P hits ROMP libels

in Toronto Star tale

The Communist Party of Can-
: S executive secretary, A.
‘“Whurst, has sent a_hard-
iting letter to Peter C. New-
.) Editor of the Toronto Daily
t, asking for adequate space
J, Which to reply to recent at-
’cks made on the Communist
tty in the paper. Excerpts
mm the letter read:
_The Nov. 29 and Dec. 6
Sues of the Toronto Star’s
Magazine supplement, the Cana-
“N Magazine, carried in two
tts an article ‘Spying in Cana-
~ @ special report by an RCMP
Tt.’ The article in question
Stitutes a danger element of
Mternational ploy to heat up
Cold war once again. It re-
Bitates all the false innuendos
the 1946 ‘atom bomb spy plot’
Ch was part and parcel of
© cold war launching, high-
cited by the 1946 Fulton
€ch of the late Winston
allen who at that time
‘lled upon the Western capital-
~ POwers to turn upon the
'S.S.R., the most stable ally of
,.vartime coalition of demo-
‘| fAtic states which brought Hit-
MNCL UN fascist Italy and
wlaristic Japan to thei: knees.
_ the question natura..}” arises
Y the Toronto Star at this
€, when important initiatives
Boeing undertaken to improve
€mational relations, lends it-
. ‘0 a repeat performance of
at has been __ historically

Muanavesencauesuenssnnasnusnnit
ADDING INSULT

OGnada, which both deplor-
te he war in Vietnam and pro-
: a handsomely by it, donated
B00 textbooks to the Viet-
"Mese school system for—yes
Social studies.

Maclean's, December 1969. |
LTT

100,000 face slow death

proved to be a deadly and bank-
rupt course?

Is it because the Star and
some of its rich and powerful
advertisers are fearful that the
present efforts of the U.S.S.R.
and the other Warsaw Pact
countries to convene a Europ-
ean Security Conference will
gain more adherents among the
people and states in the West?

“Because we stand for a world
without war, brutality, hurger,
insecurity and injustice, we
work ceaselessly to organize
Canadians to fight for the elimi-
nation of these evils of an ob-
solete social system, and to re-
place it by the most humane
society yet established by man,
socialism. And because we are
unalterably opposed to the stea-
dy take-over of Canada by U.S.
corporate interests, we organize
a public fight against the U.S.
conspiracy. to absorb Canada.

“For the above reasons, those
who are paid to uphold the pre-
sent disastrous cold war course
which facilitates the U.S. take-
over of Canada and has given
the world the bloody massacres
in South Vietnam, like the au-
thor of the article you published,
slander our party as an agency
of a foreign power and as a con-
spiracy against Canada.

“These slanders are baseless
lies and we are requesting the
Toronto Star to provide us with
adequate space on the pages of
the Canadian Magazine to reply
to the untrue allegations, charg-
es and innuendoes.

“We make this request in the
interests of truth, in order that
your readers may judge whether
the course followed and advo-
cated by the Communist Party
is, or is not, in the vital inter-
ests of Canada and Canadians.”

Ny

arm and anxiety. The fate of the arrested Communists and other
democratic-minded persons is discussed by the Indonesian press
: th increasing frequency. A Jakarta newspaper points out that
these people, whose number tops 100,000 according to the official

ta, have been imprisoned without trial or investigation for four
fers and, if the government does not solve this problem, ‘“‘we will
_-48Vve to admit that we are in no way better than the Dutch colonial
thorities with their camps . . .”

4 Feeling the censure of world public opinion, a decision was taken
oy idonesia, aimed at making the political prisoners problem less.
3 Ident for the people of Indonesia and the world. A small island
x Buru, 1,500 miles north-east of Java, was chosen for the pur-
“Ose, where more than a thousand prisoners, including the famous
Onesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer and other people pro-

Minent in science and culture, have been exiled.

, The press reports that the Indonesian Procurator-General Sugi-
fit declared that ‘plots of land will be prepared for the exiled to
.“ and to feed themselves.” London papers point out that many
Jakarta compare this plan with that of the Dutch colonial au-
ities which decided back in the 1920’s and 1930’s to set up a
a of “agricultural prison” for the arrested leaders of the Indo-
4 Jan national-liberation moevment in the West Iran jungles where
Jak would be doomed to a slow extinction. It is pointed out in
Or arta that the sending of people to a life-long exile without trial
lay WY proof of their guilt is a flagrant violation of the Indonesian
. and the universally recognized international legal standards.
ee than 10,000 persons included in what is known as Group B,
thes is, people who cannot be tried for lack of any proof against
~*M, are to be exiled.

ah general feeling is that they will be threatened with death
it Unger and disease, for even the Procurator-General had to ad-
Wo at a press conference that the half-acre plots allotted per family
~uld not be enough to feed four or five people. Besides, even far-
yes with much more experience than city dwellers would hardly

able to obtain satisfactory crops on those bad lands.

mee Procurator-General also said that the exiled would be cut

ro from the local population, for the area allotted to them is sur-
“ded by impassable jungles.

8

The state of political prisoners in Indonesia is causing growing .

Party, union tributes

Pay last respects to Charles Weir

Hundreds of friends, workers,
trade union organizers, Com-
munist Party officials, and many
who would have described them-
selves as just ordinary folk, ga-
thered on Dec. 3 to honor
Charles Weir, who died in To-
ronto on Dec. 1 at the age of 58.

