Killing of two Indonesian journalists points to criminality in palm oil industry

Owen Howell

The dead bodies of two Indonesian activists were discovered in late October on a palm plantation in the province of North Sumatra. According to police, the two men were allegedly murdered by a group of hired killers carrying out the orders of a local palm oil company owner.

Within a week of the discovery, police had arrested five suspects, including the company owner, Kompas reported. They are currently being detained at police headquarters in the provincial capital Medan, charged with murder. Three other suspects are still at large.

The two victims, Maraden Sianipar, 55, and Martua Siregar, 42, both worked as journalists for an online news portal, Pindo Merdeka, before going freelance in 2017. They then became renowned throughout the area for their activism in environmental issues and land disputes, in which they advocated for struggling peasants in their conflicts with company officials.

According to Tribun Medan, Wibharry Padmoasmolo, the owner of palm oil company KSU Amelia, allegedly commissioned the killings by hiring seven men—company employees and security guards—and paying four of them nearly $US3,000. At a press conference, police commissioner Andi Rian said Wibharry told Janti Hutahaean, the leader of the seven hired murderers: “Yes, just brush them off if there’s still someone annoying us. If you need to, finish them off.”

KSU Amelia claimed ownership of a vast plot of forest area and repeatedly expelled outraged farmers from the property, who felt the company had unlawfully taken control of their land. Last year the company’s concession was sealed off by government authorities after it cleared 750 hectares of rainforest to plant oil palms. It had been engaged in a fierce dispute with the impoverished farmers since 2015, after the firm’s expansion onto forested land was ruled to be illegal.

Violent conflicts were common between the plantation’s guards and local people trying to access the land. In the end, the residents called upon environmental groups for assistance. At this point Maraden and Martua stepped in to act as mediators and attempt to resolve the dispute.

As the Tribun reported, the incident occurred on the afternoon of October 29 when Maraden and Martua visited the plantation to speak with company officials and discuss a solution. At the front gate they were allegedly met by seven men armed with bladed weapons called kelewangs. The hired men reportedly tortured the two activists to death, stabbing them multiple times.

Pos Metro Medan wrote that their bodies were found over the following two days on the KSU Amelia plantation in Labuhan Batu Regency, North Sumatra. Maraden’s body lay at the bottom of a ditch with his left arm hacked off and deep gashes around his head. Martua was found in the bushes near a warehouse, covered with stab wounds to his abdomen, back, and other body parts.

North Sumatra police chief Agus Andrianto related to the press that Wibharry denied owning the company when under police questioning, saying his father-in-law was one of the owners.

According to Tempo, police also explained that Joshua Situmorang, another top official at KSU Amelia, had once offered a wage of $US1,000 to a security guard to kill Ranji Siallagan, the head of an association of palm smallholders, in an effort to silence opposition from local farmers to the company. Ranji survived the attack.

Less than a month before Maraden and Martua were murdered, an environmental activist named Golfrid Siregar was found dead in suspicious circumstances. Golfrid was the attorney of the North Sumatran chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), the nation’s largest environmental group. He was involved in exposing illegal logging practices and provided legal guidance for local communities ensnared in conflicts with big companies.

Golfrid was found lying unconscious beside a motorcycle on a traffic overpass in Medan early on October 3 and died three days later. At the time police asserted that Golfrid died in a drink-driving accident. His work colleagues and relatives, however, according to an article by Mongabay, rejected this claim and argued instead that the evidence, including severe head injuries, indicated he was killed elsewhere and his body was dumped to conceal the crime.

The deaths of these activists have heightened concerns over the operations of palm oil companies among observers in Indonesia and internationally. Various civil society groups have noted that intimidation against those who investigate human rights abuses in the palm oil business is growing more violent.

Greenpeace campaigner Annisa Rahmawati, when asked about the two activists, told Reuters that the running of palm oil firms “was, and is, built upon the smeared blood and suffering of residents.”

Plantation companies now employ soldiers and police as guards to stave off the infuriated rural masses from occupying their newly-acquired properties. Over the past decade certain firms in Sumatra and Borneo, where exploitative conditions are at their worst, have begun to hire the notorious paramilitary unit Brimob as a security force.

The highly lucrative international trade of palm oil, regarded as “the poor man’s oil,” is founded on the exploitation of cheap labour. Most plantation workers across Indonesia are casual daily labourers with no health insurance. Amnesty International reported in 2016 that companies used forced labour and child labour, and allowed dangerous working practices. The illegal burning of forests, moreover, which is responsible for the annual haze that blankets Southeast Asia, is a cheap method to clear land, with no consideration for the extreme ecological damage inflicted.

In a 2015 paper, the Centre for International Forestry Research documented the political corruption which propels the industry, concluding there was a link between land clearing and local elections. Regional elections regularly involve “land transactions,” in which prospective regional leaders give residents access to land to attract their sympathies. Businessmen provide financial assistance to prospective regional heads, in return obtaining extra-judicial land permits when the candidate is elected.

The sudden rise in the practice of land grabbing during the Yudhoyono administration of 2004-2014 was the product of new government regulations making it easier for private companies to gain permits for land clearing. Over the past five years, the Widodo administration has likewise continued to make life easy for palm oil companies, turning a blind eye to the deep-rooted corruption and criminality that permeates the industry.

Brazilian Workers Party joins Bolsonaro in imposing austerity, repressing strikes

Tomas Castanheira

Relying on emergency votes and employing brutal police force, Brazilian state governments are imposing pension “reforms” against state-level public sector workers that will all but prevent workers from retiring. The legislation aims at bringing public employees in the states down to the same poverty pension schemes imposed by Bolsonaro in the private sector and on federal public sector workers earlier in the year.

