Women in Colonial Countries: Delegates to the Asian Women's Conference in Peking report

=== [PDF page 1] === Women In Colonial Countries: Delegates to the Asian Women's... The China Weekly Review (1923-1950); Dec 31, 1949; ProQuest pg. 69 ‘omen In Colonial Countries Delegates to the Asian Women’s Conference in Peking report on the life and struggle of women in their countries. UEZZIN Coulibaly, fraternal delegate from the Ivory Coast, said polygamy is practised in French West Africa, and “woman lives on the edge of society, having no right to take part in men’s conversation or political activities.” “The colonial contract,’’ Miss Coulibaly said, ‘made possible the draining of all products, the nonindustrialization of our country and unilateral trade. The ‘indigent’ or ‘negro code’ made possible the enslaving of our people as beasts of burden, subjecting them to forced labor, imprisoning them without trial and paying only 250 franes when a white kills a black. In Afriea, only four out of 100 children can afford to go to school. There is no school for girls. Almost all of the African women are illiterate. * “Tir the schools, students are taught to have a holy respect for the whites. It has created a stock of submissive men, incapable of standing upright. The colonialists wished thus to create a bourgeoisie connected with the exploitation of our brothers.” Miss Coulibaly said the Constituent Congress of the African Democratic Assembly (RDA) was formed after the war and within a year had nearly 1,000,000 members. “Tts objectives were so clear and its foundation so firmly laid among the masses,” she said, “that the colonial authorities became afraid of its strength. The whole administrative system, headed by the judicial and police machinery, was set in motion against the young movement. Arrests, imprisonments, police brutalities took place everywhere. All the committee members of the RDA were arrested, and they have been detained 11 months awaiting trial.” At this point, she went on, the women decided to form an autonomous movement of their own, and a committee of women has now been established. Deseribing. some of the activities which it is coordinating, she said: “A woman was arrested arbitrarily by the police.--She was thrown into prison without trial. Immediately the women of Abidjan mobilized more than 3,000 and went to besiege the ‘tribunal in impressive calmness. The woman was piven back to the besiegers. This was the first victory. “At Bahfora there occurred an act of bloody repression which killed two and wounded several. The justice of peace and the police commissioner went to the village with a huge police force. The place was surrounded. People were arrested, tied up and hauled into military trucks. Immediately the women of the RDA lay down on the road, covering a length of about 30 meters. It was the rainy season. The vehicles could pass nowhere but on the road. Everywhere else was swampy. But the road was covered with women who were waiting to be run over by the trucks. The police had to untie the prisoners and set them free in order to get away.” Miss Coulibaly concluded: “We know why the French government insists on suppressing all democratic movements in its territories. Since the President of the United States said that American capital would only be invested in countries which were age. i aos politically securé, the henchmen of imperialists have. waged a ferocious war on us.” Therefore, she added, the women of the Ivory Coast are continuing the struggle for peace and liberty.: Algeria. ADAME Saya Allouchiche, representative of the Algerian Committee of the International Federation of Democratic Women, declared that “in spite of all the official pronouncements which classify it as a French department’ Algeria “is in fact a colony” and against its will is being turned into a military base. “Today the American imperialists are planning to make North Africa play a first rank role in the war of aggression which they are preparing,” she said. “They have included Algeria in the Atlantie Pact against the frequently expressed will of the whole population. The Atlantic coast of Moroceo has become the landing point of the Americans. After Dakar, Port Lyautey in Morocco was made an American naval base. The A)- gerian ports of Algeris, Oran, Bone and Mers El] Kebir have received visits from British and American admirals. They ave interested in air bases; 40 bases in three lines parallel to the sea have been established.” Madame Allouchiche declared. that “never has the military budget of Algeria reached such a high figure as now; out of a total of 42 billions (franes-ed.), 18 billions have been allocated to the- preparation for war, while the maintenance of the army appears in the budget of France.” Meanwhile, she said, “the Algerian woman is crushed by the poverty of the home, the miserable wages and the absence of all social protection. Her children have no schools. Only one child in ten goes to school.., We bring our children into the world in. hovels without air and without light, under deplorable hygienic conditions. Our children die from epidemics against which nothing is being done. There are not enough pharmacies and hospitals in the cities and none at all in the countryside. In certain regions there is only one doctor for 100,000 inhabitants!”