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From Over 30 Countries
IEC
Delegates Convene Successful Founding Conference
"Scorning death
and soaring up like an eagle, over the dictatorship's hungry hyenas,
Dr Guzmán gave us an historic message, full of conviction and optimism,
defiant in the face of his enemies, calling us to strengthen our
forces to confront difficulties, carry out the tasks, among them
to celebrate this year the one hundredth anniversary of the birth
of Mao Tsetung, and finally to win victory."
- Speaker from
the Movimiento Popular Perú at the IEC Founding Conference
Upon the capture of Chairman Gonzalo of the Communist Party of Peru
(PCP) on September 12th, 1992, the U.S. imperialists and their puppet
Fujimori arrogantly announced that this was a decisive blow against
the People's War. They boasted that they had "beheaded" the People's
War, and that it would surely sink to defeat.
Yet only a few days later they saw a harbinger of things to come
as they tried to humiliate Comrade Gonzalo before the world's press,
and he defiantly turned the tables on them, issuing a courageous
defence of his revolutionary principles.
Today, the Peruvian regime is isolated and battered as never before.
The People's War continues to advance in wave upon wave. And millions
of people around the world have rallied to the defence of Chairman
Gonzalo, the party name of Dr Abimael Guzmán.
This worldwide campaign was initiated by the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement. A major component of the struggle has been the coordination
by the International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Dr
Abimael Guzmán (IEC). Le Monde, the French daily, reported in an
article on December 8th, 1992 that the top Peruvian generals wanted
to execute Comrade Gonzalo by firing squad right after his sentencing,
but held off "for fear of international reaction". In uniting broad
masses around the world, first of all the workers and peasants of
dozens of countries, to defend the Maoist leader of the revolutionary
war led by the PCP, this campaign has not only succeeded in dealing
a sharp blow to the Fujimori regime's plans to kill Comrade Gonzalo,
it has also created fertile terrain for spreading the lessons of
the People's War itself, above all, the need to take up and spread
the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line.
Threat
to kill - not mere words
Despite broad opposition, the Fujimori dictatorship is persisting
in its threats against Chairman Gonzalo's life. From Comrade Gonzalo's
arrest up through December, Fujimori repeatedly declared that he
"preferred to see Guzmán executed". Since the death penalty was
forbidden by Peru's Constitution, Fujimori announced that he would
hold a referendum to bring it back and apply it retroactively against
Comrade Gonzalo.
These vicious threats gave rise to even broader opposition to the
regime, in Peru and internationally, and sharpened the internal
divisions within the Peruvian ruling classes. The regime, howling
and gnashing its teeth, temporarily retreated from this criminal
project, only to resurrect it several months later. As Carlos La
Torre, Chairman Gonzalo's father-in-law, stated at the IEC Founding
Conference, "This threat does not remain mere words. No! It has
been thought out and planned over a period of time, and follows
from the orders of Yankee imperialism and the ruling class in Peru
who know they are in danger of losing power in the face of the advance
of the Peruvian revolution that has developed over almost 13 years,
whose leader and teacher is Chairman Gonzalo."
Even while taking a step back, the regime lashed out again, this
time arresting Dr Crespo, Chairman Gonzalo's defence attorney, and
convicting him of "treason" simply on the grounds of his defence
of Chairman Gonzalo. In Peru, "treason" carries a mandatory life
sentence.
This was accompanied by new attacks on political prisoners more
broadly: they were cut off even from the International Red Cross;
they suffered severe malnutrition and disease, including tuberculosis;
and torture is widespread. These attacks, too, led to renewed outrage
internationally, and the IEC mobilized opposition to them and used
them to expose the regime and its treatment of Chairman Gonzalo
and to bring new forces into the campaign.
At this point, four months after Chairman Gonzalo's capture, he
had still not been seen by anyone but his enemies since his sentencing;
he was still being held in solitary confinement on the island of
San Lorenzo, in Lima's harbour. It was urgently necessary to raise
the level of the campaign, so that it could deal more united and
coordinated blows to the regime and force it to back off its treatment
of Chairman Gonzalo. There was a pressing need to bring together
the hundreds of activists from around the globe, to share the experience
of the campaign, debate the main political questions, unite on a
higher level, forge organizational structure and solidify the financial
support indispensable to the logistics of waging this worldwide
battle.
