BY JACK WILLEY
CAIRO, Egypt - Representatives of 33 organizations from 29 countries took part in meetings here March 5-8 to assess the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students that took place in Cuba last summer and to discuss the next steps in building an anti-imperialist youth movement.

"This festival will pass into history as a contribution of Cuba to the reshaping of the international progressive and revolutionary movement after the collapse of the regimes in the Eastern European countries" at the opening of the 1990s, said Sergio Vigoa, head of international relations for the Union of Young Communists (UJC) of Cuba. Along with Leyde Rodríguez Hernández, Vigoa represented the UJC at the gathering.

More than 13,000 delegates from 133 countries, including representatives of 2,000 youth organizations from around the globe, took part in the July 28-August 5 world youth gathering. They exchanged experiences and discussed organizing common actions upon their return against unemployment, racism, immigrant- bashing, and other reactionary anti-youth and anti-working-class manifestations of the social relations spawned by capitalism. They discussed increasing support for national liberation struggles - from Ireland to Palestine, from Western Sahara to Quebec, from Cuba's intransigent refusal to relinquish its sovereignty to Korea's battle for unification.

These anti-imperialist struggles and the response by young people to Washington's preparations to launch a war against Iraq occupied much of the discussion at the opening of the gathering in Cairo.

The event here began with a two-day meeting of the General Council of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), the main international organization that sponsored the youth festival. It was followed by an informal meeting to evaluate the festival in which all youth groups that had taken part in the festival were invited to participate.

In addition to the Progressive Youth Union of Egypt, which hosted the gathering, representatives to the WFDY General Council meeting from Africa included the SWAPO Party Youth League of Namibia, Sudanese Youth Union, and Democratic Youth and Socialist Youth of Morocco.

In addition to the UJC, the October 8 Revolutionary Youth of Brazil and Young Socialists in the United States took part from the Americas. Participation from Asia and the Middle East included the General Union of Palestinian Students, youth of the Tudeh party of Iran, Iraqi Democratic Youth Federation, Young Communist League of Israel, Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Vietnam, Socialist Youth League and Democratic Youth League of Japan, and Kim Il Sung Socialist Working Youth League of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

Delegates from Europe included those representing youth groups affiliated with Communist Parties of France, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Russia; Young Socialists in the United Kingdom; and Socialist Youth Union of Bulgaria.

In addition to WFDY affiliates, four other organizations that had joined in organizing youth from their respective countries to attend the Havana youth festival also sent representatives to the gathering to evaluate the festival that followed the General Council meeting. These were youth of the Workers Party of Belgium, Young Socialists in Canada, youth of the Irish republican Sinn Fein, and Young Socialists in Sweden.

Debate on Iraq
General political discussion and debate took place under two points on the agenda of the WFDY leadership meeting. One was the report evaluating the work of WFDY since the last General Council meeting in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1996. It was presented by Olivier Meier of the Movement of Communist Youth of France. The MJCF was elected to the presidency of the youth federation at WFDY's last General Assembly.

The second general discussion took place under a point on WFDY's evaluation of the youth festival.

In his report, Meier said that "the Iraqi people are suffering both because of human rights violations of the Saddam Hussein regime and of the United Nations embargo." This was echoed by the representative of the Iraqi Democratic Youth Federation and appeared to have the support of a majority of people in the room. Meier's report mentioned the word "imperialism" only in passing and said that "in the Israel-Palestine conflict, a visit by WFDY's president gave rise to meetings with various political and youth forces involved from both sides in the struggle for peace and recognition of the Palestinian people's rights."

A few delegates joined these issues. One of the representatives of the General Union of Palestinian Students, for example, said young fighters can't talk about the "Israeli-Palestinian" conflict and "solidarity with all those struggling on both sides," but must clearly support the Palestinian struggle for a homeland.

Argiris Malapanis, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party who was part of the Young Socialists delegation from the United States, said that condemning "human rights violations of the Hussein regime" and the UN sanctions against Iraq as in some way equivalent plays into the hands of imperialism. Washington, he pointed out, is the organizing center of assaults on the people of Iraq. U.S. imperialism not only wants to "teach" the Iraqi people a "lesson" - what the "rules" are, to quote Clinton's secretary of state. Their actions also form part of the tightening imperialist encirclement of the former Soviet Union, as does NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, the occupation of Yugoslavia under the "rules" of the Dayton accord, and the U.S. rulers' drive to dominate the oil-rich Caspian Sea region and Silk Road that make up Russia's broad southern flank. All these moves are creating explosive contradictions.

These facts alone, Malapanis said, would make it urgent to organize young people to fight for all U.S. and other imperialist troops, warships, and bombers to get out of the Mideast now and for an end to NATO military intervention in the Balkans.

Anne Howie from the Young Socialists in the United Kingdom stressed that revolutionary-minded youth in the imperialist countries must begin, first and foremost, from taking on the ruling class in the countries in which they live - which in the case of the United Kingdom means focusing the fire on British imperialism. She pointed to the importance of the Irish struggle against British occupation of the six counties. Moreover, Howie said, it was important to remember that London was the first power to use chemical weapons against the Kurds in Iraq earlier this century.

A number of delegates spoke about actions in their countries - in Europe, North America, North Africa, and the Middle East - against the recent U.S.-British military buildup in the Arab-Persian Gulf.

Assessment of festival in Cuba
Rasheed Ali of the Sudanese Youth Union presented a written evaluation of last year's world youth festival to the General Council meeting on behalf of WFDY's Coordinating Council. The document was approved at the end of the council meeting by consensus after several amendments. It described the success of the event as the revitalization of the "festival movement" as well as the traditions of the previous 13. The festival, the document read, "was a great success and a big achievement for WFDY as well as for the progressive movement all over the world."

