About the Award: KAICIID has partnered with MICT to launch an Arab Region Media for Peace Programme to foster peacebuilding and dialogue in the media. The programme will be formed of two parts: the Dialogue Journalism Fellowship and the Media Policy Forum.
For the Fellowship, 20 to 25 mid-career journalists will be selected to participate in a year-long training programme. The group of chosen fellows will have access to three four-day capacity building sessions, training them in the practice of ‘dialogue journalism’.
The Media Policy Forum will follow the Fellowship Programme and will host senior editors, high-profile media practitioners, policymakers from across relevant disciplines as well as panelists and keynote speakers to discuss the principles and ethics of good journalistic practice. Collectively, the group will produce a set of recommendations for more sustainable reporting on conflict and religion, and potentially publish a Media for Peace charter.
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility:
Eligible fellows are required to have at least five years of experience in journalism or other relevant fields. They can be working on any platform (print, podcast, digital);
They must be native to one of the mainly developing countries of the Arab Region;
They must currently live in and write for media in the Arab Region;
They must be between the ages of 28 and 40;
They must be currently employed as professional journalists for print, television, radio or electronic journalism organizations. Both full-time and freelance journalists are invited to apply.
They should have an interest in interreligious dialogue and journalism, peacebuilding, and social cohesion.
Eligible Countries: Developing countries of the Arab Region
Number of Awards: 20 to 25
Value of Award:
One-on-one mentorship
Group training
Funding
Online one-on-one mentorship will be offered to fellows from different media outlets such as print, radio, online, and TV. The mentors will have expertise in different aspects of the media industry. They will aim to:
Identify editorial objectives with the fellows
Provide feedback and coaching in areas such as video editing and story structure
Identify strengths and areas of development of the first deliverable draft
Agree on support needs to fine-tune the story
In addition to the one-on-one mentorship and group training— which might be provided in-person, depending on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic — the programme will offer participants a grant of up to 2000 EUR for producing content that follows the principles of dialogue journalism, helping the participants become active advocates for peace by shining the spotlight on stories that foster social cohesion.
Duration of Award: 1 Year
How to Apply:
CV (no longer than three pages);
Personal photo;
Motivation letter indicating the applicant’s interest and focus of the proposed production, clearly stating its connection to interreligious dialogue;
Recommendation from a current or previous media outlet that the applicant has worked with;
Video of the applicant introducing his/herself and explaining their expectations from this opportunity (not longer than one minute);
Links to three previous work samples (articles, video reports, TV programmes, documentaries… etc.)
Application Deadline: 22nd September 2021 (20:00 EDT)
Offered Annually? Yes
To be taken at (country): Canada
Fields of Research:
Health research
Natural sciences and/or engineering
Social sciences and/or humanities
About the Award: The objective of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships program is to:
attract and retain top-tier postdoctoral talent, both nationally and internationally
develop their leadership potential
position them for success as research leaders of tomorrow
Fellowships are distributed equally among the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility:
Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada and foreign citizens are eligible to apply with the stipulations stated in the Program (Link below)
Applicants to the 2021-22 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships program must fulfill or have fulfilled all degree requirements for a PhD, PhD-equivalent or health professional degree:
between September 15, 2018 and September 30, 2022 (inclusively), and
before the start date of their award.
Applicants who have not fulfilled all requirements for their degree at the time of application must submit proof no later than October 15, 2022.
For applicants who have completed more than one PhD, PhD-equivalent or health professional degree, the eligibility window applies to the most recent of these degrees.
Selection Criteria: The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships program is unique in its emphasis on the synergy between the following:
applicant – individual merit and potential to launch a successful research-intensive career
host institution – commitment to the research program and alignment with the institution’s strategic priorities
An applicant to the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships program must complete their application in full collaboration with the proposed host institution.
Number of Awards: 70 fellowships are awarded annually
Value of Program: $70,000 per year (taxable)
Duration of Program: 2 years (non-renewable)
How to Apply: It is important to go through the Application Guide before applying for this Fellowship
Iran’s Guardian Council has disqualified all candidates from the so-called reformist and moderate factions in the June 18 presidential election. The constitutional watchdog has only approved candidates from the conservative or hardline faction aligned with the 81-year-old Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
President Hassan Rouhani, a centrist politician who staked everything on the 2015 nuclear accord with the imperialist powers, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has to step down after serving the maximum two terms. The deal, which failed to deliver the promised economic benefits, was unilaterally abrogated by former US President Donald Trump in 2018. Trump reimposed and added more crippling sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports that have cost the economy at least $200 billion as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign to destabilise the country.
Ebrahim Raisi Mehr (credit: News Agency, via Wikimedia Commons)
This has served to discredit Rouhani and the reformist and centrist factions that have placed the full burden of the sanctions and the pandemic on the working class. Inflation has risen from 8.2 percent in May 2018 to nearly 50 percent today, while the rial has lost its value by four times in the same period. Electricity blackouts for hours at a time are widespread. The numbers living in extreme poverty has risen fivefold to 20 million.
