ Middle School and the other by students of the fifth class in the senior third grade at Peking No. 4 Middle School, and the many other unpublished letters which have come in from the masses strongly demand the abolition of the old system of admitting students. The two letters are full of inexhaustible sincerity and loyalty to the Party and the people, they are brimming over with revolutionary spirit, they demonstrate the spirit of daring to think, to speak, to act, to break through and to make revolution which imbues the revolutionary youth of the Mao Tse-tung era; they reflect the desire of the great numbers of revolutionary teachers and students and voice the sentiments of the revolutionary masses.

The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council took the decision to abolish the existing entrance examination method of enrolling students in institutes of higher learning in accordance with Chairman Mao’s instructions and the demands of the masses. Beginning this year, a new method of enrollment, a combination of recommendation and selection, in which proletarian politics are put first and the mass line is followed, will go into effect; the best students will be admitted, selected from among those recommended for their outstanding moral, intellectual, and physical qualities. The same method will be used in enrolling students of senior middle schools.

Again and again the Central Committee of the Party and Chairman Mao have pointed out that the old bourgeois educational system, including the enrolling of students by examination, must be thoroughly transformed. This old examination system of enrolling students is most dangerous and harmful to our socialist cause. It places not proletarian but bourgeois politics in command, it places school marks in command. This system is a serious violation of the Party’s class line, shuts out many outstanding children of workers, poor and lower-middle peasants, revolutionary cadres, revolutionary army men, and revolutionary martyrs, and opens the gates wide to the bourgeoisie to cultivate its own successors. This system is a great obstacle to the revolutionizing of young people’s minds and encourages them to become bourgeois specialists by the bourgeois method of “making one’s own way” and achieving individual fame, wealth, and position.

For a long time now, a handful of anti-Party and anti-socialist bourgeois representatives have opposed the educational policy of the Party and Chairman Mao and used the old entrance examination system as a weapon of class struggle against the proletariat, of dictatorship over the children of workers and poor and lower-middle peasants. In the current great cultural revolution, these bourgeois royalists have been attacking the proletarian Left and suppressing and sabotaging the mass movement in the great proletarian cultural revolution, once again using the pretext that they were “interfering with lessons and wasting study time” and threatening that they “would not go up to a higher class or be admitted to a higher school.”

The facts show that the old examination system of enrolment has become a stumbling block in socialist education and the great proletarian cultural revolutionary movement.

It is through schools that the proletariat trains and cultivates its successors for the proletarian cause and through schools, too, the bourgeoisie trains its successors for purposes of a capitalist comeback. There is sharp class struggle here, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, to win over the younger generation. The Party’s Central Committee and Chairman Mao Tse-tung have always placed great weight on proletarian education and on revolutionizing the educational system. Chairman Mao has put forward the policy that education must serve proletarian politics and must be combined with productive labor; he has pointed out that “our educational policy must enable everyone who gets an education, to develop morally, intellectually, and physically and become a cultured, socialist-minded worker.” The series of instructions given by Chairman Mao on proletarian education light the way in China’s socialist and communist cause like a great beacon.

The representatives of the bourgeoisie who have wormed their way into the educational world and are against the Party, against socialism and against Mao Tse-tung’s thought, hate the socialist revolution bitterly and are deeply antagonistic to the cultural emancipation of the worker, peasant and soldier masses. Using the positions they have occupied in the field of education, they have persistently carried out a bourgeois and revisionist educational line and done everything within their power to impede and sabotage the educational line mapped out by the Party’s Central Committee and Chairman Mao. Unless this black anti-Party and anti-socialist line is eliminated, it is impossible to carry out the educational line of Chairman Mao.

The transformation of the present entrance examination system represents a true breakthrough in the struggle to apply Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s educational line consistently and eliminate the bourgeois educational line thoroughly. That will be the beginning of a complete revolution in the whole of the old educational system. It is not only the system of enrollment that requires transforming, all the arrangements for schooling, for testing, for going up or not going up to the higher class, and so on must be transformed, and so must the content of education. Further studies must be made as to how to implement the policy of combining education with productive labor. We must relegate to the morgue all the old teaching material that goes against Mao Tse-tung’s Thought, that seriously departs from the three great revolutionary movements of class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experiment or that inculcates an exploiting class world outlook. New teaching material must be compiled under the guidance of Mao Tse-tung’s hought and the principle of putting proletarian politics first. The junior classes in primary schools can study some extracts from Chairman Mao’s works and the senior classes can study more of them and also some of the articles including Serve the People, In Memory of Norman Bethune, and The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains. Middle-school students can study Selected Readings from Mao Tse-tung’s Works and articles related to these readings. College students can study Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. The study of Chairman Mao’s works should be listed as a required course in all schools, whether primary or intermediate or institution of higher learning.

