REPORT REGIS DEBRAY BEING STARVED
Régis Debray, the French journalist seized by the Barrientos dictatorship in Bolivia, has finally been charged with something definite after being held incommunicado since April 20.
Colonel Robert Flores Becerra, who heads the permanent military tribunal in La Paz, ordered that Debray and Carl Andrew Roth, the English journalist arrested at the same time, be tried together with seven others on charges of being "authors, coauthors and accomplices" in crimes covered by twenty articles in the military code and five articles in the criminal code.
The specific charges were to be made public later. It was reported these would include "murder, incitation to subversion and violation of Bolivian sovereignty."
The names of the seven additional defendants were not reported in the press and nothing was said about Carlos Alberto Fructuoso, the Argentine journalist arrested with Debray and Roth, until May 27 when it was reported in the press that he had entered Bolivia under a false passport, that his real name was Carlos Alberto Bustos, and that he would be tried with the others.
The order to try Debray before a military tribunal was given May 22 but not announced until May 24 the day before the hearing on a writ of habeas corpus filed by Debray's attorney, Walter Flores Torrico.
Debray was not produced by the state at the hearing and the writ was denied.
Agence France-Press reported that it had learned in La Paz May 24 from "a good source" that Debray's condition is "alarming" and that he may be in danger of dying.
The same agency reported May 26 that it had learned from sources in touch with individuals who know Debray's guards that he is now in a pronounced state of weakness, alarmingly emaciated. "According to this source, the daily ration allowed those detained is one-half that of soldiers in the Bolivian army."
Meanwhile, an international campaign in behalf of Debray has been developing on a broad scale. Its biggest scope up to now has been in France where Debray is a well-known intellectual. Even de Gaulle felt compelled to intervene, although he did it in the form of a private letter to the Bolivian dictator Barrientos.
The slowness of the French Commu-
nist party in joining this campaign be-
came something of a national scandal.
Finally, forty days after Debray's ar-
rest, 1'Humanité, the organ of the French
Communist party, published an article on
the case by Jean Marcenac.
On May 30 some 2,000 persons, ac-
cording to Le Monde, turned out at a soli-
darity meeting in Paris. Daniel Mayer,
chairman of the League for the Rights of
Man presided. Speakers included Jean-Paul
Sartre and a long list of prominent fig-
ures of the French left.
In Canada a petition demanding the
release of Régis Debray is being circu-
lated and plans are in progress for a
public meeting in Toronto.
In the United States fourteen pro-
fessors at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Harvard University issued
an appeal May 12 declaring:
"The case of Régis Debray has been
singled out by Bolivian authorities be-
cause of his intellectual sympathies for
Castro. He is threatened with a death
sentence in his imminent judgment before
a court-martial, held within a remote
‘military zone.' Régis Debray, now 26, is
an alumnus of the prestigious Ecole Nor-
male Supérieure, and an ‘agrégé de philo-
sophie,' one of the most talented young
French intellectuals.
"He wrote a series of articles on
Cuba, and recently published a book,
Revolucion en la Revolucion?, Habana and
Paris 1967. Undoubtedly, Debray had sym-
pathies for castroism, but this does not
constitute prima facie evidence of his
leading a guerrilla band. Whatever the
facts may be, the Bolivian government has
not so far brought forth any evidence
establishing his activity in the guer-
rilla movement."
"We, the undersigned, join the
appeal made by leading moral, religious,
and intellectual French personalities, to
request the Bolivian government to make
public a full statement of the accusa-
tions, to grant the accused journalists
the right to counsel, the right to see
their respective ambassadors, a public
and fair trial by civil authorities and
the basic guarantees of due process as
required in the Articles 9, 10, 11 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
The initial signers of the decla-
ration include Latin-American specialists
Frank Bonilla, Albert O. Hirschman, Juan
Marichal, David H.P. Maybury-Lewis, Max
F. Millikan and A. Kimball Romney.