(U) GRENADA: Soviet Front Organizations
Charle Hill to Donald Gregg, et al re Inter-Agency Group on Eastern Caribbean Regional Security
March 21, 1983 – BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH • ASSESSMENTS AND RESEARCH
Summary
Since the March 1979 revolution which brought the New Jewel Movement to power in Grenada, five well-known international front organizations have established local affiliates on the island. All five—the World Peace Council (WPC), the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ), the International Union of Students (IUS), the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), and the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)—have solid historical records of affiliation with and explicit support for Soviet foreign political positions and objectives. The latter four maintain well-established ties with the WPC leadership.
How active and effective these organizations have been on the island is uncertain—virtually the only source of such information is the official publications of the fronts themselves. In recent years the fronts have staged at least three gatherings in St. George’s—sponsored by the IUS (April 1980), the WPC (November 1981), and the IOJ (April 1982). Little else is known of their activities.
Nevertheless, the steady evolution of the front affiliates since 1979 suggests that Moscow hopes to use its Grenada foothold for future front activities in the Caribbean. The island’s proximity to Cuba no doubt enhances its attractiveness to the Soviets. In the meantime, the five fronts give the Bishop regime “international” standing while they promote a favorable Soviet image in the Caribbean and influence public opinion against the US. At the same time, Grenada’s association with the fronts tends to undermine Bishop’s claim to an independent, nonaligned foreign policy.
World Peace Council
The Grenada Peace Council (GPC) was established as a WPC affiliate on May 20, 1982. According to press reports, its executive body is composed of approximately 12 members with the Grenada Electric Company manager as the president. Four standing subcommittees are:
- National Liberation and International Solidarity
- Social Progress and Human Rights
- Education, Research, and Culture
- Fund Raising
The WPC, currently headquartered in Helsinki, claims to have at least 135 affiliates worldwide. Most of these “peace committees” are controlled by local communist parties but may include in their ranks prominent noncommunist philosophers, academics, physicians, lawyers, and other political and humanitarian figures sympathetic to WPC goals. Soviet officials in the mid-1970s reportedly considered that the WPC had a total of more than 400 million supporters.
The aims of the WPC, as adopted at its triennial World Assembly in Sofia in 1980 (and expected to be readopted this June in Prague), are:
- Prohibition of all weapons of mass destruction and ending of the arms race;
- Abolition of foreign military bases;
- General, simultaneous, and controlled disarmament;
- Elimination of all forms of colonialism and racial discrimination;
- Respect for the right of peoples to sovereignty and independence, essential for the establishment of peace;
- Respect for the territorial integrity of states;
- Noninterference in the internal affairs of nations;
- Establishment of mutually beneficial trade and cultural relations based on friendship and mutual respect;
- Peaceful coexistence between states with different political systems; and
- Replacement of the policy of force with that of negotiation for settlement of differences between nations.
GPC membership is open to all Grenadian citizens as well as all organizations in Grenada that subscribe to world peace movement principles and the GPC’s objectives. According to General Secretary Victor Husbands, GPC objectives in essence are to cooperate with and uphold the principles and programs of the WPC.
Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, speaking at the May 20 ceremony, said that the GPC’s main task was to “explain why the quest of peace is so important to Grenada.” Observing that 20 million Soviet citizens were killed during World War II, Bishop declared that Grenadian “work over the next few years is to try to get our people on the side of peace and against war.”
Earlier, in November 1981, an International Solidarity Conference, organized by the USSR and Cuba and attended by a WPC delegation, was held in St. George’s. The conference attacked US policies around the globe and praised the USSR’s. According to the USSR’s international weekly New Times (No. 49, 1981), Bishop proposed that the Caribbean be made a zone of peace “without colonialism and neo-colonialism in any form, without foreign military bases and nuclear weapons.” He called for a ban on “any aggressive military exercises” there and asserted that Grenada would never renounce the principles of its revolution or its friendship with Cuba and other socialist countries in order to “curry favor” with Washington.
On January 19, 1983, the GPC unexpectedly issued a statement condemning the imprisonment of 160 members of the Turkish Peace Committee, another WPC affiliate. The GPC called their incarceration a “serious threat” to the peace movement, described the actions of the Turkish authorities as “malicious, wicked and unjustifiable,” and alleged that the activists were subjected to “all forms of inhumane treatment.”
Significantly, neither the WPC nor its Soviet affiliate, the Committee for the Defense of Peace, has publicly raised this issue since the Turkish activists were arrested in February 1982. The Soviets clearly have given priority to their relationship with Ankara and are using such obscure fronts as the GPC to do hatchet jobs for them.
