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~ Internationalist
of the Fourth International
-July 25, 1963
WORLD-WIDE CAMPAIGN TO FREE HUGO BLANCO
New York
__.. & demonstration has been called in, New York City for July 27 to demand the release of the Peruvian peasant leader Hugo Blanco, who organized and led peasant unions in south Peru in the struggle for land reform, Blanco was arrested May 30 and is being held incommunicado, although he is said to .. be ‘411, reports the American Trotskyist weekly newspaper . The Militant in'its July 22 issue, ‘
The journal says: "The demonstration will be held before the Peruvian Consulate at 10 Rockefeller Plaza. . . The action, called by the Young Socialist Alliance, is being supported by the Movimiento Fro-Independencia, the Puerto Rican inéependence movement. Demonstrators will also demand Blanco be transferred to a oe and be allowed to see family, friends and cefense gounsel,
++ + Ottawa, Canada
A picket line protesting the arrest and imprisonment of Hugo Blanco, the age leader of Peru, appeared before the Peruvien Embassy Ottawa on June 27. Many passersby on the main traffic’ artery in the fashionable district where the embassy is located stopped to read their signs demanding the immediate release of Blanco, protesting that he was guilty of no crime but of liberating the peas-nts from servitude and exploitation. $
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When embassy officieals’yere approached with a letter for the ambassador, they. said he was not in, But as the picket continued and a-policeman appeared threatening arrest on the charge of vagrency and demanding everyone's address, the onbassader, sppogncs to protest against the picket. Shortly eed tae first’ secretary appeared to take movie pictures of e action, . ?
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Vernel Olson, national chairman of the Fair Flay for Cuba Committee, in an open letter to the Ambassador of Perw ridiculed the charge of murder that has been laid against Blanco. Hequoted an interview carried by a Lima paper last fall in which Blanco is quoted as saying: "We want to kill the system of big estates, we don't want to kill landlords. We don't feed on the blood but on the products of the soil." Olson stated that Blanco, "leading peasants in the destruction of tho medieval land system," covld only be considcred_a criminal by “the landlords of Southern Peru," and demanded his unconditional release, Ross Dowson, national secretary of the League for Socialist Action, also sent a formal protest to the Poruvian Embassy in the namo of the League.
tet Tokyo.
- Protest moctings have been organized in different cities of Japan to demand the unconditional release of the Foruvien peasant leader Hugo Blanco, who has been imprisoned by the . reactionary government of Peru. .
A meeting of students' organizations in the Kinki district known as "Left," with branches in Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, decided to send a@ memorandum to the Peruvian Embassy in Tokyo protesting against the continued detention of Blanco, The supporters of "Left" in-Kyoto held a public meeting recently at which a demand was made for the immediate release of Blanco.
A committee with prominent political workers, trade~union and student leaders is being set up to campaign for the release of Hugo Blanco. Prominent among the sponsors of the committee are Shiro Oya, a Marxist student leader; Setsurei Tsurushima, professor at the Kansai University; Eiichi Yamanish, Kohei Takahara, and Osamu Nomura, assistant professors at the [Kyoto ° University, os well as representatives of various trade unions,
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Ceylon
Members of Ceylon Parliament are sending a memorandum to the government of Peru ah pag Micha immediate release of the revolutionary peasent leader Hugo Blanco, according to a message received from Colombos .
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EERROR REGING CONTINUES IN SOUTH AFRICA .
According to The Times of London, Colonel van den Berch, the police chief of Douth Africa, has ennounced thet security police "have detained a dozen colovredés and Africans allered to belong to the Yu Chiu Chan Club, a subversive organization allegedly financed from China." A Reuter dispatch carried by fhe Times said that "the police considered the Yu Chiu Chan Club © be as dancerous as the banned African National Congress anc the Poqo terrorist organization."
t is thus obvious that the racist rezime in Sovth Africa is taking advantage of every situation to round up all prorressive elements fighting for democratic rights under one pretext or another. Democratic and working-cless opinion throughout the world must protest against this