This revolution in the educational system, beginning with the change in the system of enrolment, is a tit-for-tat struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the road of socialism and the road of capitalism. It is a revolution that will destroy the bourgeoisie’s “nursery” and eradicate the poisonous roots of revisionism. As the letter from the revolutionary pupils of the Peking No. 4 Middle School declares: “What we are out to smash is not just an examination system but the cultural shackles imposed on the people for thousands of years, the breeding ground in which intellectual aristocrats and high-salaried strata are nurtured, the stepping stone to modern revisionism. This revolutionary action of ours will deal the bourgeoisie a fatal blow.” The transformation of the educational system in the final analysis affects the question of what sort of successors we shall produce, the question of whether we shall pass on Mao Tse-tung’s thought from generation to generation, the question of whether our Party and country will change colour.

A thoroughgoing revolution in the educational system will destroy the influence of the old exploiting class educational ideas which have dominated for several thousand years, ever since Confucius, and will extirpate one of the important seats of power of the bourgeois “authorities” and scholar-tyrants in the field of ideology. Those anti-Party, anti-socialist representatives of the bourgeoisie, and the monsters of all sorts, will not reconcile themselves to being defeated. They always stubbornly defend their reactionary positions, fight every inch of the way and never willingly retreat a single step. If we don’t hit them, they won’t fall, and after they fall they try to stand up again. Therefore, the transformation of the educational system will certainly be a process of sharp and complex class struggle. We must at all times be ready to meet every challenge presented by the reactionary classes and their representatives, and to deal them resolute and destructive blows.

We must warn those anti-Party and anti-socialist bourgeois “authorities” who are entrenched in the educational world: the food you eat is provided by the working people, the clothes you wear are provided by the working people, and yet under the signboard of “serving the people” you are doing evil against the people and the Revolution. You have taken the offspring of the reactionary classes to your bosoms and in a hundred and one ways have thwarted, spurned, and attacked the children of the working people. You have collaborated with and encouraged the anti-Party and anti-socialist bourgeois “specialists” and “professors” to spread widely bourgeois and revisionist poison. With so much wickedness to your account, with such a debt you owe the people, can we possibly allow you to continue your misdeeds without exposing you, without criticizing you, without fighting you? Don’t imagine that you will remain on your “thrones” just because you have established a group of royalists, don’t dream that you will be able to carry on and get by. Don’t harbor any illusion that after a time you will revert to your former state and resurrect your reactionary class “hereditary treasures.” This is absolutely out of the question. Responding to the fighting call of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao, the masses of the workers, peasants, and soldiers and of the revolutionary cadres and revolutionary intellectuals have made up their minds to expose all you monsters, to uproot you, to rid you of all your “imposing airs” and smash your bourgeois “hereditary treasures” to pieces.

The transformation of the educational system is a complicated and difficult task. So long as we, in firm accordance with Chairman Mao’s instructions, have full confidence in the masses, rely on them, mobilize them fully, and energetically develop the mass movements, we shall certainly be able to destroy the stubborn strongholds of the bourgeoisie and win complete victory for the revolution of the educational system.

Let the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought fly high over our proletarian educational front! Let it fly forever!

(“Renmin Ribao” editorial, June 18, 1966)

Report From Havana: The First Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Conference in 1966

This article is reprinted from Peking Review, #4, Jan. 21, 1966, pp. 19-25.

The conference witnessed a sharp struggle between two lines. It marked a tremendous upsurge and victory for the Afro-Asian and Latin American peoples’ cause of solidarity against U.S. imperialism. It was a damning exposure and heavy defeat for the new Soviet leaders’ capitulationist and divisive schemes.

THE 13-day First Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Conference closed on January 15 in Havana. Around 500 delegates from 82 countries and regions with more than 60 observers and over 70 guests attended the conference.

Strong voices were raised for unity among the people of the three continents in opposition to the policies of aggression and war of imperialism headed by the United States and in support of,the Vietnamese people’s struggle against U.S. aggression and for national salvation and the popular anti-imperialist struggles in all other countries. These voices combined to form an irresistible force that frustrated the plots the Soviet delegation tried to peddle under the cloak of sham anti-imperialism and sham unity.

After 13 days of struggle and heated debate, the joint efforts of the great majority of delegates to the tri-continental conference won a major victory for the line of firm unity in opposition to imperialism—a line which reflects the will of the more than 2,000 million people in the three continents. The Khrushchov revisionists’ attempts to manipulate the conference and peddle their spurious “united action” to promote their capitulationist and divisive line were thoroughly exposed and firmly rejected. They failed, too, in their attempt to control the tri-continental anti-imperialist solidarity organization and to liquidate the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization in order to bring the national-democratic movement in the three continents into the orbit of U.S.-U.S.S.R. co-operation for world domination.

