Citigroup protests in 12 countries
Students in 12 countries and 80 cities protested against the US-owned Citigroup banking corporation on April 11. Activists attacked the banking giant's funding of environmentally destructive projects.
In New York, students carried a coffin containing a replica of Earth to Citigroup's headquarters while New Orleans-style funeral music played. An international boycott of Citigroup credit cards was launched.
Citigroup-funded projects include an oil pipeline in Chad and Cameroon, China's Three Gorges Dam and the expansion of palm plantations in Indonesia that destroy rainforest habitat for endangered orangutans.
Students also protested Citigroup's lending record to poor people in urban areas, as well as the company's sale of World Bank bonds.
Australian to manage PNG privatisation
The Papua New Guinea government has appointed a former Australian government bureaucrat to manage the privatisation of key PNG state assets, Radio Australia reported on March 30.
Canberra-based consultant Mike Hutchinson has been hired to sell Papua New Guinea Telecom and Post PNG. Hutchinson is a former director of Australia Post and the Overseas Telecommunications Commission. He also managed the Australian government's privatisation of Telstra.
The PNG cabinet on April 11 gave the green light for the sale of the state-owned Papua New Guinea Banking Corporation. Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta said a minimum 51% of the bank will be sold. The privatisation of PNGBC is a condition for the release of US$20 million of a World Bank loan.
Port Moresby's privatisation program, part of the "structural adjustment program" imposed by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Australian government as a condition for loans, has provoked extreme anger from the country's workers, students and villagers.
Opposition to the sell-off of PNG's public services was a central motive of the March 14 soldiers' protests in Port Moresby.
Indonesian protests against IMF and Golkar
Police in Jakarta on April 18 clashed with two groups of students protesting against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and former dictator Suharto. About 200 protesters from at least three university student groups marched to the UN office in Jalan Thamrin, central Jakarta, and demanded that a visiting IMF team leave Indonesia immediately.
IMF officials are in Jakarta to review a stalled US$5 billion "rescue package" for the country's ailing economy, which collapsed three years ago.
The students rejected the IMF's pressure on Indonesia to cut government oil subsidies for the poor and partly blamed the structural adjustment imposed by the IMF. Protesters also called for former officials linked to Suharto's corrupt regime be put on trial and the confiscation of the Suharto family fortune in order to repay the country's debt.
Demonstrators forcibly broke open the locked iron gates of the UN office to get into the building compound. The students later dispersed after police fired tear gas and beat them with batons. At least one of the protesters was arrested.
Meanwhile in a separate protest, student demonstrators from the National Democratic Front demanded that the government disband Golkar, the party used by Suharto and the military to retain power for 32 years until Suharto was forced from power by anti-government protests in 1998.