Nova Scotia gunman kills 22 in Canada’s deadliest mass shooting

Roger Jordan

In a horrific rampage across rural northern Nova Scotia, Canada, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman shot and killed at least 22 people over the course of Saturday night and Sunday morning. Police officers investigating the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history say the owner of a small denturist business in Halifax opened fire at 16 separate crime scenes before he was caught and fatally shot by RCMP officers in Enfield, approximately 100 kilometres from the start of his killing spree.

Indicating that the massacre was planned in advance, Wortman wore a mock-up RCMP uniform and drove a decommissioned police car outfitted to look as if it were still in service. Information on his background indicates that he had been a wannabe RCMP officer since his teens. One neighbour told the Canadian Press that Wortman purchased several old police cars over the years. He also reportedly collected RCMP memorabilia.

Investigators say most of Wortman’s victims appear to have been chosen at random, but he began by targeting several people known to him. According to a police source cited by the Toronto Sun, Wortman first shot his ex-partner and her new boyfriend at around 10 p.m. Saturday, before getting in his car and targeting neighbours.

In the small community of Portapique, where Wortman began his rampage, several victims were found slain in their homes, and five buildings were set on fire. Although some victims have yet to be identified, the gunman killed a police officer, two frontline health care workers, an elementary school teacher, two correctional officers, a retired firefighter, and a family of three. The authorities warn that the death toll may rise when all the burnt-out buildings are examined.

Wortman owned two denturist clinics in Halifax and nearby Dartmouth. He also owned several properties, including a large home in Portapique, which lies around 130 kilometres northwest of Halifax. It cannot be said whether the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout played a role in triggering Wortman’s outburst of violence, but it is known that his businesses were closed under the province’s lockdown. Although he has been described as a millionaire, it is possible that Wortman was under financial stress given the stock market crash and other recent economic shocks.

Because Wortman’s bloody rampage was spread over a wide area, many Nova Scotians know someone directly impacted by the massacre. A Halifax anti-violence activist held an online candlelit vigil to allow friends and relatives to pay their respects without breaching the social distancing regulations in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Whatever the immediate trigger may have been for Wortman’s bloody rampage, the Nova Scotia mass shooting is an expression of an increasingly dysfunctional society. Riven by social inequality and mass poverty and led by a ruling elite mired in foreign aggression and war, Canadian capitalism is a brutal social order that regularly engenders outbursts of homicidal violence. Since 2014 Canada has witnessed a rash of mass killings, including several with links to right-wing extremism. These include:

• June 4, 2014: Justin Bourque opened fire on RCMP officers with an assault rifle in Moncton, New Brunswick, killing three and injuring two.

• December 29, 2014: An Edmonton man suspected of domestic violence killed six adults and two children in two homes in the city.

• January 29, 2017: Alexandre Bissonette, a student with far-right views, assaulted the Quebec City mosque. He killed six worshippers and injured another eight.

• April 23, 2018: Alek Minassian drove a white van along a Toronto sidewalk, killing 10 passers-by and injuring 16 more.

• July 23, 2018: A gunman opened fire in the Greektown area of Toronto, killing a 10-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman. Thirteen people aged between 10 and 59 were injured, including a teenager who was left paraplegic.

• August 10, 2018: A gunman opened fire in Fredericton, New Brunswick, fatally wounding two police officers and two civilians.

• July 28, 2019: A 23-year-old man in Markham, Ontario, killed four members of his family by slitting their throats with a knife.

During 2019, Toronto, Canada’s largest city, saw its worst year of gun violence ever, with 760 people being shot, 43 of whom died. During one August weekend, there were 17 separate shootings. The rate of gun violence has tripled since 2014. In 2017, Canada-wide firearm homicides reached a 25-year high.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered, much like the Democrats do in the United States, empty platitudes in response to last weekend’s events, and asserted that the surge in gun violence can be combatted by imposing stricter gun controls. “In regards to gun control, we took very serious commitments in the election campaign and have moved forward—and are moving forward on them—to ensure that we’re strengthening gun control in this country,” said Trudeau on Monday.

Aside from the obvious cynicism of such pronouncements, given that the Liberals have failed to impose any tougher gun laws despite being in power for well over four years, Trudeau’s remarks are a deliberate evasion. The Prime Minister does not want to, and cannot, honestly discuss the underlying social and political causes for the surge in gun violence in Canada over recent years, because to do so is to indict the right-wing, pro-austerity, pro-war policies embraced by the entire political establishment.

The precipitous rise of social inequality and spread of absolute poverty and homelessness, particularly in Canada’s urban centres, are one driving force of the increased violence. Since the Liberal federal government imposed the largest social spending cuts in Canadian history during the 1990s, all political parties have operated on a consensus of offering ultra-low tax rates for corporations and the super-rich and starving social services and the public sector with austerity budgets.

In January, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ annual report revealed that the country’s top 100 CEOs earned 227 times more than the average worker in 2018, which was a record high. A report from the Toronto Foundation noted last year that the typical person in the poorest 50 percent of the city’s population made $6,000 less in 2016 than they had in 1982, using 2016 dollar values as a measure. By contrast, the average person in the top 1 percent makes $99,400 more than in 1982.

Remarking on the sharp rise in gun violence in Toronto over recent years, Wendy Cukier, head of the Coalition for Gun Control, told NPR in August 2019, “Absolute poverty is not necessarily a driver of violence, disparity is, so inequality in terms of opportunities. And we’re seeing the divisions in Toronto increasing in recent years. And there’s no question that that’s driving it.”

The glaring levels of social inequality are being ratcheted up still further by the federal government’s response to the coronavirus. Trudeau’s Liberals, with the support of all opposition parties, have bailed out the banks and big business to the tune of at least $650 billion, all of which will be recouped by stepped-up exploitation of the working class and intensified austerity measures. Meanwhile, workers laid off due to the crisis are being placed on rations in the form of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which pays out a mere $2,000 per month for a maximum of four months.

Canadian society is also pervaded by militarism and war. Canada has been at war virtually uninterruptedly since the Canadian Air Force joined NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in 1999. From Afghanistan to Haiti, Libya to Syria, and Iraq, Canadian imperialism has been implicated in a long series of bloody US-led wars of aggression and regime-change operations that have collectively killed millions and destroyed entire societies.

