US Continues Campaign Against FMLN

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

US Continues Campaign Against FMLN

Marchers Denounce Government Violation of Agreement to End Healthcare
Strike

Burke Stansbury
 (by way of NY CISPES)
 <nycispes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>)
 June 19, 2003

The US government s dirty campaign against the FMLN  (Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front) intensified yesterday when Daniel Fisk, US
Sub-Secretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs, publicly expressed his
distrust in the FMLN s "commitment to democracy in El Salvador."  He
also stated that the FMLN s discourse "looks as if it were written in
Havana."  Comments such as these represent direct intervention in the
Salvadoran democratic process, and show that the US government s own
"commitment to democracy in El Salvador" stands only as long as such
democracy keeps ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) in power.  The
FMLN worries that US intervention will increase as election day draws
nearer, and demands that US-El Salvador relations be based on
"self-determination, sovereignty, mutual respect and friendship."  With
nine months to go before the presidential election, opinion polls give
the FMLN an unprecedented seventeen-point lead.

Heavy downpours were not enough to stop thousands of Salvadorans from
taking to the streets yesterday in opposition to CAFTA.  Dozens of
organizations from across the social movement came together to resist
the privatization of vital public services and the destruction of the
Salvadoran agricultural sector, both expected results of a free trade
agreement between the US and Central America.  Campesino organizations
marched alongside unionized teachers and electricity workers behind a
giant banner that read, "We reject the FTAA, CAFTA and the WTO."

Marchers also denounced the Salvadoran government's violation of a
written agreement which ended the nearly nine-month healthcare strike.
According to the agreement, striking workers and doctors should have
been allowed to return to work as of Monday.  However, workers and
doctors have been locked out by the administration in two of the
occupied hospitals. Administrators claim to be performing a week-long
inventory, but union leaders decried it as a trick to deny strikers
their June salary.  Striking doctors also report heavy pressure from
administrators to resign from the institution.  These incidents show
that although the strike successfully stopped the government s attempt
to privatize healthcare, government attempts to bust the two unions will
continue.  If workers are not allowed in by Monday, the unions will
begin a campaign of social pressure to hold the Salvadoran government
accountable to their own agreement.

President Francisco Flores announced the signing of a treaty with the US
that El Salvador would not extradite Americans charged with human rights
violations to the International Criminal Court.  Effectively, this means
that US war criminals would find safe haven in El Salvador.  FMLN
leaders believe that President Flores granted Bush these favors in order
to win support for his bid to become the next president of the
Organization of American States after leaving office in June 2004.
Meanwhile, against the will of the overwhelming majority of Salvadoran
people who opposed the war in Iraq, Flores plans to send Salvadoran
troops to the Iraqi city of Najaf, the site of two fatal attacks against
US forces in the past months, to assist US troops in anti-insurgency.
The FMLN opposes the deployment of troops to Iraq, and has suggested
instead that a Salvadoran medical brigade could be sent to treat
civilian victims of US bombings.

That's the news this morning from El Salvador