International Tribunal demands

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The presidents of the tribunal salute the sentence against imperialism.

Ecasuro Medrano, a leader of the squatters movement, salutes the sentence and voices his approval for the decision of the tribunal. '6 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1989 By MYA SHONE and RALPH SCHOENMAN The International Tribunal on the Debt, which took place Sept. 21-24 in Lima, Peru, was impressive for the breadth of participation and the seriousness with which it had been prepared.

Thirty countries were represented, and 180 delegates were formal participants in the pro ceedings of the Tribunal. Thirty-five detailed testimonies were presented on specific topics pertaining to the nature of the international debt; its origins; the mechanisms through which it had been imposed; the social, eco nomic, and political consequences for individual countries; and the structure of power required for its imposition.

The International Tribunal based itself upon the statutes which set forth the workings of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indo-China in the late 1960s. The findings were to take the form of judgment by the peoples of all countries—who were the actual "jury."

The Tribunal was a forum in which to assemble an indictment of institutions which visit specific injustices upon all the world's exploited and oppressed peoples-primarily the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the European Economic Community (EEC). It was thus a revolutionary "grand jury," a voice for the voiceless.

Broad sponsorship and preparation The Tribunal was prepared by broad political forces in Peru, notably the Workers Party and the Popular Democratic Unity (UDP), a mass-based organization that supports Cuban revolutionist Che Guevara's perspective for continental struggle against U.S. imperialism.

The major independent Peruvian trade-union federations also played a central role in preparing the Lima Tribunal. [See box for names of Sponsoring Committee members.] The six presidents of the Tribunal's sessions were Yves Dechezelles, director of the League for Human Rights in France; Helio Bicudo, a prominent figure in the League for Human Rights in Brazil and a member of the central leadership of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT); Omar Menouer, founder and leader of the League for Human Rights in Algeria; Segundo Melendez, a deputy in the Venezuelan Parliament representing the Movement for Socialist Action (MAS); Ricardo Letts, a central leader of the Partido de Unificación Mariateguista (PUM); and Ralph Schoenman, past executive director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

The Inauguration of the Tribunal took place at a public rally at the Municipal Theater in downtown Lima, with over 1500 people in attendance. The list of speakers included prominent trade-union militants from a numThe Sponsoring Committee for the Lima Tribunal included Genaro Ledesma, Senator and President of FOCEP (the Popular, Workers, Peasants and Students' Front); Yehude Simon, Deputy and President of the National Popular Assembly (ANP); Ricardo Letts, President of the National Popular Assembly (and one of the main leaders of the Mariateguista Party, PUM); Carlos Malpica, Senator; Jorge Hurtado, Secretary-General of the UNIR (National Union of the Revolutionary Left); Saul Cantoral, Secretary General of the FNTMMSP (National Federation of Miners, Steel Workers and Metal Workers of Peru)--who was recently assassinated by a para-military death squad; Moises Palomino, President of the FNTMMSP;

Olmedo Auris, Secretary General of SUTEP (National Union of Education Workers of Peru); Cecilia Oviedo, Secretary-General of the Popular Democratic Unity (UDP);

Ladislao Chavez, Secretary-General of SIDER-PERU (National Union of Workers at Sider-Peru); Enrique Rodriguez, First Vice President of FENDUP (National Federation of Teachers of Peruvian Universities); Leonor Zamora, CODEH-Ayacucho (Committee for Human Rights in Ayacucho); and Hernan Cuentas, Workers Party. ber of Latin American countries, as well as representatives from the United States, Spain, France, Germany, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Senegal, Haiti, and Cuba.

The theme of the Tribunal was captured in the slogan inscribed on the main conference banner in many languages: "It is not the peoples' debt."

Indicting the imperialist debt The major papers and testimonies presented at the Tribunal documented the process through which the ruling classes in the imperialist countries, facing declining profit rates at home, induced neo-colonial governments to borrow extensively from the imperialist banks.