Since November, unions have shut down and isolated teachers’ strikes across the country, preventing a unified working class resistance and opening the path to the action of state governments, many of them controlled by the self-described political opposition to Bolsonaro led by the Workers Party (PT), which also dominates the largest unions.

Police prepare to attack protesters at Ceará state building [Credit: Leticia Lima]

Last Wednesday, December 20, the PT governor in the northeastern state of Ceará, Camilo Santana, became the latest to impose a new pension scheme after the ruling PT caucus requested an emergency vote and the state’s Military Police were called out to confront protesting workers at the state capitol building.

Santana is following in the footsteps of other opposition-led governments in the Workers Party’s historic heartland, Brazil’s impoverished Northeast, where alliances headed by the PT and its smaller partners, the Socialist Party (PSB) and the Maoist Communist Party (PCdoB), rule eight out of nine states. A week before, police repression was employed to push through a similar proposition in Piauí. The ruling PCdoB in Maranhão rammed through its pension reform with a rushed vote, and Bahia and Rio Grande do Norte are due to hold their own votes in 2020.

The PT’s and PCdoB’s votes have also been crucial for the imposition of the reform elsewhere, such as the Amazonian state of Pará, where the PT’s state leadership issued a cynical public letter claiming its approval of the state pension reform was part of a “responsible” attitude to “reduce the damage” of Bolsonaro’s measures. In other states, wherever the PT is formally excluded from government due to particular political arrangements, it postures as opposing the reforms by concocting differences between the measures proposed in different states’ legislation.

Workers confront police in Ceará [Credit: Fuaspect]

This is above all exposed in São Paulo, where Francisca Seixas, an official with both the National Education Workers Confederation (CNTE) and the local APEOESP state teachers’ union, was forced to respond to criticism of workers for the union’s support of the Maranhão government. Seixas attempted to divert criticism by claiming that pension contributions in Maranhão were not raised uniformly for all workers. For teachers, however, pension taxes in the state will reach 14.5 percent, even higher than the 14 percent being rammed through in São Paulo. She went on to add that criticism of the PCdoB government in Maranhão was unwarranted, because “ to slander governor Flávio Dino at this point is in the sole interest of the most backward sectors of the Brazilian right wing [our emphasis].”

Even more cynical was the posturing of the PT-controlled CUT national union federation in the state of Sergipe, where it stated that the local pension reform being proposed by the government was “not in keeping with the national opposition of the [Workers] Party to Bolsonaro’s Pension Reform.”

The CUT’s claims reek of dishonesty. The PT’s “struggle” on the national level was a fraud, and workers’ demonstrations and strikes were sabotaged even as PT governors openly lobbied to have the federal reform expanded to include state workers so that they could claim clean hands, rather than having to impose the attacks themselves in their own states and call in the police to beat protesting workers.

Military Police phalanx deployed against Ceará protesters [Credit: Tarcisio Aquino Filho]

Now the same theatrics are being employed in the states, with the particularly treacherous role of the emergency votes being held while teachers are on summer recess. For almost two months, public sector unions have called for token strikes to let off steam, shutting them down at the first opportunity. In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where the strikes saw the most militant response across the public sector and gained wide support from private sector workers and even from small retailers, the local CPERS teachers union lured workers off the picket lines based on an injunction against the pension reform granted by the Supreme Court at the request of the pseudo-left Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL).

After a massive demonstration at the state capital of Porto Alegre on December 17, the union and PSOL officials claimed the local pension reform was “dead in courts” because of the injunction and that workers should call off the strike and focus on camping out in front of the state parliament to guarantee that they would be paid their wages for the days on strike. Barely a day later, the injunction was struck down, and the reform was swiftly passed by the legislators. The union then dismantled the camp in front of the legislature and claimed that a meeting in the city of São Leopoldo, part of the Porto Alegre industrial belt, had authorized it to focus exclusively on guaranteeing that workers would be paid for the days on strike, despite large votes in favor of continuing the strike against the pension reform, even without strike pay, in Porto Alegre and other regional centers.

The PT’s widespread efforts in favor of the federal and local attacks on pensions in Brazil expose once more the party’s hostility to the working class. They have also given the lie to the false claims of its leaders, first and foremost former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that the party is “the opposite of Bolsonaro.”

But it also exposes the treacherous role of the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left groups that work with the sole goal of using the overwhelming hostility of workers to Bolsonaro to restore the PT’s authority among them.

Addressing the policies of the right-wing PT governor of Bahia, Rui Costa, on December 15, the Morenoite Resistência group, operating inside PSOL, attempted to dismiss the PT’s collaboration with Bolsonaro with a reference to the so-called “Stockholm syndrome,” a condition popularly known to affect individuals who suffer severe abuse and, in a state of deep desperation, appear to develop affection for their abusers—most frequently in kidnappings. The article claims that despite suffering a “coup” in the 2016 impeachment of PT President Dilma Rousseff, which the PT accepted without any attempt to mobilize workers in its defense, the party “believes it can reestablish a social pact with the bourgeois sectors and return to power.”

Beyond the pseudo-Marxist rhetoric about “bourgeois sectors,” implying that the PT is not one of them, the aim of the article is to relieve the PT—as a supposed victim of extreme abuse—of any responsibility for its own policies. It also blames the working class for breaking with the party, and demands instead that workers work to rescue the PT from its captives and push it left.