Politicians regularly declare that the great global problems confronting the Canadian ruling elite can be resolved through the force of arms. In 2017, for example, then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland stated in presenting the Liberal government’s new national defence policy that “hard power,” i.e. war, was a key part of Canada’s past and would remain central to its future.

The explosion of militarism and war has gone hand in hand with a glorification of the police and intelligence services in the name of the so-called “war on terror.” Wortman’s infatuation with the police was undoubetdly nourished by this general reactionary climate.

US safety agencies bow to corporations as workers file record number of complaints

Jessica Goldstein

Last week the Washington Post reported over 3,000 complaints had been filed with the US federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) by workers against employers for failing to implement or adhere to safety measures to protect workers from infection with COVID-19.

The “largest share of complaints come from health-care workers” according to the article, some of whom “have been given ‘plastic ponchos’ and masks made out of paper towels... a lack of hand sanitizer or soap...But the complaints span a broad variety of workplaces, including Yosemite National Park, factories and funeral homes.”

Information about complaints specifically related to coronavirus safety is not readily available anywhere on the federal OSHA website. The Post was only able to obtain the information through the Freedom of Information Act, an indication that the statistics that concern workers the most are specifically being suppressed and that workers have made far more complaints.

It is unlikely that OSHA has issued citations for the coronavirus-related complaints, since the poorly funded and undermanned agency—with 2,100 inspectors responsible for the health and safety of 130 million workers—only issues citations after an investigation.

Combined with COVID-related complaints filed with individual state OSHA offices, the total number filed is significantly higher than what the Post has reported. WTVR Richmond 6 News reported that Virginia state OSHA staff have handled more than 3,000 complaints by phone and email from employees and employers related to COVID-19. Oregon state OSHA has received 2,747 complaints about workplace conditions since March 2, but has not issued a single citation, according to the Portland Tribune.

In Iowa, Democratic legislators have filed an OSHA complaint urging Tyson Foods to close its plant in Waterloo following the closure of Tyson’s Columbus Junction plant, where two workers died of COVID-19. Workers from Columbus Junction were transferred to Waterloo with no quarantine time in between.

In a separate letter addressed to Tyson, the lawmakers cited an anonymous complaint by a worker who revealed the danger faced by thousands of food processing workers across the US. “I can’t practice social distancing, because of my work. There are a lot of people in front of me and beside me. They gave the workers an unsown fabric mask. They offer a small bonus to keep the workers. They said the workers can call in [to take the day off] without getting a point, they also said that if they call in they will lose the bonus. Tyson did not care about the worker’s health and safety; they only care about their business.”

Iowa is one of a handful of US states with no shelter-in-place order. The Iowa Democrats who filed the complaint are aware that OSHA is incapable of shutting down job sites, which can only be done through a court order. Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds told Des Moines WHO TV 13 that there are no plans to close the Waterloo plant.

On Monday, the New York Times editorial board published an opinion piece urging the agency to clamp down. “OSHA has precedent on its side for tougher rules. During the H1N1 flu outbreak, it made C.D.C. rules enforceable, requiring the use of face masks and other measures to slow transmission. It has failed to act so far this time, however.”

Like all aspects of the health system, OSHA is woefully unprepared to deal with the immediate demands of the working class in the wake of the pandemic. The federal and state agencies are drastically understaffed, thanks to personnel cuts carried out by successive Democratic and Republican administrations, and have long bowed to the profit interests and prerogatives of the corporations.

OSHA has made clear that in spite of the crisis, in most cases it will not be able to respond any more quickly than usual to requests for investigations. On average, it takes OSHA six months to complete an investigation in response to a complaint. It has recommended that employers conduct their own investigations and report back to the agency, which will inevitably result in countless cover-ups.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for workplaces only recommend that employers take measures to protect workers during the pandemic, including cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces and social distancing of six feet between workers, and that employees who feel sick should not come to work. If workers become ill, they are recommended to self-monitor for 14 days, but there is no recommendation for implementing widespread testing.

There are no general guidelines for personal protective equipment, other than for critical workers, for whom some kind of face mask at all times is recommended, and no recommendations that employers pay for sick leave and health insurance.

Like the CDC, OSHA only recommends that employers do the “right thing,” and has no legal power to enforce guidelines. Even if businesses are found to have committed serious violations, whatever fines OSHA imposes can be challenged, and are regularly reduced, even when workers are killed.

OSHA is an agency of the US Department of Labor, which is headed by Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, the son of the late ultra-right Supreme Court justice. Scalia is a member of US President Donald Trump’s recently announced “Opening Our Country Task Force.”

Along with the state, US corporations rely on the trusted service of the trade unions to keep workers on the job and coordinate a return to work under unsafe conditions. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UCFW) has tried to block every job action by workers against unsafe conditions, even as the union itself reports that at least 1,500 of its members have been infected and 30 have died from COVID-19. Smithfield Foods, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was only shut down after meatpacking workers protested in opposition to the UFCW.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) is involved in plotting a return to work at auto companies in the coming weeks, complete with bogus “safe work playbooks,” created by the companies, which will do nothing to effectively stop the spread of the virus. The auto industry in the US was shut down only after rank-and-file workers took matters into their own hands with walkouts and other job actions in March, which the union actively opposed.

Federal laws do not require an employer to notify workers if an employee tests positive for the novel coronavirus, which can prevent effective contract tracing and contain the spread of the virus. There are no laws that require employers to follow CDC recommendations for social distancing and PPE, and there are no guidelines as to what constitute “essential” industries. Workers in the US are left at the mercy of business demands with no protection from the unions, state or any of its agencies.

On Monday the National Law Review published a detailed overview of OSHA’s guidelines for workplace inspections arising out of hazards caused to workers by the pandemic. It states that, “OSHA clarifies that fatalities and imminent danger exposures related to COVID-19 will be prioritized for inspections, with particular attention given to healthcare organizations and first responders,” and that inspections in the very highest risk workplaces are not guaranteed but “may” warrant an on-site inspection.

For all other workplaces, even those where workers are at high risk from constant contact with the public and other workers, such as in meatpacking plants, Amazon warehouses and grocery stores, OSHA will only offer phone and antiquated “fax” inspections in most cases.

OSHA has developed a pyramid of Risk of Worker Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 for its official website which ranges from low to very high risk. OSHA states that most US workers fall within the “low risk” category. According to its standards, manufacturing, food processing, retail workers in close contact with other workers and the public only fall under “medium risk,” despite the recorded deaths and outbreaks, due to the fact that they are not medical or morgue workers.

