Argentina: 10,000 inmates rebel
More than 10,000 inmates have rebelled in 18 prisons across Argentina, calling for an end to overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, and for the government to enforce a rule that reduces sentences by two days for every day beyond two years that a suspect is held before sentencing. The rebellion began March 30 at the Sierra Chica maximum security prison in Buenos Aires when prisoners fought off guards and took hostages in an attempt to escape.

Justice ministry officials said two inmates were killed. But some family members of prisoners who were allowed inside Sierra Chica said they saw 17 bodies. "We recognize that the prisons are overcrowded, and that's the reason for the crisis," Eduardo Duhalde, the governor of Buenos Aires province, said in a radio interview. Provincial officials said Duhalde ordered them to end the crisis by April 7.

Bolivian workers defend state oil
Carrying signs and chanting "Do not sell our heritage," 50,000 people marched April 1 in La Paz, Bolivia's capital, for better wages and against the sale of the state oil company. Striking public workers shut down public transportation. In response, cops attacked the demonstration.

The previous week thousands of workers demonstrated in the main cities of Bolivia with the same demands. The actions were organized as part of a national strike called by the Bolivian Workers Federation (COB). In Cochabamba, the police arrested more than 250 unionists and retirees participating in a hunger strike involving 2,000 people. A peasant was killed in the cop attack. Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada said April 1 that the sale of the oil company was the only way "to defeat the extreme poverty" in the country.

Salvador peasants protest debts
More than 5,000 peasants marched for the second day in a row on March 28 demanding the cancellation of 90 percent of their debts to the government. "We demand the cancellation of the banking and agrarian debt," read several signs that peasants carried in the march to the Legislative Assembly. Many peasants were former guerrillas or army soldiers who went into agricultural jobs after the peace agreement of January 1992.

The regime proposed to write off 65 percent of the debt, but said the peasants will have to pay 35 percent immediately. The peasants assert that the government's proposal is impossible without asking for a bank loan at 18 percent interest. According to the peasants organizations, the agrarian and banking debts of some 150,000 families goes up to $345 million. Eduardo Linares, congressman and leader of the former guerrilla group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), said the peasants "don't see any alternative."

U.S. steps up threats on Libya
The Clinton administration has stepped up military threats against the government of Libya, charging it with plans to build an underground chemical weapons plant. When asked about using military force against Tripoli at an April 3 news conference in Egypt, U.S. defense secretary William Perry said, "I wouldn't rule anything out or anything in."

Perry said Cairo might be asked to participate in Washington's war plans as a staging area for a military assault against Libya. With scant evidence, Perry said he showed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak "photographs, and they demonstrate that the Libyans are not now producing chemical weapons but that they have an extensive program under way to develop a chemical weapons facility." Libya's head of state, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, said the facility under construction is a water irrigation system.

Berlin: actions against social cuts
Thousands of working people hit the streets of Berlin March 27 to oppose cuts in social programs announced by city finance minister Annette Fugmann-Heesing. The next day the city council approved Fugmann-Heesing's proposal to chop the city's budget from $30.3 billion to $29.1 billion - the biggest cuts in 50 years.

A series of protest actions included 3,000 schoolchildren who marched on city hall March 25. Construction workers paralyzed traffic for hours March 26 demanding the government halt the cancellation of public housing projects that would eliminate 14,000 jobs.

Yeltsin halts anti-Chechnya push
Facing elections June 16, Russian president Boris Yeltsin announced March 31 that all major military operations against Chechnya would cease and said he would approve peace talks with Chechen rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev. "Military operations on Chechen territory will stop at midnight tonight," Yeltsin declared in a nationally televised interview.

Meanwhile, Russian planes bombed the village of Shalazi April 3, killing two people and destroying 300 homes. "We don't believe a word Yeltsin says - I wish he'd drop dead," said Olga Astashkino, 30, an ethnic Russian living in Grozny. "How can you talk about peace when they keep bombing us?"

Seoul students protest cop attack
Some 4,000 students rallied in South Korea March 31 after a student was killed in a massive protest against the regime the day before. Thousands of riot cops attacked students who were demonstrating against corruption in the government. "Down with [President] Kim Young Sam," the protesters chanted while marching from a campus in Seoul. Students have protested against the government in the past just before parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for April 11.

U.S. plane crashes in Croatia
A U.S. military plane, a modified version of a Boeing 737, crashed April 3 on a hillside near Dubrovnik, Croatia, as it was approaching the city's airport. There were no survivors among the 35 passengers and crew members. The deceased include U.S. commerce secretary Ronald Brown, a dozen top executives of U.S. corporations, and a CIA "analyst." Government officials in Washington said the plane went down during a severe storm, but have not provided a precise explanation for the crash.

Brown and his entourage were on a mission to expand U.S. commercial and other business operations in Bosnia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia. A number of other chief executive officers of major U.S. companies, including Northwest Airlines co-chairman Alfred Checchi and the president of Boeing, were scheduled to be on that flight but altered plans at the last minute and did not go on the trip.

Trial on MOVE lawsuit to begin
Jury selection began April 2 in the federal lawsuit filed against the city of Philadelphia by Ramona Africa, a member of the Black cultural group MOVE. Police fired 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the group's house May 13, 1985, and eventually dropped a C-4 bomb from a helicopter on the home. The blast ignited a fire that destroyed 60 other homes and left 250 people homeless in that Black working-class neighborhood.

Eleven people in the group were killed by the cops' military operation, including five children. "I was bombed, almost burnt alive," said Ramona Africa. "What happened on May 13 was deliberate murder."

- MAURICE WILLIAMS  
 
 
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