The general declaration adopted at the conference points out in clear-cut terms that the present international situation is favourable to the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles. It roundly condemns U.S. imperialism as the sworn enemy of the people of the world and an international gendarme. It proclaims in stirring words: it is right to make revolution and combat imperialism. The oppressed nations and peoples have the right to wage popular armed struggles to defeat the aggression and armed suppression by imperialism and its lackeys.

The resolution on Vietnam adopted at the conference condemns U.S. imperialism’s criminal aggression against the Vietnamese people, exposes the “14-point” hoax of the Johnson Administration, and strongly denounces the U.S. aggressors’ “peace offensive” as a trick to cover up their scheme for a wider war.

The organizational resolution adopted at the conference defeats the long pre-meditated plan of the Khrushchov revisionists to liquidate the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization which already has a history of eight years’ struggle against imperialism.

The conference also adopted a general political resolution and a number of other resolutions. These resolutions express firm support for the just struggles of the peoples of the three continents against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism headed by the United States and reflect the firm will of the people of the three continents to make revolution and combat imperialism. Only a few resolutions adopted contained views contrary to the legitimate desires of the people of the three continents.

THE MAIN CURRENT AND THE ADVERSE CURRENT

The great majority of delegates came to Havana with a common purpose, namely, the first tri-continental peoples’ solidarity conference should be a conference against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism headed by the United States, and a conference to condemn U.S. imperialism and express solidarity with the struggles of the peoples and particularly with the Vietnamese people’s struggle to resist U.S. aggression and save their country.

It was decided at the preparatory committee meeting that a new item of the agenda: “Support for the Heroic Struggle of the Vietnamese People Against U.S. Imperialist Aggression, for the Liberation of South Vietnam and the Reunification of the Whole Country” was to be added to the first item: “The Struggle Against Imperialism, Colonialism and Neo-colonialism” and listed as first point of the first item on the agenda.

The great majority of the 72 delegates who took the floor at the conference expressed support for the Vietnamese people in their struggle and condemned the United States by name for its policies of aggression and war.

In the light of the situation in their own countries, the delegates condemned U.S. imperialism for its monstrous crimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America:

It is “escalating” the war of aggression in Vietnam;

It has intensified the war of aggression against Laos;

It threatens and violates the territory of Cambodia;

It has sent troops to occupy Thailand;

Together with British imperialism, it has created “Malaysia”;

It works hand in glove with the Right-wingers in Indonesia to suppress the progressive people’s forces;

It occupies China’s territory of Taiwan;

In collusion with the Japanese militarists, it has manufactured the “Japan-ROK treaty” which threatens the security of the Asian people;

It co-operates with the Soviet Union in arming the Indian reactionaries to carry out expansion against India’s neighbours;

It has turned Israel into a base for aggression against the Arab people;

In collusion with old colonialism, it suppresses by force of arms the national-liberation struggle of the Congolese (Leopoldville) people;

It has encouraged British imperialism to support white colonial rule in Southern Rhodesia;

Through its partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization it supports the British and Portuguese colonial authorities and strengthens their rule in the southern part of Africa;

It has been subverting and imposing a blockade against Cuba and occupies the Guantanamo base;

It has sent 40,000 aggressor troops to suppress the uprising in the Dominican Republic;

It fosters reactionary puppet governments in Latin America to maintain the rule of U.S. monopoly capital there.

The accusing voices of the delegates swept across the Gulf of Mexico to shake the North American empire.

About 30 of the speakers advocated people’s armed struggle to defeat the aggression and armed suppression by imperialism and its lackeys. Many delegates condemned the United Nations as a tool of U.S. imperialism for its aggressions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They criticized the views of peaceful coexistence with U.S. imperialism and exposed certain people who have recently preached collaboration with U.S. imperialism and “united action” with the reactionaries.

In sub-committee discussions, many delegates demanded that documents to be adopted at the conference should reflect the situation of the anti-imperilalist struggle of the people of the three continents, especially the situation of their anti-U.S. imperialist struggle. They opposed peaceful coexistence or any form of collaboration with U.S. imperialism and waged tit-for-tat struggle with the Soviet delegation and its handful of followers.

Under these circumstances, the conference adopted a fairly good general declaration. In the course of its drafting, many erroneous views which failed to reflect the fervent anti-imperialist feelings and fierce anti-imperialist struggles of the people of the three continents were rejected after repeated struggles and consultations. The correct views of the Chinese, Korean, Japannese and other delegates were finally accepted. The general declaration thus reflects the main current of the conference and records its keynote.

