_ PPP member framed on murder

charge — appeal for solidarity

GEORGETOWN, Guyana —-

Amold Rampersaud, 40 year-old
father of five children and a long-
Standing member of the People’s

gressive Party, is now on trial
for his life here on charges of
murder. The case, which has
dragged on for almost three years,

| has become one of international

importance.

Rampersaud is charged with
the murder of a policeman on July
18, 1974, acharge which is backed
by the flimsiest of evidence given
by police and People’s National
Congress witnesses. He flatly de-
Ries any knowledge of the inci-
dent and defence witnesses place
him at his home when the police-

“man was shot.

The Amold Rampersaud De-
fence Committee in Guyana,
which has many prominent

People on its roles including |

Cheddi Jagan, PPP general sec-
retary, charges that Rampersaud
is being framed because of his ac-
tivities in the PPP. The entire his-
tory of the case, the fabricated

| €vidence, biased PNC judges,

mistreatment of the defendant all
; Point up the defence committee’s

Charges that the trial is a political
one.

The venue was changed on the
request of the prosecution to
facilitate selection of a jury more
favorable to the State, but in De-

cember 1976 the jury could not”

reach a verdict in spite of judicial

‘badgering and open intimidation.

The second trial of Arnold
Rampersaud opened on Feb. 24.

The defence committee has ap-

pealed to international public
opinion to press the government
of Forbes Burnham to stop the

‘persecution of Rampersaud. It

asks that letters be written to:

‘Prime Minister of Guyana, Public
Buildings, Georgetown, Guyana:

and that copies be sent to the Ar-
nold Rampersaud Defence Com-
mittee, Freedom House, 41 Robb
Street, Georgetown, Guyana.

State loses witnesses
in Wilmington 10 case

RALEIGH, North Carolina —
The third prosecution witness
against Rev. Ben Chavis and the
Wilmington defendants has re-
canted his testimony before a fed-
eral grand jury on March 10. The
witness, Jerome Mitchell, is the
third and last prosecution witness
to do so leaving the state with no
case. :

Rev. Chavis, eight Black high
school students and a white
woman supporter were sentenced
in 1972 to a total of 282 years im-
prisonment on trumped-up arson

~ Accusations of police
brutality in S. Ireland

DUBLIN — The prosecution

_ of Britain for violations of prison-

ers’ human rights in Northern Ire-
land to be heard before the Euro-

/ pean Court. of Human. Rights in

. Strasbourg has also raised the is-

~sue of police brutality in the Irish

Republic.

Mr. Aidan Browne, a member
of the Irish legal team prosecuting
Britain, charged that reports of ill
treatment of prisoners in police
Custody in the south had emerged
in the same way as reports of tor-

{ ture by security forces Northern

Ireland. He demanded an im-
Mediate investigation.

Browne gave examples of per-

A reader from Thunder Bay asks if

sons ‘who appeared in court ‘‘in

‘shattered condition’’ following in-

terogation by police. The news-
paper Irish Times has also pub-
lished... case. -histories...of....such
treatment and a series of letters to
the editor also substantiated these
charges. Justice Minister Cooney
has denied all charges and op-
poses an impartial investigation.
Hg argued that the intemal police
systems are sufficient to investi-
gate allegations of police
brutality.

The demand for an indepen-
dent investigation continues and
the matter will be raised. in the
Irish parliament in spite of gov-
ermment stalling.

charges arising out of school de-
segration struggles. A grand jury
investigation of more than 2,000
trial irregularities documented by
the defence is underway. :
Mitchell told the grand jury tha’

the prosecution told him to lie on -

the stand, offering him an early
release from prison to do so. All
three key witnesses against the
Ten’ have now recanted. The
Wilmington Ten case has at-
tracted international attention
and has been the focal point of
intensive activity in the United
States to secure their freedom.
A spokesperson for the Na-
tional Alliance Against Racist and
Political Repression told the
press, ‘‘This is it .. . the prosecu-
tion has no more witnesses.”’

CIA payoffs

SL know. what, we. got for that.

dough, and it was worth every
goddam cent,’’ said a White
House official when asked to
comment on CIA covert pay-
ments to Jordan’s King Hussein.
He received just over $1-billion in
pay-offs during the past 20 years.

Other recipients included the
late president Ngo Dinh Diem of
South Vietnam, president
Mobutu of Zaire, Holden Rober-
to, FNLA chief in the civil war in
Angola and Eduardo Frei, former
president of Chile. .

CANADIAN FIRMS EXPLOITING NAMIBIA SAYS UN AIDE

UNITED NATIONS — India‘s ambassador to the United Nations
and a member of the UN Council for Namibia, charged last week that
seven Canadian companies are collaborating with the South African
controlled regime in Namibia in the exploitation of the country’s
natural resources. He said that this will be drawn to the Canadian
government's attention when a three man council mission visits Otta-
wa. The firms have not been identified.

U.S. LIFTS TRAVEL BAN TO CUBA, VIETNAM, CAMBODIA,
NORTH KOREA

‘WASHINGTON — The United States March 9 lifted its travel ban
for U.S. citizens to visit these countries effective March 18. Still in
existence, however, are U.S. Treasury Department restrictions pro-
hibiting the spending of U.S. currency in Cuba. Treasury officials have
been quoted as saying that this restriction may be lifted to give sub-
stance to the ending of the travel ban.

