DYING FOR A DRINK Just in case you missed it the 22nd of March was World Water Day. It was celebrated in South Africa by remembering 260 people who have died in the recent Cholera epidemic. It started after the city council in Capetown started cutting off the water supply of people in townships who couldn't afford to pay for the 'service'. People who resisted were shot with live ammunition (see SchNEWS 326) Now the council have come up with the brilliant idea of auctioning off the houses of 400 families who can't pay, leaving them homeless. Most of the community were dumped in the poor quality council homes in Mfuleni in 1974, after being forcibly removed from other parts of the Western Cape under the Group Areas Act of the Apartheid government. The council homes were later supposed to be transferred to the tenants. The community agreed in a mass meeting last week that they would fight the eviction and, as a last resort reclaim the land they lived on before 1974 rather than become homeless after this second eviction. In Bolivia they celebrated World Water Day by acquitting the soldier that murdered 17 year old Victor Hugo Daza during the protests over the privatisation of the water system in Cochabamba two years ago (see SchNEWS286 and 339). Video footage from an independent Bolivian television network clearly showed Captain Robinson Iriarte de la Fuente, firing into a crowd of unarmed civilians, fatally wounding Victor in the head. This footage, seen by people in Bolivia and around the world, was apparently not considered as evidence at the trial. As a final insult, after the acquittal he was promoted to the rank of Major. In Colombia, another person fighting privatisation has been murdered. On 20 March, a leader of the Union Sindical Obrera (Oil Workers' Union), Rafael Jaimes Torra, was assassinated by paramilitaries. He is the eighty-fifth oil workers leader to be assassinated since 1988. To date no one has been prosecuted for any of these crimes. Rafael was involved in negotiations with the Colombian oil company Ecopetrol over their plans to privatise the industry. On Monday, two Ecopetrol workers, Jose Antonio Perez and Hernando Silva Cely, were abducted in Casanare and it's very likely that they will be tortured and executed. The government is doing nothing to obtain their release or prevent their deaths. To make helpful suggestions write to Dr Victor G Ricardo, Embassy of Colombia, Flat 3a, 3 Hans Crescent, London SW1X OLN. Fax: 020 7581 1829. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] More info: Colombia Solidarity Campaign 07950 923448 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
