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ATROCITIES IN ALGERIA

‘What am | to do, Monsieur le
President?’ young soldier asks

PARIS — A young French
soldier, Paul Lefebvre, who
has written to President Rene
Coty exposing atrocities in
Algeria, is afraid to return
there. He might “disappear.”

A member of the Chamber
of Deputies who is also mem-
ber of the Committee of Na-
tional Defense, Jeannette
Prin, has asked the minister
of national defense to take
every step to ensure his
safety.

Lefebvre has just finished
his leave in France after 11
months in Algeria and has
had to report back to the re-
cruiting centre in Valencien-
nes.

Before he left Algeria he
claims he was beaten up by a
sergeant with the assent of
the latter’s officers. This was
for expressing the hope that
he would see~ the Algerian
people “free and independent,
in peace and friendship with
France.”

In view of the fact that

Henri Alleg since his account
of the tortures he underwent
at the hands of French para-
in Algeria —

troops which

é : : SS

Suspicion that French troops in Algeria may themselves

had mass sales in France and
all over the world—Lefebvre
has every reason for his
fears.

As he wrote in his letter
to the president: “You will
realize that it will be impos-
sible for me in future to re-
turn to Algeria after taking
this load off my conscience.

“It would be easy for men
like Capt. Tornade to arrange
for the ‘disappearance’ of one

of the living witnesses of
their crimes.
“JI need only recall the

tragic ‘disappearance’ of Mau-
rice Audin’” (another French-
man tortured in Algeria who
was never heard of again after
his wife drew public attention
to his case).

In his letter to President
Coty, Lefebvre said:

“JT cannot remain a silent
witness of the drama through
which I have lived. I con-
sider it my duty as a young
Frenchman, devoted to my
nothing Kas been heard of
country with its traditions
of liberty and justice, to tell
the truth. :

“Since I arrived in the dis-

have instigated. a massacre of which they accuse indepen-
dence forces reinforced by this picture of a French police-
man shooting down an Algerian patriot.

;

trict South of Constantine I
have taken part in a number
of operations. I have seen
with my own eyes dozens of
young Algerians of about my
own. age, shot.

“T have seen hundreds of
men, women, and sometimes
just kids, tortured. Their
shrieks of pain still ring in
my ears,

‘Imagine my feelings when
I saw officers transformed
into torturers — Capt. Tor-
nade, for.example, command-
ing the 4th Company, and 2nd
Lieut. Mornav, leader of the
Second Section. I have seen
them practising torture on
dozens of Algerians.

“In the hospital, after strip-
ping them and _= sprinkling
them with water, they connect-
ed electrodes from a powerful
dynamo to various parts of
their bodies.

“After hours of torture the
victims were revived by an
injection of camphor’ and
hung up by the thumbs with
wire. After being flogged they
were led out, their bodies
covered with wounds, to die
after a few months or to be
shot in cold blood.

“On July 24, three days be-
fore I went on leave, I had
to take part, my hands tied,
as it were in an atrocity: 31
Algerians were arrested in a
farm 20 kilometres from the
village of Chemora.

“After being led into the
camp they were interrogated,
divided -into small groups and
massacred in different places
on the orders of Captain Tor-
nade. They were buried under
the football pitch, which was
transformed into a _ charnel
house.

“T could add other examples
to this tragic list. What am I
to do, Monsieur le President?
I love my country and the re-
public. I want to go on serv-
ing them, but I want to do so
honorably.”

Translations
Automatized

N ‘information machine”

which gives automatic and
rapid review and analysis of
scientific and technical litera-
ture is being developed in
the USSR.

The machine will be able to

_handle more than four million

pages of Russian text per
hour. Books on various scien-
tific subjects can be fed into
the receiving end and foreign
books will ~be automatically
translated by an_ electronic
translator.

History ts

reading for unions!

AROLD GRIFFIN’S British
Columbia: The People’s
Early Story (Tribune Publish-
ing Company, $1 paper. cover,
$2.50 hard cover) is ~° being
eagerly read by trade union-
ists up and down the prov-
ince — “the people for whom
it was written,” as Griffin
himself says.

On a recent trip up coast,
Alex Gordon of the United
Fishermen and Allied Work-
ers Union took along 25 copies
and sold them all to fisher-
men.

In Vancouver, one executive
member of a local union took
five copies with him to a
meeting and sold them to his
fellow executive members.
Another worker took a copy
down to the longshoremen’s
picket line last week and
came back with orders for
three» more.

Speaking to the _ recent
Mine-Mill Western convention
here, where a number of
delegates bought copies of the
book, Griffin pointed out that
“the so-called objective treat-

ment of history, which ac-
ademic historians use as a
measure to dismiss other

works as biased, is itself .a
mask for the distortion of
history.

“We have had one outstand-
ing example of such object-
ivity in this centenary,” he
said. “Sir James Douglas has
been presented as the founder
of British Columbia, but
Amor De -Cosmos, the man

~who led the struggle for res-

posible government against
Douglas, has virtually been
ignored.

September 26, 1958 —

‘by the working mer oe

pose. of history.

Z, SEE

populat

“To the ruling class be :
own day, Robert puss af
the * pioneer industrial og
founded the once Sf. if
couver Island coal ich
But to labor he remain inc)
was to his own 60 ond!
the robber baron WH? pratt
eered one of the most yt
giveaways in our niste
ruthless exploiter who ie
ed unions» and brok® | gi
“In a class sociely) | ii
is always written from of i
viewpoint, even w ash
masquerades in thé mo
objectivity, for the mute 3
are themselves the Prue
their society and 2.)
by its contending” j
“The only real ohh ty
is the ob jectame ye
the class, its past "oF TY
ent and its future :
society. ove ‘i
“In this centenaty, 1 P
pretense of object
largely been abando” pint a
bor’s story, the pat ofits

men whose labor Wh?
duced the. wealth Pa qaim
strugghes have sha Pa |
democratic herita8® 1004
smothered beneath i: i
romanticism. ‘The. ¥ wh j
ing of labor's rich * vaio :
first distortion fe) «tel
“What I have Wj
Bill Bennett before col pr
Builders of British | d
is only a beginnin& of
at least, the outline ont
story and to the 6 oo?
read by workin& “i
will, I hope, serv®
en labor’s strugele’
ing’ the experien® *
past, for that is
Ss

PACIFIC TRIBUN