Australian High Court sanctions deportations of Sri Lankan refugees

Mike Head

Australia’s supreme court last week approved the forced removal of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka, even though it was proven they face appalling conditions of imprisonment, including “torture, maltreatment and violence.”

In last week’s case, by a four-to-one majority, the judges rejected appeals by two Sri Lankan refugees to being deported back to the country they had fled because of ongoing repression by President Maithripala Sirisena’s government.

The ruling is an indictment of the last Greens-backed Australian Labor government. Labor launched a vicious program, in violation of international refugee law, to forcibly transport more than 650 Sri Lankans to Colombo, denying them the right to apply for asylum, knowing they would be punished and persecuted for trying to escape the country.

One of the majority judges, James Edelman noted that since November 2012 all “returnees” had been “arrested after their return,” held on remand and charged with an offence under Sri Lanka’s Immigrants and Emigrants Act1945.

Edelman said Australia’s Refugee Review Tribunal, whose decision the court endorsed, referred to official “country information” which indicated that prison conditions in Sri Lanka did not meet international standards.

There were documented concerns of “overcrowding, poor sanitary facilities, limited access to food, the absence of basic assistance mechanisms, a lack of reform initiatives and instances of torture, maltreatment and violence.”

A former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture reported on “severe overcrowding and antiquated infrastructure” in Sri Lankan prisons. And a press report quoted “returnees” who said they “slept on the floor in line” with their “bodies pressed up against each other,” that they “could not roll over” and that some nights they had to take turns sleeping due to lack of space.

Despite this officially-acknowledged brutality, Edelman and his fellow judges concluded that the abuse and maltreatment was not “intentionally inflicted” and therefore did not entitle the refugees to protection from being deported. Engaging in legal sophistries, the judges insisted that the Sri Lankan authorities did not “directly intend” the harm, even if it resulted necessarily from the appalling prison regime.

The judges rejected the obvious reality that Sri Lankan officials knew of the “shocking conditions in custody” and therefore intended that the detainees be subjected to those conditions. According to the judges, it could not be assumed that the officials “could be said to intend to inflict severe pain or suffering or to intend to cause extreme humiliation.”

Instead, the court insisted that the prison conditions were the result of a lack of resources, which the Sri Lankan government acknowledged and was taking steps to improve, “rather than an intention to inflict cruel or inhuman treatment.”

None of the judgments considered what happened to the detainees after their initial period of imprisonment, which the judges said lasted “possibly two weeks.” There is ample evidence that the Sirisena government has continued the systemic police frame-ups and brutality, as well as the military occupation of the island’s north and east, that was instigated under Sirisena’s predecessor, Mahinda Rajapakse.

This violence is particularly directed against the Tamil and Muslim minorities, but also has increasingly targeted workers, rural labourers and students fighting against attacks on their jobs, wages, conditions and basic rights. Last month, for example, shortly after the Sri Lankan army was mobilised to crush oil workers’ strikes, security forces set up roadblocks and checkpoints and arrested about 100 people across the Tamil-majority Jaffna peninsula, sowing fear and terror among the population.

Successive Australian governments have been complicit in this repression. In a documented case in May 2016, the Liberal-National Coalition government handed over 12 Sri Lankan asylum seekers to the notorious police Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which immediately imprisoned them. The CID has a documented record of psychological, physical and sexual torture of government opponents.

Last week’s High Court ruling applied provisions that the Gillard Labor government introduced into the Migration Act in 2012, with the Coalition’s support, to help fast-track the deportation of refugees.

The Labor government did so on the pretext of incorporating into one process all applications for protection visas, whether they be under the provisions of the 1951 Refugees Convention, which covers “persecution,” the 1984 UN Convention against Torture (CAT) or the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

In reality, Labor’s “complementary protection regime” undermined these global treaties by giving the immigration minister the power to refuse visas unless he or she had “substantial grounds for believing” that “the non-citizen will suffer significant harm” by being deported.

This “significant harm”—whether via “torture,” “cruel or inhuman treatment or punishment” or “degrading treatment or punishment”—had to be “intentionally inflicted” and “intended to cause” cruel or inhuman treatment. The CAT and ICCPR do not expressly require any such direct intention.

Australia’s removals of Sri Lankan asylum seekers are continuing with ever-more brazen contempt for international law. On June 26, the Turnbull government forcibly deported six Sri Lankans to Colombo on a chartered plane from the Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island, where their refugee boat had arrived.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull seized on the event to boast of the ruthlessness of Australia’s anti-refugee regime. He told the Australian: “Our message is very clear—if you try and come to Australia on a boat you will not be allowed in.”

The High Court has a long record of rubber-stamping the tearing up of the fundamental legal and democratic rights of refugees by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments. Just last month, a full bench of seven judges unanimously dismissed a challenge to Australia’s prolonged detention of refugees on Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) impoverished Manus Island in defiance of a PNG Supreme Court ruling that the incarceration violated the country’s constitution.

While displaying particular contempt for the law of PNG, a former Australian colony, that High Court ruling effectively gave a green light to Australian governments to flout the law of any other country, as well as international law, in their escalating measures to prevent refugees from seeking protection in Australia.

Australia’s militarised “border protection” regime involves repelling asylum seekers or incarcerating them on remote Pacific islands. It has set reactionary precedents that other governments, including that of Donald Trump in the United States, are using to scapegoat immigrant workers and incite poisonous nationalism as the global refugee crisis worsens.

Personal data of 143 million US consumers compromised in massive Equifax server hack

Kevin Reed 

In possibly the largest and most damaging data breach ever, the credit reporting company Equifax announced on September 7 that the personal information of 143 million US consumers—including their names, Social Security numbers, addresses and birth dates—had been hacked and stolen from its servers between mid-May and July of this year.

According to a company press release, Equifax executives discovered on July 29 that cybercriminals “exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files.” However, the company did nothing to immediately notify the public. Instead, Equifax “engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review” for six weeks before reporting the data theft.

In other words, the $18 billion corporation with principle responsibility for storing and protecting the most sensitive personal information of more than half of all US adults had its servers hacked, covered up the breach for two-and-a-half months, and still claims to not know what happened.

In a hastily prepared video statement posted Thursday on YouTube, Equifax CEO Richard F. Smith made the remarkable claim that his firm is “focused on consumer protection” and has “developed a comprehensive portfolio of services to support all U.S. consumers,” including one year of free credit reporting and identity fraud protection, a service that normally costs $19.95 per month.

