Kadar's kingdom

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Communist Party, was installed by Soviet troops There are thirteen joint ventures with foreign after they crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956. capitalist companies in Hungary. By comparison After a long period of repression, Kadar's government began moves to 'liberalise' the Hungarian A high-up official explained in 1976: "We are economy in the late '60s and 1970s. They began to aware that an epoch-making rearrangement in the use free-market capitalist mechanisms - within a international division of labour is taking place. We framework of state control - to stimulate its econ- must find our place in this new international economy. Simultaneously they opened the economy up omic order" - that is, seek a reintegrațion, albeit a partial one, into the capitalist world economy. In Agriculture is the most important part of the Hungarian economy. Hungary exports 30% more Hungary now imports slightly more from the food than it consumes, and agriculture accounts for developed capitalist countries than from the USSR;

and the developed capitalist countries account for In Hungary, the peasantry has neither been destroyed, as in Russia or alienated as in Poland. It has Internally, as the Financial Times put it, "The gained benefits under Kadar, Private tarms are organ- dead hand of detailed central planning has been ised into coops, which have recently started branch- removed. The new economic indicators are supposed ing out into manufacturing and engineering. In addi- to be the market instruments of tax and interest tion, 3% of agricultural production comes from Over the last six years, 150,000 workers have left Industry has been stagnating since the 1960s. Growth in 1981 was minus 0.02%, inflation was 8% So far, Hungary's economy is still in a mess.

and the external debt was 6%. For Hungary's bureauIt was to alleviate this and other economic prob- crats, the way out is by strengthening their ties with lems that Kadar began to move towards cooperation raq: one woman's story THE Merseyside Trade Union and Labour Campaign Committee has launched a national appeal for a fund to pay the fines of those arrested at the Warrington Sponsors include Moss Evans, Alan Sapper, Ray Buckton, Arthur Scargill, Rodney Bickerstaffe, Bill Keys, Eric Heffer, Terry Fields, Bob Wareing Bob Parry, Allan Roberts and Eddie Loyden.

Please send donations c/o Paul Davies, T Transport House, Islington, Liverpool 3. Victims of the repression of the 1956 rising FAREEDA SALMAN of Basra had two sons, Selim, an engineer, and Amir, a fourth year medical student. On December 29, 1981, Amir left the house and never came back. He'd been taken by the police. No information was given to his family, either that he'd been taken or why. What did you do to find your son?

Some people told us to go to the transit centre and ask about him there .:. when we went to the transit centre I saw nearly three hundred mothers, not counting fathers, asking about their sons... definitely some of From a pamphlet published by the Committee Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq, PO Box 210, London N16 them were there is a big room.. the windows of one room and doors however were covered with galvanised iron sheets, eiderdowns and blankets so that the mothers and fathers couldn't see them... we could only see their fingers, which they poke through a small window, and their lips who looked dry and drained of blood.

The room in which the political prisoners are kept is five metres high, four metres wide and about 10-12 metres long ... we went around to the back of the prison and there were small windows at the top ... but we could not see them and they could not see us because the windows are so high and right at the top of the wall.

After four months, one of Amir's colleagues, whose name I cannot mention, telephoned us and said "Amir and the other students with him are all in Baghdad in the Abu Ghraib Prison... there are no charges against them and they should be released in three months' time."

What happened after this?

After this we were to have travelled on 5 July to Abu Ghraib but 1 became ill and could not go ... the other mothers went to Abu Ghraib but got nothing. When they came back to Basrah another wave of arrests took place, a very big one.

By the end of July and the beginning of August (1982) they started distributing questionnaire forms throughout Iraq... in it they asked for the names of all our sons, names of the father and mother and anyone else living with us.

:.. The purpose was to know all the families that had any members in detention and to indicate this on the forms ... we were given two days to have the forms ready.

After they collected the questionnaire forms a huge wave of arrests swept the area. From every household that had one of its members already under detention they took away either to trade with, and investment from, the West.

25% of exports.

smaller private plots.

manufacturing to work in retail and services. Saddam Hussein went to work in the morning, it was on Saturday, he never came back home... I petitioned the Governor asking about my son. I went to the Governor's office and explained to the secretary that a week ago I had petitioned the Governor and asked about my son who was taken away by the security from his place of work in Sheaiba. He stared at me and shouted, "Get out of here... do you want to follow your son to the same place? We revolution, do you expect us to pat him on the shoulder and tell him to go away in peace?"

What happened after this?

Two days later, on 7 September, there was a knock at the door and when I opened it I with foreign capital. 1982, it joined the IMF.

25% of exports.

rates."

the capitalist system. asked me if I was Amir's mother ... I said "Yes I am". They said "Go to the Medical City Mortuary and collect the carcass of your son" • I started screaming and wailing.

When the others heard my screams they also started screaming and wailing.

After this I went to Baghdad on the 8th and we found many people there.

As you enter the road leading to the mortuary a strong stench assails you. So strong is the stench that people walking in the road have to cover their noses. From the beginning of the road, the mortuary is about 100 to 150 metres and the stench could be smelt at the entrance to the road. There were many people there waiting for the same thing as me. I wanted to take my son and they also wanted to take their sons. At the start there were some 10-16 families - about 30-40 people ...the number kept growing.. by ten o'clock there were about 150 people or more.

I was led to the room where my son was. When I entered I saw what was inside and I could not believe that there are people who could do such things to other human beings. The room is square and about six metres by six metres. There was a door on the left and another on the right (which led to two rooms) and facing you was a big door which is that of the refrigerator. My son was not in the refrigerator but was thrown on the floor of one of the rooms. I looked around and saw nine bodies stretched out on the floor with him, but my son was in a chair form ... that is a sitting form, not sleeping or stretched. He had blood all over him and his body was very eaten away there are 150 in Yugoslavia, for example. Margaret Thatcher has just finished a visit to Hungary - a Warsaw Pact country. Geoffrey Howe was meanwhile meeting Soviet foreign minister Gromyko. And Soviet sources suggest that a visit by Thatcher to the USSR itself is possible in the not too distant future.

Thatcher gushed: 'While I am known as the Iron Lady, I also have an iron resolve for the easing of tension and for a fair and more prosperous world.

Coming : after Reagan's speeches supposedly aiming to 'ease tension' between East and West and thaw the cold war, Thatcher's visit suggests that there may be more to these moves - by principal spokespeople for the Western alliance - than merely electioneering by Reagan.

It is too early to tell. But the deployment of the new missile systems shows no signs of relenting - and Anglo-US involvement in Lebanon (against Soviet ally Syria) continues, as does US backing of the rebels in Nicaragua.

Large profits can be made by sophisticated Western companies in Hungary. The Hungarian economy has been opening up to the West for the last ten years or su (see above).

The cold war notwithstanding, if there is a possibility of expanding overseas investment and trade, Western capitalism will make the most of it.

And the bureaucrats in Hungary, for their part, are centrally concerned with increasing their own wealth in alliance with foreign capital — on the backs of the Hungarian working class.

Hungary is about to negotiate for a trade agreement with the EEC, and Thatcher promised a favourable attitude.

+WU,

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can't allow things like this.. for he attacks the party and the