In reality, all workers are at risk for contracting COVID-19 as long as workplaces remain open without mass testing and contact tracing measures in place to contain the spread of the pandemic. The “level of risk” assigned by OSHA is nothing more than a way to justify the corporate ruling class’s demands that workers either stay on the job or are forced back to work in unsafe conditions while the pandemic proliferates.

Workers in the US and worldwide will draw invaluable political lessons from the life-or-death struggle against orders to sacrifice their lives for corporate profit. They cannot allow their fate to be left up to the Democratic Party, state agencies and the unions. Now is the time for workers to take the initiative by forming rank-and-file committees to demand the closing of non-essential workplaces, with full compensation for affected workers, and universal testing, protective gear and a safe working environment for essential workers, which is supervised by rank-and-file committees in conjunction with health care professionals.

Why the OPEC+ Deal is a Many-Splendored Thing

M. K. Bhadrakumar

A perfect deal is where all protagonists get something out of it. All oil-producing countries stand to gain if the oil price rebounds. In bare bones, the OPEC+ group led by Saudi Arabia and Russia finalized, in a nail-biting photo finish on April 12, an agreement to steeply cut oil production by a combined 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for May and June to rebalance the supply and demand in the world market and nudge the prices to go up amid the coronavirus pandemic.

It capped days-long tortuous international negotiations that also included the United States. Additional cuts are expected from producers outside the OPEC+ group. Experts anticipate that by the second half of the year, oil prices would be nearing $40 per barrel.

The world’s oil producers are joining together for the largest cooperative production initiative in history. The tectonic plates are shifting in the geopolitics of oil.

Historically, the U.S. rallied against the oil cartel as a threat to the American economy. However, not only has Washington joined the latest production program, but the success of that program may actually hinge on the U.S., where oil production has doubled in a single decade.

U.S. President Donald Trump has held direct talks in recent days with the heads of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. Although the U.S., the world’s largest producer, has not offered firm production cuts, Trump and the U.S. Energy Department have emphasized that market forces will bring U.S. declines.

That is to say, cuts can come from government action via corporate decisions, as companies either shut-in production or file for bankruptcy. The estimates are that the U.S. production is projected to fall by 2 million barrels per day by the end of this year and perhaps more. “According to industry figures, the U.S.’s drop in output could see exports shrinking from over 3 million bpd in 2019 to almost [zero] in the coming months, removing a key concern for both Russia and the Saudis amid fears of a U.S. takeover of their traditional markets.”

This meets with the declared twin objectives of Saudi Arabia—to defend its market share and also to kill if not slow down U.S. shale oil production. The alternative for Saudis would have been to regain market share at enormous cost by producing enough oil to keep prices in the low to mid $20s and sustain that for two years.

As for Russia, thanks to the deal, it will receive an extra $70-80 million in revenues per day.

Trump tweeted on April 12, “The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to them from the Oval Office. Great deal for all!”

Having said that, at its core, OPEC+ deal stems from a matrix of understanding between Trump and Putin. Saudi Arabia understood that it had better stay out of their way. Putin sized up accurately how important it is politically for Trump to keep the shale industry afloat to preserve jobs. The industry employs over 10 million Americans and accounts for 7 percent of the U.S.’s GDP.

The big question is, where is the quid pro quo? There has always been a lurking suspicion that Putin had a game plan while triggering the fall in oil price in such a contrived fashion that resulted in the loss of billions of dollars of income for the Russian economy.

Quite obviously, the free fall of oil price precipitated an existential crisis for the U.S. shale industry in an election year in America that sooner rather than later was bound to bring Trump onto the center stage. Whether Putin choreographed it or not, that was exactly what happened.

As for Trump, a constructive engagement with Russia is something he wanted all along. Three precious years have been lost due to the Mueller investigations on “Russia collusion” and so on. But after successfully outmaneuvering his opponents in the impeachment drama, Trump is now unbound. Putin understands that, too.

In this particular affair, Trump is salvaging the interests of Big Oil, which carries enormous clout with the political class, think tanks, the media and Wall Street—and, of course, the “Deep State.” Simply put, it is inconceivable today that anyone in the Washington Beltway, however Russophobic, would dare to protest against Trump negotiating one-on-one with Putin to salvage Big Oil.

There is a broad consensus among the American elite that Putin holds the key to unlocking the oil crisis that can severely damage the U.S. economy when it is already heading into a deep recession.

In fact, between April 10 and 13, Trump and Putin spoke to each other three times. Trump knows he is on the right side of history and his interlocutor can be trusted to keep his word. Trump’s tweet on April 12 (quoted above) drips with confidence. He is striding toward a detente with Russia.

On the other hand, with an eye on the U.S. election cycle, Putin’s interest lies in wrapping up a big picture deal with Trump on Russian-American relations as quickly as possible because a potential Joe Biden victory in November could mean that the U.S. doubles down on Russia.

Putin has set a September timeline. He has proposed the idea—and Trump has welcomed it—of a summit meeting of the permanent members of the UN Security Council in September “in any place in the world” to discuss global issues in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Interestingly, on April 10, even as the OPEC+ deal was being finalized, Putin utilized a session with two three-member crews of U.S. and Russian astronauts (with one majority-Russian crew taking over the International Space Station from the other majority-American crew on April 17) to touch on Russian-American relations.

Putin said the cooperation in space “is a vivid example of an effective partnership between our countries for the benefit of the entire humanity.” He then added, “We are now also trying to organize work on current problems. I do not like speaking about this but I have to. I mean the fight against the pandemic, as well as the situation in the global markets. The President of the United States and I discussed these issues just yesterday, and we will speak more on that topic. So, fortunately, cooperation is developing, and not only in space but also in other areas.”

Most significantly, a Kremlin statement on the conversation between the two leaders two days later, on April 12, said that “Current issues of ensuring strategic security were also discussed.” The agenda of discussion has broadened and deepened dramatically.

Meanwhile, China is also positioning itself for the summit in September. Moscow consulted Beijing before making the proposal for the summit. (Putin acknowledged that Moscow had proposed the summit to “several of our colleagues and as far as I understand, saw a positive reaction.”) Beijing was quick on its feet to voice support (within 24 hours) to Putin’s proposal regarding the summit to resolve global challenges.