~

SOUTH AFRICA TORTURES PRISONERS ON ROBBEN ISLAND

LONDON — Alarming reports that political prisoners are being
tortured on’ Robben Island, South Africa’s notorious prison near Cape
Town, have been voiced by Brian Bunting, exiled South African
journalist now living here. -

Bunting charges that Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu.and Govan
Mbeki, leaders of the African National Congress, South Africa, are
frequently beaten by guards and that dogs are used to attack them. He
says that reliable sources have informed the families of these prisoners
that such methods are now being employed: Bunting was exiled in 1963
and had been a leading journalist in Johannesburg until that time.

BONN SCANDAL OVER CHILEAN CAMP COMMANDANT
HAMBURG — A leading West German.magazine ‘‘Der Stern’’ has
reported that a Chilean officer trained in 1975-76 by the West German
Army is now the commandant of a secret Chilean concentration camp.
The article said that a UN report has made public a list of such secret
camps and that one of them was the Armored Cavalry School in
Quillotta. First Lieutenant Helmut Kraushar, a Chilean of German
descent, is its commdandant. He graduated in 1976 from a FRG army

course entitled, ‘‘Military Leadership in a Democratic Society’’.

CARTER MOVES TO SILENCE APOLOGIES FOR CIA ROLE IN
CHILE

WASHINGTON — President Carter last week dissociated his gov-
emment from statements made by U.S. representative Brady Tyson, a
member of the U.S. delegation to the Geneva Conference of the UN
Human Rights Commission. Brady expressed ‘‘profound regrets’’ for
the U.S. role in overthrowing the elected government of Salvador
Allende in Chile. Carter termed Tyson’s statement ‘‘a personal one”’
and refused to comment on human rights violations by the Chilean
junta. Tyson stuck by his statement, saying it was universally recog-
nized that the U.S. played a role in the September 1973 coup.

Inuits — nation or people?

Marxism-Leninism in Today’s World

imported pestilence, and the forcible

Inuits constitute a nation. He writes:
As far as I know Inuits from North-

“ ©ast Siberia to Greenland speak the

Same language, they inhabit the same

territory namely the Arctic. They are as

ar as I can see a people with a common
history, a common way of making a
living, a common culture and a stable
Community of people in the Arctic.”

; 1S question has become ah element
in the country-wide debate around the

| “Tisis of confederation. None other

Pitis'ga

| Ndac

the Prime Minister injected it into
the debate. Not for the benefits of Inuits
orthe Indian people but in order to raise
4 Sort of smokescreen around the issue
of What constitutes a nation.
T. Trudeau has been quoted in the
ieg in reply to Mr. Levesque’s de-
Rition of the French Canadian nation
th ying, that in a sociological sense,
i re are many nations in Canada, cit-
hg the Eskimo and Indian peoples as
ence,
* * OK

ca atxism defines a nation as a histori-
< Ple formed on the basis of a com-

Sn language, territory, economic life,
ommon culture. All of these fea-
_~*S must be present in their real sense

Y Constituted, stable community of -

for a people to constitute a nation. Ter-
ritory ‘inhabited must be clearly de-
fined. Economic life must be related to
aconcrete socio-economic formation in
order that its stabilizing and amalgamat-
ing qualities may come to the fore. In
other words, to draw the people it em-
braces closer together in terms of
economic interdependence, language,
culture and territorial boundaries.
From this standpoint the French
Canadian people inhabiting the territ-
ory of Quebec constitute a nation. And
by the same yardstick neither the In-
dian people nor Inuits can be con-
sidered nations in the real sense.
Scientifically they are ethnic com-

‘munities socially organized in a number

of tribal formations scattered over a
huge territory without any clearly de-
fined territorial boundaries.
* OK OK

The foregoing is not to deny that In-
uits inhabiting the territory of Canada
could, given the right conditions and
time, develop into nationhood. How-
ever, it is extremely doubtful that such
development can ensue in the con-
ditions of capitalist Canada. It is more
likely, that under present conditions

they will be assimilated into one or the
other of the two nations in Canada.
The process of development of or-
ganized human society, beginning with
the family, goes from tribe to national-
ity to nationhood. This processs fol-
lows a fairly well-defined path along

‘lines of language, culture and socio-

economic aspects, all of which are in-
terrelated. The historical tendency is
toward amalgamation toward larger-
sized organizations of people. For in-
stance, tribes sharing adjacent ter-
ritories and in some aspects of a com-
mon language and culture, tend to join
forces in defence of the common territ-
ory from which they derive their liveli-
hood, and in other forms of cooperation
for mutual benefit. In such manner the
process. of nationality begins.

History, however, ordained that the
development of the indigenous people
of Canada would not proceed along this
path. The armies, colonizers and mer-
chants of imperial France and Britain
intervened. The ‘‘normal’’ develop-

‘ment of tribe, nationality, nation was

aborted by force of arms, the wholesale
robbery of tribal lands, population de-
cimation through forced starvation and

suppression of all basic human rights.
In this way the Native Peoples of
Canada were forced off the road of in-
dependent development toward
nationhood.

* * *

The development of a people toward
nationhood is inseparably bound to the
prevailing mode of production. The na-
tion, in its real sense, came into being
with the advent of the capitalist system,
as the capitalists, as a class, set about
securing a stable economy based on the
creation of a stable home market. To
fulfill this aim, scattered communities
within a given territorial area had to be
brought into a single economic unit and

_ aSingle state structure. This meant ab-

sorbing, in one way or another, the var-
ious natgonalities within the given
economic unit into the dominant
nationality. Thus the nation was
created.

A piratical and expanding capitalism
blocked the road to independent
nationhood of the Inuit and Indian
peoples. Monopoly capitalism will pro-
ceed along its road of forced assimila-
tion. Only socialism will restore the
right of national identity to Cananda’s
indigenous peoples.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 25, 1977—Page 9