Samoa lifts measles state of emergency

John Braddock

The state of emergency in Samoa over the devastating measles epidemic ended on December 29, following a special cabinet meeting. The Pacific country’s government declared a so-called “state of recovery,” which requires the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare a recovery plan.

The six-week emergency was called off after the government claimed that 95 percent of all eligible people in Samoa had been vaccinated against measles following an intensive month-long compulsory vaccination period. Before then, vaccination rates had been allowed to plummet, particularly among children. Last year, just 28 percent of Samoa’s population had the two required doses of the measles vaccine.

The official death toll stood at 81 at the end of December, with no new fatalities over the Christmas period. However, there are still 46 victims in hospital, including nine critically ill children and a pregnant woman.

Samoa’s Ministry of Health confirmed 5,655 measles cases had been reported since the outbreak started in October. The total number admitted to hospitals to date is 1,844.

The official figures, showing that nearly three percent of the country’s population caught the disease, may well be an underestimate. Television New Zealand’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver claimed that the notified deaths do not give a full picture of the tragedy. She reported last month from several isolated villages where some families, often too poor to travel and obtain medical help, had buried deceased infants without informing the authorities. The government could accurately gauge the final toll, Dreaver said, only by conducting a full nationwide investigation.

The lifting of the emergency could be premature. In the 24 hours preceding the government’s announcement, 21 new measles cases were reported. Financial considerations are no doubt at play. Finance Minister Sili Epa Tuioti revealed in a supplementary budget last month that Samoa’s economy has been hit with at least a one percent drop in economic growth due to the outbreak.

The minister declared the National Provident Fund, the country’s compulsory savings scheme, would release $US3 million to finance a special dividend of 1.1 percent for the institution’s 85,000 members, in a bid to generate spending and stimulate economic activity. The government also aimed to reboot the badly hit tourism industry by marketing a “safe Samoa.”

The Ministry of Health’s mental health unit has warned of the growing psychological impact of the epidemic. Spokesman Dr George Leao Tuitama told media that the unit had so far assisted more than 600 families. The epidemic has “pushed many people’s coping mechanisms to the breaking point,” he said.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, in the face of deepening popular anger, has repeatedly attempted to defend his government’s response to the entirely avoidable epidemic. Replying to a question posed at a press conference the week before Christmas, Tuilaepa flatly declared “Samoa couldn’t do more” to prevent the outbreak.

In fact, Samoa was warned repeatedly to improve measles vaccination rates several months before the arrival of the epidemic. According to Radio NZ, as early as last March the World Health Organisation and UNICEF had identified Samoa’s extremely low vaccination rates as a key risk amid the global resurgence of measles.

A letter issued to all Pacific Island governments at the time urged them “to take proactive measures to close immunity gaps and strengthen their systems to rapidly detect and respond to measles cases,” a UNICEF spokesperson said. The messages were also delivered at an April meeting of Pacific health leaders in Fiji, and again at a Pacific Health Ministers meeting in French Polynesia.

Samoan Director-General of Health Leausa Dr Take Naseri had attended both meetings. At the April meeting, the threat posed to the Pacific by a measles outbreak in the Philippines was raised directly by officials, according to Dr Siale Akauola, the chief executive of Tonga’s Ministry of Health. Samoa did not begin its mass vaccination campaign in earnest until 15 November. By then, seven people were suspected to have died, and hundreds more were infected.

There are demands for a national inquiry into how the measles epidemic spread so quickly. Medical academic Toleafoa Dr Viali Lameko, from Oceania University of Medicine, said he believed most doctors were backing his call.

Toleafoa told the Samoa Observer that he was “not here to attack anyone or any sector, but perhaps it is time to return to the drawing board and ask some serious questions about the health profile of our population.” Tuilaepa only declared there will be an inquiry into the government’s response in “due time.”

Equally culpable for the devastating crisis is New Zealand’s Labour-led government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. On December 13, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) issued a statement officially confirming New Zealand as the likely source of Samoa’s measles epidemic.

The Samoan government had reported the first measles case arrived from New Zealand in late August. “International travel means that measles can spread quickly from country to country. It is highly likely that New Zealand is the main source for the outbreak in Samoa,” a MFAT spokesperson admitted.

Leading health experts have condemned New Zealand’s role. Otago University public health professor Michael Baker told Radio NZ on December 16 there had been “ongoing problems… with leadership and applying effective immunisation systems.”

Gaps in New Zealand’s health system led to its own measles outbreak that sparked the deadly epidemic in Samoa. From January to December 18 there have been 2,172 confirmed cases of measles notified. Of these, 1,726 are in the Auckland region, concentrated in the city’s working-class suburbs with large Pacific Island populations.

Baker said the broader provision of public health needed better funding to fix current failings. New Zealand had to get its “act together on public health policy,” he declared.

Baker continued, “We have wound down our national public health capacity hugely during my working life… That’s been the real gap. New Zealand has no excuse for having big measles epidemics because we have all of the infrastructure we need to prevent these, and we’re just not using it adequately.”

MFAT’s statement was the first public admission of responsibility for the epidemic, after government ministers either evaded questions on where the disease came from or categorically denied New Zealand was the source. When Radio NZ earlier asked Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters whether New Zealand gave Samoa measles, he retorted: “That is speculation, the answer is most probably not.”

The latest Pacific Community (SPC) health bulletin for the region meanwhile shows Kiribati confirmed its first measles case before Christmas, while the Marshall Islands has tightened its requirements for people entering and leaving the country. Fiji, Tonga, American Samoa and Hawaii are all currently reporting cases.

German authorities shut down investigations into far-right and state crimes

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

The closing of the year 2019 has confirmed that the revival of the far-right in Germany is principally due to policies pursued by the country’s ruling elite. Extreme right-wing elements inside and outside the state apparatus are being protected and encouraged from the very top.

At the end of December the German government acknowledged that 94 murders had been carried out by far-right motivated perpetrators since the reunification of the country in 1989-90.

