THE AMSTERDAM TRIAL
An Important Episode in the History of the Fourth International -
PABLO AND SANTEN TO BE RELEASED IN SEPTEMBER NEXT
On July 12, the Court which sat in Amsterdam judgment on our comrades Pablo and Santen, sentenced them to 15 months in prison. As, at that time, they had already been in "preventive detention" for thirteen months, they will be released in September next.
Big efforts were made by powerful police and govern. nental circles to launch a provocation against the Fourth International, aimed at discrediting two of its main political leaders, including its Secretary, Michel Raptis (Pablo). These efforts sought to hide the political action of aid to the Algerian revolution by trying to present the case as a common criminal action. The sentence and the trial which preceded it therefore signify a big success for our movement.
It was indeed a big political trial which will range amongst the important trials made by Capitalism against the Workers' Movement. This was due to the efforts made collectively made by our movement and all our friends in the world during the thirteen months of the scandalous preventive detention of Pablo and Santen: the very broad international campaign conducted in their defense, the testimonies made in their favour during the trial by well-known personalities of the European Workers' movement, the quality of the pleadings, the students' demonstrations in the streets of Amsterdam, and last but not least, the exemplary attitude of our two comrades, have all destroyed all of the carefully prepared machinations of the police and of the authorities. A trial prepared by various secret polices of Western Imperialism (including the F BI, ns was shown during the trial), against the leadership of the Fourth International, has become a trial of the crimes of Imperialism against the invincible Colonial Revolution, againsi the victorious march of Socialism throughout the world.
Each day, during the trial, all the Dutch papers published extensive articles on the Affair, giving it the prominence it deserved. Unfortunately the big Press of other European countries remained, on the giving the mensure of its "independence" ny Western Imperialism. This barrier of silence gives all the more value to the countless proofs of sympathy and effective solidarity our movement received throughout the world. We wish to thank here the neuspapers and organizations o! the world Workers' movement who have published or issued articles and declarations in defense of Pablo and Santen. We also thank all the Committees of Aid und Defense which were formed and the various figures of the Left who came forward a› witnesses in the trial. Their intervention had major importance in giving the rial all its political content and resonance in favour of the Colonial Revolution and especially the Algerian Revoluion, as well as for the ideas of Socialism. They have elso strongly contributed in stressing the irreproacheble revolutionary character of Pablo and Santen, their human valour and shattering the despicable attempts to them as common criminals. It is the whole of the Workers' and Socialist movement which shall reap the benefits.
The vouth of Amsterdam were in the vanguard of the demonstrations which lasted throughout the whole trial and which demanded the liberation of Pablo and Santen and aid for the war of liberation of the Algerian people. Having begun with the distribution of leaflets and picketing, in which they held big placards with these slogans, the movement culminated on Saturday 24th June in a demonstration during which there were violent clashes with the police when people in the street expressed their sympathy with the demonstrators and joined their ranks. The whole Dutch press printed impressive photos of this demonstration, the like of which had not been seen in Amsterdam for a long
During the first day of the trial, immediately after the opening examination, Mr Smeets, Sal Santen's lawyer, asked in a very detailed and juridically strongly based pleading, that the indictment be declared invalid and that Raptis and Santen be immediately released. He demonstrated that the indictment was very vague and full of contradictions. Mr Worst, lawyer for Michel Raptis (Pablo) also supported this demand.
Nevertheless, after two hours deliberations, the Court rejected it. Further to Mr Smeets and Mr Worst, the defense of our comrades was effected by Mr Cammelbeeck, a Socialist Senator, who had made a big contribution in Holland to the political campaign for Raptis and Santen. The interrogation of our two comrades took place on the second day, when they refuted with much vigour many erroneous points and irregularities in the preparatory investigations and the indictment. In reply to several attempts by the President of the Court to obtain from our comrades declarations concerning the Algerian Resistance, Pablo repeatedly exclaimed: "We have nothing to declare concerning the Algerian Resistance, nothing to criticise, to remark, to say thereon. All that is done by the Algerian Resistance is well-done. Glory and Honour to the heroic fighters of the Algerian Revolution?" Also when the President more-or-less reproached him for having had several pseudonyms, he said: "This is a current practice in the revolutionary movement. During my long life as a militant, I had to continually defend mysel! against the repressions of dictatorial regimes: first, in my own country, Gestapo, Stalin's OG PU, and then the "Red Hand" which is in the service of colonialism".