This is even more bluntly stated by another of the myriad Morenoite tendencies embedded in PSOL, the Left Socialist Movement (MES), whose leader Luciane Genro was responsible for the Supreme Court injunction used to lure Rio Grande do Sul teachers off the picket lines. The MES openly promoted the Greek Syriza and the Spanish Podemos as providing some new road to socialism. After feigning surprise over their betrayals, it now attempts to carry out the same services for the pro-imperialist Democratic Socialists of America in the US and Democratic Party House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

After joining the Brazilian right wing in the campaign for Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016, the current has done a complete about-face, defending unity with the PT and extolling Lula as “a mass leader of the opposition against authoritarianism and the far right’s project,” despite “their strategy of cooperating with banks, construction companies and big capitalists.”

The MES’s position exposes the class character of the pseudo-left’s support for the PT. Their posturing as loyal “left critics” of the PT serves as a means of channeling mounting social opposition behind this bourgeois party in order to head off and suppress the kind of explosive working class revolts that have swept much of South America.

The politics of these layers can only help prepare a repeat of the great betrayals suffered by the working class in Brazil and throughout the continent in the 1960s and 1970s. Breaking the grip of the PT and its pseudo-left satellites on the workers movement requires an intractable struggle for the political independence and international unity of the working class through the building of a Brazilian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Industrial carnage in US: 5,250 workers killed on the job in 2018

Steve Filips

There were 5,250 worker fatalities in the United States in 2018, according to this year’s annual report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an agency of the US Labor Department. The report was released on Tuesday.

An average of 101 worker fatalities a week, the 2018 toll represents a 2 percent increase over the 5,147 workers killed on the job in 2017.

The BLS monitors the incidence of work-related fatalities, while the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), also an agency of the Labor Department, is charged with enforcing health and safety regulations at US work places. OSHA has jurisdiction over 130 million workers at 8 million work places. In 2018, the agency had 2,265 employees and a budget of $552 million, far below the level of staffing and funding needed to carry out its stated mission.

The OSHA budget barely kept pace with inflation in 2019, increasing by a mere $5 million.

The toll of dead and injured workers has risen in parallel with the rise on the stock market. The period 2011 to 2018 saw an increase of 12 percent in lives lost, with a total of 39,150 people killed on the job. Tens of thousands of additional deaths resulted from occupational illnesses resulting from exposure to toxic substances.

The upward trend has occurred under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, which have plowed ever greater sums into the military budget while spending trillions of tax-payer dollars to bail out the financial aristocracy following the Wall Street crash of 2008. Funds for social programs, public health, the environment and infrastructure have been slashed.

The occupations with the highest fatality rates are related to the logistics, transportation and warehousing sectors, followed by construction. The BLS stated in a news release on Tuesday that 2,080 fatalities, or 40 percent of the 2018 total, were the result of transportation incidents. The BLS noted: “Driver/sales workers and truck drivers had the most fatalities of any broad occupation group at 966.” Most of these were heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, with 831 fatalities.

The broader trade, transport and utilities industry sectors reported 1,443 on-the-job deaths in 2018, unchanged from the year before.

A truck driver in the Northeast spoke with the WSWS, saying: “There are many dangers you face while on the road, or while making deliveries, from inattentive drivers, poorly maintained infrastructure, and congested highways. I work a regular shift, and in the mornings I frequently see trucks crashed in the median, through a guardrail, or down an embankment, which is likely to be caused by lack of sleep for the overnight drivers, who are under pressure to make delivery appointments before they run out of allowable on-duty time.”

The transportation and warehousing sectors, including companies such as Amazon and United Parcel Service (UPS), employed 5.58 million workers as of this November, according to the BLS. The WSWS has reported extensively on worker fatalities at XPO Logistics, UPS and Federal Express (FedEx), under conditions of a relentless drive to maximize profit at the expense of worker health and safety.

A Bloomberg News article from September points out that the BLS does not include Amazon workers in the nearly 700,000 workers in the “Courier and Express Delivery Services” category. Amazon has been rapidly transitioning toward delivering the products it sells.

Bloomberg found through a records request filed with OSHA that the agency is planning to step up its inspections of warehouses, but that Amazon will not be included because it is classified as an e-commerce rather than a warehousing company.

A Gizmodo.com article published last month, on conditions faced by workers at the new Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island in New York, reported a high incidence of injuries. It cited one worker who said that a coworker who was five months pregnant suffered a miscarriage because “The managers just refused to put her in a different section where she might have had less bending, stretching and things to do.”

The greatest number of work fatalities occurred among older workers, with 1,114 deaths among those 45 to 54, 1,104 among those 55 to 64, and 759 among those over 65. These age groups accounted for a combined 57 percent of fatalities in 2018.

The BLS also reported a 12 percent increase in on-the-job “unintentional overdoses” from alcohol and drugs, from a total of 272 in 2017 to 305 last year. There was an 11 percent increase in work place suicides, from 275 to 304.

Erdogan vows to send Turkish troops into Libya

Bill Van Auken

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Thursday that Ankara will deploy Turkish troops to Libya, claiming that the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) has requested military support.

The dispatch of Turkish military units to the war-torn north African country threatens to exacerbate an increasingly complex and escalating tensions between Ankara, Moscow and Washington.

The GNA, headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, is under siege by General Khalifa Haftar’s so-called Libyan National Army, which is linked to a rival government based in the eastern Libyan port city of Tobruk. Turkey and the GNA signed agreements last month covering military assistance and a delineation of maritime boundaries that the Erdogan government is invoking to lay exclusive claim to vast gas and oil reserves under the eastern Mediterranean.