However, the chair for criminology at the Law Faculty at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Prof. Tobias Singelnstein, is of the opinion that the number of victims of extreme right-wing violence is “far greater.” The true death toll is believed to be twice as high. The Amadeus Antonio Foundation (AAS) currently lists on its website 198 deaths at the hands of the extreme right and also refers to at least twelve additional suspected cases.

Amad Ahmad, for instance, does not appear in any of the statistics.

A refugee from Syria, Ahmad was detained on July 6, 2018. The arresting authorities claimed his identity was confused with a man with the same name from Mali. The innocent Syrian was held in prison in Kleve in North Rhine-Westphalia for almost two and a half months. He was then alleged to have set fire to his cell on September 17. Calls to wardens for help were left unanswered until a late stage. Ahmad died of his injuries two weeks later. He was just 26 years old.

A report on the incident commissioned by the ARD television program Monitor clearly concluded that the fire in the cell in the Kleve correctional facility could not have happened in the manner described by the public prosecutor. The version put forward, i.e. that Ahmad started the fire himself, was highly questionable.

Nevertheless, investigations into the role played by seven police officers and a prison doctor were terminated in early November. According to the public prosecutor’s office in Kleve the officers who originally arrested Ahmad had received incorrect information when attempting to obtain data.

The official who had collated the records of the two men from Mali and Syria was also declared innocent of any intentional and punishable behaviour. The woman concerned declared she was only following orders and could not remember who gave her instructions. Investigations into prison workers have also been terminated. The prosecutor said that the procedure to put out the fire in the cell had been acceptable.

One of the most well-known victims of far right violence was Oury Jalloh. Jalloh is listed by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation as a victim of right-wing violence, but not by the German government. January 7 marks the 15th anniversary of his death. The young man from Sierra Leone was arrested by a police patrol, dragged to a police station and left handcuffed in the basement. A few hours later, he was dead, burnt to death in a police cell. He was alleged to have set fire to the mattress on which he was lying, although he was constrained the whole time.

The case was plagued by huge contradictions and a growing number of inconsistencies. A police officer at the station who initially implicated her colleagues in the death, withdrew her original statement and then changed it. A thorough post-mortem was only carried out thanks to the persistence of a group calling itself the Initiative In Memory of Oury Jalloh. The post mortem revealed that the asylum seeker had been severely mistreated prior to his death. The Initiative has repeatedly tried to bring the case to court again.

Two reports on the blaze, carried out in 2013 and 2015 on behalf of the Initiative, both concluded that Jalloh could not have set himself on fire. In 2017 it was revealed that the Dessau prosecutor Folker Bittmann had come to the conclusion that Oury Jalloh had been murdered. He had drawn up another report on the fire, which basically confirmed that gasoline had been poured onto Jalloh’s bed and then set on fire.

The prosecutor also presumed that police at the station had tried to cover up internal investigations into claims of dangerous bodily harm resulting in death following Jalloh’s death.

Bittmann was subsequently withdrawn from the investigation and the attorney general for the state of of Saxony-Anhalt, Jürgen Konrad, transferred the case to the public prosecutor in Halle. A short time later, in October 2017, all investigations ceased.

Following a public outcry, justice minister Anne-Marie Kedig (CDU) agreed to an official inquiry to check whether the decision to stop all investigations was legal. Kedig commissioned Konrad, the attorney general who had withdrawn the case from Bittmann, to adjudicate. One year later, on November 29, 2018, Konrad presented his report and closed down the investigation.

The Initiative in Memory of Oury Jalloh refused to give up. In Der Spiegel at the beginning of November, the criminologist Professor Singelnstein described a new forensic report by the Frankfurt radiologist Professor Boris Bodelle, as creating “a small sensation.” So far, there had been “many question marks” surrounding the case, now additional unresolved issues had arisen. The Frankfurt report not only confirmed that Jalloh’s nose had been broken. Jalloh had suffered other injuries he couldn’t possibly have caused himself—contrary to the testimony of police officers after his death.

In a press release, the Initiative quoted from the report: “After examining the computer tomography images from March 31, 2005 of the body of Oury Jalloh, broken bones of the nasal bone, the bony nasal septum as well as a fracture in the anterior skull roof and a fracture of the 11th rib on the right side were detectable. It can be assumed that these changes occurred before the onset of death.”

The press release also states that as part of the investigation by the police doctor, Dr. Blodau, between 9:15 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. “there was no mention of the injuries or symptoms of injuries to the body or face of Oury Jalloh that have now been identified.” The Initiative therefore assumes that “both the fracture of the nasal bone and base of the skull and the broken 11th rib on the right side must have taken place in the period between the examination by Dr. Blodau and the outbreak of fire in cell No. 5.”

The period of death has been clearly identified between 9:30 a.m. and 12:05 p.m. and “the circle of possible perpetrators is clearly limited—it is limited to the people present in the Dessau police station with access to the custody cells.” Police officers may well have initiated the fire to cover up their abuse of Jalloh.

The Higher Regional Court (OLG) of Saxony-Anhalt in Naumburg dismissed a motion for consideration of the new expert opinion as part of the legal case lodged by Jalloh’s brother. The court declared the motion to be “inadmissible” and any further investigation “unfounded.” According to the court there was “insufficient suspicion of a crime” and concluded that even if police officers inflicted a broken rib on Jalloh, it would not constitute “a comprehensible motive for a covert murder.” The court excluded a racist motive from the outset. The existence of “institutional racism” was “not a motive for a deliberate homicide.”

At the end of November, Beate Böhler, the lawyer for Jalloh’s brother, lodged an appeal with the Federal Constitutional Court against these and other decisions by the OLG Naumburg. According to attorney Böhler: “The obligation to effectively enforce the law applies to all law enforcement bodies.” There remained the suspicion that two police officers “had not only illegally detained the victim, but also mistreated and burned him in cell 5 to cover up their abuse.”

All the evidence indicates that Oury Jalloh and Amad Ahmad were the victims of right-wing elements in the state apparatus. It is not only the mutual closeness of the authorities involved that is relevant, as Professor Singelnstein told the news magazine Stern: “Public prosecutors work with the police on a daily basis; the same applies to the courts.”