The pandemic has caused the deaths of around 80,000 people according to official figures, in large part due to the impact of sanctions. It has further exacerbated both the healthcare and the economic crisis. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Iran is one of dozens of countries facing severe oxygen shortages because of surging Covid-19 cases, up at least 20 percent since March, threatening the “total collapse” of health systems. The countries have all vaccinated less than 20 percent of their populations. Iraq has now agreed to transfer $125 million of frozen Iranian funds to a European bank for the purchase of 16 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.
At the same time, the regime has brutally suppressed dissent, including killing more than 400 protesters during demonstrations and riots over the introduction of a petrol rationing system in November 2019, highlighting the reactionary character of the bourgeois clerical regime that has escalated its attacks on the working class as it has sought to reach an accommodation with the imperialist powers. The ruling elite, notwithstanding factional infighting over how far they will go in seeking some sort of accord with Washington, is united in support of free market economic policies and hostility to the working class.
As well as rising economic and social unrest at home, the elites face the hostility of US imperialism, the regional Sunni powers and Israel. Since abrogating the deal, Washington has carried out several military attacks on Iran, as well as the assassination in January 2020 of IRGC commander Qassem Suleimani, while on an official visit to Baghdad. Israel, its regional attack dog, has carried out a series of attacks inside Iran on its infrastructure, including its nuclear facilities. This has prompted Tehran to disregard the limits it agreed to on its nuclear programme and install more advanced centrifuges capable of producing enriched uranium closer to that needed to manufacture a nuclear bomb.
With all the seven remaining candidates little known and lacking a voter base, from a list of nearly 600, the decision paves the way for the victory of Ebrahim Raisi, who lost to Rouhani in the 2017 elections. Raisi is the country’s Chief Justice and a prominent conservative connected to the IRGC, which has increased its power in large part due to its vast business empire as well as its much-feared intelligence service, to become the key arm on which the regime depends for its survival.
The Guardian Council’s decision will likely produce the lowest voter turnout since the 1979 revolution, with the reformists threatening a boycott. Less than 40 percent of the electorate is expected to vote, leaving the inevitably victorious conservative faction with little popular legitimacy.
The 12-member council, six of whom are chosen by Khamenei, even disqualified prominent political figures such as Ali Larijani, a former speaker of the Parliament who was expected to be Raisi’s main rival. Others disqualified were current vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, closely aligned with President Hassan Rouhani, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and former President Ahmadinejad. Another disqualified was Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former political prisoner who has demanded an end to the obligatory head covering for women and challenged the absolute authority of the supreme leader.
Larijani, whom Khamenei appointed to lead the negotiations for the 25-year economic deal recently agreed between Iran and China, is from a prominent political family. His brothers include the head of Iran’s judicial system, a leading nuclear scientist and a member of the Guardian Council who decried the list as indefensible, blaming “the increasing involvement of the intelligence services” in the vetting.
Even Raisi, the expected winner, voiced concern and called for the reinstatement of some of the candidates to give the election the appearance of a competition. Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, said that if he were standing he would step aside in protest. Rouhani reportedly appealed to Khamenei to intervene as news leaked out of the removal of Larijani and Jahangiri’s names from the approved list. Khamenei’s subsequent announcement of the list indicates that he had rejected the president’s request. Larijani has accepted the Guardian Council’s decision to exclude him.
The decision comes in the wake of a leaked interview, recorded as part of an “oral history” research project in February, in which Foreign Minister Javad Zarif revealed the extraordinary tensions within the ruling elite. He criticised the dominance of the assassinated IRGC commander Suleimani in Iranian diplomacy, who told him what to do and say in negotiations with international figures, admitting that his own influence over Iranian foreign policy was sometimes zero.
The interview, first disclosed by the Saudi-funded TV channel Iran International, was presumably leaked to discredit Zarif, the reformist faction’s best hope of winning the election who was pushing for a revival of the nuclear accord, torpedoing his chances of launching a successful bid for the presidency. In the event, the backlash against him prevented him from putting himself forward as a candidate.
US President Joe Biden is seeking a broader agreement with Iran that would limit not only its nuclear programme, which Tehran insists is for civilian not military purposes, but also its missile development and wider regional influence, particularly its support for the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. Washington is taking part in indirect negotiations with Tehran in Vienna, launched by the other signatories to the agreement, the European Union, Germany, France, the UK, Russia and China.
While some Iranian officials have talked up the chances of reaching an agreement, expectations of success are low amid a spate of unexplained attacks and explosions widely attributed to Israel. These include a cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz in April, a blast killing one worker last weekend at a complex housing a factory manufacturing drones (after Israel had claimed Iran was providing drones to Hamas in Gaza), and an explosion in an oxygen pipeline at a petrochemical plant in Assaluyeh that killed one worker and injured two others.
