In Memoriam - Obituaries and appreciations

Pierre Granet was born on 6 Septembre 1949 in Marseilles and died on 2 May 2020 in Toulouse. He became politically active as a high-school student in Cannes from 1963, notably in soldiarity with the Algerian revolution . He rapidly joined the JCR and the PCI, then French section of the Fourth International, and remained an active militant until the end of his life, as member of the LCR then the NPA. This tribute was written by his comrades from Toulouse.

Henri Weber was born in Leninabad (now Khujand), Tajikistan, Soviet Union on 23 June 1944. His Polish-Jewish parents had left Poland at the time of the German-Soviet pact but, refusing to become Soviet citizens, were sent to labour camp where he was born. They returned to Poland after the war but four years later left because of prevailing anti-semitism and moved to France. As a student in Paris Weber was recruited by Alain Krivine and became a leading member of the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire (JCR) and of the Ligue Communiste (subsequently Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire LCR), French section of the Fourth International. In the early 1980s he ceased political activity and in 1986 joined the Socialist Party. A member of the leadership of the Socialist Party, he held elected positions as a senator (1995-2004) and then as a member of the European Parliament (2004-2014). He died in Avignon on 26 April 2020 from coronavirus.[IVP]

Luis Sepulveda died on Thursday 16 April in Oviedo (Asturias, in the Spanish state) of Covid-19, which he had contracted at the end of February during a congress of writers in Portugal. Sepulveda was a great writer and his works, translated into more than 60 languages, have enjoyed worldwide success.

Luis Sepulveda was also an activist. Member of the Chilean Communist Party from the age of 12, he quickly moved towards a more revolutionary commitment. In recent years, he had moved away from the debates on the socialist and revolutionary left. Nevertheless he was also very close to us because he had participated, in practice and with arms, in all the debates of the revolutionary movement from the beginning of the 1970s to the mid-1980s.

José Maria Galante was born in Madrid on 27 April 1948, died from Covid-19 during the night of 28-29 March 2020.

Manolis Glezos was born on 9 September 1922 in Apiranthos, Naxos and died on 30 March 2020 in Athens.

On Saturday, 14 March, the trade unionist Manuel Graça died. A member of the LCI and the PSR, and a founder of Bloco de Esquerda, Graça was for two decades the Coordinator of the Union of Shoemakers, Bag makers and Associated Trades in the Aveiro district.

It was with great sorrow that we learned that our comrade Lal Khan was no more.

Yasrab Tanvir Gondal, popularly known as Lal Khan, was laid to rest on February 22 in his native village Bhaun, district Chakwal. Like his eventful life, his funeral also became a revolutionary event. He would have been amused by his burial ceremony, had he been able to witness it.

Lal Khan, whose name needs no introduction in the revolutionary politics of not only Pakistan but world over, breathed his last today on 21st February at 7:00 PM in Lahore. He had been fighting cancer for the last one and a half year. He was 64.

Michel Lequenne died on 13 February 2020, at almost 99 years old.He was a singular, atypical Trotskyist, an outstanding character, by the strength of his convictions, his polemical verve, his extraordinary – self-taught! – political, literary, artistic and historical culture, his propensity for dissent, his fidelity to the legacy of Red October.