Students fight Chilean unions call for help French racist

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During the last week university campuses in France have been turned into a battle ground against the racist laws recently introduced by the Giscard In mid-January, changes to existing: immigration laws, drawn up by Christian Bonnet (the Minister of the Interior) were enacted, giving effect that anyone considered to constitute a 'threat to public order' could be refused entry to French territory and that anyone arrested in France who was considered a public threat or whose papers were for any of a number of reasons "irregular' could be deported.

• Having gone this far the state, in the form of the Projet Stolern, is now tightening up organisationally on immigration by replacing the existing Residence Permits and Work Permits by a single card.

This card will have to be renewed every year and renewal can be refused on a number of grounds including insufficient or irregular income, ill health, more than six months unemployment, and threat to public order.

What has particularly sparked off the revolt on the campuses is another law, however, the Decrete Imbert of February which imposes stringent criteria on who can and cannot study in France.

Hunger strike

In its effects it is similar to the Tory increases in fees for overseas students in Britain.

Universities at Grenoble, Caen, Rennes, Lyon, Nice and Pans-Jussieu are particularly affected. At Lyon 29 students, most of them from overseas, are staging a hunger strike around the demand repeal of the Bonnet and Imbert laws', A move to coordinate these actions has now been made by students at Grenoble.

Coinciding, as they do, with strike action by lecturers assistants over job security, these actions have paralysed the universities concerned.

On top of the three laws above, the spring session of the French parliament has before it further proposed measures, the Projet Ornano, relating to the tenement blocks where the majority of migrant workers live.

wardens For years these have been a site of struggle, where the residents, organised into their own residents' committees, have been fighting for decent living conditions and security of tenure against. the large companies that own the tenements, and their racist wardens.

Ornano is seeking to strengthen the hand of the tenement owners, through legisration, against the residents" committees.

The Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the bureaucrats of the main trade unions of course offer no lead whatsoever in these struggles.

On the contrary, at every wist and turn they do all they can to derail the opposition, placing themselves firmly on the side of immigration controls.

The vital thing now is for these struggles to be linked through joint action committees and for the fight for supporting y strike action to be taken up in confrontation with the bureaucracy.

Open Letter from CODES (Chilean Committee for Trade Union Rights).

The CODES wishes to draw your attention to the beginnings of a fierce repression in the Chilean universities.

The students of the State Technical University (UTE)

have been holding mass meetings and electing their delegates in a democratic way over a considerable period.

Intimidation

The university authorities appointed by the dictatorship have refused to recognise student leaders of the student centres.

From the start these students have been the target of all kinds of intimidation by the 'security services' of the above university.

*Towards the end of October the student centres decided to organise a 'cultural week', The authorities forbade the holding of these sessions, denied them access to the university and threatened with expulsion all students who attended them.

*Despite these threats and intimidation, the attendance figure was close to 400, something which reflects the indomitable will of the students to seize their rights.

*The authorities reacted by suspending Lia Rojas and Ricardo Campos (two Student Centre leaders), for six months despite repeatedly declaring themselves in favour of discussion. 'Anonymous' pamphlets threatening another two student leaders have also been circulated.

*This situation has prompted CODES to call on the general public and all democratic and student organisations to solidarise with the struggle of the students for their legitimate rights and demand that the decree of November 19 which Pinochet arbitrarily suspended the two students be rescinded. The public should also be alert to the question of the safety of student leaders.

CODES-France Write to: Senor Eugenio Reyes Tastest, Rector de la Universidad Tecnica del Estado (UTE), Santiago, Chile.

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