Millions of Indians strike against liberalization plans

New Delhi, India, May 11— Millions of Indian workers went on strike Thursday disrupting businesses and transport links in a protest against the Hindu nationalist government’s march towards financial liberalization.

K. L. Mehendra of the powerful All India Trade Union Congress said 20 million employees boycotted work, and that the strike totally disrupted the financial sector, with Indian and foreign banks shutting down for the day.

“The strike was total in the states of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Tripura and Kerala and partially successful in other states,” Mehendra said as the day-long strike ended.

“In the financial sector including banking and insurance the strike was total throughout the country and the stoppage was particularly successful in the coal-belt and industrial units.”

The Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) said the strike even paralyzed India’s agriculture sector.

“The manner in which workers responded and even the labor force from agricultural, small and other unorganized sectors joined the strike showed a national opinion was being created against economic policies of the government,” CITU president E. Balanandan said.

“The strike was aimed against the surrender of the country’s economic sovereignty before the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund,” he said.

“The overwhelming response to the strike only showed the depth of the crisis the workers find themselves in, and the intensity at which they want to oppose such retrograde policies,” CITU leader Madhukar Pandhe added.

India’s four main communist parties, 12 other political groups, 55 industry federations and six trade trade unions took part in the nationwide protest.

Air and rail links were hit in Marxist-ruled West Bengal state. Truck transport ground to a halt in several other states.

A police spokesman in the West Bengal capital Calcutta said: “Trains have been stranded in several stations because the protesters are squatting on the tracks.”

In New Delhi, strikers briefly held up traffic at an arterial crossing near the downtown ITO business district till they were arrested by police.

Attendance at bank and insurance companies in the capital was almost nil.

The demonstrators were also protesting against a recent government decision to hike the prices of cooking gas and kerosene and to cut subsidies.

New Delhi is trying to rein in a massive fiscal deficit expected to reach 5.6 percent of the gross domestic product in the year to March, exceeding the government target of four percent.

Doraiswami Raja, a leader of the Communist Party of India, said there were rural issues as well.

“The government has not done anything for farmers. Impoverished farmers are committing suicide due to crop failure and staggering debts. We want land re-distribution,” he said.

Source: Agence France Press

Argentine province erupts in protest

Argentina, May 13— Residents of the northern part of Argentina’s Salta province began blocking Route 34, an important national highway, on May 2 to demand solutions to the unemployment crisis in the region, located near the border with Bolivia. The area, which includes the municipalities of General Mosconi, Tartagal, Pocitos and Vespucio, experienced an oil boom in the 1970s and 1980s; the boom ended with the privatization in 1991 of the state oil company YPF. Unemployment in the area is currently around 25%.

Traffic along Route 34, which links the region to Bolivia, remained blocked by protesters in General Mosconi as of 5am on May 12, when a contingent of some 600 agents of the Gendarmeria (the national border police) used tear gas and nightsticks to try to break up the protest and reopen the highway to traffic. When protesters fled into the town, agents of the provincial police picked up the fight, pursuing the protesters with tear gas, clubs and rubber bullets. Dozens of people were arrested and many were injured; truck driver Victor Jofre died of a heart attack.

Angered by the repression, groups of local residents rioted through General Mosconi, sacking, looting and burning government buildings and private businesses. The highway remained blocked by protesters, while thousands more staged peaceful demonstrations in the town to condemn the police violence; they were joined by some 10,000 residents of Tartagal, who marched to General Mosconi to join in.

The crackdown on the protesters was authorized by federal judge Miguel Medina after a government negotiations team announced that talks had failed. The protesters had refused to back down on two demands: an end to court proceedings against the protest leaders; and an increase in the number of available slots in a national jobs program. Following the repression and the public’s response, a high-level team of government officials flew in to resume the dialogue, mediated by church representatives.

On May 13, after 12 hours of intense negotiations, an agreement was reached, and the picketers unblocked Route 34.

El Salvador wants US to pay for war

San Salvador, El Salvador, May 14— Religious and social organizations from El Salvador and the United States have asked the US government to pay $6 billion in compensation for the role it played in the Central American country’s civil war.

