By MIKE GIDORA ‘For centuries we lived under € colonialist yoke. My people ve been fighting an aggressive War for 30 years. Now we live in Peace, Now we can be masters of our own lives and our own fate.” With these words Truong Tan, a | presentative of the Ministry of ulture and Information of the rovisional Revolutionary Vernment of South Vietnam summed up the feelings of the letnamese people, who only five Months ago triumphed in their nturies old struggle for self- termination. Tan was speaking at a benefit d for Vietnamese Civilians held He Sunday at the Queen Elizabeth layhouse. But, Tan said, the liberation of Outh Vietnam is only the begin- Concert organized by the Canadian | "hg of a new struggle, the struggle Of building of a new life for the | People of Vietnam. ‘‘Our main task j : to build an independent, united, nd free Vietnam. We look forward | othe bright future which is due us. €areliving anew life —a merry, healthy life.”’ ‘ “4 | Tan spoke of the horrors of the ca namese war and the atrocities Ommitted against the people of Small country by U.S. im- Perialism. ‘Vietnam is one-half a size of British Columbia,” he Id, “but we had 13,000,000 tons of ™Mbs dropped on our country, _ More than all of the bombs dropped he entire Second World War. 50 One region of our country, some - Miles long was wiped off the Gee there is not so much as a ‘Ingle tree left. Ten kinds of fish ve vanished from Vietnam.” he eclar ed. In human terms, the cost of the Vietnamese war was much greater. Six million people, the equivalent of the population of all Canada west of the Ontario- Manitoba border were either killed or wounded in that war. Over 2 million people, the population of all of British Columbia were killed. An area greater than all of Northern Ireland has been rendered useless for agricultural purposes for up to 100 years by the use of pesticides by the United States. These are the results of a war directed against the people of Vietnam by American imperialism. “But still, this is not a clear picture of the consequences of this aggressive war.’ Tan said. “Every South Vietnamese family is affected by this war. South Vietnamese society is sick with social disease as a result of this war. “Out of a population of 20 million people, we have half a million drug addicts, 500,000 prostitutes who were recruited to serve the Americans, 250,000 hooligans. Our country is burdened with nearly one million orphans. We have three million jobless. Allin all we have to feed and find jobs for six million people. ‘‘We have to heal not only the physical scars of war, but we must heal our moral wounds as well,” Tan said. . The healing process has already begun. Tan said that already peasants who had fled to Saigon as a result of the war are returning home and are starting to rebuild the agriculture of the country. “But still we are only using only one-half of our agricultural land.” TRUONG TAN SPEAKS IN VANCOUVER ‘We are building a free Vietnam’ Many enterprises are producing again, but no longer depend on supplying American interests with materials for their war. The universities and technical in- stitutes in Saigon are re-opening and over 800 schools in one of the central provinces have re-opened their doors since the final liberation.” But South Vietnam is still heavily dependent on foreign aid as a result of the American ravaging of that country. Tan paid tribute to all those who were assisting his country, in particular the Soviet Union which is supplying large amounts of food and oil for his country. Tan expressed the deepest gratitude of the South Vietnamese people to all Canadians who helped in their fight. ‘During the difficult years of war you were on our side and you were helping us. And now in peace you are still on our side and you arestill helping us. We will not forget you.”’ Tan made special mention of the . work of the Canadian Aid for Vietnamese Civilians, which in less than ten years, has forwarded nearly $500,000 in cash and medical supplies to Vietnam. ‘‘While eating soup you are giving us your spoon” he said in accepting a bank draft of $5,000 from Dr. Alan Inglis, chairman of the Vancouver-based CAVC. An appeal during the concert, which featured the folk rock en- semble, Bargain at Half the Price, folksinger Debbie Foulkes, and the trio of Tom Hawken, Doug Stewart and Neil Bryson netted another $2,700 which will be used in the re- construction of Vietnam. i TRUONG TAN .... “our deepest thanks to those who helped us during the years of war and now in peacetime are helping us to rebuild the country.” —Sean Griffin photo CLC tells Chile junta OTTAWA — The executive council of the Canadian Labor Congress issued a telegram to the president of Chile Sept. 11 con- The National Caucus of Labor Mmittees, also known as the wae American Labor Party and _ we International Caucus of Labor °mmittees, spends a quarter of a illion dollars a year on_in- ence activities and ‘‘covert gettations” abroad, according toa —*“tes of articles published last Week in the U.S. Daily World. ee outline of the group’s ac- a ties, prepared by Daily World “SSOciate editor, Mike .Zagarell, NCL Aves Substance to speculation that _ €NCLC — or whatever its title — S supported and financed by the ary Already notorious in both this {ountry “and the U.S. for ‘its : ee Ous provocations, the NCLC, Ich masquerades as a left wing rganization, appears also to have Perations abroad. : According to the Daily World’s ae mation, those operations have €nded into such countries as Chee Spain, South Korea and Much of the money for the °Up’s work comes from various cones funds set up by wealthy aes ibutors and from loans made ne llable by the Rockeffeller- eee Chase-Manhattan bank. inyoeculation that the CIA was Olved in the formation of the C was fuelled earlier this year hae Watergate conspirator Reed Hunt was quoted as Stu dee that the CIA had penetrated ( akg for a Democratic Society Col beginning in 1968, at str; Mbia College at the time of the Tike there. nits formative stages, the and was a caucus within SDS formecording to NCLC itself, was Dla €d at exactly the time and Ce mentioned by Hunt. Ccording to what the Daily orld