. “The deterioration of living conditions, and especially the force of the desire for national liberation,” she said, “have drawn the Algerian women, particularly those of Moslem: origin, into the struggle by the side of their husbands, their brothers and their sons.” Lebanon VICTORIA El Helou, the delegate from Lebanon, charged that the Lebanon Government is playing “the ‘organization in Lebanon. role of broker to British and American imperialists.” “This has become especially evident in its attempts to form the Arabian secague,” she said. “The League is the kitchen where the imperialists concoct plans for making our country into a base for aggression against the Soviet Union.”: Describing the women’s movement in Lebanon, Miss El Helou said: “It was not until recently that the Lebanon League for Defending the Rights of Women came into being. It is the only genuine democratic women’s It demands equality for men and women in the social, economic and political fields. Its essential aims are to struggle for national liberation, for peace, against imperialism, and for the rights of women. Branches of the Learue have been set up in several cities and their adjoining regions, including Tripoli. Jbeul, Zalhi, Antliass and Elhadass. “It has recently organized a demonstration of mothers, demanding that the government open classes for their children who are thirsting for knowtedge but have no school to enter, It has lodged a protest with the UN against the barbarous dictatorship of Husni Zaim in Syria. It sent a delegation to Syria, protesting against the Syrian government. [t lodged a pro; test with the consulate of Argentina. It lodged a protest with the UN | against the arrests and executions of: Greek democrats. ‘ “The reactionary government exerts its efforts to curb the activities of the League. Before my departure from Lebanon, four members of the League were in prison. They were imprisoned because they had led a demonstration of mothers protesting the -shortage of schools and demanding free tuition and the reduction of the price of books.” Iran MARINE Farokhi described the long-drawn-out struggle of. women in Iran against a “feudal regime of exploitation, supported and aggravated by the imperialist greed for petroleum and the natural resources of Iran.” “The women workers work 10 to 12 hours in inconceivable conditions without sanitary facilities or any security,” she said. “They generally earn one half and sometimes only one sixth of the miserable wages of men. There is no social protection for them and, with the appearance of the first Signs of pregnancy, they are thrown out of the factories. The absence of nurseries compels the women in many cases to tie their children to the machines while they work.. Ft was only last year that a mother leaving her child on a cotton pile in a factory came back from her. work to find her baby crusked by a truck... | ’ According. to the Iranian constitution, she reported, “women, lunatics and children have no right to vote.” With the end of the war, she said; the democratic movement in Ivan began to make headway, and in Azerbaijan “a democratic constitution was enforced in which women were for the first time considered as equal to men Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. === [PDF page 2] === and gained all the political, economic and social rights.” However, she added, when the Red Army and British troops withdrew from Iran, American imperialism “seized the position” formerly held by British imperialism and “brought the Tranian army and economy under its control.” “On the pretext of ensuring the security of the country, the government troops under their control invaded Azerbaijan in December, 1946, massacred the population, executed 15,000 democrats, and drove their wives and children into the concentration camp Badre Abad (unwholesome region in the south), she said. “The Iranian Women’s Democratic Organization was persecuted and its organ banned. Many of the men and women workers and democrats, including responsible personnel of the IWDO, were jailed.” Citing the influx of American military missions and advisers to Iran, Miss Farokhi declared: ‘The ‘sevenyear project of colonization enables them to interfere in all -affairs. Strategic bases and airfields are built up throughout the country. They have imposed on Iran the purchase of more than US$36,000,000 dollars worth of American arms. The Ivanian army has been reorganized along American fines. As a result of the military expenses, which amount’ to 32 percent of the budget, and the importing of American goods, the feeble national industry is ruined, thus greatly increasing the number of unemployed.” But Iranian opposition is mountings. “The Iranian Women’s Democratic Organization has carried its struggle underground,” Miss Farokhi said. “Despite the repression, two illegal democratic journals have appeared. Women form committees in defense of political prisoners, demanding their release and rendering help to their families.’’ Sytia MINE Aref Hassan, delegate from Syria, said women in her country “work 10, 12, 14 and sometimes even 16 hours a day’’ at totally inadequate wages. “At Homs,” she said, “young girls of 14 wind silk from cocoons. They work 16 hours a day for 100 piastres; the foremen, to make them work harder, whip them: with their sticks; moreover, the young girls serve as toys for their employers and_ their sons, - “The women workers who work on the highway earn only 100 piastres a day for 16 hours of work and their children whom they bring with them are left under the son and in the irt... “The living conditions of peasant women are the same as those living in the Middle Ages.” Miss Hassan described sanitary conditions as “lamentable” and reported that “there is only one maternity home for all Syria. No hospital is seen except in very important cities. The villages have neither hospitals,. clinics, nor anything like a country doctor.” As for the rights of women, she said: “Legally, women have the right to dispose of their properties, but in fact they belong to the husband who threatens his wife with divorce if she refuses to yield all she possesses to him. For a man has the right to divorcee his wife, while a woman has no such rights. Besides, a man is permitted to have four wives. “The women of Syria can also bear witness before the court, but it is prescribed that the testimony of one man equals that of two women. Men have the right to vote and to be elected, while women have only the right to vote on the condition of possessing a certificate beforehand.” While there are several women’s organizations in Syria, Miss Hassan said, “they represent chiefly the bourgeoisie” except for the Union of Syrian Women for the Defense of Mothers and Children, which “struggles for peace, national liberation and the defense of the rights of mothers and children,” and in so doing “is frequently repressed” by the government. After a peace demonstration on October 2, the secretary of the organization and seven of its members were arrested, she reported. “Now, she added, “the government has promulgated a new law which provides that the members of any organization which affiliates itself to an international movement without the. government’s authorization are subject to the penalty of three months’ to one year’s imprisonment.” India MITA Devi, the delegate from India, said the women’s movement there forms a part of the “general struggle of the Indian people for real independence.’- For a time, she said, the women’s movement was centered about the All- India Women’s Conference (AIWC) “whose sole aim was to sidetrack the main political issue involving women’s problems by. channeling the entire question towards reform.” But after the war, when “the ATWC, many of whose leaders became ministers, governors and ambassadors in the present satellite covernment, took a positive stand against the tide of the democratic women’s movement,” women began to leave the organization, and in November, 1948, following a visit to India by a WIDF commission, an All-India women’s convention was held in Caleutta under the auspices of the West Bengal Women’s Self-Defense League and the founda- - tion laid for the formation of a “broad-based All-India women’s organization.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. === [PDF page 3] === “The following facts,’ Miss Devi declared, “will clearly show what the Nehru Government is and against what our women and people are fighting today: “The government of India is actual: ly ruled by the representatives of half a dozen plutocratic families who control between them- the greater part of the native industry, banks and newspapers. These men and their gigantic trusts are directly linked up with Anglo-American big business... “This betrayal of the government has resulted in a rapid deterioration in the material condition of the masses. Unemployment among work- - ers, peasants and intelligentsia has reached unprecedented dimensions. But the profit figure of the capitalists has risen feverishly. According to their own admission, since 1939 profits have risen 680.5 percent in textiles, 278.8 percent in coal, 159.4 per- - cent in the general index of all industries... “The problem is even more accentuated by the government’s heavy armament expenditure. While the whole of India is faced with famine, 50 percent of the financial expenditure.of the government has been geared to the maintenance of police and military. “Against these monumental crimes of the Indian government, the people of India have risen. In the two years of 1947-48 alone, no fewer than 3,445 strike battles were launched... The men and women peasants in Telegana, South