YOUTH in the Nicaraguan slurs are using Coca Cola bottles as Molotov cocktails against the Guards' automatic rifles.
A Panamanian minister of health has left his desk to alongside the Sandinistas.
President Somoza sweats in his fortified Duker sending airforce to bomb the workers' area a mile or two away across the lines of barbed wire Over 2,000 are dead, thousands more refugees look for somewhere to go, and people loot for food famine is officially recognised.
The decisive battle for the capital, Managua, and Nicaragua has begun.
Nicaragua (population two and a half million, accounting for 80 per cent of its export earnings) is run country than as a family business empire. Somoza's wealth is estimated at £500 million and this includes ownership of 15 per cent of the land, many industries, all the drugs and prostitution rache s72 earthquake and benefits the disaster relief funds.
Illiterate Meanwhile 50 per cent urban and 70 per cent of the rural population are illiterate, income is f187 a year, and 36 per cent of the population are unemployed.
latest reports outcome the uncertain. The Sandinistas control the northern towns, setback in the south when an attempt National fight and die future of agriculture less as a Guard (above) bomb workers gIcal fighting in Managua.
was a defeat for the masses, per capita the opposition HU. the final offensive or not. remains This but suriered a mass mobilisations in NICARAGUA's President Somoza, sweating in his bunker while his National to set up a 'liberated' zone adjacent to their bases in Costa Rica was thwarted higher. by Somoza. All eyes are now on the The last offensive in September key leaving Have 10,000 dead. But the speed with which has regrouped convinced the US that Somoza has to whether he survives the present time the Sandinistas better armed, more unified, and have larger forces in the field. The level of the cities, particularly in Managua, is In fact the self-organisation of the masses in the insurrection will be the military and political the Sandinistas politically prepared the masses for an uprising which will avoid the bloody defeat of September?
time, set piece battles between heroic groups of Sandinistas and the National Guard ended with losses for the guerrillas and massive reprisals against many workers' areas left defenceless once the guerrillas had been pushed out of the towns The Sandinistas express all the combativity of resistance to dictatorship, but also all the classic political weaknesses of a national liberation movement unclear abut the relation anti-imperialist and socialist tasks of It is mass resistance which has weakened the Sandinistas continue to allow bourgeois opposition National Patriotic Front to dictate its goals.
Radical of national unity, reform of the National Guard rather than its dissolution -are designed to maintain bourgeois and imperialist interests mining organisation.
the head of the Nicaraguan masse against Somoza requires the fullest being coordinated American Human Rights Committee (59a Church Street, factor. Middlesex TW7 meetings country with a feature-length film on the struggle. Get your organisation to sponsor a meeting and order leaflets and posters • For further background on the struggle in Nicaraoug. referred to articles by Fausto Amador (Vol. 17, Nos. 21 and 22).
By John Leadbetter AN ALL-POWERFUL president is the main proposal in the draft constitution drawn up by the Khomeini regime. The draft. suggests that the president should be elected by universal suffrage for a four-year term, and snowd be able to choose le orime minister.
dissolve parliament, and act as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
The aim is clearly to remove the regime as far as possible from any accountability to the masses. Thus the drait eoually tais to make ans mention of regional autonomy or the principle OHION Celerite But no piece of paper is going to settle the issue. Many of these being fought out in struggle — as in the Arab province of Khuzestan. Here nine Trotskyists of the HKS (Iranian section of the Fourth International] and three leaders of the local oil workers committee are being held in jail in the town of Ahwaz. Sedition charge The Trotskyists were seized by the local Imam Committee after they issued a statement against the Arab population of Khorramshahr. They now face execution on charges of sedition and incitement to insurrection.
This repression is the regime's response to the demands of the Arab people of Khuzestan i01 basic democratic rights. majority of the working people in the province. Yet they have been denied all national and in a region which -large chemical plants, and installations — produces more wealth than any other in Iran.
The Political Front of the Arab People and other nationalist groups demands at & rally in Khorramshahr in early May. These included: recognition of Arabic as the first language of the representatives in the constituent assemb v and on all local, regional and national councils; use of a percentage of oil revenues for development of Arab education and the Khuzestan area; and the incorporation of these demands into the constitution.
The local Imam Committees, which are made up of non-Arabs, campaign of daily organisations. Prime Madani, Khuzestan, censored all reports from the area and attempted demands of the Arab people by raising the spectre of 'separatism'.
Madani in particular boasted: "To-day raise the national fist of Iran. permit the separation of one centimetre of the land of Iran. Our fist will smash the heads of all those who try to separate any part of Iran.' Islam The 'national fist' of Iran cannot be wiekded indefinitely, however. differences between the religious and secular forces still remain unsolved.
for Iran questions are already goveralden troops long sentences and possibly They Iorn ine - with its extensive oil-fields, otber first raised their Arab people; confidence responded with attacks Arab Minister Bazargan and governor-general misrepresent the just We will The the scenes, Bazargan has attempted to rebuild the old army and state structures in order to regain the of both domestic capital. But his efforts are being undermined by the trials and executions of top army and civil service personnel, which have been authorised by Khomeini's 'revolútionary Islamic Council, as part of a plan to construct a new type of state, backed by & thoroughly purged army, with a cohesive Islamic ideology.
Failure continued failure to compromise on this question severely binders the ruling class from reintroducing order and stabilising the new regime.
surprisingly, dissatisfaction impatience is growing throughout the country. Unemployment stands at 3.5 million, nearly & third of the labour force. As yet, government have come to nothing.
foreign • In SUTIC week.
Organisation reach and divide promises to create projects to absorb the jobless factories, struggles around economic questions are beginning to re-appear. Workers are implementing the 40-hour week by simply not turning up for work one day each In Kurdestan, & high level of independent organisation still exists despite the attempted pogrom by government forces two months ago. There is a possibility that a Nationai Assembly of Kurdestan will soon be convened.
The HKS has consistently supported these and other struggles throughout Iran and is the only group effectively able to counter attempts ho dived lines. Tort is on mes religious and target for the crackdown the Khorneini Colates including embassies and consulates.
support already won.
the seamen's union, union at signed in many countries unionists, MPs, and party leaders.
many student unions. become a should be Minister, Tehran, A WORLDWIDE defence campaign has been launched by the Fourth International to free the nine HKS members, as well as the three jailed members of the Ahwaz oil workers' council. Actions are known of in more than a dozen pickets of A particular feature is the labour movement In Sweden, telegrams have been sent by the harbour workers' union and the metal workers' Volvo (Gothenburg). The printworkers' union congress in Switzerland sent a telegram. Telegrams or petitions have also been by leading trade In Britain those who have taken up the case include Amnesty International, the Tribune Group, the Iranian Women's Solidarity Group the Campaign for Solidarity with Iran, and sent to: Mehdi Bazargan, Iran; and to the Islamic Revolutionarv Counci. Tehran. Irar