woRLD —__—__-_—_——

_ BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — As the fishing launches

| motored into the small fishing harbor here on the south

| _ Coast of the island, Utoni Nujoma looked at them pen-
 Sively.

“In our country, Namibia,’ he said as we stood on the
Wharf, ‘‘fishing was once good for our people. Now,

Nearly all the fish have been taken by the large South

African and international fishing companies which send

_ their big trawlers into Namibian waters.”

-Nujoma, who is one of the sones of Sam Nujoma, the

' Political and military leader of the South West Africa

People’s Organization (SWAPO), further lamented that
the economy of the southern African country is in ruin
after decades of rape and plunder of its resources by

_ whultinational corporations in South Africa and the

estern nations.
The 32-year-old Nujoma, ona recent visit to Barbados

| * as part of a delegation to observe preparatory activities

for the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students slated

| for Moscow this year, pointed out that an important task

= _ Countries in most cases has been blocked. The small

International Focus

te ofa SWAPO government will be to wrest the country’s

_ EEC food aid blocked

A study by the accounting office of the Common
Market (European Economic Community — EEC)
has revealed that. EEC food aid to the developing

amounts of aid that did get through arrived ‘‘too
little and too late,’”’ the study said, blaming this on
inefficiency and bad administration. In 1983, for
example, Ethiopia was promised 40,000 tons of EEC
grain but only got 20,000 tons. Countries like Sri
Lanka, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Somalia and
Madagascar, which also had been promised food

_ aid, got nothing at all. The states of the Sahel region
of Africa were promised 80,000 tons of grain and got
7,000 tons.

economy from U.S. imperialism, and restore it to the
people.

‘At this stage, our struggle is purely one for national
independence. However, after that it is up to the Nami-
bian people to decide what type of government they
want,’’ said Nujoma, who is a leader of the SWAPO
Youth League which, like its parent organization, is the
most representative and democratic organization in its
area of work in this former German colony of over a
million people, mainly Blacks.

Asked about the everyday life of the average person in
his homeland, Nujoma, who had to leave Namibia dur-
ing the 1970s because of his political activity among
Namibian youth, said that Pretoria had instituted a type
of apartheid system ‘‘more brutal than that in South
Africa’.

‘For the Black Namibian, there are no trade unions,
no social security, no social services. Under the apar-
theid systems in Namibia, a Black worker makes only
$50 for a job,-while the white worker will get $1,000 for
doing the same work’’, Nujoma told the Tribune in an
interview.

He nevertheless pointed out that ‘‘the tide is turning”’

_ in favor of those struggling for democracy and freedom

in his homeland.

‘‘We are very optimistic that independence will come
soon despite the difficulties, including the detention,
torture and/or murder of several freedom fighters,’’ he
said, adding that the military wing of SWAPO. — the
People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) — con-
tinues to control large areas of the 824,295 square
kilometre country and to inflict casualties on the over
100,000 South African occupation force.

‘*Virtually all the Namibian people support SWAPO.
They detest control by Pretoria, which refuses to imple-
ment United Nations Resolution 435 calling for the with-
drawal of South African troops and the holding of free
and fair elections in Namibia. Significantly, although
Namibia’s white community is very small, we get sup-
port from democratic sections of it. In fact, one white
Namibian, Anton Labonski, is regularly delegated to

“We are very optimistic our independence will come

soon’, SWAPO’s Utoni Nujoma (I) tells Tribune Caribbean .

correspondent Norman Faria.

speak on behalf of SWAPO at international meetings.
Our struggles are not against them (the whites) but
against the repressive system,” he said.

Turning to the demand by the Botha regime in Pretoria
that the Cuban internationalist forces be withdrawn from
neighboring Angola as a precondition before inde-
pendence can be granted Namibia, Nujoma argued:
‘‘The linkage issue has. nothing to do with meaningful
negotiations. The linkage is a creation of the Reagan
government, which in fact since coming to power in 1981

has given Pretoria confidence and assistance in tryingto .

topple the People’s Republic of Angola and install a
UNITA bandit regime. SWAPO continues to state that
the Angolan government has the legitimate right to invite
any troops they want to help them against the aggressor
— which is South Africa.”

With regard to solidarity activity by people and
governments in other countries for Namibian inde-
pendence, Nujoma, who is also Secretary-General of the

Algiers-based Pan African Youth Movement, said the —

Namibian people welcome such assistance.