India, are fighting with arms to protect their hard-earned liberated soil. The share eroppers’ struggle of Bengal peasants continues in spite of unheard of repression. “Huge strikes of teachers, employees and students against retrenchment and the government’s policy of increase in schoo! fees in the united provinces, Bombay and Calcutta, were met with bullets, and bayonet charges. The complete gagging of the democratic press in most of the provinces, the virtual illegalization of the Communist Party of India and the particularly savage attack on workers’ rights to trade union activities, the banning of such organizations and arresting of thousands of leaders, including the president, S.A. Dange, who has been kept in jail without trial during the past two years, has only increased the indignation of the people. “There is not a single week in Calcutta when people do not come. out to face the police might, to demonstrate their just indignation towards the insane. policy of the government... The middle class employees, students, teachers, artists and writers—every section of the people except the big bourgeoisie and Jandlords—hard hit by the.government’s policy, are more and more participating in the general struggle against imperialism. “In these struggles our women are as vailant and death-defying as the rest of our people. In West Bengal, where the democratic women’s movement is particularly strong, in the past few monthe no fewer than 32 women have been shot down and killed in demonstrations and meetings... On April 27, this year, the police fired point blank. on a demonstration of women demanding better treatment of political prisoners, killing - four heroic leaders of. our women’s movement on the spot. On September 9, the police opened fire on a demonstration of hungry peasant women and children demanding food from the landlord, killing 16 women and two children and wounding many others. “The Women’s Self-Defense League of West Bengal is virtually ilegalized. Its leaders are either arrested or driven underground. Its paper has been banned. Our president, Manjusri Devi, has been arrested under the criminal act for political activities and kept in prison without trial. Miss Devi said Indian women have responded by the thousands to the call for peace. In addition to peace rallies held in Calcutta and Bombay, she said, “the All-India Peace Congress heid in the face of terrible repression last month in the heroic city of Galcutta, attended by 3,000 delegates from all parts-of the country, gives a clear indication of how our people and women have realized the close connection of the problem of peace with that of national liberation of the Indian people.” Indonesia LILLAH Suripno of the Indonesian delegation said the first women’s crganization in Indonesia was formed in 1912, soon atter the Indonesian national movement started in 1908. Since then, she said, the struggle for national f‘iberation has become the most important part of the movement, together with the fight against illiteracy. Indonesian women, she said, fight on the battlefield and work in distribu- ‘tion kitchens to feed guerilla fighters who come down from the hills for news and communication. “At the last congress held in Djokja in September 1949,” she said, “the most important question presented by the progressive women was the fulfillment ot an independent, free, democratic Indonesian state which will be ruled by and for Indonesian toiling people.” Labelling Hatta and Soekarno “puppets in the hands of their Dutch and American bosses,” Miss Suripno declared: “The Dutch and American warmakers and their Indonesian puppets may make agreements and hold conferences to give Indonesia independence on paper, but the Indonesians will decide for themselves about freedom and real independence and will fight for their fulfillment.” The Netherlands R LIPS Odrnot, Duteh fraternal | delegate to the conference, spoke of the effect on the people of Holland of the war against Indonesia. The expense of waging the war, she said, “has gravely cut down the standard of living in our country. The government does not want to give the necessary money for social services, for building houses, for better education and for the struggle against tuberculosis, which. infects 1,200 new persons every month. Government food subsidies have been cut off, with the result that food prices have risen enormously, while money is spent feverishly for armaments.’ Miss Odrnot said the war against Indonesia costs five million guilders a day and 51 percent of the Netherlands budget “is given over to war aims.” In addition to the economic hardship, she said, the casualties among Dutch soldiers wounded, killed or disabled in Indonesia has brought “great unrest’’ to the hearts of Dutch women. and “dissatisfaction over the colonial policy of the Dutch government js spreading to ever widening circles of the population.”; “The town of Groningen,” the Dutch delegate continued, ‘was the first town in which. wives of soldiers who are in Indonesia united and organized a meeting to protest the demand by the authorities for a retroactive tax on soldier’s compensation. The women of many towns have taken similar action. They have sent the tax demand letters to their soldier husbands in Indonesia, where the soldiers, indignant and upset,: gave them to their officers.” Dutch women, she said, also have taken part in demonstrations held during the departure of troop transport ships, such as that at Ijmuiden where banners were displayed with slogans such as ‘Houses, not barracks!"’ “Bring the troops back from Indonesia!” “Peace and Fraternization!” The “united protest of the Dutch progressive women and workers,” she went on, forced the release of Dutch soldiers who were imprisoned because .they “made speeches and distributed pamphletsgin the barracks explaining the facts about the Indonesian war to their comrades and_ calling for solidarity with the struggle for freedom for the Indonesian people.” This year, she said, the parents, wives, sisters and daughters of men who have already served more than two years in Indonesia formed an organization which is demanding ‘“immediate demobilizaion of these soldiers when they return to Holland, no redrafting them for Montromery’s “European Defense Plan’ and strong measures for giving them immediate employment.’’ The Dutch women’s movement has not only given. “strong support to the demands of this organization” but has also “visited the four big trade unions and asked them to urge the government. to send back our soldiers from. Indonesia,” she said. “We have distributed thousands of manifestos, sent hundreds of telegrams to the government and the Security Council of the UN. Flying demonsirations were held in the workers’ quarters, marching with banners and _ posters” on..which were pictures of crippled soldiers and selling our peace paper from door to door.” On the initiative of the Dutch women’s movement, she said, a national committee has been organized to help soeldiers| who are in prisons: or concentration camps because they have refused to. go to Indonesia to fight, and it has been decided to expand this drive to include the “liberation of all -. Indonesian and Dutch soldiers who are - in jail for their political work in fighting against colonial war.” The Dutch delegate concluded: “We want the Indonesians to be really free, like the great brave people of China, whose victory not only stimulates the struggle of the people of the Asiatic countries. for freedom, but also the struggle in the western countries against the rule of American reaction.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. === [PDF page 4] === Vietnam HE Vietnam delegate, Ho Thi Minh, described the struggle for independence waged by the women of her country. “The women of all organizations, all walks of life and religious beliefs in Vietnam were organized into a united front,” she said, “that is the Union of Vietnam Women with 2,000,000 members. Founded on Octoher 20, 1946, it has branches among Vietnam women living in France, Siam, Burma, New Caledonia and New Hebrides and it has joined the WIDF.” Women are engaged in front line work in the resistance movements, she declared. “The women distinguish themselves in the services cf informa-- tion, Haison, and propaganda work fcr the army. They penetrate into the cccupied zones to distribute leaflets. Owing to this work, Vietnam soldiers in the French Army join the forces of the national army, bringing with them arms and ammunition.... “In the enemy’s rear,’ she continued, “militia women tear up roads, destroy railways, telegraph and - telephone lines, causing communication difficulties to the enemy.” Women also help maintain the food supply, she said, both by striving to increase food production yields and by transporting food to the soldiers. Ho Thi Minh charged that “the imperialists intend to make Vietnam a war bastion in Asia against the new China and the Soviet Union.” She declared the women of Vietnam “are opposed” to this and will “fight side by side with the democratic sisters of the world under the banner of the WIDF.” She also expressed appreciation to the French mothers who paid for the Vietnamese delegates’ trip to Peking. France ADAME Jeannette Vermeersch of the French fraternal delegation to the Asian Women’s Conference told how the women of France are organizing to oppose the war in Vietnain., “Up until now,” she said, ‘the imperialist government has not succeeded in sending regular contingents of the French Army. It has sent legionnaires, former Nazis enrolled in the legion, leftover Vichyites and collaborationists who have signed up for Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. === [PDF page 5] === the colonial war in Vietnam. At the same. time the government recruits common criminals in the prisons. And a blush of shame covers us when we learn of the unspeakable crimes committed against your people.” “Describing the demonstrations for peace, she said: “No