Last week, a jubilant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, as he stood beside US secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem, said, “We discussed many regional issues, but none is greater than Iran.”
Netanyahu hoped the US would not rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, “because we believe that that deal paves the way for Iran to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy.” He insisted that regardless of the success or otherwise of the Vienna talks, “Israel will always reserve the right to fight regimes committed to getting weapons of mass destruction,” a position from which neither Blinken nor the Biden administration sought to distance themselves from.
Schools throughout Britain are reporting cases of Covid-19. This accelerated from May 17, when Boris Johnson’s Conservative government lifted most restrictions as part of stage three of its roadmap to reopen the economy completely next month.
The number of outbreaks is increasing daily, despite the rollout of the vaccination programme. Most worrying is the fact that the more transmissible B.1.617.2 variant first identified in India has become the dominant strain.
Parents take children to a primary school in Bournemouth, UK following the reopening of schools nationally. March, 2021 (credit: WSWS media)
Department of Education figures show school attendance figures in England are falling, associated with the spread of the virus. On May 20, 91 percent of state school pupils were in class compared to 92 percent on May 12. That week, 87 percent of pupils were in secondary schools, a fall from 89 percent the previous week. In primary schools, attendance fell from 95 percent on May 12 to 94 percent.
On May 20, 82,000 pupils were sent home after contact with a coronavirus case compared to 65,000 the previous week.
Falling attendance in schools follows the government’s decision to lift the requirement to wear face coverings—the main protection afforded to educators and pupils since schools reopened early March. The government took this decision despite prior knowledge that the new variant was spreading in schools.
Previously, teachers and pupils in secondary schools were required to wear masks in classrooms. In primary schools, mask wearing was optional but not recommended for pupils. Mask wearing is now limited to communal areas excluding classrooms.
Eight hotspots have been identified across the UK: North Tyneside, Bolton in Greater Manchester and Blackburn and Burnley in the north west of England, Kirklees in West Yorkshire, Leicester in the East Midlands, Bedford in south England and Hounslow in London. Outbreaks in schools, however, are not confined to these areas, suggesting that the new variant is endemic across the UK and out of control.
According to the parent-led advocacy group SafeEdForAll, between March 8 and May 24, Greater Manchester had 104 outbreaks in primary and secondary schools, the highest in the UK. Hampshire followed with 94. The outbreaks were slightly higher in primary than secondary schools.
In Bolton, forced to introduce surge testing and mask wearing, case rates in five to nine and 10 to 14 year-olds made up a third of new infections in the area in the week ending May 14.
This is a reversal of the trend as the pandemic began, when most cases were found in the above 80 age group. The B.1.617.2 variant is affecting younger people, underlining the criminal complacency of the government which insisted children were at low risk of catching, spreading and becoming seriously ill with the virus.
Bolton school King’s Leadership Academy sent 200 pupils home until after half term June 4 and years 10 and 11 at Little Lever School are remote learning. Smithills School partially closed Year nine and fully closed Year seven.
In nearby Whitefield, Bury Phillips High sent 40 Year 11 pupils home. Several schools in Wigan were also affected. Also in the region, Year 9 and Year 10 students from Newman RC College in Oldham are remote learning after a number of positive cases.
Another Lancashire school closed its gates until June 7 after pupils tested positive. Cases at Haslingden High School and Sixth Form were identified in all classes, a surge from one the week previous.
On the Lancashire coast Lytham St Annes High School moved students in years 7, 8, 9 and 10 to remote learning for the three days before the half term May 28.
In Teesside in the northeast, the King's Academy in Coulby Newham shut after identifying several coronavirus cases across different year groups. Teachers and children from years one, two, three, four and six in Whale Hill Primary School were sent home after several teachers tested positive.
Schools in Scotland have also had outbreaks. Edinburgh’s Holyrood RC High School recently reported a positive case. Half the classes at Davidson's Mains Primary School Edinburgh were sent home, and 17 teachers were self-isolating until the end of May. In Rutherglen Lanarkshire, a positive case was identified at Trinity High, though the school remains open. Previously 10 schools across Fife, Scotland reported positive cases, after which several pupils were sent home.
Children and staff in two bubbles at St Chad’s Primary and Highfields Primary in Lichfield, Staffordshire were offered tests after the new variant was found.
Outbreaks are not confined to the cities. Nine students at Malvern College, a private boarding school in rural Worcestershire, had to isolate in a spare boarding house following an outbreak.
Hampshire County Council reported recent cases in the Costello, Castle Hill and Aldworth schools, forcing bubbles to be sent home.
Bedford Academy switched to remote learning on May 24, after a local surge in cases associated with Indian variants. These included seven cases of variant B.1.617.2 discovered in Bedford schools. With the fourth highest rate in England, the borough council introduced surge testing in four areas.