All in all, therefore, we should not miss the wood for the trees. The OPEC+ deal is about much more than oil. It kickstarted a sequence of great-power cooperation involving the U.S., Russia, and China, which would be far-reaching in the post-pandemic world politics.

Such convergence is a clear indicator of how the global pandemic and the global oil crisis remain deeply entangled, and the recovery of the U.S. economy is linked to them. “[T]he shattering impact of COVID-19” is affecting the global oil crisis, which, as U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette  put it, “transcends the interest of any one nation and requires a swift and decisive response from us all.”

The world is witnessing here the spirit of internationalism occurring, as OPEC President Mohamed Arkab said on April 9, “in the midst of a human tragedy on a scale perhaps not seen… [for] more than a century. The pandemic [which has infected more than 2 million people and killed more than 138,000 as of April 16] has reached almost every corner of the planet.”

Coronavirus Capitalism: Entrenching Dispossession and Dependency

Colin Todhunter

There is surprisingly a certain degree of optimism around at the moment, despite virtually entire populations and economies on lockdown. Although things are really bad for millions right now due to the effects of lockdown, economist Mariana Mazzucato believes that the Covid-19 crisis will shine light on societal and economic systems all across the world, exposing some of the deep-rooted flaws of capitalism.

After lockdown ends, Mazzucato believes societies can be reshaped to become more inclusive. She says an overly financialised business sector has been siphoning value out of the economy by rewarding shareholders through stock-buyback schemes, rather than shoring up long-run growth by investing in research and development, wages and worker training. Mazzacuto thinks we can use the current state of emergency to start building a fairer and more sustainable economy with the state playing a leading role to serve the public interest over the long term.

Her optimism is also shared by others who think that out the wreckage of the current crisis, the state and citizens can work together to shift towards more stakeholder capitalist or even more socialist oriented societies.

The reality, however, may merely mean the entrenchment of the prevailing system. For example, does anyone really believe that the ruling Conservative administration in the UK genuinely cares about the well-being of ordinary people or has any kind of commitment to publicly funded institutions? The Conservative Party has devastated millions of lives courtesy of an ideologically driven austerity agenda for over a decade. And for over three decades, it has been waging war on workers, unions and the public sector on behalf of global capital.

The situation is not unique to the UK. In India, successive administrations have been facilitating neoliberal policies that have led to a wholly avoidable agrarian crisis, marked by farmer suicides, child malnourishment, growing unemployment, increased informalisation, indebtedness and an overall collapse of agriculture. If anything, the current Modi administration has been keen to further open up the sector to the demands of Western agrocapital.

Things in the US hardly merit optimism for radical change either. The Federal Reserve estimates over 47 million will lose their jobs in the US, taking unemployment to almost a third of the labour force. This is more than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, in a series of short explanatory films for the layperson, analyst John Titus shows that US capitalism and the privately owned Fed are not going to change their spots: Wall Street and its top executives will continue to enrich themselves, while the public will suffer throughout the duration of lockdown, which could persist in various forms for 18 months.

Even if we take a brief, more general look at what is happening, we can see that, for instance, factory farms in the US are expected to receive $23.5 billion in stimulus money. The Center for Biological Diversity and allies have urged congress to direct these funds to small and mid-size farmers instead of big agri-food concerns. With the threat of environmental regulation rollbacks also on the cards, it is clear the current crisis is being used to consolidate the position of major players in the sector.

Consider too that, according to a recent piece in the New York Times, the $2 trillion-plus coronavirus relief package making its way through US congress will give bailouts to a number of key industries and companies that have indulged in the types of shameful activities that Mazzucato outlines. The airline industry is expected to get some $50 billion in cash and loans and Boeing, which asked for $60 billion, is widely expected to receive some part of a $17 billion fund.

During the past decade, most of the companies in line to get taxpayer money did not prepare for a downturn. For example, the airline industry, which is prone to booms and busts, collectively spent more than $45 billion on stock buybacks over the past eight years. Viewed in context, The New York Times says the relief package still amounts to a bailout of private capital and the endorsement of self-enriching practices.

Further Neoliberal reforms

The current crisis is hitting workers hard across the world, possibly more so in India than elsewhere. Consider that nearly half of India’s workforce of 467 million is self-employed, 36 percent are casual wage workers, while only 17 percent are regular wage workers. Two-thirds of them work without contracts and more than 90 percent lack any social security or health benefits in the workplace. The six-week coronavirus lockdown has made survival extremely difficult for them.

But is there hope on the horizon? World Bank Group President David Malpass recently stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various lockdowns that have been implemented in response to the Covid-19 crisis. However, before getting anyone’s hopes up too much, this ‘help’ will be on condition that neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded.

Malpass says:

“Countries will need to implement structural reforms to help shorten the time to recovery and create confidence that the recovery can be strong.  For those countries that have excessive regulations, subsidies, licensing regimes, trade protection or litigiousness as obstacles, we will work with them to foster markets, choice and faster growth prospects during the recovery.”

Ranil Salgado, mission chief for India at the IMF, echoes the views of Malpass by saying that when the economic shock passes, it’s important that India returns to its path of undertaking long-term reforms.

In the face of economic crisis and stagnation at home, this would seem like an ideal opportunity for Western capital to further open up and loot economies abroad. On 20 April, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline ‘IMF, World Bank Face Deluge of Aid Requests From Developing World. Scores of countries are asking for bailouts and loans from financial institutions with $1.2 trillion to lend. An ideal recipe for fuelling dependency.

Global conglomerates will be able to hollow out the remnants of nation state sovereignty, while ordinary people’s rights and ability to organise and challenge the corporate hijack of economies and livelihoods will be undermined by the intensified, globalised system of surveillance that beckons.

This is a sentiment shared by economics professor Michel Chossudovsky, who implies Covid-19 provides ideal cover for rebooting the global economy via a global debt crisis and the subsequent privatization of national states. The current crisis will certainly have the effect of impoverishing hundreds of millions of workers and increasing the national debt of nations. It could prove so devastating to economies that bailout packages from global financial institutions might saddle nation states with debts that prove almost impossible to pay back.

Dollar denominated loans will help secure the global hegemony of the dollar, which has been looking increasingly fragile in recent years.

