FRANCAISSecours populaire français - Right to reply
Aid Watch would like to thank the SPF for its cooperation. The history part of this description has been completely reviewed after an interview with Mr Julien Laupêtre on the 11th of March 2003, thanks to Mr Gilbert Avril, a member of the national Bureau of the SPF. Aid Watch had also noted that:
-1945-46: the partisans the SPF helps in prison were arrested because they disobeyed orders and executed “collaborateurs” on their own initiative.
-From 1956, Algeria: the SPF supports prisoners from the FLN (National Liberation Front) as well as French military that have refused to torture and to go on fighting a colonial war. Like CIMADE, the SPF is suspected, without proof, of covering weapons smugglers, in that case through the Jeanson network; however, it does not openly favours the independence of Algeria.
-1957, France: the campaign for the young conscripts who refused to make their military service within NATO may be a sign of the opposition to the project of a European Community of Defence in 1954, clearly against the USSR.
-1961, Spain: while they go and help detained opponents, the SPF teams are suspected of crossing the Pyrenees border illegally. As a reaction, a right-wing group, the OAS (Organisation of the Secret Army), bombs the headquarters of an anti fascist French Spanish committee created by the SPF and the poet Marcos Ana in the Latin Quarter, Paris.
-From 1973, Chile: the boat Anjouan, chartered by the SPF, contains “democratic ovens”, to quote the words Mr Julien Lauprêtre uses in his autobiography.
Translation and latest update: D.E. and D.R., 16-10-2003; M.-A.P.d.M. 9-02-2014
