USA: Release Juan Farinas! Free Farinas, Political Prisoner!

[p062] RELEASE JUAN FARINAS JUAN FARINAS has been jailed. The decision of the New York District Court Judge to reject Farinas’ motion for modification of sentence and his return to a Federal prison is a vicious attack against workers’ rights and the revolutionary movement. Farinas, a member of the American Workers League (Trotskyist), who has been framed on charges of violating the Selective Service Act, is to continue serving his sentence of two years’ imprison- ment in a Federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. The motion for modification of sentence asked that Juan be allowed to go into the army, or to work for two years in a court-approved job. His ‘crime’ is that he dared to distribute anti-Vietnam war leaflets in an army induction centre. The rejection of this motion is fully in keeping with the policies of the Nixon administration. This is to stifle every expression of revolutionary socialist activity against the Vietnam war and the wage freeze, anti-union policies of the Republicans. Farinas gets two years for expressing his opinions on the war whilst the organizers and perpetrators of the My Lai and Kent State University massacres go scot-free. At the same time the entire Republican administra- tion reeks with the stink of corruption and scandal as the monopolists scramble to gouge the exchequer by buying off sections of the state apparatus. The court decision, far from deterring any further opposition to the war and the reactionary two-party system, will only stimulate the growing resistance— seen in the collapse of the Pay Board and the strike wave—to the Nixon regime and put an end to the Republican-Democrat political pendulum. Farinas’ courageous stand and his principled struggle can no more be smashed than Nixon’s stooges in Indo-China can halt or defeat the victorious National Liberation Front offensive. It is not Juan Farinas who is guilty, but the US capitalist class and its state machine, which is, trying to suppress, exploit and conquer the working class everywhere. The International Committee of the Fourth Inter- national adds its protest to the thousands of US trade unionists and students who have supported the cam- paign of Juan Farinas and fought this unprecedentedly vicious example of class justice. The IC urges European and British trade unionists to support this campaign and demand that Farinas be released immediately. Free Farinas: Political prisoner THE International Committee of the Fourth Interna- tional condemns the jailing of the Trotskyist militant Juan Farinas for his opposition to the war in Vietnam as an attack directed against the working class and the youth. This attack is part of the Nixon Administration's campaign to destroy democratic rights and crush the trade unions. Juan Farinas is jailed precisely at a time when the offensive of the N Vietnamese and the National Libera- tion Front brings US imperialism to the brink of defeat in SE Asia. This jailing indicates the fear of US capitalism for the power of the working class and is aimed at pre- venting the development of revolutionary leadership. The International Committee of the Fourth Interna- tional calls on the international working class to campaign for the immediate release of Juan Farinas. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p063] LIFT PRESS BAN The International Committee of the Fourth International demands immediate suspen- sion of the Bandaranaike government’s ban on ‘Kam- karu Puvath’, paper of the Revolutionary © Communist League (RCL), Ceylon section of the International Commit- tee. The banning of left-wing papers, the introduction of photo identity cards, continued censor- ship and imprisonment without trial of 14,000 rural youth fol- lowing the JVP uprising con- stitutes a monstrous violation of the Ceylonese people’s basic democratic rights. These actions, together with the brutal terror unleashed against the peasantry by the State’s repressive forces, in alliance with world imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracies of Peking and Moscow, mark the initial steps towards a one-party police dictatorship in Ceylon. By acquiescing to these measures the Stalinists and the renegade Trotskyists in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party-Lanka Sama Samaja Party. (SLFP- LSSP) coalition are opening the door to a colossal betrayal of the working class and the smash- ing of the trade unions by an even more reactionary regime than the present coaiition —in the not too distant future. Without the support of these reformist traitors, neither the bourgeois SLFP nor British imperialism can exploit the Ceylonese working class and peasantry. Neither the ultra-left adven- tures, like the uprising of the JVP, nor the fake trade-union leftism of the revisionist forces, led by. P. B. Tampoe of the LSSP (R), can defeat the coali- tion and restore working-class rights. The International Committee of the Fourth International calls on all dissident workers and youth in the left-wing coalition parties to support the campaign of the RCL for democratic rights and to demand of their leaders that they break from the the SLFP immediately. Release the political prisoners now! Lift the ban on left-wing papers!