At the same time, with mass unemployment and workers’ pay decimated, ordinary people in both rich and poor countries will have finally reached the finishing line in the race towards the bottom. Workers’ rights and well-paid jobs will be at a premium, with a global reserve army of labour waiting in the wings to snap up any work that is available.

In India, neoliberal reforms have already devastated many livelihoods and the US – via the WTO and World Bank – has since the 1990s been pushing India to further open up to Western goods and corporations. Pressure has been applied to further reduce subsidies to the farm sector and to dismantle mechanisms which have ensured some degree of food security for the hundreds of millions who rely on state support.

As the lockdown plays out in India, we see stories of fractured supply chains and of farmers who cannot sell their produce. In rural areas, millions of migrant workers have returned to the countryside. Rural affairs commentator P Sainath paints a dreary picture of the impacts of India’s lockdown. He discusses the desperate plight of migrant workers, a shortage of cash to buy food and a potential shortage of food as farmers are unable to complete their harvests.

He notes that Dr. Sundararaman, a former executive director of the National Health Systems Resources Centre, asserts that there is a desperate need to “identify and act on the reverse migrations problem and the loss of livelihoods. Failing that, deaths from diseases that have long tormented mostly poor Indians could outstrip those brought about by the corona virus.”

But no doubt cash-rich Western capital which will gain from the trillions being pumped into the system will see many strategic opportunities to benefit. It has been pushing via the World Bank to bring Indian agriculture under corporate control for a long time. This would involve forcing GMO food crops into the country, the displacement of peasant farmers, corporate consolidation and commercialisation based on industrial-scale monocrop farms incorporated into global supply chains dominated by transnational agribusiness and retail giants.

This would amount to the wholesale restructuring of Indian society. What we could see is the acceleration of existing processes which have already led to what Sainath describes as a crisis of civilisation proportions.

Across the world, people need to question the narrative, the data and the data collection methods surrounding Covid-19 and assess whether lockdowns and their devastating effects are in line with the risks involved. Because, five years from now, given what is at stake and the massive hardships being endured, it will then be too late to look back and say it was all based on flawed data and wrongheaded responses and was driven by vested interests who were set to benefit financially.

New Zealand government moves to end lockdown

Tom Peters

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced yesterday that the government will ease its COVID-19 lockdown measures next Tuesday, April 28, five days later than originally planned, but sooner than some experts had advised.

Nearly one month ago the government imposed level 4 restrictions (the top level in its COVID-19 alert system), closing schools and requiring most “non-essential” workers to stay home. Next week this will be reduced to level 3, meaning manufacturing, construction and forestry businesses, and many smaller enterprises, will be allowed to restart. An estimated 500,000 more people will return to workplaces and schools will partially reopen.

The decision is calculated to appease businesses, which had called for the lockdown to be lifted immediately. Right-wing commentators internationally have argued that society must accept a “trade-off” between workers’ health and the economy, i.e., profits for big business. Ardern emphasised that the five-day delay to lifting level 4 restrictions will cost only two business days.

The announcement that New Zealand will reopen large parts of its economy, despite new COVID-19 cases being announced each day, will be presented in the corporate media as an example for other countries to follow.

The Ardern government’s pro-business response to the pandemic has been glorified internationally. On April 19 the Atlantic hailed Ardern’s “leadership style, focused on empathy,” saying she “may be the most effective leader on the planet.” The Financial Times went even further, calling Ardern a “saint.” There have been similar statements from CNN, BBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post and other outlets.

The reason for this avalanche of praise is that, far from being based on “empathy,” the Labour Party-led government’s main response to the pandemic has been to spend tens of billions of dollars bailing out businesses and the financial markets. To prop up capitalism, this wealth must ultimately be extracted from working people through intensified exploitation and austerity.

Already, tens of thousands of workers have been sacked and others have suffered wage cuts of 20 percent or more under the government’s “wage subsidy” scheme for businesses.

Speaking with TVNZ last night, Finance Minister Grant Robertson acknowledged that some experts had called for a longer lockdown, but the government had “considered economic matters” as well as public health. Ardern told Radio NZ (RNZ) today: “The longer you stay in lockdown the more likely you are to give yourself the best chance of success. That has to be traded against the huge economic impact and the toll on livelihoods.”

New Zealand has reported a total of 1,445 cases of COVID-19, with 14 new cases in the last two days. Thirteen people have died from the virus. Four percent of cases are classed as community transmission, with their source unknown.

University of Auckland professor Shaun Hendy, who provided modelling data to the government, told RNZ yesterday the level 4 lockdown should be extended for two more weeks. “We can’t right at the moment say we’ve eliminated the disease; we’re still seeing cases daily and we’d really need to see those cases drop down to zero,” he said. Hendry added that the reproduction rate for the virus was likely to go up under level 3.

Another government advisor, epidemiologist Michael Baker told TVNZ today: “The modelling work says it would be good to stay in lockdown a couple more weeks just to improve our chance of wiping out the virus—but we have got to get people back in work.” He described the five-day extension as a “difficult trade-off,” but hoped that keeping level 3 restrictions for two weeks would be enough to extinguish the virus.

Speaking to RNZ, Baker posed the question: “Why did New Zealand allow its public health infrastructure to get to such a poor point?” He pointed to “many warnings” about the lack of preparation for a pandemic, including the 2016 Havelock North water contamination crisis and last year’s measles epidemic, which spread from New Zealand to Samoa.

New Zealand public hospitals are drastically underfunded, with severe shortages of nurses, doctors and other staff, and rationing of personal protective equipment. Despite the level 4 lockdown, there have been positive cases of COVID-19 reported among healthcare workers, supermarket workers, aged care residents and staff, and at least one meat processing worker.

There is considerable anxiety among workers about the ending of restrictions, especially the move to reopen schools. An online petition to Ardern, started by a teacher and signed by nearly 35,000 people, calls for “no schools or ECE [early childhood education] centres to open during alert level 3.”

The petition points out that it is impossible to enforce social distancing among young children, as is required under level 3 for other workplaces. The New Zealand Herald reports that “the Early Childhood Council, whose 1300 childcare services have about 65,000 of the 200,000 children enrolled… is still recommending that its centres should stay closed because of the risk of spreading the coronavirus.”

To justify the reopening of schools, the government’s director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told the media: “Children and teens tend to have low infection rates and they don’t become as unwell if they do get infected, and they don’t tend to pass the virus on to adults.”

