A Government at War with Its Own People

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Jesuit priests slain by, army death squad, November 16. Many other religious leaders, under government death threats, have gone into hiding The Institute proposes to open debate on U.S. policy by bringing before U.S. audiences the protagonists of El Salvador's movement for democracy, to let them speak for themselves, and have a fair hearing in the United States. Thus the Institute makes available official At the same time, the Institure works to defend and promote the rights of Salvadorans affecred by the war, including members of the FMLN, to receive prompt humanitarian assistance to relieve the traumas of war. The Institute is a sponsor of the Bravo Fund, which will provide this humanitarian assistance for projects for the war wounded and their dependents. The Bravo Fund was established in home-grown rebellion against tyranny as "Soviet-backed subversion" against the United States. For too long, the Institute believes, memory of Dr. Alejandro Bravo Betancourt, a Mexican doctor assassinated in EI Salvador bythe Salvadoran army on February 13, 1989. by soldiers of the U.S.-funded army. Bombs, rockets, and machine gun-fire raining down from U.S.-supplied aircraft on innocent civilians in densely populated neighborhoods of San Salvador. Martial law decreed, abolishing Incredibly, the official policy of President Bush is to prop up the brutal regime in El Salvador, supplying it with $1.5 million daily in weapons and financial aid. And now, in an eerie replay of Vietnam, the Administration won't rule out the use of U.S. troops in the fighting.

El Salvador's People Have Risen Up for Their Freedom After suffering decades of U.S.-backed military dictatorship and poverty, the Salvadoran people have risen up in revolt. Their uprising raises hopes for a democratic future-free of hunger and death squad terror.

Residents of many neighborhoods and towns have taken to the streets, building barricades and trenches to keep the army out. Their revolt has been sparked by a nation-wide offensive, beginning November II, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the rebel alliance fighting for democracy and social reform in El Salvador.

The FMLN, conscious of its responsibility to the people, has undertaken to construct and operate Emergency Mobile Hospital Units in areas under government attack in order to provide treatment to injured civilians and FMLN members.

Let us heal the wounds inflicted by the immoral policy of our government, offering the Salvadoran people emergency hospitals and medicines rather than bombs and bullets.

The Bravo Fund was established to fund the construction and supply of these emergency mobile hospitals, and other humanitarian and developmental projects.

The U.S.-EI Salvador Institute for Democratic Development:

Making Salvadoran Voices Heard San Francisco. The Institute has a mission both educational and humanitarian in character.

that U.S. intervention in El Salvador is justified in the name of "national security interests," and it has attempted 10 portray a The U.S.-El Salvador Institute for Democratic Development is a new national organization of U.S. citizens, with its office in With its unlimited access to the national media, the Bush Administration has tried to convince the people of the United States all civil rights. The press muzzled by military censorship. Religious, labor, and political leaders driven into hiding.

This is the Salvadoran government's response to their people's dramatic uprising in demand of democratic change.

In one nearby hut, her two daughters.

"The army's firing Hernandez Martinez explosion.

$1,000 Name Address City _ Phone ( Mail to: The Bravo Your Contribution Is Urgently Needed to Save Lives Please make your check payable to "The Bravo Fund".

Yes, I want to save lives in El Salvador! I enclose a check to "The Bravo construction of FMLN emergency mobile hospitals, in the amount of:

$500 _ $250 — $100 $50 these Cold War pretexts of U.S. intervention in Central America have not been adequately challenged in the United States.

representatives of the FMLN to participate in public forums and debates as well as interviews with the media. whose 11-year-old son was killed in another Francisco Chronicle, $25 _ State_ Zip.

Box 460586 San Francisco, CA 94146 (Contributions are not lax-deductible.)

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... Romanian workers spe revolution against Stalir Top photo: Defiant under sniper fire, Romanian masses display self-confidence.

Lower: Czechoslovakian workers and students celebrate resignation of Stalinist 10 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1990 (continued from page 1: “Romanian workers spearhead revolution against Stalinism”) suddenly found himself drowned out and besieged by an angry crowd. Forced to flee for his very life, he ordered his security forces to open fire on the rapidly unfolding mass demonstrations—which demanded his resignation and an end to the despotic rule of the Communist Party.

When the Securitate followed his orders, killing hundreds, if not thousands of unarmed demonstrators, the world was astonished to learn that even greater numbers took to the streets of the capital the following dav What followed was a civil war which involved virtually the entire population. Factories were shut down and armed worker/student militias joined with the defecting regular army to take over key aspects of the state's functioning. Estimates of the number of dead range into the thousands.

"Deliver your arms!"

Obviously worried about a still-armed population, on Dec. 24 the week-old Iliescu government issued a series of decrees designed to consolidate all power in its hands. The Council of the National Salvation Front declared:

"The army is the only one to possess arms, the firm arm defending the people. All those who, these days, have come into the possession of arms and ammunition, regardless of the circumstances, have to urgently deliver them by Monday, Dec. 25, at 1500 G.M.T. [Greenwich time] at the latest.

"The units of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense are merged to take over the single command of all troops and all weapons.

"Management and all working people are called upon to insure the protection of economic, trade, and medical units.

"The bodies of the new structures of democracy must urgently begin their activities of restoration of the country by firmly setting themselves up and becoming immediately subordinate to the council."

Five days later, however, the revolutionary dynamic unleashed after decades of Stalinist rule, was still in full stride.

Masses continue to organize The snectacular breadth and sneed of events has put the new government at a great disadvantage when compared to other crippled but still functioning Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe. Virtually every political and military figure associated with the present government has been associated in one way or another with the previous regime. This fact, coupled with the armed insurrection against Ceausescu, may prove decisive in the weeks and months ahead.

