World

Canadian aid clinic victim of contra war

Until the Sandinista government evacu-
ated Aileen Tobin and her Canadian co-
workers, the critical care nurse from
Vancouver was the sole health care worker
in the region near the northern city of Jinot-
ega.

Now the members of Mancotal co-
Operative and some 17 surrounding com-
munities have no one to administer their
health care needs, thanks to a renewed con-
tra offensive that has left several dead and is
threatening Nicaragua’s electoral process,
Tobin reports.

In Vancouver for a brief visit with family
and friends, the former St. Paul’s hospital
nurse says she’ll be heading back to Nicara-
gua next month, hopefully to return to the
campesino co-operative assisted by the
Canadian aid group, Farmers for Peace. It
all depends on whether the Sandinista army
is successful in clearing the contra bands out
of the region.

“Tt will likely take two to three weeks to
clear the area,” says Tobin, who left the
country early this month after the Farmers
for Peace workers were evacuated for safety
reasons. “But if I can’t work in Mancotal,
Ill go to the military hospital in Sisle (a
nearby community).”

A Pacific Tribune reporter was one a
group of journalists, all members of the
Vancouver-New Westminster Newspaper
Guild, who visited Mancotal during a visit
to Nicaragua last July. Then, the 19-month
old ceasefire which ended this month was in
effect and the region, while bearing the scars
of several years of U.S. financed contra war,
was relatively calm.

The journalists met Tobin — at that
time, sidelined with an ankle injury —
one of the cement block houses that mark
this unique community created to house
and feed. local campesinos — peasants —
displaced by the contras’ torchings and kil-
lings in several villages. (Mancotal itself has
been attacked five times, with houses
burned and villagers slaughtered.)

Tobin is a critical care-skilled registered
nurse, but she virtually functions as a doctor
in the co-operative’s health care centre,

AILEEN TOBIN...

delivering babies, administering vaccines
and giving diagnoses to its 260 residents and
those of several surrounding communities.
The former employee of St. Paul’s

_ hospital — she still works there on return

visits to Vancouver — has examined 70-
120 patients a day since she signed up for
work in one of Nicaragua’s most medically
deprived and strife-torn areas during her
third visit to the Central American country
1% years ago.

Details of her life since then would could
provide material for an action novel. Jinot-
ega department (province) is a hotbed of
contra activity where the counter-revolution-
aries find support among the region’s
upper- and middle-class farmers tradition-
ally opposed to the socialist orientation of
the revolutionary Sandinistas. Mancotal,
located near Apanas Lake about 90 kilome-
ters south of the border with Honduras, is
bordered on either side by contra “corridors”
— valleys in which the U.S. armed bands
frequently move to and from Nicaragua’s
norther neighbour, which under U.S. pres-
sure houses several contra base camps.

Tobin has twice narrowly avoided,

Vancouver nurse plans to return to clinic in northern Nicaragua.

through lucky circumstance, ambush on the
twisting, pockmarked dirt road that con-
nects the co-op with the city of Jinotega,
and the community now forbids her to
travel on its motorbike. On another occa-
sion, she was at home when the communi-
ty’s armed residents were away and a lone
contra began shooting in Mancotal, criti-
cally wounding one of the women residents.

Another Farmers for Peace worker, Reb-
eka Seidel, telephoned Tobin recently to
report that the number of contras in the
area has been reduced recently to about 100
from the 300 who were active when a Man-
cotal member, Pedro Pablo Brenes, was
killed. Brenes, who was performing his
annual four months of duty in the armed
forces required of all Nicaraguans, was
mortally wounded Nov. 2 when he passed
by a house containing contras while on a
recruiting drive.

U.S. and Canadian mainstream media
made much of Nicaraguan President Daniel
Ortega’s cancellation of the ceasefire,
announced at a meeting of the Organization
of American States on Nov. 4, suggesting

that the president was deliberately trying to
scuttle the national elections scheduled for
February. In response, Tobin draws out a
list, compiled by Canadian observers of
Nicaragua’s electoral process, detailing 65
contra attacks and kidnappings during the
month of October.

In her own area, contra activities
increased “tenfold” during October, when
voter registration began, causing the closure
of voting stations in Sisle, about four
kilometers south of Mancotal, Tobin
relates. She produces an article in the July 9
issue of Barricada, the Sandinista daily,
which reports several contra activities in
Jinotega department early this month.

Tobin also notes that an attack which
killed 19 residents of the southern town of
San Miguelito indicates that contras are still
based in neighbouring Costa Rica, in viola-
tion of the Central America peace plan
adopted by five Central American nations
which won its initiator, Costa Rican Presi-
dent Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize.

“T hope the elections will be left alone, but
I wouldn’t put it past the Americans to
invade (Nicaragua) or to sabotage the elec-
tions,” she comments.

Despite some questionable polls report-

ing a majority favour the United Nicara- —

guan Opposition (UNO) — which backs
the presidential aspirations of La Prensa
publisher Violeta Chamorro — Tobin says
that “most people are clear on the close
relationship the contras have to UNO (a
coalition of 11 official and two unregistered
political parties)” and many non-Sandinistas
reject the contras.

