The Tamil language question

They connect the Paris underworld with the feudal regime of King Hassan II of Morocco. Their influence extends widely in police and espionage services. The possibility of their connection with the US Central Intelligence Agency must not be excluded.

The events of the past few weeks show that the critical divisions within the French ruling class, which de Gaulle the Bonaparte was supposed to have overcome, continue to tear apant the Fitth Republic, as the Third and Fourth.

Only the absence of a revolutionary workers' party allows the present set-up to continue.

ABDUCTION

On October 29, just betore the Presidential elections, Agomedhi Ben Barka was abducted in broad daylight in the Boulevard St. Germain. He was taken to the car which drove him away by two members of the Paris narcotics squad, Inspector Souchon and his assistant Voitot.

He was last heard of in a villa belonging to a brothel owner, Boucheseiche. In the villa were some retired gangsters, the chief of the Moroccan secret police and one Antoine Lopez.

The latter is important, because he combined several professions.

Not only was he an airline inspector at Orly Airport, but he was also an agent for the spy service SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure at de Contre Espionage), for the Moroccan intelligence and for the narcotics squad.

A later arrival at the villa was General Oufkir, Moroccan Minister of the Interior and leading reactionary politician. He' was responsible for the brutal suppression of the Casablanca riots last March.

He had been trained in the French Army and was head of the Moroccan section of SDECE until 1960. Then he switched over to the Moroccan police, and extended his political influence in Morocco.

He is now wanted by the French police for questioning about the torturing to death of Ben Barka. However, since he returned from France to Morocco on October 31, they are unlikely to arrest him.

This was not the first time he had attempted to dispose of his victim. Ben Barka was a leading left-wing nationalist. He had broken away in 1959 from the ruling Istiqlal Party with his UNFP.

CONDEMNED

In 1963, Oufkir announced that a plot against the life of King Hassan had been discovered. Ben Barka was condemned to death, and remained in exile thereafter.

In June he was due to attend the Algiers Conference of Afro-Asian states. Oufkir's agents attempted to fix up a deal with never be possible to tie up all the intersect in the Ben Barka affair, all affair, learly.

abduction. In December, between the two ballots of the Presidential election, Figon issued a series of statements in the press about his pant in the killing.

He also told the world that he had been bribed by the police to keep quiet. All this time was supposed to be in hiding, with the entire Paris police force looking for him.

'SUICIDE '

The climax came on January 17. Just as the police were about to close in on his flat, figon was shot. The announced 'suicide' of this key witness is regarded with universal scepticism.

The official investigation has discovered this much about the aflair. But bigger questions remain to be answered.

The police inspector in charge of protecting Moroccans in France watched the abduction, but thought it was in order, because he knew Souchon.

Even when he made further inquiries later, he was told by his superiors not to bother about the incident.

No action was taken until November 5, when a report reached de Gaulle. However, even this report omitted all references to the SDECE or police being involved.

It seems likely that this delay was related to the date of the elections. If the political implications had become public, it is possible that de Gaulle would have been defeated.

The SDECE. has innumerable connections with agents of all kinds. Many of these are the 'barbouzes' (bearded ones), who were collected by de Gaulle's supporters to fight the OAS.

The service was responsible to the Prime Minister via General Paul Jacquier._ Last week Jacquier was sacked, Leroy, head of his African section, placed under house arrest and the SDECE made entirely responsible to the Minister of Defence, Messmer.

BLOW

This is implicitly a blow at Pompidou, who is the representative of French banking interests.

Morocco has rejected the warrant for Oufkir's arrest, and Hassan stated last Sunday that 'he and the Moroccan people as a whole were convinced that the spirit of uprightness which animated the police had never varied'.

The Moroccan regime is now seeking to replace the considerable aid it has had from France by US sources. The French Ambassador to Morocco has been withdrawn.

It is possible that de Gaulle was manoeuvring to change the Moroccan regime with the aid of Ben Barka. The two are known to have met last July.

But more is at stake in this ONe Nigerian Premius of five Nigerian Premiersnot to mention an undisclosed number of Nigerian politicians army officers and dignatorieswere executed by officers of the Nigerian army in an abortive coup.

