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EarthWINS Daily #3.44
1/11/98

Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 00:34:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Alice McCombs <amccombs@igc.apc.org>

Contents

1. RUSSIA: Miners Faced Closures & Anti-Labor Offensive
2. MEXICO: More on Chiapas Massacre
a. ACTION ALERT: World Wide Action on Chiapas Massacre Monday January 12
b. MEX/USA: Indigenous place Clinton into Holiday Hall of Shame
3. ENVIRONMENT: World Bank to Let Axe Fall on Rainforests?
4. FYI: New Guinea/rainforest pages

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1. RUSSIA: Miners Faced Closures & Anti-Labor Offensive

labornews labr.global 12:28 PM Jan 10, 1998

#RUSSIA: MINERS FIRST TARGET AS ANTI-WORKER OFFENSIVE BEGINS

#By Renfrey Clarke

#MOSCOW - According to recently announced plans of the Russian
government, 1998 is to be the year when the country's coal
industry is gutted and cut up, with the most toothsome chunks
ready for handing over to private owners. For scores of thousands
of workers the result will be joblessness, with only vague,
unreliable promises of retraining and resettlement.
#But miners in the country's leading coal region have now
pledged: Only over our determined resistance! On December 29 an
extraordinary congress of miners' delegates in the Kuzbass, the
West Siberian region that is Russia's largest coal producer, drew
up a series of tough resolutions addressed to the country's
president, government and parliament.

#If key demands were not met, the miners indicated, a general
strike of the region's coal sector would be organised.

#Of some 200 coal mines currently operating in Russia, the
government plans to shut down no fewer than 86 by the end of this
year. According to the Moscow daily Segodnya,<D> employment in
the country's coal sector has already fallen by 18 per cent in
the past two years, to a current total of 359,000 workers. If the
planned closures go ahead, the paper states, the number could
shrink by a further 100,000.

#The ``restructuring'' of the Russian coal industry is to be
financed by a US$800 million loan from the World Bank, approved
during December. Half this sum was due to be handed over by the
end of 1997. Delivery by the bank of a second tranche, of US$200
million, has been made conditional on the Russian government
carrying out a coal privatisation program.

#From a figure in December of 8.5 per cent, the proportion of
Russia's coal produced by privately-owned mines is to rise to 50
per cent by the end of 1998. During December, large packets of
shares were sold in three ``promising, profitable'' Kuzbass open
pits.

#Supporters of the government's strategies argue that large-scale
mine closures are inevitable, since the coal sector, reported
recently to have debts equivalent to almost US$8 billion, is
technically bankrupt. Numerous mines have wage debts to their
workers going back six or even nine months, and continue
producing only because of state subsidies.

#But in many cases, the mines are loss-making mainly because the
state has withheld investment funds, and because of the
peculiarities of state accounting. In the Pechora coal basin in
the far north of European Russia, almost all the mines run at a
loss. But the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta<D> in
December cited a study indicating that eight of the nine mines at
Vorkuta, the main Pechora coal centre, were potentially
profitable. The taxes and penalties the mines were being forced
to pay, the report indicated, were greater than the subsidies
they received.

#In all the Russian coal regions, mines suffer from the failure
of customers to pay for deliveries. According to Izvestiya<D>
on December 18, some 56 per cent of the overdue debts to the coal
industry are owed by power plants, which in turn are owed large
sums by government instrumentalities. To a substantial degree,

the need to pay subsidies to coal mines - subsidies that are
cited as proof of the need for mine closures - flows from the
government's own failure to pay its debts.

#Closures of worked-out mines are an inevitable feature of coal
production. But the Russian government plans to shut down
numerous mines containing large reserves of coal that in other
countries and times would be considered well worth extracting.
Once the pits are closed, these reserves are lost for good.

