Muruli was one of the many students involved in protesting poor campus living conditions and the killings of several political activists by cops. One student was fatally wounded by police bullets at Egerton University last November, then two of the students who came out in protest were shot and killed. Muruli was kidnapped and beaten by police last year. Protesters said Muruli received a death threat just before he appeared for a police line up where he identified a senior cop as one of his assailants.

2,000 oil workers protest in Iran
On February 16, as many as 2,000 Iranian oil workers assembled at the oil ministry building in the center of Tehran, Iran, demanding pay raises, food coupons and housing loans promised them by the government. Eyewitnesses described to an Iran Times reporter that the action was peaceful. This did not stop Iranian riot police from descending on the protest and carting away "busloads" of oil workers, Reuters reported. One worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Iran Times he was arrested at the Sunday protest and locked up until Tuesday. The Iranian state news agency reported only "tens" of people showed up. But protesters said that workers from the country's largest and most distant oil refinery, the Abadan facility, were coming to join the action.

In other news, teachers from each of Tehran's 20 districts held a demonstration in front of City Hall, incensed by the government's failure to address inadequate housing, the daily Salam reported.

Divorce is now legal in Ireland
February 27 marked the first day in three-quarters of a century that divorce in Ireland was legal. The change was approved by a thin majority in a 1995 national referendum. A similar ballot measure had been defeated 2-to-1 in 1986. Provisions for getting the divorce are still complicated.

Applicants have to be separated for four years, and must assemble information about finances, pension rights, and other information. There are 10 legal certificates to be completed, just to get a court date. At this hearing, divorcee applicants are supposed to prove that the marriage has "no reasonable prospect of a reconciliation." There are about 90,000 separated couples in that country.

Land fight escalates in Brazil
Peasants in Brazil, organized by the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST), have stepped up their struggle for land, carrying out occupations all over the country. Wealthy land owners meanwhile, have gone on a counteroffensive. The government has launched a campaign to crush the MST-led struggle. The ranchers' drive in southern Pará is aimed at a "general disarmament" of the peasants. The crackdown is being led by the federal police with the help of the army. Roosevelt Roque dos Santos, president of the Rural Democratic Union, which represents the rich land owners, said, "no matter what it takes, we will not give up more land to the invaders."

In Bonita de Igua, two MST activists were killed in an ambush. That location, where peasants were squatting, was set to be officially turned over to the tenant farmers the next day. Squatters organize themselves to occupy areas that are not being used by anyone and are declared "unproductive." In southern Pará, a region double the size of France, fazendeiros (big ranchers) and their ilk have the record for the most assassinations of peasants. In 1996, 31 of 47 agrarian reform activists murdered in Brazil came from this region. Nathan Gatinho, a 23-year-old radio reporter in neighboring Paragominas, known for condemning on air the brutality of the landowners, was recently assassinated.

Bolivia inmates on hunger strike
Some 1,400 inmates in three jails in La Paz, Bolivia's capital, went on a hunger strike February 25 for the right to conditional release and "out time." They were joined by 400 prisoners in other Bolivian jails. The government has been stalling the implementation of these laws that would give some inmates the possibility for leave with prison supervision.

José Luis Harb, vice-secretary of the Prison Regimen tried to minimize the action saying that most inmates don't support the strikes and those who do were coerced into backing them. Yet more prisoners from cities like Trinidad, Sucre, Cochabamba, Oruro, and Tarija endorsed and have participated in the strike.

More gays, lesbians expelled from military
As a result of the "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue" policy, fathered by U.S. president William Clinton in 1994, there have been more expulsions of gays from the military, a recent report by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said. The policy forces gays and lesbians to conceal their identity in public and private and commanders will supposedly not query anyone about their sexuality. The study shows that 850 men and women were discharged from the U.S. armed forces in the year-long period that ended in February - an 18 percent increase from the previous year and 42 percent higher than Clinton's policy went into effect in 1994. A disproportionate number of those discharged were women. Some 29 percent of service members dismissed under this policy were female, even though they make up 13 percent of active duty soldiers.

"In 1996, the armed forces repeatedly excused violations of current law, including witch hunts, seizure of personal diaries and threatening service members with prison unless they accused others as gay," the study reported.

High court expands cop powers
A February 19 Supreme Court ruling gave police the power to order passengers out of a vehicle they stop for routine traffic violations, even in the absence of any reason to suspect the passenger has committed a crime or presents a threat to the police officer. The decision was a substantial blow to the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The 7-2 ruling was an extension of a similar Supreme Court decision in 1977. The Clinton administration backed the campaign that led to this ruling, assigning Attorney General Janet Reno to argue on behalf of the State of Maryland that brought the case to the high court.

Ku Klux Klansmen locked up for S. Carolina church burnings
Former Ku Klux Klan members Gary Christopher Cox and Timothy Adron Welch, who pled guilty to burning down two Black churches in 1995, were sentenced February 20 to nearly 20 years behind bars each. Mount Zion AME Church in Greeleyville and Macedonia Baptist Church in Bloomville were incinerated. Both men could have gotten 50 years or more for using fire to commit a violation of civil rights. They made statements denying the actions were based on racism or hate. Two others from that rightist formation still face sentencing for involvement in the arson.

- BRIAN TAYLOR  
 
 
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