Protests erupt in Serbia over official handling of COVID-19 pandemic

Alex Lantier

A week of protests has followed the announcement last Tuesday by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić that a curfew would be re-imposed in Serbia over the rapid resurgence of COVID-19.

The announcement came as European governments’ back-to-work campaign drives a resurgence of COVID-19 infections across the continent. Germany and Spain have re-imposed multiple regional lockdowns, while over 6,000 new cases are being discovered daily in Russia.

Serbia, a former Yugoslav republic with just under 9 million people, imposed a strict lockdown in March but lifted it in May. Now nearly 300 new cases are being diagnosed daily, close to the records for daily infections set in mid-April and threatening to flood the hospital system.

Amid mounting social anger across Europe at the official handling of the pandemic, Vučić’s announcement triggered protests last Tuesday night by thousands in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Protests spread to other cities in Serbia including Nis, Kragujevac and Novi Sad.

In Belgrade, riot police violently attacked protesters, who shouted “Resign!” and “Arrest Vučić.” Some of them forced their way into the Parliament and clashed with police inside. Twenty people were arrested, and Serbian police authorities claimed that at least 60 protesters and police were injured that night in the capital.

The protests are politically heterogeneous, with opposition social-democratic and far-right politicians taking part, as well as demonstrators expressing broader popular anger at the official handling of the pandemic. This follows the June 21 elections, which Vučić’s right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won in a landslide as the opposition parties’ call for a boycott flopped. Protesters accused Vučić of ending the curfew just to hold elections and strengthen his hold on power. Vučić has since backtracked, saying a future lockdown might not involve a curfew.

More broadly, the protests expressed widespread outrage at the official downplaying of the pandemic and its death toll that has prevailed not only in Serbia but across Europe. “Our government only wants to protect its interests, people’s lives are treated as collateral damage,” one protester told AFP, while another said: “We have had enough of the manipulation of COVID-19 statistics. People are extremely angry.”

This followed a report by the European Union (EU)-funded Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) that Serbian officials undercounted COVID-19 deaths, and that 632 people died in Serbia of the virus between March 19 and June 1, not 244. In particular, the BIRN cited hospital data showing that 243 COVID-positive patients died in the city of Nis, rather than 77; and 94 died in Belgrade’s Dragisa Misovic Clinical Center, not 39.

Large public events, like the tennis tournament hosted by famed Serbian player Novak Djokovic, have also helped spread the disease. Djokovic and his wife have since tested positive for COVID-19. Yesterday, Serbian epidemiologist Branislav Tiodorovic warned, “The health care system is overstretched and I think it is at the limit of its endurance. … I have to say that all of us who deal with the health system are in a very difficult situation and we are running out of strength.”

A student in Belgrade told the WSWS that the protests were an explosion of social and political discontent set off by the state handling of the pandemic: “Many issues are motivating people today, dating back to the last eight years of the Vučić government and all that happened before.”

Amid the NATO-led breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s following the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO bombed Serbia and Belgrade in a 1999 war to split Kosovo from Serbia. NATO issued false war propaganda claiming Serbians were massacring hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians, and turned a blind eye to Kosovar attacks on Serbs. After the war, the NATO powers organized a regime change operation that toppled Serbian President Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

On Thursday, however, the US Embassy in Belgrade issued a statement making clear it does not support the protests. “We condemn all forms of violence, including what appears to be coordinated attacks on police that appear to have provoked excessive reactions, as well as the apparent use of force by the police,” it declared. It made a pro forma criticism of Vučić, stating that for “dialogue in Serbia, a free media environment and reforms in the area of the rule of law are needed.”

The US government has shocked the world, however, with its failure to take measures to halt the COVID-19 pandemic in America and its threats to deploy the military against protests over the police murder of George Floyd. The embassy felt forced to add: “America is a nation undergoing its own challenges with protests and civil unrest right now.”

Vučić for his part denounced protesters as “fascists,” apparently referring to the role of forces close to far-right parliamentarian Srđan Nogo, who reportedly clashed with police in the Parliament. The ruling SNS also alleges that the protests were paid for by social-democratic politician Dragan Đilas.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic lamely attempted to defend the crackdown on protests by citing the brutal repression of protests and strikes in the largest EU states. “We have seen a much sharper reaction of the police and a more brutal reaction in many European and other world centers such as Paris, Berlin and London,” she said.

Workers internationally are moving into struggle against class war policies of the ruling elites. Confinement policies were adopted only after mass strikes and walkouts starting in Italy, the United States and Brazil spread across Europe and the Americas. Now, a new counteroffensive is emerging against the ruling elites’ back-to-work policies, designed to boost corporate profits, with strikes among US auto and health workers, anti-government protests that erupted in Bulgaria this weekend and the continuing protests in Serbia.

Only an international offensive of the working class, breaking the profit motive and the stranglehold of the banks and the capitalist class over global industry and medical resources can guarantee the rational use of social resources to meet human need and fight COVID-19.

This need comes at every point into conflict with the reactionary and criminal political framework created by the Stalinist regimes’ restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe in 1989–1991. NATO spearheaded the breakup of the Yugoslav federation established by the multi-ethnic anti-fascist Partisans’ victory against fascist occupation during World War II. It encouraged factions of the regime in the different Yugoslav republics to declare independence from Belgrade, plunging Yugoslavia into a decade-long bloody ethnic civil war and throwing it open to imperialist intrigue and intervention.

The different ethnic-nationalist factions of the ruling elite in the former Yugoslavia are all trying to work out corrupt deals with the NATO imperialist powers in the context of the US-led war drive against Russia and the EU austerity diktat across Europe. Vučić tries to balance between Serbia’s traditional alliance with Russia, his austerity agenda at home and attempts to work out a settlement with the US-backed Kosovar-Albanian regime. Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina have never been resolved since Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008.

Growing inter-imperialist rivalries for influence have further cut across attempts to organize a viable economic life in the Balkans. While Washington has pressed for Kosovo’s independence and to integrate it into NATO based on a land deal swapping Albanian-majority areas of Serbia for Serb-majority areas of Kosovo, Berlin has opposed land swaps as provocative and sought to integrate the region into the EU. This conflict unfolded amid vigorous behind-the-scenes criticisms by Washington of German-led initiatives to develop the EU as an independent military force from America.