#Markets for the output of these mines allegedly do not exist.
Demand for coal in Russia, especially from the metallurgical
industry, has fallen sharply during the 1990s. But there is
nothing natural or inevitable about the decline of Russian
metallurgy; it is an aspect of the country's six-year economic
depression, which was induced deliberately to serve the ends of
neo-liberal ``shock therapy''.

#Even in circumstances of depression, the argument that markets
do not exist for the output of existing mines starts to look suspicious
if we consider a point revealed by Segodnya<D> in December. Despite
the loss
during 1998 of as many as 100,000 coal industry jobs, actual coal
output is not expected to fall significantly.

#While close to half the existing mines will shut down, output
will be expanded at a relatively small number of highly
productive mines, chiefly open pits. Average costs per ton, at
least as computed by coal firm accountants, will fall.

#To the financial oligarchs who are being invited to take over
Russia's coal industry, these policies make excellent sense. But
if the likely social costs of coal industry ``restructuring'' are
taken into account, the benefits are by no means clear.

#In the depths of a depression, other work for laid-off miners is
hard to find. And if taking up another job means shifting house,
these workers often face a hopeless dilemma; continuing, acute
housing shortages mean that affordable alternative accommodation
can rarely be found.

#If laid-off miners had to be treated in civilised fashion, with
job retraining and alternative work, the cheapest course for
Russian society as a whole would often be to keep loss-making
mines open.

#For political reasons, the Russian government has been forced to
announce adjustment programs for miners in the pits that are
being shut down. But in the experience of the workers themselves,
the government's real strategy is often to try to force them out
without any compensation whatever.

#``If you don't pay people their wages for five or six months,
they'll make off of their own accord, and you don't have to
create any new jobs,'' Aman Tuleev, the governor of Kemerovo
Province, pointed out to journalists recently. Kemerovo Province
includes the Kuzbass region.

#Where coal industry workers stay on the job for long enough to
be made redundant, the programs for their support are often
merely token - or the funds are misdirected by officials. Since
1994, Nezavisimaya Gazeta<D> reported on December 3, a total
of 17 mines have shut down in the Kuzbass. Of 17,000 people put
out of work, only 7 per cent have been placed in new jobs. An
appeal sent to the president and prime minister by miners in the
Maritime District of the Russian Far East in mid-December charged

that mine shutdowns were occurring without the creation of jobs,
and that social welfare commitments to miners were not being met.

#Increasingly, Russian coal workers are coming to the conclusion:
the process through which their industry is being cut up for sale
to private business is not in their interests. The Maritime
District miners, Segodnya<D> reported on December 17,
``consider that the coal sector in Russia should be state-
owned.''

#The demand for a halt to privatisation has not figured so far in
the demands of miners at the national level, where the focus has
remained on forcing the government to meet its promises to coal
industry workers. But as the miners' protests gain in scope and
militancy, the desire of rank and file miners to go into battle
around the call for social ownership of their industry - an
essential condition if its restructuring is not to be a social
catastrophe - seems certain to spread.

#Since early December the miners' protest movement has taken on
an edge of desperation, as the costs of coal production in dead
and injured workers have risen to horrific levels. In the small
hours of December 2, a methane explosion in the Zyryanovskaya
mine in the Kuzbass claimed 67 lives - the worst mine disaster in
the region since 1944.

#No less appalling than this tragedy has been the steadily
increasing number of deaths in ``lesser'' accidents. At the time
of the Zyryanovskaya explosion, the number of lives lost in
Russian coal mines during 1997 already stood at 158 - a figure 32
per cent worse than in 1996.

#According to miners' leaders, prime responsibility for the
carnage lies with the government, which has failed to provide
adequate funds to stop safety management breaking down at all
levels. The number of safety inspections has dropped. Mines have
been left without money to repair ventilating systems, and to to
buy and maintain safety equipment.

#``With the current level of financing, carrying out this work
properly is impossible,'' Ivan Mokhnachuk, deputy chairperson of
the Russian Union of Coal Industry Workers, told the newspaper
Trud<D> in December.

