|

eR See

m
| Ssugged Soy ntact

CUT LEADER

ADDRES

ES CLC CONVENTION

‘With your help, we will

By SEAN GRIFFIN

othe eeesto Pinochet and the
thes llitary leaders launched

Renee coup in Santiago last
inthe Ba 11, Eduardo Rojas was
Contra Ice building of the Chilean
Within 3 bor Federation (CUT).
movin ers he was in hiding,
junta’ Tom house to house as the

 hla’s
impri Wave of arrests, torture,,

eet and execution swept
Within the length of Chile.
Ritecg; days, the CUT,
ition cnt two-and-a-half
me peers, was outlawed, its
been 4 ; OSe who had not already
Bvery p Reel hunted relentlessly.
sometim WO or three days,
S under disguise, Rojas
whom peed by the workers,
Desi ca Tepresented as a vice-
embers of CUT and by fellow
Was ales of MAPU of which he
i; a member.
informers Junta had bought its
YS of Eee On one of the tense
a Ing, he was betrayed.
Pen discovered that an
Wheres: reported his
tee he would probably
Cate One on a long list of
lon leaders whose names
the Chilea into the memories of
Warned
Bain seh ae was able to escape
Military eins hours later, the

who. ally through friends in MAPU
basgy into the mii a
live ae he found refuge for
Make his fore he was able to
And there +o out of the country.
Bain, se he was to see his wife
- day oe from him since
Ve Coup.
had er nonths pregnant, she too
hag n . cught by the junta. She
“newownalist for a Socialist
forced 4, vSPaper and was also

the bap e. Two months later, .
4s born — in Argentina.-

IS and his wife’
; ife’s
brought oscaPe behind him,
battled fell Sreetings of his em-
all t he oe unionists in
ni anadian Lab
88 Can ‘Convention last week and

a .
berm i ae director Dennis

’

petting

Nora

_ he told the convention through his

interpreter, “is that of the worst
military regime in the history of
Latin America. The fascists have

killed 20,000, jailed thousands of. |
trade unionists and expelled over . |

600,000 workers from their jobs.”

Already the junta has murdered
many = of
provincial leaders of CUT, among
them Luis Almonacid, general
secretary of CUT in O’Higgins
province, David Miranda, general
secretary of the Confederation of
Chilean Miners, Luis Rojas,
general secretary of CUT in Arica
province, Daniel Mateluna and
Santiago Alvarez, both directors of
CUT in their respective provinces
of Cautin and Coquimba. An at-
tempt. was also made to
assassinate Rolando Calderon,
general secretary of CUT, while he
was under the protection of the
Swedish embassy. It left him
seriously wounded. “

“Why such a brutal regime?
Rojas asked. “The answer 1S
simple. This is a counter-
revolutionary movement. it
brought down the government
which was liberating Chile from
the yoke of the multinational
corporations. It has a hatred of all
that is democratic.” ; :

Yet despite the fact that in Chile
no one but the fascists can speak
freely and the fact that the military

fascist junta ‘‘has implanted a:

government very much like that of
Hitler’s in Nazi Germany’, the
resistance is growing. “There is a
silent majority of the people which
is organizing underground,” Rojas
declared, ‘‘and their organization
is made easier because they know
thay are supported by workers
throughout the world.”

In the last month, two pamphlets’

— outlining the proposals for
resistance and raising. the cry for

the release of political prisoners —-.

have been clandestinely written
and printed inside the country.

They were distributed in virtually.

every major city throughout Chile
— in one day. ;

And even in the face of savage
repression, strike actions have
broken out in some centres. In
Valparaiso, 400. construction
workers struck for higher wages.
They were lined up before the
cordon of soldiers armed with

Ng 2 aha
fe President Donald MacDonald presenting Rojas with the

the national and ~

—earrying out the

Eduardo Rojas, vice-president of the Chilean Central Labor Federation, addressing the C

Thursday. Behind him is the emblem of the Congress.

machine guns and ordered to name
their leaders. No one uttered a
whisper. ,

Now living in Holland, Rojas is
organizing solidarity work in the
trade union movement in Europe.
Virtually every country’s: labor
federations have pledged support.
In. Sweden, workers have raised
over $300,000 in aid for the
resistance. In the GDR, in the
Soviet Union and throughout the
socialist world, workers. have
donated a day’s pay to the
resistance movement.