US-brokered attempts to negotiate a deal between Vučić and his Kosovar counterpart Hashim Thaçi broke down last month when Thaçi, the former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was charged with war crimes in The Hague. The KLA is a criminal drug-running outfit, designated as a terrorist group by Washington before the 1999 war. EU investigations in 2010 established that during the war Thaçi was complicit not only in the murder of Serbs, but in the illegal harvesting and trade of their organs. Indeed, this was known by all the major governments.

The Vučić-Thaçi talks were to take place under the auspices of Richard Grenell, the former US ambassador to Germany whose overt hostility to Berlin led the German government to demand that Trump replace him. However, the war crimes indictment in The Hague cut across this initiative. Events surrounding an interview published by Germany’s influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) daily newspaper suggest that the indictment was itself part of the growing conflicts between Washington and Berlin.

In his curt interview with the FAZ, Thaçi rejected a mutual Serbian-Kosovar amnesty for war crimes during the 1999 war and insisted that Washington should lead Balkan politics. “Americans,” he said, “can act faster, more accurately and more efficiently than Europeans. That is why American leadership is necessary for Serbia to overcome its conflicts in Kosovo. If there are lights for our countries at the end of the tunnel, they shine from Washington.”

This interview apparently provoked serious discussion and a response in German and European ruling circles to cut across US policy in the Balkans. The FAZ withheld publication of the interview while the tribunal in The Hague prepared war crimes charges against Thaçi. These charges were announced, torpedoing Thaçi’s summit with Vučić and Grenell, and the FAZ interview was published only after the Grenell summit was called off. Thaçi arrived on Monday to face charges in The Hague.

A rational response to the pandemic requires a coordinated, international mobilization of medical and industrial resources, which cannot be held hostage to rival imperialist cliques and their local bourgeois and mafia clients in the Balkans. For workers and youth fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the turn must be to the emerging international movement in the working class, and a struggle based on a socialist program against capitalism and imperialist war.

Germany halts preliminary proceedings on 1980 Oktoberfest attack

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Almost 40 years after the Oktoberfest bombing, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe is officially discontinuing the investigative proceedings, which were resumed in 2014. It admits for the first time that the assassin, Gundolf Köhler, was a right-wing radical who killed for political reasons. But that was hard to deny after all that is known.

The intention is to keep the public in the dark forever on the background to the killings and the people behind it, especially the role of the security services, above all the federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz), as the secret service is known.

The Oktoberfest bombing was the most serious right-wing terrorist attack in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The bomb was placed in a wastebasket by Köhler on the evening of September 26, 1980. It killed 12 Oktoberfest visitors in Munich as well as the perpetrator. Two hundred and eleven people were injured, some of them seriously.

Victims of the attack at the crime scene in front of the main entrance to the Oktoberfest (AP Photo/Dieter Endlicher, FILE)

At the time, the investigating authorities covered up the neo-Nazi and right-wing terrorist background of the assassin. Witness statements, according to which Köhler was not alone on the evening of the attack, were ignored. The thesis of a sole perpetrator was quickly the established narrative.

Köhler, who was a member of the right-wing extremist Wehrsportgruppe (military sports group) Hoffmann, and who had a picture of Hitler hanging over his bed, was said to have built and detonated the bomb out of distress and frustration over a failed exam. The terror attack was labelled the homicide-suicide of an unbalanced and suffering student. Some two years after the bombing, in November 1982, the federal prosecutor general ended the investigation.

Journalist Ulrich Chaussy and the victims’ attorney Werner Dietrich never accepted the official narrative and spent decades doing their own research. Thanks to their work, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office was forced to reopen the case at the end of 2014. But last year, the “26 September” special commission of the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation was dissolved.

“The perpetrator acted out of a right-wing extremist motivation,” a senior investigator told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Gundolf Koehler wanted to influence the 1980 federal elections,” the investigator continued. “He wanted a ‘Führer state’ based on the model of the Nazis.” The Christian Social Union (CSU) right-wing candidate for chancellor, Franz-Josef Strauss, was to benefit from this in the Bundestag (federal parliament) elections that followed shortly thereafter in the fall of 1980. “It was not a rampage without sense or reason,” an investigator told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In initial statements, attorney Dietrich and journalist Chaussy expressed relief that the public prosecutor’s office now considered the act a right-wing terrorist attack, because they believed that would make it possible for the victims to be compensated. Some 100 of the victims are still alive.

For decades, they had been spurned by the authorities and ridiculed as malingerers, despite having suffered life-long, in some cases very serious damage from bomb fragments. In 1980 alone, 58 people were listed as having had their legs amputated or suffered severe organ injuries. To this day, the Federal Office of Justice continues to deny the victims compensation from the fund for victims of terrorism and extremism.

It is now generally expected that the victims will be compensated, even though the federal government’s fund is obliged to compensate only victims of attacks committed after 1990. For attacks before that, it is stipulated that money will be paid only for “particularly serious incidents.” Even though the Oktoberfest attack meets this criterion, the victims will still have to fight for their compensation.

Regardless of the further course of victim compensation claims, the termination of the investigation has far-reaching political implications. It has one effect above all: the people behind the attack and the role of individual politicians and state authorities will remain in the dark.

The investigators once again interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, pursued almost 800 new leads and sifted through more than 420,000 pages of new files from the West German and East German secret service apparatuses. “But it didn’t help,” wrote Der Spiegel. “The open questions surrounding the most devastating extreme right-wing terrorist attack in Germany to date will probably remain unanswered.” The Süddeutsche Zeitung advanced a similar line, writing: “The effort couldn’t heal the mistakes of the past.”

The investigations that followed the attack and the response of the secret services and federal governments over the past four decades were not “mistakes.” The first investigations from 1980 to 1982 had the goal of eliminating all references to Köhler’s right-wing extremist background, as well as to the Hoffmann military sports group, which the secret service had under observation. The thesis of a distressed individual perpetrator was no more plausible 40 years ago than it is today.

Subsequently, all traces and evidence that in retrospect could have been dangerous for right-wing extremists and the secret services were eliminated. For example, 48 cigarette butts were found in the ashtrays of Köhler’s car parked near the crime scene. They had already been destroyed in February 1981, half a year after the attack.

Investigators had found traces of three different blood groups on the butts of six different types of cigarettes, with and without filters. DNA could not be evaluated at that time.

The stubs were a clear indication that Köhler—as many witnesses had confirmed—had not traveled alone to Munich for the Oktoberfest. In later years, the DNA on the cigarette butts could have been used to identify Köhler’s passengers.