However, Smith’s offer has since been exposed as a ruse to get individuals who sign up to accept terms of service that effectively relinquishes their right to seek any future legal action against the corporation. A class-action lawsuit worth as much as $70 billion was announced in Oregon, and the value of Equifax stock fell by nearly 14 percent on Wall Street on Friday.

The extraordinary security incompetence and legal swindling at Equifax has now been combined with a report that a few days after the July 29 discovery of the breach, three company executives sold off $1.8 million of their company shares.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Equifax CFO John Gamble; President of US Information Solutions Joseph Loughran; and President of Workforce Solutions Rodolfo Ploder sold stock worth $946,374, $584,099 and $250,458 (13%, 9% and 4% of their holdings), respectively, by August 2. The company has since made the claim that the executives had not been informed of the hack.

Equifax is one of three major US consumer credit reporting agencies (the other two are TransUnion and Experian) that track, evaluate and rate the borrowing and repayment history of individuals in the US and internationally. Financial institutions such as banks, mortgage companies, auto and other consumer lending organizations use the information provided by these agencies—summarized as a FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation) score of between 350 and 800 points—to make decisions about credit limits, interest, and insurance rates.

The Equifax data theft follows a series of hacking episodes that have impacted sensitive consumer information: 500 million Yahoo accounts, 145 million eBay accounts, and 76 million Chase accounts are among the most notable.

In addition to the primary personal information, Equifax reported that the data breach compromised 209,000 credit card numbers and the drivers’ license numbers of possibly as many as 182,000 consumers. Other stolen information could also include credit account security questions and answers.

This is not the first security failure at Equifax. According to security expert Brian Krebs, hackers were able to access tax data of employees at companies using Equifax’s payroll service subsidiary TALX last May. According to Krebs, the credit bureaus have “shown themselves to be terrible stewards of very sensitive data” due to a lack of government oversight and regulation.

As an arm of the investment services industry, the consumer credit reporting agencies exist to serve the interests of the giant banks and the financial oligarchy and view the public as a target of exploitation and source of profit. Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian have been used increasingly since the Great Recession of 2008 as an instrument for intensifying economic inequality and squeezing ever more wealth out of the pockets of the working class and into the coffers of the superrich.

Identity theft is a serious threat for millions whose information is now circulating and can be used to fraudulently validate their identity and open bank accounts or take out loans in their name. This information can also be used by hackers to change passwords and other settings on existing bank and credit accounts.

The consequences for working people of having their credit data compromised are devastating. For example, with millions of people relying upon credit to make ends meet—average household balance-carrying credit card debt in the US is $16,000—a fraudulent transaction or change in a credit score can lead to a dramatic reduction in living standards or a forced personal bankruptcy.

As US threatens North Korea, NATO chief warns of “more dangerous world”

Peter Symonds

While the US continued to provocatively intensify tensions with North Korea, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg joined the chorus of condemnation against Pyongyang over its sixth nuclear test on September 3.

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Stoltenberg denounced North Korea’s “reckless behavior” as “a global threat” that “requires a global response and that of course also includes NATO.” While saying he would not speculate on whether NATO members would be required to join a war against North Korea if the US were attacked, he did not rule it out.

Stoltenberg told the Guardian on Friday the world was “more dangerous” than at any time in his 30-year career. “It is more unpredictable, and it’s more difficult because we have so many challenges at the same time,” he said, pointing to “weapons of mass destruction in North Korea,” as well as terrorism and “a more assertive Russia.”

The NATO chief was visiting British troops stationed in Estonia, having toured NATO battle groups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. He claimed the troops were in “defensive” mobilisation as Russia and Belarus prepared for large-scale military exercises this week. In reality, Washington’s military push into Eastern Europe via NATO is fueling a confrontation with Russia.

Similarly, US President Donald Trump, following on from the Obama administration, has dramatically heightened tensions with North Korea, threatening last month to engulf it in “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” In response, the Pyongyang regime has concluded that its only means of preventing a US attack is to develop a nuclear arsenal as quickly as possible.

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon hinted the UK could become involved in a US-led war against North Korea, saying the country could pose a threat to London. “This involves us,” he said, because “London is closer to North Korea and its missiles than Los Angeles.” He admitted that North Korean missiles could not reach the UK, but said their range was getting “longer and longer.”

While emphasising the need for a “diplomatic solution,” Fallon insisted: “We have to get this program halted because the dangers now of miscalculation, of some accident triggering a response, are extremely great.” If attacked, the US “of course, under the United Nations, has the right to ask other members of the United Nations to join in its self-defence.”

The danger of catastrophic war in Asia is provoking deep fears in Europe and exacerbating divisions with Washington. In an interview published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that the deal struck in 2015 with Iran to limit its nuclear program might form the basis for negotiations with North Korea. “Europe and especially Germany should be prepared to play a very active part in that,” she said.

Merkel’s proposal of an Iran-type deal with North Korea will not be welcome in Washington. Trump has repeatedly denounced the agreement with Iran, threatened to pull out of it, and dismissed the possibility of a negotiated end to the standoff with North Korea.

Washington has ratcheted up pressure on China and Russia to agree to a new US resolution to be discussed in the UN Security Council today. The resolution is expected to include a full embargo on oil exports to North Korea, as well as a partial naval blockade that would give UN member states the right to board and inspect ships suspected of breaking sanctions.

China and Russia are expected to oppose a complete oil export ban, which would precipitate an economic and political crisis in Pyongyang. Beijing and Moscow fear that the US and its allies would exploit any breakdown in North Korea to instal a pro-US regime in their backyard.

Last Thursday, Trump declared that US presidents had been “talking, talking, talking” with North Korea for 25 years, but its nuclear program had continued. “So I would prefer not going the route of the military, but it’s something certainly that could happen,” he warned.

Trump boasted that “our military has never been stronger.” In another threat to North Korea, he stated: “Each day new equipment is delivered—new and beautiful equipment, the best in the world, the best anywhere in the world, by far. Hopefully we’re not going to have to use it on North Korea. If we do use it on North Korea, it will be a very sad day for North Korea.”

Based on senior White House and Pentagon officials, NBC News reported last Friday that the Trump administration was “readying a package of diplomatic and military moves against North Korea, including cyberattacks and increased surveillance and intelligence operations.”

Trump was also “seriously considering adopting diplomatically risky sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang” and “not ruling out moving tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea should Seoul request them.” South Korea’s defence minister last week suggested the US could place tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea.

Not only would such a move end US claims to be seeking to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula, but greatly heighten the danger of nuclear war, through accident or miscalculation.