In an open letter published in the local press, the organizations commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Sumpul River massacre, in which approximately 600 peasants were killed by the Salvadoran and Honduran armies on May 14, 1980, in the department of Chalatenango, which borders on Honduras.

Salvadoran troops pursued the peasants who, while attempting to cross the Sumpul River into Honduran territory, were fired on by soldiers from both nations. The bodies of the slain peasants were carried away by the river and never recovered, according to humanitarian organizations.

As was consistent with US foreign policy during the Cold War years of the Reagan/Bush era, the US military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed, armed, trained, and often directed Latin American governments’ efforts to extinguish left-wing insurgencies and grass-roots peoples’ movements. Since then, many historians and human rights advocacy groups have pointed to El Salvador as an exemplary case study in US interventionism and often clandestine counterinsurgency warfare. Critics of the US army’s School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, for example, often site the school’s counterinsurgency training of Salvadoran military in techniques of repression and torture as playing a large part in the genesis of what became regarded as one of the most nightmarish chapters in Central American history.

More than 50 Salvadoran and US social and religious organizations signed the letter denouncing “the US government’s role in the war and the Salvadoran government’s policy of immunity applied to those individuals responsible for the Sumpul River massacre.”

The groups are also calling on US President Bill Clinton to pay “a minimum compensation of $6 billion to rebuild the country.”

El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992), according to varying humanitarian sources, left more than 75,000 people dead, 7,000 disappeared, 12,000 people handicapped and displaced one million people from their homes.

Source: Grassroots Media Network: rootmedia@mail.com

US agent confesses to killing Chilean army chief

Santiago, Chile, May 12 (IPS)— The pending cases of human rights abuses committed by the 1973-90 dictatorship in Chile heated up this week with the prosecution of a former secret police chief and confessions by a former US intelligence agent.

A Chilean court prosecuted a former head of the military dictatorship’s secret police for the 1986 murder of a journalist, while a judge in Argentina is considering summoning former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in connection with the 1974 murder of his predecessor.

Chilean Judge Dobra Lusic issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for General Humberto Gordon and other former National Intelligence Center (CNI) agents accused of kidnapping and killing reporter José Carrasco on Sep 8, 1986 after a failed attempt by an insurgent group on Pinochet’s life.

Former US intelligence agent Michael Townley, meanwhile, confessed to killing General Carlos Prats, who preceded Pinochet as army chief under the government of socialist president Salvador Allende (1971-73), overthrown in the 1973 coup.

Prats and his wife were killed in a 1974 bomb attack while in exile in Buenos Aires.

Townley’s confessions before Argentine Judge María Servini de Cubría implicated Pinochet and other leaders of Chile’s de facto regime in the assassination of Prats.

Townley said that the orders to kill Prats came from Manuel Contreras, then Head of the National Intelligence Office (DINA), the secret police that was later dissolved and replaced by the CNI.

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos said that “if things happened as Townley says, we must ponder on what to do to keep them from ever happening again in Chile.”

Lagos, a socialist who took office in March at the head of the center-left governing Coalition for Democracy, said the Prats assassination should be solved “for the good of the country.”

Contreras, who is in prison for the 1976 assassination of Allende’s foreign and defense minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, said that Townley’s statements were false, and were simply designed to “cover up his own crimes and protect the intellectual authors” of the murder.

The former head of DINA cited a document revealing that Venezuelan agents met in May 1976 with agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as members of Cuban anti-Castro groups, in the Dominican Republic to plan Letelier’s murder.

Townley took part in that meeting, said Contreras.

“I never met Townley, and he was never a DINA agent. He was a CIA agent,” said Contreras, who denied participating in the assassination, which he said was planned and carried out by the CIA.

Operation condor: documents missing, new charges filed

South America, May 11— A number of documents have reportedly disappeared from the so-called “Archives of Terror,” a collection of files discovered in Paraguay in 1992 which reveal details of the human rights abuses carried out by the dictatorships of South America through Operation Condor. Conceived by Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Operation Condor involved the coordination of intelligence operations under the dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brasil, Uruguay and Bolivia.

