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