“Since there is an invitation [from Libya] right now, we will accept it,” Erdogan said at a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). “Based on our memorandum of understanding on the security and military cooperation, we will submit a motion for the deployment of the troops to parliament as the first item after it re-opens.”

The “invitation” from Libya had yet to be made public as Erdogan promised that the Turkish troop deployment would be approved by the time the Turkish parliament returns on January 8.

The plan to send Turkish troops into Libya threatens to escalate a conflict that has far-reaching implications. While the GNA is recognized as Libya’s “legitimate” government by the United Nations, it controls little territory outside of the capital of Tripoli, which is now under siege. It is dependent upon a collection of Islamist and regional militias for its defense.

Haftar, a former general under the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi, who defected to the US and became a longtime “asset” of the Central Intelligence Agency, has the backing of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and France. And, while Washington is formally backing the GNA, US President Donald Trump praised Haftar last April for his “significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources.”

The fracturing of Libya’s government into two rival factions at war with each other is the end product of the 2011 US-NATO war of aggression which employed massive aerial bombardment and the use of Islamist militias as proxy ground troops, ending in the toppling and murder of Gaddafi. The imperialist intervention, which shattered Libya’s infrastructure and claimed the lives of tens of thousands, turned what had been the wealthiest nation in Africa into a so-called failed state that has since endured eight years of uninterrupted civil war.

Erdogan’s threat to send troops to Libya is part of an increasingly bellicose policy through which Ankara has sought to advance the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie while stoking nationalism as a means of deflecting outward Turkey’s growing class tensions.

Turkey’s relations to Libya date back to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the territory from the 16th century through to the Italian war of colonial conquest of 1911-12, in which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who would go on to found the Republic of Turkey a decade later, served as a volunteer fighting against the Italians. The present GNA regime in Tripoli is reportedly politically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, which wins it political sympathy from Turkey but makes it anathema to the regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Haftar’s Libyan National Army has charged that Turkish intelligence is funneling fighters of the former Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, into Libya via Tunisia to support the GNA. Erdogan made a visit to Tunisia on Wednesday, cementing an alliance in support of the government in Tripoli, while issuing a joint statement in support of a cease-fire.

The deployment of Turkish troops to Libya has the potential of triggering a confrontation with Russia, which is backing Haftar. The Erdogan government has charged that mercenaries of the Kremlin-linked Wagner security contractor are on the ground backing Haftar’s forces, a charge that Moscow has denied.

A meeting between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled in Ankara during the first week of the new year, in which Libya will be one of the first points on the agenda. The conflict in the North African country is being framed by both countries in light of their tense agreement in Syria, where they have organized joint patrols on the border between Turkey and northeastern Syria.

Meanwhile, there is still the threat of a conflict over the Russian-backed offensive by the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad to retake the northwestern province of Idlib, where Turkey has troops deployed and has provided support to Islamist militias.

The Erdogan government sent a delegation to Moscow this week in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire in Idlib. Turkey fears that a continuation of the offensive will send another wave of refugees across its borders, under conditions in which some 3.6 million Syrians have already sought refuge there from the carnage unleashed by the US-orchestrated war for regime change.

The tensions between Ankara and Moscow are only exceeded by those between the Erdogan government and Washington.

Erdogan threatened in a recent television interview that Turkey “may close Incirlik and Kurecik,” two air bases that have played a major role in the US military operations in the Middle East, and where the US stores nuclear weapons and maintains critical radar facilities.

The statement came in response to the growing threat of sweeping US sanctions against Turkey over its purchase of a Russian S-400 missile system. Washington has already barred Turkey from participation in the development and deployment of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter plane on the grounds that Russia could use the S-400 system’s radar to compromise the aircraft’s capabilities. Ankara has in turn threatened to buy Russian fighter planes instead.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper responded to these threats by saying that Turkey’s decision not to host NATO bases called into question its “commitment to the alliance.” Earlier, he had repeatedly stated that Ankara was moving out of the “NATO orbit.”

Tensions between Ankara and the US-led NATO alliance have only deepened since Washington and Berlin backed an abortive 2016 military coup to topple and murder Erdogan because of his ties with Russia.

The deal between the Erdogan government and the GNA regime in Tripoli also has far-reaching implications for an increasingly sharp crisis in the eastern Mediterranean, where the devastation wrought by decades of US military interventions in the Middle East threatens to spill over into a conflict involving all of the major powers.

The memorandum signed between Ankara and the Libyan GNA lays claim to vast stretches of the eastern Mediterranean as an exclusive economic zone (EEZ), including waters off Cyprus, the Greek island of Crete and Egypt, along with off-shore reserves of oil and natural gas whose worth is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Washington has responded to Turkey’s claims by a decided shift in support of Greece and Cyprus, where it has lifted a decades-old arms embargo.

The wars in Syria and Libya, combined with the struggle for control over the energy reserves of the eastern Mediterranean, are creating an increasingly unstable situation that threatens to ignite a region-wide and even global military conflict.

Desperate to stem protests, dozens of governments shut down internet access in 2019

Andre Damon

Amid a global upsurge of political protests and strikes, governments all over the world are shutting down the internet in desperate bids to stem the tide of popular opposition.

According to preliminary data from Access Now, 2019 likely saw more deliberate internet shutdowns than any other previous year. More than a quarter of the world’s countries have shut down the internet over in past four years.

At least 29 countries carried out deliberate internet shutdowns in 2019, including India, Sri Lanka, Russia, Sudan, Indonesia and Iraq.