According to NBC, the White House had reviewed the full gamut of options, including attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons. The article stated: “A first use of nuclear weapons would be extremely aggressive and lack support domestically or among international allies, the senior administration official said.”

“We talk about all kinds of crazy stuff we never do,” the official told NBC. “Then you know why you rule it out.” No one should accept such assurances. The very fact that a nuclear first strike on North Korea is being discussed indicates it is under active consideration. Washington’s constant mantra that “all options are on the table” shows that nothing is ruled out in a US attack on North Korea.

NBC also reported that China warned Trump administration officials that if the US struck North Korea first, Beijing would back Pyongyang. If North Korea hit a US target, however, that “changes everything,” a senior administration official said. In other words, if the Trump administration can goad North Korea into making a military move with its provocative threats and actions, China might stay on the sideline.

This situation highlights the extraordinary recklessness of the US administration. As it prepares for war with North Korea, the US government knows full well that it could rapidly come into conflict with China, which it regards as the chief obstacle to global American dominance.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prizes And The Rohingyas

Binoy Kampmark

Scratch the skin of a saint, claimed George Orwell, and you are bound to find a sinner with an extensive resume.  Such resumes are evaluated in these modern times by accolades, awards, and summits.  The Noble Peace Prize tends to be crowning affirmation that somewhere along the line, you sufficiently fouled up to merit it.

The calls, some even shrill, to have the Nobel Prize taken off Aung San Suu Kyi, are distressed lamentations of misplaced loyalties, even love.  The de facto leader of Myanmar is showing what others have in the past: partiality, a harsh streak, and a cold blooded instinct. The saint, in other words, has been scratched, and the unquestioning followers are startled.

When asked to respond to the arrival in Bangladesh of almost 150,000 stateless Muslim Rohingyas since August, the result of violence in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, the leader sternly rebuked suggestions that there was a problem.  After all, the initial violence had been perpetrated by assaults on an army base and police posts by Rohingya insurgents since October.

The problem she sought to address was that others were faking the record to advance the interests of terrorists, supplying the world with “a huge iceberg of misinformation”. (How delightful is Trumpland, with its tentacles so global and extensive they have found themselves in the speeches and opinions of a secularly ordained saint.)

Faking the fleeing of tens of thousands of persecuted souls would surely be a challenge.  The response from Suu Kyi is a salutary reminder that genocides, atrocities and historical cruelties can be often denied with untroubled ease. Her statement in response to the crisis was one of conscious omission: the Rohingyas barely warranted a mention, except as a security challenge.

The statement issued from her office on Facebook claimed that the government had “already started defending all the people in Rakhine in the best way possible.” The misinformation campaign, she insisted, was coming from such individuals as the Turkish deputy prime minister, who deleted images of killings on Twitter after discovering they were not, in fact, from Myanmar.

The approach to misinformation taken by the government has been one of silence and containment.  National security advisor Thaung Tun has made it clear that China and Russia will be wooed in efforts to frustrate any resolution that might make its way to the UN Security Council.  “China is our friend and we have a similar relationship with Russia, so it will not be possible for that issue to go forward.”

As for calls of terrorists sowing discord, Suu Kyi may well get her wish.  Protests organised in Muslim regional powers are already pressing for the cutting of ties with Myanmar.  Turkey is pressing for answers.  The Islamist tide, should it duly affect the Rohingyas, will itself become a retaliatory reality.

This sting of crisis and realpolitik was all too much for certain members of the Suu Kyi fan club. It certainly was for veteran Guardian columnist George Monbiot. He, along with others, had looked to her when jailed (house arrest or otherwise) as pristine, the model prisoner, the ideal pro-democracy figure.  When held captive, the purity was unquestioned.

Hopes were entrusted, and not counterfeit ones.  “To mention her was to invoke patience and resilience in the face of suffering, courage and determination in the unyielding struggle for freedom.  She was an inspiration to us all.”

Not so now. Crimes documented by the UN human rights report of February have been ignored.  The deliberate destruction of crops, avoided.  Humanitarian aid has been obstructed.  The military, praised.  When violence has been acknowledged, it has only been to blame insurgents who represent, in any case, an interloping people who are denied their ethnicity by the 1982 Citizenship Law.

“I believe,” writes Monbiot, “the Nobel Committee should retain responsibility for the prizes it awards, and withdraw them if its laureates later violate the principles for which they were recognised.”

How often has history shown that the prison is merely the prelude to a recurring nastiness, political calculation, and revenge?  Far from enlightening the mind and restoring faith, it destroys optimism and vests the inmate with those survival skills that, when resorted to, can result in carnage and misery.  Suu Kyi, in other words, is behaving politically, fearing the loss of her position, aware that behind her is a military that needs to be kept, at least partly, in clover.

Other Nobel Laureates have also added their voices to the roll call of concern, less of condemnation than encouragement. One is Professor Muhammed Yunus.  “These are her own people.  She says ‘these are not my people, someone else’s people’, I would say she has completely departed from her original role which brought her the Nobel Prize.”

Yunus, however, is more optimistic that the selfish, distancing leader will return to her peaceful credentials.  From a dark sleep, she will rise. “I still think she is the same Aung San Suu Kyi that won the Nobel Peace Prize; she will wake up to that person.”

Another is Desmond Tutu, who took the route of an open letter: “My dear sister: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep… We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of our people.  We pray for you to intervene.”

The Nobel Institute, obviously moved by a sufficient number of calls to comment on the status of the award for the 1991 recipient, deemed the decision immutable.  “Neither Alfred Nobel’s will nor the statutes of the Nobel Foundation,” confirmed its head Olav Njølstad, “provide the possibility that a Nobel Prize – whether for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature or peace – can be revoked.”

As for the prize itself, it is long axiomatic that persons who tend to get it have blood on their hands.  The terrorist, reborn, is feted by the Nobel Prize Committee. Before ploughshares came swords.  Before peace, there was the shedding of blood.  But, in some cases, it may well be the reverse: from the ploughshares come the swords, and the Rohingyas are tasting that awful fact.

A Wild Flower in the Indian Wasteland, Gauri Lankesh: 1962-2017

Satya Sagar

On that dreadful evening of 5th September, if Gauri Lankesh had seen her own corpse lying in a pool of blood outside her house she would have -I am very sure- simply smiled

For even in her death she had done what was closest to her heart – expose India’s saffron supremacists for what they really were.  A sorry bunch of cowards, whose idea of valour or honour was to shoot an unarmed woman in the back and disappear into the dark.

