India’s Grey Clouds of Depression

Moin Qazi

Among the many challenges India faces, the most underappreciated is the ongoing mental health crisis. Mental illness is actually India’s ticking bomb. An estimated 56 million Indians suffer from depression, and 38 million from anxiety disorders. For those who   suffer from   mental illness, life can seem like a terrible prison from which there is no hope of escape; they are left forlorn and abandoned, stigmatized, shunned and misunderstood.

The intensity of mental disorders is particularly worrying in the adolescents. Half of all mental illness starts by the age of 14, but most cases go undetected and untreated. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds.

The pathetic state of mental health care in the country coupled with government’s apathy is a cause of great concern. A plausible reason is the sheer scale of the problem. Hence, nobody wants to discuss the elephant in the room. However, the nation cannot afford to ignore the stark reality. There are only about 43 mental hospitals in the country, and most of them are in disarray. Six states, mainly in the northern and eastern regions with a combined population of 56 million people, do not have a single mental hospital. Most government –run mental hospitals lack essential infrastructure, treatment facilities and have a sickening ambience. Visiting private clinics and sustaining the treatment, which is usually a long, drawn-out affair, is an expensive proposition for most families.

The Key facts ·         One in six people are aged 10–19 years. ·         Mental health conditions account for 16% of the global burden of disease and injury in people aged 10–19 years. ·         Half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age but most cases are undetected and untreated. ·         Globally, depression is one of the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents. ·         Suicide is the third leading cause of death in 15–19 year olds. ·         The consequences of not addressing adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, impairing both physical and mental health and limiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults. ·         Mental health promotion and prevention are key to helping adolescents thrive.

According to a Ministry of Health and Family Welfare report, India faces a treatment gap of 50-70 percent for mental health care. The government data highlights the dismal number of mental healthcare professionals in India; 3,800 psychiatrists and just 898 clinical psychologists. A large number of them are situated in urban areas. The WHO reports that there are only three psychiatrists per million people in India, while in other Commonwealth countries, the ratio is 5.6 psychiatrists for the same. By this estimate, India is short of 66,200 psychiatrists.

Mental health care accounts for 0.16 percent of the total Union Health Budget, which is less than that of Bangladesh, which spends 0.44 percent. A developed nation’s expenditure on the same amounts to an average of 4 percent. India must find better ways to parlay its impressive economic growth into faster progress in this critical area as maintaining an ignorant stance on the issue will not help in its resolve.

A survey conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in collaboration with WHO across 11 centres in the country, involving 3,000 people from each city found that 95 percent of those with mental-health problems remain deprived of treatment due to stigma, shame and getting shunned from societies. Three age groups are particularly vulnerable to depression: pregnant or post-partum women, the youth and the elderly.

With resources tight an effective method for successfully tackling mental illness is a major expansion of online psychiatric resources such as virtual clinics and web-based psychotherapies. The economic consequences of poor mental health are quite significant. The cognitive symptoms of depression like difficulties in concentrating, making decisions and remembering cause significant impairment in work function and productivity. A World Economic Forum-Harvard School of Public Health study estimated that the cumulative global impact of mental disorders in terms of lost economic output will amount to $16.3 trillion between 2011 and 2030. In India, mental illness is estimated to cost $1.03 trillion (22 percent of the economic output) during 2012-2030. Estimates suggest that by 2025,38.1m  years of healthy life will be lost to mental illness  in India (23% increase).

The fact is that poor mental health is just as bad as or maybe even worse than any kind of physical injury. Left untreated, it can lead to debili­tating, life-altering conditions. Medical science has progressed enough to be able to cure, or at least control, nearly all of the mental-health problems with a combination of drugs, therapy and community support. Individuals can lead fulfilling and productive lives while performing day-to-day activities such as going to school, raising a family and pursuing a career.

Although mental illness is experienced by a significant portion of the population, it is still seen as a taboo. Depression is so deeply stigmatised that people adopt enforced silence and social isolation. In villages, there are dreadful, recorded cases of patients being locked up in homes during the day, being tied to trees or even being flogged to exorcise evil spirits. Stories of extreme barbarity abound in tribal cultures. In some societies, family honour is so paramount that the notion of seeking psychiatric help more regularly is considered to be anathema to them. Recognition and acknowledgement, rather than denial and ignorance are the need of the hour.

Many a time, mental-health problems are either looked down upon or trivialised. These man-made barriers deprive people of their dignity. We need to shift the paradigm of how we view and address mental illness at a systemic level. Tragically, support networks for the mentally ill are woefully inadequate. There is an urgent need for an ambience of empathy, awareness and acceptance of these people so that prejudices dissipate and patients are able to overcome the stigma and shame.

India’s Mental Health Care Act is a very progressive legislation, and   is the equivalent of a bill of rights for people with mental disorders. Fundamentally, the Act treats mental disorders on the same plane =as    physical health problems thus stripping it of all stigmatizations. Mental health issues get the same priority as physical disorders Conceptually, it transforms the focus of mental health legislations from supposedly protecting society and families by relegating people with mental disorders to second-class citizens, to emphasizing the provision of affordable and quality  care,  , financed by the government, through the primary care system

There have been some encouraging innovations in India, led by voluntary organisations that are both impactful and replicable. Dr Vikram Patel, who is a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-founder of the Goa-based mental health research non-profit ‘Sangath’, has been at the forefront of community mental health programmes in central India.

It deploys health workers, some with no background in mental health.  The mission tasks community-based workers to provide low intensity psychosocial interventions and raise mental health awareness and provide “psychological first-aid.” Since they are drawn from the same community, they are able to empathise with the patients. The next stage consists of mental health professionals. The programme uses Primary Health Centres for screening people with mental illnesses.

According to Patel, mental-health support workers can be trained at a modest cost. Given the limited availability of mental-health professionals, such first-aid approaches can be suitably and successfully adapted to community needs with limited resources. The senior therapists can be given basic training in general medicine, psychology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, social work and patient management.

His model envisages the involvement of primary care based counsellors and community based workers to reduce the burden of depression in the population. There is no longer any doubt about whether community health workers can be trained and supervised to deliver clinically effective psychosocial interventions. The challenge before us now is how to go beyond pilots and research studies and scale these innovations up in routine health care. Involvement of the social, health and education sectors in comprehensive, integrated, evidence-based programmes for the mental health of young people is vital for strneghtening the overall healthcare framework at the grassroots level.

Mental healthcare initiatives are presently focused on a narrow biomedical approach that tends to ignore socio-cultural contexts.Community mental-health services can offer a mix of clinical, psychological and social services to people with severe, moderate and mild mental illnesses. Also, counselling can make a profound difference and build resilience to cope with despair. Providing psychoeducation to the patients’ families can also help. Unfortunately, in recent decades, academic psychologists have largely forsaken psychoanalysis and made themselves over as biologists. There is need for strengthening the cadre of behavioral health therapists.

Prevention must begin with people being made aware of    the early warning signs and symptoms of mental illness. Parents and teachers can help build life skills of children and adolescents to help them cope with everyday challenges at home and at school. Psychosocial support can be provided in schools and other community settings. Training for health workers to enable them to detect and manage mental health disorders can be put in place, improved or expanded. Such programmes should also cover   peers, parents and teachers so that they know how to support their friends, children and students overcome mental stress and neurotic problems. There is a need for more open discussion and dialogue on this subject with the general public, and not just expert’s .this can help create a more inclusive environment for people with mental illness.

