Tribunal demands reappearance of José Ramón Garcia Gomez

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Ana-María Santander (center) presents the case of the disappearance of her hus### Autonomous Federation of Workers One of the delegates who was unable to attend the Lima Tribunal because of visa problems was Yue Wu, a central leader of the Autonomous Federation of Workers of Beijing. Wu sent a message to the Tribunal which posed the crucial question of how to solve the problem of the debt through promoting and defending the interests and rights of the workers.

Wu recounted the recent popular explosion in Tiananmen Square which was suppressed at the cost of hundreds of lives. He stated:

"It was under the cover of economic and political reform designed to head off mass revolt, that the sector of the privileged caste around Deng Xiaoping installed neither democracy nor a legal system but, exploiting their positions, used their power to create millionaires among their children, parents, relatives, and subordinates.

"By 1987, for example, some 200,000 companies had been registered which controlled and monopolized the sale of the majority of consumer products such as food, oil, salt, electronics, and armaments. Through contacts at the highest governmental levels, a double pricing system was established, both in the planned and the "free" market sectors.

"Bureaucrats and their relatives and cronies buy at low state fixed prices and sell great quantities of the production of China on the black market at vastly elevated prices, with the immediate consequences of deterioration of the Chinese economy.

"In 1978, commercial transactions in China totaled $2 trillion, and there was a dollar reserve of $114 billion. By 1988, transactions had fallen to $1 trillion, with a deficit of $7.8 billion. The Chinese bureaucracy now launched an open campaign to borrow from foreign banks, and by January 1989 the debt in China exceeded $42.6 billion dollars, with interest payments of $10 billion due by 1992.

"During all this, the economic priority in China has been the construction of luxurious palaces for Deng Xiaoping and his associates along with imported cars and luxury goods.

"Using on the one hand the dollar resources of the country to obtain arbitrary purchases to serve bureaucratic privilege, the corrupt bureaucratic caste was forcing China's more than 1 billion people to endure a life of increasing misery.

"This was the principal reason and motor which impelled the Chinese people firmly to oppose the foreign debt and bureaucratic privilege, which are directly linked. This is the basic issue which provoked an explosion for a great democratic movement in China.

"Our movement, based upon the working people of China, raised demands for an end to corruption in opposition to this bureaucracy of commerce, calling for freedom of information and publication and for total democracy.

"Deng Xiaoping declared that he has no sympathy for workers, students, and the inhabitants of cities who join in mass demonstrations and great strikes. Hence, hundreds of thousands of soldiers with tanks and armored vehicles were launched upon the bloody suppression of the democratic movement.

"Tens of thousands of workers, students, and inhabitants of our cities were killed and wounded in the cruel repression of a peaceful and unarmed movement.

"Following this, all of China has fallen under a white terror on a large scale, with mass arrests and executions, both public and secret.

"Many of the leaders and members of the Autonomous Federation of Workers of Beijing have been murdered or imprisoned without any legal process. This group of criminals, leaders of the government of Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng and Yang Shagkun, are not only against the Chinese workers but are the enemies as well of the elementary rights and aspirations of the workers of the world, of trade unionists, and human beings everywhere." band, José Ramón García, before the press.

Ana-María Santander, the wife of José Ramón García Gómez, a leading member of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) in Mexico who was kidnapped by government security police last Dec. 17, presented a compelling report to the International Tribunal on the kidnapping of her husband.

Santander recounted her meeting with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on May 6, during which she demanded that the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Mexican president to investigate the kidnapping of her husband fulfill its obligations. According to Santander, the Commission never met after its first session in mid-February.

Mya Shone/Socialist Action Following her report, the Tribunal delegates went en masse to the Mexican Embassy in Lima, and a delegation composed of Ricardo Letts, Segundo Melendez, Yves Dechezelles, Ralph Schoenman, Victoria Melgar, and Ana-Maria Santander met for two hours with the Mexican Ambassador to Peru.

By chance this man was from the state of Morelos, where José Ramón had been kidnapped. The Ambassador knew the Governor of Morelos and was a friend of Salinas. He undertook to send his own personal request to Salinas to receive a Tribunal delegation at the end of October to ask for President Salinas' personal intervention to secure the release of José Ramón.

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Message from Yue Wu, leader of Beijing