YOUTH PROTEST DIRTY WAR IN VIETNAM
FRANKFORT, Germany -- The Easter March Movement Against Atomic Warfare sponsored a demonstration March 27 against the dirty war in Vietnam. The police assigned streets for the parade away from the crowds . In addition the marchers were forbidden to take a position "one~sidedly either orally or in writing against one of the parties involved in the Vietnam conflict."
The sponsoring organization considered this order, quite correctly, to be a violation of the constitution since it would mean that only such demonstrations as conform to the foreign policy of the German government are permitted.
| It was expected, under the circumstances, that not more than a couple of hundred demonstrators would show up.
To everyone's surprise about one thousand assembled. Most of them were youth, students, young socialists and young. members of other organizations, The placards they brought along were directed quite one-sidedly against the makers of an inhuman war, against the
government that is using gas, napalm and phosphorous bombs and carry- . ing the war deep into North Vietnam,
_ After the "official" part of the demonstration, which: the police did not molest, a few hundred young people made their way to the U.S. consulate. The police, however, had anticipated this, They beat up many youth and arrested about seventeen demonstrators.
Thousands of leaflets protesting against the dirty war in Vietnam were distributed. They were generally received sympathetically. American officers in the U.S.Occupation Army, for whom Frankfort is a big base, demonstratively argued with demonstrators that the fighting in Vietnam is directed against the "common" Conmunist enemy.
On the other hand, Negro soldiers in the U.S. army smiled at the placard reading, "Get Out of. Vietnam; Take Care of Alabama!"
For the first time since the Occupation, the bourgeois press in Germany is voicing a quite critical attitude toward American policy in Vietnam. It is not easy to explain to the German people that they should defend "free elections" and "self-determination" in Eastern Germany while at the same time defending American policy against free elections and self-determination in Vietnam.
On the other hand, the government parties are disappointed over the Johnson administration letting them down in the reprisals they sought against Nasser for inviting Ulbricht, the head of the Kast German government to Cairo. Thus there is some spite in the criticisms of the bourgeois press over American policy in Vietnam.
The demonstration in Frankfort was but a first small step in popular understanding of the implications of American imperialist policy. The fact that the police who beat up and arrested the demonstrators are headed by a Social Democrat will also help to bring about a better understanding of the role of this party, if only among the politically conscious vanguard.