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Vol. 5, No. 36
Debray Explains Reasons for
Defeat of Che's Guerrilla Group
Report from the Underground:
| The Struggle Continues
in Bolivia
Stokely Carmichael
Vows to Carry On
Guevaras Cause
| Pravda Sets Line for
CP Attack on OLAS
— A New Turn in Peru?
REGIS DEBRAY
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Debray Explains Reasons for
efeat of Che's Guerrilla Group
Report from the Underground:
The Struggle Continu
in Bolivia
Stokely Carmichael
Vows to Carry On
Guevaras Cause
e@
Pravda Sets Line for
CP Attack on OLAS
A New Turn in Peru?
REGIS DEBRAY |
New York, N. Y. 10010. HP ie
REGIS DEBRAY
REGIS DEBRAY
SCHOENMAN DEPORTED FROM BOLIVIA AFTER ATTEMPT TO DEFEND DEBRAY
By Les Evans
Ralph Schoenman, a member of the Commission of Enquiry sent by the Bertrand Russell Foundation to present evidence in defense of Régis Debray, arrived in New York November 2 after being arrested and expelled from Bolivia.
Andrew St. George, La Paz correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, reported that Schoenman was "painstakingly interrogated by Bolivian civilian and military intelligence" during the six days he was held before being deported.
Schoenman was arrested October 27 in Camiri when he attempted to interrupt the military prosecutor's closing speech at Debray's trial. He was taken from the court by military police after reading the opening words of a 15-page statement outlining gross violations of the Bolivian constitution in Debray's military trial.
"After his removal from the court," St. George reports, "Mr. Schoenman was driven under armed escort to the town of Choreti. There he was put aboard a plane for La Paz. Two security police agents and a major in Bolivian intelligence flew with him to the capital, where he was transferred to a military police car.
"This drove him to army headquarters in the Miraflores district, where I found him last night."
Schoenman, who is Bertrand Russell's private secretary, asked to be returned to England, but U.S. consular officials intervened, declaring his U.S. passport valid only for return to the United States. They claimed that as an American citizen, his passport was invalidated by a trip to North Vietnam for the International War Crimes Tribunal.
The New York Times reported November 3 that "Mr. Schoenman said he had spent days before his departure from La Paz in a Bolivian military prison, ‘not in a cell, but in what might properly be called a cage.' He said he had often been threatened with death."
In the statement for the Commission of Enquiry, Schoenman had asked the nilitary tribunal to call the five commission members to the stand as material witnesses for the defense. "Our evidence," he declared, "will establish conclusively that Professor Debray is a victim of terrible injustice -- of torture, of totally unconstitutional and illegal detainment -and of an oppressive tyranny which fears the Bolivian people and serves the interests of the United States Government."
The other members of the commis-— sion are Robin Blackburn, Perry Anderson, Tariq Ali Khan and Lothar Menne.
The brief for the commission which Schoenman attempted to read quoted at length from the Bolivian constitution, which embodies extensive "guarantees" of civil and political liberty.
"The precise purpose of Professor Debray's interviews with the guerrillas," the statement points out, "namely the dissemination of information and opinion, is guaranteed by Articulo 7. A man who enters in his own name, with legal passport and formal approved application, a man who obtains journalistic credentials and comes to a country in the service of prominent publications and publishers performs a function similar to that performed daily in dozens of countries throughout the world and it requires more than political malice on the part of authority to refute this.
The constitution specifically prohibits "all species of torture, compulsion, exaction, or whatever form of violence, physical or moral..."
Yet Régis Debray "was beaten for 2 days after his arrest. He was tortured throughout this period and subsequently... He was told that he would be shot and was shown his published obituary accompanied by the information that he could now be killed easily as he was regarded as dead."
The commission denounced the refusal of the military court to allow Debray to speak in his own defense or to be represented by a lawyer of his own choosing. They ask:
"Under which clause is Professor Debray obliged to accept a military lawyer, appointed by a military tribunal?"
The Russell commission challenged the military tribunal to reveal what had been done to guerrillas captured by the Bolivian army:
"Who killed Jorge Vasquez," they demanded to know, "and on whose order? Vasquez, a great Bolivian...was wounded so gravely that any movement, let alone his so-called ‘escape' was patently absurd....Vasquez was killed because he was the only witness -- a witness in a position to destroy the false charges against Professor Debray....
"Where are the two prisoners captured in the end of July whose existence is denied by Commander in Chief General
Ovando and by the Commander of the Fourth Division, Colonel Reque Teran. The Russell Commission asks that these two prisoners be granted immediate habeas corpus and their constitutional rights and warns that a new crime is imminent in relation to these two young men whose lives are at stake. The evidence of their captivity exists."
The two prisoners were identified by Schoenman as Eusebio Tapia Arune, 18, of La Paz and Hugo Choque Silva, 18, captured in Chuayaco near Monteagudo July 23.
Schoenman further warned that "the life of Professor Debray is in grave and -899-
imminent jeopardy. Colonel Reque Teran stated to members of the Russell Commission that Régis Debray should be shot... and that if it is his decision it will be done, out of hand. Other army officers have repeated this threat."
In concluding the statement for the Commission of Enquiry, Schoenman castigated the military tribunal:
"There will be no justice in Bolivia as long as tribunals such as this sit in judgment. Justice will return to Bolivia when the Tribunal of the revolution sits in judgment over the tyranny..."
REGIS DEBRAY