Instead, significant sections of the state apparatus are more or less openly collaborating with right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis. This has been the case for some considerable time in Germany’s eastern states—as evidenced by the crimes of the far right National Socialist Underground (NSU)—and has been official government policy since 2017 when the federal government commenced implementing the policies of the far right Alternative for Germany, thereby paving the way for the party’s electoral successes in 2019. At the same time, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has undertaken measures to persecute political opponents of the grand coalition and AfD such as the Socialist Equality Party.

This has created a social climate in which extreme right-wing terrorists can flourish. In June 2019, and for the first time since World War II, a leading politician, the president of the administration in Kassel, Walter Lübcke (CDU), was murdered by the far right terrorist Stephan Ernst. In the city of Halle, the neo-Nazi Stephan Balliet shot two people indiscriminately after failing to gain entry to a synagogue where he planned to kill Jewish worshippers.

Halle, like Dessau, where Jalloh died, is in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which is currently governed by a coalition of the CDU, SPD and Greens. The links between the state and the far right is a matter of record in Saxony-Anhalt. Only recently, the state interior minister and CDU state chairman Holger Stahlknecht sought to appoint the chairman of the police union, Rainer Wendt, as state secretary. Wendt is close to the AfD and was one of the most ardent defenders of the former head of the BfV, Hans-Georg Maassen, who has embraced openly fascistic policies.

Stahlknecht also rejected allegations that he should have provided police protection in front of the synagogue in Halle. Stahlknecht declared there was no reason to do so. In fact it was only the failure of Baillet to break down the synagogue door which prevented what would have been the biggest slaughter of Jews in Europe since the end of Hitler’s rule.

Britain backs US war drive against Iran

Robert Stevens

The assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Suleimani at Baghdad Airport by the Trump administration last Friday has brought Boris Johnson’s UK Conservative government face to face with the real cost of aligning their post-Brexit strategy with Washington.

Whatever the qualms and concerns in British ruling circles as to its grave implications of war in the Middle East, the UK is already involved—as the closest ally of the US—in a potential war against Iran.

Despite echoing statements from European leaders on the need to “de-escalate” the situation, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has confirmed that the UK will march in lockstep with Trump’s war drive. Raab confirmed to Sky News Sunday that he would be meeting personally with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington this week. When asked if he would be taking a “tough message” in opposition to Iran, he replied, “We’re on the same page with our American partners; we’ll continue to talk to them.”

“Let’s be very clear: he [Suleimani] was a regional menace, and we understand the position that the Americans found themselves in, and they have a right to exercise self-defence. They have explained the basis on which that was done, and we are sympathetic to the situation they found themselves in,” he added.

Britain has signed up to support the US in its latest reckless military adventure despite not even being consulted beforehand that the US was about to assassinate Suleimani.

The US State Department issued a statement Friday saying that Pompeo had phoned Raab and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to discuss the "defensive action to eliminate" Suleimani. He thanked them for their "recent statements" recognizing the continuing aggressive threat from Iran and its Quds force that Suleimani commanded.

However, Pompeo’s subsequent tweet confirmed that Raab was only told after the event, saying he had “discussed with @DominicRaab the recent decision to take defensive action to eliminate Qassem Suleimani.” [emphasis added]

Johnson has spent the last 12 days on vacation in Mustique and was not told about Trumps plans. The Sunday Mirror reported, “Britain was given no advance notice of the attack—and reportedly only became aware it was underway because British troops are stationed alongside US forces in Baghdad.”

It added that “Boris Johnson reportedly uttered an abrupt, four-letter response when he was told of Donald Trump ’s drone strike on a top Iranian general: ‘F***.’”

In Johnson’s absence, the government has held three meetings of its emergency Cobra Committee, with warships and soldiers, including special forces, and other military resources being sent to the region and readied for war.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace authorised two Royal Navy warships already located in the Persian Gulf—destroyer HMS Defender and frigate HMS Montrose—to begin “close escort” of oil tankers and other vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The Times reported that upon the prime minister’s arrival back in the UK Sunday, “Defence chiefs will ask Johnson to decide whether to deploy up to eight RAF Typhoon jets based in Cyprus, a Sentinel spy plane and drones used over Syria to protect Britons from retaliatory attacks.”

Newspapers noted that among the UK’s military arsenal permanently stationed in the region is a Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Johnson “will be presented with plans to send the soldiers heavier weapons and move them to secure the British embassy in Baghdad—amid fears that Iranian proxies could storm the enclave to kill or abduct British citizens,” the Sunday Times wrote.

Already 400 UK soldiers involved in training the Iraqi army have been moved into “force protection” mode, with intelligence officers warning Johnson that Britain could be soon dragged into an “accidental war.”

The Times cited a “senior figure” who said “We have a plan A and a plan B and a ‘break the glass’ plan if it all kicks off. Our forces in the region have been told to reorientate towards force protection. The troops could be asked to secure the embassy or the green zone in Baghdad.”

It revealed that “Soldiers from the Cyprus garrison of the Mercian Regiment and the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment are on standby for emergency operations across the Middle East.”

The Mirror reported Saturday, “It is understood around 50 members of the Special Air Service and the Navy’s Special Boat Service along with the Special Forces Support Group will be sent to Iraq to help any possible evacuation of Britons in the region.”

It noted, “There are at least 1,400 military and UK government civilian personnel in Iraq as part of Operation Shader which is the UK mission to help train Iraqi and Kurdish forces defeat Islamic State.”

Raab’s expression of support for the US came after Pompeo said on Saturday of Washington’s allies in the Middle East “They’ve all been fantastic. And then talking to our partners in other places that haven’t been quite as good… Frankly, the Europeans haven’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be. The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well.”

French President Emmanuel Macron went as far as telephoning Iraq’s acting prime minister to state his support for its sovereignty—a de facto statement opposing the US action that took place without Iraq’s government being informed.

Pompeo’s was whipping into line figures within ruling circles in Britain and the media who urged “de-escalation” following the assassination.

Among these was Tory MP and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, who said there was a “pattern” in the US administration not sharing information with its allies. Stating this was a “matter of concern,” he added, “I have long believed the purpose of having allies is so we can surprise our enemies, not each other.”