However, there was also an adverse current which clashed fiercely with the main current. Even before the opening of the conference, the Soviet delegates had widely proclaimed their intention to push their capitulationist “peaceful coexistence” line at the conference and energetically engaged in divisive manoeuvres. After its opening, they stepped up their activities, sometimes working behind the scenes, sometimes coming out into the open to peddle their contraband goods. This was the cause of the successive scenes of intensive struggle both inside and outside the conference hall. Like the weather in Havana in those days, dark clouds alternated with bright sunshine over the conference.

SUPPORT FOR THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE OR SERVICE TO LYNDON JOHNSON

Speaking at the conference and sub-committee meetings, most of the delegates in strong terms condemned the U.S. aggression against Vietnam, supported the Vietnamese people to the end in their people’s war against U.S. imperialist aggression, exposed the recent U.S. “peace talks” conspiracy, especially Johnson’s 14-point plan and condemned any collaboration with U.S. imperialism on the Vietnam question.

Many delegates pointed out that the Vietnam question could be settled only in accordance with the five-part statement of the South Vietnam National Front for Liberation and the four-point stand of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam—especially the withdrawal of all U.S. and satellite troops in Vietnam.

As strong condemnation of U.S. imperialist aggression against Vietnam resounded throughout the conference, the Soviet delegates found it expedient at times to make a few remarks against the United States. But they evidently came to Havana with a purpose of their own at a time when the United States was launching a massive “peace offensive” and the Soviet Union was carrying out intensive activities in many capitals in its support. What the Soviet delegates did at the conference was: minor attack in words but major help in deeds.

Afraid to speak in strong terms against U.S. aggression in Vietnam and to expose the scheme of U.S. aggressors to hang on in south Vietnam, the Soviet delegates simply called for “the achievement of peace in Vietnam,” which was but an echo of the fraudulent U.S. call for “peace talks.” A Soviet delegate said in an undertone, “the U.S. imperialists hypocritically talk about negotiations,” but that very sentence was deleted by the Soviet news agency TASS when it released his speech. Such tricks only accentuate the Khrushchov revisionists’ service to the Johnson Administration’s “peace talks” hoax.

Looking upon themselves as benefactors, the Soviet delegates said nothing about the invaluable contributions made by the Vietnamese people’s anti-imperialist patriotic struggle towards the revolutionary struggles of the people of the whole world. Instead, they kept on boasting of the Soviet “aid” of aircraft, rockets and other modern weapons for Vietnam. On the pretext that certain countries were unable to send aid materials to Vietnam, the Soviet delegates proposed the founding of an international aid-Vietnam fund organization. All this had aroused discontent among the delegates.

Indonesian and other delegates immediately called attention to the fact that the Vietnamese people’s victory in their fight against U.S. aggression was primarily a result of their own struggle, which was supported by other countries. It was not only a matter of the socialist countries supporting Vietnam, but of the Vietnamese people by their courageous struggle supporting all other peoples of the world. He also said that it was not only the rich who were qualified to aid Vietnam.

The Chinese delegate pointed out that it was the bounden internationalist duty of the socialist countries to support Vietnam. He queried: Why should there be any international fund organization as suggested by the Soviet delegates? Why must the Vietnamese people receive aid from other countries through such an international organization, and be deprived of their right to receive aid directly from other countries? Wasn’t this an obvious attempt to bring the aid of the peoples of the three continents to Vietnam under the control of such an organization?

The Chinese delegate vehemently pointed out that in seeking to mislead the world, the Soviet delegates had played up the question of transport for Soviet aid supplies to Vietnam. In so doing they were repeating the lie spread by a Soviet journal that China had obstructed the transit of material for Vietnam.

The Soviet delegates’ fuss over the question of aid to Vietnam failed to achieve their ulterior purpose. Instead, this only made it clear that the Soviet Union wanted to use aid as a means to intervene in Vietnam to obtain capital with which to bargain with the United States, and to stir up anti-China sentiments at the conference and bring about a split in the name of “united action.”

RESOLUTELY OPPOSE U.S. IMPERIALISM OR SEEK “PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE” WITH IT

The common desire of the great majority of delegates to the conference was to lift the revolutionary struggle against imperialism in the three continents to new heights through the conference. From the very beginning, however, the Khrushchov revisionists did their best to impose their capitulationist line of “peaceful coexistence” at the conference and to bring the liberation movements in the three continents into the orbit of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. collaboration for world domination. The Soviet paper Pravda in an article published on the day the conference opened asserted that the struggle “for peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems,” “for the prohibition of nuclear weapons and means of their delivery” and “for universal peace,” “will be the main subjects of discussion at the Havana conference.” The Soviet delegation then proceeded to present just such contraband at the conference.

