May Day protests marked by violence in RP, South Korea
May Day protests marked by violence in RP, South Korea
HONG KONG (Agencies): Riot police clashed with protesters in
South Korea and the Philippines on Monday as millions of workers
throughout Asia took to the streets to demand improved -- or in
some cases basic -- labor rights and working conditions.
Radical South Korean students hurled a volley of Molotov
cocktails at police in a violent May Day protest against the
planned sale of the ailing Daewoo Motor Co. to a foreign buyer.
The clash erupted outside Korea University when thousands of
riot police stopped some 2,500 students from marching to attend a
labor rally in downtown Seoul.
The incident follows clashes on Saturday between activists
protesting the arrest of four Daewoo union officials and riot
police.
Police in the Philippines also had to contend with violent
protests when 3,000 leftist militants -- protesting against
economic globalization -- attempted to force their way through
barricades surrounding the presidential palace in Manila. Six
people were arrested.
In Japan, where unemployment is near a record high and the
economy just pulling out of a decade-long slump, an estimated 1.7
million people attended more than a thousand rallies nationwide.
The rallies are usually more like picnics than protests, their
mood lightened by the fact that May Day comes at the beginning of
a series of national holidays.
This year, however, the poor economy added to speakers'
urgency. "We are determined to make the greatest effort to
achieve stable employment," Etsuya Washio, chairman of the Japan
Trade Union Confederation, told a crowd in a downtown Tokyo park.
In Malaysia, workers and rights groups focussed on calls for a
minimum wage and improvements in the "shocking" conditions of
plantation workers, some of whom have to survive on wages of less
than US$3 a day.
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in a May Day message to the
nation rejected the minimum wage demand, saying it would erode
international competitiveness, and accused Western Labor unions
of trying to kill off competition by encouraging Malaysian
workers to seek higher wages.
Similarly, Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai on Monday told
over 1,000 protesting workers in Bangkok that his government
would not yet raise the minimum wage frozen since the onset of
the financial crisis.
China
China marked Labor Day by granting an unprecedented seven days
of holiday -- a move designed to give the economy a boost through
higher consumer spending.
Vast crowds packed shopping areas in the center of Beijing as
shop owners attempted to entice buyers with special promotions,
gimmicks and lotteries, while Tiananmen Square bustled with
holiday-makers enjoying the spring sunshine.
China was also on the move all day long, with rail, bus and
air tickets to many destinations completely sold out as up to 10
million urban Chinese were expected to travel during the holiday
period.
In Sri Lanka, a nation whose president was assassinated on May
Day seven years ago, tensions ran high as 7,000 heavily armed
police blocked traffic and watched over workers parading through
Colombo.
During a May Day rally in 1993 President Ranasinghe Premadasa
was assassinated by a Tamil Tiger rebel riding an explosive-
packed bicycle.
In Germany, some 150 people from both the extreme left and
extreme right were arrested Monday in Berlin, police said, as a
neo-Nazi rally went ahead under heavy police protection.
About 100 people were arrested and 16 police officers were
hurt in an overnight riot in the northern city of Hamburg. Far-
leftists, whose Berlin counter-demonstration had been banned,
attempted to disrupt the rally of the National Democratic Party
(NPD) in the eastern Hellersdorf district.
Despite cat-calls, whistles and chants of "Nazis out", the NPD
rally attended by about 500 supporters went ahead under the
protection of some 2,000 police, witnesses said.
The courts had lifted a police ban on the neo-Nazi rally,
while restricting it to one place, but banned leftwing counter-
demonstrations.
In Yugoslavia, more than 4,000 people took part in a May Day
protest against President Slobodan Milosevic. Protesters gathered
at the central Belgrade square and marched through the city
waving union flags and chanting anti-Milosevic slogans, witnesses
said.
There were no incidents although some protesters hurled
insults at the families and guests of 50 couples who took part in
a mass wedding ceremony organized by state-run television RTS,
which is controlled by Milosevic, near the square.
In Russia, meanwhile, small parades of trade unionists and
Communists marched on Monday in muted and chilly May Day
celebrations across the former Soviet Union, but for many people
it was mainly a chance to plant vegetables.
President Vladimir Putin, elected March 26, enjoys widespread
support, and many Communists appear ready to work with him.
NTV television, citing police, said 15,000 people in Moscow
joined a non-Communist trade union march under blue union banners
fluttering in a near-freezing breeze along Tverskaya Ulitsa, a
main thoroughfare leading to city hall.
Separately, Communists and other left-wing groups paraded with
red Soviet flags past a towering statue of Lenin on Kaluga Square
in central Moscow. Police put the number of Communist marchers at
7,000, Interfax reported.