Tugendhat expresses the fear that Britain’s substantial interests in the Middle East are threatened by the US war plans. In Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city Basra, UK firms with substantial interests include the energy conglomerates BP and Shell, security company G4S and professional services operation Ernst & Young.

The divisions in the British ruling class was glaring in the conflicting editorials in the Financial Times, Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Telegraph—the latter a pro-Tory newspaper that advocated leaving the European Union and closer economic and military ties to the US post-Brexit.

The FT commented, “The drumbeat of conflict between the US and Iran has become suddenly deafening… Tehran will see it [the assassination] not just as a military body blow but tantamount to a declaration of war. America’s allies are disconcerted. Every move on the Middle East chessboard will now carry with it the serious risk of triggering a broader conflagration.”

The Mail on Sunday warned, “Americans—and not just Americans—are weary of being bogged down in blood and sand in Afghanistan and Iraq, for little obvious gain. Must we now prepare for a new confrontation in Iraq, or even in Iran itself? Could this conflict, in which Russia is very much on the other side, spill into Europe?”

In contrast, the Telegraph, for which Johnson was a columnist before becoming prime minister, wrote, “Britain should use the assassination of Qassm Suleimani—Iran’s terrorist-in-chief—to break away from EU foreign policy and cease legitimising this corrupt regime.” Trump should have acted sooner and taken “tough action last year when the Iranians downed a US drone.”

Unlike the EU, “An independent Britain, by contrast, will be free to fly the flag for democracy and be a constructive partner [with the US] in holding the line against Iranian terrorism.”

The Assassination of Iran’s Soleimani: Victory for Trump, Failure for the US?

Pieter-Jan Dockx

On 3 January, a US drone strike near Baghdad airport killed Major General Qasem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as his main Iraqi ally, militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The assassinations are the latest escalation of a series of tit-for-tat attacks between the US and Iran’s allies in Iraq. They come close on the heels of the storming of the US Embassy in Baghdad by pro-Iranian protesters on 31 December. While the killings mark a significant victory for US President Donald Trump in his confrontation with Iran, they risk a further erosion of US influence in the region.

Victory Over Iran

Soleimani’s assassination is a major landmark in President Trump’s efforts to contain Iran’s influence in West Asia.

As the head of the IRGC’s external operations, Soleimani was the key strategist of Iran’s regional expansion through a network of loyal militias. He also held extensive influence over Tehran’s foreign policy in the region. This became most overt in February 2019 when Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, briefly resigned because of Soleimani’s outsized influence over Iran’s Syria policy.

By killing al-Muhandis, the US has also disrupted Iran’s relationship with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF)—a collective of predominantly Shia militias with varying degrees of affinity to Tehran. Muhandis was the PMF’s deputy commander and operated as the de-facto leader of the umbrella organisation. He was also considered one of Tehran’s most loyal actors in Iraq. Although his likely successor, Hadi al-Amiri, is also seen as an Iranian proxy; his politics are considered less ideological and more pragmatic than Muhandis’.

Furthermore, the drone strikes also address a crucial flaw in Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran—his perceived reluctance to use military means. Since pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, the US president has mostly relied on economic sanctions to contain Iran. Despite the inefficacy of these sanctions, it was widely believed that Trump would refrain from resorting to direct military action—a belief also held in Tehran. By assassinating Soleimani, Trump has added a hard power dimension to “maximum pressure;” bolstering US’ bargaining position vis-à-vis Iran.

Trump’s readiness to use hard power is also the main reason why a full-blown war is unlikely to take place, with Tehran opting for restraint instead. While neither the US nor Iran could win a conventional war, direct military action by the US against Iran could threaten the survival of the current regime. The pre-eminence of regime survival for Tehran is likely to deter them from risking further escalation that could result in a direct military confrontation. Instead, Iran’s response will be indirect and asymmetric; through the use of regional proxies, drone strikes, and cyber attacks.

A Blow to US’ Regional Influence

Despite the success of the assassinations in terms of containing Iran, it is likely to undermine Washington’s partnerships and influence in the region. 

An escalation in tension with Iran is not in the interest of the US’ Arab allies. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are rumoured to have held private talks with Tehran to de-escalate tensions in the Gulf. Since the drone strikes on its oil facilities in September 2018, Riyadh has also attempted to ease its disputes with Yemen’s Houthis and Qatar—both considered to be close to Iran. Trump’s actions could undermine these attempts at reconciliation, making its allies viable targets for Iranian retaliation instead.

Moreover, the assassinations once more highlight the unpredictability of Washington’s policies in the region, making it harder for its allies to rely on the US. Trump’s decision to kill an Iranian general was an unexpected and disproportionate escalation of the dispute. This is reminiscent of earlier abrupt policy decisions like the recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and ending the support for US’ Kurdish allies in Syria. Because of this increasing volatility, US allies in the Gulf will gradually look for more stable partners like Russia, thus reducing Washington’s clout in the region.

The US also stands to lose influence in Iraq as the attacks threaten the continued presence of approximately 5,000 US troops stationed in the country. The assassinations were not only a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty but also a direct attack on the Iraqi state—of which Muhandis was an official member. Pressure from nationalists and Iranian proxies will force the Iraqi government to revise the US’ military presence in the country.

The drone strikes against Soleimani marks a pivotal moment for Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure” on Iran. Policymakers in Tehran are now faced with an unpredictable US president willing to resort to military action. Yet, it is also this unpredictability that has once more been brought to the attention of leaders in Gulf capitals—further damaging the US’ reliability as an ally. As Washington’s West Asia policy is being reduced to an Iran policy, Trump’s actions will impact not only Iran but also US’ future in the region.

Apple, Microsoft and Google among five companies sued over deaths of Congolese child miners

Sam Dalton

On December 15, International Rights Advocates (IRA) filed a case in US district court in Washington, D.C. against Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google and YouTube), Dell, Microsoft and Tesla on behalf of the families of 14 Congolese child miners.