At the political committee meeting, the Soviet delegates insisted on inserting a passage on so-called “peaceful coexistence” into the committee’s draft general resolution. They did not call for opposition to imperialism headed by the United States but urged that “all nations, big or small, should take peaceful co-existence as the foundation of their inter-relations.”

Delegates from China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaya, the Congo (L), Southwest Africa and other countries and regions firmly opposed the imposition of this erroneous line on the peoples of the three continents. The Chinese delegate said that the tri-continental conference should discuss the question of unity of the peoples of the three continents in the struggle against imperialism and not the question of peaceful coexistence. It is absolutely wrong to refrain from opposing imperialism and instead speak vaguely about so-called peaceful coexistence among big and small countries. Can Vietnam and the Dominican Republic coexist peacefully with the United States? The Congolese (L) delegate asked emotionally: The Congolese people are even denied the right of existence, how can there be any talk of peaceful co-existence? The delegate of Southwest Africa said: The tri-continental conference is not the United Nations or a hotchpotch conference. Peaceful coexistence is out of the question here; it is a choice between struggle or capitulation. We will certainly not capitulate! The Uganda delegate said that the attempt to stress peaceful coexistence at such a conference showed the designs of certain people to bring the struggle for national liberation into the orbit of “peaceful coexistence” and “general and complete disarmament” to hamper the advance in the struggle against imperialism. He asked: “You harp repeatedly on peaceful co-existence. Does this mean that you want everybody to stop supporting Vietnam’s war of resistance against U.S. imperialism and instead compromise with the United States?”

Strong opposition from a large section of the delegates prevented the Soviet delegate from inserting so-called peaceful coexistence into the general political resolution. The meeting decided to delete this passage from the draft resolution. But the struggle did not end there. As the political committee meeting went on from 9:30 p.m. on January 11 to 6:00 a.m. the next day, a document on so-called peaceful coexistence was put forward suddenly in the form of an extraordinary draft resolution.

In the ensuing harangue, the followers of Khrushchovism supporting the motion resurrected all the rubbish Khrushchov peddled in his time. One speaker said that in the present nuclear weapons era mankind had to choose either peaceful coexistence or a big nuclear war, and we chose peace. He claimed that “peaceful coexistence” was essential to revolutionary struggle, a new form of struggle for liberation. With the Soviet peace policy, he said, the hands and feet of imperialism could be bound while the liberation struggle in many places could be victorious under the help of the Soviet Union.

This incensed the delegates of many countries. The Uganda delegate said that the conference should discuss opposition to U.S. imperialism, the common enemy of the peoples of the three continents. Can our extensive talk about peaceful coexistence check the U.S. imperialist aggression against Vietnam? he asked. If the conference passed such a resolution, it would alienate itself from the broad masses of people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Nepalese delegate said that relations between states lay within the sphere of diplomats, and we should discuss the question which concerned us, the struggle against imperialism. The delegate of Bechuanaland said that the people of his country had never known the imperialist powers to respect the sovereignty of small countries. The delegate of Southwest Africa spoke emotionally and loudly: we resolutely oppose the publicizing here of the monstrosity called peaceful coexistence in whatever colour it was painted.

Amid roars of protest, the chairman put the draft resolution to a vote. China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaya, Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, Uganda, Southwest Africa, Bechuanaland, and Basutoland voted against it. The Soviet Union, India and other countries voted in favour of it. Many other delegates abstained. According to the rules of procedure, any resolution must be adopted by a two-thirds majority, if no unanimity can be reached through consultation. However, the chairman of the meeting declared the resolution adopted without even giving the number of votes cast in favour of it.

Another strange circumstance is worth mentioning. As the marathon meeting lasted from 9:30 in the evening till 9:30 the next morning, many people had left the meeting room to go to bed. However, a minute before the vote was to be taken, there was a sudden rush into the room of a large number of “voters” whose sleepy look clearly showed that they had just been roused fxom bed. They raised their hands without even fully opening their eyes. In this way, the chairman declared the “peaceful coexistence” resolution adopted.

Many delegates expressed discontent at the adoption of such a resolution by the militant tri-continental conference.

Gabriel Yumbu, leader of the Congolese (L) delegation, angrily declared that to adopt such a resolution was to spoil the fruits of the conference, and implied the recognition of Mobutu. This was not conducive to the cause of the Congo and the whole of Africa. By insisting on imposing this document on the conference, the Soviet delegates have made themselves antagonistic to the people of the three continents who are firmly against imperialism and want to carry out revolution. They have thus once again shown that they are following a line of sham anti-imperialism and real capitulation.