Paraguayan lawyer and teacher Martin Almada, who first discovered the archives, told the Buenos Aires daily Clarin that one of the missing documents is from the US Central Intelligence Agency and is titled “How to keep torture victims alive.” Almada, who was tortured under Paraguay’s dictatorship, told Clarin he had hoped to use the CIA document “to start a legal action against the CIA.” He said he recently learned from a Paraguayan CIA operative that the CIA was responsible for his abduction. Almada is currently in Washington asking the government of US president Bill Clinton to declassify US documents relating to torture in Paraguay.

On May 11, Chilean human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto filed three new charges against Pinochet, bringing to 100 the total number of charges filed in Chile against the former dictator. Pinochet is also facing a separate trial which may result in his being stripped of the parliamentary immunity he holds as a senator-for-life.

Michael Townley, a US citizen who worked for Pinochet’s notorious secret police, the National Intelligence Department (DINA), has admitted that he planned the September 1974 car bomb assassination in Buenos Aires of exiled Chilean former army chief Carlos Prats and his wife Sofia Cuthbert. Townley’s admission was reported by the electronic daily El Mostrador and confirmed to the Argentine daily La Nacion by sources close to the case. The Prats case is currently being investigated in Argentina by Judge Maria Servini de Cubria. Servini submitted questions to Townley last November but only recently received the recording of his testimony from US judicial sources. Townley lives in the US under government protection.

Meanwhile, another Argentine judge, Claudio Bonadio, is investigating another Operation Condor case: the abduction and disappearance of three Argentines in 1980 in Brazil. The investigation is causing a stir in Brazil, where military and political sectors fear it could unleash a wave of trials against officials for the disappearances of 400 people during Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

Retired Chilean general Humberto Gordon, former chief of the National Information Department (CNI), was ordered arrested on May 10, along with three other former CNI officials, all charged with involvement in the September 1986 abduction and execution of four leftists. The CNI was Pinochet’s secret police agency in the later years of his dictatorship, following the disbanding of the DINA. The executions were considered to have been carried out in retaliation for a failed attack on Pinochet by the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). Gordon was arrested last year on charges of covering up the 1982 murder of union leader Tucapel Jimenez, but was released on probation. Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org

Police attack landless in Paraguay

Caazapa, Paraguay, May 11— Some 400 Paraguayan police agents used force to evict 500 landless campesinos who had begun an occupation two days earlier of the private Taruma estate, property of the Burro Sarubbi family, located in the Yuty district of Caazapa department. At least 45 people—25 police agents and 20 campesinos—were reported injured in the ensuing clashes, four of them seriously, and 320 people were arrested, including a large number of minors. Police barred the press from the area during the operation for “security reasons;” however, reporters near the zone said they saw an Air Force helicopter hurling tear gas bombs at the ground, and three Xavante planes buzzing the area. The Armed Forces officially denied any participation in the raid, and said that the planes were merely carrying out routine exercises in the area, not taking part in the police action. Reporters also heard gunfire, and campesinos fleeing the site claimed that a number of people were killed in the operation; the government denied there were any deaths, and said only two people were seriously injured. The National Campesino Federation (FNC) says 17 people remain missing. Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org

Mexican government prepares for war on indigenous

Statement of Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN)

Translated by Irlandesa for the FZLN

Over the last few weeks the federal government has continued positioning its pieces on its macabre game board of total war against the Zapatista indigenous communities. All of their actions having to do with the state of Chiapas, whether they be political, military, economic or social, are being channeled in this direction, that of open war.

It has reached such a point that it would appear that the government has decided, owing to the combination of factors being presented by the current political, economic and social climate, that this is the moment for doing away with the indigenous insurgence, whether in order to encourage the fear vote in the coming elections, or to smooth the future government’s path regarding the Chiapas conflict.

We shall see, then, what these different scenarios are which the Mexican government is putting into place so that they will have a pretext for openly attacking the EZLN:

The Federal Army

The Federal Army’s February offensive of 1995 set the pattern for the militarization of the State, not just through the positions taken after February 9 of that year, but also because it opened a period of expansion of positions by the army itself and by other security forces, such as the federal and state police and paramilitary groups.

