French gunboats cru

_ ion. T,

Tribune writer Norman Faria is
on an extended visit to the Carib-
bean. Offering our readers an in-
sight into the politics of the reg-
sh By article discusses French

ton as part of NATO and
NATO-backed Powers in the

area. Faria is pres i
ently in
“Grenada. 4

By NORMAN FARIA
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados —
Open arms and uncritical
welcome the Barbados govern-
ment accorded a high level
French’ parliamentary mission

visiting this Caribbean island ear-
lier this month reminds us once
again of the rocky road ahead for
the region in coming to grips with
and breaking away from neo-
colonial control. —

In view of France’s continuing

role as a colonial power, some ob-
servers here advise caution in ac-
commodating the European na-

_tion’s desire ‘‘to help protect the

region from outsiders’.

Seemingly, this offer to help
was one of the main reasons for
the official visit’ to Barbados and

other English-speaking islands of
Oliver Stim, the Minister of State
in France’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.

This move by Paris into the reg-
ion comes at a time when the met-

ropolitan country is increasing its ©

armed forces in its West Indian
colonies of Martinique and
Gaudeloupe. In June last year, M.
Yvon Bourger, the French War
Minister, stated that ‘‘we
(France) must have a powerful
army to defend our territory”.
In addressing a press con-
ferenc with Barbados Deputy

Py

ai

Fishermen in Barbados repair their boats on

“

not aid the developing countries to construct viable economies.

a beach. The military build-up by France in the Caribbean would

_

—_—_

Kassem Amin, one of the foun-
ders of the Sudanese Communist
Party, amember of the secretariat
of its Central Committee, and a
prominent personality, died on
Feb. 5, 1980, the SCP reports ina
letter recently received by the
Communist Party of Canada.

Kassem Amin was arrested by
Sudanese authorities in the sum-
mer of 1979 ‘‘when powerful
strikes swept across Sudan.”’ It
was One of a series of imprison-
ments for him. ‘‘As a result of the
ghastly conditions in prison, he
contracted a clot in the blood ves-
sels of the brain,” the Party re-
ports, ‘‘and the dictatorial regime
hastened to release him. After an
operation performed abroad,
Comrade Kassem Amin died.”’

The Sudanese Communist
Party is calling upon world pro-
gressive opinion to ‘‘protest
against this fiendish crime of the
Sudanese regime, which is hostile
to all signs of democracy.

“Our Party is waging a relent-
less Struggle against it, heading
the forces determined to despose
it and open the way to a national-
democratic revolution in Sudan,”
the SCP point out.

Hassem’ Amin has been known
since the 40s ‘‘as an indefatigable
fighter and a true son of the nation

and working class, from which he

came,” the letter recalls. As a
railway worker he. was instru-
mental in forming Sudan’s first
trade union in 1946 — the Rail-
waymen’s Union — the backbone
of the trade union movement.

Just released from prison

Also in 1946, Kassem Amin
was among those who founded
the Sudanese Communist Party,
and he has played a leading role in
the struggle for independence,
democracy, social progress and
socialism.

He. spent long periods in pris-
ons and concentration camps
both before and after Sudan’s
conquest of national inde-
pendence. -

.

Founder of Sudan party dies

“After the bloodshed caused
by the counter-revolution in the
summer of 1971... Kassem Amin
responded to his Party’s call and
returned home from abroad.” Ar-
riving at Khartoum Airport he
was arrested and imprisoned for
four years. :

His death resulted from the
cumulative effect of years of im-
prisonment added to by his in-
carceration again last year.

Patterson activist, author

NEW YORK — William L.
Patterson, widely known as ‘Mr.
Civil Rights” for his half-century
leadership of mass struggles in de-
fence of the victims of political
and racist repression, died here
March S after a prolonged illness.
He was 89 years old. s

Patterson’s contribution as
lawyer, scholar, author and or-
ganizer was considerable. He led

the 17-year defence of (1913-1948):

of nine Afro-Americans in what

has become known as the famous

“Scottsboro case”. His legal
career brought him in the midst of
other racist frame-ups such as
those of Willie McGee, Rosa Lee
Ingram, the Trenton Six and the
Martinsville Seven.

In 1947, following adoption by
the United Nations of a resolution
condemning genocide, Patterson
directed the drafting of a petition
to the UN showing the deliberate
commission of such acts by the
U.S. government against the

Afro-American population, then
estimated as one-tenth of the
population. The petition was pre-
sented to UN authorities by
Patterson and his long-time friend
Paul Robeson in 1951.

During his latter years, in rec-
ognition of his contributions to
the people’s struggles, Patterson
received many testimonials from
his contemporariés at home and
abroad, one of these being the

establishment of the William L.

Patterson Foundation and _ its
awards to others engaged in ad-
vancing these struggles.
Patterson’s legacy also in-
cludes his own account of his life

_in his autobiography, ‘‘The Man

Who Cried Genocide’. Patterson
had been a member of the Com-
munist Party, USA, for 54 years
having repeatedly been elected to
its highest bodies. Tribute was
paid to this outstanding humanist
and Communist at a memorial
held in New York, March 15.

Prime Minister Bernard St. John
and the Minister of External Af-
fairs, Henry Forde, Stirn said that
because of various attempts in re-
cent years by countries outside
the region to promote instability
here, France is interested in en-
suring that the alleged — the
Minister gave no examples of this
‘‘threat’’ — interference would be
nipped in the bud.