Such statements distort the scientific evidence. While most children do not develop symptoms, they can easily contract and spread COVID-19.

Rod Jackson, an epidemiologist at the University of Auckland, told the New Zealand Herald schools should remain closed because there were likely to be undetected cases in the community which could be spread by children. He pointed out that NZ’s biggest COVID-19 cluster is centred around Marist College, where adults and children tested positive.

International research suggests that children are acting as carriers for the virus without being detected, due to the lack of testing. A study published on April 16 in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice estimated that for every one child hospitalised in the US with a severe case of COVID-19, 2,318 others could be infected. The authors predicted the number of children hospitalised could soar if nothing is done to stop the spread.

For the ruling class, however, the reopening of schools is vital in order to send hundreds of thousands of parents back to work, regardless of the risk to health and lives.

The union bureaucracy is working closely with the government and big business to suppress opposition to this agenda. The Post-Primary Teachers’ Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute have not endorsed the petition to keep schools closed. The unions, which opposed calls for schools to be closed prior to the government announcing its level 4 lockdown, issued statements yesterday welcoming the reopening.

Protests and looting break out in Colombia over failure to distribute aid amid COVID-19 quarantine

Cesar Uco & Bill Van Auken

Protests and looting broke out last week in Colombia’s major cities over the abject failure of the right-wing government of President Iván Duque to provide promised aid to working people left without income or food amid a nearly month-long coronavirus quarantine.

Riot police attacked protesters banging pots in the street with tear gas in southern Bogotá’s impoverished district of Ciudad Bolívar, while looting was reported in several parts of Medellín, the country’s second largest city, as well as in Vichada province’s capital of Puerto Carreño and in Sincelejo, the capital of the northern province of Sucre.

There were also reports of the hijacking and looting of trucks carrying goods, forcing the closure of a road between Cordoba and Antioquia provinces.

When Duque first imposed the nationwide quarantine on March 25, he promised to provide emergency financial aid and food deliveries to Colombia’s poorer areas, where much of the population is employed in the so-called informal sector, making their money through casual labor and street vending, with little means of support.

Since then, food has failed to arrive, and the main emergency aid program, the so-called “Solidarity Income,” which was supposed to provide the poor with a meager 160,000 pesos ($41), has been suspended amid charges of systematic embezzlement and a failure to make payouts to those who need them.

Popular anger over the government’s malign indifference to mass suffering, defense of the interests of the rich and rampant corruption boiled over as Duque has continued to clash with Colombian governors and mayors over his demand for the reopening of the economy.

As of Sunday, the official number of coronavirus cases in Colombia stood at 3,792 and the death toll at 179. As in every country, these figures are a gross underestimation of the real toll of the deadly virus. Health Minister Fernando Ruiz himself admitted last week that 12,000 people have been infected, roughly four times the official estimate. No doubt the number of deaths is a similar or greater multiple, with many people never reaching a hospital.

As elsewhere in the country, in Cali, Colombia’s third most populous city, residents of impoverished districts have hung red rags from their windows to indicate that they are without food and need aid.

Mábel Avendaño, environmental coordinator of Cali’s Tercer Milenio neighborhood told the Spanish news agency EFE that people had taken to the streets in protest because “they locked us up for a month and a half and told us that they were going to bring us food.”

“People are hungry, they’re leaving their homes, risking their lives, and they haven’t brought them food. We were told that we had been sent two trucks but they have sent us nothing; we’ve received nothing ... We need help,” said Avendaño, one of the leaders of a protest that saw over a hundred people take to the streets banging pots and pans, while many more joined in from inside their homes.

The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, claimed that aid from the city had benefited 262,561 families, out of over a half a million who had applied for assistance, and in a city of 7.5 million people, most of whom are out of work. The boast only underscores the complete lack of preparation to meet the crisis unleashed by the pandemic and the callous indifference of Colombia’s bourgeoisie to the plight of the working class and poor.

This lack of preparation is also expressed in the catastrophic state of Colombia’s health care system. At least four Colombian health care professionals are known to have died from COVID-19. In the north of the country, near the Panamanian border, doctors at the Clinica Apartadó walked out for the second time in a week Monday, protesting both the lack of personal protective equipment and the failure to receive a paycheck for the last three months. One carried a sign referring to the cheering for medical workers saying, “What good is the applause if our families are going hungry and our colleagues are dying.”

The economic impact of the pandemic upon Colombia is already devastating. According to the daily El Tiempo, the IMF is warning that “the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic are expected to generate the first recession in Colombia since 1999,” with a negative 4 percent growth rate, which would make it the worst crisis in Colombia’s history.

Under these conditions, the government of President Duque has been thoroughly discredited. The main government aid program, which was supposed to prevent Colombians from going hungry, has been suspended while authorities investigate how massive amounts of money allocated for it were diverted into ghost accounts set up for dead and non-existent people. This has stopped the distribution of $75.5 million out of the wholly inadequate $126 million allocated to prevent starvation.

Colombia’s weekly Semana reported that the country’s National Registrar has already discovered 35,000 ghost accounts to which money has been sent.

The legislation establishing the program included in its first paragraph a clause granting immunity to all public officials from criminal investigations or charges, in apparent anticipation of massive embezzlement.

Duque, responding to the demands of Colombian and foreign capital—and in direct consultation with Washington—has called for an immediate reopening of the country’s economy saying that he favors a plan to “recover productive life without social life.” Thus far, however, mayors and governors have opposed this plan, maintaining in place orders restricting social mobility. Colombia’s medical professionals have warned of the collapse of the country’s health care system. According to most estimates, the pandemic in Colombia will not peak before the second half of May at the earliest.

The nationwide quarantine, and the growing hunger among the population, is only intensifying the extreme tensions that erupted into a series of mass protests and strikes in November and December of last year. This movement of the Colombian working class was directed against rising social inequality and unemployment as well as the series of reactionary fiscal policies imposed at the behest of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

These policies shifted social resources to private capitalist interests at the expense of the working class and were paid for through continuous cuts in social programs, with education and health the most affected. The coronavirus has exposed the criminality of these policies, which are now leading to the unnecessary deaths of working people and health care professionals.

Mass COVID-19 infection among migrant workers in Singapore

Gustav Kemper

The Singapore Ministry of Health reported 1,426 new COVID-19 infections by noon on Monday alone, 95 percent of them among temporary workers from India, Bangladesh and other countries in Southeast Asia who are crammed into inhumane dwellings.