Lewis Carroll very succinctly summed up the plight of today’s human beings in the conversation between the Queen and Alice in her classic .Alice in Wonderland. Here’s the paraphrase: Alice tells the queen that one has to run at the top of one’s speed to excel in a competitive race. The queen disagrees and we see the essence of competitive existence when she tells Alice that in her country one has to do all the running at the top most speed to retain one’s position. But if you want to get somewhere you have to run twice as fast. This is the paradox. Everyone wants to go somewhere. But they don’t know where. This is the reason for the growing incidence of depression in   society.

With simple yet effective steps, we can turn the situation around and build a more accommodating environment for those struggling with mental distress.

The Bangladesh Left in the Glorious War for Liberation: A brief note

Farooque Chowdhury 

The glorious War for Liberation in Bangladesh turned powerful with the participation of people – the downtrodden, the exploited. They came from poverty-ruled rural areas; they came from machine shops chained to capital; they came from educational institutions – teachers and students primarily identifying with the aspiration of the exploited.

To this huge human spirit, the bell of liberty was ringing the song of liberation from exploitative property relation. The communists, broadly identified as Left, were at the forefront in conveying this message of smashing down the exploitative property relation: A life liberated from all forms of exploitation as exploitation chains life, exploitation cripples and distorts life, exploitation stifles life.

The masses of the exploited people in Bangladesh were always with these fighters in the Left camp engaged with a relentless fight in ideological and cultural, political, economic and organizational areas. Despite deviations and delusions, flaws and failures, the Bangladesh Left – fractured into factions – always upheld the banner of liberation. The camp followers, with a history of organizing people’s struggle in different parts of the country, always labored to organize the marginalized, the muzzled.

The major part of the Left camp was always standing for an armed struggle. The effort gained momentum since March 25, 1971, the black day the Pakistan state unleashed its genocidal military campaign on the unarmed civilian population engrossed in its political fight in the form of a peaceful, non-cooperation movement. It was a major stroke by the state itself to make it wither away from this landmass.

A few factions of the Left were preparing them in advance for such an encounter with the Pakistan state. However, these factions had to experience limitations originating from history and class that grounded many of their political and organizational moves.

Nevertheless, they organized and carried on the fight since the earliest moments of this phase of Bangladesh people’s struggle for emancipation – encounter the state with armed form of struggle. Rifles and bullets replaced festoons and banners, protest marchers and demonstrators turned into guerrilla fighters, unarmed street barricades were left behind for making an ambush targeting the enemy. It was a transformation in struggle in form and organization – armed struggle as the main form of political fight, and, guerrilla units and armed organizations as the main form of organization. The form and organization spanned all over the country with variance in proportion, force and intensity. Sacrifices were very high, many of which are yet to be accounted.

But, this saga mostly goes unreported, the bravery goes unsung, and the martyrs go unnamed. Haidar Akbar Khan Rano as editor has assembled writings – descriptions and analyses of politics and power of the Left in the glorious War for Liberation in 1971 – in his Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa, The Left in the Liberation War in Bangladesh (Tarafdar Prokashani, Dhaka, December 2018). The 480-page book of history and politics presents writings and interview from most of the factions of the Bangladesh Left, irrespective of shade of red and change of color at later stage. The 13 writings in the book are, among others, by Moni Sing, leader, now deceased, of the once-Moscow-leaning Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), Kazi Zafar Ahmed, once a fire brand Left student and labor leader turned prime minister under a military ruler, and Haidar Akbar Khan Rano, once a fire brand student and labor leader and now a presidium member of the CPB. It also includes writings by Manjurul Ahsan Khan and Mujahidul Islam Selim, former and present presidents of the CPB respectively, both of whom played a leading role in securing the CPB from liquidation during the Gorbachevite-wave in Bangladesh, Haidar Anwar Khan Juno, a student and cultural leader and one of the main organizers of a guerrilla force in an area that remained liberated all through the 9-months of the armed struggle. The volume includes a number of political documents also.

“The problems of contemporary history”, writes R Palm Dutt, “raise in an especially sharp form all the problems of history in general.” (Problems of Contemporary History, “History and truth”, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1963) Dutt, in the preface of the book, also raises the problem as he writes, “Contemporary history is a dangerous subject to handle. It is full of explosive material. Much essential information will not be known until many years later, as documents are released and memoirs published. Passions and partisanship can obscure objective judgement. Anyone who attempts to write contemporary history in any more durable form than a current journalistic article is laying his head on the block for the executioner.” Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa isn’t free from the problems Dutt mentions. The reality is impossible to escape.

Haidar Akbar Khan Rano, the editor of Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa, writes:

“The War for Liberation in 1971 is the most glorious chapter in the history of Bangladesh. People of this country spontaneously began resistance war against the raiding Pakistan army. The people began the resistance war everyplace in this land. Armed forces and units, relatively smaller and bigger in size, got organized in different areas of the country. Nationalists as well as communists and Lefts organized these armed units and forces.”

The editor tells about the communists and Lefts:

They fought heroically, organized liberated zones; and all these were done without any external help. More than a hundred martyrs are from the ranks of the communists and Lefts. But the bourgeois information/publicity media never refers to or mentions these acts and sacrifices.

So, Haidar Akbar Khan Rano, with his own initiative, took up the responsibility of documenting this heroic chapter of struggle of the exploited of Bangladesh. A great job, no doubt. One may say, this is today’s fighters’ one way of admitting debt to the fallen comrades, and to the people.

The book is a part of a people’s history. It tells struggles for the cause of the exploited. This book will be dug into for composing a people’s history in future. “If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should,” writes Howard Zinn, “I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win.” (A People’s History of the United States, Longman, London, 1980) Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa has done this – disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when […] people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win – within its capacity.

Limitations are difficult, almost impossible, to avoid. This book is no exception. There’s possibility that a researcher would question a number of facts presented in the book; but that doesn’t nullify the premise of and rest of the facts presented there, and that doesn’t deny the fact of millions of the poor’s participation in the glorious War for Liberation. This poor part of the society, the multitude, was the main strength of the War for Liberation. The book once again announces this fact.

