Workers around the world
By Andy McInerney
INTERNATIONAL
PRIDE
AUSTRIA
'Vienna goes the other way'
An estimated 100,000 people gathered
in Vienna on June 17 under the slogan “Vienna goes
the other way.” The demonstration was called to
protest discrimination against gays and
lesbians.
Marchers symbolically marched the
opposite direction around a central traffic circle to show
solidarity with lesbians and gays. Minutes of silence were
held for people who have died of AIDS and for gay victims
of the Nazi holocaust.
The protest had special significance
because of the ultra-right Freedom Party’s position
in the Austrian government. The party has been the focus of
mass protests against racism and fascism in recent months.
Demonstrators tore down a wall painted with the colors of
the two governing parties.
MEXICO
Pride in the Zocalo
Around 10,000 lesbian, gay, bi and
trans people took to the streets of Mexico City on June 17.
The pride parade marked the 22nd anniversary of the first
gay-rights protest in Mexico.
Marchers carried a giant rainbow
flag along Reforma Avenue to the Presidential Palace in the
historic Zocalo Plaza. Chants of “Fight, fight for
the freedom to love” and “Equal rights for
lesbians and gays” filled the streets.
“Gay and lesbian pride marches
give us the visibility and open a space where we can
exercise our rights as citizens,” march organizer
Tito Vasconselos explained.
ARGENTINA
Gen'l strike vs. IMF
Nine out of every 10 Argentinean workers stayed home on
June 9 in a massive rejection of International Monetary
Fund economic policies. The one-day strike shut down the
giant South American country, leaving streets in every
major city empty and littered with uncollected trash.
"This is a strike from the heart of the people," General
Confederation of Labor (CGT) leader Hugo Montoya
declared.
The strike's immediate cause was President Fernando de
la Rua's announce ment of an economic plan that would raise
taxes and slash salaries of public-sector workers by up to
15 percent. The move comes after he gutted labor
protections and imposed austerity measures after his
inauguration six months ago.
The IMF dictated these harsh measures as conditions for
a $7.2 billion emergency credit line. De la Rua admitted as
much when he whined after seeing the strike's success, "How
can someone think I would have taken [the measures] if they
were not necessary?"
Fifty-three strikers were arrested in clashes with
police.
The June 9 general strike was the second in recent
weeks. In May, hundreds of thousands of workers hit the
streets to fight de la Rua's anti-labor legislation.
This strike achieved widespread unity among Argentina's
main union federations. In addition to the CGT wing headed
by the militant Montoya, the more moderate wing of the CGT
and the Argentine Workers Confederation backed this
strike.
This widespread unity reflected the focus on the IMF as
the main enemy. Montoya warned on the eve of the strike,
"We have to change this economic model that starves and
kills our sisters and brothers."
BOLIVIA
Thousands demand university
About 100,000 residents of the city of El Alto descended
on Bolivia's capital, La Paz, on June 12 to demand an
independent university in their region. They also brought a
range of other demands for the development of El Alto.
The Alteñidad Assembly called the march--which
drew widespread support from the impoverished city of
500,000 neighboring La Paz.
The government has offered to build a university in the
area, but insists that it be a branch of La Paz's San
Andreas University. The residents of El Alto, predominantly
of the Aymara Indigenous nationality, insist on an
autonomous university.
The Alteños also demanded a general hospital, a
stadium, and a say in the tolls for roads through their
city.
ECUADOR
Strike against the dollar
Tens of thousands of Ecuadorians answered the call for a
48-hour strike beginning June 15. The Coordination of
Social Organizations--an umbrella of unions, peasant, and
community groups-- and the Popular Front initiated the
action.
The strikers protested President Gustavo Noboa's plans
to "dollarize" the economy. Noboa wants to replace the
sucre with the U.S. dollar as the national currency.
Workers' and peasants' groups charge that the move will
decimate their purchasing power.
Doctors, teachers, electrical and oil workers, and
students joined the protests on the first day. Indigenous
peasants blocked roads in the northern and southern regions
of the country.
Four protesters were injured and 10 arrested in clashes
with the police in Quito.
The million-strong Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador did not join the strike but
offered "moral support" to the protests.
Economic chaos and attempts to impose IMF-backed
neo-liberal policies of austerity and privatization have
led to massive protests over the past years in Ecuador. In
January, only the intervention of the U.S.-backed
Ecuadorian military prevented the emergence of a popular
government. Noboa took power after mass protests forced
Jamil Mahuad from the presidency.
PUERTO
RICO
New arrests at Vieques
Fifty-six activists were arrested June 17 as they defied
the U.S. Navy occupation of the Puerto Rican island of
Vieques. Among those arrested were 20 doctors protesting
the impact of the Navy bombing on the local residents.
There has been a steady wave of activists entering the
training grounds to protest the Navy presence in recent
weeks.