demonstration for peace, no meeting of housewives takes place without vigorous protests against the war in Vietnam. In the organized vote for October 2, more than 7,000,000 men and women voted against the war. “In the Chamber of Deputies, the Communist group, which includes a number of women, speaks out vigorously to denounce. the crimes of colonialism, and votes against all war credits. It has won other deputies to its side,. “The women’s organizations, especially the Union of French Women, issues much material—posters, pamphlets, newspapers—denouncing the war in Vietnam and calling for action against it. Many of our women have been prosecuted in court for this action; “Through the committees of the Union of French Women, demonpeace of last: strations have taken place throughout France. “Strikes have begun against the loading of ships leaving for Vietnam. Such strikes have taken place in Dunkerque and Marseilles. “A demonstration of mothers whose sons were killed in Vietnam or who are still there took place in Paris in front of the Ministry of War. The women were attacked by the police, but this has only enraged them into more determined action against the colonial war. “In Paris and Toulon, young soldiers are in prison for having refused to leave for Vietnam. “This struggle is in the tradition of the French working class, which fought against the war in Morocco and the war in Syria. The people of Algeria, Black Africa and Madagascar have always found the French working class at their side.” Madame Vermeersch declared that the-war is also “costly to the French people” and. charged that America is trying “to reduee the French people to colonial status, with all that means in the way of misery, suffering, unemployment and repression.” “American colonize our imperialism country,” she went on, “not only to conquer it economically tries to for the sake of profits, but also, and pbove all, to make of it a base of aggression in Europe against the country of socialism, the USSR. and the people’s democracies.” China HINESE delegate Li Wen-yi declared that the women of China have been emancipated because they goined forces With the revolution, Formerly, she said, “Chinese women were completely deprived of their rights. They starved and were on the verge of death; they worked an average of 13 hours a day. but their wages were only two-thirds that of men. They had no- sick leave, Pregnant women were dischareed. They lost all opportunities for education,. “The women in the villages fared no better. Almost all of them were illiterate. Thev were sold out of their families just like commoadities and Lecame wives, servants, child brides, concubines or prostitutes.” Now, she declared, “a new life opens hefore the Chinese women.” Women are learning new industrial techniques and a number 4n the Northeast have heeome locomotive engineers and tramear drivers. Literacy classes and evening schools are climinating iliteracy among women, she continued. In one textile mill in Datren, “there is neat a single illiterate amone the 913 women workers.” I Pointing out how the status of women has risen. Miss Li said that women have been elected croup leaders and ‘eommittee. members of trade unions and “increasing numbers” are taking park in gavernment | work. “Madame Sun Yat-sen was. elected vice chairman of the Central People’s Government. three women were elected members of the Central Peanie’s Government, Council. and many more heeame ministers and vice ministers.” she said, In the cities, she added, women are voiting equal pay for equal work and reaternity leave, while “the number of nurseries ta take eare of the children of working mothers is grawine.” ™m the eountry. wamen share in the land reform and “tens of thousands of women have taken an active part in administrative work. In* -the Northeast alone, 6.G88 village chiefs are women.” “Al these rights gained by Chinese women did not come casilv.’ she said. “They are the outcome of lone-drawnout strugeles. The most essential experiences eained in these protracted struvgles is: the’ emancipation ‘of women must be closely linked wi ith the revolutionary movement — for national independence. and peaple’s democracy. “In the past, -there were some women intellectuals in China who set up organizations in a few big cities. They demanded that women must have the right to ‘participate in state administration’ and so on. They did not identify their object with the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. === [PDF page 6] === revolution. And all their work got nowhere. “But later, Chinese women accepted the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. From then on, broad masses of laboring women joined the gigantic struggle against imperialism, feudalism, fighting for national independence and people’s democracy. This is a correct direction because women’s emancipation can only come with the liberation of the entire people.” Miss Li predicted that “the emancipation of the Chinese women will greatly increase