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EDITORIAL

The Aug: 15 speech by South African president
Pieter Botha killed whatever expectation was held for
democratic change in South Africa. Instead it reiter-
ated the hardline position of a minority of white racists
who rule through the vicious apartheid system.

The speech in Durban removed the last shred of
pretext by the Mulroney government and its external
affairs minister Joe Clark, that propping up apartheid,
diplomatically, economically and financially, some-
how makes the regime susceptible to democratic ideas.
Pretoria’s murdering of more than 600 of its Black
citizens in the past few months does not recommend

_ the regime for such consideration.

Australia has taken steps against imports and
investment from South Africa and has banned the
Krugerrand gold coin and ended assistance to Austral-
ian firms dealing with South Africa. Calls have been
heard from India’s prime minister, from the UN, from
the 50-nation Organization of African Unity, and
from 10 European Community countries, who have
withdrawn their ambassadors. .

How many racist atrocities does Ottawa have to
witness before it can act decisively? External Affairs
Minister Clark has even refused to make permanent

More calls for sanctions

the recall-of Canada’s ambassador, Edward Lee,
assuring the apartheid regime it is not a protest —
merely a consultation. There would be more honesty
in the Mulroney government’s open declaration that it
embraces apartheid than in this camouflaged support
for it.

Total sanctions are called for. They should be app-
lied now without further delaying tactics. The Ottawa
Tories can spare us the spectacle of the racists shed-
ding tears over the possible loss of jobs by Black
workers. Where are their tears for the victims of the
death squads, for the tortured and the bereaved? Has
Joe Clark got a clear picture of these people as he
dilly-dallies?

There’s no excuse for further delay. The fabric of
apartheid lies won’t hide the truth. The oppressed
people of South Africa are fighting for freedom.

Around the world the call for the destruction of
apartheid resounds. The Mulroney government,
instead of helping to keep the apartheid alive, must be
compelled by all democratic Canadians to play a role
instead in opening the door to a free, democratic,
multi-racial South Africa. The immediate action
toward achieving that is total sanctions, now.

Support flight attendants

Last March the Mulroney government purged Air
Canada — firing 13 of its 15 directors and replacing
them with loyal Tories. At the time the prime minister
accused the fired directors of having no qualifications
other than being Liberal supporters. “We think it’s
time to change that a little bit,” he told reporters.

And he did, as the list of Tory patronage appoint-

ments showed.

Transport Minister Don Mazankowski added that
Air Canada directors should “reflect the philosophy
and attitude and approach” of the Tory party.

On Aug. 19, nearly 3,300 Air Canada employees,
members of the Canadian Air Line Flight Attendants
Association were forced to take strike action in the
face of a management concessions drive against
wages, hours and working conditions.

The refusal to meet the reasonable demands of the
union is, it seems, that sought-after reflection of “the
philosophy and attitude and approach” of the Ottawa
Tories.

What we see is the setting back of labor relations by
the Crown company’s intransigence on reaching an
amicable agreement, and its blatant use of strikebreak-
ing and scab labor to assert its Tory authority.

For purposes of winning public sympathy, Air

Canada may plead the pressure of airline deregulation
and capitalist competition, but then that is the Tory
policy the new directors want to mirror. next they’ll
want sympathy for being Tories.

After all, if Prime Minister Mulroney can try to cash
in on public relations by not crossing the picket line,
when his government’s policies are behind such
attacks on workers, lesser lights might try the same.

On the other hand, perhaps the PM considered it
unsafe to fly to Vancouver by Air Canada in the
circumstances. The scabs got only five days of training
before taking on the responsibility of seasoned flight
attendants. In view of that, where does Air Canada get
off with its “merger” process — stalling for seven
years before paying a flight attendant full wages?
There’s quite a gap between five days and seven years.

Full backing of the flight attendants by the entire
labor movement — and the travelling public — is
urgently called for.

Beyond that, it is time the call for a Labor Bill of
Rights entrenched in the Constitution, was taken up.
Such protection is long overdue, as is the rallying of a
people’s majority outside parliament to counter the
Tory, anti-labor majority in parliament.

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Everybody’s heard how Canada sells off natural gas cheap to
U.S. companies because there’s a glut of it. It would be nice if
Canadians got some cheap. For the nine months ended June 30
Consumers’ Gas Co., Toronto, had after-tax profits of $89.1-million.
It was $85.5-million same period a year earlier.

