Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 7 April 2005 — Page 7

The Muncie Times • April 7, 2005 • Page 7

continued from page 6

In Web Design GIN—A group of European and Canadian unions shared Internet skills with their African counterparts in a series of workshops in Dakar, Senegal, last month. Twenty-five participants from nine Frenc-speaking African countries took part in the trainings which involved hands-on practice in web design, and the incorporation of news and pictures. The goal was to underline the importance of the web for African unions in organizing and recruiting new members. Free web-hosting thought 2005 is being made available to the unions by UNI, a skills and service union organization that presses for on-line rights for on-line workers. Call centers and mobile phone companies are the subject of current campaigns. Joe Hansen, secretary treasurer of the union of Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) heads UNI, which was launched on Jan. 1, 2000. Support for the workshops came from CGSP-Postes et CGSPTelecommunication of Belgium, STTP Quebec, Fo.com of France and SYNDICOM of Switzerland. COSATU Seeks Links With Other Progressives

AFRICAN BRIEFS

GIN—The Congress of South African trade Unions (COSATU) marked “10 years of Democracy” at a conference this past weekend with a call to forge links with progressive movements and revitalize South

African’s left wing. Cosatu members at the

meeting adopted an unprecedented resolution to work with the country’s growing social movements to rescue the

“fragmentation . attrition” of the lg^ ‘

Cosatu’s

Tunisia Web Editor Dies at 36

congress in 2003 decided that cooperation would be sought with the movements, “where there was a common political project’- in effect, very

limited cooperation. This week’s resolution

is significantly different, in that Cosatu acknowledges the need to work with social movements as autonomous groups to bolster the labor

movement.

Cosatu is already allies with the Treatment Action campaign, while the People’s Budget Campaign is based on a coalition of Cosatu, the South African National NGO Coalition and the South African Council of Churches. Ashwin Desai, a social movement activist in AwaZulu-Natal, said that while trade unions and social movements had different tactics and organizational identities, the two sides had realized the value of “participating in community structures to build mass-based civic

formations.”

GIN — Zouhair Yahyaoui, dissident web editor, had died at 36. Relatives said he died in the hospital of a heart attack, after complaining of

chest pains.

Yahyaoui, who founded and ran satirical Website www.tunezine.com, was imprisoned for 18 months

spreading

news,” after he

published opposition ighth material on his site.

Many tributes have

appeared on opposition Websites. Yahyaoui won the 2003 cyber-freedom prize set up by media rights

in 2002 for

and false

group Reporters Without Borders* The press freedom watchdog says that the Tunisian government censors the internet more tightly than any other country in the world, with the possible exception of China. Tunisia is scheduled to host the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in November 2005. Representatives of governments, international organizations, civil society and the private sector will come to discuss how the world can eliminate the digital divide in content and physical infrastructure, has one of the world’s most sophisticated systems of Internet censorship. But according to the rights group Amnesty International, freedom of the press is virtually nonexistent in Tunisia and the government has repeatedly

blocked access to several internet websites.

Opposition Chooses Presidential Candidate By Jeppe Hirslund Wohlert G I N — T o g o ’ s opposition’s parties have picked Emmanuel BobAkitani to run against the ruling party’s Faure Gnassingbe in this month’s presidential election. The 74-year-old BobAkitani, ex-mining engineer and vice president of the Union of Forces for (UFC), was chosen _ eeks of discussion following speculation that |1the exiled UFC leader Gilchrist Olympic would return from Paris and run for president. Younger members have criticized the decision, saying Bob-Akitani is too old to stand against the ruling party’s candidate, says BBC’s Ebow Godwin in Lome. Bob-Akitani came second to the ex-president Eyadema in the 2003 presidential elections with 34.1 percent of the vote and will meet Eyadema’s 39-year old son Faure in the 24 April polls. Opposition parties remain skeptical as to whether a free and fair election can be organized in such a short time frame. First we need to consider the problems that still need to be solved...before the poll and the resolution of those problems will determine the final date,” said

Yawovi Agboyibo, the leader of the second biggest opposition party, the Action Committee for reform (CAR). The opposition maintains that as many as 25 percent of the names on the electoral list are made up. The government had promised that the voter register will be revised between 28 March and 5 April, but critics say that is not enough time to make the necessary revisions.

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