Tobin’s goals when she resumes work at
Mancotal include the establishment of a
daycare centre. “I really enjoy helping
women get organized to take care of their
needs.”

Of the Alberta-based Farmers for Peace,
she says: “I think Canadians can be proud
there are Canadians working in difficult
situations. But that isn’t enough.

“Our government needs to be much
more vocal in speaking out against U.S.
policy on Nicaragua.”

By TOM MORRIS

With incredible drama and momentum
that almost seems too scripted to be real
life, the political train of events in the
German Democratic Republic has pro-
vided one surprise after another.

Capping a period of change and leader-
ship shuffling, beginning with the resigna-
tion of former GDR _ leader Erich
Honecker, then the exit of the entire parli-
amentary Council of Ministers and the
Politbureau of the Socialist Unity Party
(SED), the biggest political bombshell
exploded Nov.10 with the stunning and
unexpected breach of the 28 Jom Ber-
lin Wall.

Since then, millions of GDR citizens
have crossed into West Berlin as well as
into the FRG via other border crossings,
almost all to return home hours and days
later. This, it seemed for a time, helped
defuse what had become a mass exodus of
people via Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

But the root causes of the dissatisfac-
tion, frustration and anger with what
clearly was a self-satisfied, bureaucratic
and isolated government and SED leader-
ship, coupled with a now-admitted eco-
nomic mess, remains to be addressed.

Meeting in emergency session last week,
the SED Central Committee offered some
brutally frank and self-critical assessments
of the political and social crisis the country
faces, beginning with this startling admis-
sion:

“The political approach to the 11th

‘Wishful thinking’ cited in

SED Congress in 1986 was based on an
unrealistic assessment,” said the new party
leader Egon Krenz, (who also holds the
posts of head of state and chair of the
National Defence Council). “The defini-
tion of economic tasks was based on wish-
ful thinking ... Instead of pointing to
problems immediately and directly, efforts
were made to paint a picture of the GDR
which was increasingly different from that
which citizens saw every day.”

On democratic issues, Krenz said the
party was unprepared for the social awak-
ening all about them, and that successes
achieved since 1971 had “‘led to an unchal-
eee dominance of individual party offi-
cials

Speaking of the GDR’s approach
toward perestroika and glasnost in the
USSR, Krenz revealed that “‘wait-and-see
attitudes, disapproving, partly-dogmatic,
partly-arrogant tendencies” existed and
that “when leadership was needed, the
party remained speechless.”

Evidence of this was everywhere, both
inside the country where hundreds of
thousands marched in large cities and
small towns, and outside, where images of
GDR citizens climbing fences and occupy-
ing embassy compounds were carried
around the world.

“Without underestimating the influ-
ence of the opponents of socialism,”
Krenz told his colleagues and his people,
“we have to admit that the real reasons for
this painful exodus lie in this country ...

GDR leaders’ self-criticism

We were not prepared for the open out-
break of conflicts or for the new questions
emerging in our society.”

Referring to social forces bursting onto
the political stage, Krenz called for the
legalization of all new citizens’ action
groups willing to work within the coun-

_ try’s constitution, and said the SED wants
to institute fundamental reforms “‘in part-
nership with all (such) forces.”

At the same time, the country’s 478-
member parliament met and, amid a
storm of criticism ranging from debate on
the state of the economy to challenging the
SED’s leading role which is set out in the
1974 Constitution, elected 61 year-old
Hans Modrow as prime minister. He said
he would immediately lay out his policy
and name a genuine coalition government.
Parliament also elected its first non-
communist Speaker, a member of the
Democratic Peasant’s Party.

(Since this was written, parliament has
met and named a new 28-member cabinet,
made up of 17 members of the SED and
11 members of other parties — Ed.)

At the SED Central Committee, in ref-
erence to widespread public demands for
democratization, general secretary Krenz
said the party “must admit that existing
power structures are not democratic
enough” and called for a new election law
providing for free, democratic and secret
general elections with public control gua-
ranteed at every stage.

Clearly, the days of the unchallenged

role of the SED, a pliant and subservient
parliament, the absence of effective oppo-
sition parties and meaningful ways for
citizens to effect change are gone.

And the SED has paid a price already as
many members resign. While 36,000 peo-
ple applied for membership this year,
Krenz said, 66,000 have left. Opposition
was also heard in the SED leadership to
Krenz’ holding three top posts in the coun-
try. “Three hats is too many for one
head,” one Central Committee member
was quoted as saying. To deal with the
crisis, the SED has moved up the date of

its 12th congress from next spring to Dec.
15-17.

On economic matters, Krenz said that
real social renewal was impossible without
dynamic economic growth. “The point is
to combine the advantages of socialist
planning with the stimulating effects of the
market,” he said, calling for “‘a critical,
productive exchange of experience among
socialist states to draft a modern concept
of socialism.”

The new dynamic between the two
German states also took centre stage with
media speculation running high about
reunification. Added to a daunting maze
of socio-economic, legal, military and pol-
itical problems this would create was a
public opinion poll which showed an
overwhelming majority of citizens of both
states opposed to the idea at this time.

Pacific Tribune, November 27, 1989 « 9