On the same day, the Court also heard the deposition of the provocateur Hompe, who confirmed entirely his role Ts un agent of the Dutch Secret Police (B V D), to whom uent regularly each month to deliver his reports, since the 13th January, 1960 (our comrades were arrested on 10th June, 1960).
Then came the first witness for the defense: Professor Laurent Schwartz, world-known mathematician (whom the Court did not afford the possibility of making his declaration orally — this was read by Pablo's lawyer), declared he had known Michel Raptis for « long time and could therefore be witness to his political intelligence, to his polit-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL ical morality and of his high ideals. "It is absolutely evident that all his motives were political and were completely disinterested. One cannot blame him for having gone beyond the framework of the laws: in certain circumstances this is unavoidable. I myself, who occupy in France a very respectable position, as Professor of Mathematics at the Faculty of Science (Sorbonne), was persecuted during the War as a Jew and as a member of the Resistance. I could survive only with false identity cards for my wife, my baby and myself. At that time, I myself made such false papers to help friends."
Then came the British Labour Party Member of Parlia- 212
ment, John Baird, to recall the Dutch traditions of struggle for liberty, which were particularly well-demonstrated during the years of the Occupation. He reminded the Court that at that time a great quantity of false papers were made in Great Britain to help he Dutch Resistance and were parachuted into Holland. Three other Labour Members of Purliament, Konni Zilliacus, Stephen Swingler and William Griffiths had asked to be allowed to testify in favour of Pablo and Santen, but the Court refused them permission to speak in the triul, arguing that they did not know our comrades personally. Konni Zilliacus held a press conference in which he declared that Pablo and Santen worked for the good of humanity and for the cause of the independence of Algeria and that is why their case meets with such sympathy in England where the fight of the FLN for the freedom of their country finds very wide sympathy.
Concerning the question of military help to the FLN, he also stated: "The world has just seen how a World Power carried out a similar action on a gigantic scale for the Cuban rebels and mercenaries who attacked Cuba; up to now I have not heard any protests against this action either from the Dutch government or from the British government. This action of the American Government was an infraction not only of International Law, but also of half a dozen treaties. After that it is really in bad faith to condemn these two men for having done the same thing on a much smaller scale, for a much more superior cause." Due to the stand taken by the Court the Dutch publicist, Fons Hermans, who actively participated in Holland in the cumpaign for the Algerian Freedom Fight, and wrote n booklet on it, was also prevented from speaking for Pablo and Santen.
Nevertheless, the quantity and quality of the testimonies were so substantial that the Prosecutor remarked ill-humouredly during his speech: "We knew perfectly well that these two men acted from political and disinterested motives, il was useless having such a large number of personalities come here to say that". He visibly forgot that all the preparations for the trial had been made precisely in order to demonstrate the contrary!
We reproduce after this article, the declaration of our comrade Livio Maitan who, vigorously applauded by the public gallery, ended his declaration with the cry of: "Long live the Algerian Revolution! Long live the Fourth Interna-
The third day of the trial was also largely occupied with testimonies: Claude Bourdet, the well--knoun French journalist, Paris Municipal Councillor and leader of the P SU, summarised in a well-argumented and documented political declaration, the last conversations he had has in France in 1958 with Michel Pablo. He stressed the political clarity and foresight of Pablo who had lung foreseen the development of the contradictions within the French bourgeoisie
5 itself concerning the evolution of the Algerian Affair and the reactionary, even fascist, attempts which occurred in January 1960 and April 1961. He declared it was in the basic interest of all French democrats and members of the workers' movement to fight against the Fascist threat, together with the Algerians who were fighting against the same fascists for the freedom of Algeria. Then came the historian Isaac Deutscher who praised highly the intellectual and moral qualities of Pablo and his life entirely devoted to the fight for Socialism. He especially stressed the high quality of his political conceptions, quoting his last drajt article on the question of the liberation of women, published in the Summer 1960 issue of FOURTH INTERNATIONAL immediately afer his arrest. The French writer and ethnolog-
Michel Leiris, also came to testify to his high appraisal oj Pablo and the confidence he has in him.
A French lawyer, Mr Yves Jouffa, was instructed by the French Comite de Sourien, to follow the trial as a juridical observer.
