The United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938, condemned the Gaullist repression in a brief statement June 18. .
"On June 14, 1968," the statement said, "the French secret police raided the offices of the French section of the International, the offices of their publishing enterprise and the private homes of many militants. This followed by a day the official government dissolution of the PCI [Parti Communiste Internationaliste -- Internationalist Communist party - the French section of the Fourth International] and the JCR [Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire -- Revolutionary Communist Youth. J
"Many comrades were arrested and
Demonstrations at French consulates and information centers were held all across the United States and Canada June 22 in solidarity with the banned left-wing student organizations in France. Reports are still incomplete as we go to press, but demonstrations of as many as several hundred were held in Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle, Ios Angeles, Detroit, and Atlanta.
In Canada there were demonstrations in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Vancouver. Most of the protests were widely reported in local newspapers, and over radio and television. In many cities in both countries this was the first mention given in the mass media to the banning of the revolutionary organizations in France.
At most of the demonstrations petitions were circulated demanding, "(1) The immediate lifting of the ban on all the proscribed political organizations; (2) the immediate release of all political prisoners; (3) the reaffirmation by the French government of the right of free access for all foreign journalists in order that the rest of the world may know the truti about France; and (4) an immediate end to the brutal repression of demonstrations and other attacks on the civil liberties of the French people."
The broad sponsorship and participation in these actions included sections of the black movement, antiwar organizations, and the North American left.
In Philadelphia the sponsors included representatives of the Students
DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST GAULLIST CRACKDOWN HELD THROUGHOUI U.S. AND CANADA DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST GAULLIST CRACKDOWN HELD THROUGHOUI U.S. AND CANADA
held for questioning and their personal papers seized. Most of then have since been released. However, Pierre Frank is still being held."
The statement called for the organization of protests and solidarity actions. It also asked that material aid for the victims of French repression be sent in care of the Belgian Union de la Gauche Socialiste (UGS) at the following address: CCP 9679.36 UGS, Brussels, Belgium. The latter organization has made a public appeal for aid to the JCR through the columns of its organ La Gauche.
The United Secretariat statement declared, "We appreciate this fraternal solidarity that they have extended and call upon all our friends to send their help through this means."
W. E.B. DuBois Clubs jeterans for Peace in
Vietnam, Women Strike for Peace, University of Pennsylvania Society of African and Afro-American Students, American Friends Service Committee, Young Socialist Alliance, and Socialist Workers party.
In Montreal the leaders of the Quebec New Democratic party -- Canada's labor party -- and of the Quebec tradeunion movement signed a petition in defense of the victimized organizations.
In other cities in the U.s. a wide variety of organizations sponsored the demonstrations. The Arab Student Association, Black Conscience magazine, Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and Inner City Voice, a black newspaper, sponsored the action in Detroit. The demonstration in Atlanta, Georgia, was sponsored by members of Atlantans for Peace, the Southern Student Organizing Committee, the National Student Associathe Young Socialist Alliance.
tion, and The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Cal State Black Student Union, and other organizations joined in the call for the demonstration in los Angeles.
In San Francisco June 18 more than sixty young people marched into the heart of the financial district to hold a spirited demonstration and street rally in front of the offices of the French commercial counselor. Called by the Young Socialist Alliance, the action took place at noon, when the sidewalks are crowded with office workers out for lunch. Further solidarity actions are scheduled.
"SCREAMS LIKE NOTHING I HAVE EVER HEARD..."
The following eyewitness accounts of the sadistic treatment of Paris students by the CRS (paramilitary security police) appeared in the June 17 West German weekly Der Spiegel.]
Statement of a 28-Year-Old Woman
Along with about ten other people on the night of May 24-25 at about 1:30 in the morning I ran into the entrance of No. 27 Boulevard Saint-Michel. Suddenly about ten CRS cops with screams like nothing I have ever heard and armed with rubber truncheons and shields stormed into the entranceway. We ran up the stairs and knocked on all the doors, but to no avail. Finally, a young man kicked open a door to get his pregnant wife into a safe place. I rushed in after him.
The apartment was unoccupied and there was no furniture we could hide behind. The young couple fled into the bathroom. But shortly afterwards the CRS broke down the door and attacked the couple. I had hidden in another room which by some miracle they did not come into. I heard how the woman screamed, "I'm pregnant." But she was beaten anyway. "Jou slut, you'll soon find out how pregnant you are." They left the almost unconscious pregnant women lying in the doorway.
Statement of a Medical Student
When we got out of the van, a double row of police received us, making us run a gauntlet of rubber truncheons.
Among us were high-school boys and girls who were all around seventeen years old. Although the girls were in tears and completely hysterical, they were mistreated in the most infamous way and beaten again and again. I got a blow in the testicles. Another man got three furious blows in the same place. Because of his pain, he could not answer the increasingly maddened cops.