A torn-off hand, which could not be attributed to any of the known victims, was destroyed along with all other remaining evidence in 1997.

In 2014-2015, the federal coalition government, consisting of the Christian Democrats (Christian Democratic Union—CDU and Christian Social Union—CSU) and the Social Democrats (Social Democratic Party—SPD), refused to answer questions from the parliamentary opposition, which had demanded information about the findings of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution regarding the Oktoberfest bombing and Köhler’s right-wing extremist background provided by informers. In 2017, in response to an official complaint lodged by the Greens and the Left Party, the Federal Constitutional Court decided that the government had to answer only a few individual questions. The court allowed other important questions to go unanswered.

In 2015, Chaussy reported in an interview with the World Socialist Web Site that the investigators in the reopened proceedings were not willing “to enter into the necessary critical review of the investigations of their former colleagues.” According to the journalist, the 26 September Special Commission did not want to clear up the investigatory mishaps of the past.

Instead of revealing anything about possible backers and accomplices of the assassin Köhler, the investigators ignored all relevant leads. The witness whose testimony had played the key role in forcing the reopening of the case in 2014 was said to have simply made a mistake in her recollection of the timing of events.

Two of Köhler’s close friends were also re-interrogated by the investigators, as they had contradicted each other in 1980. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office came to the conclusion that, by all indications, they knew more than they had revealed, but that nothing more could be proven. The “involvement of other persons as accomplices, instigators or assistants in the crime,” the investigators said, could not be ruled out, but neither could it be proven.

The investigators also found an accomplice of the right-wing extremist forester Heinz Lembke, who was suspected of having supplied the explosives, but allegedly there was no connection to Köhler. It remains unclear whether Lembke worked for the secret service or other state agencies.

Attorney Dietrich discovered in files the note, “Findings about Lembke are only partially usable in court”—a formulation that normally occurs only in regard to Confidential Informants or secret service employees. Lembke was found hanged in his cell in 1981 after he had announced he would testify and provide detailed information.

The cover-up of the Oktoberfest bombing must be opposed. It is unacceptable that the secret service (Verfassungsschutz) escapes any control, functioning as a state within the state with the power to determine which of its files are handed over to investigators and which are not.

This writer read Lembke’s secret service file in the Federal Archives in Koblenz in 1998, at least the pages that were available. The most important pages in the file were clearly missing. The secret service had not handed over the pages to the relatively freely accessible archive.

The Verfassungsschutz and all such agencies must be abolished and dissolved. Their archives must be opened so that trustworthy persons—such as investigative journalists and serious scientists—can fully investigate the role and clandestine activities of the secret services and make them known to the general public.

German Green Party programme: Police-state repression and militarism

Max Linhof und Jan Ritter

Germany’s Green Party presented a draft party programme in Berlin on June 26 entitled “To care and protect...” It reveals that a future federal government involving the Green Party would continue and expand the current grand coalition’s right-wing militarist agenda.

After one wades through and past the typical phrases about “ecology,” “justice” and “an economy for the common good,” the true essence of the programme comes clearly into focus: police-state repression, attacks on the working class and the pursuit of a great power policy to make Germany and Europe “fit for world politics.”

During their first participation in government at the federal level between 1998 and 2005, the Greens implemented savage attacks on the working class with the Hartz IV welfare reforms, and jointly organised Germany’s first foreign military intervention since the Second World War, in Kosovo. Now they are banging the drums for sweeping attacks on the working class and the rearmament of Germany, both at home and abroad.

Domestic state repression and police-state measures

In the sixth chapter, which bears the cynical title “Strengthening democracy—the rule of law and security,” the Greens call for the strengthening of the police to maintain control over mounting social opposition to inequality and state repression. “The police and security organs guarantee security at home,” declares the programme, remarkably. “As the visible expression of the state’s monopoly of power, the police in particular are the protector and defender of a watchful democracy. For this, they need to be well equipped and provided with adequate personnel, both in the cities and in rural areas. They depend on the trust of all citizens.”

The reaction of the Green-led state government in Baden-Württemberg to the so-called “night of violence in Stuttgart” provides a foretaste of what the Greens mean with their talk about “strengthening democracy” and confidence-building measures: police in full riot gear patrolling neighbourhoods of cities, and arbitrary checks—including full body searches—24 hours a day.

Stuttgart Mayor Fritz Kuhn (Green Party) and Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Minister, Thomas Strobl (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), recently signed a security partnership agreement. The 10-point plan for Stuttgart cements the “law-and-order” policies that have been practiced in the city for the past several weeks.

It declares, “The police in Stuttgart will, depending on the situation, ensure a large contingent of personnel for the ‘Stuttgart security concept’ (SKS).” In the city centre, police forces should be merged, and increase checks on “entry and exit routes” to Stuttgart. These plans are being augmented by the expansion of video surveillance in the city centre and a ban on alcohol and spending time at the popular Eckensee.

In addition, the Greens want to extend these methods to as many European Union (EU) member states as possible. To this end, they call for the expansion of the executive powers of the European investigation bureau and the judicial powers of the European state prosecutors. “By expanding cross-border cooperation between police and judicial authorities by means of European policing teams, a European investigative bureau and European state prosecutors, security policy will increasingly be coordinated and cooperatively pursued at the European level,” states the document. “The reform of federal cooperation between security agencies will create common standards so that investigations can increasingly be conducted jointly.”

The Greens’ anti-worker neoliberal policies

The question that naturally arises is: whose interests does this massive build-up of the state apparatus serve? Cem Özdemir, who responded to a left-wing interjection during an interview he was giving on the Stuttgart events by saying “Shut your mouth,” embodies the Greens’ aggressiveness. Asked about the possibility of a coalition with the CDU and the Christian Social Union (CSU), he told Der Spiegel that the Greens now explicitly and unashamedly advanced the interests of big business and the financial elite. “The reconciliation between ecology and the economy took place long ago within the Greens, as can be seen by the growing support we receive from business,” he remarked.

The chapter “Doing business in the future—economic and industrial policy” describes the character of this policy as the maximisation of profit and share dividends for German capital at the expense of the working class. “Regulations should be established to achieve these goals. They should give individuals and businesses the most freedom possible when it comes to the methods they choose. Inappropriate political regulations also limit free competition and inhibit economic development,” notes the programme.