The Belgian lawyer, Marc de Cocki, who has for years been defending the Algerians whom French Imperialism prosecutes even in Belgium ard kills through the intermediary of the "Red Hand", guve an important explanation concerning the french identity cards which Pablo and Santen were accused of having supplied to the Algerians. He pointedly explained that these identity cards were not compulsory, which made the whole of this part of the indictment (aimed at demonstrating that Pablo and Santen had acted against the French State) completely without joundation. The Belgian Professor Pierre le Greve, of Brussels, who, one year ago, nurrowly escaped from u bomb attack made against him by the "Red Hand", (our readers uill remember another Belgian professor. the late H Laperche, who was a fatal victim of a similar simul. taneous attack in Liege) and roho came to demonstrate hou French Imperialism organizes on Belgian territory the persecution and murder of Algerian fighters. He brought before the Court a document formally proving this statement, but the Court refused to take cognisance of this document.
After the testimonies made by the Dulch trade union militant, Maurice Ferares, nil comrade Pierre Frank (uho was interrupted by the Court as he was explaining hou it was necessary to light against Imperialism to support the Algerian revolution, Mrs Sneevlie, widow uf the grent Dutch revolutionary shot by the Nazis in 1941, ended in a very moving way this exceptional series of testimonies, which were completed by a letter of the French writer Jean Guehenno which wus read by Mr Worst.
The President of the Court then announced he would read a letter from comrade Nathalia Trotsky which dec-
"I know personally Michel Raptis and Sal Santen and I vish to tell jou at this moment when their trial is taking place, my esteem for these militants, the sincere integrity, their complete devotion to their convictions, who could not for one. moment ie suspected of obeying per. sonal or self-interested motives. Their long detention in conditions which were those of common criminals, seems to me particularly revolting as would be any sentencing oj two true revolutionaries oho fight with courage and self-denial for their ideals.
"My health and my age prevents me from going to Amsterdam to testify in person as to my sympathy and
6 my high esteem for them - which, I pray you, Mr Pres ident, will make known to the Court".
Much comment was made the next day in the Dutch Press on this episode in the trial, in every newspaper. One of them, the "Algemeen Dugblad" published an extensive article entitled "Trotsky Still Speaks".
All these testimonies had largely eclipsed the miserable declaration of Joop Zwart, igent of the BV D, boss and author of the actions of the provocateur, Hompe.
After the lengthy speech of the Prosecutor, which lasted about six hours and concluded with a request for a sentence of three years for Raptis adn tuo years for Santen the last day of the trial was devoted to the pleas of the three defense lawyers, who refuted in a most brilliant, serious
### FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and moving manner the indictment and the Prosecutor's concluding address. Mr Cammelbeeck stressed especially the political character of this whole affair from the pointof-view of the help given by Raptis and Santen to the Colonial Revolution as well as from the point-of-view of the counter-revolutionary actions of the secret police of Western Europe and North America.
OTOX Lastly our comrades made their final declarations: both of them excellent ones. We can only quote in this issue the conclusion of comrade Pablo's declaration: comrade Santen's having been given in Dutch and now being translated. All these documents will be published in extenso in the booklet which will be issued on this trial, an important episode in the history of the Fourth International and its struggles.
DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT
On the trial of Comrades Michel Raptis and Sal Santen (issued on June Ist, 1961)
The trial of Comrades Michel Raptis (Pablo) and Sal respectively Secretary and member of the Secretariat of the Fourth International, has been fixed for the 21st., 23rd., 26th., and 27th. June, 1961, in Amsterdam.
Our comrades are accused of diverse activities of material support to the Algerian revolution.
The Fourth International assumes full responsibility
Ere aims itingh is arisoned leaders and
conformity with the revolutionary principles and conceptions which are its own.
It denies to the imperialist Court the right to judge revolutionary militants for their action in favour of the great cause of liberation from the colonial yoke which moves the greatest part of humanity. The intended trial of the comrades Pablo and Santen is one of the expressions of a regime of oppression and exploitation, which, in the whole world, recoils before the uprising of oppressed peoples and which tries to sulsist by repression terror. All Courts which pretend to judge the activity of revolutionaries acting in accoril whith their convictions, are only instruments of imperialist and bourgeois justice, which seek to maintain a regime condemned by History.