In Gloucestershire, southwest England, Pillowell Community Primary School sent a bubble home. Finlay Community School in Gloucester sent its reception class home because of an oubreak. Abbeymead Primary School in Gloucester closed to the end of May.
After confirming positive cases in Year 11, Thorpe St Andrew Secondary School in Norwich, southeast England sent pupils home for online learning.
Schools in Wales are reporting cases. Millbank Primary in Cardiff closed May 19 until further notice after 23 staff and five pupils tested positive. At West Park Primary School, Porthcawl, 25 pupils tested positive for coronavirus and 219 other pupils and 12 staff members went home to self-isolate. Classes affected were Year 1, nursery, reception, and years 2 and 3.
The response of the education unions is limited to demanding the government publish data about the spread of the new variant—bolstering the illusion that schools can open safely during the pandemic. The unions have done everything to s tymie opposition by parents and educators demanding school closures until the virus is suppressed.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), said, “The government must be proactive to ensure that transmission in schools, particularly in relation to the new variant, is not allowed to proceed unchecked.”
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders said, “It is essential that there is full transparency about the impact of the new variant in schools and colleges so that the level of risk is clear and any necessary protective measures can be taken.”
Jon Richards, head of education at the largest public sector union Unison said, “The Government should release the data and keep schools safe. While there are any concerns about safety, face coverings must return.”
At the beginning of the year, the National Education Union released its Education Recovery Plan aimed at keeping schools open. From last summer, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer backed the government in insisting that schools reopen, “no ifs, no buts, no exceptions”.
A paper in the Lancet medical journal published May 18 provides further proof that schools are among the main vectors along with workplaces for the spread of the virus. The Lancet concluded, “The full reopening of schools in September 2020 was associated with an increase in COVID-19 cases and outbreaks in educational settings across England.”
The data was compiled from an online questionnaire conducted November 2020 by schools, which reported an outbreak (more than two laboratory-confirmed cases within 14 days) to Public Health England. The school outbreaks in the first half of the autumn term, affecting two percent of primary and 10 percent of secondary schools, represented “32% of all outbreaks reported to PHE across all settings (care homes, hospital, prisons, workplaces, food outlets and other).”
The personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index, a primary measure of the cost of living in the United States, rose 3.6 percent in April, the highest rise in 13 years, according to a report released by the Commerce Department last week.
The increase in the index, which was larger than economists had expected, underscores a global problem of rising costs, especially for consumer staple goods and basic components of such products. The impact is disproportionately borne by working people.
A cashier checks out a customer at a Nordstrom Rack at a mall in Burbank, Calif. on Saturday, April 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
The cost of living in the United States, as in most countries around the world, is on a steep upward curve. To give some examples:
Meat prices rose by 1.5 percent just in April and have risen 4 percent this year, driven by price increases for animal feed grains like soybeans and corn.
Lumber costs have risen by 300-400 percent over the last year, driven by disruptions and mismatches in the supply chain due to COVID-19.
Used car prices jumped 10 percent in April and are up by 21 percent since a year ago. The average cost of a used car broke $25,000 for the first time in the US.
In the last year, fuel prices have increased by over 50 percent, going from a national average of about $2.00 to $3.00.
Fruits and vegetables were up 3.3 percent in April compared to the same month in 2020. Food prices as a whole were up 2.4 percent.
Electricity prices were 3.6 percent higher compared to the same period last year, jumping 1.2 percent in April from the previous month.
Less-densely populated areas in the interior of the United States have seen surging home prices, as residents from larger, often coastal, cities move. Boise, Idaho, for example, has seen a 32 percent increase in home prices over the last year.
Another major US index, the consumer price index (CPI), increased even more than the PCE, rising by 4.2 percent in April. The CPI puts more weight on costs workers bear out of pocket, such as housing, utilities, consumer goods and insurance payments. The PCE is a more abstract measure of inflation in the economy, including the cost of services not necessarily directly impacting most consumers.
While a series of factors, many having to do with COVID-19, are driving this inflation, a few in particular stand out.
First, energy prices, especially for oil, have rebounded sharply since their dip during COVID-19. Just six months ago, the cost of West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark for crude oil, was at $35 a barrel. Now, it is past $65 and nearing $70.
Second, a global shortage in semi-conductor chips, used for nearly all electronic appliances, has driven up the cost of a range of goods. For example, Ford estimates that it will deliver only half of its usual number of vehicles through the end of June because the chip shortage prevents it from completing production of its vehicles.
Third, changing consumer demand as a result of COVID-19 has altered buying patterns. For example, there is a large surge in demand for household electronics, which has major companies reorienting their production output.
Fourth, other supply problems, often due to COVID-19, have disrupted global supply chains. On the West Coast of the US, for example, there are long lines of ships waiting to be unloaded at ports, such as the port of Los Angeles. Farm shortages last year, coupled with excess production now turning into its opposite, have led to a variety of delays.