The city-state, a former British colony, was praised in the early weeks of the coronavirus epidemic for its strict measures—tracing COVID-19 cases back to the first infected person—to contain infections in the native population. A different story in the city-state is now emerging, hidden behind the shiny skyscrapers of the financial centre and the pompous hotel complexes.

Dormitory in Singapore

Among Singapore’s nearly 6 million inhabitants are some 323,000 workers who built these skyscrapers, Changi Airport, the subways and the HDB flats—the homes of the locals. They are housed in “foreign workers dormitories,” where 8, 12, 18 or even up to 25 workers share a room with bunk beds.

In the largest of these camps, Sungei Tengah Lodge—far from the city centre—about 25,000 workers are accommodated in this way in several blocks of flats. The S11 dormitory in the district of Punggol houses up to 13,000 workers in a fenced area. In this camp, 1,123 patients had already tested for COVID-19 as of Saturday.

These “purpose-built dormitories” (PBDs), which are under the regulation of the Ministry of Labour, are run by private companies. This group of dormitories consists of 43 complexes that can accommodate between 3,000 and 25,000 workers per complex. Twenty-two of these have groups of infected people and 13 had been quarantined through the end of last week.

This means that workers cannot leave their block. Workers report on their social media platform that any violation will be punished with a fine of 10,000 Singapore dollars (about US$7,000) or six months in prison. Workers also write about the fear they feel when they see 15 ambulances driving into the block every day and newly infected people with more severe symptoms being driven to hospital. In addition, there is the lack of contact between them. “You can’t watch videos on the Internet all day,” reports one of the workers.

A total of about 200,000 workers live in the PBDs, with another 95,000 in “Factory-Converted Dormitories,” each of which can accommodate 50 to 500 workers, also under the registration of the Ministry of Labour. Another 28,000 or so workers live in containers directly at their workplaces (“On-Site Housing”), accommodating up to 40 workers each. These shelters are only checked occasionally.

These conditions exist in a tropical climate, where average temperatures vary between 28 and 32 degrees Celsius (82° to 90°F) and humidity is around 80 percent—in buildings without air conditioning.

The dormitories are run by private companies that have no concern for workers’ health. Even the government did not show much interest in the health protection of these workers, despite the rapid spread of the virus under such living conditions being predictable and inevitable.

After cessation of the construction work due to the spread of the pandemic, workers are stuck in congested dormitories because only those needed for urgent work—including Singapore’s garbage collection service—were allowed to leave the complex and were now housed separately.

Daily new cases of new Covid-19 infections in Singapore

Since a 48-year-old construction worker from Bangladesh tested positive for COVID-19 on March 28, the infection statistics among temporary workers have risen sharply. On Monday, Johns Hopkins University registered 8,014 infected persons in Singapore. Temporary workers now account for 90 percent of the new infections registered daily, with only a minority tested so far.

The Ministry of Health first became aware of the spread of infection in these dormitories when the infection figures reported by the hospitals increased dramatically beginning in April. The government has now ordered that the infected workers be separated from the healthy ones, and that some of the sick be moved to military camps or empty gymnasiums or ships. But the measures will probably have little effect, as the infection has spread further among workers living in close quarters. Not all workers have yet been tested.

A New Zealand professor, Mohan Dutta, told the Guardian of interviews he had conducted with 45 migrant workers in Singapore: “Participants told me that even up until Monday they don’t have access to soap and adequate cleaning supplies.” He added that many feared an outbreak was inevitable due to the living conditions in the dormitories. The workers had told him that there were only five toilets and showers per 100 workers, so they often had to stand in line. Workers complained that the food provided since the crisis was also poor in nutritional value.

A specialist in infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore Hospital, Professor Dale Fisher, told the Guardian that thousands of new infections were to be expected in the dormitories of temporary workers. He said the workers “are all 30 to 40 years old, which is good, but still when you’re dealing with these massive numbers you’re going to get a good number of sick 30- to 40-year-olds. The risk [in such cramped dormitories] is completely different and the preparation and the anticipation wasn’t there.”

The hard construction work with frequent overtime and often a heavy strain on the lungs due to smoking are also increasing the risk of infection. Fisher added: “If we don’t stop it there [in the dormitories] the hospitals will get overwhelmed.”

He told the Straits Times in Singapore that he expects between 5 and 10 percent of infected temporary workers to be hospitalized, with up to 2 percent of critical illness expected. The number of deaths among contract workers in Singapore is usually not released until later.

Referring to slum areas in India and other Southeast Asian countries, he warned, that the message to other places was, “if you have an overcrowded setting it is just so vulnerable. …When people say India’s shutdown has been extended—I can’t think of anything other than shutting down. It’s like the only defence you’ve got.”

The problem of limited capacity of hospital beds on one hand and the exploding numbers of infected workers on the other poses a big problem that Associate Professor Hsu Liyang of the National University of Singapore suggests to solve by triaging of patients: “COVID-19 cases should be triaged and those with minimal risk of complications should be sent to community isolation facilities immediately rather than face a period of observation in an acute hospital.”

With globalization and the economic opening of China, Singapore has grown rapidly since the 1980s, bringing with it hundreds of thousands of temporary workers to be used in the construction industry at low wages. Labour agencies arranged the formalities for work permits, promising wages between 800 and 1,300 Singapore dollars (US$560-US$900). But a large part of the wages is later deducted for “agency fees,” accommodation and food, so that the workers can only transfer a small amount of money from their wages to their families in their home countries.

The authoritarian regime in Singapore suppresses any movement of workers fighting for better working or living conditions. Those who resist are immediately deported and, in some cases, lose everything they have saved up in their hard work through fines. While many of the Singaporean workers participate in fundraising campaigns for their foreign colleagues, the control of the dormitories in the fight against the spread of the virus is now carried out by the army, a “task force” of 750 men under the leadership of Brigadier General Seet Uei Lim.

In the crisis, the “gold standard” of the highly praised Singapore—like capitalism in any other country—turns out to be what it really is: a brutal class society.

COVID-19 lockdown leaves Gulf states’ migrant workers penniless in unsanitary conditions

Jean Shaoul

Millions of migrant workers in Gulf countries have been laid off without income in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their plight is terrible. Unable to return home because of travel restrictions or their countries’ refusal to accept them, they have been left to fester in lockdown, confined to overcrowded, unsanitary dormitories without access to either health care or help.