To impose these “methods” of intensifying exploitation in the face of mounting opposition, the Greens propose strengthening the trade unions. “The social-ecological market economy is organised on the basis of corporate co-determination, shareholder participation and trade union representation. All this requires strong trade unions,” states the programme in the same chapter.

The trade unions are nothing other than a workplace police force within the corporations. They compete with each other to slash wages and jobs. Their officials belong to a privileged layer of society that earns fat salaries for their positions on company supervisory boards. In partnership with big business and the government, they stand up for Germany as an economic location, meaning they do not represent the interests of the workers.

The Greens advocate the same nationalist economic policy in their draft programme. They criticise protectionist measures, before calling three sentences later for the protection of European companies against hostile takeovers.

“Wage dumping, protectionism and lax regulations lead to unfair competition,” the programme says. “Many European companies are struggling with this. The purchasing of stakes in companies, direct investments, market access and the issuing of public contracts by and to third parties should be based on standards and on the principle of reciprocity. Takeovers from outside Europe must, where necessary, be prevented. Critical infrastructure and key industries must be protected.”

The Green document goes on to argue that the state must ensure by means of an “active industrial policy” that Germany “maintain its position as a global industrial player.” In summary, this means subordinating politics entirely to the interests of the financial and corporate elites at the expense of the wages and living standards of the working class. The result of this inhumane class policy is being made clear to millions of people around the world during the current coronavirus pandemic, with the placing of profits before human lives.

Workers confront short-time work benefits, unemployment and a social crisis, and must now risk their lives due to the “back-to-work” campaign to boost corporate profits and repay the coronavirus bailout programmes. This was shown starkly in the district of Gütersloh. After an outbreak in a meat-packing plant belonging to billionaire Clemens Tönnies, 7,000 workers were forced into quarantine. The schools and childcare facilities throughout the district had to be closed once again and a lockdown imposed.

The Greens’ aggressive anti-worker policy is not limited to Germany, but also encompasses its Europe policy. They advocate establishing Germany as a great power and securing its leadership role in Europe.

The European Union as an imperialist world power

In their chapter calling for a nationalist “economic and industrial policy,” the Greens advocate a policy for Europe in the interests of the German bourgeoisie. “As one of the world’s largest economic areas, the European Union can set global standards with its common internal market,” notes the programme. “This should be used to press ahead with transformation, defend human rights, ensure competitiveness, remain as independent as possible from other global players and safeguard citizens’ rights in the largely unregulated global digital marketplace.”

What does this mean in practice? How and by what means do the Greens intend to set global standards and stay competitive? Which transformations do they want to carry out to become less dependent on other global players? They provide answers to these questions in the chapter “International partnerships.” Under German leadership, the EU is to emerge as a leading foreign policy and military great power.

On their plans for the European Union, they write, “The EU must become fit for world politics. It must jointly shape the rules of the global order in the spirit of universal values and interests based on them,” states the document. “A unified European Union can assert itself in a globalised world and unleash democratic power to shape change.” To “deal with global challenges,” the “European Union, as a peaceful power, must ... be conscious of its global responsibility.”

The call for a global role for Europe is a direct challenge to American imperialism and to the other two major economic and nuclear-armed powers, China and Russia.

The Greens demand that Europe and Germany assume greater responsibility within the United Nations. Such “responsibility” means that they “substantially ... strengthen their engagement financially, in terms of personnel and diplomatically,” and implement “international agreements decisively and coherently in European and national policy.” They speak of “the principle of reform by strengthening,” so as to better enforce German and European interests.

They intend to work on creating a “security union” in order to “do justice to European defence and security.” European foreign and security policy must “be strategic, forward-looking, comprehensive and capable of taking swift action.” To this end, “a joint capacity for analysis and the strengthening of the European foreign affairs service” are necessary.

However, the Greens believe that they and the German bourgeoisie are obliged to determine the course on foreign policy that the EU must take. “The European Union grows through stronger collaboration. Because not every European state wants the same thing at the same time. But European agreement and the blockading stance adopted by some states cannot become excuses for collective inaction. That’s why some states have to move forward further than others on certain things while advancing in other areas together,” argues the programme.

The main issue on which Germany is moving ahead together with other EU states is the military rearmament of the EU. Last year, then-German Defence Minister and current EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen signed several agreements with her French and Spanish counterparts to establish a joint air combat system, the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).

Experts estimate that by 2050, total costs will amount to €500 billion [$US570 billion]! The “system of systems” explicitly incorporates “manned airplanes with unmanned aircraft” and other sections of the armed forces into a single unit. “The air force, navy, and army can cooperate more closely as a result,” notes a report on the Defence Ministry’s official website.

European rearmament and war under German leadership

The drive to transform the EU into a combative military power occupies a central place in the Greens’ draft programme. They write in the section on “global security” that “peacekeeping missions” led by the United Nations are “a central instrument of collective peace and security and should therefore be strengthened.”

The Greens declare their explicit support for militarism and war. “The use of military force always brings with it tremendous suffering. But we also know that the failure to use it in certain situations can lead to even greater suffering,” they cynically state. “In international security policy, our actions [are] guided by ... the expanded UN responsibility to prevent, protect, rebuild, which commits us an international community to protect people from the worst of all human rights abuses,” they add.

The reality is that international military interventions organised under the banner of the “responsibility to protect” serve not to defend human rights, but to pursue predatory imperialist interests. In 2011, NATO bombarded Libya on the pretext of the “responsibility to protect” and organised the murder of Muammar Gaddafi in order to seize Libya’s vast oil reserves.

In order to more effectively enforce the geostrategic and economic interests of German and European imperialism, the Greens also call for the creation of independent military structures. They write that instead of “directing more money into parallel national military structures” they want to “expand the cooperation of the EU’s armed forces” and integrate “military capabilities.” They also demand “appropriate equipment, the increasing of EU units, and the strengthening of the joint European headquarters.”

Additionally, the Greens appeal for a “new strategic orientation” for NATO. “With stronger military cooperation and coordination within the EU and with Britain, common European interests can be represented more decisively and forcefully, especially within NATO,” states the programme. The restructuring of NATO is necessary, because NATO is suffering due to “the divergent security policy interests within the alliance.” The meaning of this is clear: like the entire German bourgeoisie, the Greens are striving for a more independent foreign and military policy from the US to defend the interests of German imperialism, including against Washington if required.