The rise in the cost of living, however, is not a stand-alone burden. While prices are increasing, wages and employment levels remain depressed.
A report released this month on infants in the United States found that 40 percent of babies now live in households near or below the poverty line. (The latter is set at a notoriously low income level, resulting in a vast underestimation of the real number of people living in poverty in the US.) Twenty-one percent of infants have no working parent.
Prior to the pandemic, 15 percent of US families reported being food insecure. That figure rose to 26.8 percent during 2020. Nearly half (45.4 percent) of low-income families were insecure in 2020, up from 29.2 percent.
Meanwhile, large sections of the unemployed in the US have had their benefits stopped or cut by state governments.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal editorial board published a statement calling for the ending of all federal employment benefits, complaining that “wage increases will become embedded in expectations,” i.e., that American workers will expect to be paid more.
While jobs have been added over the last several months, the April jobs report was considered a massive disappointment, with only 266,000 jobs added, when economists had predicted the addition of a million new jobs. Altogether, there are about 8 million fewer people employed in the United States compared to a year ago. The labor participation rate remains at depressed levels not seen since the mid-1970s.
That jobs report was seized on by sections of the corporate media and the Republican Party to demand an early end to the federal unemployment supplements first enacted in 2020 as part of the CARES ACT, which handed trillions to the banks and corporations. The benefits were allowed to lapse for months after they expired at the end of July 2020, then restored at the end of the Trump administration, but cut from $600 to $300. The Biden administration extended the supplements at the reduced level.
Following the April jobs report, Biden quickly agreed to restore requirements that will prevent many laid off workers from receiving the supplement, which is set to expire across the US on September 6.
A May 23 report prepared by the human rights organization Justicia y Paz stated that fascistic paramilitary groups, which operate in concert with the far-right and US-backed regime of Colombian President Ivan Duque, have created torture sites and mass graves in an attempt to suppress protests in the city of Cali, which has been the epicenter of continuing countrywide demonstrations.
The report described “chop houses” in Ciudad JardÃn, a neighborhood of Cali, where protesters kidnapped by fascists were tortured and dismembered. Residents, the document asserts, were generally too frightened to denounce these chilling crimes, for they knew that they had the sanction of the police and the state.
The report went on to describe mass graves, “where the bodies of many young people were taken,” in the cities of Yumbo and Buga. It noted: “The people who have shared their testimony indicated that the youths were detained, some of them have been reported missing by their friends or families, and in Guacari, in Buga, 45 minutes from Cali, they were executed. Some of the survivors of the executions were found with gunshot wounds in health centers and today are terrified and in hiding.”
Protesters clash with police in Madrid, on the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
Thousands of people involved in protests have been arbitrarily detained and often subjected to brutal treatment, sometimes including torture. Of these, hundreds have been “disappeared.” The Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia had reported 548 missing persons as of May 7. In Cali alone, human rights groups reported 206 missing persons as of May 20.
The corpses of murdered protesters have begun to turn up in rivers, some showing signs of torture, others dismembered. In one particularly grisly instance, the severed head of a missing protester was found in a plastic bag. Other bodies have been found alongside abandoned roadways. Among those murdered was Beatriz Moreno Mosquera, a Buenaventura teacher and syndicalist, whose body was found bearing signs of torture.
Even as it employs such gruesome and outright fascistic methods against the predominantly peaceful protests, the Duque administration is escalating state repression. Duque announced on May 28, which marks a month since the demonstrations began, a “maximum deployment” of the military and police in the western province of Valle del Cauca and its capital Cali. Thirteen demonstrators were killed on that day alone in Cali.
In employing the military and paramilitary forces, including for kidnappings and murder, the Colombian oligarchy is adopting the tactics of the decades-long US-backed counterinsurgency war during which hundreds of thousands of mostly peasants were killed and “disappeared.”
These methods of brute force and terror mark an escalation in the efforts to suppress protests involving millions of youths and workers against social inequality and the homicidal response of the government to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed over 88,000 lives in the country, according to official figures.
Protests began on April 28, triggered by a proposed tax reform which would shift the burden of the pandemic onto poor and working-class Colombians while protecting the wealth of the country’s oligarchy, who form the main constituency of the Duque regime.
Although the tax reform was ultimately withdrawn in the face of the growing unrest, the demonstrations quickly escalated into a generalized outpouring of anger against corruption, police brutality and the government’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, among other longstanding social grievances. The protests grew to massive proportions, with as many as 15 million Colombians out of a population of 50 million taking part in demonstrations in one form or another.
According to Human Rights Watch, there have been 63 “credible” reports of deaths since the start of the protests, which is higher than the 45 deaths reported by the Colombian Ministry of Defense. The majority of the dead have been gunned down with live ammunition by the National Police, the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (ESMAD) and fascistic paramilitary forces who work in concert with the security forces.