Indian workers shout slogans in front of a police barricade during a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act in New Delhi [Credit: AP Photo/Altaf Qadri]

Since the 2011 uprising in Tunisia, dubbed a “WikiLeaks revolution” after the organization released information on the corruption of the country’s ruling class, governments have increasingly seen the internet as a threat, used by masses of people to organize strikes, protests and demonstrations. In recent months, workers and young people have used social media to organize mass demonstrations in Chile, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti, Egypt and Algeria.

Last week, police authorities in India shut down internet access in sections of New Delhi in response to a wave of popular protests against the Modi government’s Hindu supremacist citizenship law.

The Modi government has responded to the demonstrations, which have mobilized broad sections of the population across ethnic and sectarian lines, with a crackdown that has taken the lives of dozens of people and the imposition of effective martial law in broad sections of the country.

India has shut down the internet more than 104 times this year, up from six times in 2014. The most notorious of these actions is the ongoing internet shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir, which has now lasted 135 days, the longest ever in any country officially called a “democracy.”

The ongoing internet shutdown in the Kashmir Valley now affects over seven million people, making the most routine aspects of life—from communicating with distant family to applying for a job—next to impossible.

The Kashmir shutdown was aimed at quelling opposition to the illegal abrogation of the semi-autonomous status of India’s lone Muslim-majority state. This constitutional coup has been enforced by the deployment of tens of thousands of additional security forces and the detention without charge of thousands.

In its latest annual report, Access Now pointed out that governments routinely lie about their motives in carrying out internet shutdowns. “[W]hen governments shut down the internet citing ‘public safety,’ it is often evident to observers that, in reality, authorities may fear protests and cut off access to the internet to limit people’s ability to organize and express themselves, whether online or off.”

It adds, “When authorities cite ‘fake news,’ rumors, or hate speech,” they are in fact most often seeking to curtail protests and control elections. “Using these threats as scapegoats, it appears that governments are leveraging shutdowns to shape the political narrative and control the flow of information.”

While outright internet shutoffs have remained rare in the major capitalist powers, many of the same false arguments—like protecting “public safety” and suppressing “fake news”—have been used to establish an apparatus of mass censorship by major corporations acting on behalf of state intelligence agencies.

In 2017, Google announced a series of changes to its search algorithm, internally dubbed “Project Owl,” that drastically reduced search traffic to left-wing, antiwar and progressive websites, in the guise of fighting “fake news.”

An investigation by the Wall Street Journal this year confirmed the allegations made by the World Socialist Web Site that Google operated internal blacklists of websites that it sought to keep users from accessing in search results. Facebook and Twitter followed Google’s actions, removing left-wing political accounts and pages with millions of followers on the grounds that they were “inauthentic.”

The Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission has moved ahead with the gutting of net neutrality, giving private corporations a legal cover to censor and tamper with political speech at will.

Last year, Germany passed the so-called NetzDG law, which threatens to fine internet companies that fail to remove “illegal content,” turning, as Human Rights Watch wrote, “private companies into overzealous censors.”

The Spanish government is pushing through a law that allows the state to shut down at will digital communications, internet infrastructure and apps without a court order. The law follows a similar measure passed in France last year, spelling out massive fines for disseminating “any allegation or implying of a fact without providing verifiable information.”

The efforts to curtail the distribution of critical political viewpoints go beyond even these draconian censorship measures.

The British government has, at the direction of the Trump administration and with the full support of the Democratic Party, detained and isolated WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, under conditions that UN human rights expert Nils Melzer has called tantamount to torture.

The US has also imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning without charge. Both of these courageous individuals are being persecuted for nothing other than telling the truth about criminal wrongdoing by the US government.

All these measures represent the vindictive actions of vastly unpopular capitalist governments that feel besieged by a global upsurge of political opposition. This year, this latent opposition has erupted in a series of mass demonstrations, which the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) think tank dubbed an “Age of Leaderless Revolution.”

CSIS analyst Samuel Brannen wrote: “This awakening has been amplified by the digital information age with more than half of the planet—4 billion people—now connected to the internet. Facebook alone counts 2.4 billion active users. And among the most popular topics for users is politics…. And the ways in which people can connect locally and globally and draw comparisons and inspiration from events elsewhere is unmatched. The ability for individuals to connect, to inspire and coordinate millions onto the streets is without precedent.”

Capitalist governments all over the world see this communications revolution, which holds immeasurable promise for human society, as an existential threat. One recent survey observed, “There is now a geopolitical operating premise that the ills of the internet are potentially more consequential than its benefits.”

While the cliques of corrupt capitalist oligarchs that dominate society all over the world, from Washington to New Delhi to Madrid, recoil in fear at the growing interconnectedness of society, the freedom of speech, including internet communication, is vital to workers and young people seeking to express their grievances and organize politically.

As workers and young people enter into social struggle all over the world, they must take up the defense of the freedom of expression and the freedom of political prisoners like Assange and Manning as inseparable from the fight to defend their social rights, abolish inequality, and overthrow the capitalist system.

CAA and Citizenship Determination: An ‘Assamese’ Exception

Niharika Das


The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA), which came into force on 12 December 2019, amends the Citizenship Act, 1955, to state that “any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014 and who has been exempted by the Central Government by or under clause (c) of sub-section (2) of section 3 of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 or from the application of the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 or any rule or order made thereunder, shall not be treated as illegal migrant for the purposes of this Act.”