#As well as seeing important strategy meetings by miners'
delegates, the Kuzbass in December witnessed the dramatic use of
direct action by rank and file miners. In the city of Anzhero-
Sudzhensk on December 22 about 250 workers blocked the Trans-
Siberian Railway for ten hours, demanding wages owed from as much
as eight months back.

#Meanwhile, a group of miners from the Pechora basin were staging
a hunger strike in the Moscow offices of Rosugol, the state coal
industry holding company.

#Through its plans for massive lay-offs, in circumstances where
it has neither the will nor the ability to provide for the
workers involved, the Russian government has signalled that it
aims to deal a knock-out blow to the miners, the best-organised
and most combative sector of the Russian working class.

#The assault on the miners will be the spearhead of a much
broader anti-worker offensive, as the capitalist
counterrevolution in Russia enters its most aggressive phase. In
other signs of what is to come, Economy Minister Yakov Urinson on

December 30 revealed that the government plans to cut the number
of defence sector enterprises by nearly two-thirds - from 1700 at
present to 670 in the year 2000. And on January 6, under the
headline "A Reform More Painful than Privatisation",
Izvestiya<D> outlined a new labour code, currently at the
drafting stage, through which the government plans to ``bring
order to the relations between employer and employee.'' Modelled
in part on neo-liberal legislation in New Zealand, this draft
code would reduce trade unions to playing a marginal role in
relations between workers and employers.

#In plotting their anti-labour offensive, Russia's rulers have
perhaps cast their minds back to September-October 1993, when the
application of ruthless, illegal force was enough to overthrow
the country's old parliament and to humble the elite factions
that backed it.

#But the Russian working class is not a cabal of nomenklatura
losers, despised by the population and outmanoeuvred without
great difficulty. To a large degree Russian wage workers,
numbering more than 60 million, are<D> the population.
Millions of these people now have little to lose if they mount
desperate resistance.

#The latter is particularly true of the miners, who have strong
traditions of solidarity and are well able to provide leadership
for much broader working-class layers. The Russian government's
efforts to dismember the coal industry, in short, could finish up
with the country's rulers facing the most determined opposition
they have met throughout their entire restorationist project.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2. MEXICO: More on Chiapas Massacre

a. ACTION ALERT: World Wide Action on Chiapas Massacre Monday January 12

moonlight indig.info 12:55 PM Jan 10, 1998

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION
MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1998

MEMORIAL ACT AND PROTEST
STARTING AT THE EL PASO FEDERAL BUILDING 700 SAN ANTONIO ST
ENDING MEXICAN CONSULATE 900 SAN ANTONIO STREET
4PM

STOP U.S. MILITARY AID TO MEXICO!

END THE WAR IN CHIAPAS!

"Key objective: "To destroy the relationship of support which exists between
the population and the transgressors of the law...military intelligence
services should secretly organize certain sectors of the civilian
population...ranchers...small businessmen...individuals...train and support
self-defense forces or other paramilitary organizations...in cases where
self-defense forces do not exist, it is necessary to create them"

Excerpt from document from
Seventh Military Region
Mexican Federal Army
Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas

Aided by a graduate of the School of Americas in the United States, General
Jose Ruben Rivas PeÒa, 1980 graduate, the Mexican Army has been implementing
a counterinsurgency strategy which revealed itself with the massacre of 45
Indian men, women and children on December 22 of 1997.

An International Day of Action on January 12th has been called for by the
Zapatistas and the FZLN in response to the massacre in Chiapas and the
growing threat of open warfare in Chiapas. The complicity of Mexican state
and federal authorities in the killings remains unresolved. The illegal
incursions of the Mexican military has resulted in beatings, harassment,
widespread terror and the displacement of Zapatista communities. These
actions continue unabated in spite of the resignations of highly placed PRI
officials.