Many thousands have been injured. One favored tactic of the security forces has been aiming “nonlethal” projectiles at the faces of protesters, often causing severe injuries, including blindness. The NGO Temblores reports at least 46 protesters with eye mutilations as of May 20.
In addition, at least 22 women have reported being sexually assaulted at the hands of the police. In the city of Popayán, a 17-year-old girl committed suicide after she denounced the ESMAD officials, who had detained her, of sexual assault. This triggered angry protests and the burning down of the local police jail.
The bourgeois press in Colombia has imposed an unofficial blackout on the protests to cover up the crimes of the state. The government has also taken to cutting off power and internet access to targeted areas, allowing their forces to move in and commit atrocities under cover of darkness.
The bloody details of the repression have nevertheless been captured on hundreds of cellphone videos that have been uploaded to social media. One video uploaded to Twitter shows a block of working-class homes going up in flames, apparently after police fired tear gas canisters into the buildings. In another instance, police fired tear gas into a hospital.
The ruling capitalist oligarchy is seeking to defend its wealth and privileges at any cost. The vicious repression meted out by the state, on the one hand, and the desperate anger fueling the protests, on the other, reflect the enormous social tensions that exist within this deeply unequal country, in which 42.5 percent of the population live below the poverty line.
VICE interviewed a doctor who runs a makeshift clinic in Cali that provides medical aid to protesters wounded by police. In reference to the Cali youths who have formed defensive groups to confront the police, known as the Front Line, he said, “The people putting themselves on the line are the people who have nothing. They feel that since they already have nothing, there’s nothing they can take away from them.”
One of these Front Line youths told VICE, “We’re young people who removed our blindfolds and can now see the truth. We’re sick of the lack of opportunity, of the inequality, of this society of rich people that sees us as delinquents because we rebelled and decided to act against this situation.”
The heroic determination of the Colombian workers and youth in the face of deadly state repression stands in stark contrast to the duplicity and cowardice of those claiming to represent them. The major trade unions and the pseudo-left organizations, organized in a “National Strike Committee,” have been involved in talks with the Duque regime in an effort to bring an end to the protests. The Catholic Church and the UN are also involved.
The National Strike Committee’s demands have focused on reformist measures such as the dismantling of the ESMAD, greater opportunities for students and a basic income. This promotion of illusions in half-measures is meant to distract workers from the irreconcilable class conflict that lies at the heart of Colombian capitalism. The Committee has also carefully avoided mobilizing workers in key industries, thereby deliberately isolating the protest movement.
By their actions, the trade unions and the pseudo-left—representing sections of the affluent middle class—whatever their rhetoric, demonstrate that they serve as auxiliaries of the Colombian state in protecting the interests of the oligarchy and its US imperialist sponsors.
The death of a young student in Argentina last week laid bare a health care system that is totally devastated by the coronavirus pandemic now sweeping that nation.
Lara Arreguiz, a 22-year-old veterinary student from the northeastern city of Santa Fe on the Parana River, died of COVID-19 on May 21 following a tragic chain of events that lasted eight days and left her lying for many hours on a hospital floor, while waiting for a bed to become available.
She died two days later, drowning with fluid-filled lungs. A photograph of her lying on the floor before being admitted to the hospital—taken by Claudia Sanchez, her mother—went viral on social media.
Lara Arreguiz, 22, lying on hospital floor before her death from COVID (Credit Claudia Sanchez, Lara's mother)
Lara’s death adds to the list of young adult victims of the Manaus and South African variants of the COVID-19 virus, which are more virulent, more transmissible and more likely to severely affect the lungs.
Among the latest young victims are not just those with underlying risk factors, such as Lara, but otherwise healthy and young individuals. On April 26, 35-year-old Joel Rutigliano, a rugby player, died in the city of La Plata, after a 19-day battle with the disease. In early May two sisters, Aldana, 21, and Marina, 29, both biology students died within days of each other in Entre RÃos, across the Uruguay River. Sol Casella, 23, a journalism student at Lomas de Zamora University near Buenos Aires, died on May 1.
Lara began showing symptoms of the disease on May 13. Yet she was not diagnosed with a COVID-19 infection until May 17; given antibiotics and sent home. The antibiotics were ineffective, and two days later, her parents took her to Iturraspe Hospital in Santa Fe.
Attempting to explain this chain of events, the head of Iturraspe Hospital, Francisco Villano, said that the Lara’s photo revealed only an aspect of what was going on. Villano insisted that Lara had been under constant medical supervision.
Exhaustion of hospital personnel
Villano was quoted by Santa Fe’s Diario Uno: “She entered the hospital last Monday, was admitted and was seen by doctors 30 minutes later. She spent almost six hours in an isolation room and underwent tomography. An ambulance arrived and was sent to Iturraspe. At the time there were no beds available, even in private clinics. … I am not suggesting that we are perfect, but let us keep in mind that the degree of saturation, the amount of work and the exhaustion of hospital personnel are important. We also need to take care of them; that is what is most essential.”