A few snippets                                                      

The Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa presents a lot of facts, from which following are only a few in brief:

Moni Sing writes:

The CPB, National Awami Party and Bangladesh Students Union [all these had inclination to pre-Gorbachev Moscow] organized a guerrilla force with 5,000 members. They joined the War for Liberation. Moreover, the two political parties and the student organization organized 12,000 youths, and sent them to the Liberation Force under the provisional government of Bangladesh. Thus, for the War for Liberation, these left political parties and student organization organized in total 17,000 young Freedom Fighters. Our guerrilla teams entered all the districts of occupied Bangladesh. These guerrillas conducted actions in Dhaka, Cumilla, Noakhali, Chattogram, Rangpur, and in different parts of the northern Bangladesh. Our comrades died during the war. Comrades staying within occupied Bangladesh built up organizations for the war and helped the guerrillas conduct operations. Our guerrillas sunk a ship at the Chattogram Port. At Betiara on the Dhaka-Chattogram highway, nine members of our guerrillas died in a fight with the occupying Pakistan army. The Pakistan army killed Shahidullah Kaiser, member of our central committee. (“Mooktee jooddha o communist party”, pp. 15-30)

Rashed Khan Menon writes:

The single uniformity of idea among the squabbling pro-Peking communist factions and sub-factions was: an independent Bangladesh to be achieved through an armed struggle. The slogan that dominated the peasants’ conference at Sahapur, Pabna, in 1968 was Workers and peasants rise up with arms for an independent Bangladesh. Maulana Bhashani [dubbed as the Red Maulana by a part of the MSM] convened this conference. Thousands of peasants from all over Bangladesh joined the conference defying prohibitory order issued by the Martial Law authority. East Pakistan Students Union (Menon group) and East Pakistan Sramik Federation, student and labor organizations of Poorba Baanglaa Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries [East Bengal Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, henceforth CR, a pro-Peking faction] issued the call for an Independent, People’s Republic of East Bengal. The call, along with an 11-point program, was made at a public meeting held in Dhaka city on February 22, 1970. The call was made following CR’s decision. The student and labor organizations were rechristened as Poorba Baanglaa Beeplobee Chaatra Union and Poorba Baanglaa Sramik Federation. Immediately after March 25, 1971, the fateful day the occupying Pakistan army began its genocide in Bangladesh, the CR began organizing armed struggle. The center of this activity was Shibpur, Narsingdi, a few dozen kilometers from Dhaka. Golam Mostafa Hillol died while collecting arms. He was the first martyr from the rank of the CR. Armed struggle was initiated in Bagerhat by organizing peasant and student members of the peasant and student organizations under the CR. This force in Bagerhat continued armed fight against the occupying Pakistan army. The CR members led seizure of firearms from a local armory of police in Pirojpur. That was at the formal beginning of the armed struggle. Fazlu led the seizure. He was later caught by the Pakistan army, and brutally murdered. This unit in Pirojpur kept the Pakistan army on its heels throughout the entire period of the armed struggle. Many members of the CR joined armed fights in different areas under a number of sector commanders. Shahidullah Khan Badal played the main role at the training facility for the freedom fighters at Melaghar, Tripura. Most members of the urban guerrilla unit [popularly known as the Crack Platoon] were members of the student wing of the CR. They carried on heroic operations within the Dhaka city. The Platoon paid a heavy price with a number of martyrs, who were brutally tortured, and then, shot or bayoneted dead. I [Menon], on behalf of the CR, assisted our armed fighters in Dinajpur, Rangpur and Rajshahi. In this task of coordinating armed struggle in the northern districts, I had to work in close collaboration with Sector Commanders Wing Commander [later Air Vice Marshal] Bashar and Lieutenant Colonel Kazi Nuruzzaman, Captain Noazesh and Squadron Leader [later Air Vice Marshal] Sadruddin. Mohammad Toaha, a leader of East Pakistan Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [a pro-Peking faction following the Naxalbari approach] successfully organized liberated zone in the river shoal areas in Noakhali. Under his leadership, land was redistributed among the landless peasants in the liberated zone. Moreover, he had no skirmish with the freedom fighters operating under the provisional government of Bangladesh. He established contact with the provisional government also. (“Bangladesher saadheenataa o mooktee jooddhe baampantheeder voomeekaa”, pp. 31-41)

Kazi Zafar Ahmed tells:

The National Coordination Committee for Liberation War was formed in a meeting in June. Deben Sikdar of Poorba Baanglaa Communist Party, Nasim Ali of Bangladesher Communist Party – Haateear group, Amal Sen of Communist Songhatee Kendra, Dr. Saif-ud-Dahar of Communist Karmee Sangha and me from CR were members of the committee. The CR guerillas, about 10,000, fought in Shibpur, Monohardi, Raipura and Kaliganj, places within dozens of kilometers from Dhaka. The occupying Pakistan army failed to organize any auxiliary force in support of its occupation in this area. Our headquarters was in this area. About 5,000 CR guerrillas operated in the southern part of Cumilla. About 5,000 guerrillas organized by CR joined the liberation force under the leadership of Kader Siddique in Tangail area. In Satkhira area, a force of 2,000 CR guerrillas was organized. About 3,000 CR guerrillas operated in Bagerhat-Bishnupur-Raghunathpur area. A force of about 2,000 CR guerrillas was organized in Atrai, Naogaon. A force of a few hundred CR guerrillas was organized in Boalmari and Madaripur. A few hundred CR guerrillas operated in Chattogram and Raojan area. These guerrillas mainly operated in the city area. In the Feni area, a force of a few hundred guerrillas operated. (“Kazi Zafar Ahmader saakkhaatkaar”, pp. 71-80)

The book carries many such information by other leading Left leaders/theoreticians/fighters.

Documents

The book presents six documents of a number of communist parties/factions/alliance. These documents, from 1968 to 1971, are related to the War for Liberation, and independence.

In the book, reminiscences, three in total, remind readers of the brave people looking at the eyes of death while they joined the armed struggle. These tell the people’s courage, and their ever-ready heart to make supreme sacrifice for their best love – motherland, to all of us, Bangladesh, Aamaar sonaar Baanglaa, my golden Bengal.

La Rinconada – The Devil’s Paradise

Peter Koenig

La Rinconada, 5,000 to 5,400m above sea level, corrugated iron shacks, glued to the hills of the surrounding mountains, home to some 50,000 to 70,000 mining inhabitants and competing mafia mobs that control them. La Rinconada, in the Peruvian Andes, the world’s highest, chaotic, poisonous and illegal goldmines, some 210 km northeast of Puno, a 4-hour drive by car over partially paved, albeit potholed roads. La Rinconada, near the just barely more civilized mining town of Ananea (about 4,700 m above sea level), is also considered one of the most horrific places on earth: a crime gang-run city, spreading through a valley and up the surrounding hills, no running water, no sewerage, no electricity grid. La Rinconada looks and smells like a wide-open garbage dump, infested by a slowly meandering yellowish-brownish mercury-contaminated brew – tailings from illegal goldmining – what used to be a pristine mountain lake.

The thin, oxygen-poor air is loaded with mercury vapor that slowly penetrates people’s lungs, affecting over time the nervous system, memory, body motor, leading often to paralysis and early death. Average life expectancy of a mine worker is 30-35years, about half of Peruvian’s average life expectancy.

Life has no value. People are killed for carrying a rock that may contain some tiny veins of gold. Bodies are often just thrown on to garbage heaps to rot. Occasionally a body is found and then buried right on the garbage dump. It’s not unusual to find a grave right in the midst of a field of trash.

Human rights do not exist in Rinconada. Child work is common place. And so is child prostitution, women and drug trafficking. Time off is a life of drunkenness and drug deliria. Life is worthless. See also Andre Vltchek’s essay – Welcome to Hell: The Peruvian Mining City of La Rinconada https://www.rt.com/op-ed/454486-la-rinconada-hell-mining-peru/

Small boys are used to work in underground mining galleries, where adults hardly fit. When the galleries collapse and a child – or several – dies – nobody cares. Many are not even identified. Most likely they are not missed. They are children of non-parents, like in non-humans, those that run this hellish mining industry, and those who send their children there to help them make a living. No love, no ethics, no respect for nothing but the legendary gold nugget, for greed and necessity. No mercy.That’s La Rinconada.