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__IRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN nove
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON
Business & Circulation Manager — DONALDA VIAUD
Graphics — ANGELA KENYON
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| n the decade since the 1975 events at the
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South
Dakota, the efforts by the U.S. govern-
ment, and the FBI to maintain the frame-
up of American Indian Movement leader

People and Issues

ticking by your principles can some-
times be costly, particularly when’
you’re on a modest income. Yet cost didn’t
deter Vancouver Ald. Libby Davies, when
it came to a choice between flying with a

Leonard Peltier have continued relent-
lessly. Each time that his defence lawyers
have succeeded in taking away one of the
Pieces that have supported the contrived
case against him, the courts respond as if
nothing has changed.

So it is with the most recent incident,
detailed by Peltier’s defence lawyer Wil-
liam Kunstler in the current issue of the
Washington-based publication Covert
Action Information Bulletin.

According to Kunstler, the conviction
against Peltier rested heavily — after the
testimony of so-called witness Myrtle Poor
Bear was proven to have been fabricated
— on ballistics evidence which purport-
edly linked rifle shells found near the dead
FBI agents’ bodies with a rifle attributed
to Peltier.

But years after his initial imprisonment,
Peltier was able, through a Freedom of
Information Act suit, to obtain some of the
documents relating to the ballistics evi-
dence used in the trial. One of them was
Particularly revealing. It was a teletype
from an FBI ballistics expert, Evan Hodge,
sent on Oct. 2, 1975, stating that the shell
Casings found near the bodies showed that
the weapon used had a “different firing
pin” from the rifle attributed to Peltier.
Significantly, it was Hodge who had given

the damning ballistics testimony at Pelti-
er’s 1977 trial. ae

On the basis- of. that discrepancy, an
appeal court ordéred thé original judge in
the Peltier trial, Judge’ Paul Benson, to
conduct a hearing'to examine the new
information. It was there that the discre-
pancies began to crop up one after
another. Hodge, who maintained that
only he and another FBI agent had made
ballistics notes on the case, was shown to
be lying when handwriting analysis
revealed that a third agent, other than
Hodge and his assistant, had been
involved in writing the notes. In fact, it was
that third agent’s note which had posi-
tively linked the shell casings to the Peltier
rifle.

There were other discrepancies as well.
In particular, the agents were at a loss to
explain why they had waited until months
after the shootings to examine the shell
casings when they all admitted that the
case had the “highest priority” in the FBI’s

investigative work at the time, and that.

Hodge had been pressed constantly to test
shells found at the scene against any rifles
associated with the Pine Ridge incident.
Behind all the discrepancies, Kunstler
contends, was the July 19, 1976 acquittal
of other AIM leaders Dennis Banks and

Robert Tobideau and the subsequent
determination of the FBI to “get”
Peltier — even if it meant fabricating
more evidence.

In this case, adding the necessary notes
to corroborate Hodge’s testimony would
have been particularly useful.

Because lawyers weren’t able to get all
the documents required, they weren’t able
to reveal the extent of the continuing
frame-up.

But the discrepancies they did reveal
were glaring enough — except, it seems to
Judge Paul Benson. In what Kunstler calls
“an outrageous decision” on May 24,
1985, Benson denied the motion for a new

trial, claiming that the new evidence would

“not influence a jury in any way.”

_ In fact, jury members would have to be
collectively blind or committed to the per-
petuation of injustice not to be influenced
by the new evidence. And it is just that
outcome that the U.S. administration and
the FBI fear most for it would show their
contrived case for exactly what it is: a
monstrous frame-up.

Still, it isn’t over: Kunstler has stated
that lawyers will appeal once again and the
international campaign for Peltier’s release
continues.

scab airline and refusing to cross a picket
line.

According to Libby’s husband, Com-
mittee of Progressive Electors Ald. Bruce
Eriksen, Libby was refused a refund on her
Air Canada ticket for the return trip while
visiting relatives in Regina last week. She
had booked the flight and taken the trip to
Regina before the members of the Cana-
dian Air Line Attendants Association went
out on legal strike Aug. 19. ;

Air Canada’s position was that a
contract — booking a flight — was a
contract, and no refund was owed. But,
Bruce asks, what kind of a contract is it
when the conditions are changed, and
inexperienced, non-union labor is hired
with the resulting threat to passenger
safety — a threat documented by pilots
who rejected some ill-trained recruits.

It cost Libby an extra $325 to book a
flight with another air line. It cost Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney nothing to make
his gesture of support for the picket line
when he chose an alternate air line to fly out
for the Vancouver cabinet meeting — a
support not complemented when he
crossed the CALFAA line at the Hotel Van-
couver, not to mention allowing the gov-
ernment’s own air line to proceed with its
drive for concessions from its employees.

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE, AUGUST 28, 1985 e 3

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