THE INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN
TO FREE PABLO AND SANTEN
DECLARATION OF THE SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS
OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
FREEDOM FOR PABLO AND SANTEN!
4
The VIth World Congress of the Fourth International sends its greetings to and expresses its closest solidarity with Comrades MICHEL RAPTIS (PABLO) and SAL SANTEN, imprisoned in Amsterdam for their active militancy in favor of the Algerian revolution, in accomplishment of the tasks of the Fourth International.
We call on the militants, the organizations of the colonial revolution, of the workers' movement, of the socialist movement as a whole, actively to support these two victims of imperialist repression.
Faced by the repeated postponements of the trial, with the repeated provocations of the French, Dutch, and German police, with the attempts to conceal the political basis of this affair, we call on revolutionary and vanguard militants to redouble their campaign for the freedom of Pablo and Santen, to rely actively on the sympathy aroused in the mass movement by their fight, the fight of the Fourth International, the fight. for the Algerian revolution.
We call for an extension of the campaign in trade
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL unions and factories, in living centres of the colonial revolution, so that each worker and revolutionary militant may learn of the fight of the Fourth International and of these two courageous leaders for the colonial revolution. The whole action engaged in by Comrades Pablo and Santen, their entire lives, are courageous and worthy of respect. This is why the repression has struck them as it strikes hundreds and thousands of revolutionary militants in the service of the colonial revolution, as it strikes the masses who fight on every front for their liberation, against imperialism. Let us all mobilize in the fight to free Pablo and Let us ever more vigorously call on the workers and the revolutionary movement to intervene in this fight. The most complete solidarity with Comrades Pablo and Santen! January 1961
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LETTER OF MICHEL RAPTIS (PABLO) TO THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATE
Why have I accepted all these responsibilities?
Here I owe an explanation which, while extending into the political field, seems to me necessary and even indispensable.
not unaware, Madame, as examining mathat I belong to the Fourth International and that I form part of its leadership.
I had the honor of joining the historic movement of Leon Trotsky in my early youth, when I was a student at the Higher Polytechnic School of Athens in 1928. (
It is from that time that I date my conscious life as a man, which I have wanted to devote to service in the cause of the oppressed and exploited of this world. I have endeavored ever since to make my actions as faithful as possible to that ideal of my youth, to the political ideas that I then embraced, and to the line advocated by the organization to which I belong.
Thus, at the time of the Second World War, which
I spent in France, while continuing my studies at the University of Paris (from which I have two diplomas, first in urbanism, and then in statistics), I engaged in militant action against Nazi oppression and aided its victims to the extent of my powers, quite apart from their nationality or religion.
Numerous friends whom I made in France - among whom I feel honored to quote the names of Mr Jean well-known and humanist, Mr Claude Bourdet, publisher of france-Observateur, scierist of word ren rofess wilt be Soe to te and to this activity.
Most of them, for that matter, have already had the kindness to testify in my favor by letters which they have sent to the Dutch Minister of Justice at The Hague.
Already at the end of the war and at the time of the upsurge of the emancipation movement of the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL colonial peoples, I found my place - quite naturally and unconditionally - at their side.
The right of each subject people to national independence seems to me a right that is both democratic and elementary, which was well defended by all means at the time of the Nazi occupation of Europe, and which cannot under any pretext be denied to the colonial peoples.
For this reason, as a member of the Fourth International, I am proud of having taken my stand, right from the beginning of the struggle of the Algerian people for its national liberation, in support of this just
It is quite true that I exerted myself greatly for this cause, as did all the members of the international organization to which I belong, starting in 1954.
In the files seized in the apartment that I occupy in Amsterdam, the police found papers belonging to me personally which illustrate this activity, and which I should like to see included in the documentation concerning my case.
Among these papers I cite the memorandum that I sent to the Conference of the National Liberation Front in Tripoli in the summer of 1959, and the report that 1 wrote on my return from a trip to Morocco and Tunisia (dated March or April 1959) concerning the aid that we ought to bring to the struggle for self-liberation of the Algerian people. It is quite true that I wished to give impetus, in Europe and elsewhere, to Committees for Free Algeria, Committees for Algerian Prisoners in France, and Committees for Material Aid to Algerian Children and Refugees in Morocco and Tunisia.
