The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.6           February 12, 1996 
 
 
In Brief  

General strike hits Swaziland
Unions in Swaziland organized a general strike January 22, closing down factories and shops. During the walkout power failures occurred throughout the country. The labor movement, backed by students, is demanding legalization of political parties and the adoption of a constitution making the king a symbolic figure instead of de facto head of state in this southern African country of 1 million people. "We are not satisfied with the present government," said Muzi Mthetwa, a civil service worker in the health ministry.

Strike organizers said the shutdown would continue until three officials of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions arrested January 22 were released. Swaziland cops attacked a demonstration that day with tear gas and rubber bullets, killing a 16-year-old woman and injuring six marchers.

Miners in Russia demand pay
Some 800 coal miners marched in front of the government building in Moscow January 24 demanding four months' back wages. The workers planned to picket for three days in Moscow. They threatened a national strike February 1 if their demands were not met.

According to the Interfax news agency, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin ordered $134 million allocated to the coal industry before the end of January. Several miners said they think the government will pay them this time because of the upcoming presidential elections in June. Many miners who backed Boris Yeltsin in the 1991 elections are opposed to the Russian president now. According to the Associated Press, many miners voted for the Communist Party and other nationalist candidates in the recent parliamentary elections.

Racist Dutch exec denounced
Dutch beer giant Heineken came under fire January 19 after Justus Kos, a top executive, sent a fax to a British television company saying "there was too high a proportion of negroes" in one of the TV shows the brewery was sponsoring. "We would hope that TV programmes would seek to represent a positive image of Black people and seek to create change in a racist Europe," Bernie Grant, a Black Labour Party member of parliament, told the press.

The London office of Caribbean News, a newspaper oriented to the Black community, demanded Kos be fired and Heineken donate $1.55 million to African-owned charities and children's care organizations. Heineken chief executive officer Karel Vuursteen replied, "Proper measures will be taken to prevent recurrencebut it is an internal matter."

S. Korean indicted
Prosecutors in South Korea indicted former president Chun Doo Hwan January 23 for overseeing the 1980 massacre of hundreds of protesters in the city of Kwangju. The government stated that at least 240 people were killed in the affair, but most other estimates are substantially higher.

Chun and his successor Roh Tae Woo are in jail, charged with corruption and leading a mutiny in 1979 to seize control of the army. Both could face the death penalty. "They are traitors who stole power, and I'm glad they're now getting what they deserve," said Kang Min Jo, the head of a victims' organization in Kwangju whose son was beaten to death during the bloodbath.

Colombian president under fire
Scores of workers and students marched in the streets of Bogotá January 24 demanding the resignation of Colombian president Ernesto Samper. Samper faces growing pressure to resign following former defense minister Fernando Botero's televised assertion that the president knowingly accepted more than $5.8 million from the Cali cocaine organization for his 1994 campaign. "Samper has done nothing but lie to the world," said Enrique Gómez, a Conservative Party senator calling for his immediate resignation. Samper has denied the accusations and instead proposed a national referendum over whether he should resign.

The resignations of several other government officials have rocked Samper's regime. Agusto Galán announced January 23 he was quitting his job as minister of health. Samper announced January 25 the resignations of the ambassador to Argentina, Víctor Ricardo, and the ministers of transportation and foreign trade, Juan Gómez and Luis Alfredo Ramos respectively. Colombia's ambassador to Venezuela, Francisco Posada, left his post and returned to Bogotá January 24.

Record arrests of Mexicans
Mexico City television reported January 18 that U.S. authorities had broken the record for the number of undocumented workers arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border - more than 2,100 in one day - since Washington's new strategy to halt so-called illegal immigration went into effect. On January 17, Alfonso Primitivo Ríos Vázquez, a leader of the Labor Party in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, called for the Clinton administration to remove its troops from the Mexican border. It is "a serious violation of international law and an act of open hostility," he said.

Ríos Vázquez told the Chamber of Deputies that Mexican immigrants have been victims of discrimination and human rights violations. In addition, he stated, U.S. president Bill Clinton has used the immigration issue as part of his electoral strategy to win elections in the Southern states.

Border town in crisis
The devaluation of the Mexican peso in December 1994 sent border cities like Calexico, California, reeling. After falling to half its original value overnight, the weak peso has led to a reduction in retail sales and jobs there. The peso now stands at 7.5 to the U.S. dollar, compared to the 3.5-to-1 ratio before that devaluation.

The 1995 jobless rate soared to 41 percent in Calexico, largely because of the high number of unemployed retail workers. Laredo, Texas, a border town of 163,000, had an unemployment rate of 14 percent in 1995, while Brownsville, Texas, with a population of 300,000, had a jobless rate just under 12 percent. The national average in the United States is 5.3 percent.

Interviews with inmates banned
J.P. Tremblay, a spokesperson for the California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, told the San Francisco Chronicle December 28 that state prison authorities are now barring all reporters from conducting face-to-face interviews with inmates. Tremblay said the ban went into effect in October 1995 and was temporary. Some states, such as Indiana, already have such restrictive policies, prohibiting interviews if a news organization has "offended" prison officials.

Lowell Bergman, producer of the CBS News program "60 Minutes," said his request to interview California inmate Geronimo Pratt, a former Black Panther leader, was rejected a few months ago. The Department of Corrections "said he's only allowed one media interview every six months, and he had already been interviewed by Fox (television) in June," Bergman reported, according to the Chronicle. Pratt, who was railroaded to prison in 1972, has won broad support, and several news organization have published or broadcast stories on his behalf.

- MAURICE WILLIAMS

 
 
 
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