The processes of paramilitarization began during the period from 1995 to 1998, as did the establishment of the first broad circles around the conflict zone, through the establishment of new military installations around the State of Chiapas, the first positions around the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, the establishment of advance lines in the Selva and police expansion in Los Altos.

1999 marked the beginning of a new stage in the military offensive. The Federal Army entered directly in to the Northern region of the Montes Azules Reserve and the areas surrounding it. Police presence was simultaneously expanded and intensified, covering a broad area of Los Altos, the Coast, all of the Soconusco region and the Zoque Area.

In 1998 CIEPAC reported the presence of 300 positions of various types of repressive forces in the State of Chiapas. This year, 2000, however, there are at least 681 positions, of which 291 are police positions, 39 immigration police ones, 313 Federal Army, Air Force and Navy (of which, 39 correspond to 33 locations which we have not been able to identify in various regional maps). Locating the physical positions of these control points is not sufficient, since all of these forces are continuously moving along corridors of influence, such as those of the Mixed Operations Bases and the Army’s strategic routes, as noted by Jorge Luis Sierra. The forces of the 15 paramilitary groups should also be noted, active in at least 26 municipalities in the State.

The strategy of military, police, and paramilitary saturation of a region of such dimensions carries an excessive cost for our country. The social and economic costs of these hundreds of repressive positions make no sense in the long term. They only make sense from the perspective of a brutal attack against indigenous communities in the area.

The Military Encirclements and the Importance of San Quinti’n

It is well known that an important part of the strategy followed by the federal Army against the EZLN has been the acquisition of numerous methods of air transport, as well as the construction of roads which allow an ever greater and better access to zapatista areas. As part of that, the Army has proposed the closing of various highway circuits, establishing a series of progressive concentric circles, as well as the encirclement of various parts of the Selva.

It can be confirmed, in this regard, that the development of highway construction policies by the federal Army following the zapatista uprising, has gone through at least four different stages:

1. The definitive closing of the border highway (or external circle);

2. The closing of a great interior circuit;

3. The closing of a circuit which surrounds the RIBMA (Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve)

4. The closing of an internal micro-circuit.

The border highway is the highway circuit that allows the broadest possible means of surrounding the entire Selva Lacandona, connecting the city of Palenque to the south with the village of Flor de Cacao, in Marqués de Comillas, and this village with Lagos de Montebello and Comitán to the west. Comitán connects directly with Palenque through the highway to Ocosingo, which passes by Margaritas and Altamirano. One must remember, in addition, that this highway --the portion of it that is parallel to the Usumacinta River-- also serves military logistics, allowing the introduction of the Navy by water.

The next key step was the closing of a second circuit, an interior one this time, which was achieved through the improvement and inter-connection of two stretches of highway going from Ocosingo to San Quintín, crossing the cañadas of Patihuitz and Betania, and from Las Margaritas to San Quintín, passing through the towns of Nuevo Momón, Vicente Guerrero, Guadalupe Tepeyac, La Realidad and Guadalupe los Altos. The circle was only able to be truly closed when the bridge crossing the Jataté River in San Quintín was built.

Contrary to all its statements and propaganda acts, the federal Government, far from carrying out the signed Accords and building a negotiating policy with the EZLN, has, in fact, implemented an extraordinarily costly military deployment, systematically and continuously, which demonstrates its true warlike vocation. Up to now, the only solution to the chiapaneco conflict which the government has promoted has been military.

The So-called “Ecological Front”

The Fires in Chiapas, Alibi for War:

An inter-institutional commission (made up of the SRA, Profepa and the Chiapas government), an International Committee for Forestry Safeguarding (including, curiously, in addition to Profepa and SEMARNAP, the SEDENA, the PGR, the PFC, the PJE, the State Council of Public Security and the Department of Government), the SEMARNAP itself, Profepa, the Department of Government, a group of 8 ecological organizations, the WWF (World Wildlife Federation) and the PFP itself - in addition to some journalists on the payroll - have all been spending their time over the last few months orchestrating a campaign of vague, ambiguous, contradictory and - on not a few occasions, scandalously false - statements concerning a purported crisis regarding the fires in the Selva region of Montes Azules, in the very heart of the chiapaneco region of the conflict.