With the Premiers went the constitution, parliament and other pseudo-democratic trappings which were used to conceal the thuggery and skulduggery of the medieval regional and central governments.

In the West, Premier Akintola was shot dead. In the North the Feudal Emir-the Sardauna-of Sokoto was surrounded by rebel soldiers in his home and machine gunned and his palatial residence reduced to rubble by mortars.

Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Federal Prime Minister, died mysteriously at the hands of unidentified captors.

ESCAPED

Dr. Azikiwe-recuperating in a London Hotel--and Okpara in the Mid-West escaped the vengeance of the officers.

Although successful in the North and West the officers were defeated in the Mid-West and East, primarily because they lacked any kind of progressive social programme which would have evoked an active and favourable response trom the masses of impoverished workers, secondly because of the nanrow base upon which the conspiracy rested, as well as the extreme secrecy of the whole operation.

(Many of Major Nzeogwu's soldiers were the a mom his The failure of the uprising in the South led finally to the assumption of power by General Ironsi, supported by the Civil Service and 'loyal' units of the army and imperialism.

All the customary paraphanalia of military rule have been brought to bear while the working class and peasantry celebrate the overthrow of their former corrupt, tyrannical rulers—but continue to keep a . watchful eye on their new rulers.

Undoubtedly this is one of the most impontant events in the history of the largest 'self-governing dependency in the British Empire'.

It is certainly the most significant episode since the Royal Niger Company surrendered its MOLLOWING the attack by 'Izvestia' on Soviet writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuri Daniel, many

Abubakar killed

Azikiwe süțe in Britainm chanter and the Foreign Office proclaimed the Southern and Northern regions of Nigeria a British Protectorate in 1900.

Although abortive, it will be remembered as the first time when all four ethnic groups, Hausa, Ebo, Fulani and Yoruba, collaborated to create a bourgeois national government as opposed to the intrinsically divisive and retrograde system of Federal administration designed, cultivated and imposed by the British imperialists.

LAST ATTEMPT?

It is probably the last such attempt that Nigeria will see.

For many decades, it was British policy to exploit the religious and ethnic differences between Moslem north and pagan south under the system of government known as 'indirect rule'.

Not only were elected Africans heavily outnumbered in the legislative council by nominated members, but the northern territories were not represented at all and were administered by British political officers working through the traditional rulers such as the Emirs, Sultans and chiefs. -by John Crawfor This system, which was introduced under the 1922 Clifford Constitution 1942 in favour of slightly in elected Africans.

In 1944, the first African National-bourgeois party was set up-the National Council :of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC) under the leadership of Dr. Azikiwe and Hubert Macaulay.

Having deliberately_kept the North backward, the British, in 1947, under the terms of the Richands Constitution attempted to counter the growing influence of the NCNC by giving direct representation in the Central government to the Islamic rulers of the Nonth.

DIVISIONS

To complicate matters further, the South was divided into two regions-West and East-along tribal lines with separate regional assemblies.

This divide-and-rule policy was upheld by the Labour government despite the opposition of the NCNC and became the basis upon Which tribalist politics flourished, and, inversely, the country disintegrated rapidly.

(The governor, Sir Richards, for his 'distinguished' services in perpetuating imperialism Nigeria was made a Labour peer —Lord Milventon of Lagos!)

What Sir Richards could not finish, his successor, Macpherson, did.

Regional separatism was his guiding principle. His constitution-the 1951 constitution—not only retained the shadowy regional assemblies, but even invested them with legislative and executive power.

The majority of seats in the single chamber central legislature was, characteristically, reserved the backward traditional northerners.

In the early fifties, the Action group, a splinter group led by Obafemi Awolowo who is committed to tribal separatism and the NCNC began agitating for 'self-government by 1956'.

This was opposed by the northern representatives (the Northern Peoples' Congress) and led subsequently, to the resignation of the Action group delegates from the Council of Ministers.

The Cabinet collapsed. A new constitutional conference in 1953 was called in London. This led to a further intensification of the principle of 'Federalism' as (Continued on back page) of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary)

THE DRAFT regulations under the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act now before Parliament, seek to establish a legal status on a regional basis (Northern and Eastern Provinces), for the Tamil language which is subordinate in relation to the status already given to the Sinhala language under the Sinhala Only Act.

