FEATURES Opposition stifled in Grenada By NORMAN FARIA Tribune Caribbean Correspondent ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada — Despite its promises to maintain freedom of the press and a democratic environment for the flourishing of alternative view- points, the eight-month-old, Washington-installed In- terim Government of Nicolas Brathwaite has clearly encouraged a campaign to undermine the influence and hamstring the work of such representative organizations as the ‘‘Maurice Bishop and October 19th, 1983 Martyrs Foundation”’ and the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Move- ment (MBPM) political party. The campaign also tries to black out general informa tion critical of the Government from reaching the populace. Among the measures: - e Passing laws forcing opposition papers to post a bond; e Refusal of the state-run printery to print news- papers which refuse to kowtow to the regime’s policies; e Restricting the movement of opposition organiza- ’ tions; e Banning and expelling of investigative journalists from the island. : The recently formed MBPM, which has decided to go ahead and field a full slate of candidates for the 15 parliamentary seats in the upcoming general elections, has nevertheless pledged to continue with its work of contributing to the restoration of democracy and the economic programs of the People’s Revolutionary Gov- ernment of the late Maurice Bishop. Speaking with the Tribune, a spokesperson for the “Maurice Bishop. and October 19th, 1983 Martyrs Foundation’, a body set up last March to honor and preserve the memory of Bishop and others murdered last October, argued that the EC$1000 bond for newspapers was a way to intimidate and make it more difficult for the opposition press, particularly those which support the ideals of the PRG. g ‘‘After we paid the bond, we then learned that the state-owned print shop which printed our weekly news- paper, Indies Times, was refusing to run off any more papers for us. This press, not surprisingly, also publishes the pro-Government Grenadian Voice,”’ he said, adding that Indies Times was consistently the most widely read paper in the island. TRIBUNE PHOTO — NORMAN FARIA Armed U.S. coast guard vessel enters St. George’s har- bor. Up on the hill are the remains of Butler House, the The Foundation has subsequently gained access to another, smaller, press but the format of the paper has been reduced. ; The Foundation and the MBPM has also criticized the decision of the Interim Government to hold onto the passports of former PRG Agriculture Minister George Louison and his brother Einstein. Both Louisons are now actively involved in the Foundation and the MBPM. ‘They have taken our passports and we may only travel after a lengthy complicated application process for * a special permit. We have had to turn down several invitations from overseas solidarity groups and institu- tions, including those in Canada, to come and address them,’’ said Louison. Besides the efforts to reduce and undermine the in- fluence of such media as the Indies Times, some analysts argue that the Brathwaite administration has also cracked down on outspoken journalists and entertainers both local and those from overseas. Since last October’s invasion, the Government has launched a virtual witch hunt against those island jour- nalists who had actively supported the PRG. Several have been summarily fired, including 10 media workers at the recently set up Radio Grenada. No reason was given by the government for these latter dismissals which took place last month. However, in the past, Brathwaite has said such fired workers were supporting “‘an alien ideology’. Journalists from overseas have also been given their walking papers, several not getting past the island’s air- port where a lengthy list of names has reportedly been drawn up. The latest has been the deportation last April of U.S. radio newsman Don Foster, who was on assign- -PRG’s Prime Minister’s office, which was bombed and gutted by fire during last October’s invasion of the island. ment in the Spice Isle for National Public Radio and thé Pacific Radio Network. Foster, who had last year lived in Grenada under the PRG for several months doing research, was picked up by authorities after he followed up reports that a youth was shot dead by a policemal: Foster was given two days to pack his bags and leave: Earlier this year, St. Lucian journalist Earl Bousquet who was a correspondent in St. Lucia reporting for under the Radio Free Grenada under the PRG admit istration, was put on the next plane out when he arriv from St. Lucia’s capital Castries. (Faria, in addition 0 writing for the Tribune also worked.as a RFG corres pondent in Barbados. He was able to legally enter post: invasion Grenada recently to gather material for thes¢ reports in such a manner as to avoid the fate of Bousque! — Editor.) In another incident, Barbados’ popular calypsonia! “The Mighty Grynner’’, who is well known in the Anglophone Caribbean region for his witty criticism of the Barbados government of Prime Minister Tom Adams in the song ‘‘Mr. T., Lemme Go’’, was never allowed off the airport compound when he arrived to sing at a fun@ _ tion last March marking the launching of the “Maurice Bishop and October 19th, 1983 