During the discussion, several delegates said they thought the Havana festival had registered a departure from the organizing methods of previous festivals, and they considered this a problem. The representative of the Free German Youth (FDJ) of former eastern Germany said in his remarks, as well as in a written statement distributed at the meeting, that the "14th festival was characterized by chaos that has never occurred before in the international youth movement in the last 50 years. The vast majority of delegates were not chosen by a selection procedure as was done in the previous 13 festivals. Many delegates seemed to be political tourists rather than representatives of organizations of the youth."

In Germany three committees organized people to go to the festival, and no one organization controlled who attended. Two coalitions organized several hundred people to go from the United States. In Canada, a group based in Montreal sent a contingent from Quebec, dominated by supporters of Quebec independence. This was organized in addition to the other delegation from Canada. And in Ireland, where the National Preparatory Committee headed by the Workers Party objected to the participation of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican group organized its own separate delegation.

Sergio Vigoa of the UJC said that the fact that no one group from any country could veto who would take part in the festival reflected its nonexclusionary character, one of its great strengths. "It was also the first self-financed world youth festival held," Vigoa added, "in a unipolar world and a socialist country subjected to a cruel U.S. blockade."

Maureen Hinda of the SWAPO Party Youth League of Namibia and several other delegates made similar points.

"This was a new kind of festival that should be repeated in the future," said Nguyen Hai Anh of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Vietnam.

A number of these youth leaders said that without the initiative of the UJC and the Cuban Communist Party to host the gathering in Cuba, and to organize for delegates to stay with Cuban families, this kind of festival could not have happened.

Most participants reported that dozens of youth who went to the international youth gathering subsequently got involved in political activities in their countries for the first time - from defense of the Cuban revolution to mobilizations against unemployment to activities demanding the reunification of Korea.

Workshop discussion
The Informal Meeting to Evaluate the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students, which followed the WFDY General Council meeting, focused for the most part on proposals for where to hold the next international youth festival. Because relatively few organizations not already affiliated to WFDY had been organized to participate in this gathering, the discussion was not as rich as it could have been, and the session ended a half day ahead of schedule.

Afterwards, however, political discussion continued in three workshops. The workshop on Korea issued a resolution in WFDY's name demanding withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Korea and supporting the Korean people's struggle for reunification.

A second workshop focused on the Sudan. The third, entitled "Youth against Fundamentalism," was addressed by a representative of the Sudanese Youth Union and Refat Said, general secretary of the Progressive Party of Egypt.

In the eyes of many Arab youth, Said stated, the crumbling of the Soviet Union means that socialism has failed. He compared Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the region to the Nazis in Europe. During the discussion, a representative of the MJCF in France labeled the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria as fascist and called on the government of France and other European countries to ban organizations that raise funds for groups such as the FIS.

Malapanis from the United States pointed to how the capitalist politicians and big-business media in the United States and other imperialist countries try to make "Islamic fundamentalism" synonymous with "terrorism" and use it to justify attacks on democratic rights of working people, especially Arabs. Banning such groups and their supporters only plays into their hands and restricts the space youth and all working people have to organize.

Malapanis pointed to the example of the Bolsheviks in the early years of the Russian Revolution and how they championed the rights of the Muslim peoples of the East, without retreating one inch from a historical materialist understanding of religious institutions and their hierarchies as props of class oppression.

Mun Chol from the Korean delegation said that it wasn't socialism that had failed but opportunism, revisionism, and vulgar Marxism. An uncompromising fight against imperialism and for socialism is the alternative that must be presented to young people the world over, he insisted.

Next world youth festival
Toward the beginning of the discussion earlier in the day at the Informal Meeting to Evaluate the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students, Valeri Azestov of the youth section of the Russian Communist Party raised the proposal that his organization host the 15th festival in Moscow. He said the National Preparatory Committee organized for the 14th festival in Russia was broad and is still in place, ready to begin working on the next one. Among the organizations he listed as affiliated to the committee is the youth of the Liberal Democratic party - the party of ultrarightist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, which many people in the room considered an unwelcome surprise. Among the reasons Azestov gave for hosting the next festival in Russia is that it would help his party win more seats in parliament "where 50 percent of the seats are now controlled by left-wing parties." The representative of the Democratic National Youth Federation of Nepal proposed that the next festival be held in Katmandu, Nepal, to coincide with the turn of the Western millennium. The Communist Party there recently won parliamentary elections with a large majority.

Maureen Hinda of the SWAPO Party Youth League (SYL) talked about the anti-imperialist tribunal at the festival in Cuba as one of the highlights of that youth gathering. She said U.S. imperialism above all, but also to a lesser degree French, British, and Portuguese imperialism, are intensifying the exploitation of peoples of the Third World today, especially in Africa, by penetrating these countries deeper under the guise of "development." She pointed to the importance of the aid of Cuban volunteers in winning Namibian independence and in aiding other national liberation struggles in the region.

Hinda urged that the next youth festival be held in Africa, where none of the previous WFDY-initiated festivals has ever been held. The SYL is proposing Namibia, she said, and SWAPO, the governing party in Namibia, has already expressed support for this proposal. The UJC and a number of other WFDY affiliates are collaborating with the SYL to help make this possible, she added.

A few participants spoke in favor of the Namibia initiative. No one commented on the other two proposals. At the conclusion of the meeting, WFDY president Olivier Meier said further consultations around the world will be needed before a final decision is made. This will be taken up at the next WFDY General Assembly meeting - the highest decision- making body of the federation with representatives of all member groups. The General Council decided to schedule the next WFDY General Assembly meeting for January 28-31, 1999, in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Jack Willey, the organizer of the National Executive Committee of the Young Socialists in the United States, headed the YS delegation from the U.S. to the Cairo gathering.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home