These bodies have seen the current national wave of fires as a great opportunity for presenting the residents of the Selva Lacandona as persons who clear, set fire to and devastate forests when they prepare their lands for cultivation.

One important fact, however, does not fit this alibi. Anyone who consults one of the web pages of the observation satellite (http://www.cira.colostate.edu/RAMM/Rmsdsol/MXFIRE.html) will be able to observe daily images which show how the current fires in the Mexican southeast are taking place outside the area of conflict this year, including the Comprehensive Reserve of the Montes Azules Biosphere (RIBMA). This renders the published statements of the WWF --as well as the response to them by Wilfrido Robles (La Jornada, April 30, 2000), justifying the entrance of the PFP into Montes Azules-- absolutely false.

One strange aspect of this line of reasoning is that, even as the Secretary of the Environment complains about the SEMARNAP’s few human forces and meager monetary resources for putting out these invisible fires (300 brigade members, 15 brigade chiefs from the Sedena and two helicopters), she gives no thought to these campesino families as being the first persons interested in preventing these fires.

It is hard to imagine the existence of any better fire-fighting force when such disasters take place. It is strange, then, that the Department of the Environment is not concerned about the defense of these communities (among other things, creators and guardians of biodiversity, of the genetic banks as well as of their traditional knowledge), while transnational companies and international research centers smack their lips when they go in to the area to investigate and to patent genomes and the indigenous knowledge concerning them.

Nonetheless, the use of biological war materials (the abundant bombardment of rats and snakes, which has even caused imbalance and unease in Guatemala; the copious application of defoliants and other chemical substances in all areas of the Selva; and the introduction of transgenetic maize in an area whose biodiversity is considered as one of the most important in the world because of its domestic species) and, above all, the fact that Montes Azules is being considered as the scenario for the final denouement of warlike confrontations, are factors which put the conservation of the Selva in jeopardy, not fifteen years hence, but over the next few months.

As if all the foregoing were not enough, Montes Azules has been considered to be a privileged area for the irregular activities of bio-prospecting and bio-piracy by pharmaceutical and transnational environmental companies. An example of this is the current scandal concerning the connection between the College of the Southern Border (Ecosur) and bio-prospecting activities by the University of Georgia and the Gales company, which deals in nano-technology, Molecular Nature Limited, as well as the eco-tourism centers and bio-prospecting of the Savia (formerly Pulsar) company, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). [They are located in] the rich area of the Ocotal and Suspiro lakes, which is, curiously, the most heavily militarized place in the entire reserve.

It is odd that many national ecologists and intellectuals —instead of complaining about the flagrant intervention in an issue and region that are of great strategic importance for sovereignty and national peace— have joined in the lynching campaign against the indigenous communities of Montes Azules.

It is equally odd that those who say they are concerned about the future of the Selva Lacandona have not come out against the whole web of irregularities that the management of this biodiversity reserve has woven. That, even without taking into account the fact that ecologists should naturally be the automatic enemies of warlike solutions, if not because of the persons that the federal government plans to assassinate, then at least for the butterflies which are going to be lost.

NO to the PFP’s entering into Montes Azules. NO to the destruction the army is wreaking on the reserve. NO to the false reforestation. NO to the political manipulation of fires. NO to the opening of roads. NO to delivering this strategic resource to Conservation International and to Pulsar. But, above all, NO to using the conflict in Chiapas as the means by which the PRI thinks it will overcome the irreversible political crisis being created by the current election process.

No to the war. Instead of that, yes to conservation of biodiversity, which begins with the conservation of our indigenous culture, old and new. Yes to designing intelligent strategies of conservation which will allow the gradual enriching of the soil, in a planned manner, doing without the risks of clearing, planting and burning. But, above all, yes to the participatory and inclusive management of everyone in our biodiversity and our country. In the same way, yes to the carrying out of the San Andres Accords and the building of a peace with justice and dignity.

