6) No justice in Peru's courts
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7) Vieques protesters disrupt U.S. Navy exercises
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8) Amid coup rumors: Struggle sharpens in Venezuela
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9) Next stop: G-8 in Genoa
by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [WW] No justice in Peru's courts
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 5, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BERENSON CASE AND CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY:
NO JUSTICE IN PERU'S COURTS
By Andy McInerney
Anyone who had illusions that the fall of Peruvian dictator
Alberto Fujimori in November 2000 would usher in a new era
of democracy in Peru got a rude wake-up call on June 20.
Political prisoner Lori Berenson was handed a 20-year
sentence for "terrorism in respect to collaboration against
the state."
Berenson is a progressive U.S. activist and journalist. She
was arrested in 1995 with several Peruvians on charges of
being a "leader" of the Tupac Amaru Liberation Movement
(MRTA) and planning the bombing of Peru's Congress. She has
always denied the charges and maintained her innocence.
"I am innocent of the prosecutor's charges of being a member
and a collaborator with the MRTA," Berenson said in her
closing statement. "In fact, by definition one cannot be
both a member and a collaborator. I am neither and there is
no evidence to the contrary."
At the time of her arrest, dictator Alberto Fujimori and his
right-hand man, secret police boss Vladimiro Montesinos,
were prosecuting a bloody war against the MRTA and the
Communist Party of Peru. Both groups were conducting armed
insurgencies against the Peruvian state.
All pretense of democracy had been abandoned after the U.S.-
backed 1992 "self-coup," when Fujimori and the military
heads dissolved Congress and cut off all freedom of
association and press. Berenson was tried in the system of
so-called "faceless justice,"where judges were masked and
defense lawyers were not allowed to view evidence.
Of course, Berenson is just one of thousands of political
prisoners who languish in Peru's brutal prisons. Human
rights groups estimate that there are between 4,000 and
5,000 political prisoners, the vast majority accused of
belonging to or supporting the PCP or the MRTA.
Fujimori was swept from power in 2000 after a wave of mass
protests against his anti-democratic regime. In June, former
World Bank official and Wall Street darling Alejandro Toledo
took over the presidency.
Despite the new regime--whose "democratic" credentials are
touted by the likes of war criminal and former U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright--the political
prisoners are still in jail. Berenson was convicted again,
relying on the same flimsy evidence from informers bent on
personal gain as in her 1995 conviction.
The leaders of both the PCP and the MRTA have been held
incommunicado in isolated prisons for years. An April 2001
delegation of the International Emergency Committee to
Defend the Life of Dr. Abimael Guzman was denied the
opportunity to meet with the PCP leader.
MRTA leader Victor Polay is also being held in isolation.
Despite the brutal repression, Peru's political prisoners
have staged militant struggles against the ruling class. For
example, beginning on March 13, MRTA prisoners began a
weeklong occupation of the infamous Yanamayo prison,
demanding that it be closed and they be transferred.
Yanamayo was also the site of a February 2000 uprising led
by PCP prisoners demanding prisoner-of-war status and a
public appearance by Abimael Guzman, better known as
"Chairman Gonzalo."
DESPERATE SOCIAL CONDITIONS
Peru's ruling class and its U.S. masters may no longer feel
the need for Fujimori's iron handed tactics, preferring a
more "democratic" veneer for their exploitation. But despite
the change in regime, Peru's workers and peasants live in
desperate social conditions.
Half of Peru's 26 million people live in poverty. Full-time
employment is a luxury. Anti-Indigenous racism runs rampant
in the countryside.
On top of this unstable social situation, the International
Monetary Fund is demanding an economic policy of austerity
and privatizations. This neoliberal economic program has
already provoked strikes and protests.
New Peruvian President Toledo has the job of carrying out
this program on the backs of the Peruvian working class. The
Peruvian people never voted on the program, drawn up in New
York and Washington.
Such is capitalist democracy.
In fact, the only way for the Peruvian elite to implement
Wall Street's economic program and at the same time
guarantee their wealth and privileges is to rely on the
military and the DINCOTE secret police--minus Montesinos,
Peru's version of Heinrich Himmler.
Lori Berenson's family and supporters are appealing her
guilty verdict to the Inter-American Commission for Human
Rights. Some members of the U.S. Congress are calling on
Peruvian President Toledo to release Berenson.
Lori Berenson deserves to be released. She has stood
steadfastly on the side of Peru's poor and working people--
despite a massive demonization campaign against her. She
refused to denounce the MRTA--a move that the Peruvian
government clearly would have viewed favorably.
