Torture by Peru army exposed
The Peruvian Army "took out its frustrations on coffee farmers who live near" rebel bases, peasants told an Associated Press reporter. The news article reports the army strung up a 17-year-old peasant with electrical wire, repeatedly dunked his head in a bucket of water, and held him knife-point to get him to sign a confession stating he was a rebel with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. Some 40 people were arrested in the past two months and many underwent comparable beating and torture. The army denies these charges, insisting instead that it "dealt a blow to the rebels." Soldiers reportedly broke into people's homes, conducting searches and robbing food.

Brazil cops are violent criminals
Nine Brazilian military cops were arrested and five were detained April 2, after they were caught on film March 7 while carrying out "extortion and torturing citizens" in a shantytown in the outskirts of Sao Paulo. The cops have a record of criminal activity, including eight charges of homicide, one intent toward homicide, eight acts of aggression, and one sexual assault charge.

The Brazilian newspaper, Jornal Do Brazil, ran an editorial denouncing the cops, saying, "Only a hypocrite could imagine that this [criminal behavior] is the exception and not the rule of the everyday life of police whose values rot beneath the shadow of impunity."

U.S., EU spar over meat markets
Washington announced April 1 that it would block meat exports worth $300 million from countries in the European Union (EU). This was in retaliation for the EU's rejection of U.S. hygiene standards and inspection methods in poultry plants, and refusal to import any of it. The European governments are demanding that U.S. food exports carry a certificate that meets the EU standards.

The European Commission canceled negotiations scheduled for April 1, after U.S. officials attempted to approach individual governments with proposed exports. Thirteen senators in the farm states wrote U.S. trade representative Charlene Barshefsky a letter urging her to "stand firm" against the "continued recalcitrance [disobedience] of the EU."

More labor battles in France
In the first week of April, truckers in France called a strike for May 5, after negotiations on retirement questions fell apart. Four of the main truckers' unions in France withheld their labor four months ago, blocking major roads, and paralyzing industries all over the region. At that time strikers had demanded the retirement age be brought down from 60 to 55. Now workers plan to strike because the bosses failed to implement the agreement by the March 31 deadline.

On April 1, airline ground crews and pilots voted to extend a walkout at Air France Europe another 24 hours, in protest of the company's proposed merger with Air France. The state-owned airline had to cancel most of its morning flights. Thousands of doctors and striking interns marched through Paris April 3 in a national protest against government plans to cut health care funds from the budget. The month-old strike has shut down many of Francés university hospitals.

Cops attack protests in Indonesia
Hundreds of students at Gadjah Mada University in Eastern Indonesia protested April 1-2, calling for a boycott of the elections coming in May. The government called in cops, who arrested 24 activists on the first day of the protests and, according to the Jakarta Post, beat at least five people unconscious the next day.

Eight of the students arrested will be charged with inciting people not to vote, punishable by up to five years in prison.

South Korean steel in shambles
First, in January, the south Korean company Hanbo Steel went down with a nearly $6 billion debt. Then on March 19, Sammi Steel, part of the 26th largest conglomerate in the country, announced it used $1.25 million more dollars than it had. "Jittery lenders are responding by withholding further credit, prompting fears of bankruptcies," warns the Far Eastern Economic Review. Now stock traders have a "blacklist" of 20 firms dancing on the edge of disaster. Lending from south Korea's banks has tightened, even to the top 10 conglomerates. Finance and Economy Minister Kang Kyong Shik said the government "is no longer able or willing to rescue poorly managed, bankrupt companies." The collapse of two south Korean steel producers in the same financial quarter has the economic magazine Far Eastern Economic Review writers saying, "It's time to sound the alarm bells."

Tokyo to bail out two big banks
The Japanese government made the decision to bail out two of its top-20 banking institutions - Nippon Credit Bank and Hokkaido Takushoku Bank - both of whom have amassed huge bad debts. Tokyo is calling for other large banks and industries to offer up 150 billion yen (US$1.2 billion) in loans for the bailout. Alicia Ogawa, a banking analyst at Salomon Brothers Asia Ltd., said that this way of proceeding is "a sign that they [Japanese capitalists] don't have anything else up their sleeve." Nippon will be liquidating its three affiliates, closing down its overseas operations, and cutting 20 percent of its workforce, while lowering salaries for those who remain. Takushoku will merge with Hokkaido Bank, formerly its main competitor.

Farmworkers' pay fell sharply
In the last two decades, real wages earned by farmworkers have fallen by as much as 20 percent or more. Don Villarejo, executive director of the California Institute for Rural Studies, places wage decline at over 25 percent. Conservative estimates from the Department of Agriculture put the pay drop at 7 percent. Farm workers' annual earnings average a mere $8,000. Some of the agricultural toilers have health-care benefits and pensions, but the majority of workers do not. Farmworkers in many states are many times also denied time-and-a-half for working over eight hours.

Farmworkers waged a 15-year struggle for better working conditions beginning in the early 1960s. The United Farm Workers of America helped lead the drive for unionization appealing to the consciousness of national oppression among Chicano and Mexican workers. It played a major role in the fight for Chicano rights at that time, winning scores of union contracts in the 1970s.

- BRIAN TAYLOR  
 
 
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