Miners come “voluntarily”. Nobody forces them.Most are poor and jobless. They come for necessity. Some are just greedy – the never-dying ‘Gold Rausch’ attracts them. The dream of getting rich in the goldmine makes them accept the most horrendous working and living conditions: surviving in an open dump-ground of everything, garbage, toxic heavy metals, wading in mercury-polluted tailings, thin air, contaminated by poisonous vapors, no heating, most of the year sub-freezing temperatures –trash and debris everywhere. But the miners don’t complain. Some bring their wives, few bring also their kids – it’s their choice. Some stay ‘temporarily’ only, 6 months, 12 months, 2 years? – For some the dream of hitting the riches never dies; they stay until they die. – They know they will be abused, enslaved. They know, they can take it or leave it.

Miners work for usually long hours and are working during 29 days for free. On the 30th day they may keep whatever they take out of the ground, amounting on average to about 800 to 1,000 Soles per month (US$250 – $320). Sometimes day 30 brings nothing.Sometimes some rocks with traces of gold. All are hoping for a gold nugget. This type of mining wage is not unique to Peru. Bolivia and other Andean countries that are open to the most environmentally and socially destructive industry – mining – apply similar systems. The illusion to hit it BIG by finding the legendary ‘gold rock’ is a passion; it is obsessive. And if and when a miner does find a treasure to keep, he is vulnerable of being robbed, even killed, body discarded – another miner gone missing. Or not. Just disappeared. Maybe in a garbage dump. They are endless in Rinconada. They reflect the character of Rinconada. Refuse, waste, stench and death.

Nobody cares – or not enough to investigate the death, the missing. It’s the name of the game. Miners come by their free will. They are not coerced. They enslave themselves, in the vane hope to get rich. Instead, they intoxicate themselves from mercury fumes, from a totally poisonous environment, daily exposure to heavy metals. Their nervous system slowly but surely fails them. Memory loss; brain damage, muscular dystrophy, collapsing lungs, paralysis, early death. For many, it’s a dream gone dead. That’s what poverty does; it kills while dreaming of a better world.

Rinconada – mafia rules. Police work in connivance. Murders and assassinations are of the order. Prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse is rampant. Nobody cares. It’s survival of the fittest – and often survival succumbs to hardship, misery and yet hope for a better life.

These criminal organizations are all local, meaning from the vicinity, Puno, Juliaca and thereabouts. No foreign mining companies are allowed. They, huge world (in)famous gold and precious metals corporations, are waiting ‘downstream’ to buy the blood-ware, without identity, without origins. So that nobody can trace them to the crime.

Women generally do not work in the mines. Superstition. They bring bad luck. They make the gold veins disappear. They distract the men. The mines are masculine. Only men are allowed to work them. The mountains may get jealous, and who knows what jealousy is capable of doing. Women have other chores: collecting loose rocks that may contain some remnants of gold; they clean, prepare food, mind the household, children, if a family is unwise enough to bring their offspring to this hellhole – and, they are “taking care of the men”, in more ways than one.

La Rinconada – one of the most horrible places on earth. Hardly known to the rest of the world. Most people in Lima, the capital of Peru, have no idea that Rinconada exists, and if they have heard the name, they associate it with a lush country club in the elite district of “La Molina” of Lima. – They don’t know what it also stands for – The Devil’s Paradise.

What Rinconada produces is “blood gold”, akin to blood diamonds, blood emeralds in other parts of the world.

Who buys this gold?

Large corporations. One of them is the Swiss registered Metalor, one of the world’s largest gold foundries. Annually, about 3,000 to 3,500 tons of gold are mined across the globe. Switzerland refines about 70% to 80% of all the gold in the world. An estimated 20% to 30% of it is considered ‘blood gold’ – gold that stems from illicit mining practices, child labor, environmental and social destructions, land theft, corruption – like from Rinconada.

As of now, Switzerland, the host of the globe’s largest mining corporations and gold foundries does not want to know the origin of the gold – possibly the environmentally and socially most destructive precious metal. Switzerland does not impose a code of ethics on the corporations that enjoy the Swiss tax-haven. The Swiss Government pretends that these mining corporations have their own codes of conduct, and the Swiss authorities trust that they adhere to their own standards of ethics. What an easy way out!

When challenged with evidence to the contrary, i.e. Rinconada, or Espinar (also Peru), where Glencore beats up defenseless indigenous women, because they attempt to protect their properties and water from Glencore’s illegal confiscation – with the corrupt help of the local Peruvian authorities – the Swiss authorities close their eyes to open crimes of their corporations and if pressed, they simply say, “if we are too harsh with them, they will leave Switzerland” – and – “if they are doing something illegal, they are responsible to their host country”, apparently ignoring that corruption buys everything in most of these “host countries”.

That’s the level of ethics one of the richest and reputedly most noble countries of the universe applies to keep her corporations happy. Naturally, Switzerland is also the only OECD member that allows her parliamentarians to sit in as many corporate Boards of Directors as they wish. Imagine! – A totally legalized conflict of interest. And nobody says ‘beep’. The Swiss populace just accepts this blunt aberration – most of them don’t even know it exists. They live comfortably and well, and don’t care much about Human Rights abusing corporations, and less so that their Parliament is a humongous built-in corporate and banking lobby. In this environment of white-collar illicit behavior, corporations like Metalor and Glencore flourish. A recently launched people’s referendum propagating ‘Responsible Mining’, was undermined in the Swiss Parliament by the ‘built-in’ mining lobby. It is common practice that Parliament, as well as the Swiss Executive give their votum before the public vote on a referendum, another unfair practice, as it influences the voters’ final decision.

In the meantime, the Government of Peru accuses the Swiss foundry Metalor of financing and buying tons of gold from suspicious sources in Peru, meaning illicit gold – or ‘blood gold’. Metalor is also investigated for participating in organized crime and money laundering from illicit gold deals (OjoPúblico, Peru, 14 March 2019):

“The Metalor Group was the exclusive importer of gold from illegal mining, sold or shipped by Minerales del Sur SRL (Minersur) in the period from 2001 to 2018 in the amount of more than US$ 3.5 billion. Metalor is headquartered in the Canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland.”

Metalor is also being investigated for financing Minersur’s purchasing and sales transactions of gold from illegal sources. One of these illegal sources is La Rinconada. Other illegal sources stem from gold-digging in Peru’s Madre de Dios Amazon Region, where thousands of hectares of rainforest are being raided and devastated by mafia-type organizations, similar to the ones in Rinconada. Metalor denies the accusation, saying they only deal with reputable mining corporations. The case is wide open and the stench of illegality that has been permeating Metalor for many years is as sickening as Rinconada itself.

What is it about gold that makes it destroy the environment, precious fresh water resources, the human spirit, sowing conflict among entire societies, abolishing their social fabric and bringing death to countless millions for centuries in exploited and abused regions of the globe? – The real industrial value of gold is only about 15% to 20% of its speculative market value. But the gold fever is such that banks invented ‘paper gold’, meaning that Mr. and Mrs. Anybody can buy gold without ever seeing the gold bar. The bank simply issues a certificate, an IOU for a certain amount of gold which, in theory, could be exchanged for the real thing at any time Madame Anybody would like to keep her gold bar in her personal household vault. Not so easy. There is more than 100 times more paper gold floating around than real gold is available on the market. If everybody would like to exchange their paper gold into real gold, the banking system would collapse, or would just simply fail to deliver.