She deserves to be released along with the thousands of
Peruvian political prisoners who are in jail for their
struggle for revolutionary change in Peru, for a Peru of the
workers and oppressed.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
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From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: tiistai 3. hein�kuu 2001 10:28
Subject: [WW] Vieques protesters disrupt U.S. Navy exercises
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 5, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
A FITTING ANSWER TO BUSH:
VIEQUES PROTESTERS DISRUPT U.S. NAVY EXERCISES
By Berta Joubert-Ceci
In an ongoing battle of wills, the people of Puerto Rico
have once again confronted the U.S. Navy Goliath.
At the end of May the Navy announced that the aircraft
carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt would be conducting military
practices for 18 days in the firing and bombing range of
Vieques, Puerto Rico. Some 10,000 U.S. sailors from the 11
ships of this battle group were to participate, along with
the aircraft assigned to the carrier. They were planning to
drop from 250 to 300 bombs daily, from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m.
Their plans, however, were disrupted. Although the bombings
were scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. on June 18, it was not
until 2 p.m. that day that the first bomb fell on Vieques
soil. Not one bomb exploded the following day.
Activists had prepared in advance to make new rounds of
incursions into the restricted area. They were determined to
stop the practices by risking their lives as human shields.
Thirty activists, divided into four brigades, went in the
day before the scheduled military drills.
One of the brigades, with four women and two men from the
Workers' Socialist Movement (MST), took it on themselves to
walk all the way to the shooting targets located on the
easternmost tip of the island, miles away from the entrance
to the base. There they posted a placard on one of the
targets and another on an observation post, demanding an end
to the Navy occupation of Vieques.
The Navy, through spokeswoman Katherine Goode, admitted it
had to stop the exercises when the planes, approaching the
targets to drop their bombs, saw two of the activists. The
protesters had lighted flares to make their actions known.
After 14 hours of pursuit by the military, two of the MST
activists were arrested on June 20. The four women, however,
eluded capture and left the firing range on their own two
days later. They said the purpose of their action had been
to demonstrate that, in spite of the U.S. Navy's technology
and the massive military and Puerto Rican police
surveillance of the area, it was possible to stop the
bombings without everyone being arrested.
The Pentagon has greatly reinforced its surveillance. It is
employing more personnel equipped with the most
sophisticated instruments to try to prevent the entrance of
activists into the zone.
After President George W. Bush's June 16 decision to halt
the bombing in Vieques in the year 2003, the Navy thought
that people's outrage would ease and that, with a little
more vigilance, the military could conduct its practices
without too much of a problem. But it was wrong. Bush's
decision has helped to infuse more anger and determination
to get the hated Navy out immediately.
The police have been instructed to detain any person seen
attempting to do civil disobedience, throwing stones,
tearing the fence down, or even just covering their faces.
"Los encubiertos," the masked ones, are youths who dare to
break the fence dividing the base from the civilian area so
others can enter the restricted zone.
Two of those masked youths were arrested on June 25 with
Lolita Lebr�n. Lebr�n is a famous Nationalist who was
imprisoned in the U.S. for more than 20 years for an armed
attack on Congress in 1954 demanding independence for Puerto
Rico.
She was arrested by dozens of armed military police wearing
riot gear and carrying pepper gas and tear gas canisters,
but even while she was handcuffed they could not stop her
from shouting "Stop the bombing now" and "Long live peace
for Vieques" and singing the Puerto Rican revolutionary
anthem.
Those arrested have faced severe treatment by the federal
authorities--everything from disproportionately long
sentences to beatings and even strip searches.
A video about this treatment was shown during the Korea
Truth Commission tribunal on U.S. war crimes held in New
York on June 23. Ismael Guadalupe, head of the Committee for
the Rescue and Development of Vieques, whose son is in
prison for his anti-Navy activism, entered the video as
evidence of U.S. repression. The sequence showed protesters,
many of them young women, searched and handled roughly by
male military personnel.
The Vieques struggle has become immensely popular within the
entire Puerto Rican population, both on the island and in
the United States, and support for the struggle is being
voiced from all quarters.