The
Founding Conference
The proposal for a conference struck a deep note of accord among
the activists. Yet the great diversity of the campaign, which was
a source of such strength, also posed seemingly insuperable obstacles
to holding a conference. Delegates would have to travel from all
over the globe, while lack of funds was already a severe problem;
translation difficulties were enormous; and, not least of all, the
work of the campaign could not be halted, including plans to send
another international delegation to press the IEC's demands against
the Fujimori regime.
So the IEC did what it had often done in similar circumstances:
it called for the necessary action, the founding conference, knowing
that the only way it could succeed would be if the revolutionaries
and activists worldwide deeply grasped its importance to the campaign
and made great sacrifices and efforts.
And this they did. In some of the poorest countries on earth, Nepal
and Bangladesh, activists collected the money required to send a
delegate, penny by penny; in the U.S., some potential delegates
to the conference, learning of the severe financial problems of
their comrades in Third World countries, gave up their own places
and air tickets so that the movements in these countries did not
go unrepresented. Borders were being broken down, as a real feeling
began to develop that the delegates from any one country represented
in some sense the will of the activists from around the world.
Yet some delegates never arrived: one in Turkey was halted at the
border, and another, Metin Çan, a young Kurdish human rights attorney,
was abducted and tortured by a Turkish death squad. His wife was
told that he would be released only if he renounced going to "Guzmán's
conference in Europe"; his body was found a few days later. Metin
Çan played a crucial role in carrying the campaign inside the Turkish
prisons and in bringing to the outside world news of the developing
movement among prisoners to support Comrade Gonzalo. This bloody
deed underscored the reactionaries' understanding that this struggle
to defend the revolutionary leader of the Peruvian people is profoundly
threatening to the world order.
Despite the obstacles, on February 27th, one thousand people gathered
in Duisburg's Effendi Hall, including hundreds of Turkish immigrants
in Germany, their German comrades, and many others from over 30
countries around the world: Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium,
Bolivia, Colombia, Denmark, England, France, Greece, Haiti, Iran,
Italy, Kurdistan, Luxemburg, Mexico, Martinique, Malaysia, Morocco,
Nepal, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Africa,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the U.S. and the former Yugoslavia.
The frenzy of the last minute preparations was equalled by the enthusiasm
of the participants. Over 20 translators worked into the night,
and the technical team making the artisanal headphone system developed
a sort of "call-and-response" - "What's the Time? 1509!" (Dr Guzman's
prisoner number) - to help them make it through their round-the-clock
efforts. The conference was translated into five languages simultaneously:
Spanish, English, Turkish, Farsi and German. Meanwhile, in the homes
of local Turkish workers, delegates from all different parts of
the world made their own efforts to talk to their hosts and other
delegates.
The make-up of the participants at the conference reflected that
the IEC is a broad united front. Revolutionary Marxist-Leninists-Maoists
played a crucial role in its success. As one revolutionary remarked,
"If the Maoists don't fight hard to defend one of their own leaders,
how can we expect the rest of the people to fight?" There were many
others too: lawyers from Germany and the United States, human rights
activists, revolutionary nationalists from a number of countries,
and many others. The great diversity of the participants assembling
for such an important cause was deeply moving. Mary Cox, an African-American
attorney from the U.S., stated about the conference: "I learned
more about the Shining Path [the media's name for the PCP - AWTW]
and that women play a very important and dominant role in their
success.... We must do all we can to keep the military out of Peru.
We do not have a right as slaves in America to play a part in stopping
a revolution carried out by peasants in Peru... The peasant struggle
in Peru is our struggle. Our struggle is their struggle."
Sharp controversy erupted at the conference. To a certain extent
some controversy was to be expected. The conference brought together
a range of different political forces with conflicting programmes
both for the campaign to defend Chairman Gonzalo and for the revolutionary
struggle more generally. But it was also to be expected that - as
indeed happened - such controversy could be dealt with on the basis
of grasping the importance of the campaign and thus putting conflicts
in a correct perspective.