¹/ For additional information on the WPC, see INR Report 157-AR, “World Peace Council Reenters the Lists” (SECRET/NOFORN/ NOCONTRACT/ORCON), June 11, 1981.
International Organization of Journalists
The IOJ, a Prague-based front with worldwide affiliates and 150,000 members, held its Ninth Congress October 19-22, 1981, in Moscow. There it admitted to membership the Media Workers Association of Free Grenada (MWAFG), believed to be the IOJ’s Grenadian affiliate.
IOJ goals are similar to those of the WPC. According to Pravda (October 23, 1981), the IOJ’s chief aim is to “bring truth to the masses and promote in every possible way united action by supporters of peace and broader cooperation and strengthening friendship among peoples.” It mainly concerns itself with cultivating journalists in the developing world by providing equipment or financing courses at schools of journalism in communist countries.
The IOJ actively opposes the “hegemony” of the United States and other capitalist countries over the international information flow and demands an end to the arms race and the elimination of imperialist domination of developing countries.
A First Conference of Journalists from the Caribbean Area was held April 17-20, 1982, in St. George’s, according to the May 1982 issue of the IOJ Newsletter. Fifty-six journalists attended from 20 Latin American countries. Bishop, speaking at the opening, stressed the need to circulate truthful information throughout the world and to resist the “imperialist mass communications mafia.” He castigated the “aggressive” campaign against Cuba, Grenada, and Nicaragua “unleashed by the imperialist communications media” and the flood of “war-like” information disseminated by the US.
The plenary agenda covered such topics as:
- The information flow to the Caribbean and Latin America;
- The social, economic, and political situation affecting journalists in the Caribbean;
- The building of national organizations of journalists throughout the region.
General Secretary Jiri Kubka spoke on the “Role of Journalists in the Defense of Peace” and criticized imperialism’s journalistic practices. The conference’s final declaration condemned alleged imperialist distortions of facts about Grenada’s revolution and attacked what it termed a systematic campaign of lies and misinformation against all progressive forces in the Caribbean.
The IOJ Newsletter in August 1982 carried an interview with Don Rojas, MWAFG vice-president and press secretary for Bishop. Earlier that month Rojas had traveled to IOJ headquarters in Prague, as well as to the USSR, East Germany, and Bulgaria. Rojas stated that the purpose of the trip was to solicit IOJ support for establishment of a regional office in St. George’s; he expressed hope that “this office [would] soon become a reality.” Rojas said he had discussed IOJ training of young Grenadian journalist cadres; and he had proposed a “Truth in Grenada” project that would bring several influential West European journalists to the island to “report truthfully” about events there.
Rojas also revealed that he had concluded an agreement in the Soviet Union for the establishment in Grenada, “very soon,” of an Intersputnik earth ground station. (Such a station would provide Grenada with direct telecommunications with the USSR and all of Eastern Europe.) Other agreements signed, according to Rojas, would enable Grenada to receive Soviet films, documentaries, and TASS news service on a daily basis.
On January 25, 1983, Radio Free Grenada reported that four local media outlets on the island soon would be receiving TASS English-language news service. The report stated that equipment to relay TASS news was being installed at the Ministry of Information, presumably by Soviet technicians.
International Union of Students
By the time of the 13th IUS Congress, November 18-24, 1980, in East Berlin, the National Student Council of Grenada had been admitted as an IUS member.
The IUS, headquartered in Prague, claims to have 117 affiliates; the bulk of its membership, claimed to be more than 10 million, comes from communist countries. The IUS works particularly closely with the WFDY (below); the IUS president is also a member of the WPC’s Presidential Committee (as is the IOJ General Secretary).
IUS activities and public statements consistently promote Soviet foreign policy objectives. The IUS has condemned Western, but not Soviet, nuclear testing; it campaigns against NATO, but not against the Warsaw Pact; it protests alleged violations of students’ rights in noncommunist countries, but ignores similar allegations in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe.
In Latin America the IUS, like other international fronts, concentrates on strengthening “anti-imperialist” forces. Since the fall of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, the IUS has organized or participated in a variety of activities directed against the Pinochet regime. The IUS has a permanent campaign titled: “Every University a Center of Solidarity With Chile.” Together with the British National Union of Students, the IUS in 1975 organized a World Student Seminar of Solidarity with Chile to launch the program from London.
IUS interest in the Caribbean and Latin America has increased in recent years, with special focus on the “anti-imperialist struggles” of Puerto Rico, Panama, and El Salvador. In that context it helped to organize various student meetings in Costa Rica and Panama in 1976, in Jamaica in 1978, and in Grenada in 1980.