Case in point was Germany. By tradition Germany had about 1,200 tons of gold, worth about US$ 50 billion, deposited in the FED in New York. In 2013, when the Germans awareness that their gold is being stored outside of German borders resulted in a public outcry, the Bundesbank wanted to withdraw and repatriate all of their foreign stored gold by 2020, but the FED said no, they could not deliver. The gold was simply not available. Was the FED using the German gold and the gold of so many other countries deposited in the FED’s treasuries for speculation – rent seeking with somebody else’s assets? Blood and crime are intimately linked to gold, it seems. Our western monetary system was for a long time backed by gold. Today, western moneys are fiat money, not even backed by gold, just hot air. But the Russian ruble and the Chinese yuan are backed by gold, as well as by their respective economies. – Who knows – as a last-ditch effort to save the US-dollar and the western fiat money pyramid from collapsing, the west may again revert to some kind of gold standard, a man-made folly, when in fact, the only real value reflected in a county’s monetary system, is its economy.

Back to La Rinconada, Metalor and Switzerland, home of more than two thirds of the world’s gold refining – how much of the reserve gold in the coffers of countries around the world is “blood gold”? – How many people, children and eventually entire generations have to live in misery, their health degenerating from exposure to heavy metals and eventually leading to early and painful death, until human consciousness is able to stop the gold craze? – Closing down hellholes like Rinconada and Madre de Dios mafia-run, all-destructive gold mines? – And hundreds more of similarlydevastatingtype mines around the world. Perhaps when the value of gold becomes what it ought to be – its industrial value, and nothing more and nothing less, humanity becomes richer by the values of human decency and respect for each other.

Ukraine’s Autocephaly: First Results and Possible Influence on Orthodox World

Jelena Rakcevic

Nearly three months ago, on January 6, Patriarch Bartholomew signed the Tomos of Autoceplahy for the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Though the whole process of granting autocephaly took less than a year – Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in April 2018 – the “healing of the schism” seems to be requiring much more time as the reconciliation between former schismatics and the Orthodox Church, which used to be the only canonical one in Ukraine, can’t happen in one moment.

The Phanar is said to have implemented everything Kyiv had asked it to: the leaders of the two previously schismatic churches – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) were suddenly reinstated. The two organizations merged in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which was designed to unite the Ukrainian faithful and attract the followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP). After the Tomos of autocephaly was granted to the OCU in early January, its hierarchs and the state urged the followers of other denominations (primarily of the UOC-MP) to join the newly established church.

To date, more than 500 UOC-MP parishes have transferred to the OCU. Ukrainian media claim that the majority of them were voluntary but according to the recent report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in some cases they were initiated by state or local authorities or even representatives of extreme right-wing groups, who were not members of those religious communities. If the Orthodox Church of Ukraine wants the UOC-MP followers actively join it, its hierarchs must intervene and show that violence is not a solution.

Autocephaly was to become one of Poroshenko’s main advantages during the elections. He finally brought to the Ukrainians an independent church separate from Moscow and recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. However, recent polls show that he is lagging behind. The newly elected OCU Primate Epiphanius often highlights the role of Petro Poroshenko in the process of gaining autocephaly but it hardly yields any results as it makes the OCU look like a political project.

So far, the Tomos so hastily granted by Constantinople hasn’t brought the long-expected peace to the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Believers are still divided, violence has grown and the authority of the new church leaders in Ukraine is weak.

Autocephaly affected not only Ukraine but also the Orthodox world. The Tomos, which was fiercely opposed by the Moscow Patriarchate for obvious reasons, led to an increased level of misunderstanding between the Orthodox Local Churches. Some Churches (of Antioch, Serbia and Poland) joined Moscow in criticizing Constantinople while the others still haven’t recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. There have been calls to convene a Pan-Orthodox Synaxis on the Ukrainian issue (for example by John X of Antioch) but Patriarch Bartholomew refused to hold such a council.

The Ukrainian autocephaly did influence the relations between the Local Churches, and this influence wasn’t positive.

Really disturbing is that the Ecumenical Patriarchate can no longer unite or reconcile the other Local Churches. One can remember the conflict between the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch in 2013 when the first established an archdiocese in Qatar, the land which canonically belongs to the Patriarchate of Antioch. The Phanar that claims to bear the title ‘first among equals’ did nothing to resolve the issue, and that was one of the reasons why the most ancient Orthodox Church was absent at the Pan-Orthodox Council convened by Patriarch Bartholomew on Crete in 2016.

However, Constantinople willingly interferes in the affairs of the Local Churches if it’s beneficial for it. Along with the Ukrainian issue, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is focused on France, in particular on the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe (AROCWE). On November 27, 2018, the Holy Synod of the EP suddenly and unilaterally dissolved the Archdiocese declaring that all its parishes and properties must be transferred to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Extraordinary General Assembly held on February 23, 2019, refused to dissolve the Archdiocese. Later, it will be decided whether to come under the jurisdiction of another Church – the Moscow Patriarchate, Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia or Romanian Orthodox Church.

It is still unclear why all of a sudden Constantinople decided to revoke the Tomos of 1999 granted to the AROCWE. It is rumored that this was masterminded by Metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis) of France who decided to acquire the Archdiocese’s parishes. Of course, such an act doesn’t boost Constantinople’s popularity among the AROCWE parishioners.

Another act unilaterally revoked by the Phanar was the 1686 ruling that placed Ukraine under the Patriarchate of Moscow. This was a decision that led to the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Constantinople. These two incidents are serious reasons for concern. What if it decides to declare the ‘New Lands’ in Greece its own territory, for example? An Orthodox war between the Church of Greece and the Phanar?

The Ecumenical Patriarchate has shown how easily it can influence the fates of Orthodox Churches by revoking or interpreting documents it had once issued. On the other hand, it’s not that capable of resolving conflicts even in its own dioceses (see the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America whose Primate Archbishop Demetrios faces strong criticism amid numerous calls of Bartholomew to leave). The gap between Local Churches is widening. And today the Ecumenical Patriarchate is not seen as the leader, the ‘first among equals’ at least, that can unite the Orthodoxy and deal with the threat of another great schism.

Indian elite nervously prepares for national elections

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Keith Jones 

The campaign for India’s national elections is unfolding in a highly-charged political environment.

Among India’s workers and toilers there is deep-rooted anger against not just the Hindu supremacist Bahartiya Janata Party (BJP), which swept to power five years ago on the basis of phony promises of jobs and development, but against the ruinous outcome of three decades of neo-liberal “reform.”

This anger, however, can find no genuine or positive expression in the politics of the Indian establishment. All of the parties, from the BJP and the Congress Party to the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, have connived in the implementation of “pro-investor” policies aimed at making India a cheap-labour hub for global capital. All support the great-power ambitions of the Indian bourgeoisie, even as they draw South Asia ever more deeply into the maelstrom of imperialist intrigue and conflict, and threaten to ignite, as was highlighted again last month, a catastrophic war with Pakistan.

The elections will be held in seven regional phases, starting just two weeks from now on Thursday, April 11 and concluding Sunday, May 19. The votes are to be tabulated May 23. State elections will be held alongside the national vote in four states—Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, and Sikkim—but not in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state and the focal point of the India-Pakistan strategic rivalry. Citing “security” concerns, the BJP government has extended indefinitely the central government rule it established over Jammu and Kashmir last June, after the state government, in which the BJP served as the junior party, collapsed due to differences over how to contend with mounting popular opposition.