In fact, such was her chutzpah, if Gauri had known there were a group of men waiting to kill her she would have invited them home for a cup of coffee. In chaste Kannada then, she would have asked them to explain whether her dying would be of any use to the ordinary citizens of this land. If convinced by their arguments, maybe she would have happily paid for the cartridges in their guns and requested them to go ahead.

Instead, in the end, her opponents remained true to their cultural roots and usedthe chosen methods of suppressing rebels and ‘rakshasas’ prescribed by hoary Hindu mythology. Like Vali, slyly shot by Ram, from behind a tree or a defenceless Meghnad murdered by Lakshmana, as he sat worshipping Lord Shiva – Gauri, daughter of Lankesh, was silenced only through low cunning and treachery.

Very appropriate perhaps in some ways. Nothing, after all, has really changed in this country, so many millennia since the Ramayana happened. The racist Aryans, whom Gauri fought all her life, are in power and consolidating by the hour.

Not one of these ‘Ram bhakts’ though, had the guts to look her in the eye – for who knows what mighty powers that may have provoked? Gauri, despite her own professed rationalism and atheism – had silently become through her life, work and audacity- what ordinary Indians have respected from time immemorial – a fearless and even fearsome Mother Goddess.She had to be eliminated – the Gods themselves were feeling the heat way up there, from the fires she had lit all around.

Gauri would also had a hearty laugh at the sick characters on social media celebrating her death, their green tongues dripping poison, using the vilest of terms to abuse her. The ethos of these proponents of  ‘Ram Rajya’, are now so visible for the whole world to see.

These are the rabble claiming to be upholders of India’s great spiritual heritage, culture and morality and who distribute the Gita to visiting dignitaries from distant lands. They stand stark naked now, proven to be nothing more than hate-filled misogynists, men without mothers or sisters, born to stone and not of flesh and blood.

Even so, I think,  Gauri was large-hearted enough, to forgive them. For despite the biting language she often employed – her battle was nothing personal at all. Instead she stood for whatever she thought was just and humane and against all that reeked of raw greed for oppressive power. She harboured no ill will against anyone and would have fought like a tigress to defend the human rights of even her foes.

Gauri’s heart would have filled with genuine happiness to see the thousands upon thousands who turned out across India to protest her brutal murder – again, not as a boost to any ego but as sign of hope they hold for the future. What she had tried very hard in nearly two decades of activism – to mobilize and unite fellow citizens against the politics of religious bigotry– happened within twenty four hours following her death.

She would have loved especially all those young girls coming out with ‘I am Gauri’ placards. In the instant the bullets pierced her frail body a million Gauris were already born, resolving to carry on her fight, with similar courage, commitment and passion. India indeed has a bright future, despite the descending gloom at Gauri’s departure There are many indeed many wild flowers, inspired by her, blooming in the dry wasteland this nation has become and they will have their day too.

Gauri, would have known though, given the vast challenges of fighting injustice, deprivation and venal racism of caste in a country like India, even all this outpouring of grief, anger and resolve may not be enough. It will take much more energy, intellectual honesty, courage and conscience to overcome the forces of darkness enveloping our nation.

It will be first of all crucial – to follow in the footsteps of Kalburgi, Pansare, Dabholkar and Gauri – to go to the field to study, mix with common citizens to understand what is really needed and how it should be done. To listen to and speak the language of the people in their own idiom, to truly communicate– in a way that transforms hearts and minds.

How is whatever we see all around us today in the country linked to what is happening in other parts of the world? Is there not a long history of religious, ethnic, racial hatred everywhere and how were they challenged? What were the responses forged by ordinary folks in their fight against fascism or other similar ideologies that pit the weak against the weak to cover up the crimes of the high and mighty?

How does nationalism or religion intersect with the economy, both local and global? Where does the money trail behind the assassins of our democracy really lead to? Who are the corporate babas, who make all their wealth, by distracting the population from its immediate problems using the politics of hate? How can we beard these monsters in their ‘deras’?

What role does religion play in all these stratagems and is religion just one single monolith or can it also contain myriad memories and possibilities of both good and evil? In this ancient land of the Buddha, Mahavir, Nanak, Kabir and Basavanna, is there anything we can learn from them – their outlook, methods and action – that can give us the strength to fight contemporary battles?

We also need to ask today, are we going to confine ourselves to merely protesting injustices or do we also construct alternative institutions and processes to shape a new reality? Do we even have the skills to make such a contribution and have we bothered to develop them sincerely – so that we do not remain mere creatures of rhetoric without any tangible substance to offer anyone?

Are we being honest enough with ourselves, when we point fingers at others while ignoring the various faults in our own midst? Do we have the will or energy or courage to first change our own ways of working?

If we are to be true to Gauri’s memory, it is urgent today we ask questions not just to those in power but to ourselves. It only through the process of putting own feet to fire that we can fly high – like Gauri ultimately did.

New Zealand: The right-wing politics of the Opportunities Party

Sam Price & Tom Peters 

The Opportunities Party (TOP), founded by multi-millionaire businessman Gareth Morgan last November, has received significant promotion by the corporate media in the lead-up to the New Zealand election on September 23.

By presenting itself as “anti-establishment,” the party is seeking to exploit widespread discontent with the status quo, particularly among young people over the rise in social inequality and the high cost of housing. TOP’s website states that it opposes “policies that allow people to get rich at the expense of others or our environment.” One of its slogans is “Not left. Not right. But... what works.”

This is a sham. In fact, TOP is seeking to channel opposition behind a right-wing, nationalist agenda aimed at boosting New Zealand capitalism at the expense of workers’ living standards.

Morgan is one of the richest people in the country. During the 1980s, just before the pro-business de-regulation of the 1984–1990 Labour Party government, he co-founded economic forecasting company Infometrics Limited, one of the largest businesses of its kind in the country.

In 1999, Morgan founded the investment company Gareth Morgan Investments, which he sold in 2012 to the state-owned Kiwibank for a sum estimated between $50 and $100 million. The Morgan Foundation was established to manage Morgan’s philanthropic activities, for which he is lauded in the media.

TOP is polling around 2 to 3 percent at this stage, below the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament.

There is widespread hostility to the National Party government and opposition Labour Party, which both support the program of austerity and militarism. The last two elections saw historically low voter turnouts with more than a million people abstaining, in a country of just 4.8 million.