In Orlando, Belgium, the
workers have adopted what is
called the partial boycott whereby
a work slowdown is effected on all
Chilean shipping. In other coun-
tries they are moving to impose an
embargo on all shipments of arms

to Chile. The Canadian Congress,
which condemned the fascist junta
last year and denounced the
federal government for the ‘‘ob-
scene haste” with which it moved
to recognize the military regime,
reaffirmed its support for the
Chilean workers last ‘week. A
motion proposed by CBRT
delegate Gibert McIntyre pledging
moral and material assistance to
the Chilean trade union movement
was .passed with every hand
throughout the huge hall raised in
assent.

“To combat the junta,” Rojas
declared, “‘it is necessary to exert

‘the greatest possible pressure to

isolate fascist Chile in the to save
the lives of all those in jail. The
organized workers have the power
to isolate the junta by forcing their

win’

LC convention last
—Sean Griffin photos

governments to refuse to render

any financial aid.

Already, since September,
governments in the United States,
Japan, Britain, Brazil, Belgium,
France and.:.Canada have
given a total of $710,000,000 in
financial aid to the junta.

“There must be acts of vigilance
and a public rejection of the junta’s

representatives to make them feel -

that the people of the world are
against them,” Rojas said.

‘Boycott all arms to the junta.
These arms are not to defend the
workers but to assassinate them;
these arms are not for human
dignity but bestiality.

“Tt must be remembered that the
crushing of democracy in Chile
affects all workers and out

struggle is also yours. And with

your help, we will win.”

Five years in the

strugg|

By FRED WILSON
After more than four years of
living and breathing the in-
ternational peace movement,
awesome
responsibility of guiding the
world’s peace forces from its in-
ternational centre, Jim and Lucy
Forrest are on their way home.
It is characteristic Hane
lin, eace movement in
Soni hence that few of his
native Americans or Canadians,
whom he so aptly represented,
know who Jim Forrest is. But as
one of sixteen members of the
secretariat of the World Peace
Council, serving in the position of
North American secretary, Jim

" Forrest is a world figure.

ving completed his term of
ae oan World Peace Council,
the Forrests stopped in Vancouver
last week to meet with a group of
peace activists en route to their

e in San Francisco.
Be Forrest took up his post in
Helsinki, Finland, headquarters of
the World Peace Council, in 1969.
Hardly unpacked, he was whisked
away to a presidential meeting In
the Sudan. It was an appropriate
beginning for a job that would keep
him at the pulse of world events.
From witnessing US: aggression in
Vietnam, to Chile, the Middle East,
and the battle lines of the ee
struggles in Africa, Jim Forres

has travelled around the world
three times.

It is gratifying to the Forrests
that in their years at Helsinki, the
world peace movement has come.
into its own. ‘‘We learned we have
power, and how to use our power to
develop public opinion,” Jim ob-
served, ‘‘The fundamental fact of

- any peace organization is that it is

dependent and related to mass
movements of people, to public
opinion.”” For the Forrests, the
Vietnam war marked the turning
point in the power of public
opinion, ‘Public opinion as a force
coolesced around Vietnam and
later all of Indochina. For the first
time it was ‘force capable of
changing the direction of world
events. Many people think there
was one or another reason for the
ending of the Vietnam war, in-
flation in the US, the presidential
election and so on... but along
with the heroism of the Viet-
namese, the main reason was
international solidarity and the
force of public opinion.”

Talking to Jim Forrest is like
reading a new magazine. He can
tell you that on a per capita basis
the strongest peace movement in
the world is found in Australia. Or
that although the socialist coun-
tries can boast the most powerful
peace movement, in terms of pure
numbers the most consistent and
largest mass demonstration for

e for peace

peace are in Japan, demanding the
abolition of nuclear arms. France,
Italy and West Germany are close
rivals in the capitalist world.
“Damn encouraging, tremen-
dous,’” is what Jim thought of
Tuesday’s announcement by
Harold Wilson that Britain would
cease arms shipments to South
Africa and Chile. Not so en-
couraging though was Tuesday’s
nuclear blast in India. ‘‘We
shouldn’t jump the gun on this until
we have the facts,’”’ he cautioned,
“The World Peace Council is clear
in its opposition to any develop-
ment or proliferation of nuclear
arms, but one has to be suspicious
of the way that the media has
surged to the attack against India,

but. not against the French ex-

plosion in the Pacific which was
obviously a war weapon.”

The Forrests’ favorite topic is
the World Peace Council itself.
This month marks the 25th an-
niversary of the organization, born
in Paris in 1949; founded by a group
of intellectuals with F. Joliet Curie,
the famous French scientist, as its
first president. The pressing fear
of nuclear warfare acted as a
catalyst for the formation of a
world organization and pointed the
way to its first campaign, the
“Stockholm appeal’’. In spite of the
bitter years of the cold war the
Stockholm appeal collected 700

see FORREST pg. 12

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MAY 24, 1974—PAGE 3