For nearty two months, over 260 Pakistanis, 180 Bangladeshis, 140 Indians and about 300 Moroccans. together with smaller numbers of have made front page news in Spain.
On January 20. just two days before a draconian new megapon P which threatened them with immediace deportation was due to come into force, these so-called "illegal" immigrants occupied a church in the centre on hunger strike. The movement soon spread to another nine churches in the Lining tried demonstrations, alies without getting any response from the authorities to their simple demand for "papers", l.e. a permit giving them the chance to work in this country, feeling socially isolated but not wanting to let down all the people at home who had invested their hopes and considerable decided in desperation to resort to this more drastic and dramatic form of struggle.
The impact was enormous. The banket meda coverage was for once sympathetic and attracted a huge amount of support and solidarity to those in the sit-ins. Public opinion was won over and the government, which had hitherto regarded them as "nonacknowledge their existence, was forced to sit down and negotiate with More than this, in direct defiance of the new Act, which forbids "undocumented" foreigners to take part in meetings, demonstrations or strikes. this spirited group of mirant workers were overtly breaking the law on all these counts with absolute impunity.
However howinalica easy victory to be had against this right-wing, authoritarian Spanish government with a comfortable parlamentary majority and just one year every trick in the book to derail and divide the movement, but at every and determination of the protesters.
They were helped by a series of mass public demonstratons and teles aged by a broad-based support com highly successful, despite the obstructionist and divisionary tactics of the major trade unions and nominally left political parties who made their backing conditional on the immigrants putting an end to the hunger strike -the one weapon that had been left to them after they had been ignored and abandoned by these very organisa. After a tense and gruelling fortnight. the hunger-strikers managed to wring an apreement out of the government But as this was couched in rather general terms, they maintained the sit-ins while a team of lawyers under their instructions thrashed out the actual delars with the governments lega experts until the wording was to their Eventually, after 47 days which. together with smaller actions in other foreign workers to centre stage of the poltical scene, the hundreds of partici. pants in the sit-ins strcame out of tre main church in a mood of euphoria after a packed mass meeting... and marched straight to the central government offices in Barcelona to show that they were still as militant and united as ever.
This exemplary struggle has had the virtue of demonstrating yet again that where there is a will to resist the dieexploitative economic system, resistance is always possible, even by those in the apparently weakest positions It is all the more remarkable for having taken place during a period when major political and social struggles have been virtually absent from Spain. which captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Catalan and Spanish citizens, is the way it confirms that ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances are capable of the most extraordinary feats.
For among these heroic hunger strikers there were practically no political activists, no hardened trade unionists, no seasoned campaigners. no experienced organisers, "merely ordinary people prepared to stand up This struggle could never have achieved as much as it did without the unity of all those at its not No in
Outlook The arrest of Slobodan Milosevic comes at a time of growing tensions throughout former Yugoslavia. In the last few weeks there have been armed clashes in Macedonia. The Dayton accords, which supposedly brought peace to Bosnia, are being torn up by sections of the Croat community. Later this month elections in Montenegro will probably decide on whether or not to secede from what remains of Yugoslavia.
All of these issues are inextricably linked. They are a product of the wave of Serb nationalism unleashed by Milosevic in the late 1980s which led to the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. They are also the results of imperialist intervention region, intervention which has led to new crises arising. Geoff Ryan explains. Kostunica: Milosevic may be behind bars, bus another nationalist has taken his place. Macedonian covernment. They did not understand that imperialism intervened in Kosova not because they cared about the fate of Albanians but because Milosevic was no longer the best guarantor of stability in the *Hopefully the haste with which western governments have declared their hostility to Albanian separatism in Macedonia will belp disabuse them of their illusions in imperialBosnia From the beginning of the war in Bosnia Socialist Outlook supported Bosnian independence. We did not take the view that all narties involved in the war were couslly bac but argued for defence of Bosnia against Serbian and Croatian aggression.
Bosnia was a multi-national state and its government, (whatever our many criticisms ofit), continually defended its multi-national and multi-ethnic nature.
We therefore opposed the Dayton Accord because it gave de facto recognition to the partition of Bosnia along ethnic lines. Far