While he tries to posture as an “outsider,” Morgan has stated that he could work with either of the major big business parties. On August 24, he told Newstalk ZB he expected the recently elevated Labour leader Jacinda Ardern to be the next Prime Minister “and I think that’s fantastic for New Zealand.”

So far, TOP has made no statement on the most pressing issue facing the working class: the immense danger of nuclear war. In response to Trump’s aggressive and reckless threats against North Korea, both Labour and National have publicly signalled the possibility of joining a US-led war.

Like the major parties, TOP supports New Zealand’s de facto military and intelligence alliance with the US and increasingly aggressive stance against China. Writing on his foundation’s website on July 1, 2015, Morgan endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, promoted by the Obama administration to establish a US-dominated trade and investment bloc to counter China.

Morgan approvingly quoted Obama’s statement that “if we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules” in Asia and declared it “a no-brainer” that New Zealand should align with the US against “non-democratic” China. He endorsed the US “military steps such as beefing up its presence in Asia” to counter Chinese “expansionism” in the South China Sea.

Trump’s administration has scrapped the TPP and is instead threatening trade war, while increasing the US military build-up against China and North Korea.

TOP has also joined the established parties in stoking anti-immigrant xenophobia as a means of diverting acute divert social tensions. It calls for a 30 percent cut in immigration and attacks the government for allowing “desperate economic refugees from India and China” to study and work in New Zealand. It also advocates tougher immigration measures, including more stringent “English language” criteria, to require migrants to work in NZ for five years (up from two) to qualify for Permanent Residency and 25 years for pensions (up from 10).

The Labour Party, the right-wing populist NZ First and the Maori nationalist Mana Party advocate similar policies. They have scapegoated Chinese people in particular for the housing crisis, low wages, drugs and other social problems—a campaign that is also bound up with further integrating New Zealand into the US preparations for war with China.

TOP’s economic and social policies are not aimed at reducing inequality, but further enriching New Zealand capitalists.

One of TOP’s billboards misleadingly states: “Rich pricks should pay more tax, including me,” i.e. Morgan. The party’s tax policy actually says “New Zealand companies are bearing an unfair and unsustainable tax load” and should “get relief.”

While lowering corporate tax by an unspecified amount, TOP would impose an “assets tax,” which it claims would be paid by the rich. In fact, the tax would not just apply to investment properties, but indiscriminately to every house, which would be regarded as a “productive asset” and taxed on its estimated annual rent. The party’s website asserts that home owners should be taxed on the “benefit of ‘free’ accommodation,” even if they receive no rent or capital gains on their home.

TOP claims that the tax would address the country’s speculative housing bubble by diverting investment from property to other economic activities. In March, the Economist wrote that New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, was among the least affordable housing in the world, with modest homes frequently selling for over $1 million.

TOP’s housing policies would only make the crisis worse. It does not propose any cap on rents, meaning landlords could pass on the extra tax to tenants. At the same time, many home owner-occupiers would have to take on debt to pay the tax. Retired people would have the tax deducted from the sale of their house after they die.

In addition, TOP calls for the privatisation of the country’s entire public housing stock, saying it should be “gifted” to “not-for-profit” organisations. Far from increasing the stock of affordable housing, this would end any responsibility by the state to house the poorest people in society.

Another central TOP policy is its call for a so-called “unconditional basic income” (UBI) of $200 a week, which it cynically portrays as a form of wealth redistribution that would help to alleviate poverty.

In fact, the UBI would initially be available only to families with children under three years old. It would be funded, not by taxing the rich, but by cutting pensions through means testing. A single retired person is currently entitled to a maximum of just $390 a week, which TOP says is “just too high.” Speaking to Radio LIVE on March 28, Morgan said approximately half of pensioners should have their payments cut in half.

TOP states that it eventually wants a UBI “for all” adults. It would be funded by eliminating or drastically reducing existing targeted welfare payments, most of which (invalid benefits, pensions and unemployment benefits plus accommodation supplements) are higher than the UBI.

The UBI is so low that nobody could realistically survive on it. The average rent in Auckland or Wellington is over $500 a week, more than twice the level of the UBI, and single rooms are rented at around $200 or higher.

If TOP gains seats in the next parliament, far from narrowing the gulf between rich and poor, it will use its numbers to assist in deepening the assault on the working class. The fraud that TOP is “anti-establishment” is being promoted by the corporate media, as well as the trade union funded Daily Blog, as another political safety value to prop up a parliamentary system which is already under severe stress.

India, Bangladesh support Burmese military repression of Rohingya

Wimal Perera 

During a visit to Burma (Myanmar) this week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi explicitly endorsed the ongoing military repression of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s northwestern Rakhine state. His government and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina are both moving to forcibly deport thousands of poverty-stricken Rohingya refugees.

Since August 25, the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) has stepped up its violent attacks on Rohingya in Rakhine state where most of the Muslim minority live. Rohingya have been tortured, women raped, houses torched and villages destroyed in “ethnic cleansing” operations throughout the state.

According to UNICEF, over 400 Rohingya have been killed and 164,000 have been forced to flee—80 percent are women and children. Tens of thousands are seeking refuge in neighbouring India and Bangladesh. The Burmese government claims the military operations are in response terrorist attacks by insurgency groups linked with the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army which purportedly killed 12 security officers.

During his visit, Modi fully backed the military repression declared, “We share your [the Burmese government’s] concerns about the extremist violence in Rakhine state and especially the violence against the security forces and how innocent lives have been affected and killed.”

Modi praised Myanmar Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi for her “courageous leadership” and issued a joint statement in which he promised to work with her to solve the “terrorist problem.” In return, she thanked “India for its strong stance with regard to the terrorist threat” and claimed her government was “defending all the people” in Rakhine state.

Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy are directly responsible for the brutal repression, having given a blank cheque to the military and defended all it has done. Last week she attempted to deny the military violence unleashed against Rohingyas, claiming that news reports about the attacks were “a huge iceberg of misinformation.”

Modi signed 11 joint agreements in Myanmar last week, his first trip to the country. The Hindu newspaper reported on September 6 that these included “maritime security, strengthening democratic institutions in Myanmar, health and information technology.”

Prior to the trip, Deputy Home Minister Kiren Rijiju declared that India would deport Rohingya refugees, including those registered under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “They are illegal immigrants in India, he declared, and “as per law, they stand to be deported.”

Early last month, Rijiju told the Indian parliament that about “40,000 [Rohingyas] were staying in India illegally.” The Home Affairs Ministry also declared that Rohingya refugees and others deemed to be “illegal immigrants” were responsible for the “rise of terrorism in last few decades” and called on Indian’s state governments to deport them.