Opinion polls, which in India have often proved wrong, indicate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP will cling to power. But unlike the past five years, they will be dependent on the votes of their National Democratic Alliance allies for their parliamentary majority.

The BJP’s record of austerity and reaction

The BJP re-election campaign revolves to a large degree around the promotion of Modi as a self-made Hindu “strongman,” who incarnates an assertive “rising” India. The other key theme of the BJP campaign is the claim that the Modi government has delivered “world-beating” economic growth.

In 2014, India’s corporate elite propelled the BJP to power, so as to accelerate neo-liberal reform and more aggressively assert its interests and ambitions on the world stage.

Five years on, the BJP continues to vastly out distance all its rivals, even when combined, in corporate donations.

However, some sections of the ruling elite are fearful that the BJP is sowing a whirlwind: that its noxious communal politics are rending the social fabric and undermining the popular legitimacy of state institutions; and that its relentless hype about India’s growth and suppression, and fiddling with economic statistics can’t cover over the grim reality that confronts the vast majority.

The fruits of India’s growth have been monopolized by a tiny capitalist elite. Between 2015 and 2017, the portion of India’s wealth owned by the top 1 percent surged from 53 to 73 percent, leaving the remaining 99 percent with a 27-percent share.

India, as even much of the corporate media now concedes, is beset by both an agrarian and jobs crisis. According to a suppressed government report, the labour force participation rate plunged from 63.7 percent in 2003 to 49.8 percent in 2017-18, because tens of millions have given up looking for non-existent work.

The BJP was clearly rattled by its defeat in state elections in December in three states—Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgargh, and Rajasthan—which are part of the “Hindi belt” that has historically constituted its principal base of support, and by the palpable growth of social opposition in recent months. This includes farmer protests and the participation of tens of millions in a two-day general strike in January against the Modi government’s pro-big business economic policies.

In an attempt to divert the mounting social anger and mobilize its Hindu right base, the BJP seized on the February 14 Pulwama terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir to foment a war crisis with Pakistan. Making good on Modi’s pledge to punish Pakistan for the attack, Indian warplanes struck inside Pakistan on the night of February 25 for the first time since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war.

Even though this resulted in a Pakistani counter-strike that brought South Asia’s rival nuclear powers to the brink of all-out war, the BJP and much of the corporate media continue to promote India’s airstrike as a masterstroke. Modi, they claim, has shattered the shackles of Indian “strategic restraint” vis a vis Pakistan, winning international recognition for an Indian “right” to punish Pakistan for major terrorist attacks in Indian-held Kashmir.

The Congress Party and their Stalinist enablers

The Congress Party’s response to last month’s war crisis was akin to that of the other opposition parties. That is to say, it hailed the Indian airstrikes, but quibbled when the BJP relentlessly milked them for electoral gain, countering that all the credit should go to the “heroes” who comprise India’s military.

The historic ruling party of the Indian bourgeoisie, the Congress appeared to be on its death-bed, after suffering a long string of electoral debacles, until receiving a shot of adrenalin from last December’s state elections.

A dynastic party, now led by Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, the Congress has no substantive differences with the BJP over economic or foreign policy. Indeed, Congress spearheaded the abandonment of the bourgeoisie’s post-independence state-led development program, its pursuit of an India-US “global strategic partnership,” and its drive to make India a major military power.

But Congress is hoping nonetheless to exploit the widespread anger over the lack of jobs and government support for agriculture and the savage austerity measures the BJP has imposed in the name of reducing the debt-to-GNP ratio. Congress is trumpeting a “guaranteed annual income” scheme which it claims would ultimately provide the poorest 20 percent of Indian families with up to 72,000 rupees (or roughly US $1,000) per year, with the aim of raising their incomes to 12,000 rupees ($172) per month.

Much of this is smoke and mirrors, and not only because the Congress Party has failed to flesh out the details of the program, which would be rolled out over many years. Much of it is to be paid for through “rationalizing,” i.e., cutting existing social spending programs.

In a reference to Modi’s trumpeting of his “surgical strikes” on Pakistan, Rahul Gandhi is boasting that the Congress’ phony guaranteed income scheme constitutes a “surgical strike on poverty.” But as even some of Gandhi’s political rivals have noted, the Congress has been claiming that it will lift Indians out of poverty for generations. In 1971, Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother, Indira Gandhi, won a sweeping election victory on a pledge to “banish poverty” (Garibi Hatao).

The Congress is also denouncing the “divisive” communal politics of the BJP. But it itself has shamelessly connived with the Hindu right, including by lending full-throated support to an RSS-led agitation against a Supreme Court order opening a Kerala shrine to women, and by placing “cow-protection” at the center of its government agenda in Madhya Pradesh.

The Congress toyed with the idea of forming a “grand coalition” with a host of regional and caste-ist parties. But ultimately it has formed electoral alliances only in a handful of states. There are two reasons for this. The Congress leadership feared a “grand coalition” would cut across its attempts to re-establish itself as a truly national party. Recognizing the Congress’ weakness, many of its potential allies—such as the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in north India, and the Telugu Desam Party(TDP) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana—drove a hard bargain. They are calculating they will have greater leverage if they keep their hands free to haggle over cabinet seats with both the Congress and BJP—many of them are erstwhile BJP allies—once the votes are counted.

The CPM, its sister Stalinist party, the Communist Party of India (CPI), and their Left Front have played the principal role over the past three decades in politically suppressing the working class. From 1991 to 2008, the Stalinists propped up a succession of right-wing Indian governments, most of them Congress-led. Moreover, in the states where they have held office, West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, they have implemented what they themselves concede are “pro investor policies.”

The Stalinists’ response to the bourgeoisie’s embrace of communal reaction and authoritarianism in the form of Modi and his BJP has been to turn still further to the right. They have redoubled their efforts to chain the working class to the parties of the bourgeoisie and its state, claiming that to counter the BJP and “save democracy” and “the Republic,” the working class and oppressed must work for the election of an “alternate secular” government—that is, help bring to power another right-wing capitalist government, likely Congress-led, committed to the ruling class’ agenda of intensifying the exploitation of the working class and maintaining and expanding India’s role as a satrap of Washington in its military-strategic offensive against China.

If the Hindu right has been able to grow into such a menace, it is precisely because the Stalinists have politically paralyzed the working class, preventing it from advancing its own socialist solution to the social crisis, and subordinating it to right-wing capitalist parties and governments.

India’s workers must blaze a new political path based on the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution: the mobilization of their independent class strength and the rallying of the toilers and poor behind them in the fight for a workers’ government, as part of a global working-class offensive against capitalism.

Goodyear-Dunlop plans 1,100 job cuts in Germany

Marianne Arens 

The jobs massacre in Goodyear-Dunlop’s tire factories is continuing, with 1,100 job cuts planned at its facilities in Hanau and Fulda in the German state of Hesse. Goodyear-Dunlop shut two plants down over recent years, in Amiens, France, in 2014, and Philippsburg, Germany, in 2017.

