Solidarity 046, 19 February 2004

Cambodian union leader murdered

On 22 January Chea Vichea, the president of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTUWKC), which organises garment workers, was shot dead in Phnom Penh. Chea Vichea was an outspoken leader. He was shot in the head and chest while reading a newspaper at a busy kiosk in Phnom Penh. Vichea was also a founding member of the Sam Rainsy party (Cambodia's main opposition party). He eventually left the party to focus on his union work, but maintained close links with it. In recent weeks three other members of the opposition have been murdered in Cambodia. On 25 January Buddhist...

Why Iranians hate Islamism

By Yasmine Mather Elections for the seventh session of the Islamic Parliament in Iran are very strange elections, even by Iranian standards. The scrutiny of the Islamic credentials of candidates by the ultra-conservative Council of Guardians has led to a ridiculous situation where many sitting MPs as well as some 2,500 other candidates have been eliminated from the electoral list. If you are a secular candidate, you can't put your name forward for elections, but even amongst the candidates of various Islamic groups, a very large number were considered too "liberal" by the Guardian Council...

Haiti: civil war and a glimpse of a third power

By Dan Katz The crisis facing the Haitian government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide continued on Sunday 15 February with a mass demonstration in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Thousands of demonstrators - who blame the president for rigging elections in 2000 - demanded Aristide's resignation. Aristide faces both these large-scale mobilisations and the armed groups which have seized a number of areas in the north of Haiti. These armed gangs seem to have been reinforced by some supporters of the old Haitian dictatorship who have entered Haiti from the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Fighters...

International women's day, 8 March. Don't take the Mickey!

By Mick Duncan Anti-sweatshop activists are targeting Disney to mark International Women' Day on 8 March. Women' Day is a chance to show solidarity with women workers across the world -and what better way than to highlight the plight of many tens of thousands of women workers who slave for Mickey Mouse? The Disney corporation is an enormous, hugely profitable empire. Last year its profits were $1.27 billion, with a revenue of $27 billion. Disney clothes and toys are made in 50,000 factories across the world. Disney has made its CEO Michael Eisner very wealthy. The business magazine Forbes...

Chinese textile workers' protest attacked by police

Chinese police have repressed a protest by textile workers struggling to recover unpaid wages and other benefits after their factory went bankrupt. On 8 February around two thousand workers from the Tieshu Textile Factory in Suizhou, Hubei province, blocked the local railway for most of the morning. Around 800 armed and regular police from neighbouring towns arrived to disperse the protestors, and blocked the arrival of hundreds more who were heading toward the scene. According to eyewitness reports in the China Labour Bulletin, scores of demonstrators were injured. The police randomly hit...

Mexican women against violence

By Joan Trevor On Saturday 14 February - Valentine's Day - a march was held in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez to remember more than 300 young women murdered there since 1993. The women were often raped before being killed and their mutilated bodies dumped in public places. The murderers - believed to be a gang - have evaded justice, and the authorities shown themselves at first dismissive of the crimes, then incompetent - and perhaps even reluctant - to solve them. There is speculation that many of the murders have been done by rich gangsters with links to the law enforcement agencies...

The miners' strike 1984-5: They fought, they lost, they could have won

By Cathy Nugent On 1 March twenty years ago British miners embarked on a tremendous year-long battle to save their jobs, their communities and, as it turned out, the entire industry. They also fought the Thatcher Tory government for the whole of our class. The miners were absolutely right against those union and Labour leaders who portrayed their intransigence as irrational. The miners fought and lost. Their defeat was far from inevitable. Decisive solidarity from the rest of the labour movement could have ensured a victory for the miners. That is the tragedy of the miners strike and it is a...

Free trade, fair trade? The inequalities of nations

Paul Hampton begins a series about world trade. What has happened to world trade since World War 2? Can, as some charities and campaigners argue, capitalist trade be made more 'fair'? Whether you live in Mexico or Morocco, South Korea or Spain, you can buy food produced on the other side of the world. Toys made in China, jeans in Guatemala, trainers in Indonesia and cars made in Brazil are sold thousands of miles away. This is the golden age of world trade, if nothing else. Since World War 2, world trade has grown 16-fold - far outstripping the growth in world output (GDP), which has grown...

Anti-semitism and anti-Zionism on the 1970s German left

Gerd Koenen, who in the 1970s, was a leading member of the Communist League of West Germany, an eclectic but numerically substantial Maoist (and pro-Pol-Pot) organisation, has recently published memoirs. He has learned some things over the years: and one of them, as this extract shows, is the rottenness of standard left "anti-Zionism". His rethinking is relevant outside Germany, too. The extract is from The Red Decade: Our Little German Cultural Revolution, 1967-1977, Gerd Koenen, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002. Stan Crooke Jordan Kunzelmann [a leading figure on the German "anti...

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