The French Courts have sentenced thousands of militants of the Algerian revolution and of anti-colonialist Frenchmen and men from other countries who are aiding them; they condemn to death hundreds of Algerian mi. litants who fight for a cause which the French government today has to recognise as legitimate. At the moment in which it must negociate with these Leaders who these militants have chosen to lead their struggle. These judgements, these sentences will stand before History as crimes committed in defense of Imperialist privilege. Courts which have sentenced to death men and who fought for a cause which the power of the Algerian revolution has now made triumphant, will appear as the executioners, the legal covers of imperialist repression.
In the whole world, this imperialist and bourgeois "justice" works to cover up and to justify repression and tyranny: just as the Yankee Courts which for the same faults sentence to death negroes and acquit whites, or which sentence to death the Porto-Ricans fighting for their independence; just as the Courls of Batista which sentenced Fidel Castro.
In the vast front of international repression, organised against the liberatory revolution of the colonial and oppressed people, Dutch imperialism assumes its tasks of executioner with a base zeal, in defending its privileges, its investments and what remains of its domination. The "justice" of Dutch imperialism —which continues to be the partner of French imperialism in NATO had the occasion of exercising itself against the struggle of liberation of the Indonesian people, and it still partakes in present imperialist politics in West Irian and
Our comrades have helped the struggles of the Algerians exposed to arbitrary arrest and persecution, deprived of their elementary rights and submitted to the most cruel treatment, in France as in Algeria. They have helped them to escape that repression. They helped with all their forces the revolutionary efforts of the Algerian masses to expel French imperialism.
For imperialist legality, these are faults and even cri.
This "legality" considers of course as such all methods of police and fascist repression. It judges "illegal" the armed insurrection of peoples against its domination and exploitation. But it is by insurrection, revolution, by escaping from repression and opposing it with violence and with weapons, that immense sectors of humanity commence to conquer their most elementary rights, to throw off the imperialist yoke, and to open up for themselves the way to a dignified and human life.
The Fourth International for its part has reorganised its activities according to this immense upsurge of the colonial and oppressed peoples which, in the present phase, represent the main sector of the world revolution.
Continuing the revolutionary internationalist traditions of the communist movement of Marx and Engels, the Fourth International does not restrict itself to proclaiming the rights of peoples it militates actively for their insurrection and for the triump of their revolution. It puts
eged minorities. Neither the threat of fascism. nor the men and women, Christian and civilized people, of Western
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL into practice the principles of the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky which admitted in its ranks only the parties and organisations which engaged ..."in support not only in words but in deeds for every movement of emancipation in the colonies, and to demand the expulsion of the Metropolitan imperialists from the colonies," as was stated in the 21 Conditions for admission into the Communist International.
Our International in the application of its principles, lives in the same struggle, carries out the same actions and faces the same perils as millions of men and women mobilised for the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist revolution throughout the whole world.
But the Dutch not dare accuse activity in this respect. skilfully its role of agent of international repression it utilizes against comrades Pablo and Santen, provocations, and the most arbitrary methods. Il aims at compromising these leaders of the Fourth International by way of false accusations such as that of complicity in an affair of forgery.
Our comrades energetically reject this accusation which has been made up with the complicity of the Dutch, French and German police.
It will not be comrades Raptis (Pablo) and Santen who will be judged in this trial. As in trials held in France, against the Jeanson network and the different "networks" of help to the Algerian revolution, against the Algerian militants, it is criminal imperialism which will be judged. With it will be judged the irbitrary police methods, the secret police, the international police, who are instituting a regime of repression and provocations, to try and halt the internal and external disorderly retreat of the impe-
The Court, which will deliver this judgement, will not of course be that which is organised to defend the privileges of imperialism, but that of the colonial peoples, that of the peoples who have overthrown capitalism and built workers states: that of the European workers, and among them the Duich worker;, who knew during the difficult hours of Fascism how to rise against oppression and terror, for the defense of human dignity.
It is our profound confidence in these forces — which are those which are today advancing Humanity and will do so in the future - which gives to comrades Pablo and Santen and which gives to the Fourth International their confidence with the approach of the trial.