The importance of the campaign was highlighted in the opening speech
by IEC Coordinator Massoud Rahimi, entitled "Why Dr Guzmán is the
most important political prisoner in the world today". Rahimi was
followed shortly thereafter by Carlos and Delia La Torre, the parents-in-law
of Comrade Gonzalo, who spoke of his importance to the people of
Peru and the world. A speaker from Movimiento Popular Perú (MPP)
upheld Chairman Gonzalo's leadership of the People's War, his Maoist
political line, and showed that the people of Peru would defend
his life and go on to victory. Other speeches prepared for the conference
included ones by Luis Arce Borja, editor-in-exile of El Diario other
members of the IEC Coordinating Committee, delegates from Bangladesh,
the U.S., and Turkey, as well as José María Sison (Founding Chairman
of the Communist Party of the Philippines), which recounted his
own experience of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Marcos
regime, a U.S. imperialist puppet regime.
Two empty chairs were placed on the stage, one in memory of Metin
Çan, the martyred Kurdish attorney, and the other in memory of Comrade
Sanmugathasan, Secretary General of the Ceylon Communist Party.
Comrade Sanmugathasan was a revolutionary Maoist leader who had
helped found RIM, and whose last public act was to help found the
IEC. The next day, Sunday, the Steering Committee (SC) assembled,
with representatives from two dozen countries. The basic orientation
of the IEC was affirmed by majority votes that elected the central
staff members in London to the Coordinating Committee, headed by
Massoud Rahimi. The SC also adopted a series of resolutions on the
main planks of the IEC campaign, denouncing the Fujimori regime,
calling for expansion of the IEC to Latin America, demanding "Yankee
Go Home!", and exposing Amnesty International for its objective
support of the Fujimori regime and pressing it to defend the rights
of Dr Abimael Guzmán according to its own stated principles.
The conference succeeded in consolidating the IEC and helping it
make a leap in its efforts to more effectively fight to defend the
life of Comrade Gonzalo. This was the fruit not only of the concrete
achievements of the conference, but it was also due to the great
exchange of experience and understanding that took place everywhere
around the conference, and which imbued the participants with a
real sense of internationalist camaraderie.
The
Fourth Delegation
A few weeks after the founding conference, just as the regime moved
Comrade Gonzalo to a new prison, specially constructed for him,
the 4th IEC Delegation arrived in Lima. This delegation, like the
others before it, was sharply attacked by the Lima press and government
officials. But even the attacks served mainly to spread the word
throughout Peru that there is a campaign with significant support
from many different countries to defend the life of Chairman Gonzalo.
This delegation was able to meet with people from Lima's shantytowns,
and was given a stirring welcome by them (see page 22). Besides
bringing pressure to bear on the Fujimori regime, these delegations
have continued to be a crucial means of building international solidarity
between the people of Peru and the rest of the world: Peruvians
who meet with the delegates risk being charged with "apology for
terrorism" if caught; yet time and again they have stepped forward
to make welcome the delegates from around the world and to exchange
news of the struggle.
Debate
within the IEC
In the course of the eight months during which the international
campaign has been waged to defend the life of Chairman Gonzalo,
a series of important political questions have been posed. Some
tendencies have arisen that would seek to "broaden" the campaign
by focusing on the political prisoners in Peru more generally instead
of on Chairman Gonzalo, or even on political prisoners around the
world. Another tendency which would also have the effect of dropping
the focus on Chairman Gonzalo and the immediate battle to defend
his life takes a different form: he can only be freed by the People's
War. This position would have the IEC make the defence of the People's
War the heart of its work and basis of its unity. Tendencies to
drop the focus on the struggle to defend Chairman Gonzalo ultimately
will serve neither the defence of his life, nor the People's War
and revolution in Peru or world-wide.
This is because, on an international level, the defence of Chairman
Gonzalo's life is today the central front in the fight to support
the People's War in Peru. Look at how the imperialists themselves
target him: they call him "the world's most dangerous man", "world
public enemy no. 1", etc. There is every indication that one or
more U.S. agencies are involved in hunting him down. The U.S. Senate
unanimously praised his capture, and Congressmen called for his
execution. Desperate to defeat the People's War, they complemented
their ongoing counter-revolutionary war with an unprecedented effort
to "behead the PCP", as they put it.
When faced with an attack like this, can the revolutionaries and
people fail to defend their leaders? Maoists are not anarchists
or common social democrats, they understand how precious a true
vanguard party is, and how precious the leadership of such a party
is. And who more so than Comrade Gonzalo, who led his party in preparing,
launching and sustaining the most successful revolutionary people's
war in the world today, and the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line to
lead it? Such leaders are not born, they are forged in the furnace
of decades of the revolutionary struggle worldwide and in their
own countries; thus they are the cherished fruit of the struggle
of millions. This is why the oppressed from truly every corner of
the globe, from Nepal's Himalayas to New York's ghettoes and barrios
have risen in his defence. And it is also why the imperialists and
reactionaries have concentrated their attack on him.