As Goodyear-Dunlop Tires Germany Ltd. announced on March 19, 490 job cuts will take place at its Fulda tire factory and 610 at its headquarters in Hanau by 2022. Both factories currently employ around 2,900 workers, meaning the latest measure will cut more than a third of the workforce. The one-time largest producer of tires in the world currently employs 60,000 workers in 22 countries.

Company management, the works council, and local politicians are now engaged in damage control to prevent a rebellion among the workers. Business manager Jürgen Titz has insisted that the job cuts will be carried out in a socially responsible manner. This simply means that restructuring, including the job cuts, will take place in consultation with the works councils.

For their part, the works council and Industrial, Mining, Chemical, and Energy Union (IG BCE) support the plans, and want to “try and find the best possible solutions for the workers,” said Ines Sauer, chair of the works council at the Fulda factory. In Hanau, works council chair Herbert Sandner claimed he was “shocked,” and called for a social plan for those impacted.

According to the Goodyear-Dunlop board, the company will invest €106 million in the two plants in parallel with the job cuts. Management also announced that in order to improve competitiveness, production in future will focus on larger tires no less than 17 inches in size.

The IG BCE welcomed this move in particular. Osman Olusoy, deputy leader of the union in Hesse, merely complained that the restructuring had come too late and that the job cuts were the result of a “chain of errors” by management in tire production.

In order to quell opposition among the workers, Hanau mayor Claus Kaminsky (SPD) sought to pose as their ally, stating that he “trusts that Goodyear will remain an important actor in our local economy over the long-term.” After a meeting with the board, which was also attended by Sandner, Kaminsky said that the positive thing is “that management and the works council are working hand-in-hand.”

Kaminsky’s claim that management and the works council are working hand-in-hand is correct, but their goal is to strangle any opposition among the workers. Their claim that the job cuts will secure the factories for the long-term is a flat-out lie.

The entire global auto industry is being restructured. A jobs massacre is under way at Ford, VW, Opel, Audi, and at practically all supplier plants. Under conditions of global trade war, General Motors and Ford are in the process of winding down their European operations. In addition, there is the impact of Brexit and the transition to electric cars. The companies are exploiting this to boost their profits at the expense of the workers, and slash hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The layoffs at Goodyear began five years ago, when in January 2014 the company’s plant in Amiens was closed with the loss of 1,200 jobs. The workers, who responded by spontaneously occupying the plant, were isolated by the trade unions, especially by the IG BCE. Two workers were subsequently hauled before the courts for allegedly kidnapping the factory manager and were handed prison sentences.

Then in 2017, the Philippsburg factory in Baden-Württemberg, once the largest Goodyear factory outside of the United States, was shut down. Since then, some 2,000 jobs have been cut at German Goodyear plants.

The experience of the workers at Philippsburg is worth reviewing. It showed once again how bankrupt the union’s policy of isolating each plant actually is. The argument “We will accept job cuts to save the plant” served to divide the workforce and pave the way for the shuttering of the entire factory.

Even as the closure of Philippsburg was in progress, Goodyear outsourced the jobs of around 900 workers in Wittlich to a subsidiary, Goodyear-Dunlop Tires manufacturing. Their collective bargaining rights and wages are guaranteed only until 2022. In Hanau and Fulda, production plans also only run for the coming two and a half years, and much of the work is already done by contract workers who have virtually no rights.

If they are to defend their jobs, Goodyear workers must reject the lies and intimidation of Goodyear management, the bourgeois politicians, works councils, and IG BCE. They must organise themselves independently in rank-and-file action committees to make contact with workers at other Goodyear plants and throughout the entire global auto industry in order to take the defence of jobs into their own hands on the basis of a socialist programme.

Australian government exploits fascist atrocity in New Zealand to push online censorship

Oscar Grenfell 

The Liberal-National Coalition government, along with Labor, the Greens and the entire Australian political establishment, is cynically using the March 15 fascist massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, to escalate long-standing moves to censor social media and suppress political discussion.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison summoned the Australian representatives of major social media companies, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, to a meeting in Brisbane, where he outlined a series of draconian measures aimed at forcing them to rapidly remove content.

Morrison flagged legislation that would compel the platforms to delete whatever the government deems to be “abhorrent violent material.” It would be a criminal offence for the companies to fail to comply with a government directive, punishable by massive fines. Financial penalties would increase, based on the length of time that the material was publicly viewable.

In an unprecedented move, the government has also stated that the legislation, which is still being drafted, will contain provisions for the criminal prosecution and potential jailing of social media executives and office-holders who do not obey its dictates.

Following the meeting, Attorney-General Christian Porter declared that the response of the social media representatives had been “thoroughly underwhelming.” “There was unfortunately nothing in that room that would discourage the government from looking at a legislative solution to try to ensure that much, much quicker action is taken,” Porter stated.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has declared his support for the proposed legislation. The Greens have hysterically denounced “fake news,” and called for an inquiry into social media.

Labor and the Greens, no less than the Coalition, have overseen the build-up of police-state measures over the past two decades. They are making clear that if a Greens-backed Labor government is installed in this year’s federal election, it will deepen the assault on democratic rights.

All of the official parties and the corporate press have presented the proposed measures as an attempt to stop “hate speech” and prevent the public being exposed to “offensive” and “violent” material. They have cited the dissemination of the Livestream video of the shooting, produced by the fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant, on social media platforms and websites.

These claims are a lie. They are aimed at covering up the responsibility of the political establishment, and all of the major parties, for the Christchurch attack, and utilising the massacre to crackdown on the democratic rights of ordinary people.

Tarrant’s attack was not the product of free speech or the Internet. The Australian-born fascist was a highly conscious political operative with links to extreme right-wing networks in Australia and across Europe. His political outlook, based on murderous hostility to immigrants and an intense hatred of socialism, mirrors the nationalism and jingoism that has been promoted by Australian governments, and all of the official parties, for decades.

For the past 30 years, Labor and Coalition governments have transformed Australia into a world model for the persecution of refugees fleeing imperialist war and oppression. They have vilified asylum-seekers, while detaining them indefinitely in concentration camps in the Pacific.

The major parties and the press have demonised Muslims since 2001, as part of the bogus “war on terror,” aimed at legitimising predatory US-led military interventions and erecting the foundations of a police state. They have stoked nationalism and anti-Chinese xenophobia to divide and disorient the working class amid a deepening social crisis produced by their pro-business policies, and to legitimise Australia’s integration into US preparations for war with China.

Morrison himself was installed as prime minister in a political coup within the Liberal Party last August, spearheaded by far-right forces. He and his colleagues have sought to transform the Liberal Party into an alt-right style movement, modeled on Trump and based on extreme nationalism, xenophobia and populism.

In reality, the calls for a crackdown on social media are directed against the mass opposition of workers, students and young people to the ruling elite’s agenda of war, austerity and authoritarianism.

Since 2017, the major social media companies, working in collaboration with the US intelligence agencies, have introduced a series of algorithms to dramatically reduce traffic to socialist, progressive and anti-war websites. Facebook and Twitter have deleted hundreds of pages and accounts exposing US wars and military intrigues, and the domination of official politics by the banks and corporations.

Morrison has made clear that his government’s measures are of a piece with these international efforts to suppress freedom of speech online. In the immediate wake of the Christchurch attack, he floated the possibility of a ban on all social media livestreaming.

