Chiapas
Peter Gellert's article (GLW #260) on recent events in Chiapas focused on the "two texts" and the differences between them. This may have given some readers the impression that the president's "counter proposal" was a legitimate response to the rebels.
Actually the fact that Zedillo forwarded the "counter proposal" at all was a violation of the terms of the peace process. In sum there is an official government negotiating team (COCOPA), the EZLN delegation and the mediation team (CONIA). All parties signed an accord on Indigenous Rights and Culture one year ago. That agreement was signed, the verification team was being assembled, the nation and the world were waiting for implementation of the accords.
Then Zedillo himself forwarded this "counter proposal." Out of respect for the president the EZLN forwarded a complete critique of the "counter proposal" along with their rejection of it.
Since the EZLN rejected the "counter proposal" 11 January, the Mexican Army has violated the tenuous cease fire by attacking the community of El ParaÃso leaving three dead and the rest of the community displaced.
The army has also doubled its troops in many areas, has begun to practice ambushes near La Realidad and there have been numerous army "incursions" most recently into Pinabetal and San Isidro Labrador. The air force has been buzzing the Aguas Calientes cultural centers.
People in the highlands fear the outbreak of high intensity war, as opposed to this low intensity war, as was the case in February 1995 when the on-ground situation was very similar.
This past year has also seen the rise of at least ten paramilitary groups. Attacks by these groups on human rights workers, both Mexican and international, have increased in number and severity in the past three months. Actions have included kidnappings, rape, torture and drive-by shootings.
Both the Zapatista Front for National Liberation and the EZLN have asked international solidarity groups to focus on Mexican consuls and embassies and demand the government honour the accords it has already signed.
As international supporters let us act before the onslaught in hopes of preventing it.
Brisbane Zapatista Front
[Abridged.]
Tony Cabardo
It was good to see the article by Sonny Melencio about Tony Cabardo, who died last week of cancer. Having attended the memorial meeting for him at his home and heard the long line of testimonials, I can only further confirm the high esteem in which Tony was held.
I first met Tony in 1986, when he was in Australia doing international work for the New People's Army. His internationalism was marked not only by his work to obtain assistance for the struggle in the Philippines but his desire to exchange views and opinions about all kinds of issues.
We met again in 1992 in Manila where he introduced me and the Democratic Socialist Party to the debates taking place inside the Philippines movement. Again he was alive with desire for the most open kind of exchange of views.
It was Tony who put the DSP in contact with Manila Rizal Committee of the CPP and later with the broader peoples organisation, San Lakas. Much of any positive results for the Filipino movement and for the DSP and the Australian left that has flown from that relationship is already a memorial to this Filipino internationalist. Whatever more Australian and Filipino socialists can do together in the future will also be a memorial to comrade Tony Cabardo.
We all miss you, Tony.
Collins no traitor
The article in GLW #259 entitled "Michael Collins: Irish Patriot or Sell-out?" by Sean Healy was a poor piece of analysis from either a socialist of bourgeois perspective.
Collins was no socialist nor did he ever profess to be one. Collins was a patriot, he was a nationalist but he never saw the future of Ireland being held in the hands of the working class.
Collins' signature of the treaty was not a betrayal. He was sent to London by the bourgeois nationalist forces who opposed British rule (including De Valera) with a mandate to sign. On his return the treaty, with partition a central feature, was ratified by the Dail. It should be remembered that the civil war which followed the treaty was not over partition but over whether Southern Ireland should be in what is now called the Commonwealth.
The most extraordinary thing about Sean's article is his belief that De Valera led "the more radical wing ... [who] saw in this treaty both the betrayal of the ideal of a unitary republic and the ending of any hopes of social and economic transformation." De Valera, once president, took the country backwards rather than forward in his decades of rule.
Lastly, Sean is utterly wrong when he says that the risings of the 200 years prior to 1916 achieved nothing. These similarly non-socialist uprisings achieved Catholic emancipation, pro-tenant land reform and the right to vote.
Melbourne
[Abridged.]
Anti-IRA propaganda
I felt like a one-headed man in a two-headed world until I read Sean Healy's excellent review of "Michael Collins"in GLW #259, and found that like me he saw this film as a very cleverly made piece of anti-IRA propaganda quite clearly aimed against Sinn Fein and the IRA in Occupied Ireland today.
In any war reasonable men certainly do not enjoy killing but realise its necessity, yet Jordan portrays Irish soldiers as having deep pangs of conscience, even fearing for their immortal souls when they have to "murder" British soldiers, agents and torturers.
The implication is clear that now the war is "over" (for the bourgeoisie of the 26 counties) the defence of civilians by the Northern IRA, and presumably the struggle for a United Ireland is criminal, unless it is by "talking around a table". If Irish history does not illustrate what hogwash that is, then surely the refusal of the British to negotiate with Sinn Fein throughout the 17 months cease fire by the IRA, followed by so-called peace talks with pro-union groups, Sinn Fein excluded and even the wimpish SDLP too disgusted to attend, should convince anybody.
But apparently not correspondent Dave Riley (GLW #260). Dave says the film poses the question what went wrong and then answers with a simplistic picture of the result of the War of Independence — Ireland as a Third World economy regimented by the Catholic Church.
That would be, I fear, more a result of the Treaty and the Civil War, unless Dave would prefer, as I feel Jordan does (had he the guts to admit it) that Ireland had been better off remaining a province of Britain. I feel many present Irish politicians share Jordan's view.
The lack of progress in unification is not the core of the film. It is what the film tries to dodge, particularly by praising Collins, with 77 executed republicans on his conscience, as the man who "took the gun out of Irish politics", and in praising the Treaty as the "first step" towards an Irish Republic. This "step" has gotten nowhere in three-quarters of a century.
I suggest Dave forgets about Neil Jordan and re-reads Sean Healy's review, making that his solid foundation for further study in Irish history. Next he can apply the lessons learnt to the similar betrayals by Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat at the present time.
Mt Druitt NSW
Amnesty International
Adam Hanieh ought to be congratulated. He's exposed what a growing number of Amnesty International members long suspected. Amnesty International has become a machine for white-washing massacres.
Adam's report about A.I.'s Qana whitewash (GLW #260) didn't surprise me. I had the whitewash experience, when I returned from Thailand, soon after Bangkok's May '92 massacre. Almost immediately upon arriving back in Australia, I naively went to Amnesty to tell them what I'd seen and heard. They weren't interested.
I'd been in the thick of the massacre — unintentionally, and by chance. I'd seen so many Thais take so many risks, this was the least I thought I could do for them. As it turned out I also took a risk telling Amnesty what I'd seen, because basically they told me to shut up. "Do you want to go back to Thailand?", they asked me.
One leading local Amnesty leader regularly addresses a North Shore right-wing think tank. Amnesty to this day goes along with the Thai government's whitewash of Bangkok's May '92 mass murder. Amnesty still endorses the Thai military whitewash that "50" people died during the three-day uprising. This despite Thailand's Mahidol University's extensive research showing at least 169 still missing.
The 169 figure which Amnesty does not want to know about is probably absurdly low. It has never been explained to me how hundreds and hundreds of heavily armed soldiers, uniformed and in plain clothes, could fire directly into a crowd from 10:30pm until 6am — and only make 169 "missing", but yet have the figure reduced to "50" by Amnesty International.
Sydney