Economic projects aimed at increasing export earnings in the debtor countries were fostered, making these economies particularly vulnerable to the manipulations of pricing controlled by the imperial countries. Contrived drops in the prices paid for export commodities or raw material result in increased borrowing and in devaluation of the currencies of the dependent countries, thereby creating a worsening debt cycle.

Once the debtor nations are caught in this cycle, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and EEC come forward as arbiters of renegotiation. These institutions are the instruments of the ruling class, whose banks have made the loans. The IMF and World Bank proceed to impose austerity economies on the debtor regimes.

In short, the debtor regimes are compelled to eliminate the meager social services which exist in the dependent countries, to freeze wages-and to liquidate the infrastructure of health care, education, housing, and food production.

Papers presented at the Tribunal also revealed how the debt incurred by client regimes in the over-exploited countries has been "liquidated"-and often paid off many times over-because the huge interest payments reach or surpass the sum of the original principal very quickly.

Hence, in the era of declining profit, capitalism has reverted to a pre-colonial mode of pillage which has genocidal consequences. According to the World Bank's own data, mass famine, destruction of viable agricultural land for cash crops subject to the vagaries of a manipulated world market, will result in the death of 30 million children in Africa in the next 10 years.

In Latin America, governments in debt are now transferring rights to natural resources as a barter payment for the interest on the debt which the governments cannot meet. In this manner, the mineral wealth, forests, and resources for potential development are being handed over to the banks and conglomerates IS PO in the wholesale liquidation of nominal sovereignty and command over basic resources and goods.

As the standards of living plummet, as epidemic disease increases, life expectancies plummet, pauperization generalizes and despair deepens, the client governments which have obtained the loans resort increasingly to para-military murder squads to attack the population when it attempts to resist.

Thus, the debt is the vehicle for revisiting upon the semi-colonial world conditions which have not been seen since slavery. None of the indigenous ruling classes can avoid this cycle. Only the working class and peasants, victims of imperial exploitation, are able to challenge the new slavery.

The example of Chile The report from Albert Galvez Muena, Secretary-General of the Construction Workers of Chile, was typical of the high level of discourse and research which characterized the Tribunal hearings. It exemplified, as well, the involvement of working-class militants, many of them occupying important tradeunion positions.

The 1988 public debt of Chile was $16 billion and private debt was $3 billion. The sector of the ruling class that was tied to transnational corporations was closely linked to the military dictatorship.

All of the debt was contracted by private corporations acting through the Pinochet state. The total obligation was so crippling that in order to service it, debt was constantly incurred and the IMF was determining the operation of the Chilean economy.

Today $21 billion are owed; 22 percent of Chilean production is devoted to servicing this debt. Far more than this amount has been paid since 1982, however.

At the same time, the IMF imposed austerity and drastic cuts in all social services, in health, and education. Since 1973, when the government of Salvador Allende was overthrown, employment has collapsed and entire branches of national industries have disappeared.

Unemployment has reached 40 percent of the workforce and in many sectors it is over 50 percent. In education, all of elementary and secondary school education has been removed from the public sector and put in private hands There are 60 to 80 pupils per class. Fifty percent of students are now out of the educational system seeking work and half of them are unemployed.

Only 48 percent of the children of Chile now finish elementary school. Ninety percent have dropped out of secondary education for financial reasons.

To enforce these Draconian measures, barbarous repression has been necessary. The trade unions are being destroyed, and under the doctrine of national security an internal war has been unleashed against the population, notably the working class. Over 800 people have disappeared recently, Muena asserted.

Workers' states not exempt The weaker industrial economies-and the bureaucratized workers' states—are being subjected to a like fate. In the Soviet Union. China, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, for example, the introduction of market mecha-

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-IS SIND NICHT DIE SCHULDEN DER • IS NOT THE PEOPLES' DEBT!

Sponsors of the Lima Tribunal

Mya Shone/Socialist Action Mya Shone/Socialist Action Miya