called “reliable sources fund In the organization,” the thee of NCLC’s intelligence- ering abroad is done through bank transfers. Of the quarter million dollars cited as being spent this year, $200,000 is said to be going to Europe and $52,000 to Asia and Latin America. The sum does not include $67,000 listed for supplies and intelligence materials as well as an additional $114,000 listed in the budget. for salaries. At least $150,000 of the NCLC’s funds was reportedly made available by a loan with the Chase- Manhattan bank, owned by the Rockefellers. Ironically — likely there is method in its madness — the NCLC has been fanatical in its attacks on Nelson Rockefeller who is alleged to be plotting to take over . the world. - Another source of income 1S reported to be Computron, a computer company, which is owned by the group-and is housed inthe same building as the NCLC’s offices in New York. However, the bulk of the gro Ss resources come from wealthy patrons with contributions ranging from $25,000 to over $100,000. One patron reportedly contributed a farm in upstate New York which has been used by the group as a base for numerous training schools. in methods of disruption and terror. : The main activity of the NCLC in North America as well as abroad, NCLC activities linked to according to sources and documents cited by the Daily World, is the gathering of in- telligence. Various agencies are maintained in several countries, all of them under the coordination of one Nick Syvriotis who is also known as Criton Zoakes. Syvriotis had ap- parently been active in the left in the sixties and turned up in Greece in 1967 in time for the colonels’ coup. i While the backgrounds of many of the NCLC’s operatives are not known, several have been linked to the ‘‘intelligence community”’ including Uwe Henke, now head of the NCLC’s European operations, who bragged that he had been an intelligence officer in the German Navy. He is also reported to have spent a year in Paris working for NATO intelligence. Another NCLC national com- mittee member, Dan Sneider, is the son of a past assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Until recently, Sneider was head of the Asian Labor Committee, a branch of the. NCLC, and was stationed in Tokyo. The organization receives in- formation on all its operations in its offices in New York which occupy six floors in an_ office building on West 29th Street at a total cost of $10,000 per month. Over 20 international and domestic telephone and telex lines are leased at a cost of $500,000 a year. Over the telex go reams of press releases and articles, many of which have, been sent to the Tribune office. A recent tactic devised by the NCLC has been to advocate a “united front’’ with the Communist. Party in the name of defending the Soviet Union and the Portuguese revolution. Beneath the campaign lurks the objective of further disruption and a desire to be [A ‘where the action and the in- formation is’’. Only two years ago, the NCLC was carrying out its ‘“‘Operation Mop-Up” in the U.S. aimed at intimidating members of the Communist Party of the U.S. as well as a number of progressive trade unionists. In many instances, the in- timidation included physical at- tacks. At least one leader of the NCLC; Fillo Torres, responsible for the group’s security has also been linked to a terrorist organization, the Movimiento Independista Revolucionario Armada (MIRA) which has since become the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN). The group claimed responsibility earlier this year for a series of bombings in New York. Torres’ brother, Jose, was also a member of the NCLC but the organization was forced to expel him when it was publicly revealed that he had been an intelligence officer in Vietnam. During the group’s terror ac- tivities in 1973, a Columbia College journalist commented: “If the NCLC is not a police organization, it is doing a lot of work for nothing.” Clearly, it’s not working for nothing. 5,500 AFRICAN MINERS KILLED More than 5,500 South African miners have been killed in mine accidents. in the past six years, according to official statistics released recently in Johannesburg. In 1974, 485 miners were killed, an average of one miner killed every 17 hours of mine work. ‘End state of siege’ demning repression in the South American country. The telegram to General Augusto Pinochet coincided with the international Chilean Solidarity Day and reads: “On behalf of Canadian workers, we demand an end to the state of siege and the closing of the con- centration camps. Also we demand freedom for trade union and political prisoners, free elections, the rights of petitioning, collective bargaining and strike, and respect for the freedom of association for trade unions. We hope for a prompt and positive response.” Copies of the telegram were sent to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations General Assembly, and the Organization of American States. “The executive council of the Canadian Labor Congress has noted with great sadness that two years agter the establishment of a military junta in Chile, the plight of Chilean workers and their families remains critical,’’ said CLC President Joe Morris. “The state of siege remains in force in Chile, human rights continue to be viciously denied and free and effective trade unionism is nonexistent. “The executive council calls on the Chilean junta to end the state of siege, to welcome the United Nations Human Rights Com- mission, to implement the recommendations of the In- ternational Labor Organization and to remove all obstacles to the exercise of free and democratic trade unionism.” The CLC executive council also was critical of the actions of many governments since the staging of the coup in Chile and cited the reluctance of the Canadian government to mount. a- major effort to accept and assimilate Chilean refugees as one example. CLC president Joe Morris had ~ earlier cited the ‘‘obscene haste”’ with which the federal government had moved to recognize the junta following the overthrow of the legally-elected Allende govern- ment. ‘ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 26, 1975—Page 3