European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 13, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday april 13, 1986 Anthony Lewis Young Man s death exposes truth about contras i have in front of me some clip pings from Swiss newspapers the text of a Brief speech a snapshot. They Tell a Story that is difficult to write. Maurice Demierre was born in Bulle a Small town in the gruyere Region of Switz Erland on feb. 24, 1957. After High school he went to an agricultural school. He worked for a time As a Mason. A deeply religious roman Catholic he thought of becoming a priest. Instead he decided to spend his life working among the poor. He joined Freres sans frontiers Brothers without Borders Catholic Charity that sends volunteers to work in peasant communities. In 1982, Maurice and his Fiancee Chantal Bianchi were sent to Nicaragua. They went to the Northern part of the country a poor Agri cultural area on an assignment that was due to end in the Spring of 1986. Then Maurice was to be posted to another country. What Maurice did was work on simple improvements to life in peasant villages. He brought piped water to communities with out it built houses improved roads. He demonstrated simple new techniques by doing the work himself. For arcs sans frontiers had sent him with a Van that he used to carry building Materi Al and farm supplies. Maurice and Chantal lived in the Village of Villanueva. Both Learned to speak the local dialect fluently. Chantal who had been a teacher in Bulle set up a Grade school in the Village. Villanueva is about 15 Miles from the Hon Duran Border. A Large part of Demierre s work was helping at eight refugee Camps for people who had left the Border zone for fear of at tacks by the nicaraguan contras. Their fear was not theoretical. A number of times Mau Rice helped to Bury people killed in attacks by the Contra rebels. On feb. 16, 1986, a sunday Maurice and Chantal were in the Village of Somotin to four Miles or so from the honduran Bor Der. Shortly before 8 that night a group of 15 women and their children who had been travelling in the area asked for help in get Ting Home to their Village 10 Miles away. People in som Otillo said it was too danger Ous but Maurice said he would drive them in the Van. William Safire talk is cheap a few minutes Down the Road the Van ran into an ambush. Contras detonated two anti personnel mines As the Van passed. Then the contras sprayed the wreck with machine gun fire. Demierre and three of the women were killed instantly. Another woman died later and three Small children were badly wounded. Maurice was eight Days Short of his 29th birthday. Those Bare facts come from accounts in Swiss newspapers and from a Eulogy delivered by a colleague. A snapshot taken on a visit Home at Christmas 1984 shows Mau Rice with dark curly hair and Chantal both very Happy both very Young. A Swiss reporter who went to Villanueva a few Days after the killing Jacques Secre Tan said he found intense feelings about Maurice. He said people told him they Felt his presence still. The people Are very Christian very religious secretan said. For example they say of the contras they Are poor people who attack us. It s not their fault. It s a stronger Power Over them they speak of the United states without hate we Hope president Reagan will come to understand what is happening Here " Swiss newspapers in telling the Story of Demierre have emphasized . Support of the contras. A poster displayed in Geneva and other French speaking cities shows his picture and says remember Maurice Demierre. He was killed in Nicaragua through the Power of the .a." a television special on Maurice is to be shown next month. Representatives of Freres sans frontiers and of Pax Christ a Catholic peace and human rights organization met in Bern two weeks ago with the Counselor of the . Embassy. Adrien Claude Zoller of Pax Christi said the Counselor explained that Nicaragua was heading toward a future like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and it was necessary to prevent that even with a dirty we have the contrary impression Zol Ler said. We think the Reagan administration is creating the danger of radicalization in the death of Maurice Demierre cuts through ajl the words All the debate about the Reagan policy in Nicaragua. It tells us that when the president Speaks of Freedom fight ers he Means terrorist killers of unarmed civilians. And the world sees it Plain. C new York times it May not be accurate but it makes Good theater the american society of newspaper editors met last week which tempts me to butt in with an observation and a suggestion about politics and the press. The observation is that from Roosevelt to Reagan the arts of Public relations and political advertising have not Only tended increasingly to dominate our politics but also to diminish the influence of the printed word and distort the facts of our nation Al life. In Short the hucksters Are getting too far out of hand. Managing the news of course is the oldest game in town. Franklin Roosevelt was a master at it. The leaders of All institutions try to manage the news in the sense of emphasizing their Virtues and minimizing or suppressing their failures. Even newspaper owners have been known to fid dle with the facts. What is new however is that in the conduct of the Public s business the Power of the unelected and largely unknown peo ple who write the speeches for the executives downtown and Frame the questions for the legislators on Capitol Hill has in creased to such a Point that while we know who is speaking we Don t know where the words come from. We Are seeing More than Ever before or so i believe a distortion of the theory of representative government. Increasingly the executive Branch with its dominance of television tends to evade the doubts of Congress by theatrical appeals to the peo ple on the theory that what s popular is what s right. This is not a partisan or ideological argument. President Truman counted in and Vance on Public support rather than on considered discussion with Congress when he dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So did president Johnson for a time in his manipulations of Public opinion on Vietnam and president Kennedy in his Covert disaster at the Bay of pigs not forgetting for s efforts to pack the supreme court. The main difference now is that president Reagan is better than any of them at Reading speeches other people write and at using television to argue that Nicaragua and Libya Are major threats to our Security and that a permanent ban on the testing of nuclear weapons which All other presi dents since Eisenhower have publicly sup ported is just another diabolical soviet trap. Also what was merely a cunning Public relations Talent on the part of Roosevelt has now become a Deverish Industry under Reagan. The editors can Check it for themselves the publicity budget in Washington has soared and the number of news conferences has declined. Publicity is not merely an instrument of government Here these Days it is government. The founding fathers did t imagine that the great conflicts Between nations let alone the mysteries of outer space could be decided by Public opinion except at election time. But that s the current trend and the question for the editors is what if anything they can do about it. The Short answer is not much but at the opening of the baseball season my suggestion is that they might get a tip by looking at their daily sports pages and their business pages. Every Day editors devote two or three pages of newsprint which is not cheap to keeping the precise figures on Wall Street who s up who s Down and who s Chis Eling on the Side. Likewise on the sports pages. They keep the record runs hits errors stolen bases bean balls and other achievements and misdemeanours. But not on the political pages. Sure we catch the pols off base from time to time but in More than 40 years in Washington i can t remember a period when so much obvious nonsense so Many distortions of fact have gone by unchallenged or been dismissed with scarcely More than a whisper by the Public. Roosevelt in his cynical Way used to say just let me make the headlines on the front pages and i Don t care what they say on the editorial pages. Now the theme is give me half an hour on television and i la prove the Freedom fighters of Nicaragua and the peacekeeper missile Are essential to the Security of the nation and that Moa mar khad Afy of Libya is masterminding the terror of the world. Well As the president says it May not make sense but it makes news and it gets votes. You could accurately say that Rea Gan is the most popular president since the last War and that the press is More unpopular than Ever for questioning his statements and policies. But there is a difference Between the president and the press. He s in the popu Larity business and we re riot and Haven t been since the pamphleteer spoke out against the British and the abolitionist Edi tors fought against slavery which was pop ular for almost a Hundred years. C new York times