The Paramilitaries

One of the most central elements of counterinsurgency in Chiapas has been the establishment and development of paramilitary groups in various areas of the state. The term paramilitary notes the existence of a direct relationship between armed civilian groups and the armed forces of the State. This relationship can range from tolerance of their existence, to the training and direction of these groups by the military and police. These paramilitary groups carry out a series of repressive tasks, assassination, and terrorism in service to the State. They seek to clear the military and police institutions of responsibility for these acts by placing a smokescreen around the Army in order to prevent their indictment and denunciation for human rights violations. The existence of these groups has been noted by various social and human rights organizations, as well as having been publicized in the national press. A Department of Defense document, published by Proceso, noted: “(...)Military operations include the training of local self defense forces, so that they can participate in security and development programs.” “In cases where such self defense forces do not exist, it is necessary to create them.”

The Sedena forecast: “That the friendly population defends what is theirs, and it is especially valid for cattle ranchers and small owners.”

The strategic-operational objective: “To destroy the EZLN’s will to fight, isolating it from the civilian population and to secure their support for the operations.”

The tactical objective is: “To destroy and/or disrupt the EZLN’s political-military structure.” (Chiapas Campaign Plan 1994, Proceso, 1105, January 4, 1998, p.7)

The relationship between these groups and the armed forces has been documented in various testimonies from communities in the areas where they are operating, as well as by persons who once were members of those groups. In several cases government financing of these paramilitary bodies has been documented. Their modus operandi include various massacres, including the one carried out in Acteal. One of their central objectives, as noted by their actions as well as by counterinsurgency manuals, is to provoke terror and to force the displacement of residents who have not demonstrated their support for the government.

Immigration Policy at the Service of the War

International visitors expelled from Chiapas:

Between February 1995 and December of 1997, there were more than 200 international visitors expelled. Between February of 1998 until December of 1998, the Mexican government expelled 162 internationals. From January of 1999 until March of 1999, there were 7 international visitors expelled. In the first months of 2000, January and February, there were 49 internationals expelled.

One of the last expulsions was directed against Ted Lewis, Director of the Mexico Program of the North American organization Global Exchange. This is an organization which has not only helped the indigenous communities of our country in economic and social projects, but has also played a very important role in disseminating, at a national and international level, the Mexican government’s human rights violations against the indigenous and against the people in general. Similarly, the previous year Tom Hansen and Peter Brown, among others, were expelled. They are both North Americans who have done much solidarity work and who have supported educational, social and cultural projects in the indigenous communities.

Over the last few days, the National Immigration Institute (INM), an agency in the Department of Government, has “unleashed a persecution campaign against foreigners visiting the indigenous communities of Chiapas, through a massive campaign of citations” (La Jornada, 5/5/2000). The campaign is being tightened, thus, against foreign observers, uncomfortable witnesses to the warlike actions of the Mexican government.

FZLN

The activities in preparation for war which the government and the federal army have put in place could be verified by members of the FZLN in all the communities they visited, in the North as well as in Los Altos and in the Selva. Aggressive checkpoints, paramilitaries on the roads and around the communities, low overflights, the proliferation of military control points, threatening convoy runs, etcetera, all allowed us to conclude that what is going on in Chiapas today is not just the same attempts to wear down the communities which the federal and state governments have been maintaining over the last few years.

It is, instead, the prelude to something greater: the imposition of a new open war in the Mexican southeast against the zapatista communities and the entire country.

Conclusions:

The game board for war is set there, in the Mexican southeast, although its scope is, without any doubt, national. The pieces for war have been put in place by the government. The offensive could begin in a matter of months, weeks or simply days. It depends on us, organized civil society: What pieces can we put in place in order to prevent war once again and to impose peace with justice and dignity?

Interdisciplinary Group Against the War in Chiapas Mexico, May of 2000

Local Chiapas solidarity: Carolina-Chiapas Connection: 675-5525, or: jmorgan@yancey.main.nc.us

Source: Chiapas95 newslists: chiapas@eco.utexas.edu