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San Salvador’s military and police, aided by civilian right-wing vigilantes, continue a reign of terror against anyone who criticizes

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the fascist regime. Churches too have been the brunt of the junta’s violence.

Churches document fascist
repression in El Salvador

TORONTO — Canadian church organizations received
direct information Oct. 8, that the office of the Archbishop of
San Salvador (the capital city) was bombed on the evening of
October 7, and confirming the collaboration of state military
with paramilitary groups in civilian dress in the murders of
human rights and religious leaders in El Salvador.

The Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin

_America has called on the minister of external affairs of

Canada to denounce the continued repression of human
rights and popular leaders by the junta which controls most of
El Salvador. Meanwhile, Salvadorean human rights spokes-
persons were conferring with Canadian and American re-
ligious human rights leaders in Toronto, at the invitation of
the church-sponsored conference on Canada and Latin
America: Alternatives for the 1980s.

Information received from El Salvador indicates the fol-
lowing:

Maria Magdalena Henriquez of the Salvadorean Human
Rights Commission was captured at eight in the evening,
Friday, Oct. 3, by a group of people in civilian dress in a
pick-up truck. Her body was found Oct. 7, in the poblacion
Conchalillo, 33 km south of the capital. Forensic examina-
tion confirms that she died the same day as her kidnapping,
from eight gunshots fired from a machine gun. She was buried
as an unknown. The Commission of Human Rights exhumed
the body.

Father Manuel Rafael Reyes, 32 years of age, parish priest
at St. Martha’s church in Colonia 10th September, San Sal-
vador, was taken by a combination of national police and a
group of men in civilian dress who claimed to be registering

houses. His body was found Oct. 7, on a highway seven miles
north of the capital. He died from two gunshots, one in the
head and one in the chest. see

At Reubicacion Rio Lempa,.in Chaletenango province, 70
km north of the capital, at 11 p.m., Oct. 6, the home of a
catechist of the local church was surrounded by men in army
uniform. A group of menin civilian clothing entered the home
and killed the father, mother and children 11, 7 and 5 years of
age. The father was the brother of two religious sisters of the
Congregation of the Oblates of the Sacred Heart in El Sal-
vador.

Also in Chaletenango, the church and convent at San An-
tonio Los Ranchos was ransacked by the national army, who
stole every valuable and destroyed the sacraments in the
church. ee

Human rights sources in El Salvador report that paramilit-
ary groups in the country have this week published a death
list of five prominent religious and human rights figures. Both
Maria Magdalena Henriquez and Fr. Reyes were on the list.
Others include a prominent Jesuit priest, a leader in the
popular organization Liguas Populares (People’s Leagues)
and a member of the legal assistance office of the Archdio-
cese of San Salvador.

In Toronto, the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights
has sent telegrams of protest to Salvador, and telegrams
calling for action to the department of external affairs in
Ottawa.

On the evening of Oct. 8, Dr. Roberto Cuellar, director of

_ the legal assistance office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador

was to address the Toronto Conference.

‘GDR pledges

support to
Poland

By FILS DELISLE
Tribune Berlin Correspondent _

BERLIN — The German Democratic
Republic, as a neighbor, socialist ally and
treaty partner of Poland, will act decr
sively with other socialist countries t0
defeat any foreign conspiracies against
the socialist political structure of the
Polish people..

That warming was issued here recently
by Erich Honecker, chairman of the
GDR’s state council and general secret
ary of the Socialist Unity Party. Similar
assurances have been given by Commu-
nist Party organs and political com-
mentators in Prague, Moscow and other
socialist capitals.

In an address on the eve of the GDR’S
founding day celebration, Honecker
spoke of attempts made in the Federal
Republic of Germany and other NATO
countries to interfere in Poland’s internal
affairs, and declared:

**Poland is our neighbor. It is a frater-
nal socialist country. In the first years of
our existence we signed the treaty ap-
plying to our eastern border and Poland’s
western border, the peace border on the
Oder and Neisse (rivers). Both socialist
states, since then, have been bound to-
gether in a system of treaties expressing
the socialist, internationalist character of
our relations: the Warsaw Pact, the Tre-
aty on Friendship, Cooperation and
Mutual Assistance, and many other
treaties.

‘‘We cannot watch with indifference
the fate of people’s Poland. As a friend
and ally of people’s Poland, the German
Democratic Republic stands side by side
with the Polish people, which under the -
leadership of the United Workers’ Party,
is currently working to consolidate the
socialist forces of the people’s power
against the undermining activity of anti-
socialist forces financed from abroad.
We stand in solidarity with the fraternal
Polish people, which lives in secure bor-
ders as one of the great achievements of
the workers’ and farmers’ state power.

‘In the interests of peace and social- _

ism, on the basis of our political,
economic and cultural relations, as well
as our many-sided human contacts, we
are interested in a stable situation in the
People’s Republic of Poland. For that
reason, we will act against all attempts.at
interference with which foreign reac-
tionaries are striving to exploit the cur-
rent difficult situation in people’s Poland
for their own dark aims. The counter-
revolution must understand that the area
of their power lies westward of the Elb
and Werra.””

The last allusion is to the border be-
tween the two German states, the divid-
ing line between capitalist and socialist
Europe.

Typical of similar expressions of sol-

_ idarity with socialist Poland in other

socialist capitals was the following com-
ment in the Prague Rude Pravo, organ of

No split in left forces

the Czechoslovak Communist Party:

Soiree a a a

Se

RT

SAN SALVADOR (PL) — ‘‘Our
organization has worked, is working
and will always struggle for the unity
of the revolutionary forces,’ the top
leader of the Armed Forces of Na-
tional Resistance (FARN), Ferman
Cienfuegos, said in an interview here
last week.

Cienfuegos was interviewed by
the Cuban press agency Prensa
Latina under conditions of utmost
secrecy from where he is directing
FARN, which is a member of the
Unified Revolutionary Leadership
(DRU). He spoke of the unified pro-
cess of member organizations of the
DRU which, as well as FARN, com-
prises the Salvadorian Communist
Party, the Revolutionary Army of

the People and the ‘‘Farabundo Mar-
ti’’ People’s Liberation Forces.

The guerrilla leader refuted re-
ports on an alleged split with the Sal-
vadorian revolutionary organiza-

tions and reiterated the principle of ~

unity of the organization he leads.
“In every revolutionary process,”’

_ he said, ‘there is a struggle of ideas,

but that does not mean we are di-
vided. It is the enemy who tries to
present this as a division.”’

Cienfuegos also confirmed to PL
that three leaders of FARN, in-
cluding Ernesto Jovel Funes, died
Sept. 27 in an airplane crash and paid
tribute to their role in the struggle for
national liberation.

C of other socialist countries.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 24, 1980— Page 6

‘‘The imperialist circles now place great
hopes on the developments in Poland,
where anti-socialist forces are striving to
exploit the criticism of certain short-

_ comings in order to discredit real social-

ism, to disrupt international relations and
to remove Poland from the family of frat-
ernal socialist countries. We are witnes-
ses of an expanding interference by
international reaction in the internal af-
fairs of Poland. The communists in the
fraternal country of Poland, its working
people, who are endeavoring to improve
conditions and to beat back the attacks of
the anti-socialist forces, can rely,on the
solidarity of Czechoslovak communists
and our people, as well as on the sol-

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