IUS General Secretary Srinivasan Kunalan in 1981 summed up the main tasks facing the IUS in the 1980s: it must pay “great attention to the struggle for peace, detente and disarmament”; this struggle cannot be separated from that being waged “for national independence, democracy and social progress, particularly that waged by youth and students in Third World countries.”
Kunalan also specified four main areas of cooperation between the IUS and the WFDY:
- Peace, detente, and disarmament;
- International solidarity with the peoples of southern Africa, Palestine, and El Salvador and solidarity with all peoples “suffering from imperialist plots and maneuvers”;
- Wider cooperation with other youth and student organizations “of different orientations and convictions”;
- Activities related to establishment of a new international economic order.
World Federation of Democratic Youth
The Youth of the New Jewel Movement (YNJM) apparently was admitted as a WFDY affiliate in February 1980. At the WFDY’s 11th World Youth Assembly in Prague in June 1982, the YNJM was placed on the WFDY’s Executive Committee.
The WFDY, headquartered in Budapest, maintains strong links with the WPC (both its President and General Secretary sit on the WPC Presidential Committee). It claims more than 150 million members from 123 countries. Most WFDY members are from communist countries; affiliated groups from noncommunist countries generally are connected with local communist parties.
WFDY activities in Latin America traditionally have sought to support and lend credibility to opposition forces. Following Allende’s 1973 overthrow, Chile for a time dominated the WFDY’s agenda; since then, the organization has campaigned vigorously against the “crimes” of the Chilean junta and for the release of political prisoners. The WFDY also has organized meetings and seminars in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, and Nicaragua on such subjects as US multinational firms, the struggle against fascist regimes and violations of human rights, the new international economic order, and anti-imperialism.
Almost 800 delegates from more than 130 countries attended last year’s WFDY 11th General Assembly in Prague. Final documents called for stepping up the struggle for peace, disarmament, and social progress and against imperialism. One resolution called on all youth organizations to unite against the threat of nuclear war. Another, titled “The 1980s – A Time for Action,” enshrined the Federation’s political action program for the decade. Other resolutions condemned Britain’s action in the Falkland Islands and the support extended by the US to British “colonial” policy.
The British Young Communist League (a WFDY affiliate) expressed concern over some of the assembly’s conclusions. Pointing out that it was opposed to martial law in Poland and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the League criticized the manner in which the Executive Committee’s report dealt with “peace.” It did not accept the thesis that the US and its allies were the exclusive source of world tension. It expressed its wish that the WFDY take into account different points of view on particular issues.
Women’s International Democratic Federation
The National Women’s Organization of the New Jewel Movement was admitted to the WIDF at the latter’s Eighth Congress, October 14-15, 1981, in Prague.
The WIDF, with headquarters in East Berlin, now claims a membership of more than 200 million in 131 affiliated organizations in 116 countries; no noncommunist women’s organizations are members. WIDF goals are to:
“…unite women regardless of race, nationality, religion and political opinion, so that they may win and defend their rights as citizens, mothers, and workers, protect children and ensure peace, democracy and national independence, establish friendship and solidarity.”
WIDF activities invariably are meshed with campaigns inspired by the Soviet Union and by other front organizations. Opposition to Soviet domination led the Italian affiliate, the Union of Italian Women, to withdraw from full membership in 1964.
Throughout the 1970s, the WIDF organized meetings in support of Soviet peace and disarmament policies in Lima, Havana, Sofia, Panama, Conakry, New Delhi, Luanda, Vienna, Budapest, Helsinki, Warsaw, Nicosia, Aden, and New York. The WIDF’s 1976-80 action program included a series of international meetings on women’s role in the struggle against Zionism, apartheid, and fascism as well as regional meetings on such topics as the struggle for peace and independence in Asia, the role of women and their organizations in defending rights and opposing pillage by the multinational companies in Latin America, and “ideological penetration by imperialism” with the aid of mass media in Europe.
Signs of dissension within the WIDF were evident at the WIDF’s World Congress of Women, October 8-14, 1981, in Prague. According to the Belgrade weekly NIN, representatives of women’s organizations who were likely to blame the Warsaw Pact as well as NATO for strained international relations were prevented from addressing the congress. WIDF president Freda Brown (currently a WPC vice-president) denounced such views at the start of the gathering, asserting that the notion of equal guilt and responsibility was “the falsehood of the century.”
According to NIN, the Japanese delegate was forcibly ejected from the hall after she stated she did not agree with the WIDF’s condemnation of China or its official view on Afghanistan and Cambodia. Other dissident representatives (from Algeria, France, Iraq, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Romania, and Yugoslavia) then attempted to take the floor, but the microphones were switched off and the congress adjourned.
Prepared by: David Hertzberg (632-9120)
Approved by: Martha Mautner (632-9536)