U.S. Representative John Conyers has equated the repression
in P.R. now with what happened during the civil rights
movement in the U.S. And the Rev. Jesse Jackson of PUSH, who
has gone to Puerto Rico to join the protests, says, "The
system here is using high bails and long jail sentences to
discourage, but it will not stop the resistance." His wife,
Jacqueline Jackson, is still in solitary confinement in a
Puerto Rican federal jail for her incursion into the bombing
area.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
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From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: tiistai 3. hein�kuu 2001 10:28
Subject: [WW] Amid coup rumors: Struggle sharpens in Venezuela
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 5, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AMID COUP RUMORS: STRUGGLE SHARPENS IN VENEZUELA
By Andy McInerney
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised a "peaceful,
democratic revolution" to root out the South American
country's corrupt U.S.-backed political establishment. He
assumed the presidency with close to two-thirds the popular
vote in the 1998 presidential elections. His mandate was
reinforced when his coalition won 120 out of 128 seats for
the National Constituent Assembly in July 1999.
Nearly two years later, reactionary forces backed by the
U.S. government and opposed to the process that Chavez's
election has unleashed are gathering strength. At the same
time, Chavez has called for the creation of "Bolivarian
circles"--popular organizations to defend the revolution.
For the last year, there have been persistent rumors of
plots brewing in the Armed Forces to oust Chavez. At least
since January, a series of "dirty tricks" bearing all the
hallmarks of the CIA appear to be aimed at provoking
elements within the Venezuelan Armed Forces to launch a
coup.
The Jan. 20 edition of the business-oriented magazine The
Economist ran a small item called "Twist in the knickers."
"Irritation was unconfined," it said, "when several
commanders in Venezuela's armed forces recently received
women's underwear through the post, along with pamphlets
insinuating that this was all they were fit to wear because
of their failure to overthrow the country's elected
president."
But Chavez's opponents don't confine themselves to
sophomoric and sexist pranks.
In a significant article in Venezuela's Revista Koeyu
Latinoamericano, journalist Dr. Heinz Dietrich Steffan
describes the growing coup winds in the country. He reports
that one attempt was already made as Chavez returned from a
21-day tour of Asia on June 3.
"Three security cordons, cutting the lights and
communication, and the deployment of special response units
frustrated the plans of the plotters," he wrote. "But the
conspiracy remains latent, and the date foreseen by the coup
leaders for a new attempt runs from June 20 to July 5."
Steffan bases his article on "multiple interviews with
civilian, political and military sectors in the country."
The anti-Chavez coalition, he writes, includes the remnants
of the traditional big-business parties in Venezuela and
receives support from counter-revolutionary Cubans based in
Miami. One visible actor in the anti-Chavez mobilizations is
Hernan Ricardo, a Venezuelan jailed with Cuban terrorist
Orlando Bosch in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian
airliner that killed all 73 people aboard.
Steffan notes the "recycling" by the Bush administration of
some of the most notorious figures of the Reagan-Bush
administrations. Otto Reich, Bush's nominee to the post of
Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, was
the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela until 1989.
The article identifies two interrelated tendencies within
the anti-Chavez forces. One prefers the slow strangulation
of the Venezuelan economy, hoping to diminish Chavez's
popularity and avoid creating a martyr. Another is aiming at
a more immediate attempt on the president.
Four factors underlie the growing audacity of the anti-
Chavez forces, Steffan writes: the lack of determined
response by the forces supporting Chavez; the regroupment of
the old Democratic Action (AD) and Social Christian (COPEI)
party structures after their 1998 defeat; the growing
animosity of the U.S. government; and the defection of some
layers of Chavez's original Popular Pole coalition, in
particular some elements of the Movement to Socialism (MAS)
party.
"A military disturbance, whether or not it fails on the
battlefield, will always be to the political advantage of
the destabilizers," Steffan writes.
"Of course, the date and the plans of the conspiracy--like
all of life--may change. One call from Washington,
government preparations or logistical problems, among other
factors, could modify the plans. Nevertheless, the threat of
a coup is a real threat for the whole region."
(Steffan's complete article, in Spanish, is reproduced at
http://www.eurosur. org/ ebelion/sociales/
venezuela240601.htm).
Politically, right-wing sectors are trying to mobilize the
petty bourgeois layers against the "Cubanization" of
Venezuela, organizing rallies in front of the Cuban Embassy
in Caracas. The official trade union leadership, with deep
historical ties to the AD party, has allied itself with this
right-wing mobilization.
What is Washington saying? The U.S. State Department's Peter
Romero said on June 5: "[Chavez] has the right to travel
where he wants and to say what he wants, but what he says
will have consequences in terms of U.S. perception."
THE CHAVEZ 'THREAT'
Why is the U.S. government aiming at destabilizing--and
possibly overturning--the Chavez government?