To achieve this goal, the German army in particular needs to be massively strengthened. The Greens state that the army is “a parliamentary army anchored in international alliances,” and that therefore “parliament has a duty to care for the soldiers ... as well as to equip them appropriately to fulfill their tasks.”

The Greens also demand that German imperialism intervene chiefly in the regions where it plundered in the past. They are striving, among other things, for “partnerships and economic cooperation with the regions on Europe’s doorstep. The EU’s eastern partnership, as well as cooperation with countries in North Africa and the Middle East strengthens democracy, human rights and economic development. They should be expanded.”

The right-wing coup in Ukraine, supported by the US and Germany, shows what the Greens mean by partnership and democratisation. Since the crisis in Ukraine triggered by the 2014 coup, the number and scope of military exercises in Eastern Europe have increased considerably. This year, “Defender 2020,” the largest NATO exercise in Europe in 25 years, took place.

The cooperation with countries in North Africa is also aimed at expanding Germany’s power. In countries like Mali and Niger, Germany’s geopolitical interests in Africa are already being enforced with weapons. Access to rare earth supplies and cheap labour and the prevention of so-called “illegal immigration” are among Berlin’s central concerns.

A right-wing, bourgeois party

With its new programme, the Greens are auditioning for a major role in the next federal government, and signalling to the German bourgeoisie that they will unconditionally uphold its reactionary interests in all areas. They have inscribed protectionism, economic nationalism, militarism and war on their banner. “This is a programme that ... bolsters our claim to leadership,” offered Annalena Bearbock, the Green Party’s federal co-leader.

The programme was broadly welcomed by possible coalition partners. Friedrich Merz (CDU) was reassured, saying, “I dare say I could achieve clearly recognisable CDU positions in a constellation with the Greens, and ensure that we not only adopt reasonable measures in economic and financial policy, but also on issues of social policy.” The former pacifists have moved so far to the right that even the most reactionary representatives of the ruling class now applaud them.

German state intelligence agency deletes data of right-wing extremists

Christoph Vandreier

The decision by the state of Saxony’s intelligence agency to delete data it had collected on members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) highlights the close links between Germany’s secret services, the national government and the right-wing extremist milieu, not only in Saxony but throughout the country.

Last Wednesday it was revealed that the Saxony Interior Ministry had instructed its intelligence service (officially known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution) to delete all information collected on members of the AfD currently sitting in the Saxony state parliament. When the head of the agency, Gordian Meyer-Plath, refused to carry out the order to delete, he was immediately replaced last Tuesday by Dirk-Martin Christian.

Christian had previously headed the technical supervision section of the secret service in the Ministry of the Interior and had ordered the deletion of the AfD data. At the end of 2019, he had also forbidden the intelligence agency from monitoring the right-wing extremist Pegida movement in the city of Dresden, which conducts racist campaigns against refugees and threatens leftists and all those who oppose its politics.

Wahlabend Sachsen 2019: Martin Dulig (SPD), Ministerpräsident Michael Kretschmer (CDU), Jörg Urban (AfD), by: Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Meyer-Plath is a longtime member of the far-right Marchia student fraternity and former undercover officer responsible for liaison with Carsten Szczepanski, a supporter of the neo-Nazi terror group, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which carried out 10 murders. As head of the state secret service, Meyer-Plath has concentrated on targeting leftists and anti-fascists, while providing protective cover for far-right terror networks and the AfD. The fact that such a figure was dismissed because he was unwilling to delete the data of AfD members of parliament shows the extent of the cooperation between the Interior Ministry and the AfD.

Interior Minister Roland Wöller (Christian Democratic Union—CDU) and Christian made this clear at a press conference on Thursday. Wöller confirmed all of the allegations made and defended the deletion of the AfD data. This was necessary, he claimed, because the data had been “illegally stored.”

Wöller was not referring to tapped telephone calls, statements by informants and/or other intelligence information. Christian stressed that the data had been collected exclusively from publicly accessible sources and maintained that storage of the information was “illegal” because the data on AfD deputies did not contain sufficient evidence of their anti-constitutional activities. In other words, according to Wöller, the intelligence agency, in the course of many years of work, had been unable to confirm that individual members of the AfD in Saxony pursued right-wing extremist goals.

This is a ludicrous claim aimed at justifying the deletion of the data. Even a superficial glance at the AfD faction in the Saxon state parliament makes clear that the majority of the grouping are right-wing extremists.

Jörg Urban, who has headed the AfD faction in the state parliament since 2014 and its state organisation since 2018, openly advocates far-right views. He calls for a “homogenous people,” glorifies “white European culture” and accuses “representatives of do-gooderism” of forcing “our girls to the butcher’s block of the welcome culture” (a reference to Germany’s acceptance of immigrants in 2015) and “into the arms of rapists.” Back in April 2019, a court in Dresden concluded that, on the basis of such opinions, it was admissible to call Urban a “neo-Nazi.”

Urban also makes no secret of his support for the nationalist “Wing” of the AfD, which was recently certified by the federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as demonstrating “definite indications of right-wing extremist efforts opposed to a free democratic, constitutional order.” In his greetings to a meeting of the “Wing” held in Kyffhäuser in 2019, Urban called those in attendance “like-minded.”

Flying in the face of facts, Christian, Saxony’s new head of the secret service, declared at a press conference on Thursday that so far no membership of the “Wing” on the part of AfD members had been proven. “We do more harm to democracy if we draw hasty conclusions and then go public and pillory people when we cannot prove it afterwards,” Christian said.

When asked why only the state of Saxony refuses to collect evidence on AfD deputies in contrast to other federal states, Christian explained: “We have the same legal basis as all of the federal states and federal government, but we have different individual cases. I cannot put a member of parliament from Saxony on a par with one from Brandenburg or Saxony-Anhalt. There are always people behind them.”

While Christian readily protects right-wing extremist agitators and the “people behind them,” his agency has been aggressively pursuing leftist and antifascist groups for years.

For example, in its 2018 report, the state secret service denounced four left-wing music groups—Dr. Ulrich Undeutsch, East German Beauties, Endstation Chaos and One Step Ahead—as “left-wing extremist.” To justify its claim, song lyrics were taken out of context and interpreted in a one-sided way. Last year, the Dresden Administrative Court ruled that the naming and observation of the bands by the secret service was illegal.