The CAA’s implications for the state of Assam are different compared to the rest of India due to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise, and the context of the Assam Accord (1985). A majority of those opposing the CAA in Assam have argued that it threatens the identity and culture of the Assamese people. This is tied to an ethno-nationalistic sentiment in the state, which is different from the wider Hindu-Muslim binary that dominates debates on the CAA in the rest of the country.

Why is Assam's Case Different?Under the CAA, the cut-off date for persons belonging to the six above mentioned communities claiming citizenship in India is 31 December 2014. This date clashes with the NRC deadline (as implemented in Assam) of 24 March 1971, rendering the entire NRC exercise in the state meaningless. Those previously identified as illegal migrants in Assam can now apply for citizenship under the CAA. This defeats the purpose of the NRC, i.e. to detect and deport illegal migrants from Bangladesh. It also creates fertile grounds for forgery by those excluded from Assam’s NRC list to seek citizenship by claiming to be from the relevant countries.

The CAA violates certain provisions of the Assam Accord. The addition to Section 2(1)(b) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 negates or dilutes the provision under Clause 5 of the Accord, which requires any person entering Assam between 1 January 1966 and 24 March 1971 to register themselves under the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939. The amendment to the Third Schedule also dilutes Section 6A of the 1955 Act (which is derived from the Assam Accord) which clearly states that any persons who had migrated to Assam between 1966 and 1971 were eligible to become citizens of India either immediately or after a period of ten years. However, the CAA 2019 reduces this period from ten to five years.

The CAA also clashes with Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, which states that “Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.” The Indian government denied any violation and set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to look into the proper implementation of Clause 6. This Committee proposed a categorisation of Assamese into three groups: indigenous tribal; indigenous Assamese speaking people; and other indigenous people of Assam. However, it did not clarify the parameters determining the categorisation,  causing further confusion.

Lack of clarity on the definition of the third proposed category (‘other indigenous people of Assam’) has implications especially for the Bengali, Nepali, and Hindi speaking populations who have been resident in Assam for generations. To arrive at an accurate definition, representatives from each of the over 30 ethnic groups in Assam must be consulted—not merely the majority groups. The JPC was dissolved within six weeks of its formation, which resulted in the setting up a High Level Committee. The High Level Committee, too, lacked diversity and representation, with only one Muslim and no women among its members. CAA 2019 creates further confusion by not defining the term ‘Assamese people’ clearly. The lack of a clear and legal definition for the terms ‘Assamese people’, ‘indigenous people’, and ‘local identity’ aggravates the issue of a thorough implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord.

Looking AheadThe 2014 Supreme Court order to conduct an NRC in Assam for the identification and deportation of illegal migrants from Bangladesh was received with widespread jubilation in the state. However, this sentiment began to erode after the final (Assam) NRC list was released in September 2019. Many expressed concerns that the list’s figure of 1.9 million was much lower than what they believed was the actual number of undocumented immigrants in Assam.

With the CAA regularising illegal Hindu migrants excluded from Assam’s NRC list and enabling them to claim Indian citizenship, the fear of Assamese identity and culture being under attack has come to the forefront again. The dominant Assamese speaking population in the Brahmaputra Valley believe that they will be reduced to a minority in their homeland. Given how this ethno-nationalism is structured around linguistics, land, and a common homeland, there are concerns that the regularisation of illegal Hindu Bangladeshi migrants will further fuel an insider-outsider narrative, which, if left unchecked, will have negative consequences for social stability and law and order.

After the Argentina Debacle, the IMF Endorses Weakening Capital Controls in Ecuador

Lara Merling

Over the past year, a rebranded International Monetary Fund (IMF) returned to Latin America with promises of loan agreements that would be different than the dreaded “structural adjustment programs” of the past. Behind statements about inclusive growth and protecting the most vulnerable, are policies similar to the structural adjustments of the Washington Consensus era. While the Argentina program has already imploded, leaving behind soaring poverty and a collapsed economy, the IMF seems determined to push forward its agreement with Ecuador.

Things have not been smooth for the IMF in Ecuador. Massive protests erupted after an attempt to impose fuel price hikes as part of the IMF agreement ― forcing the Ecuadorian government to withdraw the measures and temporarily put its agreement with the IMF on hold. The IMF recently announced it plans to resume its program in Ecuador after the country’s National Assembly passed a tax reform bill.

However, the IMF’s press release fails to mention that the bill contains several provisions that aim to weaken and essentially render Ecuador’s capital controls ineffective. Ecuador introduced a series of measures to discourage capital flight and prevent speculative flows of capital back in 2007 by taxing outflows that did not meet the criteria of productive foreign direct investment (FDI). The measures have been successful in strengthening macroeconomic stability and raising revenues for the government.

It is important to note that under the original bill, inflows financing productive activities and staying in the country for at least one year were already exempt from this tax. It also specified that outflows to a list of tax havens cannot be exempt from paying the tax.

The new bill passed by the Ecuadorian assembly removes the provision on tax havens, shortens the wait period for some investments to be exempt from the tax, and withdraws it altogether for equity and security markets as well as financial investments.

The changes to the law effectively open the door to financial speculation. Furthermore, by removing the tax haven provision, the new law allows both domestic and foreign investors to reroute their money as “phantom FDI” – avoiding both income and capital outflow taxes.

The measures included in this bill are in direct contradiction with the Fund’s supposedly evolving position on capital controls. A recent article in the Financial Times praised the IMF’s warming toward capital controls, going over a series of statements made by high-ranking IMF officials on what they refer to as “capital flow management.” These statements are in line with the IMF’s institutional view on capital flow management released in 2012. That position recognized that capital account liberalization might not be the appropriate measure under all circumstances, moving away from the neoliberal dogma of open capital accounts.