7
This trial, which will be held after seen years of heroic struggle by the Algerian people for their liberation, under the leadership of the FLN, and soon after the heroic Cuban people, organised in their militias, have inflicted a defeat on imperialism, is a part which the Fourth International takes in this vast struggle which is taking place in the world betweem a regime in collapse and the new society which is pushing its way forward. Our comrades will represent with dignity, the confidence and strength of the world revolution.
The Fourth International salutes Michel Raptis (Pablo) and Sal Santen as the the defenders of its revolutionary
They are going to this trial with the support of a powerful movement of solidarity which has shown itself throughout the world: in Latin America, in the United States, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, in Australasia. This vast international movement has made heard to the Dutch authorities, the protests and indignation of the revolutionary colonial movements, the socialist and workers movectuats, ho youth and students or nisation cohe inish against colonialism and take part in the revolutionary struggles of humanity.
This international protest against the arbitrary detention of comrades Raptis (Pablo) and Santen, this call for their immediate release, the Fourth International takes them up again as the trial approaches with all its strength. It launches a new appeal to all the workers' forces, to all the forces of the colonial revolution, to all the cialist and communist forces, to all the youth and intellectuals' organisation, so that they demand the acquittal and liberation of Pablo and Santen from the prisons of Dutch imperialism.
In front of this colonialists trial, the Fourth International reaffirms its unshakable will to continue and increase its struggle for the triumph of the colonial revolution, for the struggle for socialism in the world.
It reaffirms its determination to fight for an independent and socialist Algeria and greets, on this occasion, FLN, which leads the heroic struggle, heavy with the greatest sacrifices, of the valiant Algerian people. It has confidence in the militants of the FLN to Algerian revolution forward to the Algerian and Mahgreb Socialist Republic.
It reaffirms its complete solidarity with and total support for its leaders Michel Raptis (Pablo) and Sal Santen.
Long live the Algerian and Colonial Revolution!
Long live the world Socialist Revolution!
FROM THE FIRST DECLARATION OF COMRADE
PABLO DURING THE TRIAL
...I lived as a militant through the cataclysm of threat of war or of dictatorship are absent from the fascism in Germany and in Europe, through the thirties,
Second World War. I drew from all that the conclusion that a certain quantity of courage, of intelligence and critical spirit is necessary to every citizen so that liberty shall live, so that the horrors of war he avoided, so that society should not fall under the slavery of the bureaucratic privil-
Karen present world. It can be clearly seen from what is going on in France, in Africa (from Algeria to Angola to South Africa), in Latin America (from Cuba to Chile), or from the East-West relations, from Laos to Berlin.
I shall only say a few words on the Algerian drama, which is at the foundations of the affair you are judging, Mr. President, Messres Judges. I am wondering whether
8 Europe, well-established in their relative material comfort, are conscious of what is going, for already seven years in Algeria, and what is going on presently in Angola, or for instance of the drama of the Congolese children, dying in thousands of hunger. Are they conscious to what extent our civilization is still a superficial one, which one has only to scratch to see emerge an incredible potential of cruelty, violence and injustice towards our brothers, the coloured people cruelly oppressed and exploited?
Have people in Western Europe really realized the horrors of the colonial war in Algeria, the fact that there were seven years of massacre ind torture, about one million dead on the Algerian side, more than two million poor peasants chased away from their villages, displaced, regrouped in emergency camps, more than 250,000 Algerian refugees in Morocco and Tunisia, most of them being elderly men, women and above all children, war orphans, more than 30,000 Algerian nilitants in the prisons and concentration camps of France itself? And nevertheless, these figures are quoted in the official press of France, and in the innumerable literary documents and other documents which were issued on this colonial war, the most atrocious in our century.
Can one simply shut his eyes facts and lead each one "quietly" his own selfish little life without occupying himself with "the devil of polities"? I do not think so. I firmly believe that politics, that is to say i science of the knowledge, of the organisation, and of the ruling of society, must occupy a primordial place in the life of every free and critical man, in order to avoid disasters and to lead humanity as quickly as possible tooras the abolit comf oppressione b explotatone i-
Mr President, Messres Judges,
I have the honour of being for already 32 years, since the beginning of my life as a conscious man, a member of a historical movement created by L. Trotsky, at present known as the Fourth International. It is in the ranks of this movement that I have learnt the real meaning of
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the fight for Socialism and the socialist society of tomorrow. This meaning has been remporarily obscured by the features of bureaucratic degeneration and deformation, whie were forced upon the Workers' Power in the USS R and elsewhere during the time of Stalin, due to the backward character of Tsarist Russia, and the prolonged international isclation of the October Revolution.