These facts signal a continuation of the policies which led to the massacre.
Most disturbing are concerns about the ease with which US military aid is
being used for counter-insurgency efforts in Mexico. As one commentator
from MSNBC noted in reference to the massacre and continuing violence in
Chiapas, "the CIA has left its footprints-again allying itself with
questionable elements within a foreign country's military." ("Planning the
CIA's Next Secret War," Michael Moran, MSNBC)

The Comite de Apoyo Zapatista joins the call made by the National
Commission for Democracy in Mexico, the Zapatista Front for National
Liberation, and an international support network in Spain, France, Italy,
Switzerland, Canada and more than 24 cities in the U.S in holding events
as part of an international day of protest on January 12, 1998.

In addition the Comite encourages El Pasoans to contact Congressman
Silvestre Reyes to raise their concerns about US military involvement in
Mexico, to ask his staff to attend a briefing for the Congressional Human
Rights Caucus regarding the situation in Chiapas on January 15th at 11am in
Washington DC; to ask him to co-sponsor legislation to suspend all military
aid to Mexico which includes equipment and training to the Mexican
military, in accordance to the provisions established under the Leahy
Amendment; and to seek a full public disclosure of the amount and type of
assistance the US has given to Mexico and an accounting of how it has been
used.

For more information, contact 532-8382.

-----------------------------------------------

b. MEX/USA: Indigenous place Clinton into Holiday Hall of Shame

DEBRA hrnet.indigenous 10:02 PM Jan 7, 1998
(at OLN.comlink.apc.org) (From News system)

Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------
## author : saiic@igc.apc.org
## date : 06.01.98
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jose Matus
1-800-682-4280
Joe Garcia
520-791-3008

Indigenous Alliance Condemns Slaughter in Chiapas

President Clinton Inducted into Holiday Hall of Shame

TUCSON, Ariz. -- An Indigenous human rights alliance has
inducted President Clinton into the "Holiday Hall of
Shame" for failure to appy pressure on Mexico to uphold
the human rights of Indigenous peoples. The Alianza
Indigena Sin Fronteras, Indigenous Alliance Without
Borders, condemned the slaughter of 45 women, men and
chidren in Chiapas, shot and hacked to death by machetes.
"This is just plain terrorism," said O'odham in Mexico Lt.
Gov. Jose Garcia, among the cofounders of the recently
formed human rights organization. Jose Matus, Yaqui
ceremonial leader in South Tucson, urged President Clinton
to join with other countries to apply economic sanctions
against Mexico to ensure civl rights and human rights for
Indigenous peoples. "President Clinton has just closed his
eyes and ears to what is going on in Mexico," said Matus,
director of the Arizona Border Rights Project. Matus said
President Clinton should have apppied pressure during
NAFTA and U.S. loan negotiations to ensure human rights in
Mexico. "The United States has to put pressure on the
Mexican government to do something. But, my take on it is,
it won't," Matus said. "No one really cares about human
rights. We have suffered genocide, the takeover of our
lands and been outcast in the community. That is our
problem in Mexico," said Matus, whose tribe lives in
Arizona and Mexico. While Americans celebrated Christmas
with their families, Indigenous people in the village of
Acteal, Mexico, buried 21 women, nine men, 14 children and
one infant in plain wood coffins. The farmers were shot to
death Dec. 22. Pro- government forcers of the PRI have
been arrested for supplying the weapons. Lt. Gov. Garcia
said ranchers and the Mexican government seizes the land
of Indigenous peoples, who most often do not have a title
to the oil and gas rich land where they live and survive
by raising corn and other crops. Lt. Gov. Garcia said
people in the United States, including Indian Nations and
his own tribe, the O'odham Nation in Sells, Ariz., are
comfortable and show no mercy to the less fortunate. "They
are so used to government aid -- another form of
government control -- they forget about the O'odham and
other tribes in Mexico," Lt. Gov. Garcia said. Maria
Garcia, spokeswoman for the northwestern tribes in Sonora,
Mexico, said the savage violence was meant to provoke the
Zapatista rebels. The owner of La Indita Restaurant in
Tucson said weapons have been supplied by the United
States to eliminate the Zapatistas who are fighting for
Indigenous rights. The victims of the Dec. 22 massacre
were members of the Indigenous group Las Abejas -- the
Bees -- who support the goals of the Zapatistas, but not
the armed struggle. Alliance member and news reporter
Brenda Norrell said, "It is unconscionable that the United
States government -- while pretending to be the human
rights champion of the world -- ignores the slaughter of
women, men and children." "The United States pretends to
be the big brother of the world's helpless. But in
reality, it undermines human rights as it masterminds
corporate greed," said Norrell, editor of the Fort
McDowell Indian Commuinity Newsletter in Arizona and
columnist for the The Circle in Minneapolis. Alliance
members, including Tohono O'odham Mike Flores, were
members of an Indigenous delegation to Chiapas in 1995.
The alliance was formed in August on Tohono O'odham tribal
land in San Xavier, Ariz. In a written statement, the
alliance said, "What would happen if 45 Indian women, men
and children in Arizona, New Mexico or North Dakota were
shot and hacked to death? Does it matter less that they
are Indian people living in Mexico, our neighbors to the
South?"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