While the new government desperately seeks to govern with the aid of the administrators of the barely changed institutions of the old regime, the masses, without awaiting formal permission, continue to organize strike committees, newspapers, political organizations, and armed groups.

Government officials lamely explain that "competence," not past political association, will be the first criterion in selecting the new technocrats. Meanwhile, workers and students are proceeding to organize their own discussions regarding the administration of factories and other state institutions.

Worker occupations have already challenged the authority of the appointed "management" in some factories.

The new government has been forced to certify the rights which the Romanian masses have already conquered with their own blood. In the case of the ethnic Hungarians, for example, their right to their own language, schools, and cultural centers-denied for the past decade-is today unchallenged.

The right to possess an unregistered typewriter has been decreed-after the appearance of countless leaflets and newspapers. The right to abortion, long denied by Causescu on the grounds of the need to increase the size of the population, is today decreed without opposition.

Causescu's warehouses emptied In an attempt to win legitimacy with the still-armed and ever-organizing masses, the new government felt compelled to empty the special hiding places of the Communist Party and the government export warehouses—where nearly all of Romania's agricultural products were stored awaiting shipment to foreign markets.

Ceausescu's aim had been to exchange these products for hard currency to continue payment on Romania's $1l billion debt to the imperialist-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other such lending institutions.

For this fidelity to international capital and because of his frequent pro-U.S. foreign policy initiatives, the Causescu regime had won the enthusiastic support of the U.S. ruling class.

Until a few years ago, for example, Romania had been granted most-favored-nation status by the U.S. Congress. When it comes to protecting the economic interest of U.S. capital, concern for human rights——whether in El Salvador or Romania-takes a back seat.

In addition to the mass graves which will forever remind the Romanian people of the price of their struggle against Stalinism, the depth of the corruption of the Causescu regime is being revealed for the first time.

In the name of "socialism," Ceausescu stole over $1 billion from the Romanian people and stashed it in various foreign banks. In the name of "socialism," Ceausescu built a golden palace for himself while he plowed under historic cities and villages to construct slipshod and inadequate housing for the masses.

And in the name of "socialism," Ceausescu, like his Chinese Stalinist cohorts, praised virtually every U.S.-supported dictator in return for the privilege of securing loans which would mortgage the future of the Romanian people to U.S. banks.

It is ironic that the Zionist, apartheid state of Israel—whose 1967 predatory war against the Arab nations of the Middle East was praised by Ceausescu-today stands as one of the few with a "mixed mind" in regard to the Romanian revolution.

Stalinist control has not ended The revolutionary mass mobilizations in Romania and in Eastern Europe are not likely to be contained in the coming period. This fact, above all, causes great concern in both Washington, D.C., and Moscow.

However, while an unprecedented blow has been struck against the Stalinist regimes— which have been ruled by bureaucratic elites imposed by the Soviet army following World War II-Stalinist control of these deformed workers' states has not been ended. "Old Guard.' Most of the state institutions, especially the police and military, still remain in the hands of the Stalinist bureaucrats, who are determined to rule in order to perpetuate their privileges.

The last few months have witnessed a frantic and still-continuing series of maneuPeter Turniey/Newsweek 'ARI CSAD vers designed to find a governmental formula which is both acceptable to the people and which, at the same time, allows the continuation of the rule by a privileged bureaucratic caste.

The wide range of formulas include that of neighboring Bulgaria, where recent threats of triatensv

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La general strike led to the resignation of top Communist Party officials but not yet to the wholesale removal of the government and central leaders of the Communist Party.

In Poland, at the other extreme, the Stalinist General Jaruzelski still rules in a coalition with openly pro-capitalist elements that, for now, have captured control over the Solidarity union leadership.

Poland's new economic measures Recent developments in Poland highlight most clearly and remarkably the course the Stalinist leaders of Eastern Europe have embarked upon to maintain their privileges, a course leading to the open restoration of capitalism at the expense of the working The Mazowiecki/Walesa government today proposes deeper budget cuts and anti-working class measures than any contemplated by the Stalinist regime when it was the sole ruler less than a year ago.

This month, Poland's new crash economic program begins to take effect. Subsidies for goods and services, which last year accounted for 31 percent of public spending, will be reduced to 14 percent. Reduced subsidies will remain in just a few areas—housing, public transportation, coal, bread, and low-fat milk and cheese.

Price increases of 25 percent to 50 percent each month are expected, as state enterprises lose their government support and are compelled to raise prices to survive. Coal and energy prices are expected to rise five to seven times. About 400,000 workers are exPeter Turnley/Newsweek pected to lose their jobs in the resulting ment to foreign markets.

Causescu's aim had been to exchange plant closures. these products for hard currency to continue The price increases and the cuts in govpayment on Romania's $11 billion debt to ernment spending are expected to result in a the imperialist-dominated International 20 percent decrease in real income and a 5 Monetary Fund (IMF) and other such lending percent decrease in industrial output. Finance institutions.

For this fidelity to international capital and because of his frequent pro-U.S. foreign OPH:TARI CSAD policy initiatives, the Causescu regime had won the enthusiastic support of the U.S. ruling class.

Until a few years ago, for example, Romania had been granted most-favored-nation status by the U.S. Congress. When it comes to protecting the economic interest of U.S. e 1)

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SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1990 9 Six Jesuit priests murdered in cold blood

Contribute to the Movement for Freedom in El Salvador

a rocket from a helicopter killed a mother and from their helicopters like madmen," said Raul

• Romanian workers spearhead revolution against Stalinism