He pointed out that hospital employees have been working with not enough rest for a year and a half. He stated that “we are seeing very young people, this young woman suffered from Type 1 diabetes, which put her at the highest risk level. … These are young patients. In fact, we have two pregnant patients, 27 and 30, both on respirators.”
The hospital has only 40 beds equipped with respirators, which are constantly in use. “Most of our beds only become vacant when a patient dies. At this point in the pandemic we face conditions of 60 percent mortality, compared with 40 percent in the previous wave. Patients require mechanical respirators 48 to 72 hours after symptoms begin.”
The May 6 Spanish language BBC News-Mundo published statements from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that confirm Villano’s age observations. In Argentina and across Latin America, “Adults of all ages—including the youth—are becoming gravely ill; and many are dying,” declared Carissa F. Etienne, head of the PAHO. According to that organization, death rates doubled in Brazil for people between 40 and 50 years of age and tripled for those between 50 and 60. In Chile, the rate of hospitalization of people under 39 years of age has shot up by 70 percent in recent months. The same goes for Argentina, in which the average age for those being admitted to intensive care is now 52, compared to averages of 70 and 75 in 2020.
“Some [like Lara Arreguiz] suffer from high-risk conditions, others don’t,” declared Rosa Reina, head of the Argentine Intensive Therapy Society. “They remain in intensive care for an average of 15 to 20 days; 70 percent require respirators. When they gain admission to the hospital, they already are in a very serious condition.”
Even though Argentina managed its first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic with a near total lockdown, which lasted 234 days, the reopening of the economy this year rapidly resulted in a second and deadlier wave with a daily average that exceeds 30,000 new cases, a number four times higher than at the beginning of the year.
According to statistics from the Health Ministry, a total of 3.7 million infections have been recorded and 77,108 deaths as of May 30, undoubtedly a major undercount, according to PAHO and the World Health Organization. By total cases, Argentina is ninth in the world, behind countries with much higher populations, such as Italy and the United Kingdom. Currently its two-week average of daily cases per 10,000 inhabitants is over 49, placing it ahead of most other South American nations, including Brazil.
On the day before Lara Arreguiz’s death, the administration of Argentine President Alberto Fernandez imposed a nine-day partial lockdown in most regions of the country in response to the new flare-up of COVID-19 cases, pending a decision on what further measures to take across this nation of 40 million inhabitants.
Argentina’s Health Care Crisis
Even before the pandemic, Argentina’s health care system was already reeling from three decades of attacks, beginning with the imposition of privatization and austerity measures dictated by Wall Street and approved by the International Monetary Fund in 1991. By almost any measure—vaccinations, tuberculosis testing, office visits, pregnancy care, etc.—the system has become a skeleton of its former self. As Argentine society entered a deep economic recession in 2018, hospitals began confronting diseases most associated with poverty and hunger.
When the pandemic hit, this broken health care system was unable to provide the necessary care.
In the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, ICU bed occupancy in private clinics is between 95 and 100 percent. In the public hospitals, the occupancy rate is 79.7 percent. Only 91 out of 450 beds are available for critically ill patients.
The new wave of COVID-19 infections this year combined with the nature of the new COVID-19 variants, have increased demand for oxygen by more than 300 percent in April, a shortage that is already having deadly effects. In many clinics nurses are being ordered to ration oxygen for their patients.
On Saturday, massive demonstrations took place in all 28 Brazilian states against the government of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and its criminal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The total number of protesters nationwide may have exceeded 100,000, according to organizers’ estimates.
In São Paulo, the country’s largest metropolis, the estimated number in the streets was over 80,000 people. In Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, there were around 30,000. Thousands more also protested in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Brasilia and in smaller numbers in more than 100 other cities.
In Recife, the demonstration was violently repressed by the Military Police under the command of Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) Governor Paulo Câmara in the state of Pernambuco. The police fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at the demonstration. Three people were wounded by the shots, and two of them, hit in the eye, were partially blinded.
People march in a protest against the government's response in combating COVID-19, demanding the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
These were the largest demonstrations in Brazil since 2019, when students and teachers marched nationally against the cuts in the education budget implemented by Bolsonaro in his first year in office. They coincide with the mass uprising in the neighboring country Colombia, where there have been uninterrupted and radicalized protests, also opposing a right-wing government’s handling of the pandemic and the social crisis.
While these are the first mass demonstrations against the response of capitalist governments to the global pandemic, they express the growing social anger within the working class all over the world over similar conditions.
In Brazil, the protests were called by social movements linked to the Workers Party (PT) and its pseudo-left satellite Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL). Among these movements is the Frente Povo sem Medo (People without Fear Front), led by PSOL leader Guilherme Boulos.
