- SIGN FOR CHILE

Toronto Committee in Support of a Democratic Chile is cir-
culating these messages — one to prime mintster Trudeau, the
other to Chilean dictator Pinochet demanding the release of
thousands of political prisoners in Chile.

Please sign and mail.

Pees Nt OE ar RCM lin mana eee ie ee

bees

August Pinochet
Edificio Diego Portales
Santiago, CHILE

The eyes of the world have been on you and your
illegal government since the overthrow of the
democratically-elected Allende government In Sep-
tember, 1973.

The U.N. Resolution on Chile of Dec. 9, 1975, ap-
proved by 95 nations, condemned the trials, called
for the release of political prisoners and demanded
an end to torture and concentration camps. We
energetically demand immediate implementation
of the resolution in all its aspects!

We have called on the Canadian government,
which approved the Resolution, to actively seek its
implementation.

The upcoming “trials” for leaders of the Popular
Unity and other political prisoners will only serve as

‘a further example of the ruthlessness and vicious-

ness of your regime!
Free the political prisoners now! Anything less
will receive the condemnation of the world.

(name) (address)

Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ottawa, Ontario

Dear Sir:

The fascist dictatorship in Chile is now preparing
to put several leaders of the Popular Unity govern-
ment on “trial” after 2 1/2 years of illegal detention
and torture in prisons and concentration camps.

This move is in contravention of the U.N. Resolu-
tion signed by Canada and 94 other nations on De-
cember 9, 1975.

Accordingly, we call on you to put political,
economic and moral pressure on the Pinochet gov-
ernment to stop the farce “trials’, free the political
prisoners, close the concentration camps, and re-
rr the fundamental human rights now absent in

ile.

Until the implementation of this U.N. Resolution

* occurs, we ask for a total boycott of Chilean goods,

including economic, military and cultural aids.

(name)

(address)

Dre eRe Ne A ga ew

The following letter has been
received from the Executive Sec-
retariat of the National Trade
Union Organization of Uruguay,
which functions illegally under
the present dictatorship.

* *

Six months have now elapsed
since the beginning, on October
21 last year, of a mounting wave
of repression in Uruguay. Along
with the regular police force and
army, a special corps, equipped
and trained by the specialized
services of the FRG began acting
against the people. A nazi team is
at present conducting and applying
a methodology which had sup-
posedly been buried by history.

For months on end more than
2,000 people have been savagely
tortured while naked and
blindfolded. The more usual
forms of torture are: the ‘‘picana’”
(the prisoner is tied on to an iron
structure or he simply lies on the
wet floor and an electrial device is
applied to different parts of his
body, especially his genitals); the
“submarine” (the prisoner’s head
is submerged into a receptacle
filled with water and kept in it un-
til symptoms of suffocation ap-
pear); the ‘‘flag” (hanging from
his wrists, the. prisoner is kept for
days in the open air); the ‘‘cabal-
lete’’ (the prisoner is placed as on
horseback on a thin steel bar, his
feet a ‘few inches over the
ground). In the cases of the ‘‘flag”’
and the ‘“‘caballete’’, the pain,
starting at the wrists in the former
and at the coxis in the second,
rapidly spreads to the whole
body, and as time elapses it gets
more and more unbearable. Wo-
men are subjected to the same
treatment. Young girls have been
violated dozens of times, and the
‘picana’’ has been purposely

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‘‘perfected”’ for its use inside the
vagina.

These methods have been
employed with a great number of
union leaders: among others,
Wladimir Turiansky (vice-
president of the CNT), Gerardo
Cuestas (a member of the Execu-
tive of the CNT), Rosario Piet-
raroia (secretary-general of the
metal-workers union), Alberto
Altesor (from the railways union),
Antonio Marotta (president of the
bank-workers union), Humberto
Rodriguez and Julio C. Quinteros
(port-workers union leaders).

Jose. Luis Nassera, an out-

By ALFRED DEWHURST

standing mathematician, was tor-
tured and is still in prison, in spite

‘of the protest of his colleagues

from all over the world.

General Liber Seregni, presi-
dent of the Frente Amplio, is also
in prison, as are a considerable
number of other political ac-
tivists. Among the latter is Jaime
Perez, a former member of Parli-
ament, who was seen hanging
from his wrists after being taken
out of prison for the purpose.

All sectors of the population
are subjected to repressive ac-
tivities. No trade union move-
ment is allowed and the buildings
formerly occupied by the unions
have been transformed into police
quarters or places to keep people
arrested and tortured. Teachers
and professors have been ar-
rested and tortured for circulating
a petition for salary increases.
More than a thousand teachers
have been fired from their posts.

