'Intervene in Prague trials' appeal by oppositionists, but Davis snubs Czechs

ANGELA DAVIS has ignored appeals to help the victims of the Stalinist purg she 'reportedly considers any East Euro Brezhnev (and presumably his aide, Dr When she was acquitted of frame-up murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges in people who struggled for me across the country and around the world are aware that it [the acquittal] is a symbol that we are going to free all political prisoners and the oppressed'.

When the current wave of trials began in Czechoslovakia last month, .. the 'Citizen's Freedom Movement', an underground opposition group, smuggled a letter out of the country asking for her aid. It asked Miss Davis to use her authority with the present rulers of Czechoslovakia to allow her to attend the trials.

It said: 'Your victory against a seemingly allSource of inspiration to chingle is SOUL CE It went on: 'Unlike you, the (Prague] defendants AROUND-THE-WORLD EEC trade deal aids Portuguese atrocities A PREFERENTIAL trade agreement giving tial concessions to the reactionary Caetano ship has been concluded between Portugal After the first stage of talks last December the Portuguese requested fundamental changes in the EEC proposals to improve terms for items such as farm produce and textiles competing directly with EEC products.

Not only were these concessions made in the second stage of negotiations, but the Common Market allowed Portugal to keep tariff barriers for certain products to protect new industries.

Portugal was thus allowed to reap the benefit of free trade in regard to exports and at the same time protect itself against any threat free trade might pose to domestic industry.

No government either from the EEC or the four candidate countries which are present as observers at the negotiations, raised any political objection. The Tory government's attitude was entirely favourable.

With this agreement, the Common Market is aiding the Portuguese dictatorship to finance its brutal colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea.

Britain, West Germany, Italy, France and the other NATO states within the Common Market have long aided and financed these wars.

Under the new agreement these same capitalists will be able to step up their investment in Portugal's African colonies, intensifying the exploitation of the African workers and peasants and strengthening the dictatorship against the working class at home.

THE ATROCIOUS character Portuguese rule in Mozambiq: is underlined by a repc smuggled out of the colony by from inside and outside Czechoslovakia trials. According to "The Sunday Times', ean communist who does not praise Mr Husak) a traitor to the socialist cause'.

cannot hope for moral or material support from their countrymen because any public expression of sympathy would automatically result in police of Czechoslovak television now living in exile in Rome, also appealed in an open letter asking Miss Davis to demand the release of political prisoners everywhere, including Czechoslovakia and the USSR. Miss Davis herself or by the US Communist Party to which she belongs. The party paper Daily World' has carried no report either of Miss Davis' response to these appeals or of the trials themselves. defence lawyer, Ernest Graves, was refused entry to the Prague trials. He went to Czechoslovakia in machine a private capacity without her blessing following substandictatormissionary priest Father Luis Alfonso da Costa, who gives details of 92 people killed by Portuguese troops between May 1971 and March 20 of this year.

On the last date, he says, the DGS security police tortured and killed a 68-year-old man in the village of Chimandbue and the military killed a married couple, later burning the bodies.

He has heard of a case of a woman being forced by soldiers to eat the flesh of her slain child, but did not include it in his report because he was unable to verify the story.

He describes in detail forms of torture used by Portuguese.

Apart from prolonged physical torture during interrogation, castration and mutilation are common in the prisons, he says. He also describes how the Portugue: ° forces have set up concentration camps called 'aldeamentios' in Tete province.

Soon, he says, all Africans will be enclosed in them with about 250 peopee to a camp. Permission the camps can be obtained in theory, but it is not easy in practice.

The Portuguese troops, he says, also take hostages from the camps ten or 20 at a time and torture them as a reprisal for guerrilla activity by the Frelimo liberation front.

The priest also attacks his superiors, the Bishop of Joao Belo and the Archbishop of Lourenço Marques, who support the government and have refused to condemn the atrocities. At the same time, Jiri Pelikan the former head These appeals have not been answered, either by She made no statement even when her own measures against such sympathizers'. the publication of the open letters.

Vasil Bilak, the Kremlin's most servile supporter on Tha Czechoslovak CP presidum, accused Graves and other western opponents of the trials of trying to divert attention from 'the big crimes committed against humanity' such as genocide in Vietnam.

This, Graves said, was a typical evasion tactic. Obviously this man is endeavouring to • avoid answering the charges of illegality of his own • trial by irrelevant cross-accusations'. Graves' statement was only too well-founded.

The trials, held in semi-secret conditions with the public excluded, resulted in verdicts of guilty against all the accused.

They were all opponents of the Warsaw Pact occupation Czechoslovakia. Many of them had held prominent positions in the Czechoslovak Communist Party under Alexandr Dubcek.

Milan Huebl, the former head berhe are Central Committee the Central Committee purged after the invasion, was sentenced to 6} years' in jail for having circulated a leaflet reminding voters of their right to strike names off the ballot papers in last November's presidential election.

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