APRIL 12 - 18, 1987 THE MICHIGAN CITIZEN 3 Paul Bobeson on his 60th birthday By leRoy Wolin In 1958 Paul Robe on celebrated his 60th birthday with a series of public parties from coast to coast in early April. His actual birth date April 9th, he was in Chicago, Il, where the Chicago Council of American-Soviet Friendship hosted the meeting-party in the largest hall of the old Masonic Temple Build­ ing,32 . Randolph St. Over 400 people filled the seats and overflowed into aisles, age and the vestibule. A Secretary of the Council I organized the meeting and gave the fund­ appeal speech, keyed to the need for green money to help in the fight to win back his green passport. My heart was really in it a a fello victim of the Hou omrni tee on un-American Activi ies ho p port was cancelled like Robeson' . t the end of the meeting, Robeson cut hi birthday cake flanked by Council Board members l-r Chairman Mandel Terman, Robert Ba er LeRoy Wolins and Lulu Saffold. Continued on P e 7 Torture under' t e hammer of apart aid By G en c inney IS - "It is better for me to fail temporarily in a cau that will ultimately. succeed, than to ucceed temporarily in a cau that will ultimately fail." South African Reverend Tshenu eni imon Farisani - beaten, banned and brutally tortured - recently a d hi life under the hammer of apar­ theid in tho philo phical term. Fari ni, receiving treat­ ment at the Cent r for Torture Victims in St. Paul, innesota a relea d from a South African pri n January 30 after a three-month detention and month-long hunger ri e. sive prote t by human right and church organiz tions led to hi relea and forced the apartheid government to allo the 39-year old Lutheran pa or to come to the .S. for treatment. hile in detenti n in -19 1, F ri ni s severely be ten, tortured ith electric shoc s and uffered two heart atta s. 'The bi e t problem i the footprint that the South frican police have left in my REV. T HE UWE I F RJ­ SA I - victim of South African torture. mind. . . But my suffering should not be viewed in isola­ tion. I'm one of millions who have to endure the indignity of detention torture and ex­ posure to the brutality f the South frican oppres rs." said Farisani during an interview in t. Paul, Minne ta. I He was there in arch attend in a ationa1 Conference on amibia ponsored by er branches of the Lutheran' hurch. It a the first uch ent held in ,the U.S. drawing more than 600 amibians church activists and uman right advocates. 'The problem of the mi- , bian people is one and t same a that of uth fric ' have a common oppre ommon t ruggle ' commented. Indeed, den war in amibia has claimed ores of casualties. Torture and detention have been m [or ' .. t ols of the South Afri an occupation according to a rie of reports on human rights violations in amibia issued by Amnesty International and church-sponsored fact-finding groups. Exact figures on the num­ ber of amibians presently in detention are not available. Opponents of South Africa's 20-year illegal occupation main­ tain that m st of the human rights offenses occur in the n rthem region of the country where more than 75 percent of the amibian people live. Security 'restrictions include a du to