THEGREAT freedom march from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to the Indian-held part of that country has been met with bullets and teargas by Pakistani troops.
But it has succeeded in focusing world attention on a forgotten conflict. And the size of the march has demonstrated the THANK support for the lammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (KLF.
For two years an 'intifadah' has been raging in the Indianeld part of Kashmir. In tha time 3000 people have been killed. Thousands of suspects have been tortured, and women systematically raped.
The victims are nearly always Muslims and the culprits invariably the Indian police and army. But the scale of the upris ing has shown the overwheim. ing support among the people for Kashmir's independence.
The roots of the conflict lie in the historical domination of the Kashmir Muslim masses by a Hindu aristocracy.
In 1947 when India gained independence and the partition with Pakistan took place, Kashmir's Hindu rulers opted to join india. sequently fought two wars over Kashmir. In 1948 P'akistan captured part of Kashmir. There a puppet government has been stalled, waiting for reunification and union with Pakistan.
While this 'government' has been throwing banquets, refugees fleeing Indian terror are thrown into camps with little food and no medÃcines.
Poorest state
Forty years after the tion, the situation in inow held Kashmir is no better. Kashmir is one of the poorest states in the Indian union. Tourism Provides 60 come, while the Indian goverits agriculture and industry. thus encouraging a dependent relationship.
But unification of Kashmir within Pakistan is no solution. Indian dominance replaced by that of the Punjabi ruling class. Kashmir would be thoroughly Islamised' leading to stepped-up oppression and the Hindu and Shites minorite Pakistan's shameful role is shows by its attitude to the march. Although pressured by popular opinion to support a one-day strike in solidarity with the march it did all it could to prevent it taking place. Near border Pakistani troops killed 16 people and wounded 350. Among the Kashmiri resis. tance there are a number of Muslim fundamentalist groups. Hezbollah has substanial support and other fun lamentalist groups have link: with the Afghan Mujahadeen, and are armed by Pakistan.
But the fundamentalists are asually in favour of Pakistan. It is the IKLF which until now at least put forward the project of an independent Kashmir. The Kashmiri people have the right to self-determination, , and their struggle deserves the active solidarity of all socialists. Roberto D'Aubuisson, charismatic leader of the ruling ARENA party in El Salvador, has died of cancer. D' Aubuisson was the leader of the infamous death squads, who personally ordered the murder in 1980 of Archbishop Romero, who angered the extreme right by his human rights campaignin Aubruisson was certainly charismatic. He was brilliantly portrayed as a debonair psychopath in Oliver Stone's movie Saltalor, handing over a silver bullet to a death squad killer chosen to assas. sinate Romero.
For his role in the death squads and his favourite dubbed "Major Blowtorch'. His torture skills were doubt. less picked up during his training at the US national police academy in Panama.
before his physical being politically sidelined. Adored by the San Salvador middle classes for his 'firm hand' with communists, he had become an embarrassmentto the finite States When ARENA won the 1959 election, it was Allredd Christiani, a man with a more moderate wage, wid became president. Under American pressure the ARENA government has been forced to accept negotia lions and a ceasefire with the FMIN rebels, a move which D Aubuisson was fonted ta go along with.
During the El Salvador war more than 80,000 people have been killed. Tens of thousands were murdered by death squads, hacked to death with machetes, tortured, mutilated, their bodies dumped on rubbish tips.
D'Aubuisson was the conductor of the death squad orchestra. A large part of the Salvador population who lost friends and relatives in his terror will see his terrible death from cancer as poetic No. 17 Feb. 29, 1992
- Letters PEOPLE-