CHINESE FRAMED UP IN BRAZIL
im a lead editorial, the December 26-27 New York Herald Tribune [European edition] told its readers that while the "Chinese Communists may not have been very successful with their 'Great Leap Forward,'!" they "appear to have compensated for some of their domestic setbacks with great leaps abroad, Among these are listed gains in air ias and Cuba. Then we are given the following:
"The appearance of nine Chinese in a Brazilian court, which found them guilty of engaging in espionage, reveals an attempted jump
onto the South American continent and all the way down to Rio, Brazil not only won the distinction of imprisoning the first Red Chinese agents caught in the Western Hemisphere. It also served notice on other American republics how far afield the Chinese Communists already have gone, and what they do when they get there,"
The truth is that the nine Chinese were victims of one of the rawest frame-ups ever perpetrated in a capitalist court. It was so raw that the militarists sitting in judgment in the drumhead affair did not have the stomach to condemn the Chinese on the espionage charge. They condemned them instead on a charge of "subversion,"
The stench of the Rio de Janeiro trial is indicated in the | report sent by Irénée Guimaraes, special correspondent of the Paris daily Le Monde,.a. bourgeois newspaper like the New York Herald Tribune, but one with somewhat higher standards in reporting the news.
Guimaraes filled in the background for the trial that began December 21: "For foreign observers who have been following the first big political trial of the April ‘revolution! in the military court in Rio de Janeiro since last Monday, many things must now be clearer. For nine months the authorities of the new regime carefully prepared to extract maximum effects from this ‘good trial,! The business was in truth rather good -- nine Chinese 'tspies! and | nine Brazilian accomplices who had fallen into the Guanabara police net after the first days of April. Before the judges, an impressive amount of evidence: six big valises and twenty-three files of documents gathered by the security services of Governor Lacerda."
The prosecution talked for four hours before the judges -=- a magistrate, a colonel and three captains -- about a “vast guerrilla plan aimed at overthrowing the regime." When he finished, he demanded thirty-year sentences for "espionage" and "subversion,"
The first words of 71-year-old defense counsel Sobral Pinto, one of the most distinguished lawyers in Rio de Janeiro were:
"This trial is a farce. The farce is the worst I have seen in thirty-four years in the profession."
A devout Catholic, Pinto told the judges: "You are asked to be accomplices in an iniquity. Implicated in a movement of indiscipline that triumphed [the reference is to the coup d'état of last April 1], you are here as representatives of comrades in uniform, and you have been offered an opportunity to justify before the public the motives of your rebellion, If you recognize the innocence of the accused, who are in fact innocent, you condemn your chiefs, This trial is a monstrosity."
Sobral Pinto then went on to examine the main document presented by the prosecution as "evidence" of espionage. This was a
letter signed by an unknown person and mailed from Switzerland which the authorities claimed to have found April 3 hidden inside a flashlight, hidden in turn in the gove box of an automobile belonging to one of. the defendants, a Chinese journalist. The letter was written in Chinese, but the names of a number of leftist figures in Brazilian politics were included in roman letters, It was because their names appeared in this letter that these Brazilians were accused of "eomplicity" in committing "espionage,"
The defense attorney listed a series of errors in translating the document, in the dates, and in the names. All these pointed to | the conclusion that the document had been deliberately forged by the police of the state of Guanabara with. the aid of the Chiness’ nationalist embassy in Rio de Janeiro.
The proofs adduced by the defense of a. crude forgery were so overwhelming that the judges refused to admit the letter and threw out the charge of espionage. In accordance with this decision, they unanimously acquitted six of the Brazilians named in the indictment.
As for the “evidence” on which the charge of "subversion" was based, this did not stand up much better.
The voluminous files introduced by the prosecution consisted of lists of addresses of members of the Communist party, messages‘ from the former President Janio Quadros dating from 1961 and bearing on projects for establishing commercial relations with the People's ‘Republic of China. "Dozens of pages of certain files were composed solely of business cards, all with the same name, each pasted on a single sheet." ae
As for the valises, they contained books: on Marxism, Chinese” magazines and works on the agrarian reform in China. Not a document contained anything indicating either espionage or subversion,
[The Hsinhua News Agency reported that another bit of: "inerim- — inating evidence" placed before the court by the prosecution was a "hypodermic syringe," evidently intended for carrying out poisoning operations. This deadly weapon, however, finally turned out to be nothing | but. a. ballpoint pent}
The. embarrassed judges nevertheless decided to sacrifice the: nine Chinese commercial representatives and journalists and three Brazilians. They gave the victims ten-year sentences: for “injuring the security of the state."
Guimaraes reported that in "oertain circles it is said that the federal government will soon exchange the nine defendants for Catholic priests Jailed in China, ne
os The: defense attorney, however, is preparing to appeal, the case, "I want to save these innocent men," he said. :
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. LEFT SocTALioT PARTY