The Navy occupies Vieques for use as a training ground
and bombing range. In April 1999, a bomb killed Puerto
Rican civilian David Sanes. That provoked mass outrage. For
over a year after the killing, activists occupied the
grounds, camping out to prevent naval exercises. Their
resolve was reinforced by tremendous unity among Puerto
Ricans against the Navy bombing.
The Navy retook the grounds on May 4, and has resumed
bombing. But civil disobedience actions continue--despite
threats of $250,000 in fines or 10 years in federal
prison.
After a June 10 action in which 14 people were arrested,
Committee for the Rescue and Development of Puerto Rico
leader Robert Rabin warned that the arrests would "make the
normal functioning of military activities inside Camp
Garcia [on the Vieques base] impossible."
Meanwhile, in Washington, Puerto Rican activist Hector
Rosario began a hunger strike on June 15. He is demanding
that President Bill Clinton meet with Vieques leaders and
address their concerns.
NICARAGUA
CIA admits contra drug smuggling
"In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas
appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with
potentially serious allegations against those with whom the
agency was working."
Those were the words of Central Intelligence Agency
Inspector General Britt Snider. He was testifying in front
of the House Intelligence Committee of the U.S. Congress in
May 1999.
Robert Parry analyzed last May's testimony in the June 8
issue of Consortium News. Parry sifted through pages of the
Intelligence Committee record and Department of Justice
reports on CIA involvement with right-wing Nicaraguan
contra drug smuggling.
The CIA created the contras--short for
counter-revolutionaries--in the early 1980s to destabilize
the 1978 Nicaraguan Revolution, which was led by the
Sandinista National Liberation Front. The contras waged a
terror campaign against Sandinista supporters in the
countryside. They were backed by U.S. intelligence, arms
and funds.
Evidence that the contras funded their operations
through cocaine trafficking with the support of the CIA
emerged at the time. In 1996 San Jose Mercury News
correspondent Gary Webb wrote a series detailing these
ties. He also exposed how the drugs ended up on the streets
of the poorest communities in the United States.
The U.S. government vigorously denied the reports. Webb
was eventually fired from the Mercury News.
The 1999 testimony, contained in the government's own
reports, gives the lie to those denials. The U.S.
government's pattern of using the illicit drug trade to
support counter-revolutionary movements--from Vietnam to
Afghanistan and Nicaragua--should cast suspicion on the
Pentagon's current allies, the Colombian armed forces and
their paramilitary adjuncts.
MEXICO
UNAM student leaders released
On June 7, the final six student leaders of the 10-month
strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM) were released from prison. The six had been among
the hundreds of General Strike Council (CGH) leaders and
activists arrested after troops stormed the campus in
February.
Five hundred students welcomed the six as they left the
prison in the early morning hours.
The CGH waged a four-month campaign to win their
comrades' release. While some had been offered release
earlier, the leaders pledged to stay in prison until all
were released.
Although none of the activists remain in prison,
hundreds are still under legal restrictions because they
participated in the strike. "More than 250 comrades still
find themselves within the penal process, with their
political rights suspended," CGH leaders explained in a
June 7 news release. "Although for the moment they are out
of prison, the judgment against them continues and they can
be jailed again."
The CGH waged the strike at UNAM to defeat a massive
tuition increase and to institute democratic changes within
the university, which is considered one of Latin America's
premier educational institutions. While the strike was
broken with the tear gas and batons of riot police, the CGH
struggle is still alive.
Students are now pressing to have all legal proceedings
against more than 600 student participants dropped.
EAST
TIMOR
Fuel protest
Hundreds of taxi and van drivers blocked traffic in
central Dili, the capital of East Timor, on June 7. The
transport workers were protesting a fuel price hike.
East Timor is occupied by United Nations troops who
moved in after the population voted for independence from
Indonesia last year. The UN now administers East Timor.
One protester was arrested for kicking a UN cop--a
member of the U.S. division of the occupation force.
SLOVENIA
Workers demand higher pay
Unionists in Ljuubljana, Slovenia, staged a protest
rally against low wages on June 14.
The 2,500 workers also called on bosses to take
inflation into account in computing raises. Unions complain
that wages are too low to support the workers in the former
autonomous region of Yugoslavia.
BOSNIA
Wage protests spread
Bosnia, once a relatively prosperous region of
Yugoslavia, is now a military protectorate of the Pentagon
and NATO. Workers are beginning to learn the results of
dismantling the socialist-based economy.
As in the former Soviet Union, thousands of workers
routinely go without pay for months. On June 14, hundreds
blocked traffic in the eastern city of Tuzla to demand
months of back pay. Nearby, workers at the Lukavac soda
factory walked off the job. They had not received a
paycheck for six months. Three Lukavac workers blocked a
road linking the capital city of Sarajevo with Croatia.
Eight hundred workers at two coal mines in Zenica went
on strike on June 12. They demanded mine-safety equipment,
and to be paid their April wages. The government agreed to
pay the wages "in principle"--but the miners refused to go
back to work until they had the guarantee in writing.
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