This would prevent ordinary people from broadcasting significant social and political events, and airing their views, to a live audience online. Livestreaming has been used in the US, Australia and internationally to document police violence, state attacks on protests and to broadcast political demonstrations to a global audience.

Even if the government legislation does not ban live-streaming, statements by senior Coalition ministers have signalled that it will be used to crackdown on political opposition. It is entirely possible, for instance, that footage of police attacking ordinary people or prison guards brutalising detainees could be deemed “abhorrent violent material” and proscribed.

Moreover, the threat of financial and legal penalties is clearly intended to pressure the social media companies, which are already implementing online censorship, to carry out the broadest removal of content, including to protect their own lucrative operations.

Already, in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch attack, major Australian internet service providers blocked access to websites which had hosted Tarrant’s video, even if they had subsequently removed it. Facebook has begun a purge of pages associated with the Australian far-right.

These measures will inevitably be followed by attempts to suppress left-wing and progressive pages and opposition from the working class. Morrison, and Peter Dutton, the minister for home affairs, set the stage for this, by declaring last week that it was necessary to oppose “extremism” of the “left” and the “right.”

A federal Senate hearing on social media in November last year underscored the real target of online censorship.

Journalists from corporate media outlets, including Chris Zappone, the online foreign editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, warned that social media threatened “social cohesion” and was fuelling “growing distrust between the population—the citizens—and the leaders of that country.”

Dr Michael Jensen, of the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, a government-funded think tank, said that online discussion would likely be used to weaken “the Five Eyes alliance”—the international surveillance network led by the United States, which monitors the communications of millions of ordinary people and is integral to the preparations for war. He warned of online support for Julian Assange, who is being persecuted for his role in WikiLeaks’ exposure of US war crimes, mass spying and illegal diplomatic intrigues.

At the hearing, representatives of the Coalition, Labor and the Greens all expressed support for measures aimed at suppressing anti-war and progressive sentiment online.

The drive by the entire political establishment, in Australia and internationally, to social media censorship and other authoritarian measures, underscores the importance of the International Coalition of Socialist, Antiwar and Progressive Websites, initiated by the World Socialist Web Site in 2017 to fight back against these attacks on freedom of speech and democratic rights.

European Union intensifies internet censorship

Justus Leicht & Johannes Stern

Two months before the European elections, the European Parliament has voted to massively escalate internet censorship. Yesterday, the majority of MEPs voted in favour of a directive which, under the guise of copyright reforms, would enforce the use of so-called upload filters in social media, thus further restricting the internet.

According to Article 17 (formerly Article 13) of the Directive, internet platforms must now ensure that works protected by copyright are not uploaded without permission. This could only be enforced through upload filters, which automatically filter and censor content. The consequences are clear: internet giants such as YouTube or Facebook, which cooperate closely with the secret services and governments and already censor left-wing and progressive content on a massive scale, are being urged to delete articles, videos or other postings even before they are uploaded.

So far, platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have had to delete copyrighted works from their sites as soon as they receive a complaint. According to Article 17 of the new directive, operators must ensure that copyrighted works are not uploaded without permission. Alternatively, they must also seek licences for the material uploaded by third parties and, in principle, develop mechanisms to prevent works from being made available in the first place where the rights holders have proven their claims.

In practice, given the amount, variety and speed with which new content is uploaded, this could only be achieved by automatically scanning and filtering all content in advance. Anyone who inserts images, excerpts from texts, videos or music to their own content, or modifies such content to create new content from it, can fall victim to the upload filters just as much as someone actually violating copyright law. In addition, upload filters can be politically manipulated so that, for example, texts or videos that are directed against austerity, militarism and war, report on labor disputes and strikes or contain terms such as socialism or “Marxism” are censored.

None of this is the result of an oversight, but is the real purpose of the “reform.”

The European governments and giant tech companies fear growing social opposition and are already censoring left-wing and progressive content on a massive scale. Facebook regularly deletes accounts that oppose war and police violence. In Germany, tens of thousands of posts have been deleted since the so-called Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) came into force. Google, in consultation with German government circles, has modified its search algorithms in order to suppress left-wing and progressive websites—including, above all, the World Socialist Web Site.

Faced with the “Yellow Vest” protests in France, the mass protests in Algeria and the growth of class struggle internationally, the ruling class is feverishly seeking ways to suppress all independent opposition. Last autumn, the EU already agreed to intensify internet censorship and threatened opposition parties with sanctions and punishments. The most recent authoritarian measure has been pushed through in direct opposition to the expressed will of the population.

On the weekend before the vote, more than 100,000 across Europe took to the streets against the new directive and the infamous upload filters. More than 40,000 people demonstrated in Munich alone on Saturday and more than 10,000 in Berlin. Further protests took place in Malmö, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Krakow, Lisbon and Thessaloniki. An online petition on change.org, “Stop the censorship machine—Save the internet,” was signed by more than 5.1 million people. Last Thursday, the German Wikipedia site went offline for a day in protest.

Immediately after the vote on Tuesday evening, spontaneous demonstrations with several hundred participants each took place in Cologne, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dresden and Leipzig. Further protests are planned for the next few days. The directive must be approved by the European Council before it can officially enter into force. According to media reports, this will take place in a vote on 9 April.

The MEPs who voted against the reform—including the majority of SPD, Linkspartei and Green MEPs from Germany—fear above all the growing radicalisation among students and young workers. Julia Reda, a member of the Green/European Free Alliance (EFA) parliamentary group, warned that the directive would “rob an entire generation of confidence that politics will represent the interests of the population.”

In fact, the vote showed that all the establishment parties support censorship and the construction of a European police state. Representatives of all factions—from the European Left (GUE/NGL), the Greens, Liberals (ALDE), Social Democrats (S&D) and Conservatives (EPP and ECR) to the extreme right (ENF and EFDD)—voted in favour of the new censorship law.

In implementing their reactionary plans, EU politicians are resorting to bald-faced lies. A few days before the vote, conservative European politician Daniel Caspary (CDU) denounced the anti-censorship protests in the Bild newspaper as “bought demonstrators” who would “endanger democracy.” The EU Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová told Netzpolitik that upload filters and short deletion periods for online platforms could have prevented the right-wing terrorist attack in Christchurch/New Zealand and the radicalisation of the perpetrator. She wanted “100 percent certainty” that “terrorist content... would not remain on the net.”

Such statements turn reality upside down. It is not the internet and demonstrators who are responsible for attacks on democratic rights or the radicalisation of right-wing terrorists like Brenton Tarrant, but EU politicians like Jourová herself. She is a member of the Czech governing party ANO 2011, which advocates a restrictive immigration policy and denounces Muslim refugees as potential terrorists. How openly and shamelessly leading European politicians are tying in with Nazi traditions was demonstrated by a statement made by the head of the conservative EPP parliamentary group, Manfred Weber (CSU), at the beginning of 2018. “The central European issue” was “the final solution to the refugee question,” he declared.

One year later, European governments openly consider fascistic methods to implement their reactionary policies. Ahead of protests by the “Yellow Vests” last weekend, the Paris military governor announced that the soldiers of an elite unit were ready to open fire on demonstrators with live ammunition if necessary.

Workers and youth must draw the necessary conclusions. The struggle against internet censorship—as well as the struggle against social inequality, fascism and war—requires a political struggle: that is the mobilization of the international working class on the basis of a socialist program.