TO CENSURE THE UNITED NATIONS OR TO EXTOL IT

At the meeting, many delegates strongly charged that the United Nations is an instrument of U.S. imperialism for committing aggression against the people of the three continents.

An Indonesian delegate said: We must further unmask the nefarious imperialists who are using the United Nations as a tool for dominating the whole world and deceiving the people.

A Pakistan delegate said: The United Nations is still being dominated and utilized by the imperialist powers. It continues to deprive the Chinese people of their legitimate seat in that organization. Its intervention in Korea, Pakistan, Kashmir and the Congo (L) has complicated matters in these places and this is only beneficial to the imperialists and colonialists.

However, the Soviet delegates and their followers did not miss a single opportunity at the meeting to justify the United Nations in order to meet their need to use that organization as a market place between the United States and the Soviet Union for concluding transactions to dominate the world. They took up the cudgels whenever anybody attacked the United Nations.

At the committee meeting for discussing urgent problems the Dominican delegate called for a denunciation of the United Nations because it failed to defend the people’s right to self-determination and to put a stop to the military interventions in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This had in fact reduced the organization into an instrument of colonialism and neo-colonialism, he said.

The Soviet delegate at the meeting said nothing. The delegate of the African National Congress (South Africa), who often spoke in support of the Soviet delegate, came forward to defend the United Nations. He said that nobody should denounce the United Nations because many Asian and African countries were represented on it.

The Chinese, Korean, Congolese (L) and other delegates made scathing attacks on the United Nations. The Chinese delegate expressed unreserved endorsement of the Dominican draft resolution and pointed out that by adopting the resolution for a “cease-fire” in the Dominican Republic under joint U.S.-Soviet sponsorship, the United Nations had legalized U.S. armed aggression against that country. The Korean delegate condemned the United States for using the United Nations as a signboard in its aggression against his country. The Congolese (L) delegate indignantly charged: “The United Nations has come to our country, but what has become of our Lumumba? What has become of our Republic of the Congo? I know all these things. I know how the U.N. representative was overjoyed when Lumumba was murdered. We all know what sort of organization the United Nations is.”

Before the vote was taken, the delegate of the Dominican Republic demanded that the Soviet delegate clarify his stand. The Soviet delegate hurriedly replied that he agreed with the view of another delegate who suggested a certain “modification” in the wording so as to avoid calling the United Nations an “instrument of colonialism and neocolonialism.” When at last the draft resolution of the Dominican delegate was put to a vote, the Soviet delegate voted against it.

At another meeting of the urgent problems committee, the delegate of the African National Congress (South Africa) tabled a draft resolution on South Africa. It called on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America to “carry out all resolutions of the United Nations.” This further enraged the delegates. The Chinese delegate asked: Does this mean that the Chinese people should carry out the U.N. resolution which branded China as an “aggressor”? The Congolese (L) delegate demanded to know whether the Congolese people should betray their own motherland. Under the pressure of the delegates for a clarification, the delegate of the African National Congress at the next day’s session had to agree to delete that paragraph.

At that time, the Soviet delegate suddenly became bold and insisted that the African National Congress was the sole organization engaged in underground struggle in South Africa. “So please adopt the resolution as they demand,” he said. This added fuel to the anger of the Venezuelan, Brazilian and other delegates. Under the accusing fingers of the majority of the delegates, the delegate of the African National Congress had to declare once again that the said paragraph should he deleted. Only then was the debate closed.

While the political committee was drafting the general political resolution, the Chinese delegation pointed out emphatically that the resolution should, in compliance with the demand of many delegates, expose and denounce the United Nations as an instrument for aggression. The Indian delegate put forward an amendment in an effort to defend the United Nations. But he failed to advance any convincing arguments. Finally, the following passage was included in the general political resolution: “The conference accuses the United Nations of having allowed itself to be used more than once by U.S. imperialism as an instrument of its policy of aggression against the national-liberation movements and against other countries such as the Congo, Korea, and Santo Domingo. It also condemns the United Nations manipulated by the United States for having deprived the People’s Republic of China of its legitimate seat in this organization.”

CAPITULATIONIST AND DIVISIVE NATURE OF “UNITED ACTION”

The overwhelming majority of the delegates voiced the desire of the people of the three continents to unite against their common enemy, imperialism headed by the United States. Wu Hsueh-chien, leader of the Chinese delegation, said: “At a time when a fierce struggle is going on between the aggressive forces and the forces against aggression we should unite all genuinely anti-imperialist forces to fight against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism headed by the United States.”