Thus, the defence of Chairman Gonzalo's life is the focus of this
campaign because he has come to represent the revolutionary hopes
and aspirations of millions in Peru, and world-wide, and, as such,
he has come to be the special target of the imperialists and reactionaries.
So long as his life remains in the hands of his enemies, then millions
will stand up to defend him. At the IEC Conference the question
of fighting for Chairman Gonzalo's liberation came up. His father-in-law,
Carlos La Torre, remarked that, ultimately, it is the advance of
the People's War that can free Chairman Gonzalo - but only if today
we are successful in defending his life!
The IEC has been able to forge a very broad unity with forces from
the middle classes because of, not despite, the focus on Chairman
Gonzalo. Many of these people understand more fully Chairman Gonzalo's
importance for the people in Peru and world-wide. Others recognize
that the imperialists are going after Chairman Gonzalo with exceptional
ferocity, and that they are trying to use his case to set new reactionary
precedents for the treatment of revolutionary leaders. In uniting
with the IEC, these people are trying to resist this reactionary
agenda. Many of these people say that, though they have disagreements
with the PCP's line, they recognize that Chairman Gonzalo is indeed
looked to as a leader by millions of workers and peasants in Peru,
and they cannot stand by while he is treated in such a way by a
reactionary like Fujimori.
This situation, where millions of people have come to the defence
of Comrade Gonzalo, while many do not yet understand or agree with
the need for Maoist revolution, creates excellent terrain not only
for actually winning victory in defending his life, but also for
the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist forces to play their independent role
in propagating the revolutionary line that Chairman Gonzalo embodies.
People can be led to see why it is that the reactionaries have singled
him out, how it is Chairman Gonzalo's Maoist line that has unleashed
the Peruvian people to rise up and that is the source of his courage
and steadfastness in the hands of the enemy. Already throughout
this campaign great numbers of people have been introduced for the
first time to the truth about the People's War in Peru and the campaign
has enabled many to advance politically as they come to understand
more deeply the politics of Chairman Gonzalo. Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
forces are key to winning victory in the campaign itself, for who
will fight harder to defend a revolutionary leader than those trained
deeply in revolutionary politics? Thus it can be seen that there
is a dialectical relationship between the broad-based platform of
the IEC and the independent role of the Maoist forces strengthening
the campaign and serving the overall revolutionary communist tasks.
The
Future of the Campaign
The process of development of the campaign has shown that, like
any real battle, it must be fought to win. During the first few
months of the campaign, when the IEC sent its first two delegations
to Lima to protest the Fujimori regime's vicious treatment of Chairman
Gonzalo, the regime, puffed up by his capture, behaved aggressively
and arrogantly, and Fujimori promised "quick victory" in the war
led by the PCP. But soon their tune changed. They were stung first
by Chairman Gonzalo himself, when he turned the tables on his captors
when presented to the press conference in a cage. Then the People's
War, far from collapsing, re-grouped and went on to wage powerful
blows against the enemy. This, once again, showed the quality of
Chairman Gonzalo's leadership, for he has trained his comrades well.
Underlying all this, as the speaker for the Movimiento Popular Perú
analysed at the IEC Conference, is that Peru is "in the deepest
crisis in all its history.... all the reactionary political parties,
including the revisionists, are in serious crisis, disorganized
and repudiated by the masses".
By the time of the 4th International IEC Delegation in April, the
Fujimori regime, while still pressing ahead with vicious repression
of the PCP and its leaders, was visibly shaken. When they transferred
Comrade Gonzalo to his new prison at Callao naval base, this time
they had no illusions about presenting him to the press again! The
4th Delegation, instead of being arrested immediately as was the
2nd Delegation, was able to meet with prominent individuals in Lima.
Though hostile, as always, the Lima press felt it necessary to report,
for the first time, on the breadth of support internationally for
the IEC campaign, including the wide range of signatories to the
IEC Call.
Yet despite these important accomplishments of the campaign, there
is no reason to relax vigilance. Fujimori described the specially
constructed underground cell Comrade Gonzalo was moved to as his
"tomb", and government spokesmen and media blared the headlines,
"Never to be seen again!"