‘Stirn and his five-man party
also visited Grenada and Trinidad
and Tobago where he had private
discussions with Prime Minister
Eric Williams and senior Trinida-
dian government officials. While
in Grenada, Stirn was bluntly as-
sured by the People’s Revolu-
.tionary Government there of the
island’s support for the principles
of the Non-Aligned Movement.
~ What critics of the overly warm
reception given the French of-
ficials are arguing here is that his
renewed interest in the’ English
speaking region is clearly based
ona reaction to the increase in the
recognition by ordinary West In-
dians for progressive social and
political change. It is the intention
of Paris, they say, to put the
brakes on this movement for
change.

‘“‘All signs point to France’s
move as being part of a co-
ordinated effort by NATO and
NATO-backed powers to estab-

~ lish a strong military presence in

the Caribbean to counter an al-
leged threat to the region’s sec-
urity from outside forces. There
are no threats to our security. In-
deed, a danger to peace in the reg-
ion comes from this increased or

proposed military: buildup ‘bythe -

Western powers,’’ said Francis

- Belle, the General Secretary of
Barbados’ Movement for Na-
tional Liberation (Monali).

Monali is arguing that France is
still a colonial power and the gov-
ernment in Paris would have little
genuine interest in helping de-
veloping countries build up viable
economies.

The present French govern-
ment, they say, still exerts a grip
on numerous possessions in the
South Seas, South (Cayene) and
North (St: Pierre and Michelon)
America and in the Caribbean
(Martinique and Gaudeloupe).
The huge French colonial pre-
sence was thrown out of South
East Asia only after bloody libera-
tion struggle by the Vietnamese
led by Ho Chi Minh. Despite pro-
tests from Pacific countries such
as New Zealand, Paris continues
to pollute the environment in the
Pacific region by testing nuclear
‘weapons on its uninhabited is-
lands near Tahiti.

If on one hand there are those
who maintain that close ties be-
tween France and the West Indies
will benefit the latter region
economically, this may be coun-
tered with the information that
thousands of French troops are
stationed in many African coun-
tries to prop up despotic leaders.
Paris, for example, still calls the
tune in the Central African Re-
public. It was back in Jan. 1966
that France helped the French
army captain Jean Bedel Bokassa
to overthrow another pro-French
leader David Dacko — the same
man whom French armed forces
units were to put back into gov-
ernment house Jast year.

Incredibly, French President
Valery Giscard D’Estaing sent a
state minister to Bokassa’s much
publicized ‘‘coronation’’. Most
analysts agree that France got fed

ise Caribbean

up with Bokassa only after Am-
nesty International reported that
the dictator had ordered the mur-
der of some 100 schoolboys. The
French government, desirous of
protecting an investment which
includes uranium mines partly
owned by Giscard’s cousin Jac-
ques, clearly wanted to get rid of ~
an incompetent overseer. In-
terestingly, Bokassa, although a
French citizen, was refused per-
mission after the coup to live in
France.

’ The possession of French’
citizenship is a much trumpeted
feature of being born in
Maritinique or Gaudeloupe, two
West Indian islands which are of-
ficially provinces of France’s fed-
eral system. If Paris is to impress
political leaders in the English
speaking region, they must point
to a successful relationship be-
tween their West Indian posses- ~
sions and the metropole.

_ There are indications that this
relationship is somewhat strain-
ed. For example, in last June’s
elections in Gaudeloupe, only -
20% of the electorate exercised
their franchise. This could be
interpreted as.a disenchantment .
in the French administration.
Some sociologists point to a social
formation in the French islarids
characterized by a concentration
of economic and political power
in the hands of a handful of
mulatto (‘‘brown skin’’) and
French Creole (‘‘white) families. ©

The social scientists suggest
that what the noted Martiniquean
literary figure Aime Cesaire wrote
back in 1939 is still true today. It
was during that year that Césaire,
shortly before returning to his
homeland, wrote in Return to my
Native Land that ‘‘this ar-
chipelago whose flanks secrete
for Europe the sweet liquid of the
Gulf Stream’’.

Paris likes to counter this criti-
cism by publicizing the fact that
people living in French colonies
Overseas can emigrate at will to
the “mother country’’. In point of
fact 8,000 Gaudeloupeans leave
for France every year. Yet even
the country’s immigration
policies have come under attack
from both the French Socialist
Party and the Communist Party,
two large political forces which
nearly defeated Giscard and his
allies in France’s national elec-
tions. .

France has millions of immi-
grant workers, primarily from
North Africa. Last Spring Gis-

_ card’s administration came under

attack from the Opposition for
passing two laws (the Barre-
Bonnat and the Bovein-Stoleru
bills) which the latter say will
clamp down further on immigrant
and undocumented workers. Be-
cause of problems arising out of
Algerian immigration to France,
the Algerian government had put
a stop to large scale travel to the
former ‘mother country’’.

What the opposition in France
is saying was that Paris was effec-
tively using immigrants as scap-
goats to cover up government
mistakes leading to balance of
payments deficits. ‘

Those who have harsh words
for the dealings which island gov-
emments have with France say
there is nothing inherently wrong
with establishing diplomatic and
economic ties with that country:
they suggest, however, that any
links must seriously take into ac-
count the well being and long term
interests of the region.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 28, 1980—Page 7