Earlier, the Saxony secret service had accused the organisers of an anti-Nazi concert, attended by 70,000 people following far-right riots in Chemnitz, of having given provided a platform for left-wing extremists—allowing them to influence “non-extremists with their extremist ideology.” As proof, the secret service referred to shouts of “Alerta, alerta Antifascista” from the audience—i.e., the call for anti-fascists to be vigilant!

While Wöller uttered a few platitudes about the importance of opposing right-wing extremism at the press conference, Christian made abundantly clear that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution under his leadership would continue to protect right-wing extremists and criminalise left-wingers.

Cristian described “extremism of any sort” as the “greatest danger” and stressed that the fight against right-wing extremism was just one focal point. He regarded his task as “putting a stop to political extremism as a whole.” Such phrases have become commonplace in recent years to justify the continuation and intensification of official cooperation with right-wing extremists.

This political course has the support not just of the CDU, but also its two coalition partners in the state, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens. Valentin Lippmann, head of the Green faction in the Saxon state parliament, defended Wöller’s evasions and declared: “One does not fight enemies of the constitution by using unconstitutional practices.” Lippmann expressly praised Christian’s response and his appointment to head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The Left Party also supports the absurd argumentation of Wöller and Christian that the secret service was unable to confirm right-wing extremism on the part of AfD members of parliament. According to Kerstin Köditz, spokeswoman of the Left Party for anti-fascist policy, the state intelligence agency was “too stupid to justify to the Ministry of the Interior why it has to store data on AfD members of parliament. In exercising its supervision, the Ministry therefore came to the conclusion that the storage was unlawful and that the data should be deleted,” Köditz said.

In addition to the claim that the Ministry and the authority had acted out of “stupidity” and not out of political conviction, the German media is also propagating the absurd notion that what took place in Saxony was a local phenomenon.

In fact, Saxony is only the latest, very clear example of how closely parties and government throughout the country are linked to far-right networks operating within the state apparatus. Similar events to those in Saxony have taken place with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and at the hands of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. According to recent reports, Seehofer was opposed to including the AfD and its “Wing,” as well as the AfD’s neo-fascist youth organisation, “Young Alternative,” in the intelligence agency’s annual report for 2019.

The BfV insisted, however, that these organisations be included in its report—not because it intended to take action against the party, but rather out of fears that the report would meet with “incomprehension from politicians, the media and the public,” according to an internal exchange of letters, reported by a German news source. Publication of the secret service report has been postponed indefinitely.

If the AfD or individual parts of it are actually included in the report, this would be the first time that the party appears in the chapter on right-wing extremism. Even far-right terrorist organisations such as Combat18, which has been involved in various attacks, were not listed in the last secret service annual report.

Instead, the secret service criminalises all those who oppose the far right. Two years ago, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) was listed in the report for the first time as a left-wing extremist and as an object for surveillance. After the party filed a legal complaint against its being named in the report, the federal government defended surveillance of the SGP, arguing that “fighting for a democratic, egalitarian, socialist society” was not compatible with the German constitution.

The domestic intelligence service and its close ties to the extreme right-wing scene are being used by the government to intimidate anyone who opposes its policies of militarism, police-state build-up and soaring social inequality. This is particularly evident in the cover up of right-wing extremist structures by the Interior Ministry and state government in Saxony.

The blinding of Gustavo Gatica and the return to unrestrained police state violence in Chile

Mauricio Saavedra

Eight months after university student Gustavo Gatica was blinded by riot police, not one officer has been arrested. In the case of factory worker Fabiola Callimpai, who was nearly killed by the impact to the head of a teargas canister, the Carabineros have not made public which officers were involved. These two cases are representative of thousands of human rights abuses committed in Chile since the eruption of massive demonstrations against social inequality last year. They reveal a level of impunity not seen since the 17-year military dictatorship, when thousands were arrested, tortured, killed and disappeared.

On July 6, the Investigations Police (PDI) made a perfunctory promise to the Human Rights Commission of the lower house of Congress that investigations into the two cases would be concluded in the “following days.” The PDI has been promising this undertaking since prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus in March, but continues to drag its feet as human rights groups and investigative journalists publish further damning evidence. The PDI works in coordination with the civilian Public Prosecutor’s Office, a toothless body when it comes to prosecuting Carabineros.

“The police have an obligation to communicate the results in order to lower the perception of impunity,” PDI director general Héctor Espinosa told the parliamentary deputies. “We are committed to the truth … I have absolute confidence that my institution will rise to the occasion in these two cases, because the country needs to know what happened.”

Lt. Col. Crespo pointing gun at a firefighter in Plaza Dignidad. (Credit: @frentefotografico)

Espinosa seemingly convinced the parliamentary human rights commission and its president Emilia Nuyado (Socialist Party), who openly praised the institution.

No class-conscious worker, youth or student—those who have borne the brunt of escalating human rights abuses—has any expectation that the thoroughly corrupt and brutal state repressive apparatus, which acts in the service of corporate and financial ruling elites, will be brought to justice. The Carabineros are an autonomous military unit barely answerable to civilian bodies and have from the outset lied, obfuscated and withheld information in these cases, as in so many others before and after them.

At about 4 p.m. on November 8 of last year, Gustavo Gatica, a 21-year-old psychology student, was shot in the face by riot police while on Carabineros de Chile street. From a distance of no more than 30 metres, the special forces were indiscriminately firing rubber-coated lead pellets into hundreds of youth standing behind makeshift barricades.

Each cartridge releases 12 pellets. In the space of four hours, three high-ranking riot police used 420 cartridges, releasing a total of 5,040 pellets against the youth. This came to light only at the end of June because of leaked evidence, published by Amnesty International and other human rights and investigative organisations, revealing the identities of the three agents: Col. Santiago Saldivia, Lt. Col. Claudio Crespo and Lt. Col. Andrés Graves.

The Deputy Director General of the Carabineros, Inspector General Diego Olate, also addressed the deputies at last week’s parliamentary session exclusively to whitewash the crimes of his agents. Crespo, he said, “has an impeccable record, with commendations.” Olate added that he wanted to put on the record “that the disciplinary measures (against Crespo) are related to the breach of protocol” and not the injuries sustained by Gatica.

Olate was referring to the fact the institution had recently been impelled to remove Crespo because it had become public knowledge that the cop had attempted to hide his presence at the events of November 8—he downloaded his body camera onto his computer before submitting it to internal auditors. As a matter of fact, the auditors initially did not even take his deposition, even though he was a commanding officer and had personally fired 170 cartridges. More information has since come forward about this sadistic cop, who has a long history of violence and “systematic torture of minors,” according to one medic.