Bud Doucette, prominent trade
unionist, summed up their feel-
ings in the conclusion of his fu-
neral address with the words
that he: was a dedicated ‘‘friend
and comrade.”

Mr. Doucette said, ‘‘Charles
Weir was a product of the Cana-
dian working class. He was wor-
thy of the name; a man in the
mold of that great working class
poet ,and songster, Joe Hill. He
was a leader of the working
class, but he never lost touch
with workers. He knew and was
known by an amazing number of
ordinary workers, who came to
him at all hours of the day and
night to talk about their prob-
lems. Charlie always stood by
them, with encouragement and
good advice.

“Charles Weir became a Com-
munist at an early age—he join-
ed the Communist Party as a
teen-ager. His membership in the
Party was the main thing in life
for him. He fully accepted the
idea that Marxism-Leninism had
the answers to all man’s prob-
lems and that its organ-
}zed expression, the Communist
Party, was the strongest force in
today’s society.

“Charles Weir was a kind and
considerate man, an _indefatig-
able defender of human dignity.
He felt great sorrow and com-
passion for the wrongs of the
workers, and their hurt, and no
matter how ill or weary, he al-
ways thought of the other’s
need, and put himself out for
them.

“His life was an inspiration to
all of us workers. He was
a teacher, friend and comrade.

&

> *

He was my personal friend and
my comrade. I can say no more
than that.”

Alf Dewhurst, administrative
secretary of the Communist
Party of Canada, delivered the
funeral tribute on behalf of the
Central Executive Committee of

the Communist Party of Canada.
He said in part:

“The untimely death of
Charles Weir, member of the
Central Committee of the Com-
munist Party of Canada, and a
life-long member of the Party, is
a cruel blow to his family, his
many friends, his fellow-union-
ists, his comrades and his Party.

“Our hearts go out to his wife
Ruth, his sons Douglas, Fred
and Steven, his brother John and
other members of the family.

“Charles Weir was born into
this world 58 years ago in a
small town in British Columbia
of Ukrainian parents. Brought up
in a working-class home, Charles
carried with him all the days of
his life the creative internation-
alist world outlook the early
Ukrainian immigrants brought

- with them to their new home-

land, Canada. Joining the Young

This remarkable photo of rice harvesting in Vietnam while the

rifles are stacked at the ready was taken by a Soviet Tass photogra-
pher and was a recent prize-winner at a photo exhibit in Moscow.

a 2 : > \

Communist League in the mid-
twenties in Toronto, to which
the family had moved, Charlie
from that day on became an or-
ganizer for the working class
and Communist movement.

“In the days of the open shop,
he helped to establish the begin-
nings of unions that are today
mighty bastions of working
class strength. For a number of
years he was an official of the
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
in Calgary. He helped to union-
ize workers at the Lakehead, in
the Niagara Peninsula, Toronto
and other Ontario centres.

“He was a builder of the
Young Communist League in his
youth. For a large part of his
adult life he worked full time
as an organizer of the Commu-
nist Party. Working class strug-
gle, organization and politics
were Charlie’s life, and life to
him meant to organize and to
act for the day when the work-
ing class and its great democra-
tic allies would win political
power and build a system of so-
ciety in our land that would
erase forever the scourge of pov-
erty and hunger, pollution and
disease, tyranny and war.

“How does one take the
measure of a man?. By his words
alone? No. By coupling words
with the things that man does.
By the life he leads. By the prin-
ciples he stands by. By the
dreams he cherishes. By his at-
titude to his fellow man, and by
his social outlook.

“Comrade Charlie Weir’s de-
dication to his class and his
party was only equalled by his
vision of the society that is to
be. His political work was cen-
tred around that vision of a so-
cialist Canada. He never wa-
vered in the collective struggle
to make that dream come true.
He was above all a _ practi-
cal working-class revolutionary.
Charlie Weir gave his whole life
to the socialist revolution, the
party of socialism, the Commu-
nist Party.

“Stricken by the terrible
scourge of cancer, Charlie never
lost his revolutionary optimism.
He refused to bow before this
enemy of human society. Ra-
ther, in characteristic fashion,
he intensified his efforts for the
party and the working class. His
last article appears in the cur-
rent issue of the Canadian Tri-
bune. The fact is, the day he
passed away, he phoned to con-
firm a discussion he had arrang-
ed to examine some of the prob-
lems of Italian immigrants. His
greatest concern during his last
days was that the united labor-
farmer-citizens demonstration at
Queen’s Park for a new deal in
medicare would be a_ success.
Charlie did these things while
suffering great physical pain.
Finally brought down by this

‘dread disease, he remained spiri-

tually and politically victorious
to the end.

“This gives us the measure of
a man—of Comrade Weir, work- _
ing-class humanist and fighter, a
front rank soldier of the interna-
tional working class, a dedicat-
ed Communist, a pioneer build-
er of the Canadian labor move-
ment.

“The Communist Party dips
its banner in last farewell to a

- courageous son of the working

class, an exemplary Communist,

“a member of its Central Com-

mittee.”
Interment took place at Pros-
pect Cemetery on Dec. 4. —

PACIFIC TRIBUNE DECEMBER 12, 1969 Page Se