CALL TO EXPOSE THE COMINFORM

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 December 1949, Page 6

CALL TO EXPOSE THE COMINFORM

LONDON, Dec. 21. A sub-commit-tee of the International Socialist Conference today called on all workers “to expose the Cominform fraud for what it is—a fifth column of imperialist tyranny.” The International Socialist Conference was formed after the war to foster relations among the Socialist parties of Europe. In a strongly-worded statement the sub-committee rejected "with contempt’ the Cominform’s claim to represent "peace, freedom and Socialism.” It described the resolution passed by the recent Cominform meeting in Hungary, calling for Communists to co-operate with Socialists, as “a sign that the Communist parties feel uneasy in their self-imposed isolation.” AGENCY OF SOVIET STATE The statement said: "The Cominform is not a democratic organisation of independent national parties; it is the agency of the Soviet State, which ail Communist parties are compelled to obey. Total subservience of the Communist parties to the Soviet State is most clearly shown by the purges within every Communist party of Eastern Europe. "In faked trials Russia has liquidated all those Communist leaders who have gained their experience in Spain and national resistance movements. Those liquidated have been replaced by local agents of the Soviet Union who spent the difficult war years in the hotels of Moscow. Even these agents may not long retain their usefulness.” The statement continued: "The Cominform claims that it stands for peace and national independence. In fact, it is openly fomenting war throughout one half of the world, and in all countries, except Russia, it treats national feeling as criminal heresy. At the very moment that the Western Cominform was shouting for peace in Budapest, its Far Eastern Bureau, meeting in Peking, under the camouflage of the World Federation of Trade Unions, called for civil war throughout Asia.” USE OF VIOLENCE The statement said that in China, Burma, Indonesia, Malaya and IndoChina the Communist parties had for years been using violence as their first weapon. Moreover, the Soviet Union, to which the Cominform accepted allegiance, had vetoed the organisation of peace through the United Nations. "Meanwhile, the Kremlin devotes more of its resources to military purposes than any other Government, the statement went on. "Russia's armed forces are still more than half their wartime size, and, in addition, Russia is gearing all her satellites into her own centralised war machine. The Soviet Union is fundamentally opposed to the independence of other nations and has used the Red Army to impose Communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe. "In private Communists admit these facts, but they justify the sacrifice of national freedom and democracy by claiming that the workers' lot is improved. This is the final fraud, for in all countries where Communism reigns the workers have lost freedom without gaining bread.—N.Z.P.A. Correspondent.