government would bow to the demand of the Swiss authorities, However, the case was. taken up by the Comité d'tAction Contre le Néo-Colonialisme et le Fascisme,. Socialist-minded workers brought. the matter up in their unions and a campaign got under way that included big rallies and demonstrations, [See World Outlook April 24, June. 5,] The radical press in other countries gave the case wide publicity, and in this way both domestic and international. pressure mounted against. the Belgian government. —
The decision to release Abarea and to grant him political asylum constitutes a big victory not only for the young militant anarchist but for the principle of democratic rights. It isa significant precedent for future cases like this one which may occur in Belgiun,
CALL FOR POPULAR MILITIA IN ALGERIA
On June 15, the last. combat - units. of the French Army sailed from Algiers, It was a historic date, marking the end of the imperialist conquest that began 154 years ago, but the French kept it as quiet as possible. They did not care to celebrate the defeat their mighty forces had suffered at the hands of an insurgent people.
The Algerians, on the other hand, did not attempt to convert the occasion into a day of special jubilation although they had won an additional triumph in seeing the 600,000 troops withdrawn a year ahead of the schedule provided in the accords signed at Evian in 1962, The Algerians still face immense tasks in repairing the destruction inflicted on their land in seven and a half years of one of the most bitter and bloody colonial wars in history. They face the even greater task of continuing down the road toward socialism in face of extraordinary obstacles.
While the French Army was assembling to go back home, counterrevolutionary forces inside Algeria were moving against the Ben Bella regime, In the Kabylie, scattered groups under the command of Ait Ahmed engaged in forays and ambushes, murdering local supporters of independent Algeria's government. In Algiers, a bomb, planted in the parcel department of the post office, killea a postal worker, gravely wounded several others and set the building on fire,
These. and similar acts, touched raw memories, Was. the Secret Army Organization Loas] again. at work?
The mood among the socialist vanguard in Algeria was expressed in an editorial in the June 13 Révolution Africaine entitled "The Guns of Wrath" [Les Fusils de la Coltre]. The subtitle reads, "Those who support the government want arms.
The editorial is as follows:
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After two years, the port of - Algiers has witnessed a repeti-= tion. of ‘the same methods: blind murders committed by the OAS followed by similar ones committed by the counterrevolution, ©
The OAS assassins retreated in face of a. people in arms. It will be the same with the counterrevolution. The reply of the people to collusion with enemies abroad will be quick and decisive,
Let the counterrevolution understand that compelled to deside between the revolution and the peaceful ways we would have liked to maintain, we are choosing armed revolution, if that is what must be done.
--The counterrevolution, in resorting to certain methods, seeks to shake the attachment of the masses to their regime, to their leadership, They seek also to shake the will of the revolutionary power to go forward,
As Révolution Africaine wrote last week: “the only effective way to. meet t these plots is to set up without delay a POPULAR MILITIA, as was advocated by the Congress. The arming of the people is one © of the main acts by which the revolutionary will of the leaders can be recognized, It is the only way that will make it possible: to galvanize the energy of. the people.”
Last week the arming of the people appeared .to us to be a preventive measure, Today the arming of the people is an urgent. countermove.
In face of the test affecting the people as a whole, the Central Committee of the FLN [Front de Libération Nationale] decided at its current session to proceed to democratize the party and to. purge the state apparatus.
To reinforce the capacity for revolutionary struggle, a .
party will be democratized through elections at all levels, after its revolutionary base is widened.
A permanent commission will go after those who participated in either a movement or a body of repression against the population, the militants or the djounouds [fighters during the war for liberation]: those who collaborated with the OAS, the information services or the psychologicdl services; those who participated in the May 13 events and the Committees of Public Health; those who either by writing or speaking propagandized for a French Algeria,
The purge of the state apparatus will be accelerated, This apparatus has picked up at times even gangrenous functionaries from
the colonial administration. By the nature of things it is open to elements who have been privileged by birth and wealth, It automatically engenders bureaucratism, careerism and the hatred of the masses if measures are not taken,
Within it the counterrevolution also finds its natural allies,
That is why the Central Committee has decided that from now on the approval of the party will be required for all nominations _ in the ministerial cabinets, all the key positions in the state, and all the upper magistrates. oo
The essential aim of these measures is to shape the state in accordance with the popular will and to make it represent exclusively the interests of the workers. _
In the confrontation ahead of us it is advisable to seok all the ways and all the means that will permit the. people to express themselves and to defend their interests,
To the purge and the formation of a popular- militia it is advisable to add their natural complement: POPULAR JUSTICE.
It is necessary to physically associate the workers with the trials of counterrevolutionaries, It is necessary to judge them outside the tribunal and its rituals which are incomprehensible to. the workers. It is necessary to give the floor directly to the vice tims and those who have been robbed, It is necessary to organize immediately a wide publicity campaign with regard to the struggle against the enemy, from arrests to the execution of the sentences pronounced by the popular tribunes,
The people constitute the final guarantee because ‘they are the sole beneficiaries of the revolution.
It is incumbent on the leadership of the party to guide it in accordance with the interests of the people and to give ‘the people their say and the means to act in all domains.
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