3. ENVIRONMENT: World Bank to Let Axe Fall on Rainforests?

newsdesk The Inter Press Service in English 3:09 PM Jan 10, 1998

*** 07-Jan-98 ***

By Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (IPS) - The World Bank, the world's leading
investor in forest projects in developing countries, says it aims
to clean up the global timber industry but is fuelling fears that
it wants to start financing logging operations in tropical
rainforests.

Bank President James Wolfensohn meets leading international
loggers and hand-picked environmental groups Friday, to chart the
lending agency's future course as a champion of 'sustainable' or
'low-impact' logging.

Trouble is, say critics, the Bank has barred from the talks
analysts who question whether 'sustainable' logging is possible
and also has ignored alternative approaches while overlooking the
harmful consequences of its policies and investments on the
world's forests.

At stake are the last of Earth's 'old growth' or 'primary'
forests, home to centuries-old trees largely untouched by humans.
These dense tracts have been referred to as the planet's 'lungs'
and are considered home to as-yet undiscovered species, including
plants with medicinal potential.

Only about 20 percent of these forests remain intact, mostly in
South America's Amazon Basin, Canada's Pacific Northwest, and the
boreal forests of Siberia. Nearly half of all remaining old growth
forests are at serious risk of destruction, according to
environmentalists. The endangered forests include those in the
West African nation of Gabon and on the Southeast Asian island of
Borneo.

''The Bank is pushing the notion of sustainable logging by
transnational corporations, but it has yet to produce the evidence
that such a thing can even exist in primary tropical
rainforests,'' said Randall Hayes, president of the Rainforest
Action Network (RAN).

That view likely will not be heard at Friday's meeting, as RAN
and other groups who challenge the notion of 'sustainable' logging
have been excluded. Also barred are environmentalists and
indigenous people from the countries and forest communities at
greatest risk from intensified logging.

The only developing-country participants expected on Friday are
loggers, including Mohammed 'Bob' Hasan, a close associate of
Indonesian President Suharto and head of the Indonesian Wood Panel
Association, APKINDO, a logging company plagued with widespread
allegations of environmental and human rights abuses.

A Bank spokeswoman pointed out that other participants include
David McDowell, head of the Switzerland-based World Conservation
Union (IUCN), which has affiliates in a number of developing
countries. She nevertheless conceded, ''it would have been better
to have an actual grassroots group.''

The Bank also is embarking upon a year-long review of its
forest policy, adopted in 1991 under heavy pressure from
environmentalists. Officials insist Friday's meeting will not
affect the policy review but analysts note the meeting's agenda is
dominated by discussions of what the Bank should do to improve
forest management.