Fighting 101 their liberation, have been cast.
I know from direct sources the enormous tribute of blood and sacrifices paid in this war to which the Algerian people are subjected: more than 700,000 killed, more than 1,500,000 displaced persons in
5 Algeria itself, more than 30,000 prisoners in France, and more than 200,000 refugees in Morocco and Tunisia, mostly old people, women, and war-orphaned children.
The war is certainly a cruel one on both sides, and I take no pleasure at all in the fact that it has made victims among the French laboring youth in uniform. But the Algerian victims are far in excess of those on the French side.
Furthermore, it cannot be forgotten that the Algerian people is fighting for its freedom and is therefore waging a just war, quite like the European peoples fighting for their liberation at the time of the Nazi occupation.
I know that the majority of the laboring people of France and the élite of its intellectuals, writers, artists, and scientists, are against the continuation of this abominable enterprise, and in favor of the right of the Algerian people to self-determination and independence.
My own active struggle in favor of this cause was in no way directed against the French people, among whom I passed a very considerable part of my life, but was simed against the forces who, for their own selfish interests, are plunging thousands of human beings, both Arab and French, into blood, tears, and sufferings.
The interest that I have taken in, and the effort that I have been willing to make in favor of, the struggle for self-liberation of the Algerian people, are in conformance, I repeat, with the ideal of my youth, with the political ideals that I profess, and with the line of the organization to which I have the honor to belong.
any of my they earlds for exesi even betrayin
be at the sacrifice of my freedom and, if necessary, of my life itself. 16 December 1960
PROGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN
We are finally in possession of the text of the admirable letter sent to the Dutch Minister of Justice by FRANCIS JEANSON, the trial of whose for aid to the Algerian revolution and conscripts who refused to fight against that just cause made such a sensation late last year:
Michel Raptis and Sal Santen have just become involved, in your country, in a criminal-court case; they are today being treated as if they were common criminals.
belong to an organization toward which I have never pathy on the political level; this puts me more at my ease in protesting here against an accusanon of a piece of dishonesty whose meaning is eit total devotion to the cause of the Algerian too clear, in the present conjuncture, revolution is taken into account. Everywhere that men are fighting, without reservations and without calculating self-interest, for justice and for the right of peoples to self-determination, there are other men who — under orders, in the shadows, and by sometimes atrocious means — are trying to intimidate these true militants int the cause of humanity, and to force foreign governments to take against them repressive measures the principle of which, as far as France itself is concerned, two-thirds of the world has already condemned.
Forgive me if I take a personal example. I have just been expelled from Switzerland, and this measure obviously fits into the constitutional framework of Suiss neutrality. On this formal level, I had nothing to object to con.
cerning the decisions of the Swiss jurists. The the Confederation thermore adopted an irreproachably correct attitoward me, I could only yield to thus safeguarding the future of our But it is quite evident that, in taking chis decision, the Swiss government was above all concerned with sajeguarding its present relations with the French government. I can understand that; but its concern seems to me already more or less anachronistic. From week, official France goes on banishing itself from the comity of nations; the Atlantic
Alliance itself is no longer in a position to put up with its absurdities; and the internal situation of my country is being changed these days at a pace which we ourselves, who had predicted this revival, had not been able to imagine.
In six months, in one month, perhaps tomorFrench truth will again become what it should never. have ceased to be: the trach of
That is why today governments countries that are friends of France must not themselves be dragged into combinations the French people itself, interests, and, in fine, against the interests of all peoples who want to maintain genuinely friendly relations with it tomorrou. Overwhelmed by the army that raised it to power, fought against by all the living forces of the country, whom any eventual coup d'état would end up by uniting an impassable opposition,
Gaullist government is moribund. It is not up to the free peoples to support it, when convulsions are inclining it irremediably toward a solution of a fascist type.
