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Peddling apartheid
through sport

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Once
considered the ‘‘gentleman’s game”’ in
England where it first evolved back in the
18th Century, cricket is now caught up in
the hurly-burly of the international cam-
paign being waged by developing coun-
tries, including those in the Caribbean,
against sports links with the minority ra-
cist regime in South Africa.

Island governments in the Common-
wealth Caribbean where the game is the
number one sport have already urged
their cricketers to respect United
Nations-sponsored appeals for such a
boycott of the racially divided country.
As well, those administrations have care-
fully noted the mood of the average citi-
zen and began to keep tabs on visiting
sides which may contain members who
had played in South Africa.

The seriousness with which the vari-
ous Caricom governments in the Carib-
bean view any public outrage on sports
ties with Pretoria is perhaps gauged by
the fact that the issue was discussed by
the Foreign Ministers of the 13-member
political and economic grouping at a
meeting last May in St. Christ-
opher/Nevis. On the agenda was
whether to allow an English team, which
is expected to contain players who have

gone to South Africa, to tour the islands ©

next year.

The issue was again picked up at the
Caricom Heads of Government Con-
ference in Barbados July 1-4. At this par-
ley there was unanimous support for
eliminating all sporting contacts with
South Africa. Said a statement released
at the Conference: ‘‘With particular re-
ference to the forthcoming tour of the
region by an MCC (Marylbourne Cricket
Club — the English cricket club which
traditionally sponsors English touring
teams) cricket team, they (the govern-
ment heads) were at one in regarding as
wholly unacceptable as visiting players,
persons currently in breach of the
Gleneagles Agreement as well as those
expressing an intent to violate it through
sporting contacts with South Africa.”’

In 1983, as part of its ongoing efforts to
use sports in attempting to show the
world that.all is well in the troubled coun-
try, Pretoria had lured 15 top West Indian
players to South Africa to play a series of
matches, reportedly paying each a tidy
sum. :
It was a stunning coup. After all, the
West Indies were the world champions
of the game. The visit. of the *‘West In-
dies team’’, as it was billed in South Afri-
ca, could do more for apartheid’s image
than a hundred full page advertisements
in the New York Times, organizers
reasoned.

All did not go well for the ‘‘rebels’’.
Their matches in South Africa were
poorly attended. On their return home to
the Caribbean, they found themselves
banned for life by sports authorities from
playing first class matches.

In South Africa, President of the South
African Cricket Board, Hassan Howa,
denounced the tour, saying that the visit
by the islanders had done nothing to im-
prove the situation in South Africa where
the country’s legal, political and eco-
nomic institutions are firmly based on
racial discrimination. ‘‘You cannot come
into a country and tell the people who
have suffered apartheid that you are
coming to put it right in six weeks of
playing,’ Howa remarked.

Unlike Pretoria, such Commonwealth
cricketing nations as Australia and New
Zealand are not at their wits’ end and are
as desperate as South Africa’s minority
regime in terms of having other overseas
sports teams to play with. Nevertheless,
both the Labour Party governments
‘“‘down under”’ realize that their national

From the
Caribbean

Norman
Faria

teams are frequently touring — the Au-
ssies are currently in England, for exam-
ple. More importantly, both countries
have occasion to send cricketing teams
to the West Indies, as did New Zealand
earlier this year. If any of these teams
had any players who had been to South
Africa, the tours could be in jeopardy.

In May, Australian Prime Minister
Bob Hawke deplored the decision of a
number of Aussie cricketers to tour
South Africa on their own. Hawke
echoed the appeals of the anti-apartheid
movement in South Africa and else-
where that sport was extremely im-
portant to the South African government
and that a sports boycott was effective in
trying to bring down the dreaded Botha
rule. :

For their part, Commonwealth Carib-
bean government heads know that the
media-fueled and emotionally charged
debate about sporting links with South
Africa is not far below the. surface of
small island states where the populations
are mainly black.

Already, some opinion leaders are ar-
guing that double standards have come
into play when it is considered that those
English players who went to South Af-
rica were only required to serve out a
three year ban while their Caribbean

TRIBUNE PHOTO — TOM MORRIS

if

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Anti-apartheid activists held a picket outside the Toronto Cricket Club to protest a tour

of a South African team. Sports personalities who play in South Africa also find
themselves on anti-apartheid boycott lists.

counterparts are banned for life for the
same offence. ~

Meanwhile, The Trinidad Peace
Council headed by University of the
West Indies History professor Dr. James
Millette has pledged to organize protest
demonstrations outside match venues if
the English teams containing any players
who have been to South Africa comes to
Trinidad next year.

Although not as far reaching in their
positoins as anti-apartheid activists like
Millette who would like to see the adop-
tion of a ‘‘code of conduct’ for multi-
national corporations doing business in
the region and who have branch plants in

South Africa, a number of Caribbean

governments have been forced to take a

stand and speak out on the issue of sport- ©

ing contacts with Pretoria.

CIVILIANS MAIN TARGET

MOSCOW — The audience sat
hushed as Abdul Sabir, age 12, told how
he picked up a fountain pen while play-
ing on the street in Kabul and un-
screwed the top. Made in the USA, the
booby trap exploded blowing away his
hands and leaving him nearly blind.

many from around the world at an anti-
imperialist tribunal held during the 12th
World Youth Festival in the Soviet cap-
ital this summer, heard by an inter-
national panel of jurists and festival
participants.

In Afghanistan, Abdul Simar is but
one of many victims, mostly children,

This testimony was but one of the.

U.S. sabotage hits Afghanistan

killed and maimed by booby-trapped
pens, books, flashlights, dolls, chewing
gum and other items planted by Afghan
terrorists — weapons supplied by U.S.
special services.

As well as providing sophisticated
arms, Afghan counter-revolutionaries
are trained in their use at special camps
in Pakistan and Iran, then infiltrated
into Afghanistan. Taza Gul, an Afghan
farmer, told the tribunal how he was
trained in such methods abroad. By
playing on his religious feelings, Gul
said, agents convinced him to learn the
skills of sabotage but, like many others,
he came over to the side of people’s

Ar

ed

A new school in the Jelalabad outskirts lies in ruins after a rebel attack. Hospitals,
nurseries, schools and new industrial projects are prime targets of the terrorists.
Nearly one-quarter of the nation’s schools have been destroyed.

power and today is actively defending
his homeland.

U.S.-backed terrorism against
Afghanistan has now assumed the scale
of undeclared war. Washington has
spent more than $1-billion to date, with
Congress passing a 1985-86 bill for
$280-million for this purpose, the tri-
bunal was told. Similar testimony was
heard from South Africa, Chile, Syria
and Israel.

* * *

A related story of atrocities in
Afghanistan came last week by a Soviet
reporter covering an Afghan army raid
on a terrorist base camp in the
mountainous region of Panjshir. Here
farmers were forced to pay exhorbitant
taxes, provide food for counter-revo-
lutionary bands and were robbed of-
precious stones to help finance terrorist
arms purchases.

: Following a battle, the Afghan army
discovered large caches of weapons,
munitions and communications equip-
ment near the village of Dehmikini.
They also discovered a large under-
ground prison similar to the infamous
“tiger cages’ used by the Saigon re-
gime during the Vietnam War.

Divided into three compartments,
the army discovered bloodstains
everywhere as well as numerous as-
sorted torture instruments.

Captured terrorists, revealed how
127 persons were held there, but just
days before the army attack were or-
dered disposed of by the terrorist com-
mander, Ahmad Shah. They were then
murdered and their mutilated bodies
thrown into the Mikini river.

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 11, 1985