Gustavo Gatica (Credit Eduardo Gatica)

On the day of Gustavo Gatica’s blinding, the Medical Association and the Society of Ophthalmology released a chilling report stating that 176 people had suffered severe injuries to their eyes in the previous two weeks of protests. Sixty percent had severe decrease in vision, and 30 percent had been blinded in one eye. This is equal to more than two-thirds of all eye injuries caused by “non-lethal” weapons in demonstrations or areas of conflict from 1990 to 2017.

The eruption of massive demonstrations on October 18, triggered by a public transport fare hike, was immediately met with unprecedented police state violence. The ultra-right administration of billionaire President Sebastian Piñera set in motion a series of draconian laws to outlaw protests and decreed for the first time in the 30 years of civilian rule a State of Constitutional Emergency. This allowed the military, Carabineros special forces and black berets to unleash a reign of terror.

“We are at war,” Piñera broadcast on live television. “We are at war with a powerful, ruthless enemy, who respects nothing and no one, who is willing to use violence and crime without any limits.” Piñera’s war was, and continues to be, against the working class, students and youth who have been at the receiving end of 50 years of social and political counterrevolutionary measures that have helped enrich the scions of Augusto Pinochet’s fascist civic-military dictatorship and created one of the most socially unequal countries in the world. Chile, the “paragon” of free market nostrums of the World Bank and the IMF imposed at the barrel of a gun, today boasts shantytowns amid condominiums, 25 percent unemployment amid 4,000 multi-millionaires and, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, collapsed public hospitals for the poor amid concierge clinics for the rich.

By November 26 of last year, the Chilean Institute of Human Rights reported that at least five people had died at the hands of the security forces and more than 2,300 had been injured, of whom more than 1,400 were wounded by firearms and 220 suffered severe eye trauma.

The Prosecutor’s Office recorded more than 1,100 complaints of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, as well as more than 70 crimes of a sexual nature committed by Carabineros. In the case of Josué Maureira, it reported that he had been raped with a cane while in police custody.

Meanwhile Amnesty International documented the practice of Carabineros and soldiers running over or attempting to run over protesters walking in the street on at least nine occasions in the cities of Colina, Quilpué, Santiago, Viña del Mar and Valparaíso.

“The use of tear gas in an inadequate manner and in alarming quantities… as well as in hospitals, universities, homes and even schools, seriously affecting children, adolescents and other populations that require special care,” reported the human rights organisation. “Its firing into the body of people at close range and through grenade launchers … has generated severe injuries, including to the eyes.”

This is how Fabiola Campillai, 36 and the mother of three, was nearly killed by Special Forces in the working-class commune of Cinco Pinos in Greater Santiago on the evening of November 26. At 9 p.m., Fabiola and her sister Ana Maria were heading to work at Carozzi S.A., a Chilean-based food processing company. As they turned onto Portales Avenue East, riot police fired a tear gas canister into Fabiola’s face from less than five metres.

Ana Maria screamed at the cops standing two metres away to help her sister to the hospital “She’s dying, she's bleeding to death.’ I told them. They just shooed me away. They smiled and threw a tear gas canister at my feet.”

Fabiola has undergone multiple high-risk procedures to prevent cerebrospinal fluid seepage and has been left with scar running from one ear to the other. She lost, in addition to her sight, her senses of taste and smell.

Last week La Tercera released video footage from Capt. Jaime Fernández’ GoPro body camera where officers are heard saying, “He hit her, right?”, “Matu seems to have hit her, hit her with a …” as a third shot was fired by Capt. Patricio Maturana Ojedabut.

Yet to date, no one has been charged. Public prosecutors have requested more time to investigate the case.

There is no tally of the total victims of the police state repression—the state’s own figures are a deliberate underestimation. Last March, the National Human Rights Institute issued a balance sheet indicating that 3,838 men, women and children were hospitalised due to severe injuries caused by bullet wounds, tear gas canisters and beatings. Of these, 460 suffered eye wounds. The NHRI recorded, during visits to police stations, the detention of 11,389 men, women, adolescents and children. Among those detained, 2,146 reported some kind of human rights violation: sexual violence (257); torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (617); and excessive use of force (1,272).

The NHRI acknowledged that the figures do “not represent the universe of people injured since the social crisis, but is only a sample of cases observed or confirmed.”

Yemen fragmenting under pressure of war, collapsing economy and COVID-19

Jean Shaoul

The five-year-old Yemen war is creating a catastrophe of immense proportions in the Middle East’s poorest country.

Last week, Saudi Arabia launched scores of air strikes on the capital Sana’a, Saada and other cities in the north under the control of the Houthi rebels, with the aim of killing top officials.

The attacks followed the Houthis firing missiles and drones at the Saudi capital Riyadh and military installations in Jizan, Najran, Khamis Mushayt, and Abha. While the Saudis said they had intercepted and destroyed two missiles and six drones, the Houthis claimed they had hit the Tadawin camp where Saudi and Yemeni leaders were meeting, killing and injuring dozens, as well as the Saudi Ministry of Defence.

In this Sunday, June 14, 2020 photo, seven-month-old Issa Ibrahim Nasser is brought to a clinic in Deir Al-Hassi, At seven months old, Issa weighs only three kilos. Like him, hundreds of children suffer from acute severe malnutrition because of poverty and grinding conflict. Yemen. (AP Photo/Issa Al-Rajhi)

The Houthis said their attacks were in response to the crimes of the Saudi-led coalition, the latest being the killing of four civilians, including a child, in a naval attack in May on the country’s north-western province of Hajjah, and the ongoing naval blockade of Hodeidah port that is preventing the most basic commodities, including food and pharmaceuticals, reaching Yemen’s people. Around 14 million of Yemen’s 28 million population are on the brink of starvation, while 80 percent are reliant on food aid.

The Saudis’ 257,000 aerial strikes and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) naval blockade have caused the deaths of at least 230,000 civilians, both directly and indirectly due to hunger and disease, and displaced 3.6 million. Save the Children estimated last year that at least 75,000 under the age of five have starved to death since the onset of the war. The worst cholera epidemic on record has infected an estimated 1.2 million people and led to at least 2,500 deaths, while the recent floods have sparked a dengue fever outbreak in Hadramawt. The United Nations has recorded 137,000 cases of cholera and diarrhea this year, nearly a quarter of them in children under five.