However, the “united action” demanded by the Soviet delegation at the meeting is quite another matter. Its aim is to take advantage of the legitimate desire for unity of the people of the three continents to impose on the conference the Soviet line of collaboration with the United States for world domination, under the hypocritical slogans of “united action” and “a common fight against the enemy.”

In the course of the conference, many things had happened which clearly showed that all the endless talk of the Soviet delegation about “unity,” and “co-ordination” was designed to cover up their own capitulationism and splittism. But they failed dismally. The ugly nature of their so-called “united action” was utterly exposed.

The Chinese, Indonesian, Japapese and other delegates all demanded to know with whom the Soviet delegation wanted to take united action and against whom this united action was to be directed. The leader of the Chinese delegation Wu Hsueh-chien raised ten “why’s” in his speech to the conference. But the Soviet delegation did not dare to utter a single word in reply to the ten questions.

Nevertheless, they answered them with their actions. The Dominican and Cambodian delegates, for instance, resolutely opposed at the conference any sort of co-operation with U.S. imperialism. The Cambodian delegate tabled a draft resolution at the committee for discussing urgent problems, calling on all countries which love justice and peace to refuse to co-operate, in political, diplomatic, economic and cultural fields, with the U.S. Government and all governments which energetically support its policy of aggression against Indo-China. When the resolution was put to a vote, the Soviet attitude was an adamant no.

Where does the Soviet delegation stand, people ask, on the sharp issue of opposing co-operation with imperialism?

Also at the committee for discussing urgent problems, the Indonesian delegate put forward a draft resolution for condemning the Indonesian reactionary army leaders’ suppression of the progressive forces. Far from endorsing this resolution, the Soviet delegate went so far as to oppose the inclusion of this draft resolution in the agenda of the committee. Doesn’t this sufficiently prove that the Soviet delegate was standing on the side of the Indonesian Rightists?

In discussing a draft resolution advanced by the Palestinian delegate, delegates of the Portuguese colonies suggested the addition of a call for “breaking off all relations” with Israel. This suggestion had the support of most of the delegates. But the Soviet delegate was opposed to the severance of “all relations.”

Similar instances are too numerous to be cited one by one. No wonder that after the committee discussions, an African delegate said: What the Soviet delegates have in mind is now clear to all. An Asian delegate said: Whenever anybody attacks the United States, the Soviet delegates would come forward to defend it. Isn’t it amply clear whom the Soviet delegates want to unite with and whom they are against?


PLAN TO CONTROL TRI-CONTINENTAL SOLIDARITY ORGANIZATION GOES BANKRUPT

The Khrushchov revisionists’ slogan of “united action” also finds its expression organizationally in the demand for the establishment of a new Afro-Asian-Latin American organization to be controlled by these revisionists themselves and affiliated with organizations under their thumb, such as the World Council of Peace. Their aim is to abolish the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization and undermine the Afro-Asian people’s cause for unity against imperialism. To this end, the Khrushchov revisionists raised a hue and cry for “enlargement” of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization into a tri-continental organization.

For quite a number of years, the anti-imperialist organizations in Asia, Africa and Latin America had exchanged views on the question of convening a solidarity conference of the peoples in the three continents. The Executive Committee of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization meeting in Gaza in December, 1961, recommended that representatives of the Afro-Asian-Latin American anti-imperialist organizations make preparations for the convening of a tri-continental conference. The Third Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference held in Moshi, Tanzania, in February 1963, decided to convene a tri-continental conference in Havana and to set up an 18-nation preparation committee. The Fourth Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference held in Winneba, Ghana, in May 1965, approved the holding of the First Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Conference in Havana in January 1966.

For quite a long time, the Khrushchov revisionists had tried to prevent the convening of the tri-continental conference, for reasons best known to themselves. But in the past year they suddenly changed their attitude and shifted to the tactics of energetically participating in, manipulating and controlling the preparatory work in an attempt to erase the anti-imperialist character of the projected conference. They tried hard to bar the representatives of the genuine anti-imperialist forces in the three continents from attending this conference. They even kept outside the conference hall some representatives of genuine anti-imperialist organizations who had already arrived in Havana after overcoming diverse difficulties.

On the eve of the opening of the tri-continental conference, the Soviet and Indian delegates rushed up and down the hotel Havana Libre and tried to collect signatures demanding a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization in Havana. It was said that they intended to propose at the committee meeting the “enlargement” of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization into a tri-continental organization. In other words, they wanted to “bury” the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization in Havana. But the signature drive quickly proved abortive.

The Chinese delegation in a letter to the member countries of the Executive Committee of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization resolutely opposed any illegal convention of a meeting of the committee during the tri-continental conference, thus crushing the Soviet and Indian delegates’ plot.