Thousands of Burmese Rohingya have sought refuge in India from previous persecutions, settling in Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-NCR and Rajasthan. In these areas, poor and oppressed Rohingya communities are being targeted for racialist attacks. According to thewire.in website, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jammu in April “threatened to ‘identify and kill’ Rohingya refugees in Jammu if they were not immediately deported.” Up to 7,000 have taken refuge in the north Indian state.

These threats are encouraged by the Modi government, which is promoting racialist and religious divisions in an attempt to divide Indian workers and undermine the growing opposition to New Delhi’s social austerity attacks on the working class and the poor.

The government’s support for the ethnic cleansing attacks on the Rohingya are in line with its attempts to develop closer ties with Myanmar and undercut Beijing’s influence in that country. This is directly connected to India’s active involvement in the US-led diplomatic and strategic confrontation with China.

Burma is also crucial to India’s so-called “Act East Policy”—a strategic outreach to South East Asia and East Asia. This includes boosting Indian trade and investment with Myanmar to exploit the country’s rich resources. Much of this has focused on Rakhine, where India has completed work on the Paletwa Inland Waterways Terminal and Sittwe port as part of the Kaladan project. Both countries share a 1,600 kilometre border.

Last week two Rohingya immigrants—Mohammad Salimullah and Mohammad Shaqir—filed a petition with the Indian Supreme Court opposing any deportation of Rohingyas. Both men are registered refugees under the UNHCR.

Their plea states that their deportation is illegal under the Indian constitution and violates the principle of “non-refoulement” which bans sending a refugee back to where his or her life or freedom is “threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” The two men stated that they were forced to seek refuge in India due to widespread discrimination, violence and bloodshed in Myanmar.

India’s threat to deport thousands of Rohingya refugees has been widely condemned. Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said the UN was concerned about India’s treatment of refugees. “Once refugees are registered they are not to be returned back to the countries where they fear persecution,” he said.

Bangladesh has also declared that it wants to expel Rohingya refugees. There are currently 400,000 Rohingyas living in desperate conditions in Bangladesh, having fled there in response to previous attacks by the Myanmar military and anti-Muslim thugs.

The Bangladesh government has mobilised security forces along its border to prevent more refugees entering the country. Late last month 20 Rohingyas, including 12 children, died when boats carrying them across the Naf River, which borders both countries, capsized. The International Organization for Migration said last week that thousands of others are stranded in a “no man's land” between the two countries.

While there are no accurate figures, the Inter Sector Coordination Group of Humanitarian Agencies in Bangladesh estimates that over 160,000 Rohingyas have entered Bangladesh since the latest pogroms began on August 25.

Journalist who exposed Hindu right assassinated in Bangalore

Kranti Kumara

Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year old former Times of India journalist and the publisher/editor of a Kannada-language weekly named Gauri Lankesh Patrike, was assassinated Tuesday night as she was entering her home in Bengaluru (Bangalore). Two motorcycle-borne assailants, aided by a third who was waiting near her house, reportedly shot seven bullets at Lankesh, three of which struck her head, neck and chest.

Lankesh had used her publication to expose and denounce the Hindu right and its Hindutva ideology, which are the political bedrock of India’s BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government led by the arch-communalist prime minister, Narendra Modi. She was also reportedly in the process of writing a series of articles exposing the corrupt nexus between big industrialists and Karnataka state politicians in the run up next year’s state assembly elections. Bengaluru is the capital of Karnataka, India’s eighth largest state.

Lankesh had become the target of seething hatred from powerful BJP politicians and Hindu communalist and fundamentalist groups. Two state BJP leaders had sued her in court for “defamation” over an article she had written in 2008 about their involvement in corruption. Last year, Gauri Lankesh was sentenced to six months in jail on these trumped-up charges, but was allowed to post bail pending an appeal in a higher court.

Lankesh’s murder bears all the hallmarks of the Hindu extremist right. There has been a surge in Hindu right vigilantism and violence since Modi and his BJP came to power in 2014, exploiting mass disaffection with the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and the Stalinists who propped up the UPA for its first four years in office.

That a journalist could be stalked and killed in such a cold-blooded manner has provoked widespread shock and revulsion. Hundreds of people took to the streets of Bengaluru and other Indian cities to demand justice for Gauri Lankesh and other targets of Hindu-supremacist groups.

Lankesh is the fourth victim of such a targeted assassination in the past four years.

On August 20, 2013, Dr. Narendra Dabholkar—a medical doctor and crusader against self-styled “godmen,” an endemic phenomenon in India—was shot dead during a morning walk in Pune, the second largest city in Maharashtra, Karnataka’s neighbor state to the north. Dabholkar had played a leading role in the campaign for an anti-superstition bill banning various activities religious hucksters use to exploit popular superstition. Right-wing Hindu groups have denounced even the highly-watered down bill the Maharashtra Assembly passed in the aftermath of Dabholkar‘s death as “anti-Hindu”.

Then on February 10, 2015, Communist Party of India (CPI) national executive member Govind Pansare and his wife were shot at close range by two men on a motorcycle when they were returning home from their morning walk. Pansare, who had come in the cross-hairs of Hindu-supremacist groups for being a strident opponent of the caste system, died from his gunshot wounds, but his wife survived. Pansare’s daughter, Smitha Pansare, has blamed the BJP and the RSS—the shadowy Hindu nationalist “cultural organization” from which Modi and much of the BJP’s leading cadre have emerged—and their relentless promotion of Hindu extremism and intolerance for her father’s death.

Six months later, on the morning of August 30, 2015, Dr. Malleshappa Kalburgi, a 76-year old retired professor and vice-chancellor of Karnataka’s Hampi university, was shot dead by two assailants who came to his home posing as students. Kalburgi had been vehemently denounced by violent Hindu-supremacist groups such as the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad or World Hindu Council) and the RSS, after having declared his opposition to idolatry during a June 2014 seminar in Bengaluru. He then recollected how “as a curious child” he had urinated on idols of various Hindu gods “to see if it would elicit instant divine retribution.”

The assassinations are widely recognized to be a product of the noxious communalist view of Indian society promoted by the RSS-led network of Hindu supremacist organizations which the BJP government has been promoting, including through the systematic naming of Hindu chauvinists to leading positions in educational, cultural, and scientific organizations.

Modi, a self-styled autocrat who gained notoriety as the chief instigator and enabler of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, relies upon Hindu bigotry and bellicose nationalist appeals to rally popular support for his government and its unabashed pro-business agenda.