the confidence and courage of women of various oppressed nations of Asia” and she said Chinese women support all such struggles for national independence. Korea pak Ching- Ai, president of the Democratic Women’s League of North Korea, said the League was formed in November, 1945 and at “present has a membership of 1,480,000. In South Korea, ‘she said, the Democratic Women's League has been driven underground. Contrasting the position of women in the two sections of the country, she said that women in North Korea are active in all fields of public life and the professions. More than 1,000 women hold government pasts, she reported, and there are 55 women judges, including two in the Supreme Court. In addition, she said, women have become technicians and engineers, fields “which could not even be dreamed of before liberation,” and are increasing in numbers in educational and public health work. As a result of the land reform, the country women, ‘who have received land on an equal footing with men,” are playing a more active role in the rural economy, and more than 6,000 “are members of various committees of the peasant league.” However, in South Korea “the patriotic women....are dismissed from factories, mines and offices, expelled from schools and arrested, imprisoned and massacred,” she declared. The situations in North and South Korea, she concluded, demonstrate the results, on the one hand, of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, which is designed to “assist the liberation, independence and democratic development of the oppressed nations,” and cf the “expansion program of the American imperialists,’’? which is “eneroaching upon national independence and freedom of all the peoples of Asia and trampling upon the freedom, rights and happy future of women.” Madagascar IESELE Rabesahala, the fraternal delerate from Madagascar, told of the ‘‘wretched living conditions, starvation wages, insecurity and lack of sanitary facilities” in her country and the battle for national independence that is being waged. Of Madagascar’s $00,000 school-age children, she said, only 184,000 attend school and “there are few or nearly no secondary schools....students are not taught in their mother tongue ‘she declared that although Madagascar has a language both in writing and speech.” Madagascar’s national independence movement was started in 1946, she reported, and “three-fourths of the population joined this movement. But the colonia] authorities, frightened by the growing popular strength, staged a provocation. On March 29, 1947, a few Europeans were killed in the camp of Moraganga. The MDRM (mouvement democratique de la renovation malgache) was accused at once; its leaders arrested without any reason, were put in prison and tortured. The criminal court of Tananarive passed a death sentence on two delegates and sentenced others to imprisonment ranging from five to 10 years. “In the subsequent repression, 90,000 people of Madagascar were killed, tortured, shot, executed without trial. At the same time, an emergency law came into force which suppressed completely the freedom of press, assembly and association. This law is in force now.: “At present there are 3,000 people detained in filthy prisons awaiting trial. They have waited for almost three years.” Miss Rabesahala said Madagascar’s mica, graphite and uranium “are coveted by the imperialists who are preparing a third world war,” but “the women of Madagascar want peace, because to struggle for peace is to struggle for national independence and for the future of our children.”. Burma ; DA‘ Thein Tin, the delegate from Burma, said there are innumerable Burmese women working in small. businesses and bazaars,- in agriculture, and in handicraft “industry, such as the “making of handlooms, pottery, matting and cigar rolling.” Since the war, “an increasing number” have been working as office clerks, telephone operators, school teachers and nurses. “There are no rights and privileges for the toiling women,” she declared. “No. nursery or kindergarten is established even for the so-called privileged intellectual strata. Measures to protect mothers and children are absolutely absent.” The All-Burma Women’s Congress, she said, was formed in 1945 and worked closely with the peasant union in the “no rent, no tax and antistarvation” campaigns. But on March 28, 1948 the “leading women” were arrested by the Thakin Nu government and “the activists were compelled to escape to the rural areas.” The women of the liberated areas now are being reorganized under the name of the Burmese Women’s Union, she said, and they are now supporting “the armed struggles at the front” and the peasants’ demand for land reform. Together with other progressive forces, the women of Burma “are now carrying on a revolutionary war to defeat the long and brutal reactionary rule of imperialism, feudalsm and its agent Thakin. Nu and the -counterrevolutionaries,” she concluded. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.