The impact on their health and finances will ricochet across the world due to the vast numbers and diversity of migrants in the Persian Gulf.

While the obscenely rich princes and emirs of the Arabian Peninsula can shelter in their palaces to reduce the risk of infection and access the health care so necessary for survival, the conditions of life for those workers who cater to their every whim are the complete opposite. Effectively imprisoned, they are not only more likely to get infected; they are unable to get treatment or manage the terrible consequences of the expanding economic catastrophe.

This indisputable fact of class life finds its supreme expression in the venal House of Saud and other petro-monarchies, which exploit the labour power of a massive army of migrant workers, largely from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Africa.

Migrant workers make up 9 million of Saudi Arabia’s 33 million population; 7.8 million of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) 9.2 million; 2.34 million of Qatar’s 2.6 million; 500,000 of Bahrain’s 1.6 million; 1.8 million of Oman’s four million; and 3.15 million of Kuwait’s 4.5 million. This constitutes 24 million people, or nearly half of the six countries’ 54 million population and two thirds of its workforce.

Migrant workers in the Gulf account for 12 percent of the nearly 200 million migrant workers globally, who travel across national borders and whose conditions are not much better. Another 760 million move within their own countries in search of work: more than 400 million in China and 40 million in India, although this is likely a gross underestimate.

In the Gulf, migrant workers labour in construction, sanitation, transportation, hospitality and domestic service for a pittance, under the notorious kefala system that binds them to their employer and prevents them changing jobs in a modern form of indentured servitude. Working long hours in horrendous conditions in the scorching heat, they are forced to live for years alone in labour camps that are little short of prisons, in order to send home money to their families who would otherwise starve.

The crowded conditions in which they live and work provide a fertile breeding ground for the coronavirus. Migrant workers are not only victims but potential carriers too, taking the epidemic back to their families, often in remote villages unable to deal with a health crisis. This means that their villages or home countries have in some cases greeted potentially infected homecomers with suspicion.

Without the most basic rights, migrant workers are typically the first to be hit by an economic downturn. As the first cases of the coronavirus hit the region in March, governments shuttered their economies, imposed self-distancing restrictions and banned international travel, although some sectors, such as construction and oil and gas, have continued to work, exposing migrant workers to the virus.

While the number of COVID-19 cases is still small compared to the US and Europe—some 26,653 confirmed cases and 167 deaths as of April 20—these are likely to be an underestimate given the lack of testing. Already it appears that the migrants have borne the brunt of the virus, with Saudi Arabia reporting on April 5 that foreigners made up half of its then 4,000-plus COVID-19 cases. Qatar, amid a construction boom as it prepares to host the 2022 World Cup, found hundreds of cases among migrants.

Paid not much more than $200 per month, many workers have amassed substantial debts before they had even begun working, in order to pay the agents and middlemen who found them work in the Gulf and organised their travel. Their loss of income affects not only themselves but also their families who receive billions of dollars in remittances every year.

This explains why their own governments have given the nod to the Gulf states’ atrocious treatment of migrant workers: their remittances provide a crucial safety net for the impoverished masses, thereby deflecting popular anger. These conditions also form the standard that corporations and governments around the world are now seeking to emulate.

Oman, Qatar and the UAE are compounding the migrants’ plight by blocking voice and video calls over apps such as WhatsApp, Facetime and Skype in order to protect the commercial interests of their own telecom companies. A group of 29 rights groups, protesting against the ban on Internet calls during the pandemic, issued a statement saying, “This has caused serious problems for the people living in those countries, especially the majority of migrant workers and foreign national residents who need to connect and communicate with their families and communities overseas.”

While the Gulf countries have announced aid packages, these are for their own citizens, not foreign labourers. Running out of food and money, with nowhere to turn in countries that treat them as slave labour, these workers face starvation.

A survey carried out by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) raised its “deep concern” over the safety of migrant workers in the Gulf. It revealed that most of the construction companies taking part in the survey (and only half replied) in the UAE and Qatar were not doing enough to protect their workers. It found that work on construction sites in Qatar was continuing despite the pandemic despite the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for workers at the World Cup sites, with workers having to bring their own masks. Social distancing at work and in living quarters, which were often unsanitary, was impossible, yet none of the companies had any plans to improve their accommodation or provide PPE.

Most workers were forced to work even if they were unwell, as only four companies guaranteed job security for those unable to work due to ill health, and only three said that workers forced to self-isolate would be paid in full.

So bad are the conditions in the UAE that the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre in Dubai has petitioned the Indian High Court, calling on the government to repatriate its citizens. Haris Beeran, a lawyer representing the petitioners, told the UAE-based the National, “We know of 10,000 people just from Kerala who want to come back home.” He added, “Many workers no longer have jobs [and] some people are on visit visas that have expired. They don’t have any means to live in the UAE and would rather return to their family at this time.”

Pinarayi Vijayan, chief minister of the Indian state of Kerala, has called on Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi to organise the repatriation of Indian workers in the Gulf. Some 3 million Indians work in the Gulf, nearly a million from Kerala. Modi has refused to do so before India’s own nationwide lockdown ends.

There are also thousands of migrant workers languishing in the Gulf states’ overcrowded prisons and detention centres, further exacerbating the likelihood of the virus spreading uncontrollably. According to Human Rights Watch, many migrant workers, particularly those who have fled ruthless employers or are undocumented because their employers have withheld their papers, spend long periods in detention centres prior to deportation.

The UAE has warned countries refusing to repatriate their workers that it may take action against them. Kuwait has sought to deport workers it claims are violating quarantine instructions and has called on Egypt and India to repatriate citizens working there “illegally.”

Saudi Arabia has deported nearly 3,000 Ethiopian migrants to Addis Ababa, as part of a broader plan seen by Reuters to deport 200,000 Ethiopians, with other Gulf States expected to follow suit. Catherine Sozi, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Ethiopia, told Reuters, “Large-scale migratory movements which are not planned make the transmission of the virus much more likely to continue. We are therefore calling for the temporary suspension of large-scale deportations.”

Without controlling the spread of the virus in humane conditions and treating its victims—citizens or migrants—the human toll will grow exponentially as the disease spreads across the world.