Earlier this year, Modi appointed Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu high-priest who commands his own Hindu communalist militia, as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

Since taking office, this retrograde, saffron-clad swami has used various pretexts to order the wholesale shutting down of slaughterhouses, putting large numbers of Muslim and Dalit laborers out of work. He has also threatened to book Muslims under the “Gangster Act” if they slaughter cow, buffalo, camel or ox during the Muslim Bakrid festival.

In the aftermath of Modi’s election, BJP state governments either adopted or began to more aggressively enforce “anti-cow slaughter” legislation. Emboldened by this, and sometimes with the active support of BJP politicians, the BJP’s Hindu right allies intensified their anti-cow slaughter campaigns, setting up vigilante “cow protection” groups. Lynchings of poor Muslims and Dalits soon followed.

Only after months of public outcry did Modi make a pro forma statement condemning the violent attacks on villagers alleged to have eaten-beef or to be engaged in cow-slaughter. Not only are beef and buffalo meat an important source of protein for many poor Indians, the leather-industry is a major source of employment.

Some have suggested that the primary motivation for Lankesh’s murder could have been her impending e xposé of political-corporate corruption. But even if that was the case, BJP politicians through their ties to the RSS, have links with all sorts of extremist and criminal elements.

Many of Gauri Lankesh’s friends and journalist colleagues have said there is much evidence pointing to the involvement of a Hindu extremist group named Sanatan Sanstha in her assassination. All the named suspects in the murders of Pansare and Dabholkar were linked to this organization. However, neither of these murders has been solved.

India’s police are notoriously incompetent and corrupt. But the Indian state has consistently failed to seriously investigate, arrest and convict those responsible for acts of Hindu communalist terror, whether it be the orchestrators of anti-Muslim riots or the killers of opponents of the Hindu right.

Last month, India’s Supreme Court ordered the release on bail of Lieutenant-Colonel Shrikant Purohit, an Indian Army intelligence officer accused of supplying the military-grade RDX explosive used in the 2007 Samjhauta Express train bombing, which killed 70 people, and bombings in 2008 in Malegaon and Modasa that killed 8 people.

These bombings were all initially blamed on Islamists, but subsequently authorities conceded they were the work of Hindu terrorists with ties to the military.

All this came out almost a decade ago, yet no one has been convicted in any of the bombings and all the alleged leaders have been released. In Purohit’s case, India’s highest court said there was a “contradiction” in the charges two different investigative agencies had filed against him.

One of the lead prosecutors in the Samjhauta-Malegaon case has said that she was instructed by higher-ups to “go soft” on these Hindu terrorists after the BJP came to power in 2014.

The discredited Congress Party and the Stalinist parties—the CPI and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM—bear the primary politically responsibility for the rise of the Hindu right, which until the 1980s was a marginal player in Indian politics. The Stalinist parties have systematically suppressed the class struggle, including by propping up corrupt Congress governments that have connived with Hindu right (as in the Dec. 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid) and implemented socially incendiary neo-liberal reforms.

The rise of the BJP is the Indian expression of a global phenomenon whereby the crisis-ridden bourgeoisie is vomiting up social reaction and increasingly employing authoritarian methods of rule. Only through the development of a mass working class-led political movement for socialism uniting India’s toilers across caste, religious, and ethnic lines can the depredations of the BJP and its cohorts be defeated.

ECB makes first move to wind back quantitative easing

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank has given its strongest indication yet that it will set out proposals to start to reduce its holdings of €2 trillion worth of financial assets—corporate and government bonds—when it holds the next meeting of its governing council in October.

Speaking at a press conference following its September meeting on Thursday, ECB president Mario Draghi said the bank was likely to take the “bulk of decisions” next month on winding down its €60 billion per month asset purchasing program. There had only been “very, very preliminary discussion” so far.

The meeting was preceded by further pressure from Germany for a winding down of the ultra-low interest rate policy and the bond buying program that began in 2015.

In an address to a banking conference in Germany earlier this week, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble called on the ECB to end its program of bond buying and negative interest rates. He said that the economic recovery in the euro zone was now strong enough for a return to a more “normal” monetary policy.

Schäuble was supported by the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, John Cryan, who called for an end to the policy which has hit banks’ profitability. “The era of cheap money in Europe should come to an end—despite the strong euro,” he told the conference in Frankfurt.

But the rise in the euro poses a dilemma for the ECB as it considers its next policy move. The official rationale for the low-interest rate regime is that it is necessary to lift euro zone inflation to near, but below, 2 percent.

However, the fall in the value of the US dollar is pushing up the value of the euro—it is now around $1.20—having risen more than 14 percent against the US currency this year and 6 percent on a trade-weighted basis. The rise in the value of the euro tends to push down the rate of inflation which the ECB is trying to lift.

The impact of the higher euro value was reflected in the ECB estimates for euro zone inflation set out by Draghi in his remarks to the press conference. Inflation was expected to be 1.5 percent for 2017, falling to 1.2 percent in 2018 and rising to 1.5 percent in 2019, well below the ECB’s target. Draghi said the estimate for inflation had been “revised down slightly, mainly reflecting to recent appreciation of the euro exchange rate.”

While economic expansion appeared to be solid and broad-based, Draghi said, “the recent volatility in the exchange rate represents a source of uncertainty” which had to be monitored with regard to the implications for the medium-term outlook for price stability.

Economic expansion had yet to translate into “stronger inflation dynamics,” he said. Therefore “a very substantial degree of monetary accommodation is still needed for underlying inflation pressures to gradually build up.”

Accordingly, the ECB made no change to its interest rate policy leaving the main refinancing rate at zero with its deposit rate at minus 0.4 percent. Draghi said the ECB expected rates to remain at their current levels “for an extended period of time, and well beyond the horizon of our net asset purchases.”

As in the US, where inflation is also significantly below the Fed’s target of 2 percent and has been exhibiting a downward trend, one of the main reasons for low inflation in the euro zone is that wages are not increasing despite the increase in job numbers. This is because many of the additional jobs are either low-paying part-time or casual positions.

Draghi acknowledged that corporate profits in the euro zone have increased as a result of the low-interest rate regime but cost pressures “notably from labour markets are still subdued.”

He made it clear that the essential class agenda of the ECB—cheap money for the finance houses and corporations coupled with worsening conditions for workers—will continue and be intensified.

Draghi said that, in order to reap the “full benefits” of monetary policies, other policy areas had to contribute. “The implementation of structural reforms needs to be substantially increased to increase resilience,” he said.