After the opening of the conference, the head of the Soviet delegation took the floor and put forward an official proposal on the establishment of a tri-continental organization. In sub-committees, they advocated “permanent co-operation” and “close relations” between the various mass organizations of the three continents on the one hand and the World Council of Peace and other Soviet-controlled international organizations on the other.

Many other delegates, out of a desire to strengthen the solidarity of the peoples in the three continents in their anti-imperialist struggle, also looked forward to the establishment of a tri-continental organization. But the overwhelming majority of them were against the abolition of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization.

The Soviet, Indian, and a small number of other delegates insisted that the conference adopt a resolution on “enlargement” of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization into a tri-continental organization. The Indian delegate said: “After the water of small rivers has flown into a big one, the existence of these small rivers is no longer necessary!” His argument was repudiated by many other delegates. The Indonesian delegate said: If after the establishment of a bigger regional organization the smaller ones must be abolished, didn’t it mean, that the Arab League must be abolished since the African people’s organization has already been established? Should the Pan-African Union of Journalists be abolished after the establishment of the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association?

The Chinese delegate pointed out that in recent years the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization had contributed a great deal to the national-liberation struggle in Asia and Africa. To abolish the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization would split the Afro-Asian solidarity movement and seriously threaten the tri-continental solidarity movement.

The conference’s organizational committee after discussions turned down all proposals for the abolition of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization. Thus the Soviet delegates suffered another defeat.

The Soviet delegates’ sabotage activities against Afro-Asian-Latin American solidarity reached a new height on the eve (January 14) of the closing of the conference. In disregard of the resolution already adopted, they insisted on forcing their way into the Executive Secretariat of the tri-continental organization. Before this, delegations from various countries had already met separately, consulted with each other and decided on the composition of the Executive Secretariat of the Afro-Asian-Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Organization, the establishment of which had earlier been approved by the tri-continental conference. The members from four Asian countries were to be Korea, southern part of Vietnam, Pakistan and Syria. At the meeting of the heads of the Asian delegations held on January 14, the Soviet delegation suddenly moved to annul the list of names of Asian secretaries already agreed upon through consultation. It even unabashedly recommended itself to be a member, saying: “Whatever responsibilities the Asian people want the Soviet Union to shoulder, it is always willing to do so.” This action of the Soviet delegation enraged the delegations of Asian countries. The head of the Laotian delegation Vongvichit repeatedly asked: Was the list of names passed on January 13 valid or not? He insisted that the list already approved should be taken as a decision of the conference. The Japanese delegate pointed out that international conferences had never witnessed such a precedent: A resolution was to be reversed right after its adoption. From five in the afternoon till past midnight, the Soviet delegate made one difficulty after another on that issue. He was compelled to withdraw his demand only when he found himself unanimously condemned by the delegates of China, Japan, Indonesia, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, Korea and south Vietnam.


CONCLUDING WORDS

The tri-continental conference was the scene of a serious struggle: the struggle between two lines. Should one resolutely combat imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism headed by the United States or practise peaceful coexistence with them? Should one firmly support the Vietnamese people in carrying through their people’s war against U.S. imperialist aggression to the very end or lend a hand to U.S. imperialism’s “peace talks” plot? Should one severely condemn and expose the United Nations as an instrument of U.S. imperialism for aggression or gloss over the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union are using the United Nations as a market place for bargaining at the expense of the people of the three continents? Should the people of the three continents form the broadest possible united front against imperialism headed by the United States or should one take the so-called “united action,” and put the continuously rising national-liberation struggles in the three continents into the orbit of U.S.-Soviet collaboration for world domination? Should one abolish the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization with an eight-year-old anti-imperialist tradition in favour of a new organization to be controlled by the Khrushchov revisionist clique for pushing their erroneous line, or should one promote the Asian, African and Latin American peoples’ solidarity movement on the basis of safeguarding the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization and its anti-imperialist tradition?

The outcome of the struggle shows that thanks to the joint effort of the delegates from the three continents, the Khrushchov revisionists have suffered a crushing defeat in their attempt to put across their erroneous line at the conference and their intrigues to sabotage the Afro-Asian solidarity movement and to control the tri-continental solidarity movement. Their true features of sham anti-imperialism and real capitulation, sham support and real betrayal, sham unity and a real split were once again completely unmasked and this has taught the people of the three continents a new lesson by negative example.

The tri-continental people’s solidarity movement ran into various difficulties at its very outset. But in accordance with the will of the people of the three continents, the movement is sweeping forward with irresistible momentum, overcoming one difficulty after another, and is triumphantly carrying forward its task of opposing imperialism headed by the United States and striving for national liberation.

— HSINHUA CORRESPONDENT