The Taiwanese government in Taipei turned down an offer of rescue teams and supplies from the government of China. Beijing offered the assistance September 23, two days after a massive quake claimed nearly 2,000 lives, reshaped Taiwan's landscape, and felled whole buildings in the capital, Taipei. An offer of a financial grant may yet be accepted. Beijing offered doctors, seismologists, and other qualified workers. "It's not clear to me if they would be useful or not," said a spokesperson for Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, Chang Yung-shan. Teams from 17 other countries, among them the United States and Japan, are already at work. Taipei and its backer, Washington, have assumed a more provocative stance towards Beijing in recent months.
"Thieves, thieves" chanted 30,000 workers and farmers marching September 24 through the streets of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Workers from the Lucznik rifle factory carried a banner reading "We want to live and work with dignity." The unionists demanded wage increases and job guarantees, while the farmers called on the Polish government to guarantee higher prices for their produce.
Some protesters burned the European Union flag. The deeply unpopular government of Jerzy Buzek hopes the country will be admitted to membership of the European Union in 2002. Poland became one of NATO's newest members earlier this year. Last year foreign investors, among them the International Monetary Fund, sunk more funds into Poland than into any other East European nation. The country has experienced the fastest economic growth in the region over the last five years. The government's restructuring of industries has cost many jobs, and class and regional divisions have grown.
Five thousand soldiers in the German army booed the defense minister, Rudolf Scharping, in Berlin September 11, despite his protestations of support for their demonstration opposing cuts in the military budget proposed by Finance Minister Hans Eichel. The protest added to the problems of the government of Gerhard Schröder, whose Social Democratic Party was soundly defeated by the Christian Democratic Union in state and municipal elections in early September.
Schröder defended his call for budget cuts of $16 billion September 16, declaring that Germany could no longer "devour [its] resources." His proposed reductions especially target social security. More than 4 million workers are unemployed, and the national debt has ballooned in the unavailing effort to swallow East Germany whole. The German economy is one-third larger than that of the next biggest European power, France.
"The status of women is eroding" in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, said Carol Bellamy of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which released a study of 27 countries in the region September 22. The impact on women of the increasing use of the methods of the capitalist market, the privatization of some industry, and the decline in state provision of essential social services, has been devastating. Of the 25 million jobs lost in the area in the last decade, reports UNICEF, an estimated 14 million were held by women.
Women's reduced life expectancy dropped over the last 10 years in 16 of the 27 countries studied. Among the health problems affecting women are a steep rise in the reported cases of H.I.V./AIDS and syphilis. Women's second-class status is reflected in the fact that in Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, only 18 and 1 percent respectively of parliamentarians were female.
"This clinic stays open" read a sign outside the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. From September 17 to September 20, defenders of a woman's right to choose abortion mobilized to keep open two clinics that the anti-choice organization Operation Rescue had vowed to close.
Other new fronts in the ongoing conflict over abortion rights have opened recently. State laws in Iowa, Nebraska, and Arkansas banning some late-term abortions were ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court September 24. "These decisions reaffirm that the Constitution still applies to women and their health care," said Janet Benshoof, the president of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. Thirty states have passed such laws, and in 18 of them implementation has been blocked by federal courts. A similar law is currently before Congress. Meanwhile, on September 26 New Jersey became the 39th state to pass laws restricting the right to choose for youth. Before having an abortion, a woman of less than 18 years must notify at least one parent. Opponents of both these decisions are appealing them.
Representatives of the United States and Britain have so far failed to gain agreement on the United Nations Security Council for a new regime of intrusive weapons inspections against Iraq. Washington and London insist that Baghdad permit inspections before there is a possibility of lifting the sanctions that have now been wreaking their toll on the Iraqi people for almost a decade. Earlier this year, the White House was forced to admit U.S. spies worked under cover in Iraq on the UN Special Commission as "weapons inspectors."
Officials of France, Russia, and China, who with Britain and the United States form the five permanent council members, state that the embargo should be lifted more rapidly. French foreign minister Hubert Védrine accused Washington of "insensitivity to the human disaster" in Iraq. Paris is preparing to take advantage of trade and investment links already established with Baghdad, which opposes any new inspections. Warplanes from the U.S. and Britain are still carrying out regular bombing raids over Iraq.
Taxi drivers in the Cameroon cities of Yaounde and Douala organized a strike on September 6 to protest the decision announced by the national petroleum company to increase gasoline prices by over one-third. The drivers also oppose the many taxes they have to pay, and the checkpoints operated by police where money is openly demanded. A motion to strike was carried unanimously at a meeting in Yaounde of the Syndicate for Employed Taxi Drivers of Cameroon.
Protesters on Bonny Island, Nigeria, erected barricades to blockade the newly opened $3.8 billion Nigeria Liquefied National Gas (NLNG) plant September 20. They also enforced a blockade of the nearby Port Harcourt with threats to attack the port's authority from canoes. The Bonny communities are demanding that the company assist in developing water and electricity supplies. They also declare that some jobs at the plant should be set aside for local people. NLNG, a state-run company whose shareholders include Royal Dutch Shell, Elf-Aquitaine, and Agip companies, and the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, has opened talks with representatives of the community and the local governor.
Less than 300 miles to the west, in the capital Lagos, police and soldiers opened fire on demonstrating dock workers September 9, leaving 10 dead. The workers are fighting for reinstatement after having been fired under the former military regime of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar.
— PATRICK O'NEILL
Jeanne FitzMaurice in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this column.
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