Tens of thousands of workers participated in a general strike in India last Friday, Dec. 11. The strike was called by more than 50 trade unions to protest against the government's free market policies. Industrial and agricultural workers, women's groups, youth groups, and students marched to the parliament building in the capital, New Delhi, and staged a sit-in. In other areas, protests closed down most banks and businesses in Calcutta and in West Bangal, Kerala, Tripura, and Tamil Nadu States, where public transport was closed down and government-owned coal and oil companies shut for the day. The strikers' demands included: a guaranteed minimum wage (something we take for granted here in the U.S.), an end to privatization of state-run companies, and a halt to opening the insurance sector to foreign investors. Speaking at a rally in Bombay, the Secretary of the General Insurance Employees Union said: "We are strongly opposed to privatization. Private companies swindle profits, especially foreign companies. The profits from the insurance sector which are now being used by the government to build roads and canals will now go into the hands of a few families."--Maria Tomchick

In South Korea, thousands of workers and students hit the street last week to protest government privatizations, cuts in social spending, layoffs, and a $10 billion deal to restructure the nation's top five conglomerates--Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Daewoo, and SK--in an effort to make them appear more profitable to foreign investors. The restructuring will leave hundreds of thousands of people unemployed. Workers at Daewoo and Samsung have staged daily rallies since last Tuesday to protest a merger of the two companies.--M.T.

Thai environmental protesters set up roadblocks on the Phet Kasem Highway in southern Thailand last Thursday to block the construction of three coal-powered energy plants. On the previous day, a demonstration attended by 5,000 people had been violently disbanded by 3,000 Thai police, and over 50 people were injured. So the protesters returned the next day to shut down the freeway. The Phet Kasen Highway is the main arterial connecting southern Thailand with the capital of Bangkok.--M.T.

Last Thursday was also Human Rights Day to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. In Hong Kong, 50 protesters marched to demand that China release all political prisoners. A similar demonstration in Seoul, South Korea, was meant to embarrass the country's new president, Kim Dae Jung--himself a former political prisoner--to release over 100 prisoners of conscience. In Pakistan, women's rights activists demonstrated against the government's decision to make Islamic code the country's supreme law. In Indonesia, activists, women's groups, and East Timorese resistance groups marched in Jakarta to demand investigation into past human rights abuses.--M.T.

Meanwhile, two Russian nuclear whistle-blowers remain in legal limbo. In late October, a St. Petersburg court remanded prosecution of Aleksandr Nikitin to the FSB (the Russian secret police) on the grounds that the FSB had failed to document which of the papers Nikitin released publicly in 1995 on Russian nuclear navy pollution were classified. Under Russian law, the judge in the case could not directly acquit Nikitin, so he remains under arrest while the wheels of bureaucracy grind on. The same week, in the Pacific coast city of Vladivostok, a military court postponed trial for Capitain Grigory Pasko, a journalist accused of giving publicly available documents on nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan to Japanese media.--G.P.