WORKERS AROUND THE WORLD
By Andy
McInerney
AUSTRALIA
Massive march for Indigenous rights
Hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal people in Australia
and their supporters turned out for the Dec. 3 "Walk for
Aboriginal Reconciliation." The quasi-official event marks an
effort to commemorate the massive social harm down to the
Aborigines since European settlers began to arrive on the
island continent in the 18th Century.
Over 400,000 marched in the southern city of Melbourne
alone. Tens of thousands also took to the streets in western
Perth. The demonstrations had the support of all the main
bourgeois political parties, the Australian Confederation of
Trade Unions, Aboriginal rights groups, environmentalists and
others.
Notable for his absence was right-wing Prime Minister John
Howard. "It seems to me that when a prime minister of our
country ... can't walk in solidarity with Australia's
Indigenous people, then there's something very sick about a
government that would pit people in Australia against each
other," noted ACTU president Sharan Burrow.
There are less than 400,000 Aborigines left on the
continent out of a population of 19 million. The life
expectancy for Aboriginal people is 20 years less than for
white Australians. Poverty and incarceration rates for
Aborigines are far above those for whites.
TURKEY
Strike against IMF austerity plan
Thousands of public sector workers in Turkey walked off
the job Dec. 1 in a strike against government austerity
measures. The protest came as the International Monetary Fund
imposed tight restrictions on government spending in return
for a financial bailout.
Teachers, hospital workers and other civil servants
answered the strike call. Union leaders expected over 1
million workers to take part. The capital, Ankara, was
brought to a standstill by the strike and mass
demonstration.
A financial crisis hit Turkey in November, sending
interest rates on short-term loans skyrocketing to 2,000
percent. The Turkish stock market crashed, losing 40 percent
of its value. Ten private banks collapsed under the shadow of
corruption inquiries.
In the midst of this financial crisis wracking a key U.S.
ally, the IMF endorsed a massive bailout on Dec. 6. The
Turkish government would be eligible for $7.5 billion in
emergency loans, and the IMF would open the gates of nearly
$3 billion already approved but not yet released.
Turkey's workers are slated to pay for this bailout. The
IMF demanded that the Turkish government speed up the
privatization of telephone, airline and power companies.
Government spending is to be kept to a minimum.
That sparked the public sector workers' protest. The Dec.
1 strike was against a government wage offer that would not
have covered the current 34-percent inflation rate--down from
last year's 100-percent inflation rate.
INDIA
Postal workers strike for part-timers
Over 600,000 postal workers across India went on strike
Dec. 5. In addition to demanding higher wages, they walked
out to press for full benefits and pensions for over 300,000
part-time workers.
The strike brought mail service in the vast country to a
halt. Reuters estimated that four days into the strike, on
Dec. 9, only 7,000 of the country's 153,000 post offices were
open. The government was losing an estimated $1 million per
day.
On Dec. 9, the Indian government intervened by ordering
the army to assist in mail delivery. But the heavy-handed
tactics did not break the resolve of the postal workers. "We
are determined to continue with our strike for any number of
days until our demands are met," said G.K. Padmanabhan,
secretary general of the Federation of National Postal
Organizations.
SOUTH
KOREA
Thousands protest
anti-communist law
Thousands of Korean workers and students staged a militant
demonstration on Dec. 9 in Seoul against the infamous
National Security Law.
Demonstrators clashed with riot police as the cops tried
to prevent the workers and students from marching into the
street.
The National Security Law makes it a crime in south Korea
to possess any communist literature. Contacts with the
socialist Democratic People's Republic of Korea are severely
punished. The law has been used against hundreds of the most
militant workers who are organizing for their rights.
Kim Dae Jung, the president of the U.S. puppet government
in the south, has been praised throughout the capitalist
world as a "reformer" and a "democrat." He received the Nobel
Prize on Dec. 10--despite the fact that it has been the DPRK
that has consistently pushed for the unification of
Korea.
The National Security Law is a reminder that the illusion
of capitalist democracy in the south is maintained by riot
police batons and tear gas, backed up by 37,000 U.S.
troops.
MAURITIUS
'Albright go home!'
Three labor unionists, including Federation of Progressive
Unions Secretary General Reeaz Chuttoo, were arrested on Dec.
9 on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's
visit to the African island nation of Mauritius.
Their crime: hanging up posters denouncing Albright and
the "Africa Growth and Opportunity Act." "We wished to
express ourelves on the Africa Act," Chuttoo told the
Panafrican News Agency. He demanded the right for unionists
to be able to express their opinion on matters affecting
them.
The posters read: "Albright: Take your Africa Growth and
Opportunity Act home," "Go home," and "AGOA means jobless
growth."
The U.S.-sponsored act is widely viewed in Africa as a
NAFTA-type measure for the African continent, giving U.S.
corporations trade and labor advantages against governments
that want to protect local jobs and companies.
GUATEMALA
Military guilty of rebel's murder
An international tribunal has finally confirmed what the
whole Latin American solidarity movement already knew: that
the Guatemalan military tortured and murdered a left-wing
rebel leader who disappeared in 1992.
The Inter-American Court on Human Rights, a branch of the
Organization of American States, ruled Dec. 7 that the
Guatemalan military had tortured and killed Efraín
Bámaca Velásquez and then tried to cover it up.
Bámaca's widow, U.S. lawyer Jennifer Harbury, had
conducted several hunger strikes in Washington and Guatemala
City demanding the release of classified information on his
case.
This case is just the tip of the iceberg of crimes
committed by both the U.S. government and its client
Guatemalan regime against the workers and poor of that
country. In 1954 a CIA-sponsored coup overthrew the elected
president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, after he began to
carry out land reform.
Some 70 percent of Guatemala's land had belonged to just
2.2 percent of the population. The Arbenz government
distributed land to 100,000 peasants before being
overthrown.
Much of the land belonged to the United Fruit Co.--known
today as United Brands--which held onto vast unused tracts
while landless peasants starved.
Arbenz offered the company $525,000 for its expropriated
lands--the value United Fruit had declared for tax purposes.
But the company demanded $16 million. Meanwhile, it had
powerful allies in the Eisenhower administration, including
CIA chief Allan Dulles and his brother, Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles.
Resistance to the right-wing regimes imposed by the U.S.
grew into full-fledged guerrilla war in the 1970s. The
killing of Bámaca was just one in at least 200,000
deaths of rebels and ordinary peasants, most of them
Indigenous people, at the hands of the U.S.-trained and
supported Guatemalan army.
Details of the plot to overthrow Arbenz can be found in
the book "Killing Hope" by William Blum, who left the State
Department in 1967. He also maintains a Web site with much
valuable information on U.S. interventions.
--Deirdre
Griswold
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS
:: SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page