Defend Eritrean liberation fighters!

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rihan tenone now haking the Ethiopian forces We print below the text of a statement issued by Nafi Kurdi, the representative of the Eritrean Popular Lib eration Front in France, a nd published in Le Monde on April 14.

The Ethiopian Derg has launched the invasion of Eritrea which has long been in preparation.

It will be without doubt one of the bloodiest operations Africa has experienced.

Even now, Ethiopian aircraft are bombing the villages around Asmara and troops, equipped with ultra-modern heavy armaments, are massing in the Tigre-Asmara-Massawa triangle.

Bloodbath

After the checking of the 1975 offensive-during which the military cooperation between the Popular Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Liberation Front (ELF) succeeded in liberating almost the whole of the country of Eritrea-the Derg tried again in 1976 and 1977 to create a bloodbath by throwing the 'red march' against the liberated zones.

The statement clearly reveals weaknesses in the political positions of the EPLF-in particular their critical failure to analyse feel Castro But our fighters, firmly linked with the masses. routed the tens of thousands of peasants and unemployed workers (mostly enlisted by force) which it threw into the frontline of its attack.

Today the EPLF holds 6,500 Ethiopians prisoner, important to publish for our readers this principled call for proletarian solidarity with the struggles of the Eritrean revolution against the differing attacks of both imperialism and and treats them in and fraternal way.

While clinging to the expansionist tradition of Haile Selassie and chasing the same dream as the Negus, the new head of the Empire (now rebaptised 'socialist republic') continues to try and justify his colonial policies by resurrecting the argument that "Eritrea does not exist' but that 'in this administrative area there are quite distinct nationalities to whom we will grant autonomy' Dismember If it cannot defeat our revolution, the Derg aims to dismember our country and to maintain access to the sea for Ethiopia by holding under its control at least part of the Eritrean coast, and in particular the port of Assab.

Denying the existence of all Eritrean national feeling, and of all the common history of our people (which in fact stretches back through several centuries), the Derg has mobilised its armed forces by air, sea and land, to commit the basest crime against our people-a crime which will also be an equally direct attack against the disoriented Ethiopian revolution, which the Derg claims to represent.

Since the military seized power in Addis Ababa, 600 Eritrean villages have been flattened and 25,000 civilians have been killed by Ethiopian bullets and napalm in Eritrea.

Massacre

The occupation have taken to every kind of aggression agains the inhabitants: they loot, massacre, disembowel pregnant women, they poison wells and watercourses; they destroy crops and livestock.

These criminal policies have driven more than 500,000 people to flee to our liberated zones.

Independent

After the decades of suffering and oppression, the only conceivable relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea are those between two independent states.

And it is only with this status that we will be able in the future to discuss with our neighbours all forms of regional regroupment for the greatest well-being of our Moreover. the Eritrean and Ethiopian peoples have common interest in peace and progress.

That is why the free and independent Eritrean nation would not be able to organise a blockade of Ethiopia, which has no outlet to the sea.

On March 16 of this year, the two Eritrean fronts concluded a unification agreement, and this will have great historical significance when it is put into practice on April 20.

One of the main provisions of the agreement is for the setting up of a 'supreme military command' with six members-three from each Legitimate This command alone will have the authority to enter into negotiations with the Derg on the terms that our revolution has long put forward-recognition of the legitimate right of the Eritrean people to self-determination and to independence; recognition of the EPLF and the ELF as the only representatives of our liberation struggle.

But the bloody regime of the Derg does not want to recognise the obvious.

By allying itself with the Soviet Soviet Union, Cuba and the Democratic Republic of the Yemen, it seeks to have done with the Eritreans and their revolution.

Some countries have supported the independence of Eritrea since the 1950s (when the UN, at the instigation of American imperialism, imposed the fictitious alliance binding Eritrea .to Ethiopia), and up to very recent times.

But, rather, than advise the Mengistu regime finally to independence, those countries sanctioned its enterprise of genocide by providing the Derg with a massive arsenal.

Still worse, 500 Soviet advisers oI 'technicians' 3,500 Cuban soldiers and some 100 South Yemenis are alread at hand in Asmara, alongside the besieged Ethiopian occupation forces.

This policy of direct intervention against our people is incompatible with the principal of proletarian internationalism.

Although it is possible to understand that American imperialism has no desire to be ousted from a region of such strategic importance and so cannot reconcile itself with the independence of Eritrea unless it is to be governed by reactionary forces in favour of maintaining US privileges; although it is equally possible to understand that the strategy of the USSR is that of a superpower, it is difficult to understand the behaviour of Cuba and the Democratic Yemen.

How is it conceivable that the Cuban leaders, who in February still declared that 'the Ethiopian head of state, Mengistu Haile Mariam, may not use Cuban aid to fight the Eritrean rebellion', and that 'a political solution' must be found, today send their soldiers to Asmara?

Are we witnessing a fundamental revision of their principles, or is it simply a case of a 'mistake?

If we take into account the very real revolutionary possibilities which exist in Ethiopia, their development cannot be fostered in any way by the genocide of our people, who are struggling for their national liberation.

No revolutionary proclar.ation can make us forget the main point: 'One peope which oppresses another carnot itself be free' Faced with the war c: aggression and exterminatio=.. our people's only perspective for national liberation is ther to fight on with guns in thes hands until the final victory We call on the peoples c: the whole world, the p:=gressive and democrat:: forces, to take up ther responsibilities now the! are faced with this genocide iha: lies before the Eritreac people.

We call on them to make the Eritreans' right sei:determination and indeçendence prevail, and to our people th : huz 25:22support whic