A worker carries wet Cobalt on his back at the Shinkolobwe Cobalt mine in the DRC (AP Photo / Schalk van Zuydam, File)

Of the fourteen, six have died, while eight suffer from life-altering injuries including crushed legs and full body paralysis. According to IRA, the case has been put forward on behalf of children “as young as six years old” and they note that “some child miners are trafficked.” The plaintiffs accuse these companies of deliberately purchasing cobalt that was produced by child labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) under horrific working conditions.

The case charges: “Defendants Apple, Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla are knowingly benefiting from and providing substantial support to this ‘artisanal’ mining system in the DRC. Defendants know and have known for a significant period the reality that DRC’s cobalt mining sector is dependent upon children.”

These companies buy cobalt, a rare earth metal essential for the batteries used in cellphones and electric vehicles, from mining companies, including the Chinese-owned Huayou Cobalt, Anglo-Swiss Glencore and the Belgian based Umicore, all of whom are accused of actively engaging in illegal mining activity.

Responding to the lawsuit, Apple has claimed that to their knowledge, their supply chain does not involve child labor. It is clear this ignorance was feigned.

Most children in the case worked for Dongfang Mining Congo, a satellite of Huayou, which is Apple’s main supplier of cobalt. Following an investigation led by the Washington Post in September 2016, Huayou’s president admitted that the use of child labor was “our short-coming.” In response to the same exposé, a Tesla spokesperson declared they were going to “send one of our guys over there.” When the Post followed-up six months later, the company admitted no one had been sent.

Despite Apple’s claim to have suspended the purchase of cobalt from Huayou in 2017, in the company’s Supplier Responsibility 2018 Smelter and Refiner List, it continues to list “Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co., Ltd.” as a supplier of DRC cobalt and claims to have conducted a “third party audit.” The nature and results of this audit are unclear, and any claims to have ended child labor are contradicted by the plaintiff’s own research from 2017 to 2019 in Huayou-owned mines.

In the interim, multiple media sources have continued to report on conditions in cobalt mines. In 2016, Amnesty International released a report entitled, “This Is What We Die For – Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt.”

On August 5, 2017, the Mail on Sunday featured a report on cobalt mining entitled “Child miners aged four living a hell on Earth so YOU can drive an electric car.” On October 12, 2018, the Guardian published an article on the industry called, “Is your phone tainted by the misery of the 35,000 children in Congo’s mines?”

Following a further three years of hollow promises of investigations from all defendants to investigate these issues since the report, the IRA states, “The fact that these programs were announced is merely evidence that the companies know they have serious child labor and forced labor problems in their DRC supply chains for cobalt.”

Approximately two-thirds of the global supply of cobalt is mined in the “copper belt” region of Haut-Katanga and Lualaba Provinces of the DRC, which include the cobalt mining areas of Kolwezi, Fungurume, Likasi, Kambove, Kipushi, and Lubumbashi. Ninety percent of cobalt mined in the Congo is taken to China where it is mostly used in the production of lithium-ion batteries.

A typical smartphone lithium-ion battery might contain five to ten grams of refined cobalt and a single electric-car battery can contain up to 15,000 grams. The growth of these industries has been reflected in the increased demand for cobalt. In the past five years, demand has increased threefold and it is expected to double again by the end of 2020.

According to the same 2016 report from the Post, “artisanal” mining is carried out by adults and children known locally as ‘creuseurs’ (diggers). This is a euphemism to describe independent miners, often children, without regulations or safety equipment who then sell on their hauls to suppliers such as Dongfang. A day’s yield of cobalt ore typically fetches two dollars.

For children, this sum is even lower. Siddharth Kara, who is serving as an expert witness on the case, estimates from 303 recorded cases that the average day’s pay for children under 14 is $0.81. Given the uncertain nature of this work, it is not uncommon for creuseurs to go home empty handed. Out of 100,000 cobalt miners, 40,000 are estimated to be children.

The 2016 Post report described how creuseurs dig wherever one finds a locally known green leaved flower that is supposedly the marker of cobalt deposits; this regularly leads to the construction of long tunnels, little wider than a human body, under roads and buildings without any supports. These can easily collapse on miners. Other creuseurs enter both abandoned and used mines under the cover of darkness often leading to clashes with armed security guards, police and militia.

Cobalt mining also causes considerable environmental damage in the southern DRC. Since uranium is common in the mines of this area, radioactive ore with little cobalt content is dumped in local rivers. According to DownToEarth.org in 2015, following a dump of 19 tons of radioactive material, the local authorities again warned residents of Likasi (a city of 300,000) to keep a safe distance from the Mura river and not to use its water.

A 2012 report by the University of Lubumbashi charted the effects of this pollution. In recent years, there has been an unprecedented increase in birth defects in mining regions. These included cases of Mermaid Syndrome and holoprosencephaly. These conditions were previously unknown in Congo and have all occurred in children of miners. This is only an extension of the already severe and wide-ranging health problems that occur in mining populations in the Congo and internationally.

Responding to the findings of IRA’s research team the lead counsel in the lawsuit, Terry Collinswood, stated “I’ve never seen such extreme abuse of innocent children on a large scale. This astounding cruelty and greed need to stop.”

Threats to life are numerous. One of the children represented had his leg crushed when a chamber roof collapsed on 40 people on July 2, 2019. Thirty-eight died. Another in the case lost his leg when he collided with a mining truck while driving 80 kilograms of ore on a small motorbike. When two brothers were caught by a collapsing wall in an open pit-mine, one died and the other severely damaged a leg.

Many of the children are forced to work because of the widespread poverty in the region. In other cases, representatives of the mining companies—who according to the plaintiffs are regularly accompanied by Congolese Presidential Guards—simply round up children and force them into the mines.

The plaintiffs claim these individuals are employees of Huayou, Glencore and Umicore. Many of the mines are also controlled by local militias that work directly with these companies, and to whom the government turns a blind eye.

Horrific working conditions are hardly limited to ‘artisanal’ cobalt mining in mineral rich DRC. In June 2019 43 miners died in a landslide in a Glencore-owned copper mine; in October and December two gold-mine incidents killed 22 and 24 miners respectively. While large incidents often make their way to national and international media, individual and smaller group deaths are a daily occurrence across the Congolese mining industry.

