The "disappeared"

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There and there SAN FRANCISCO—A face is haunting San Franciscans. It's the face of Kevin Collins, a 10-year-old boy who disappeared Feb. 10 while waiting for a bus at the corner of Oak and Masonic streets. He was returning from a basketball game at St. Agnes School where he is in the fourth grade. His face haunts us wherever we go. Posters are on every store window and every light pole. A reward of $110,000 is being offered for his safe return. Kevin is one of the disappeared.

We know that the kidnappers of Kevin Collins, if caught, will be punished. But we live in a country where official criminal acts go unpunished every day. The government in El Salvador is snatching children from their homes and using torture, rape, and murder to repress its own people. The United States government is supporting the dictatorship in El Salvador as it creates thousands and thousands of "Kevin Collins."

In Congress, right now, the government is requesting $93 million in emergency aid that will keep the death squads going. That does not include over $1 million per day which is being pumped into the hands of the dictatorship. Now Reagan is requesting $1.2 billion for economic and military aid-that request comes from the recommendation of a bipartisan presidential commission led by Henry Kissinger.

What if the U. S. government was appropriating that amount of money to kidnap children like Kevin Collins from their families in this country? Would such a policy have the slightest support from the American people? But that's exactly what the U.S. government is doing in El Salvador.

The conditions in El Salvador have 2 Socialist Action April 1984 forced thousands of terrorized Salvadorans to flee their homes. The refugees are children of all ages, men and women; people from all walks of life: teachers, students, workers, housewives, and farmworkers. They are victims of repression so pervasive that the majority of Salvadoran families have had at least one member either tortured, raped, or murdered by government-supported death squads.

The United States is the only government which openly deports Salvadorans back to their war-torn country, despite a specific offer from Canada to accept any Salvadoran the United States wishes to deport. Now the government has adopted a new policy that all Salvadorans and Guatemalans without proper visas who are detained in Northern California will be immediately shipped to Florence, Ariz. for deportation proceedings. The facility at Florence is a former concentration camp used for detention of Japanese-Americans during World War Il.

Here's one example of what happens to deported refugees. In 1981, 24-yearold Santana Chirino Amaya was deported to El Salvador. Two months lated his decapitated body was found at a site often used by the Salvadoran military as a dumping ground for their victims. The government of the United States shares guilt for this murder with the military dictatorship of El Salvador.

The United States is shipping thousands of Salvadoran "Kevin Collins" back to their sure deaths. Any of us, if we saw Kevin, would grab him up and return him safely to his family. We must do as much for our Salvadoran brothers and sisters. We must protest this outrage. We must view them as we do Kevin. They are all our brothers, sisters and children.

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COUR