It brought in an outside company to carry out spot checks on its suppliers, resulting in the suspension of 30 companies last year.”Retailers know there is a problem and they accept that they are responsible for doing something about it,” said Duncan Green of Cafod, “but the complicated system of sub-contracting means they might not be aware of the specifics; it took C&A three years to find out which factories were making its clothes.”Three of the four British companies on the Chinese scheme joined up after their own attempts at overseeing conditions in their suppliers’ factories ran into difficulty.The problem, said Phil Wells, director of the Fair Trade Foundation and manager of the pilot scheme, is that information on working conditions is difficult to come by in China because the only trade union, ACFTU, is part of the ruling Communist party and there is no tradition of grassroots organisations.In addition, the leverage that British companies can exert is limited because they only buy a small percentage of each factory’s output. The Clapham Junction-like freight station in La Lima, which for decades pushed cartons of bananas to the Atlantic port of Cortes and on to the world, sits deserted. This is the heart of Central America’s banana country controlled by the big American corporations Or at least it was For now, the heart has stopped. The ease with which people now can communicate with each other has, I think, helped to escalate things.”The internet, and proximity to Britain, may be the key to the spate of violence.

There is easy access through a website to a forum where information, including details of targets, can be exchanged. Activists are encouraged to restrict the most sensitive of contacts to e-mail addresses designed to be difficult for the authorities to trace.Neither McDonald’s nor Quick were available for comment, perhaps worried about retaliation There is, however, no doubting their alarm. As one fast food worker put it: “We have to take these organisations very seriously They are dangerous.”. THE LANDMARK water tower that casts its shadow over this small northern Honduran town says it all in large letters: Chiquita.

“It will increase their security costs and their insurance premiums, with the intent of pricing them out of the industry.”There is a link, in as much as the Belgian ALF has made claims of responsibility to British ALF supporters, although the activists do what they do without telling any other group. According to Robin Webb, British-based spokesman for the ALF, the rationale behind the campaign is not to gain publicity but to wage economic warfare against the retailers. “The point of attacking McDonald’s is economic sabotage,” he argued. Here in Belgium McDonald’s have started a new campaign: on big posters with the picture from a big island full with trees stands the text: ‘Everyone has the right for a piece of paradise’ Meanwhile, McDeadly is cutting the rainforest!!! The bastards!!!”Some believe that the “McLibel” trial pursued by McDonald’s against two campaigners in Britain may have put the company in the firing line. They have suffered all but two of the “actions” claimed by the Belgium ALF this year. Most have been arson attacks, but often, as at a Quick in Grotesteenweg Berchem near Antwerp, slogans such as “Meat Industry = Death” and “ALF” are spray- painted on walls.Both chains are popular with shoppers, and make a point of catering for children, with specially-designed menus and play areas.

That may be the very thing, however, which has put them in the activists’ sights. In a statement explaining one set of attacks, Belgium ALF argued: “McDonald’s makes profits from children … They are investigating a possible link to Britain, a stronghold of activism and the birthplace of the Animal Liberation Front.”We have had terrorist groups in Belgium before, but I don’t remember a case like this in the last 20 years,” said Jos Colpin, of the public prosecutor’s office in Brussels. With activists operating through cells, police face formidable difficulties in tracing the perpetrators of crimes ranging from large-scale destruction to small-scale vandalism.Other parts of the meat industry have been attacked, including meat trucks and a cold storage unit. But the main targets have been McDonald’s and Quick, the home-based company with the largest number of burger outlets in Belgium, and an expanding network in France. Several attacks have taken place in or around Antwerp, but this time a fast food restaurant in Genk was seriously damaged by fire. Although no one has yet been hurt, the law enforcement agencies are taken aback by what is a new phenomenon in a country where meat eating is the norm.

Closer examination showed them to be of human origin, exhumed from a cemetery in the city’s Ixelles district. The Belgium Animal Liberation Front did not claim responsibility for that attack, as it has for most others, and although three people in the city were questioned, no charges have been brought.Last week’s incident was more typical of a trend which has developed since April. No other country has suffered such a sustained bout of eco-terrorism against burger bars – 10 this year – and nowhere else has the campaign been so extreme or bizarre.
In the most macabre incident, police arrived outside a McDonald’s in Brussels to find what they assumed to be animal remains. In 1965, the then unknown General Suharto came to power after a supposedly communist “coup”, which he almost certainly engineered himself.Last night Western diplomats were seriously discussing rumours of an even more drastic possibility – that Suharto himself may even be hoping for a return to power.Since his resignation, he has continued living in his home in Jakarta’s Sandalwood Street, comfortably cushioned by the untold sums which he is believed to have squirrelled away during his dictatorship.Last week, however, the old man suffered his most serious legal blow so far when he was named in a parliamentary resolution calling for an investigation into corruption.The prospect of a peaceful Suharto comeback is inconceivable. It could only be accomplished by greater than ever repression. For the time being it remains an outside chance.But nobody was reassured yesterday by a plaintive, rhetorical, and breath- takingly hypocritical question relayed from Suharto through a relative yesterday.