STATEMENT BY MR. ROMESH CHINDRA, SECRETARY-GENERAL OF WORLD PEACE COUNCIL, BEFORE THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON APARTHEID, SEPTEMBER 10, 1971 ¹

(Extract)

… From its very birth, twenty-two years ago, the World Peace Council has placed the question of the eradication of racial discrimination at the top of its aims and objectives. It has condemned racialism and apartheid and initiated popular action to isolate the hated Pretoria regime. From its foundation, the World Peace Council has been proud to count amongst its most distinguished members, the outstanding leaders of the South African people's struggle against apartheid. Permit me to mention here, the revered name of the late Chief Albert Lutuli, President-General of the African National Congress of South Africa, whom the World Peace Council is proud to count amongst its founders. Today too, in the highest leadership, the Presidential Committee of the World Peace Council, you will find Mr. Oliver Tambo, who succeeded the late Chief Lutuli as acting President of the African National Congress, the mighty liberation movement of the South African people. The topmost leaders of the liberation movements of southern Africa - South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau are members of the World Peace Council's leadership. Their participation guarantees that the Council can take ever more active and effective steps in solidarity with the people fighting against racialist and colonialist regimes.

Collaborators with Apartheid

This year, Mr. Chairman, has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination. The World Peace Council has marked this year through several activities, which I believe are among the most effective observances of the year. The fact, however, must be faced that certain Powers and forces are celebrating the International Year by intensifying their support to the apartheid regime of South Africa. The supply of arms by the British Government to South Africa rightly roused world-wide protest, in the organization of which, I am happy to report, the World Peace Council played a significant part.

But this supply of arms by Britain is only the most flagrant and open indication of a far more widespread violation of United Nations resolutions and decisions calling for the boycott of the South African regime and other racist and colonialist regimes. Several North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries must be arraigned, together with Britain, as suppliers of military, economic and financial assistance to the South African regime. Your Committee is well aware of this criminal activity by certain Powers and has drawn repeated attention to it. Early this year the World Peace Council took part in a special study group called by the Organization of African Unity to collect further evidence of this aid to the racialist and colonialist regimes, without which these regimes could not continue to repress African peoples whom they hold in bondage. Results of this study arc startling. Far from ending military, economic and other assistance, several countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in particular are expanding their collusion with Pretoria, Salisbury and Lisbon. I must mention in particular, France, United States of America and the German Federal Republic.

The World Peace Council has called upon all its national organizations in all the countries whose Governments are collaborating with Pretoria, to intensify their demands that their Governments cease forthwith this violation of United Nations decisions, this criminal activity which actually seeks to perpetuate colonialism and racialism. I may also mention here that the World Peace Council has condemned, very vigorously, the efforts which have been made to make use of the existence of the racist and apartheid regime in Pretoria to create division in Africa with a view to helping them in the project for the reconquest of Africa. It has given its full support to the condemnation of these efforts by the Organization of African Unity and it endorses in full the clear-cut position taken by the Organization of African Unity against the so-called schemes of dialogue with the Pretoria regime which, in our opinion, .are totally contrary to the decisions of the United Nations, totally contrary to the interests of the independent African countries and a blow against the liberation movement in southern Africa as a whole.

Support for liberation movements

The record of the World Peace Council, and of many national committees in well over 100 countries of the world, in regard to this question of apartheid has been continuous and effective. I would mention at this moment only two particular conferences which were organized by the World Peace Council in close collaboration with the Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Organization - the conference in support of the liberation movements in southern Africa held in Khartoum in 1969 and the international conference in solidarity with the liberation movements of the Portuguese colonies, held in Rome in 1970.

Our main effort at this time, apart from that of increasing the material and moral support for the liberation movements, is along the following directions. First of all, we have intensified the campaign for the recognition by Governments and international bodies of the national liberation movements as the sole representatives of their people and for the application of the clauses of the Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, on the treatment of war prisoners, to imprisoned national liberation fighters. Another direction of our activity has assumed great importance for all peoples struggling for their liberation and for all independent countries in Africa and, indeed, in other parts of the world. This is the awakening and mobilizing of world opinion on the necessity of an international convention aimed at prohibiting the recruitment, training, equipping and employment of mercenaries and denying the right of entry to such mercenaries and all equipment intended for them.

Co-operation with OAU

We are also, in collaboration with the OAU, preparing a "white book" which would give in detail the dark story, the evil story, of the collusion between the imperialist Powers and South Africa. We hope that it will be published soon.

We are also collaborating at this time in the preparation of a conference on racism and colonialism for which the initiative has been taken by the OAU and which is to be held next year in Oslo, Norway. Just before we came here, we had the privilege of receiving at our Headquarters in Helsinki the Assistant Secretary-General of the OAU, Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun, who was able to give us more detailed information on the preparatory work for this extremely important conference. We are sure that your Committee, and the United Nations as a whole, will give this important conference not only their support but the greatest attention. It can be an important landmark in the building of invincible public opinion against the apartheid regime. …