------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the March 29, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- WORKERS AORUNGD THE WORLD CHILE:.PROTESTS VS. INTER- AMERICAN BANK The wave of protest that has met world bankers and financiers since the November 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization continued in the streets of Santiago, Chile. Demonstrations against the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank opened up on March 15, despite a massive police presence. The opening protests began with a march organized by the Chilean activist group Funa Commission. Demonstrators chanted, "IDB out of Chile! Capitalism out of Latin America!" They charged that the IDB is a "promoter of neoliberalism in Latin America." Neoliberalism is a term used throughout Latin America for the economic policies of austerity and privatizations that are promoted by international financial groups like the International Monetary Fund. The Funa Commission is a human rights group that publicizes the identity of torturers and other agents of the brutal U.S.-backed dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. Some 40 other community and leftist groups joined the protests, including the Federation of Construction and Wood Workers' Union. Major clashes between demonstrators and riot police took place throughout the weekend leading up to the opening sessions of the IDB on March 19. Over 200 people were arrested in the two days leading up to the opening, according to the Ecuador-based Pulsar news agency. A bomb exploded outside a bank in Santiago on March 19. Leaflets around the bank warned, "Death to the IDB." No one was injured in the blast. "Elite meetings of global wealth and its governmental promoters, of the same type that will take place in Santiago, are generating growing universal rejection due to the total devaluing that they demonstrate in the face of social and human problems that billions of people across the planet are suffering," said a statement issued by the Communist Party of Chile. "That is being shown by the gigantic demonstrations in Okinawa, Bangkok, Melbourne, Washington, Prague, Nice and Zurich this year alone." IDB representatives adopted a tactic used by organizers of the recent World Economic Forum in Cancun, Mexico. They invited representatives of unions and other popular organizations to "debate" banking representatives about the supposed benefits of imperialist exploitation. The United Workers Federation (CUT), Chile's largest union umbrella, did not participate in the demonstrations. Union leaders were invited to some of the IDB's events leading up to the summit. Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, a member of the Socialist Party who postured as a leftist during the election campaign, opened the IDB meeting. He made a point of backing Argentinean President Fernando de la Rua's economic austerity plan during his opening remarks. Argentinean unions are planning a wave of strikes to combat de la Rua's austerity program. Leftists from across Latin America are preparing for a massive demonstration against a meeting of Latin American trade ministers in Buenos Aires on April 6-7. As many as 100,000 people are expected for those demonstrations. COLOMBIA: UNION LEADERS MURDERED Two leaders of a union representing coal miners at the Loma mine near Chiriguana, a town in northern Colombia, were dragged off a bus and executed by paramilitary death squads on March 12. Valmore Locrano Rodriguez and Victor Orcasita had represented workers at the Loma mine, owned by the U.S.- based Drummond Corp. Trade unionists are frequent targets for right-wing death squads in Colombia. The United Workers Federation, CUT, reported that 1,522 labor leaders have been killed in Colombia since 1995--116 in the year 2000 alone. Witnesses reported that several of the gunmen who executed the union leaders wore military uniforms. The paramilitary death squads have been linked directly to Colombia's official armed forces, which use the death squads to terrorize the civilian population against supporting the country's powerful insurgencies. In response to the murders, the Loma mine's 1,200 workers walked off the job. Several international unions, including the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers (ICEM) and the United Steelworkers of America issued statements condemning the attacks. BRAZIL:.OIL WORKERS DEMAND SAFETY An explosion on an oil rig owned by Brazil's state-owned Petrobras oil com pany provoked demonstrations by workers for increased safety measures. One worker was killed outright, another was critically injured and nine were missing and presumed dead in the March 15 explosion at the Campos Basin rig. The Oil Workers Federation FUP staged a series of slowdown and workplace demonstrations to protest the accident, according to the international energy workers union ICEM. The FUP charged that Petrobras was endangering worker safety by subcontracting work to lower-paid and lower-skilled workers. It demanded the right for workers to refuse any work they considered dangerous. An FUP statement called Petrobras management "clearly responsible" for the accident--one of a series of fatal accidents at Petrobras facilities. The "brutal subcontracting implemented within the company" combined with the "criminal cutbacks in the regular workforce" have "multiplied the risks already inherent in this sector," the FUP statement charged. MOLDOVA: COMMUNISTS WIN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS The Communist Party swept parliamentary elections held in Moldova on Feb. 25. Election returns showed that the CP won over 50 percent of the popular vote and 71 out of 101 seats in the former Soviet republic's parliament. The vote was a reflection of disillusionment among the country's poor for the country's pro-capitalist orientation since Moldova seceded from the USSR in 1991. It was also a show of support for greater unity with Russia and Belarus. Moldova was among the first of the former Soviet republics to declare independence from the USSR. Two-thirds of the country's population is Moldovan, closely connected to neighboring Romania, with the remaining one third of Russian background or with backgrounds from former Soviet republics. So the majority vote for the Com mun ists, who campaigned for greater unity with Russia, was a clear defeat for nationalists in the orbit of Western European and U.S. imperialism. Whether the CP can chart a truly independent course remains to be seen. Communist leader Vladimir Voronin declared that "Moldova is interested in extending cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions," according to a March 15 TASS report. UKRAINE:.COMMUNISTS DEMAND GOV'T RESIGN Thousands of communist demonstrators filled the streets outside of Ukraine's parliament building on March 15 calling for President Leonid Kuchma and his government to resign. The leftist demonstrators also called for a restoration of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. "We have called on the president and the prime minister to resign," said communist leader Petro Simonenko. "If not, millions of people are ready to take to the streets to sweep out this regime. The people are tired of this regime that has plunged them into the depths of misery." While the thousands rallied outside the building, activists inside the parliament's visitors' gallery unfurled a banner calling for "Union of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia." The activists were expelled from the gallery after a struggle. Demonstrators came to the capital city of Kiev from the coal regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as from the industrial areas of Odessa and Kharkov. The Ukrainian Workers' Union and the All-Ukrainian Union of Soviet Officers joined the protest. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. 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