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May Day unifies workers worldwide
Associated Press
Published May 2, 2005
HAVANA - Cuban President Fidel Castro, leader of one of the world's last communist regimes, commemorated May Day on Sunday by demanding the United States expel a Cuban-born militant accused of blowing up a civilian jetliner.
Elsewhere in the world, millions of workers staged largely peaceful rallies to press for better conditions or protest government policies.
But in Moscow, celebrations of the international workers' holiday turned violent when radical activists from the National Bolshevik Party and the Red Youth Avant-Garde political group clashed with riot police after several activists were detained.
In Zimbabwe, despite earlier fears of a ban on May Day gatherings, the southern African country's umbrella group of trade unions held 17 rallies to celebrate the workers' day holiday with no police interference.
China used the day to single out thousands of laborers and a few athletes for recognition.
Up to 5,000 Bangladeshis demanded the country's first minimum wage - $50 a month. The South Asian country has 1.8-million workers in about 2,500 garment factories, exporting more than $5-billion in textiles each year.
More than 500,000 Germans staged rallies, with many accusing company executives of increasing earnings while squeezing workers' wages and slashing jobs.
Castro looked out at hundreds of thousands in the vast Plaza of the Revolution and demanded Washington expel Luis Posada Carriles, who is accused of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73 people. Posada denies involvement.
Posada, now 77 and seeking asylum in the United States, and three associates were imprisoned in Panama in an alleged plot in 2000 to kill Castro. They were pardoned last year.
In France, far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen marked the workers' holiday by urging citizens to reject the European Union constitution in a May 29 referendum.
Hundreds of thousands of Japanese workers rallied for a global ban on nuclear weapons, ahead of the 60th anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, after U.S. planes dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[Last modified May 2, 2005, 01:43:05]
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