A significant step forward in the course of the de-Stalinization in Czechoslovakia has carried the Czech liberalization beyond any previous such experience. The West German weekly Der Spiegel of June 23 reported: "Literarni Listy [the liberal Czech literary weeklyJ... (which nas a circulation of 300,000) even in-
The girls, who were all very young, were beaten on their sexual organs. The foulest insults were heaped on them. They were threatened with rape. Then we were stuffed in a cell and had to stand tightly crowded together. The air was stifling. There was only one tiny opening..Sweat saturated the air, running down the walls. The stench was unbearable. The toilets were stopped up.
Outside we heard someone say:
"Wouldn't it be fun to toss a few teargas grenades in there." And: "We should pour gasoline over them and burn them all."
Statement of a Volunteer Nurse
Arrested in an Ambulance
Beaujon was a kind of concentration camp. As we got out of the police van, blows rained on us. After being driven through a gauntlet of CRS cops, I came into a barbed-wire enclosure. From time to time, the CRS vans brought in men and women who had been beaten or were suffering from tear-gas poisoning. Some of them had serious head wounds and broken arms. Chinese, Vietnamese, and Negroes were given especially brutal treatment.
One by one we were taken into different enclosures. A CRS cop yelled at me: "Come here, Goldilocks, and I'll give Jou a shearing." A CRS sergeant intervened. But I saw that a young girl in front of me had her hair forcibly shaved off.
I was locked in a cell...Ihrough the bars I could see out into the court. A half-naked Joung man went by, his legs lacerated by club blows. He was bleeding and constantly had to urinate. From a young woman who was with him I learned that the CRS had beaten him unconscious and then spread him out and beaten his genitals until the skin hung in tatters.
Young girls were brought in. Among them was a sixteen-year-old girl who had been arrested by the CRS on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. They had dragged her into a police van where four cops gang-raped her.
cluded a picture of a Communist whose name to this day must be pronounced with horror in the Soviet Union: Stalin's enemy, Trotsky, With this portrait, the
CZECHOSLOVAK MAGAZINE PUBLISHES WORK BY DEUTSCHER, UNDER TROTSKY'S PICTURE CZECHOSLOVAK MAGAZINE PUBLISHES WORK BY DEUTSCHER, UNDER TROTSKY'S PICTURE
Isaac Deutscher's book, The Unfinished ian revolution for the Soviet Union."
JOSEPH HANSEN
JUNE 16 -- Yesterday I received a carbon copy of a letter from the Ministre de l'Intérieur, a member of de Gaulle's cabinet, to the Directeur de la surveillance du Ierritoire Director of National Securityl, ordering him to see to it that I was deported forthwith from France.
I was given the copy of the letter under somewhat unusual circumstances - in the headquarters of the french government's secret political police -- after having been held in custody for some twenty-seven hours, out of which I was grilled for about twelve hours.
The reason given for deporting me was that my "presence" on French territory was of süch "nature" as to be inimical to the public order. Ihe grounds for coming to this conclusion were not stated in the Minister's letter.
However, the main pieces of evi-
A 27-HOUR INTRODUCTION TO THE FRENCH POLITICAL POLICE
By Joseph Hansen dence considered by the police, as I can ›ear witness, were the two issues oi the American socialist weekly The Militant which the police found in my briefcase. One of these issues carried an announcement on the front page reporting that a group of Militant correspondents had gone to France to cover the revolutionary events there. The other issue carried an article I had written under a Paris dateline.
I was honored by having as my chief inquisitor a Commissaire de la Police, working directly under the Minister himself. Should the Commissaire ever wish to have a testimonial from me, I can state that he measured up to the highest standards of his profession.
pointed to the maz-
For instance, he pointed to the announcement on the front page of The Militant as overwhelming proof that I was the "organizer" of a group sent into France from the USA for subversive purposes. When on the word "organizations, put his finger L asked nim to show me, ne in the sentence itemizing some of the things we intended to report on. The translating department of de Gaulle's political police
"organisateur"
evidently read this word as
[organizer], and put it, conveniently, in the plural, thus the singular instead of correcting what was obviously a typographical error in the original.
keen-witted Arsène Lu-
Again, this pin nailed me with a letter from my wife, Reba. In the first paragraph, she tola me the heavy work in getting out "the about issue" (a 32-page issue of Intercontinental Press dealing almost wholly with the
French events). This proved, since it was discussing "issues," that the letter was completely political. Now what about the rest?
The author of the missive, the mysbegonias terious Reba, mentioned that the vere doing well and that, oi all things. the cyclamen was putting out another bud despite the heat. This, said Monsieur Iupin, could be nothing but a secret code.
It was not the thing to do in this
"There are some peopl 01 all countries this should be understood in France."
The translator, at this point a woman, intervened to assure the Commisthat the letter really was from my saire wife and it was quite understandable why she would like to grow flowers. The Commissaire came back rather hotly. "I'm asking the questions here, not you. Let