It is also stated in the IMF’s Articles of Agreement that Fund resources cannot be used to “meet a sustained outflow of capital.” However, this is exactly what happened in Argentina, where $36.6 billion left the country as the IMF disbursed $44.5 billion. Sustained capital flight was undeniably a main contributor to the colossal failure of the IMF’s latest Argentina program.

It seems natural to ask under these circumstances, and given the context, why the IMF is pushing for measures that weaken Ecuador’s current capital controls. Since the tax on outflows already did not apply to productive, long-term investments, attracting more (real) FDI cannot justify these measures. On top of all this, the unpopular measures that the IMF demanded and that fueled massive protests earlier this fall have only been postponed.

It appears the IMF will double down on an austerity program in Ecuador, which is likely to result in a prolonged recession and growth projections that never materialize (a common feature of IMF programs). It is thus unrealistic to believe that the measures in the new tax bill will massively attract new productive investments. The most likely outcome is an increase in volatile capital flows that will further threaten the macroeconomic stability of Ecuador’s dollarized economy. Even in the program itself, the IMF acknowledges that the current environment, which has only worsened since the agreement was signed, might not be the best time to remove the tax on transfers abroad.

The IMF nevertheless states that these measures are “laying the groundwork for robust and sustainable growth, while protecting the most vulnerable.” Yet the tax bill does nothing of the sort. It enables local elites to take their money out of the country cost-free; it makes tax avoidance and speculation easier; and it introduces regressive taxation measures, placing the burden of adjustment on Ecuador’s most vulnerable. Unfortunately, rather than learning from its mistakes in Argentina, the IMF appears to be repeating them.

Australian police begin “foreign interference” raids

Mike Head

Without providing any details whatsoever, the front-page headline on last Saturday’s Weekend Australian declared: “Police launch raids on foreign agents.”

It began: “The Australian Federal Police has frozen the bank accounts of a suspected foreign agent and will move against a range of foreign operatives in the first half of next year as part of a crackdown aimed at curbing unprecedented levels of foreign meddling.”

No indications were provided of the identities of the “suspected foreign agent” or the “foreign operatives.” The article only said the AFP had frozen “several bank accounts,” “seized cash” and “executed search warrants.”

The story had all the hallmarks of an orchestrated leak to the Murdoch media’s national flagship by the federal government and/or the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Both have been under mounting pressure to answer criticisms from Washington and within the security establishment that no prosecutions have yet been instigated under the anti-democratic “foreign interference” laws introduced last year.

These laws are sweeping and vague, going far beyond previous conception of a “foreign agent” as a spy. They feature seven new unprecedented offences of “foreign interference,” punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment. These provisions punish cooperation with overseas or international organisations, including by political parties, and even reporting Australian human rights abuses to the UN.

The legislation also contains 38 expanded criminal offences, with penalties of up to life imprisonment, ranging from “treason,” “advocating mutiny” and “sabotage” to “dealing with” (i.e., receiving or publishing) any leaked information that allegedly “harms” Australian “national security”—which includes corporate interests.

In addition, the legislation established a “foreign influence” registration scheme for anyone supposedly undertaking political or communications activity “on behalf” a foreign company, government or “foreign organisation that exists primarily to pursue political objectives.” The term “on behalf of” includes “under an arrangement,” which is defined to include an “understanding” of any kind, whether written or unwritten. There are jail terms of up to five years for failing to register or not supplying detailed financial and internal information to the attorney-general’s department.

The Weekend Australian report came just three weeks after the Liberal-National Coalition government announced an $87.8 million police and intelligence taskforce to launch prosecutions under the legislation. Before that, the government had come under fire in the corporate media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, for failing to produce “scalps.”

The contrived “exclusive” story in the Weekend Australian signals an offensive by the government’s police and intelligence agencies, which have close links to their US counterparts, and which are supervised by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.

AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw reportedly revealed that a new specialist team of 40 investigators was preparing to move against suspected “foreign agents,” “using disruption tactics including arrest, deportation and asset seizure.” Kershaw, recently appointed to the top federal police post, told the newspaper: “You are going to see that we’ll uncover some very interesting matters.”

The references to “a range of foreign operatives” and “unprecedented levels of foreign meddling” are linked, first and foremost, to wave after wave of unsubstantiated allegations of “Chinese interference” via business figures, undercover agents, defectors, politicians and university students and research funding.

In all the hysteria, not a word is being said in the media and political establishment about the chief source of foreign “meddling” in Australian politics—the United States. Since World War II, Washington has had a continuous history of intervening, including in the ousting of two prime ministers—Gough Whitlam in 1975 and Kevin Rudd in 2010. Secret US cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010, as part of its massive “Cablegate” files, revealed that “protected sources” of the US embassy inside the Labor Party helped orchestrate Rudd’s replacement by Julia Gillard.

Moreover, Washington’s hands are all over the “foreign interference crackdown,” which is driven by US President Donald Trump’s escalation of Washington’s confrontation with China, begun under the Obama administration. This is part of a wider attempt by US imperialism to block the emergence of any perceived rivals and maintain the global hegemony it secured via World War II.

Not coincidentally, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week cited Australia as a world leader in countering Russian and Chinese “foreign interference.” He said Britain would overhaul its Official Secrets Act, following the Australian and US models. Like its Australian counterpart, the British government has been under pressure from Washington and the US-led “Five Eyes” global surveillance network to publicly pursue alleged Chinese and Russian agents.