But now we have entered, in an impetuous, irreversible manner into the era of the world expansion of the Socialist Revolution which will restore a victorious vigour to all fundamental ideas, in the field of economy, of democracy and socialist culture, elaborated in the face of storms and tempests over the decades, by L. Trotsky and the Fourth International.
And il is my profund conviction that the era of atomic energy, of sputniks, of the beginning of the conquest of the osmos, will prove to be on the social plane, as the beginning of a new civilization, the first deserving this name in the cruel, thousands of years long, story of Humanity, which it will recognise in the ideas and the programme of the Fourth International, its pioneers, lucid and conscious, the true vanguard of the socialist and communist international movement.
One more word, before ending. I do not as yet know what culpability and what sentence the Court will give to Sal Santen. I declare that I am ardently willing to share koth with him. I seize this opportunity, which after all is not so badly chosen, to pay homage to the hard, but so pure and courageous, life of Sal Santen, entirely dedicaded to the service of the humble.
I have finished, Mr President, Messres Judges. last words will be to pay homage to the Heroic Algerian Revolution which, thanks to the immense sacrifices of its fighters, is now anyway virtually victorious. I have the best hopes for the prompt, total and real independence of Algeria, whose magnificent struggle has during seven years served as an example for all oppressed people in Africa and everywhere and for whom, my organisation and myself have had the honour of making an effort and sacrifices which are after all a minimum compared with the effort and the sacrifices of her own sons..."
FROM THE LAST DECLARATION OF COMRADE PABLO DURING THE TRIAL
*...My activity in Denmark and in England was esentially political, for the Algerian revolution. There is in the files seized by i the police many letters and documents which show that the aim of my voyage to Denmark was to set under way Committees for Free Algeria and committees for the 30,000 Algerian prisoners in France, that I was there for meetings of students in which the representatives of the FL N came and spoke in Copenhagen, in Sweden, in Norway; that in England, with the collaboration of friends of the Labour Party: Mr John Baird, Mr Michael Foot, Mr Crossman, Miss Lee (the widow of the late Aneurin Bevan). With Mr Griffiths and others, we set under way committees for Free Algeria and we launched a journal, "Free Algeria", for which, as is known, I sent money from Germany.
"Naturally I have nothing against aiding the Algerians to procure arms for themselves. The Algerians were fighting alone, absolutely alone over many years, exterminated en masse by tens and hundreds of thousands by all the forces of a very powerful imperialism, with the aid of NATO to this imperialism, searching desperately for arms to defend themselves for survival, I consider it as an honour to have aided them, unfortunately very modestly.
"Mr Prosecutor, you wish to sentence me to suffer three years in prison as 1 have served already thirteen months, thirteen long months, under the regime for the common-law prisoners, in company daily with the commonlaw prisoners. I say, you condemned me to the regime for the common-law offences and to the regime of obligatory work, cumpolsory, which is the rule in Dutch prisons. I will say that anyway I protest and will continue to protest against this regime that is not even applied to
Oldrich in Germany. Certainly, I have no feeling of the powerful voice of active solidarity of men, not only
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL contempt for my common-law co-delainces, because it is by love of humanity and a great pity for the human condition which I consider to be above all the result of social conditions that I came to Socialism; and prison has done me much good, it has reenforced me in this love of humanity and this immense pity for the human condition, precisely by this daily contact with the weak and the vanquished of this society.
"But this does not prevent, Mr Prosecutor, prison being for me a double pain. I shall undergo it with suffering but with dignity. I would like only to say to you, Mr Prosecutor, that a long imprisonment in the present conditions in which it has to be accomplished today, is a torture with a thousand faces, a very grave pain: the degree of civilization in a society is measured by the way it treats the weak and the vanquished, the mentally-ill, the prisoners. I do not want to formulate here a special criticism of the regime and prisons of Holland or in the or the prison systems in no matter what country. B rofound conviction, reenforced still more by what i non
9 of Free Algeria on the march, hut of the whole of Africa, of Free Africa on the march. These men, I am sure, will not forget us, these men of Africa that Christian and civilized Europe has ferociously oppressed and exploited over centuries, selling by the million their sons as slaves, pillaging their natural riches and massacring even today the sons of Africa in atrocious colonial wars, such as the war in Algeria and the war which has broken out in Angola.