The IRA’s case concludes that companies will continue these practices “until they are forced to do better.” However, human rights abuses undertaken in the pursuit of profit cannot be fought on a purely legal basis. Appealing to the courts distracts from the fact that such abuses are an integral part of the global capitalist system dominated by American and European Imperialism. Any attempt at limited legal reform that infringes on the right of billionaires to continue to reap gargantuan profits will necessarily fail.

The fact that elections at the end of 2018 marked the first peaceful transition of power in the DRC since 1965 should not fool anyone into thinking that a new dawn awaits the Congolese people.

The supposedly ‘democratic’ victory of Félix Tshisekedi was not a product of a political revolution against the Kaliba dynasty—father and son Laurent-Désiré Kaliba and Joseph Kaliba ruled over the country from 1997 to 2019—but instead represented a compromise between the two factions of the ruling class in which Tshisekedi ascended to the presidency on the condition that a Kaliba ally was appointed prime minister. As the WSWS reported on January 17, 2019, a data leak revealed widespread voter fraud, leading the African Union and European Commission to deny the validity of the result.

The Congolese government remains as much at the behest of American high-tech companies and their suppliers in the cobalt processing industry as it was under the US-backed dictatorship of Mubutu in 1965-97 and that of the Kalibas.

Government forces provide armed support to the personnel of its foreign investors while they work impoverished and desperate Congolese men, women and children to death.

Ending the exploitation of child labor, which is rampant in ex-colonial nations across the globe, can only be achieved through the overthrow of the capitalist system and the expropriation of the technology giants and mining conglomerates by the working class on a global scale and their reorganization to meet the needs of all of humanity.

International Criminal Court to investigate Israeli war crimes

Jean Shaoul

Fatou Bensouda, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor in The Hague, has announced that there is sufficient evidence to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Her announcement constitutes an indictment of Israel’s political, military and judicial establishment, which has inflicted war, repression, occupation, dispossession, torture and collective punishment on the Palestinian people.

As the ICC deals with the personal criminal culpability of individuals, such an investigation could open up current and former government officials, top officers in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and low-ranking military personnel to international arrest warrants when they travel abroad, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader and former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz.

It was Gantz who, under Netanyahu’s premiership, led two of Israel’s murderous assaults on Gaza, in 2012 and 2014. The latter, according to the UN, killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, among them 551 children.

Bensouda stated, after five years of procrastination, that there is “a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”

By this, she meant Israel’s West Bank settlement policy, its 2014 war against Gaza and Israel’s response to the nearly two-year-long Great March of Return along Gaza’s border with Israel. Last year, Bensouda said she was keeping an eye on Israel’s planned demolition of Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin hamlet in the West Bank, saying that its razing could be a war crime.

Nevertheless, despite concluding that an investigation is warranted, the office of the ICC Prosecutor is to seek a jurisdictional ruling from ICC judges to confirm that the ICC has the necessary territorial jurisdiction for the case, a process that could drag on for several years. The jurisdiction must be settled before the ICC can proceed with a full investigation.

In June 2015, the ICC accepted Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s application to join the court, following the UN General Assembly’s upgrading of the PA’s status to that of a “non-member observer state.”

Under the United Nations’ Rome Statute, the ICC has the power to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes committed since July 2002, when the statute came into force. States cannot be charged. Neither the US nor Israel has signed up to the ICC, as their record of wars of aggression and criminal actions would open their officials to prosecution.

Membership of the ICC enabled the Palestinians to pursue Israel over its actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip starting from June 13, 2014, when Israel used the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers to root out Hamas supporters whom it claimed—without evidence—were responsible and to launch a one-sided war on the bourgeois clerical group that controls Gaza.

That war, whose homicidal conduct was deliberate and conceived at the highest level of government, killed 2,251 Palestinians, mostly civilians, compared to 67 Israeli soldiers, 5 Israeli civilians, including one child, and one Thai civilian. Nearly 11,000 Palestinians were injured. More than 10,000 families saw their homes destroyed and another 89,000 saw their homes damaged due to the bombing.

Bensouda has warned Israel that its leaders may face trial for the killing of unarmed demonstrators during the Great March of Return. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, as of March 2019, the IDF had killed 266 Palestinians taking part in the border protests in pursuit of their demand that Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel in 1947-1949 and 1967 and their descendants be allowed to return to their homes.

A staggering number of those killed were children, 50, or nearly one fifth of the total, indicating that the murder of young children has become Israel’s new weapon of terror against the Palestinians. A significant number of journalists, photographers and medical personnel were killed, despite wearing clearly visible identifying kit. Of the more than 30,000 Palestinians injured, 6,000 were hit by live fire.

Human rights groups have told the United Nations Human Rights Council, which has been carrying out an investigation into Israel’s use of lethal fire against the protestors, that there is no evidence that a single protester in Gaza killed during the march was armed. This gives the lie to the government’s claims that it faced armed terrorists planning to rush the border with Israel.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a radio interview several days ago that Israel had not demolished a West Bank Bedouin village close to several Israeli settlement blocs that had been slated for demolition. He admitted that the decision not to demolish the hamlet was due to Bensouda’s statement that the act might constitute a war crime.

Netanyahu had pulled back, Katz said, lest the destruction of the hamlet become the deciding factor in a decision to open an investigation against Israel. The High Court had given the go-ahead for the demolition and Netanyahu had repeatedly promised in the recent election campaigns to raze the village. Gideon Sa’ar, Netanyahu’s unsuccessful challenger for the Likud Party leadership, lambasted him for failing to do so.

The prosecutor’s announcement is a potential legal barrier to Israel’s threats to annex parts of the West Bank and establish settlements in breach of the ban on an occupying power settling civilians in or annexing occupied territory. While Netanyahu had promised to annex the Jordan Valley, more than one quarter of the occupied West Bank, before the March 2 election, he has delayed doing so because Bensouda cited the threat in her decision to move forward with an investigation.

Israeli leaders universally condemned Bensouda’s announcement, with Netanyahu calling it “a dark day for truth and justice” and an “absurd” decision showing that the court had become “a weapon in the political war against Israel.” He added, “The court has no jurisdiction in this case. The ICC only has jurisdiction over petitions submitted by sovereign states. But there has never been a Palestinian state.”

