4 Die as Salvador Raids Hospitals to Rout Strikers

Showing a tough face to organized labor, the government of El Salvador’s President Jose Napoleon Duarte on Sunday sent police to raid public hospitals and clinics that were occupied by health workers striking for higher pay.

Four plainclothes policemen died of gunshot wounds under confusing circumstances during the assault here on the General Hospital of Social Security, largest of the occupied facilities.

General Hospital strikers said the fatalities occurred during a shootout in the emergency room among the police themselves. Police officials said the plainclothesmen were sent to infiltrate the hospital before the all-out raid.

Authorities would not confirm the report that the deaths were due to a police mix-up.

Some striking workers suffered cuts on their wrists from being bound and forced to lie on the floor.

Four strikers were arrested, including two union leaders. Police remained on the hospital grounds throughout the day, ostensibly to ensure that any patient seeking treatment would receive attention.

Besides the General Hospital, four other hospitals and about 20 clinics were seized by the police, official spokesmen said. The raids began simultaneously at 3 a.m. There was no report of violence in the other facilities.

(Leftist rebels, in a broadcast on clandestine Radio Venceremos, condemned the raid, then dynamited high-power cables in western Sonsonate province, blacking out the entire country, United Press International quoted utility officials as saying.)

All the health centers involved in the strike are run by the Salvadoran Institute of Social Security, a government welfare agency.

Since May 6, a strike and occupation by the 6,000-member Salvadoran Social Security Institute Workers Union had caused hospitals to limit treatment to emergency cases. The strike also tied up pension payments handled by the institute.

The raids followed a Saturday speech by Duarte in which he charged that a wave of strikes was planned by leftist insurgents who have infiltrated the unions.

A Salvadoran civil court declared the strike illegal last Monday. Later, a military judge termed the hospital occupation a terrorist act, opening the way for police action.

“Negotiations with the union can continue,” said the Social Security Institute director, Jorge Bustamente, a Chicago-trained gynecologist. “What cannot continue are acts of violence or terror, like the occupation of a hospital.”

Just Want Higher Pay

“We are not subversives,” countered Jorge Lara, one of the strike leaders. “All we want is higher wages.”

The raid on the General Hospital was preceded by a government-ordered electricity blackout in the western San Salvador neighborhood where the eight-story hospital stands.

Under the light of a nearly full moon, black-clad SWAT-style troops from the Treasury Police lowered themselves from a helicopter onto the roof of the hospital. Others broke through doors on the ground floor. Once inside, they herded workers and some patients into the hallways of the building and tied the hands of many behind their backs.

The government press office brought reporters to the scene.

“You are witnesses to what happened,” said Lt. Col. Enzo Rubio, who directed the raid. “We tried to manage the operation so as not to create problems.”

Hospital workers were angered by the raid. “It is like always--repression,” said one orderly awaiting police interrogation.

Hospital workers said a woman patient died of a heart attack on the operating table during the melee.

The health workers’ strike and the police raids were reminiscent of unrest that routinely gripped this capital in 1979 and parts of the first two years of this decade. Strikers and backers of leftist rebels routinely occupied government buildings and ministries. Such actions were roundly criticized by Duarte, who beginning in 1980 served on civilian-military juntas that ruled El Salvador before elections in 1982.

“The left has lost control of the streets and is trying to win them back,” said Julio Rey Prendes, a top Duarte aide and newly named communications minister, in a recent interview.

Since Duarte’s inauguration last June, more than 100 strikes have erupted in El Salvador. Nearly all have been settled peacefully, including a recent walkout by water utility workers.