Michel Raptis and Sal my good fortune: their situation is much worse than mine. I appeal to your sense of justice and of history to act in such a way that they shall no longer undergo a fate which will soon make them appear, in the eyes of everybody, victims of a totally outdated colonialist solidarity.
From Bolivia a letter calling for freedom for Raptis
Dutch Prime Minister, signed by the following Parliamentary Deputies: BERTO JARA DAZA, HUMBERTO LOZAÑO, MANUEL NAvA Ríos, GERMÁN CLAROS CARREÑO, SATURNINO LIMA TICONA, JORGE OROSCO LORENZETTY, AVENDATO FLORES, PEDRO RIVERA ARUZAMEN, HERNAN MEDEIROS. A manifesto to the same ENRIQUE GUZMÁN MOYA, GREGORIO MENDOZA, signed by EDUARDO NOVOA Dean of the Faculty of Economic General of University of San Andrés; EnuArDo LóPEz RIVAS, ber of the Faculty of Economie Sciences; Professor of the Faculty of Economic Sciences; and J. ALBANACIN, at-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
In Chile, the general assembly of the Machinists' Union at the Aceros del Pacífico steel plant at Huachivoted a resolution of support to the Cuban and Algerian revolutions, which concludes:
And lastly, we declare that we make the struggle in defense of the Algerian revolution.
our oun, and support it with full intensity; and demand the immediate release of the workers' leaders Sal Santen and Michel Raptis,
Parrested and prosecuted for helping to defend the people of Algeria against the french imperialist yoke. The resolution was signed by four union officers: Communist Party members ARTIDORO VILLIGÁN and JULIO OLIVA; and ELBODORO NEIRA and ROLANDO CHÁVEZ, members of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista).
In France, the campaign continues now under the official committee composed of ARTHUr ROGER BLIN, CLAUDE BOURDET, JEAN CASSOU, YVES DECHEZELLES, MAURICE JARDOT, YVES JOUFFA, MICHEL LEIRIS, MAURICE NADEAU, CLAUDE RoY, SCHWARTZ, PIERRE STIBBE, and PIERRE VIDAL-NAQUET.
In Holland itself the following have joined the campaign: Mr J RuccE; Dr HuGeN LoLz; Prof Dr DE GRAAF; Dr N V D VELD, Deputy; Prof Dr DE JONG;
Ra Bees, tree acade
Dr K STRID, theologian; Dr W BARNARD, poet; Dr P J MEERTENS, of the Academy of Leiters; Mr WEGGERs; Dr J BUsHES, theologian; Dr A HindenBurg; Dr K L RosHN, secretary of the Anti-Apartheid Party.
From Indonesia, the following persons have added their signatures to the appeal of the British Labour Party MPs printed in our last issue: MANDJI ANWAR TJOKROMINOrO, Member of Parliament, as president of the the Afro-Asiatic Group in Indonesia; K WErDoJo, Member of Parliament (Communist Group); R B SIo the Indomesian Catholic Party; I A Mo, rosident Member of Parliament; I J Kasimo, president Member of Parliament (Communist Group).
From Peru, a demand for the immediate release of Raptis and Santen was sent to the Dutch government, signed by: MIGUEL YI CArrILLo, journalist, director of Aqui Está, former president of the Peru Federation of Journalists and of the Lima Federated Centre of Journalists; RICARDO NAPURI, leader of the A PRA Rebelde; Dr OscAR GóMEZ, dentist; EFRAÍN LuIs CARO, Partido Social Progresista Parliamentary Deputy from Cuzco; CARLOS MALPICA, Parliamentary Deputy Cajamarca, and leader of the A PRA Rebelde; José
ArGuedAs, novelist and Director of the of Ethnology of the University of San Marcos of Lima; Dr ANGEL CASTRO LABARELLO, secretary the FERTISA tradeand delegate the Provincial Trade-Union Centre of Callao Workers; OsvALDo BALDERRAMA, organizational secretary of the Peru Metal-Workers' Fedethe Peruvian Confederation of Labor.
Documents of the Sixth World Congress