Whatever falsehoods the Sri Lanka Freedom Party-led coalition panties may say to the Sinhalese masses about these regulations and whatever explanations the Federal Party may make to the Tamil masses concerning these regulations, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) emphasises to both the Sinhala and Tamil masses that the United National Party-led government has brought these regulations to accord the Tamil language a status which is a subordinate status and not the official status which the Tamil language should enjoy.

The language rights of the Tamil-speaking people cannot be realised without Tamil also being declared an official language together with the Sinhala language.

NEITHER UNP - led government nor a SLFP-led government can be expected to grant the language rights of the Tamil-speaking people because both are constituted of bourgeois parties competing with each other within the parliamentary framework for the votes of the Sinhala majority of the Ceylonese masses.

It was the UNP that organised and took a leading part in the anti-Tamil riots of 1956 and 1958. And as late as 1960 it was the UNP that sought to rouse communal passions of the Sinhala people by publishing a map showing Ceylon divided into a so-called Tamil area and a Sinhala area.

Today it is the SLFP that leads the campaign against even the introduction of regulations for the implementation of the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act enaated by every SLFP government in I958.

IN 1960, the Federal Party thought they could get the Tamil language rights through the SLFP and supported the bourgeois SLFP government. What they got in the end was the detention of their Members of Parliament and military suppression for the Tamilspeaking people.

When the LSSP abandoned its socialist position and accepted portfolios under Mrs. Bandaranaike's SLFP in June 1964, the Tamil-speaking people lost a champion of their democratic rights and the Federal Party no longer faced any competition from the socialist left for the leadership of the Tamil-speaking people.

The Ceylon Communist Party, of course, With its equivocal and treacherous policies on this question, had never seriously affected the attitude of the Federal Party on this question. But it was all along the LSSP finally, domains in which it orientates itself.

'The domain of art is not one in which the Party is called upon to command. It can and A statement by the CC that stood out intransigently for the working class and the democratic nights of the Tamil and other minorities.

was in this situation the federal Party decided to join th United National Party, and accept subordinate position for the Tamil language without serious resistance from the Sinhala masses.

What makes the position worse for the Tamil-speaking masses is that today their former socialist champions have become their open political enemies before the Sinhala masses.

WHAT THE SINHALA masses have still to realise fully is that the real question today is sho ud gusin tof ome han cage auestion ( Tamil masse, nut of the Tamhe being recognised as ecuad CItIzens of Ceylon together with the sinnala people.

Nor will the Sinhala masses lose anything of their rights if the Tamil-speaking people also win their language and other rights. But on the other hand, so long as the lamii people are not recognised as equal citizens with the Sinhala people. both the Sinhala and Tamil-speaking people will continue to be divided from eaci other and subjected to bourgeois rule whilst the problem national unity remains unsolved.

5 THE ENTIRE history of the Tamil language problem alone proves that the problem of probea unit, which fundames thal democratic rights of the minorities of Ceylon, can never solved under bourgeois regimes, whether headed by the UNP or bv the SLFP. Both have a vesited interest in keeping the masses alvided ana subect bourgeois rule.

The Tamil language rights and the rights of the other minorities can be won only in united sur uggle against the capitalist class and by encita CaDiraisI class ruue. Separate movements for winning minority rights will be mere dis sipation of human and material résources without real gains.

The struggle for minority rights must flow into the mainstream of the class-struggle led by the working class aralilsl the forces capitalism.

THE REALITY of the Ceylon situation is widespread landlessness and growing poverty in the rural areas, increasing unemployment, high costs of living in the LUlLeAL ot a continuing wagefreeze, acute shortage of housing, chock v næeąe bcк facilities and brutal police assaults on persons WinO Seek to orolesI against their intolerable conditOns.

AND EVEN at this moment tae wor erg and væge ezre cre stepping out in class action against the capitalist class and the UNP. led government. There are defiTiLt indications that the workers and wage-arners can be mobilised for big class battles in an