Nailing themselves to a cross in back pay protest

Asuncion (Paraguay), Dec 22 (IANS/EFE) A woman and three former employees of the Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant plan to spend Christmas nailed to wooden crosses and going without food in front of the Brazilian embassy in the Paraguayan capital.

They are protesting against non-payment of labour benefits they say are due to them while working at the dam -- the largest operational hydroelectric energy producer in the world, with an installed generation capacity of 14GW and located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay.

Sunday was the 13th day of the protests for the men and the fifth for the woman, all of whom say they will stay there until the government resolves their demand.

According to the protestors, three other women and an elderly man have also offered to join their protest this week.

"What hurts the most is spending Christmas here, without seeing family, its sad to hear carols on the radio," said the woman, Rosa Caceres, 52, whose husband, a former employee of Itaipu, is unwell.

"The men were here a week and it didn't change anything, I came to soften the heart of the hard-hearted. We crucified ourselves because God crucified himself to save everyone," added Caceres, revealing that the nails are very painful.

Though it has been an exhausting trial for the three other protestors, Roberto Rosales, 61, Roque Samudio, 58, and Gerardo Orue, 49, they are determined to continue until their demands -- which include retroactive benefits that their Brazilian counterparts received -- are met.

Among the demands are incentives for productivity and seniority, as well as food vouchers and allowances for vacations and for transfer of workers outside their region of origin.

"We are going to spend Christmas, New Year, the Day of the Kings (Jan 6) and everything here if no solutions are provided," said Teodorico Franco, a spokesman of the national coordinating committee for former Itaipu employees and contractors that brings together 9,500 ex-employees of the nearly 40,000 who built the dam.

According to Franco, Sergio Godoy, judicial advisor to Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes, has told the former employees that he has already handed over the claims document to Itaipu but they were yet to receive a response from the company.

The protestors are also abstaining from consuming food and are taking a minimum quantity of liquid.

After several demonstrations in front of Itaipu in Hernandarias as well as on the Brazilian side, in Asuncion and in front of the national congress building in November, the members finally adopted crucifixion as a method of exerting pressure on the company and government.

Itaipu, constructed on the Parana river, the natural boundary between Paraguay and Brazil, employed tens of thousands of Paraguayans in the 1970s.

At that time it was a remote, almost uninhabited location covered by thick forests. Thousands of people died during the construction of the dam due to accidents or work-related health problems, according to a source from Itaipu.

--IANS/EFE

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