Martyrs Foundation. The singer had previously sung at a Caribbean Calyps? Festival organized last August by the PRG and which was attended by calypsonians from all over the region: Meanwhile, the Interim Government has announcé that none of the island’s calypsonians, (renowned like their colleagues in other Caribbean states for their inch sive social commentary) will be allowed to participate !? the island’s Carnival celebrations which are traditionally held every August. — Challenger The spectre of Korean Airlines Flight 007, bearing its damning cargo of unanswered questions, continues to haunt the course of the new Cold War. Persistent scrutiny of the event by some analysts is almost certainly producing tremors of fear in those secret places where the tragedy was planned. A case in point is an article that appeared recently in Britain’s authoritative ‘‘insider’’ magazine, Defense At- taché. The piece pulled together a great deal of hitherto unknown information, and concluded there is no doubt that KAL 007 was one element in an elaborate CIA espionage project which also involved a U.S. Airforce RC-135 electronic reconnaissance plane, a ‘‘Ferret-D”’ spy Satellite; and the space shuttle Challenger. According to the article, the RC-135 ‘‘piggybacked”’ with KAL 007 just before the airliner proceeded into Soviet airspace. This tactic caused the radar images of the two planes to merge, creating confusion among So- viet operators. The role of KAL 007 was to “‘turn on”’ Soviet air defences, so that Soviet responses and elec- tronic emissions could be examined and measured by the U.S. spy satellite overhead. Indeed, Soviet military authorities drew attention last October to the uncanny ‘linkage between the orbital path of the “‘Ferret’’ satellite and the stages of KAL 007’s flight. What is new in the Defense Attaché article is the suggested role of the space shuttle. It points out that Challenger was launched some 36 hours before the inci- dent ‘‘eastwards at the unusual local time of 0232, the first night-time launch’’. “It is possible that, in its orbital passes to the south of the Soviet Union, it would have been advantageously placed to eavesdrop on emergency communications’ streaming east to west across the-USSR between the Far implicated in fy ore | Fred Weir Eastern command and the centre of political control in Moscow’’. The thorough technical detail of the article has con- vinced many analysts that Defense Attaché had access to intelligence sources directly involved in the KAL 007 -operation. Even Britain’s conservative newsmagazine, The Economist, concedes that it constitutes ‘‘the strongest case yet that Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was involved in an intelligence-collection mission’. The conclusions of the Defense Attaché article are not | new, although it is perhaps the most definitive roundup of evidence to date. Indeed, within weeks of the incident a number of intelligence insiders and analysts came for- - ward with evidence that the KAL episode was not an isolated case, that the CIA has for decades routinely used aircraft intrusions as a means of stimulating and then examining Soviet defensive responses. e Duncan Campbell, writing in the new Statesman, recalled that there have been at least 87 such incidents in the past 35 years, involving British, American and other aircraft. He documents a case in which two British intel- ligence operatives were jailed in 1958 for the crime of MX’s, we are all of us in deadly peril. ‘ - KAL fiasco publicly revealing details of these actions in a newspaper article. They had written: } : ‘*Since the Russians do not always provide the re- quired messages to monitor, they are sometimes pro- voked. A plane ‘loses its way’; while behind the frontier ‘tape recorders excitedly record the irritated messages of Russian pilots; and when sometimes the aeroplane is forced to land, an international incident is created...” 2 Twenty-five-year CIA veteran Ralph McGehee, re- ~ cently retired, as publicly argued that KAL 007 was part of ‘‘an intricately designed intelligence gamble set up by ‘the CIA, a gamble it has taken dozens of times in the - past. ‘““KAL 007 was working in concert with U.S. and Korean intelligence agencies,’ says McGehee. ‘‘Its mis- sion was to fly into Soviet airspace at a time when the Soviets were conducting missile tests, thus forcing them to activate their radar’’. The U.S. makes a regular prac- tice.of ‘‘testing’’ Soviet air defences in this way, he says. So far, the U.S. Government has responded to these . charges, predictably, by claiming they are “‘Soviet lies”. As if the mere association with a Soviet view were refu- tation enough. : . Yet it is growing increasingly clear that throughout this terrible episode, it was the Reagan administration, not the government of the USSR that lied, elaborately and volubly, to the world. The lessons of KAL 007 are simple. We are all inno- cent passengers on a planetary airliner, attempting t0 navigate the rough turbulence of the Cold War. And as long as the men who cynically manipulated the flight ofa civilian aircraft in the pursuit of military intelligence are — also the ones who control the Pershings, Cruises, and ——— ~ . 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JULY 11, 1984