To date, the Chavez "peaceful revolution" has not
transcended the bounds of bourgeois democracy. The old,
corrupt ruling parties have been cleaned out of government--
but they remain free to organize. Slavish, pro-U.S. history
is being erased from school textbooks and curriculum--but
the official Catholic Church is allowed to operate its own
religious schools and to campaign against Chavez. The armed
forces have been deployed on public works projects.
In particular, the Chavez movement has not yet touched
private property. The rich still own the main newspapers and
media. U.S. investment is respected--and in fact courted.
But in the sphere of foreign policy, Chavez has crossed a
line. He has time and again defied the U.S.--a mortal sin
for a leader of a country in the U.S. "sphere of influence."
He has refused to allow his territory to be used as part of
the "Plan Colombia" war against the Colombian insurgencies.
He traveled to Iraq in defiance of the U.S.-orchestrated
blockade. He has helped to revitalize OPEC, refusing to
yield to U.S. demands to increase oil output and lower the
price U.S. oil companies pay.
Before Chavez assumed the presidency in 1999, Venezuela was
the biggest oil exporter to the United States--ahead of all
the Middle East oil powers. After one year, it had dropped
to the fourth biggest.
What the U.S. government fears most is that the process
unleashed by Chavez's election will transcend the bounds of
political reforms, and will pass over to a genuine socialist
revolution. The Venezuelan masses, 80 percent living in
poverty amid a sea of oil wealth, have concrete expectations
that their social demands will be addressed.
THE 'BOLIVARIAN CIRCLES'
The April 16 New York Times reported that Chavez has talked
of forming a "people's militia" of a million strong. The
Venezuelan president made this more concrete in mid-June.
On the second anniversary of the elections for the National
Assembly, Chavez told assembly members that he would again
launch a "Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement" (MBR). That was
the name of the movement of mid-level officers he led that
staged a popular uprising against the Venezuelan government
in 1992.
Key to the new MBR would be the formation of "Bolivarian
circles": popular neighborhood-based organizations to defend
the revolution. They are named for Simon Bolivar, the 19th
Century Latin American who led the independence wars against
Spain and advocated a united Latin American nation.
MBR leader Guillermo Garcia Ponce described the circles in
the June 4 edition of the Caracas-based El Universal: "The
Bolivarian circles are the organized people in the
neighborhoods, townships, projects, every place in
Venezuela, in order to strengthen the revolutionary process,
to bring the people into the activity of the government, to
make participatory democracy effective, to carry out the
Constitution and to defend it.
"We have now finished with the electoral aims and the
creation of a new [political] institution. We have now
entered on a thrust toward the economy, toward social
solutions. For that the greatest unity of political force is
needed."
On June 9, President Chavez spoke before a plenary meeting
of over 1,000 delegates of the Communist Party of Venezuela,
wearing a hammer-and-sickle pin on his trademark red
beret. "In the revolutionary battle," he told them, "the
most important thing is revolutionary organization. It is
not the moment for grandeur, it is the moment for unity, for
the offensive.
"Let's smash the conspiracy and support the revolution--the
slogan is exceedingly clear. That's the order of the day."
The mark of a true revolutionary process is the dismantling
of the old state apparatus--especially the armed forces,
courts, and police--and the creation of a new one, one that
reflects the masses of working people and organizes them to
act in their own interests. That process was not carried
through in Salvador Allende's Chile of 1973--and a potential
revolution was drowned in blood by a U.S.-backed coup.
In the face of U.S.-backed efforts to destabilize the
incipient Venezuelan revolution, this is the most urgent
task. The anti-war and progressive movement in the United
States needs to be on the highest alert to defend the
Venezuelan people's right to build their own future.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
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From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: tiistai 3. hein�kuu 2001 10:29
Subject: [WW] Next stop: G-8 in Genoa
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 5, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
EUROPEAN SUMMER OF RESISTANCE ROLLS ON
NEXT STOP: G-8 IN GENOA
By Greg Butterfield
Just the threat of protests was enough to cancel a World
Bank conference on global poverty scheduled for June 24-25
in Barcelona, Spain. The World Bank moved its conference to
cyberspace, but the protest went ahead as scheduled.
Mass protests and street fighting had rattled European Union
leaders at their summit meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, 10
days earlier. Police had opened fire on anti-globalization
protesters with live ammunition, wounding three people--one
critically.
Nineteen-year-old Hannes Westberg, a member of the
Syndicalist Youth Movement in Sweden, had been shot in the
back. His liver, spleen and kidneys were damaged and he was
still on a respirator at the end of June, according to the
weekly Arbetaren.