“It shows that we are not alone in our struggles. It
strengthens our determination to continue the struggle,”
he said.

2

Tom Morris

eee \

Complicity
in genocide

Last September a damning
600-page report was submitted
to the Director of the United
Nations Environmental Pro-
gram charging the killing of
Some 7,000 people in the Brazi-
lian Amazon basin during a

Ments in 1981.

The report, compiled by
Sonia Regina de Brito Pereita,
president of Movement for the
Preservation of Life, a Brazi-

lian ecological group, says that
Under the guise of constructing
hydroelectric installations,
3,000 square kilometers of
forest were razed by a chemi-
Cal defoliant of similar com-
Position to Agent Orange of
Vietnam infamy.
It further charges that the
/ companies involved were Dow

| Chemicals (U.S.),. Agromax
| (Japan)
| (Brazil). The report says that,
|. after having contaminated the

and Kampemix

‘region, an effort was made on
Sept. 6, 1981 to cover the crime

| by flooding over 2,400 square

kilometers. ‘On site exam-
_inations by Brazilian scientists
provided much of the data on
which the report is based.
-. That the experiment had
_ Mnilitary implications, the re-
port says, is seen in the fact

evacuate people from the area

Series of defoliation experi-

that no attempt was made to

so that the effects on both
human life and forests could be
assessed.

Such international bodies as
the World Peace Council and

‘the Women’s International

Democratic Federation charge
that the main beneficiary of
this gruesome experiment is
the U.S. military which is
updating its chemical weap-
ons forces through production
of new binary nerve gas weap-

ons.

They point to the fact that
the U.S. is the only United Na-
tions member which voted last
year against a General Assem-
bly resolution (GA 38/187A)
calling on all member-states
‘to refrain from actions which

could impede negotiations on ~

the .prohibition of chemical
weapons ... as well as from
stationing chemical weapons
on the territory of other
states.””

World Court for
world, not U.S.

U.S. law has a Grand Jury
system which, in short, deter-
mines if there is enough evi-
dence against a defendant to
warrant a trial.

In its own way, the World
Court at The Hague operates in
a similar way. Last year the
International Court of Justice
examined Nicaragua’s claim
that the United States was
guilty of aggression against its
sovereignty. Its ruling was al-
most unanimous — enough
hard facts were present to
prove the U.S. was violating
international law by mining
Nicaraguan ports and sup-
porting contra attacks.

Faced with this finding an
seeing itself dragged further
into the international legal
spotlight for its Central
America policies, Washington
reacted last week.

Did it renounce its viola-
tions? Did it apologize for the
minings and killings in
Nicaragua? Did it offer to
comply to the Contadora Plan
for a peaceful settlement to re-
gional disputes?

Not a chance. The world’s
policeman announced it will

VS. 4-Tee ne

boycott all future deliberations
of Nicaragua’s charges by the
World Court, a United. Na-
tions body.

The action speaks volumes.

Joe Clark says nothing. -

Neither does Stephen Lewis.

All’s not well
on the farm

‘‘The most severe crisis
since the Great Depression’,
was how Minnesota governor
Rudy Perpich called the out-
look for U.S. farming.

Perpich was speaking to a
Jan. 21 rally in support of his
state’s stricken farmers, many
of whom havVe lost their farms,
others facing foreclosures.
Schools and businesses shut
down for the day in support of
a new farmers’ organization

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 30, 1985 e9

‘‘Groundswell’’ which is de-
manding state and federal
government aid to save their
farms.

The scene was repeated in
Chicago where 12 persons
were arrested at the Board of
Trade. In Missouri a farming
couple, $200,000 in debt, sold
poetry books along with raffle
tickets. The winning number
gets their farm.

In Iowa, 150 friends of Roger
Escher stood in silence refus-
ing to bid during a bank auction
of his property. Texas farmers
are going out of business at the
rate of 100 a week.

With this happening,
Reagan’s budget-slashers plan
to cut $7.3-billion from federal
farm subsidies.

Sow and Ye
Shall Reap

It’s only poetic justice.
“On January 8, Reagan’s
Cruise missile was tested over
Canada, a large portion of its

path being over Alberta.
On January 21, the day
Reagan was to have a huge,

-public outdoor inauguration

celebration, a fierce arctic.
storm, named ‘‘Alberta clip-
per’ hit Washington forcing
cancellation of the outdoor cir-
cus. )

As the television ad says,
“It’s not nice to fool Mother
Nature’’. >