Indonesia: gov't cuts subsidies
In accordance with mandates by the International Monetary
Fund for a $43 million loan, Jakarta is moving to implement
austerity measures against workers and peasants there. The
government cut price subsidies for three key food
items - sugar, flour, and soybeans - September 2, and is
attempting to sell off 12 state-owned companies.
Food prices have soared in recent months, with inflation at 70 percent. One-fifth of Indonesia's 92 million workers are unemployed, and 75 million people - or 37 percent of the population - are expected to fall below the official poverty line by the end of the year. Some estimates put the number at 100 million by 1999.
In response to these conditions more than 2,000 students demonstrated at the parliament in Jakarta September 7-8 demanding the ouster of President B.J. Habibie. Police attacked the students with teargas and bayonets. Thousands of students also rallied against rising prices in Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya. They are the largest protests since former President Suharto was forced to resign in May.
Protests are also continuing in the province of Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra island, which Indonesian troops have occupied for years in an attempt to put down an independence movement. When protests broke out September 1 in Lhokseumauwe, Aceh, soldiers shot at the crowds, killing two and wounding at least 10.
Russian Duma rejects Yeltsin's prime minister once again
The lower chamber of the Russian parliament voted a second
time September 7 to reject Victor Chernomyrdin as prime
minister. The proimperialist regime of Russian president Boris
Yeltsin fired his entire cabinet August 23, after only five
months. The recent move by Yeltsin to rename Chernomyrdin is
aimed at attempting to stabilize the tumultuous economic and
social crisis in Russia.
Strikes over unpaid wages remain a daily occurrence. Workers at three Russian nuclear research factories in the Urals Mountains region walked out over that issue September 7. "Conditions have become intolerable and socially dangerous," said unionist Vladimir Gorshkov. Workers at two of the nuclear plants have not been paid for five months, and overall the government owes more than $11 billion in back wages.
Proposed settlement in Kosova
National chauvinist president Slobodan Milosevic of
Yugoslavia and Ibrahim Rugova, head of the Democratic League
of Kosova (LDK), announced in early September they had reached
an agreement under which Kosova would become an autonomous
region within Serbia, with final status talks put off for
three to five years. As repression by Serbian forces against
the 90 percent Albanian majority in Kosova has intensified,
the desire of many Kosovar Albanians for independence has
grown. The Kosovan Liberation Army (UCK) does not support the
U.S.-mediated agreement.
Earlier, a Serbian court in Prizren sentenced nine Albanian student leaders to a total of 32.5 years imprisonment August 24. Eight are leaders of the Independent Students' Union at a local high school. All were convicted of "terrorism," an indictment that has been used in hundreds of trials in the last five months. The trial took one day and the student leaders were interrogated, severely beaten, and tortured.
300,000 strike in Israel
After 300,000 public sector workers -one-seventh of the
workforce in Israel -went on strike September 3-7, members of
the Histadrut Trade Union Federation won a wage increase of
1.5 percent. Workers shut down government offices and slowed
seaports, railways, hospitals, and state-run utilities.
Teachers remained on strike. Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu called the strike irresponsible in light of the
worldwide financial meltdown and a supposed need to increase
military spending. Netanyahu said he would set an example by
requesting a 5 percent wage cut for the highest-paid workers.
Workers in the prime minister's own office are also on strike.
U.S. court indicts right-wing Cubans in plot to kill Castro
Seven right-wing Cuban-Americans were indicted August 25
on charges that they conspired to assassinate Cuban president
Fidel Castro while he was in Venezuela last year. They include
at least one board member of the prominent Cuban American
National Foundation (CANF). Many of those indicted - José
Antonio Llama, José Rodríguez Sosa, Alfredo Otero, Angel
Alfonso Alemán, Angel Hernández Rojo, Juan Bautista
Márquez, and Francisco Secundino Cordóva, had been
affiliated with the CANF at one time or another.
Those indicted were caught last October by the U.S. coast guard with sniper rifles, one of which was registered to José Francisco Hernández, president of CANF.
U.S. gov't won't let businessmen go to Cuba
On September 3 Washington announced it was rejecting
permission for a group of U.S. businessmen to visit Cuba in
mid-September, saying the trip violated U.S. interests.
According to Kirby Jones, president of the business
consultancy firm Alamar Associates, the three-day visit with
Cuban officials was made with "every arrangement in full
compliance with U.S. law." The U.S. Treasury Department
rejected Alamar's request for a license because the "proposed
activity is inconsistent with current U.S. policy aimed at
bringing about a peaceful transition to democracy" in Cuba.
Jones said the license denial came after he met with Michael Ranneberger, head of the Cuba desk at the U.S. State Department, and refused the U.S. official's request that participants in the trip meet with Cuban counterrevolutionaries, make critical comments about Cuba to the media, and announce at a press conference that they would do business "only with a freely democratically elected government."
Parts of 1996 immigration law ruled `unconstitutional'
A U.S. federal appeals court declared September 1 that a
key provision of the 1996 immigration law was
unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck
down the section that prohibits immigrants from using federal
courts to fight deportation by Washington. The elimination of
all judicial review of detention is also known as "court-
stripping." The Immigration and Naturalization Service told
the press that it would most likely appeal the ruling.
- MEGAN ARNEY