MEXICAN INTELLECTUALS APPEAL FOR SOLIDARITY WITH DEMETRIO VALLEJO
Mexico City
APRIL 7 -- The solidarity campaign in behalf of Demetrio Vallejo is beginning to have repercussions in Mexico.
Widespread sympathy is felt for the leader of the nation's railway workers, who has spent nine years behind bars because of his militant role in the 1959 railway strike and who has now gone ona hunger strike to dramatize his demand for "“confinamiento" -- the right to be restricted to a small area outside of prison. This is a right granted by law in Mexico after a prisoner has served a certain proportion of his sentence.
Vallejo applied for this right some time ago. As yet the authorities have not seen fit to reply.
Vallejo began his hunger strike on March 29. Within a few days a group of students at the National University of Mexico joined him in a solidarity hunger strike, maintaining a vigil in the gardens of the Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales.
It has now been announced that a collective hunger strike will be conduct-— ed by the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras and the Escuela de San Carlos.
Similar moves are reported to be under consideration among students at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional and the Normal de Maestros.
Student squads are also circulating throughout the city to spread the facts about Vallejo's hunger strike and ue solidarity campaign as widely as possible.
A significant development was the
decision of 197 Mexican intellectuals,
most of them professors at the National
University of Mexico, to publish a large
advertisement in the April 6 Excelsior,
a leading daily, appealing to the public
to rally behind Vallejo's demand. They
expressed their preoccupation over the
growing number of political prisoners in
Mexico, "many of whom are progressive per-
sons who have not committed any crime
whatsoever, being persecuted because of
their ideas, for participating in public
meetings which no law prohibits, or who
have been accused under suspicious circum-
stances of alleged crimes or of causing
damages that in reality injured no one."
From his prison, Demetrio Vallejo
said to the students:
"Thanks for the determination you
have shown in expressing solidarity with
my hunger strike. After nine years of
being imprisoned unjustly, arbitrarily
and unconstitutionally, I felt compelled
to make this supreme decision in order
to demand the legal right that has been
denied me, the last one remaining to po-
litical prisoners: confinamiento.
"To continue to hold me in prison
without any legal justification is a ju-
ridical crime. In one way or another, it
must be exposed as a historic lesson.
"I am satisfied because I consider
that my decision was a first skirmish in
the legal battle. And you young ones will
bring it to a conclusion in the future,
victoriously. With your revolutionary sup-
port and solidarity, we will also win the
first skirmish. My decision is irrevocable
because it is based on justice and law.
With warm greetings and good luck to
everyone."
WHEN I MET RUDI DUTSCHKE IN BERLIN
By Mary-Alice Waters
On the evening of April 11 the news was broadcast from Berlin that Rudi Dutschke, leader of the left wing of the German SDS [(Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund -- German Socialist Student Federation] had been shot and critically wounded.
According to the report., he was attacked by an as yet unidentified man in his mid-twenties who had been waiting for him outside the Berlin SDS headquarters. As Dutschke started home about 4:30 in the afternoon the assailant pulled him from his bicycle and fired three shots at him
as he lay on the ground.
Dutschke was taken to a hospital
where he underwent emergency surgery.
Three bullets were reported to have
struck him, one in the chest, another in
the face, and still another in the back
of the head, the bullet lodging in his
brain.
The gunman was apprehended after a
battle with the police in which he, too,
was critically injured. He was reported
to have said he had been "inspired" by
the assassination of Martin Luther King.
The description of the assassina-— tion attempt seemed all too vivid to me, as I had just recently visited the SDS headquarters in Berlin.
I met Rudi Dutschke last February 17, the weekend of the giant Vietnam conference and demonstration that brought together in Berlin 20,000 youth from all over Western Europe.
During the three days of activities, he was everywhere, chairing sessions of the conference, talking with foreign delegations, speaking on the platform, and leading the most politically advanced youth of Western Europe through the streets of Berlin to demonstrate their support for the Vietnamese revolution. But that was wholly in character for hin.
As the acknowledged leader of the left wing of the German SDS, as its chief spokesman and leading theorist, his presence, advice, and leadership have been constantly in demand, not only in West Berlin and other cities of West Germany but all over Europe.
RUDI DUTSCHKE [center, in plaid shirt], leader of the Sozgialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, at conference held as part
SDS is an organization of some two
to three thousand university students in
West Germany. Until 1959 it was the offi-
cial student organization of the SPD
(Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
-- Social Democratic party of Germany],
but as the SPD moved further and further
to the right it found the criticisms of
its youth organization too embarrassing.
SDS was financially cut off and an "incom-
patibility resolution" was formulated,
making membership in the SDS sufficient
reason for expulsion from the SPD. Most
of the youth, however, stayed with the
DS.
In a country where the Communist
party, the Fourth International, and all
other left-wing political parties are
banned, the German SDS has been a home
for radical youth of all political af-
finities; it has also played an important
political role in West Germany as a whole,
often being described as the "extraparlia-
mentary opposition."
Between 1959 and the mid-1960's the
SDS grew fairly steadily and engaged in
of February 17 weekend Vietnam antiwar
demonstration in Berlin involving 20,000
participants from all over Europe.