The following is a statement issued November 15 by the Communist Organizing Committee in Paris on the wave of attacks against Algerian and other immigrants by the French government. The statement was titled "Don't let the government attack our democratic rights!" The translation from French and subheadings are by the Militant.
Since July 1995 the government has carried out an offensive against democratic rights. Terrorist attacks are the pretext. The Communist Organizing Committee calls on workers and all their political and union organizations, on the antiracist groups and partisans of democratic rights, to defend these rights won at such great cost through decades of struggle. The police, in carrying out "probes and investigations," are trampling on rights such as the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, protection against illegal search and seizure, freedom of association without police infiltration, and the right to move about freely.
The terrorist attacks that have taken place, killing and wounding dozens of men, women, and children, have nothing whatever to do with the fight against exploitation and oppression - no matter who carried them out. These methods are categorically rejected by revolutionaries and class- conscious workers.
Since the "Vigipirate" plan was first implemented on Sept. 7, 1995, nearly 2 million identity checks have been carried out against youth and workers. Hundreds of workers from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe have been deported by charter plane or other means, with no organized response.
The terrorist attacks have even been used as a pretext for striking a blow at the right to demonstrate. In September the government banned a Greenpeace demonstration against nuclear tests for "reasons of public security."
Two books have been banned by the government and withdrawn from bookstores under the pretext that they are a "threat to public order." One of them, Le Livre Blanc sur la Répression en Algérie (1991-1994) [White Book on Repression in Algeria] is a compilation of testimony on arbitrary arrests and use of torture and executions by the Algerian army and cops.
Cops consider all Muslims suspects
For months every Muslim worker and youth has been
considered a suspect by the police. Young workers living in
the housing projects on the outskirts of Paris - the first
victims of unemployment, racism, and cop violence - are
accused by the government of being potential terrorists.
Police spying and infiltration in youth and neighborhood organizations have become common. Police provocations and acts of racist cop violence are everyday occurrences. In Laval, Marseilles, Vaulx-en-Velin, and elsewhere the list of youth of Arab origin who are killed or brutalized by the police grows every day.
We are witnessing a veritable anti-Islamic and anti-Arab campaign on television and in the press, singling out and scapegoating a category of workers. Being a Muslim and having a beard makes any worker suspect!
French state is greatest terrorist
Workers must never lose sight of the fact that it is the
French state that is one of the greatest terrorists in the
world.
It is the French capitalist state that waves the threat of nuclear terror in the face of the world, 50 years after the massacres in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is the French state that armed, financed, and backed to the hilt the previous regime in Rwanda, which was responsible for the massacre of 500,000 people in 1994.
It is the French capitalist state that practiced torture and terrorism on a mass scale during the 1954-62 Algerian war. We must remember that 1 million Algerians were killed during that dirty war.
It was the French state that killed in cold blood, using a rifle with telescopic sights, Eloi Machoro, the pro- indepen-dence leader in New Caledonia, in 1985.
It was the French secret service, carrying out orders from Paris, that sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in 1985, killing one person.
Using the terrorist attacks as a pretext, the "antiterrorist" prosecutors now have, through the adoption of the antiterrorist laws in 1986 and the Pasqua laws in 1993, a legal arsenal that allows them to take a series of extraordinary measures: car searches, identity checks, prolonged detention at police stations, raids and searches anywhere, anytime, special trials before professional magistrates, and so on.
Vigipirate plan unleashes army
The Vigipirate plan, previously used during the Persian
Gulf War in January 1991, consists of using the army in the
tasks of controling and carrying out surveillance of the
population.
Today almost 32,000 soldiers, riot police, regular cops, and
customs police are mobilized in this way. The plan includes
stepped-up surveillance of public establishments and schools
and prohibits gatherings in front of high schools.
The government is seeking to accustom people to seeing the army patrol the streets. In Strasbourg, the army has been used in working-class neighborhoods and the mass transit system for "maintaining order." After many protests from the population, the prefect had to rescind this measure.
A new antiterrorist bill, proposed by the government in October, would extend the powers of the police: nighttime searches will now be legal; the list of offenses considered acts of terrorism under the penal code is longer. For instance, abetting the entry or irregular stay by a foreigner, "in relation to an individual or collective undertaking aimed at seriously disturbing public order through intimidation or terror," now falls under the antiterrorist law, its extraordinary procedures, and its heavier sentences.
This new legislation furthermore contains provisions to "strengthen the repression of attacks committed against law enforcement officials, public authorities, and, in particular, members and officers of the national police, the customs department, and the prison system."
For example, a violent act against a cop causing permanent injury is to be punished with 20 years imprisonment, if carried out by several persons. All sorts of provocations and frame-ups are possible against workers who occupy factories and students who go on strike.
The government is preparing a full-scale attack against social security, pensions, and many other social gains. Curtailing workers' democratic rights and creating divisions between native-born and immigrant workers are part of this arsenal used by the capitalists against us.
French imperialism in Algeria
The French government is also openly using the present
attacks to take an active part in the civil war in Algeria.
French imperialism has considerable interests in that
country.
Algeria's payments on its FF50 billion [$10 billion] foreign debt continue to fill the coffers of several big capitalist banks, especially the French banks.
Recently, International Monetary Fund president Michel Camdessus congratulated the government of Algeria for implementing a draconian austerity plan and making regular interest payments on its foreign debt. And it is the Algerian people who foot the bill: privatizations, freeing of prices, massive unemployment.
To contain the resistance by Algerian workers and peasants to this policy, the Algerian government called off the elections in 1993, installed the army in power, and carried out three years of terrible repression against the entire population. Forty thousand men and women have been killed in Algeria in the last four years!
The French government is organizing roundups and deportations of members of the Algerian opposition milieu living in France. The big French banks are trying to prop up the military junta of Liamine Zéroual, whom they see as the best guarantor of their interests.
Stop the deportations!
For all these reasons the Communist Organizing Committee
affirms that all measures taken by the government, including
the Vigipirate plan, are directed against the workers - all
workers.
The main aims of this hysterical campaign by the government - echoed by all political parties of the right and left - are to restrict our democratic rights, intimidate French and immigrant workers, create scapegoats, and provide support to the military junta in Algeria.
That is why unions, student organizations, and antiracist and democratic organizations must demand:
Stop the anti-Arab, anti-Islamic campaign!
No to the deportation of undocumented workers!
Halt the "Vigipirate" plan!
Repeal the antiterrorist laws!