RETRACTS SLANDER OF TROTSKYISTS
De Waarheid, official daily newspaper of the Dutch Communist party, issued a retraction August. 21 in relation to a suit for slander. brought against it. The text of the retraction is as follows:
"On October 14, 1961, we published an article that included declarations made by one Otto Freitag at a press conference in Hast Berlin conoerning the. activities of Mr, Raptis-and Mr, Santen.
"Mr, Raptis and Mr. Santen sent us a letter informing us that they felt that their good name and honor were injured by this article, Thereupon they initiated a lawsuit against De Waarheid,
“Ny the letter addressed to our editors ~« which has been
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mentioned before in our paper -- S, Santen and M, Raptis state that they never had any links with Joop Zwart, They both strongly objected to the fact that our report could be interpreted as in~ ferring that 5. Santen as well as M, Raptis were in the service of the West German secret service, and collaborated with Joop Zwart, They also deny that Otto ‘Freitag was a member of the Fourth International,.
"after meticulous consideration, we deem it necessary to state that we regret having published the above-mentioned report,. A statement has been made in opposition to Otto Freitag'!s declara+ tion that seriously disputes part of its contents, If the report published in our issue of. October 14, 1961, could have been inter~ preted as including accusations involving links with Joop Zwart or the West German secret service, we wish to dissociate ourselves from the accusations denied by the persons concerned, A report coming from a foreign country should have been judged more critically than was the case, The fact that the foreign news editor in charge (who no longer works for us) failed: to do this was an error, Had criti-« cal judgment been used, parts of the above~mentioned report would not have been published. Counsel of S, Santen and M. Raptis was informed about our point of view in this, in response, S, Santen and M, Raptis withdrew their lawsuit : aginst De Waarheid. "
Despite the legal gobbledegook and the clumsy effort to evade the issue and to use a former: editor as a scapegoat, the retraction is important. It is one of the few cases up to now in which an official Communist party publication has retracted a typical Stalinist slander of. Trotskyist militants...
Miohel Raptis and Sal- Santen, internationally known Trotskyist leaders, members of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International, were arrested in 1960 by. the Dutch police, They were accused of helping in the liberation struggle of the Algerian FLN LFront de Libération Nationale] against French imperialism by allegedly forging French bank notes, buying and smuggling arms for the Algerian underground, and | manufaoturing false French identity papers. ta Ph,
The two revolutionists denied the first charge but admitted the other two, stating that it was their duty.to help the cause of an oppressed nation against imperialist exploitation and rule,
The world Trotskyist movement organized a defense campaign that attracted wide international’ support. Among the prominent figures who offered help were. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jorge Amado, and Bertrand Russell, In Ceylon more than sixty members of parliament expressed solidarity with the persecuted Trotskyist figures,
This big campaign as well as the wide publicity given the Amsterdam trial proved to be embarrassing to leaders of European Communist parties accustomed to throwing Stalinist slanders at
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Trotskyists, Some of them sought to maintain a-discreet silenoe. Others, however, resorted to their usual practice,. This was. espeoially true of the East German, the French and the Dutch Communist party leaders, The "press conference! held by a-certain Otto Preitag in East Berlin was part of this Stalinist way of responding to the challenge of the Amsterdam trial. Freitag accused Raptis and | Santen of having connections with the “West German secret service" through a notorious Dutch anti-Communist, Joop Zwart, and thus organizing a vast provocation against the FLN.
The slandars were oe: xposed in the world Trotskyist press. Rap-~ tis and Santen filed a suit for damages against De Waarheid, Caught with a flagrant lie in its pages, the Dutch Communist party publication finally decided to get out of the jam as best it could,