The dimension of the protests, however, expresses the growth of social opposition beyond the narrow political limits imposed by these organizations.
After an official COVID-19 death toll of more than 460,000 Brazilians and with nearly 2,000 people continuing to die daily from the disease, there is immense accumulated anger in broad sections of the population.
The horror caused by the pandemic is added to the explosive growth of the social crisis over the last year. Tens of millions of workers have been thrown into unemployment or have lost their sources of income, expanding the ranks of Brazilians in misery and hunger.
Many of the demonstrators in different Brazilian cities marched with handmade banners and placards, some of which bore names and photographs of parents, grandparents and siblings lost to COVID-19, charging the government with murder. Others demanded vaccines and government aid against hunger, denounced police violence and demanded the ouster of Bolsonaro, accusing him of being “genocidal.”
The protests were also fueled, more immediately, by the investigation of the government’s handling of the pandemic by a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI). The COVID-19 CPI installed in the Senate in early May has exposed the Bolsonaro government’s sabotage of the vaccination campaign, having turned down offers from Pfizer and the Butantan Institute.
Last week, the director of the Butantan Institute, Dimas Covas, said in testimony to the CPI that the Bolsonaro government refused in October 2020 an offer of 100 million doses of the Coronavac vaccine that were to be delivered by May of this year. A study by epidemiologist Pedro Hallal, professor at UFPel (Federal University of Pelotas) and coordinator of the largest epidemiological study on the coronavirus in Brazil, calculated that with these vaccines, the country could have prevented at least 80,300 deaths.
These revelations reinforce the widespread perception within the population that the COVID-19 catastrophe in Brazil is the result of a deliberate policy of social murder that continues to be pursued by the country’s fascistic president, increasingly through dictatorial methods.
The PT and PSOL leaderships which called Saturday’s demonstrations are seeking to channel this growing discontent behind a corrupt policy tied to the bourgeois state.
In an interview with El PaÃs published on Saturday, the PSOL’s Guilherme Boulos clarified how he is seeking to steer the demonstrations behind the political trajectory of the CPI. “The CPI creates a political environment that can lead to the corrosion of [Bolsonaro’s] social and parliamentary base. So the demonstrations can play a key role of opening the way for an impeachment,” he said.
This statement should be seen in the context of Boulos’ efforts to align his politics with those of the most reactionary sections of the political establishment in an unprincipled opposition to Bolsonaro.
In late 2020, Boulos told Jacobin that it should be seen favorably that “sectors of the old Brazilian right wing are distancing and disassociating themselves from Bolsonarism.” He advocated an “anti-Bolsonaro alliance ... in which all those who share this flag should participate.” Following this line, Boulos met in April with the leader of the fascistic Republicanos (to which Bolsonaro’s sons are affiliated) asking help to sell his image as a moderate politician to the more right-wing sectors of the bourgeoisie.
Regardless of whether they propose impeachment or waiting for the 2022 elections, in which they are pushing for a return to power of former PT President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the political way out presented by the PSOL and PT involves a dirty deal within the framework of the capitalist state. Their “opposition” to Bolsonaro poses no alternative to the catastrophic situation of the pandemic in Brazil.
A serious investigation of the Bolsonaro administration’s implementation of the murderous herd immunity policy—unlike that being carried out by the political forces leading the CPI—would reveal that the local governments of the PT, the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PcdoB), and PSB, as well as of traditional right-wing parties like the PSDB were direct accomplices.
The public health institution Fiocruz warned in a bulletin last week that a third wave of the pandemic is rising as a result of the adoption of “return to normalcy” measures across the country. This exposes the fact that the PT and its allies are unable to promote a scientific response to the pandemic, which involves confronting capitalist interests with a broad-based lockdown and economic compensation for all working families.
These same political forces, through the unions they control, are systematically sabotaging the struggles of the working class against the pandemic and the decline in living conditions. The CUT, led by the PT, and the other union federations collaborated with the reopening of workplaces and isolated the strikes that broke out in opposition to their leadership.
This happened in the strikes at the Petrobras refineries against privatization and the outbreaks of contamination among the oil workers; in the school systems of São Paulo and other states, where teachers went on strike for months against the deadly reopening of the schools; in the strikes of bus drivers and other transportation workers all over the country, which have intensified since the beginning of the year; in the Ford and LG factories, where thousands of workers were ordered to sign sell-out agreements accepting the closure of their plants; and in the many hospitals where, without the support of the unions, health professionals stopped their essential work in the face of deadly conditions.
Despite the individual participation of workers in different cities, the working class as a social force was not mobilized in Saturday’s protests against Bolsonaro.
There is an immense contradiction between the interests of the tens of thousands who have taken to the streets in Brazil, as well as the workers who are fighting in their workplaces, and the corrupt leaderships that claim to represent them.