Netanyahu’s rival Gantz, one of the main criminals likely to be investigated, also lashed out at Bensouda, declaring the decision was “a political decision, not a legal one.” He added that “the Israeli army is one of the most moral militaries in the world,” and that “the Israeli army and state of Israel do not commit war crimes.”

It is expected that Israel will refuse to cooperate with the ICC, as in 2003, when the UN asked the ICC to give an advisory opinion on the legal implications of Israel’s “security wall” between it and the West Bank.

The ICC has come under pressure from the major powers. Bensouda has sought to deflect allegations of anti-Israel bias by likewise accusing the Palestinians of committing war crimes, despite the grossly uneven nature of Israel’s seven-week long war against Gaza in 2014 and provisions in the UN Charter recognizing the right of self-defense when attacked.

The US, under Obama and even more so under Trump, has proposed various initiatives threatening US legal action against the ICC should it act against Israel.

Last April, the Trump administration revoked Bensouda’s entry visa to the US after she announced her intention to investigate potential war crimes by US soldiers in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would impose restrictions on any ICC staff who investigated US or allied personnel, marking an intensification of Washington’s policy of non-cooperation with the ICC and a further rejection of international law.

Russia, Ukraine reach last minute gas transit deal

Jason Melanovski

Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz gas monopolies announced Monday, December 30, that they had finally reached a deal to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe.

The deal was preceded by the Normandy talks held last month in Paris, involving the French, German, Russian and Ukrainian government. While Russia and Ukraine agreed on a continuation of a prisoner exchange and an armistice, the Zelensky government objected to any peace deal that grants the separatist controlled regions political autonomy or allows for local elections without Kiev in control first.

The Solitaire, a ship laying pipe as part of the Nord Stream gas pipeline project in the Gulf of Finland (Photo: archive.government.ru)

The new gas accord was reached just one day prior to the expiration of the former 10-year deal after what Russia’s Gazprom President Alexey Miller called “five days of non-stop bilateral talks in Vienna” led by Ukraine European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič. Ukraine had earlier insisted on a ten-year contract while the Kremlin only offered a one-year extension of the last contract.

According to the terms of the deal Russia is obligated to send 65 billion cubic meters (bcm) gas through Ukraine in 2020 and then 40 bcm of gas from 2021 to 2025. In exchange a cash-strapped Ukraine will receive around $7 billion in much needed transit fees. Gazprom also paid out to Naftogaz $2.9 billion to resolve the terms of a 2018 legal case it lost in Stockholm court while Natfogaz agreed to withdraw another $12.2 billion claim against the Russian energy giant.

Prior to the announcement of the 11th hour deal there was much concern in both Ukraine and Europe that without a deal in place gas supplies to Europe could be severely interrupted during winter right when they are needed the most. Currently 40 percent of Russian gas headed to the EU passes through Ukraine. Gas supplies to Europe had already been interrupted twice in last 13 years due to tensions between Moscow and Kiev.

Following the deal energy prices across Europe dropped precipitously with German power shares reaching their lowest price since May 2018 and European Commission Vice-President Šefčovič claimed the deal was a “hat trick” in which “everyone is a winner.”

Russia currently supplies Europe with approximately 40 percent of its natural gas and its share of the market is expected to increase in coming decades as European gas supplies shrink. Ukrainian officials, such as Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk and Naftogaz who had previously boasted about stockpiling gas for winter if an amenable deal could not be reached greeted the accord with enthusiasm claiming that Ukraine had achieved the “impossible.”

In reality, the deal was only reached due to the intervention of the European Union, particularly France and Germany who were not willing to have their energy security put in jeopardy by Ukrainian intransigence, and the US sanctions against Nord Stream 2.

Germany is the world’s biggest natural gas importer obtaining 92 percent of its natural gas outside of its borders. According to Bloomberg News, between 50 and 75 percent of that comes from Russia’s Gazprom. Accordingly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the agreement a “good and important signal to guarantee the security of our European gas supply.”

France has also moved closer to Russia in recent years as Gazprom increased its gas exports to the country by 58 percent between 2013 and 2018.

The deal became even more necessary for the EU after Allseas, a Swiss-Dutch company that had been constructing Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline announced they were immediately ceasing all work on the project due to United States sanctions of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline included the included in the massive $738 billion 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Allseas had been expected to lay 96 percent of the pipes needed for the project, which once completed, will carry gas directly from St. Petersburg to Germany.

French energy firm Engie, and U.K.’s Royal Dutch Shell are also part of Nord Stream 2’s ownership consortium.

Prior to the imposition of sanctions and the effective end of work on Nord Stream 2, Russia had taken a hardline with Ukraine by refusing to enter any long-term deal with Naftogaz and instead offering Kiev a mere one-year deal along with the demand that any legal claims against it be dropped.

Ukrainian officials rejoiced at the announcement of the US sanctions and Naftogaz’s CEO Andriy Kobolyev claimed that the Nord Stream 2 sanctions “facilitated” the negotiations between the two sides.

The sanctions against the pipeline have also exacerbated rival imperialist tensions between the United States and Germany with Germany’s Finance Minister calling the sanctions “a serious interference in the internal affairs of Germany and Europe and their sovereignty.”

While both countries backed the fascist-led coup in 2014 that deposed then President Viktor Yanukovych and installed a right-wing nationalist government in Kiev hostile to Moscow, the United States and Germany have rival imperialist interests and strategies in the country, which are reflected in their differing stances on resolving the now six-year long civil war in Eastern Ukraine that has claimed the lives of 14,000, displaced 1.4 million and left 3.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

It remains unclear, however, whether the US sanctions against Nord Stream 2 will actually prevent the completion of the pipeline’s construction. Germany’s Deutsche Welle has reported that Nord Stream 2 is already 94 percent complete and according to Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak the country will redeploy its own pipe-laying vessels “within a couple months” to complete the project.