In response to a question, Draghi further elaborated on the impact of the so-called “flagship reform” of the labour market by the Macron presidency in France, which aims to “liberalise” the labour market by eliminating previous protections. The questioner pointed out that, in as much as many of these jobs would be “precarious” or “low paid,” this would make the inflation target of the ECB much harder to achieve.

Draghi’s response could be described as a baring of the teeth. He expressed “full confidence” that the French government knew exactly what it was doing to undertake needed “structural reforms” and that one of the main targets had to be what he called “dualism” in the labour market.

“Dualism” refers to the situation where certain sections of the labour market were “rigid”—that is, governed by regulations restricting to some extent the ability of employers to hire and fire at will—while other sections were “very, very flexible.”

According to Draghi, the experience of the economic crisis was that it was in these latter areas that job losses had been the most significant. His prescription was not that further measures had to be introduced to prevent a recurrence of this experience, but rather that “all reforms of labour markets should aim at decreasing or eliminating this dualism.”

In other words, the Macron measures should be extended more broadly to remove what remains of regulatory protections for the jobs and wages of workers across the euro zone.

UK: May government finalises Grenfell Tower Inquiry cover-up

Robert Stevens

The public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower inferno, called by Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, will begin its deliberations with a preliminary hearing on September 14. Its findings are not due to be published until next Easter, fully 10 months after the fire took place.

The Socialist Equality Party has consistently warned that the inquiry is a fraud—aimed at covering up for those responsible for the economic, social and political decisions that led to at least 80 people perishing terribly.

Even today, the full number of those killed has not been confirmed, such is the contempt of the ruling elite for the working class residents who suffered. Not a single person has been arrested, or even questioned under caution. This is despite it being a matter of public record that the fire was the result of the decision made by Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation and its contractors to use combustible cladding, during the tower blocks refurbishment, to save money. Grenfell Tower residents who warned of the dangers of an impending catastrophe were silenced and threatened with legal action.

The fate of those who died in Grenfell was sealed by the implementation of austerity measures that further compromised safety, including the closure of 10 fire stations and the loss of 600 firefighters’ jobs by then London Mayor Boris Johnson, all of which left firefighting measures woefully inadequate.

While the inquiry’s appointed chairman, Sir Martin-Moore Bick, has been engaged in a fraudulent “consultation” with survivors and local residents, the reality is that most of the survivors remain in temporary accommodation, with inadequate support. Some 20 survivors are estimated to have tried to commit suicide since the fire, as a result of their trauma and the continued indifference to their suffering.

The inquiry has no intention of achieving real justice for the victims of Grenfell—nor remedying the dangers faced by thousands of other tenants across the country, who live in tower blocks clad in the same inflammable materials.

Its terms are restricted to “the immediate cause or causes of the fire and the means by which it spread to the whole of the building.” While it is meant to consider the adequacy of regulations relating to high-rise buildings, and the actions of the local authority and the London fire brigade, no one can expect anything but a whitewash.

The inquiry was called under the 2005 Inquiries Act, which states, “An inquiry panel is not to rule on, and has no power to determine, any person’s civil or criminal liability.”

Critically, it will not consider broader issues of “social housing policy,” i.e., of the social cleansing policies of successive Conservative and Labour governments over the last three decades that played a significant role in the inferno.

Moore-Bick recommended that any issues of a “social, economic and political nature,” should be barred from the inquiry, which May was only too happy to accept.

A former judge, Moore-Bick is notorious for ruling in 2014 that Westminster council—the equally wealthy neighbouring borough to Kensington & Chelsea—could rehouse an ill single mother of five more than 50 miles away in Milton Keynes.

Many local residents have rightly denounced the inquiry as a cover-up. But May is only able to proceed with this criminal farce due to the support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the trade unions, including the Fire Brigades Union.

Corbyn endorsed the inquiry from the beginning, with the sole caveat that it be held in two parts. In a letter to May, he wrote, “It is ... a relief that the inquiry is now up and running, and that survivors are one step closer to the answers they so desperately need.”

While calling on May to “immediately set out a clear, independent and thorough process for identifying and addressing the broader failings that led to the Grenfell fire,” Corbyn added, “This process should work closely with Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s inquiry where appropriate...”

The various proponents of identity politics are also supporting the inquiry, as a means of concealing the essential class divide that it laid bare.

A critical role in this is being played by BME (Black Minority Ethnic) Lawyers4Grenfell, an umbrella group that includes, among others, the Association of Muslim Lawyers, the Society of Black Lawyers, Operation Black Vote, NHS BME Network and Society of Asian Lawyers.

In a BMELawyers4Grenfell press release, Peter Herbert, Chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, stated that Moore-Bick “has little or no personal or professional insight into the cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity represented by the Grenfell community.”

A letter addressed to May and Moore-Bick from a law firm representing the family of one of the victims of the fire, Hesham Rahman, states in part, “It is important that there is trust and confidence in the inquiry by the bereaved families, survivors and affected local residents, otherwise this could undermine the inquiry, its findings and any recommendations. ”

It adds, “Given the concerns already expressed … we are sure that you would wish to avoid any further criticisms [so] we ask that you appoint panel members who have the ability to reflect the diverse multi-faith community who will make up the majority of the core participants for the inquiry.”

Herbert welcomed this letter, stating that it stressed the “the importance of ensuring trust and confidence in the Inquiry in order to achieve justice” (emphasis added).

The fraudulent character of the inquiry is not fundamentally the result of the racial or religious make-up of its panel, which can be remedied by greater “diversity.” It is a fraud because it has been convened, and will be overseen and directed, by the very capitalist state apparatus and its political representatives that are responsible for turning Grenfell Tower into a death trap.

Time and again, official inquiries and inquests—lasting decades in some instances—have been utilised by the British ruling elite to conceal the truth of events that have resulted in massive loss of life, including those after the Aberfan and Hillsborough disasters.

No faith can be placed in the government inquiry or the police investigation. Workers must demand that all those guilty of the social murder at Grenfell are immediately arrested, charged and put on trial.

In the coming weeks and months, the WSWS will dissect the inquiry and expose its lies and evasions. The work of political exposure is an essential part of mobilising workers and youth independently of the political establishment to secure genuine justice for all those affected. This must include full and immediate compensation; permanent, decent rehousing in the borough, and an emergency programme of public works nationally—funded out of the ill-gotten gains of the banks and super-rich—to ensure all social housing meets the needs of working people, not private profit.