''The Bank has a tendency to muddy the waters like this,'' said
Korinna Horta, an environmental economist at the Environmental
Defence Fund (EDF). ''The indications are that the Bank wants to
make changes in its operations - in other words, effectively
change the forest policy. But you can't review a policy without
looking at whether and how it has been implemented. We are afraid
there has been little implementation, yet we see signs the Bank is
ready to move away from it.''

The 1991 policy bans direct funding for logging projects in
tropical primary rainforests, limits Bank forestry lending to
governments which are committed to conservation, and emphasises
environmental protection and indigenous peoples' concerns.

Senior Bank officials in particular have stirred suspicions
that the ban on tropical logging will be overturned, by suggesting
that ''waivers'' be granted, permitting them to back projects they
otherwise could not.

''Instead of revising its forest policy to make new loans, the
Bank should revise its loan portfolio,'' said Randy Hayes,
president of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), one of the
groups barred from Friday's meeting.

Hayes held that the Bank should use its lending power to
''promote paper production from agricultural waste rather than
wood. That's a bold, visionary path that I just don't see the
World Bank taking.'' Yet it is exactly the type of option the
Bank, as an avowed development agency, should pursue, he added.

''There has been not enough funding for alternative projects by
the Bank,'' Horta told IPS. In addition, ''most causes of forest
loss are outside the forests themselves, and the Bank's major
investments are helping to drive deforestation.''

Horta highlighted the Bank's insistence that borrowing
countries increase their exports - largely of primary commodities
including timber - to generate economic growth, and rein in state
spending. Budget cuts often result in lay-offs of government
forestry officials, she explained.

One well-placed senior analyst, who asked not to be identified,
said Bank officials also have failed to tackle basic cost issues
in the logging industry, because these have been opposed by the
loggers.

Timber companies generally must pay governments for permission
to operate in national forests but the payments are based on the
amount of timber the companies say was harvested, the analyst
explained. The companies usually seek out one type of tree - say,
hardwood Mahogany - but chop down dozens of other trees to get to
each Mahogany. Yet they pay only for the Mahogany.

Were the companies required to pay for the actual number of
trees felled or the area of forest land logged, they would be far
more careful in their work, the analyst argued, adding that Bank
officials should use Friday's meeting to urge such basic reforms.

However, officials are playing down the expected outcome of the
talks on Friday. ''The best they're hoping for is that everyone
will agree to continue to collaborate for forest eco-system
conservation, and to meet again,'' the Bank spokeswoman said.
(END/IPS/aa/97)

Origin: ROMAWAS/ENVIRONMENT/
----

May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or
service outside of the APC networks, without specific
permission from IPS. This limitation includes distribution
via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists,
print media and broadcast. For information about cross-
posting, send a message to <online@ips.org>. For
information about print or broadcast reproduction please
contact the IPS coordinator at <online@ips.org>.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

4. FYI: New Guinea/rainforest pages

jorgensen reg.westpapua 6:55 PM Jan 3, 1998
(at SSCL.UWO.CA)

Some of you may be interested to have a look at a set of pages I stumbled
across this morning on Kent University's web site. It consists of the
pilot report of the project on the Future of Tropical Forest Peoples (APFT
is the French acronym), and is available in both French and English. The
New Guinea sections cover both PNG and Irian Jaya (predominantly the
former) and contains pretty good summaries and comparisons of ecological
and other data on forest folks in this part of the world (Polly Wiessner
was a major contributor to this part of the overall report). It is
interesting in its own right, and would be useful for: anyone trying to
acquaint the rainforest contingent with the relevant ethnography; those
interested in comparative cultural ecology in the tropics; students
interested in how many Melanesians get a living.

The link to the PNG portion of the site is:

http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Sonja/RF/Ukpr/NG01.htm

The site has global coverage (Africa, Asia, the Americas as well as
Pacific); a detaled index can be found at:

http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Sonja/RF/Ukpr/Report_c.htm

Happy New Year to all,

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