In spite of the intensity of the
repression, the workers are
closely attached to their respec-
tive unions and look for means of
expressing their repudiation of
the dictatorship. The government
efforts to create a parallel union
movement have repeatedly
failed. The CNT and the unions
which constitute it are, even act-
ing as clandestine organizations,
truly representative of the
Uruguayan working class and

people.
To enhance their will we are

asking for the outspoken support —

from every democratic organiza-
tion in the world, to put an end to
the nazi methods in Uruguay, to
put an end to the torture, to obtain
the liberation of the imprisoned
and to re-establish the individual
liberties and union rights.

|
a

Stop the arms race!

ee

against civilians, wide-spread destruc-
tion of crops and irrigation systems, de-

Marxism-Leninism in Today’s World

_A reader asks: ‘“‘Last week I had a

IScussion with a fellow worker who
Maintained that making armaments is a
800d thing for the economy. Is this pos-
tion valid?”’
it No, it is not a valid position although

May appear so on the surface. For

 &€tually arms programs provide very

€W jobs in relation to capital involved.
Ut they do make fabulous profits for
arms manufacturers.
* * *

The April issue of the New York

. Citibank Economic Newsletter provides

Some interesting data on this question.
coding to Citibank, U.S. spending
= armaments for 1976-77 will amount
0 $192.9-billion. That’s a lot of money.
Oney taken directly out of the poc-
€ts of the working people. Money

| ‘phoned away from needed social
} Projects,

How many jobs will this huge U.S.
an program create? The $192.9-
Cj 10n armaments budget, aceording to
“ltibank, will provide only 120,000

Obs. Precious little for a country

afficted with mass unemployment.

Compare the number of jobs the same
_ “Um would provide through develop-
including

hental construction,
OUsing. ‘

Ate same holds true for Canada,
3 Ose military spending of $3-billion
T this year is slated to rise to $5-billion
Uning the next five years.

e draining of these billions of dol-

lars out of the national treasury every
year — a drain that grows in volume
with every passing year — is a crime
perpetrated against the working people
by the giant armaments firms.

* * *

However, serious as this is, it is not
the major crime committed against hu-
manity by the imperialist monopolists.

Here is another set of figures arising
out of two world wars prepared and
launched by imperialist powers.
Canada was a participant in both these
wars.

The First World War claimed 10 mill-
ion lives and accounted for 20 million
wounded. The Second World War
exacted a toll of 32 million lives, and
wounded and maimed 35 million

le.
EoThe First World War put 70 million
people under arms, the Second, 110
million. The First World Waminvolved
36 countries with a population of 1,050
million. The Second engulfed 61 coun-
tries with 1,700 million population. The
First World War covered a territory of
four million square kilometres, the
Second, 110 million square kilometres.
‘OK O*

Material losses in Europe during the
Second World War included 23.6 mil-
lion dwelling houses and 14,5 million
public buildings and industrial

_ enterprises.

In the Soviet Union, which bore the
brunt of the war, the nazi invaders de-
stroyed and burned 1,710 towns and
more than 70,000 villages, leaving 25

million people homeless.

In Japan, two U.S. atom bombs to-

tally destroyed Hiroshima and

Nagasaki, killing and maiming almost
the entire population of these two large
cities.

* * *

This is the real price of modern war.
This is the real nature of the arms race
which no worker can afford to gloss
over.

Working people must never forget
that it was young workers and farmers
who fought these two world wars. It
was they who died on the battlefields in
their millions, or were wounded, or
maimed for life. Workers must never
forget either. that the civilians killed,
maimed and rendered homeless were,
in their overwhelming majority, work-
ing people. :

‘The Vietnam war provided a preview
of how an imperialist aggressor state
conducts modern war in this decade.
This war by U.S. imperialism against
the peoples of Indochina included re-
peated saturation bombings of popu-
lated areas, extensive use of napalm

foliation of forests, wanton burning of
villages, wholesale torture of captured
troops and civilians, mass slaughter.

Modern war is total war against
whole populations, as waged by
aggressor imperialist states.

The most burning question facing
humanity today is whether the mass
slaughter and destructive capability of
modern war will ever again be loosed
upon the peoples of the world through
war between the major powers.

_* * *

To continue to allow the stockpiling
of weapons of mass destruction, ofatom
and hydrogen bombs is to gamble with
death and the fate of the world. To put
an end to this mad gamble is what the
Stockholm Appeal is all about.

The only real guarantee that war be-
tween the major powers, triggering offa
third world war, never breaks.out again
is for the peoples of all countries to
make peace their personal and collective
business. This applies with particular

* force to the organized working-class

movement. For the working people suf-
fer most fromthe consequences of war.
Signing the Stockholm Appeal to Stop

the Arms Race is an action that every

worker should, and can, take. Such an

action taken in common with the

peoples of the whole world will consti-
tute a mighty blow for a just and stable
world peace.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 28, 1976—Page 9