Mr Prosecutor, I shall permit myself to make a remark: Holland, the Dutch people have no interest in showing themselves in any way complaisant towards oppressive and repressive Imperialism concerning the men who have fought, however modestly it might be, for the liberation of Africa. Anyway, now, the trial is finished and the curtain falls on an episode after all infinite in relation to the great drama which is played out on the world arena: may our sentencing, our pain, serves as an example to the workers of Europe in order to activate still
22222
ten me o the gable alter, tomo pad.
An a corn es if Amenden workers of
-
The following cable was sent in the beginning of July by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone d
Beauvoir to the Court.
WE DECLARE OUR HIGH ESTEEM AND
PROFOUND SOLIDARITY FOR RAPTIS
AND SANTEN AND DEMAND STRONGLY
ACQUITTAL OF ACCUSED.
TESTIMONY OF COMRADE LIVIO MAITAN
I met Michel Raptis for the first time in Spring 1948 during the Second World Congress of the Fourth International. I have known Sal Santen since the same occasion.
I have had uninterrupted relations with them over thirteen years of common activity. I can testify that, during this period, I have not met chel Raptis.
I will not speak of their activity in general, but limit myself to their action in helping the colonial revolution, more especially to the struggle of the Algerian people. Why have they undertaken this action? Why have they engaged so courageously in this activity?
The answer is clear. Raptis and Santen and the organisation to which they belong, the Fourth International, believes that the fight of the co. lonial peoples for their emancipation is a fight of capital historical importance, which has already changed and which will go on changing still more, in the years lo come, the very face of the world in which we live. They believe that it is an elementary duty of all communist revolutionaries to aid this struggle by all the methods which are available at a given necessary moment. They think that it is not sufficient to proclaim in words the right of the colonial peoples to self-determination, but it is necessary to join in practice this combat at the side of those who fight for their independence, their liberty, their social emancipation, be they Algerians or South Africans, Cubans or Angolans.
It is necessary to recall that Raptis and Santen
10 and the organisation in the name of which they have acted, has not waited until the last hour, the period of certain victory, to range themselves by the side of the Algerians, of the FL N. They were engaged at the very beginning, at the time when the Algerian revolutionaries had no real allies, and when the traditional workers organisation, who take unto themselves socialism and even communism, openly played the game of French Imperialism, or looked on without taking a clear attitude.
It is possible that someone might contest the choice of methods adopted by Santen and Raptis, in their action for the Algerian revolution. Given the nature of my testimony on this matter I shall not place myself on the juridical terrain. I can assure the Court that I myself and all the political friends of Raptis and Santen, have full confidence in their line of defense. But it is ne. cessary to add that, in a struggle such as that which Santen and Raptis have undertaken, if one wishes to triumph. one cannot always remain in the framework of bourgeois legality. Those who think that the present social order must be replaced by a historically, superior social and pol. itical regime, cannot consider the existing laws as taboos.
Santen and Raptis are accused of having contributed to the making of false identity cards. It is not my task to establish if this corresponds or not to the truth. But how should one reproach the Algerians, persecuted by the "paras", menaced
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL by fearful tortures, by a veritable extermination, for utilising false papers to escape their executioners? How can we reproach the courageous men who have furnished them, in this domain also, with what they need?
Raptis and Santen have believed that the maximum aid must be given. They have done this. Their friends approve them. They are proud of
Mr. President, I must conclude my declaration. I have given this evidence, not in my personal name, but in the name of the Fourth International, the organisation to which Raptis and Santen belong. Our organisation entirely approves the activity of the comrades Santen and Raptis. It is possible that in their actions there were some things which might seem contrary to the law in the eyes of those whose task is to defend a political and social system which still is dominant in part of the world, in Western Europe. But the judgewhich counts for Raptis and Santen, for the Fourth International, is the judgement of the workers and peasants masses in all countries, the masses exploited by imperialism, and we are sure that their judgement of us will be entirely fav. ourable. I terminate by sending once more our fraternal solidarity to our comrades Raptis and Santen and by addressing our warmest greetings to the Algerian revolutionaries.
Long live the Algerian revolution!
Long live the Fourth International!