mobilizations in order to work out perspectives for a future European-wide united initiative. The solidarity movement will not demobilize! SWEDEN The Swedish Chile committees called for demonstrations throughout the country on September 11. A massive propaganda campaign with posters and leaflets was conducted in all the cities in which the committees have branches. Special efforts were made to reach important layers of workers, particularly those of the new harbor workers union. The demonstrations were successful. In Stockholm more than 5,000 people marched under the slogans "total support to the Chilean resistance, ""free all political prisoners, "and "boycott all copper trade with the junta. " The demonstrations in
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Umed, Malmo, and Göteborg attracted 400 persons, 1,000, and 800 respectively. The most important result of the work of the committees was the response from the Hamnarbetarförbundet. This is a union that was created when the bureaucrats of the Transport Union expelled many workers for refusing to organize larger, more bureaucratic branches. It now includes the majority of the harbor workers. These harbor workers have dec ded to refuse to unload all copper from Chile between September 11 and October 10. In response, the bureaucrats of the Transport Union decided on a token two-day boycott. The Chile committees have answered by calling on the Transport Union to extend their boycott to coincide with that of the Harbor Union. DENMARK The Chile solidarity movement in Denmark was split when the Communist party decided to leave the united committees and organize along a pacifist and reformist line endorsing the policy followed by the Allende government before the coup. There were thus two demonstrations in Copenhagen, one called by the Chile committees and one by the CP. Each mobilized about 2, -500 people. The slogans of the Chile committee demonstration were "support the struggle against the junta -- for socialism, " "free all the political prisoners, " and "boycott all trade with the junta. " The two demonstrations did have a common conclusion, however. The main speeches at the common rally were made by representatives of the Chilean SP and the MIR. Demonstrations also took place in many provincial towns, with 300 in Odense, 200 in Arhus, and 150 in Helsingør. The CP, which has significant influence among the transport and harbor workers, declined to use that influence to call for boycotts of Chilean trade, thus preventing the workers from taking the sorts of actions taken by their Swedish counterparts. SRI LANKA On the occasion of the September 11 international day of solidarity with Chile, the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU), the class-struggle union led by our comrades of the Revolutionary Marxist party, Sri Lanka section of the Fourth International, organized a one-hour strike and demonstration. The General Council of the CMU had voted unanimously to organize the strike and demonstration; it was prepared by a several-weekslong campaign (banners extended across the streets, leaflets, and so on). At 11:00 a.m. on September 1l the militants of the CMU stopped work and assembled in front of their factories. They then began to march. Contingents--some with several hundred workers--marched through many of the popular neighborhoods of Colombo. The slogans of the demonstrators demanded: -an end to the internal state of war against the people, -elimination of the military tribunals, -freedom for the political prisoners and the unions, -respect for democratic and trade-union rights. That evening, a meeting was held at which comrade Bala Tampoe, secretary general of the CMU, drew the lessons of the Chile coup. On the evening of September 12 a second meeting was held, sponsored by the CMU and a number of other trade-union organizations, among them the Ceylon Workers Congress and the Ceylon Democratic Congress, which are strong among the Tamil plantation workers. All the other unions, however, refused to participate in the September 11 strikes and demonstrations, for in Sri Lanka to mobilize workers actively against the Chilean junta has certain immediate implications. It involves making accusations against the so-called United Front government, whose hands have been Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040 - Bruxelles 32 stained with the blood of the Ceylonese rural proletariat and youth ever since April 1971 when it launched its repression against the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. It involves ştruggling for the release of thousands of revolutionaries who are still being held in prison, for the release of Rohan Wijeweera and the other JVP leaders now being tried, for the reestablishment of the right to strike, abolished by the state of emergency decreed three years ago. All this involves a mortal danger for the corrupt trade-union bureaucrats tied to the ruling coalition. But the mobilization organized by the CMU had a very profound impact on the workers. The ruling parties--Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka Freedom party, the Lanka Sama Samaja party, and the Communist party--were forced to react. Thus, at the last minute, the youth organizations of these three ruling parties organized a meeting for September 10, trying in this way to recover the initiative. The trade unions tied to the ruling coalition did the same thing, calling a meeting on September 13 at which N.M. Perera and Colvin R. Da Silva, ex-Trotskyists and now ministers in the repressive government, denounced "the atrocities committed against the Chilean workers. " The controlled press, the Ceylon Daily News in the lead, also shed crocodile tears. In its editorial of September 13 this newspaper declared its association with the international protest campaign on the grounds that "brutal suppression of democratic rights wherever it occurs is cause for moral concern(!) " If then revealed its real motives. The United Front government in Ceylon and the Unidad Popular government in Chile, the newspaper claimed, were "two elected governments whose common aspiration was io construct socialism on a democratic basis. " The Ceylon workers should therefore support their government firmly if they want to avoid suffering the fate of their Chilean brothers! In spite of these diversionary maneuvers by the government, the mobilizations organized by the CMU represent an important gain for the future in several respects: * For the first time in the history of the Ceylonese trade-union movement a strike was held with the objective of affirming international workers solidarity. * For the first time since April 1971 and the imposition of the state of emergency, a workers demonstration was held having a clear political and antigovernment character.
Chiledemonstration | Uppsala 14/9 Imprimerie spéciale de l'editeur