In Barcelona, as many as 50,000 people-including labor
unionists, Basque and Catalan nationalists, immigrants,
communists and anarchists--held a militant but peaceful
march through the city, denouncing the World Bank for its
role in causing, not solving, world poverty.
But police attacked the marchers at the ending rally site.
Nineteen people were arrested and 32 injured in the police
riot.
Now both sides in the struggle against global imperialist
institutions are gearing up for a new showdown in Genoa,
Italy, during a meeting of the Group of 8 starting July 20.
The G-8 includes the seven most powerful imperialist
countries-the United States, Britain, France, Germany,
Japan, Canada and Italy-plus capitalist Russia.
EUROPE'S SUMMER OF RESISTANCE
Genoa is the next battleground in what Europe's anti-
capitalist protest movement calls the "Summer of
Resistance."
A major demand of the protesters is to cancel the foreign
debt of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the
Middle East.
These countries bear the brunt of the AIDS crisis, poverty
and "free market" restructuring imposed by the International
Monetary Fund, World Bank and other imperialist
institutions. In addition, debt service to Western and
Japanese banks saps most of their resources.
Italy's new right-wing government, headed by Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, and the big-business media in Europe and
the U.S. are mounting a scare campaign around the G-8
summit. They cite threats of "violent rioting," "terrorism"
and "assassination of world leaders" to justify a wide array
of repressive measures.
Berlusconi called the choice of Genoa to host the summit
"unfortunate." The city has long been a radical center-the
original Italian Socialist Party, forerunner to the
Communist Party, was founded there. Several labor struggles
are underway in the city, with unions planning to join in
the protests.
The scare campaign is not so much aimed at frightening
demonstrators away-Berlusconi has said he expects 100,000
protesters despite the new restrictions--but at justifying
to the public whatever violence the capitalist powers decide
to use.
200 BODY BAGS STOCKPILED
Here's a sample of what Italian authorities are planning, as
reported June 21 by the BBC:
Twenty thousand police, equipped with tear gas and water
cannons, will be mobilized. They will have 15 helicopters,
four planes, seven naval boats, rooftop snipers, hidden
cameras and satellite surveillance at their disposal.
A room at Genoa's hospital will be set aside as a temporary
mortuary. The government has ordered 200 body bags, despite
Berlusconi's promise that police won't use live ammunition.
A "ring of steel" will enclose the city. Railway stations,
the airport and highways leading into the city will be
closed during the summit. Streets around the summit site
will be blocked off by dozens of armored vehicles.
The Italian military will stage "practice war games" in and
around Genoa.
Italian authorities have claimed that forces loyal to
Islamic militant Osama bin Laden plan a bomb attack against
U.S. President George W. Bush, and that Chechen rebels are
plotting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Spanish government has gotten into the act, saying the
expected presence of Basque nationalists at the protests
endangers its delegates' lives.
Bush and French President Jacques Chirac will sleep aboard
aircraft carriers anchored offshore.
Large protests greeted Bush throughout his mid-June European
tour.
Some G-8 delegations are reportedly urging that the whole
conference be moved to a cruise ship.
As Berlusconi outlined his plan to "isolate" militants to
the Italian Parliament June 18, senators from the Communist
Refoundation Party held up placards against the G-8 in
protest. (BBC, June 19)
Those who EU officials call "anarchist ringleaders" are to
be detained at the borders under laws passed to control
"football hooligans."
The London Guardian of June 18 reports, "Tougher frontier
checks will almost certainly be imposed.... Interpol has
built up a file on the main players in battles with police,
from 1999's World Trade Organization summit in Seattle
onwards."
'CREATIVE RESISTANCE'
Throughout Italy and the rest of Europe, the anti-capitalist
movement is also getting ready.
Groups are holding workshops and training. In Rome, for
example, a gathering called Grado Zero 2001 is planned for
June 28-30. Grado Zero is to bring together different anti-
globalization groups to discuss and plan "creative tactics
against the G-8," including direct action and self defense,
alternative media and a political campaign against the new
legal restrictions.
Many groups are making plans to get to Genoa as early as
possible to circumvent the city's shutdown and to help
organize local support.
And through it all, in meetings, on Web sites and e-mail
discussion lists, the anti-capitalist youth movement and
others on the left are talking about how to take the
movement forward.
Revolutionaries and anti-globalization activists in the
United States will be watching and doing what they can to
support the G-8 protests. As the Summer of Resistance heats
up, the events in Genoa will set the tone for a new round of
struggle with the capitalist state here, as activists
prepare for the Washington, D.C., convergence against the
IMF and World Bank in late September and a mass protest
against the Bush program on Sept. 29.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
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