While likely to be directed, in the first instance, against people accused of acting in support of China, the Australian legislation goes far further. It is designed to help create a political climate of fear and anxiety in which war preparations and military spending can be ramped up.

Last month, a spokesman for the attorney-general’s department said it had sent out more than 1,500 letters to a “wide variety of stakeholders” suggesting that they might need to register. Additionally, more such letters would be dispatched “where the department becomes aware of circumstances which might be relevant to the scheme.”

Under the legislation, the department has the power to issue compulsory registration notices, forcing individuals or organisations to hand over extensive details of their activities.

As the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party have warned, the legislation could be used to criminalise whistleblowing or publishing material deemed to harm Australian capitalism’s economic interests, as well as many forms of political dissent and anti-war activity.

The outlawed activities could extend to anyone supporting an international campaign, such as to defend WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against extradition to the US, and people opposing Australian frontline involvement in a US-led military confrontation with China.

These measures have the full support of the Labor Party, which voted for the legislation and this month called for further powers, being considered by a parliamentary inquiry, to counter what it claims is “foreign interference” and “fake news” on social media.

This line-up is occurring under definite conditions. The entire ruling class is nervously seeking means to quash or divert unprecedented levels of social and political distrust and disaffection amid worsening economic conditions, escalating social inequality and the mounting danger of war. As before both world wars, key sections of the political and intelligence elite are trying to channel discontent in the direction of reactionary and nationalist scare campaigns, this time particularly directed against China.

Saudi Arabia sentences hit men to death, shields organizers of Jamal Khashoggi murder

Kevin Reed

Saudi Arabia announced on Monday that five people were sentenced to death in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year. Three others were sentenced to prison terms for a total of 24 years.

The verdicts were announced at a press conference in Riyadh by Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor. Two senior government officials—one who is a top aide to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—implicated in Khashoggi’s gruesome dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 were cleared.

The court proceedings were closed to the public, foreign officials who attended were told not to disclose details of the trial, and the names of the five people sentenced to death remained concealed.

The essential purpose of the sentences is to shield the Crown Prince and his advisors. The official narrative is that there was no premeditation in the killing because the lower-level men were given instructions to bring Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia alive while the agents went rogue and killed him in a last-minute decision “on the ground.”

Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist working for the Washington Post and living in Virginia since 2017, went to the Saudi consulate to obtain divorce papers needed to marry his Turkish fiancée. When he arrived at the appointed time, Khashoggi was confronted by a 15-member Saudi hit squad—including Saudi intelligence and military men, members of the royal family’s elite guard, and a forensics specialist with a bone saw—and was murdered.

Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Washington Post, said of the sentences, “The complete lack of transparency and the Saudi government’s refusal to cooperate with independent investigators suggests that this was merely a sham trial. Those ultimately responsible, at the highest level of the Saudi government, continue to escape responsibility for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”

A Turkish foreign ministry representative issued a press statement that said, “The ruling of the relevant court in Saudi Arabia announced today on the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi falls short of the expectations of Turkey and the international community for the clarification of all aspects of this murder and the serving of justice.”

Agnès Callamard, a special rapporteur at the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Saudi authorities who destroyed evidence were culpable for the murder. She posted on Twitter, “The hit-men are guilty, sentenced to death. The masterminds not only walk free. They have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial. That is the antithesis of Justice.”

Although there has been no official statement from the Trump administration, an anonymous senior State Department official told the Post that the verdicts are “an important step in holding those responsible for the terrible crime accountable. We’ve encouraged Saudi Arabia to undertake a fair and transparent judicial process, and we will continue to do so.” The official added later, “Let’s not lose sight of the fact 1,500 people were killed in recent weeks in Iran, according to Reuters. I’m not changing the subject. But there’s a lot of atrocities around the world.”

Congressional Democrats also slinked around directly blaming the monarchy for Khashoggi’s murder. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and fresh off the Trump impeachment vote, said, “The suggestion that this was a rogue operation or a snap decision is contradicted by the evidence and common sense.”

The two Saudi officials who were exonerated are well-known to have been directly involved in the murder operation. Saud al-Qahtani, formerly bin Salman’s most influential adviser, was identified by the CIA as the ringleader in Khashoggi’s killing by establishing that he had exchanged 11 text messages with bin Salman immediately before and after the murder. The Saudi public prosecutor said al-Qahtani was investigated but “was not charged because of lack of evidence against him.”

The other top Saudi official cleared is Ahmed al-Assiri, a former deputy head of intelligence.

Assiri had been initially charged for giving the order for Khashoggi’s forcible return to Saudi Arabia, but the prosecutor said on Monday that his guilt “was not proved.”

While Khashoggi’s remains were never recovered, Turkish officials who investigated his disappearance and inspected the consulate found evidence that he had been murdered and that the scene had been tampered with by chemical experts.

Turkish bugs in the consulate recorded the Saudi forensics expert saying, “I often play music when I’m cutting cadavers. Sometimes I have a coffee and a cigar at hand,” adding, “It is the first time in my life that I’ve had to cut pieces on the ground—even if you are a butcher and want to cut, he hangs the animal up to do it.”

Despite a finding in November 2018 by the CIA that Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the assassination, the White House has dismissed it. President Trump issued a statement at the time saying, “It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.” and that “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Pressure had been building for the monarchy to finish the case because foreign direct investment into the Saudi kingdom has slowed significantly since the Khashoggi murder. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been working on a plan to revamp the Saudi economy and make it less dependent upon oil. Meanwhile, restoring the full collaboration of Riyadh with the Washington and the Pentagon in the Middle East is a top priority for US imperialism.