In addition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Russia is also planning to complete a second new gas pipeline to Europe called TurkStream in 2020 through Black Sea and Turkey and then potentially north via Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

UK refusal to accept Scotland’s supply of haemophilia drugs resulted in thousands of deaths

Robert Stevens

Hundreds with haemophilia in England and Wales could have avoided infection from HIV and hepatitis and death if government officials had accepted help from Scotland’s blood transfusion service.

Haemophilia is a hereditary condition in which the blood does not clot normally, causing severe bleeding from even a slight injury.

Bottles of Factor VIII (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Jason Evans became campaigner for justice over blood contamination deaths and founder of the Factor 8 group after his father died in 1993 after contracting hepatitis and HIV. A Freedom of Information request by Evans uncovered a January 1990 letter from Professor John Cash, then director of the Scottish Blood Transfusion Service.

In the letter, Cash said a review of services and production of the blood product Factor VIII in Scotland found there was “very substantial” spare capacity. For years prior Scotland had been self-sufficient in the production of Factor VIII, which was produced at the Protein Fractionation Centre in Liberton near Edinburgh.

In the 1970s, Factor VIII, after years of development, was a revolutionary medical breakthrough in the treatment of people suffering from haemophilia. Cash offered the then Conservative government use of this spare capacity but was rebuffed. He wrote, “It was assumed by those of us on the shop floor that this experiment [in 1980-81 on the availability of Factor VIII in Scotland] would expedite arrangements to give England and Wales assistance--but nothing materialised.”

The Guardian notes, “Cash said the first offer was made to the NHS in England in the late 1960s, and then reaffirmed after its production tests in 1980-81. Those offers were rejected by civil servants in the Scottish Office in Edinburgh and in the Department of Health and Social Services in London [DHSS].”

Cash’s frustration over the issue was palpable. He wrote of how he tried to "persuade on numerous occasions" those in more senior positions of the need for collaboration, but without success. He argued that were “serious defects in the operational liaison” between the Scottish department and the DHSS, which oversaw health policy in England. "I sense the ineptitudes of the past--1970s and 1980s--are about to catch up with us,” he wrote, warning that the decision by NHS in England not to use the spare Factor VIII was “a grave error of judgement.”

The refusal had devastating consequences as the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales continued importing Factor VIII from sources abroad that were known to be risky. These included purchasing Factor VIII from the United States--where people were paid to give blood--resulting in donations from prisoners and drug addicts who were infected with diseases including HIV.

Blood supplied from contaminated sources led to thousands of people being infected with diseases such as hepatitis and HIV, and the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in the UK. According to a recent parliamentary report, around 7,500 people were affected. The majority of the victims were people who suffered from haemophilia and needed regular injections of Factor VIII to survive.

Figures released last year found that in the 1970s and 80s, 4,689 haemophiliacs became infected with hepatitis C and HIV after receiving contaminated blood products supplied by the NHS. Of those infected by diseases, 2,883 subsequently died. The needless deaths of so many has been described as a “horrific human tragedy.”

The scale of fatalities associated with the decision not to use Scotland’s Factor VIII supplies can be understood from figures available showing that 60 people with haemophilia and 18 given transfusions were infected with HIV in Scotland. This contrast with the rate in England and Wales where 1,243 HIV infection cases were recorded.

The 2,883 who died in the UK are among tens of thousands impacted worldwide due to profiteering from the sale of infected blood.

• In the United States, around 8,000 haemophiliacs became infected as a result of receiving the contaminated blood products

• In Canada, 2,000 who received the contaminated blood products developed HIV and 60,000 Hepatitis C.

• In France, around 4,000 haemophiliacs were given contaminated blood. After drawn-out legal proceedings, in 1999 Socialist Party Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and Minister of Social Affairs Georgina Dufoix were acquitted while Health Minister Edmond Hervé was found guilty but given no penalty. Doctors in charge of verifying the safety of the blood were given and served heavy jail sentences.

• As of 2001 in Italy, an estimated 1,300 people, including almost 150 children, had died from infected blood infusions since 1985.

• The Irish Blood Transfusion Service knowingly risked treating haemophiliacs with contaminated blood products during the early 1980s. More than 200 Irish haemophiliacs were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C as a result, including young children. Seventy-five of these people have since died.

The first UK inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal was led by Lord Archer of Sandwell, only reporting in 2009 under the Labour government of Gordon Brown. Archer concluded that commercial interests had been given a higher priority than patient safety. However, his was a non-statutory inquiry with no powers to force those government ministers or civil servants who declined invitations to do so to give evidence. While criticising the government’s slow response, Archer did not apportion any blame.

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party-led government announced an inquiry in 2008 that only finally reported in 2015. Another cover-up, it did not take any evidence from anyone at Westminster and concluded that in Scotland all that could have been done was done.

After decades in which successive Labour and Conservative prime ministers ruled out calls for an independent public inquiry, in 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to announce an inquiry into the contamination of blood products in the 1970s and 80s.

May’s announced the Infected Blood Inquiry only after Evans launched a civil litigation case in April 2017 against the government in respect of his late father, Jonathan. The case was brought by Collins Solicitors of Watford who applied for a Group Litigation Order from the High Court. Factor 8’s website notes that by the end of September 2017, as the government Inquiry opened, “there were over 500 potential litigants consisting of surviving victims and also family members of those who have died in the United Kingdom.”

In November 2018, the Group Action was stayed--after the Group Litigation Order was sealed and a judge had been named to hear the case--pending the outcome of the Infected Blood Inquiry. According to the inquiry, “no firm timescale on how long the Infected Blood Inquiry will last, there are varying estimates ranging anywhere from 2.5 - 5 years…”

Speaking about the discovery of the Cash letter, Evans said, “This is an incredible piece of evidence. We have testimony in black and white here, from a very senior source, which effectively shows hundreds of HIV infections within the haemophilia community could and should have been prevented.

“The statistics say it all--59 haemophiliacs were infected with HIV in Scotland, as opposed to 1,243 in England, where a high proportion of HIV-infected Factor VIII from the US was used.

“It fills me with a distinct sense of horror that so many of these people would still be alive if it were not for the total negligence that took place.”

Cash is set to give evidence at the Infected Blood Inquiry this summer.