There is a necessity to fight through to win a major and immediate
change in the conditions of Comrade Gonzalo's imprisonment, so that
he is allowed access to a doctor, his attorneys from Peru and abroad,
reading materials, and correspondence, as well as that the safety
of his life is guaranteed. Underriding all this, however, is the
much-alive threat by his implacable enemies to eliminate him altogether.
The dictatorship has also renewed its rabid plans to bring back
the death penalty - in other words to kill captured political opponents
outright once it is put into effect. And one of the features of
this new "law" would be to hold leaders "responsible" (hostage)
for the actions of their followers, so that the regime could apply
it retroactively and go after Chairman Gonzalo and others.
Furthermore, the U.S. seems to be manoeuvering to place itself in
a better position politically to step up its actions against the
People's War. U.S. Senator Torricelli, who has been the U.S. Congressional
point-man on Peru, has recently made a big show of denouncing Central
American death squads - the implication being that the U.S. has
now cleaned up its image, so renewed intervention must, this time,
be "legitimate".
This highlights the importance of the unity achieved at the IEC
Conference, and of its plans to take the campaign, as it states,
"broader, deeper and fiercer". These tasks are interrelated. The
campaign should go even deeper among the oppressed masses and arouse
them in fierce struggles. It is vital to draw even wider ranks into
the campaign; prominent individuals from different countries around
the world continue to add their names to the IEC Call, and interest
has been expressed in the delegations to Lima by people whose participation
would put such a delegation on an even stronger footing to focus
international attention on the Fujimori regime's treatment of Chairman
Gonzalo and the other political prisoners.
While the foundation and heart of this campaign is the participation
and struggle of broad ranks of the revolutionary masses, the participation
of other progressive forces in the IEC campaign is crucial to developing
a battle that can deal the most powerful blows against the Fujimori
regime and its U.S. masters. Any attempt to divorce these two aspects
of the campaign, to try to pit the role of the revolutionary masses
against the activities of the representatives of other classes and
strata, does a great disservice to the campaign. Mao Tsetung pointed
out, "the united front policy is class policy"; the proletariat
cannot wage great battles nor can it make revolution without engaging
in a process of unity and struggle with different class forces.
This requires being clear on the nature of such forces, being firm
on strategy and flexible on tactics, relying on the basic masses
as the main force and aiming clearly at the main enemy.
It is ultimately not even possible to build the campaign more broadly
without also building it more fiercely and deeply, especially among
the basic masses. The support of the workers and peasants and revolutionary
intellectuals around the world has been the foundation of this campaign
right from the beginning.
A June headline and article in the clandestinely published pro-PCP
paper from Lima, El Diario, hailed the world proletariat's demand
to defend the life of Chairman Gonzalo and cited the arrival of
the 4th International Delegation which among other things helped
to spread the word about the international days of action on 14-15
May. These coordinated actions across the world once again voiced
a powerful internationalist outpouring and put the regime and its
patrons, the imperialist bourgeoisie, on alert from New York and
Mexico City to Lima and back through Europe and Asia (see page 25).
In part, the plans of the IEC, in close collaboration with progressive
Peruvian attorneys, include taking steps to bring the case of Chairman
Gonzalo into the international legal arena. The Fujimori regime's
treatment of Comrade Gonzalo, including his so-called trial, violates
important international legal conventions which Peru has signed,
yet the regime, with help from its U.S. imperialist backers, is
trying to reappear on the international scene with a cleaned-up
record on human rights. Such a legal proceeding would aim to shine
an international spotlight on the sharp contradiction between the
regime's claims and its actions in this world-renowned case through
the testimony of the people, including the political prisoners,
in Peru itself.
The success won so far in defending the life of Chairman Gonzalo
has strengthened the international revolutionary movement; yet Chairman
Gonzalo's precarious situation calls out for raising the struggle
to a new level. This will require the attention and efforts of the
revolutionaries and activists around the world, so that, even while
today Comrade Gonzalo is in the enemy's clutches, the life of this
precious comrade can be kept safe, so that one day soon he may step
out of Peru's dungeons to continue his role in the revolutionary
struggle in Peru and the international communist movement.
*The speeches
and resolutions can be obtained for $3 or 2Ł from the IEC: BCM IEC,
27 Old Gloucester St, WC1N 3XX London, UK.
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