Armed gangs, militias, and former Saudi mercenaries terrorise the people and extort money. Hospitals and schools do not have basic necessities, while water supplies, telecommunications, electricity generation and the road system barely function, if at all, due to the Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes.

Human rights organisations have reported extrajudicial detentions, beatings, nail removal and electric shocks in Yemen’s unofficial detention centres and prisons, which have expanded during the war, with abuses committed by all parties to the war. This is in addition to the atrocious conditions in the official prisons and detention centres.

The recent escalation in fighting follows the failure of the Riyadh Agreement, backed by the US and France and signed by the Hadi government and the secessionist Southern Transitional Council in November last year, for a power sharing deal, as well as the Saudis’ efforts over the last four months to effect a ceasefire. The Houthis have been reluctant to agree a ceasefire under conditions where the Saudi-led coalition has failed to make headway in a costly war it had in 2015 expected to win in a matter of weeks.

The origins of the war lie in the 2011 Arab Spring, when mass protests broke out against the 32-year-long dictatorial rule of US and Saudi-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who turned the military on the protesters. He was later forced to resign in favour of his vice-president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, paving the way for elections in February 2012 in which Hadi was the only candidate to lead a transitional government. Houthi rebels in the north of the country rejected Hadi’s cosmetic reforms, and with the support of the former dictator, captured Sana’a, forcing Hadi to take refuge in Saudi Arabia.

The situation on Yemen as of June 1 2020. The green area is controlled by the Supreme Political Council (Houthis), and the pink area is controlled by the Hadi-led government and allies.

In March 2015, the House of Saud launched a military campaign to suppress the Houthi rebels and to reimpose their puppet, Hadi, who had taken up residence in Riyadh. It formed a military coalition with the UAE and other Arab countries. While the Saudis prosecuted the war by air, the UAE blockaded Hodeidah—Yemen’s principal Red Sea port—and provided many of the ground troops, along with local or tribal militias operating in unstable and fluid alliances, some backed by Riyadh and some by Abu Dhabi, until pulling out of the war last year.

The US and UK, along with the other major powers, have backed the Saudi-led coalition to the hilt. They have supplied it with fighter jets, sophisticated weapons, material, military intelligence, refueling facilities and even covert forces on the ground. They not only provided diplomatic cover at the United Nations Security Council, but even secured an arms embargo on the groups under the control of the Houthis and former president Saleh—until he switched sides.

The five-year-long war has turned into several conflicts and fragmented the country into three areas. The first is controlled by the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, in the north. The second is controlled by the UAE-backed STC in the south, which in June captured the Socotra Archipelago alongside major shipping routes near the entrance to the Gulf of Aden, and the Republican Guards on the western coast, led by former president Saleh’s nephew. The third, in the eastern provinces, is controlled by Hadi’s dwindling forces, who are battling not just the Houthis in Sana’a but the STC, based in Aden, and dissent in Shabwa, Marib and Hadhramawt governorates, testifying to the almost universal hatred of the Saudis and their local stooge.

The economy has also collapsed. Yemen’s currency, the rial, has plummeted to its lowest rate against foreign currencies since the start of the war in March 2015, falling by 12 percent since the start of 2020 to 800 rials to the US dollar, amid international warnings of further falls. This was the result not just of the ongoing military war, but also the coalition’s economic warfare on the country, including seizing control of Yemen’s oil and gas fields in the east and southern provinces, moving the Central Bank from Sana’a to Aden—to which the Houthis responded by banning the use of new banknotes printed in Aden and thereby creating two separate economic systems—and speculative attacks by market traders on the currency.

A recent humanitarian aid conference for Yemen, hosted by Riyadh, raised just $1.35 billion, around $1 billion short of the target and less than half the $3.2 billion raised last year. Mark Lowcock, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that unless more money was raised, Yemen “will face a horrific outcome at the end of the year”. He added, “Yemen is now on the precipice, right on the cliff edge, below which lies a tragedy of historic proportions.”

Last month, UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, warned that water, sanitation and hygiene services for four million people would start shutting down in July if it did not get $30 million by the end of the month. Sara Beysolow Nyanti, UNICEF’s representative for Yemen, said, “We are trying to prevent the health and water systems collapsing, and we were holding those pieces together. Now we are on the brink of collapse.” She added, “COVID could be the tipping point. Right now, 75 per cent of communities cannot afford to buy soap, and if they do have the money, the choice will be to buy something they can eat or medicine.”

She warned that over 6,000 children could die in the next six months from preventable diseases and malnutrition because of the terrible state of healthcare, lack of water and soap and the inability of aid workers to provide assistance because of the lack of funding. A further 30,000 children could develop life-threatening, severe acute malnutrition later this year. The total number of malnourished under-fives could rise to 2.4 million, half of that age group.

Around 1,500 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed since the first case was recorded in April and over 400 deaths have been reported. The high death rate relative to the number of cases, nearly four times the global average, points to the lack of testing capacity in the country.

Southeastern US experiencing harrowing rise in coronavirus infections

Cordell Gascoigne

More than 3.5 million Americans have been infected by the coronavirus and more than 139,000 have died. The Southeastern states have seen sharp spikes in the rates of infection, hospitalization, and death due to the coronavirus in the last month and a half. Young or old, black or white, COVID-19 knows no boundaries. The outbreak poses particular risk to meat processing and factory workers, teachers and students, and hospital staff.

From June 1 to July 10, South Carolina reported a mortifying 436.5 percent increase in newly reported cases in the 21-30-year-old age group. Dr. Joan Duwve, director of public health for the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) has reported that 42 percent of the coronavirus cases in South Carolina to date have been reported in the past two weeks. The state reports a 75 percent ICU bed utilization rate along with a 25 percent utilization rate of ventilators. Coronavirus patients represent less than 20 percent of all hospitalizations, yet they utilize the greatest amount of resources.

Duwve also noted that 22 percent of COVID-19 cases in the state are among young people. She further observed that 15 percent of the cases in the state are in people 20 years old or younger. In addition to the continued rise in confirmed infections, currently at 60,389, the state witnessed its first child death Saturday, with a 5-year-old succumbing to COVID-19.

On Tuesday, the Mississippi Department of Health (MSDH) reported 862 new cases and 23 additional deaths. The MSDH reports that 805 Mississippians are currently hospitalized across the state with coronavirus infections, an increase of 119 from the previous high of 686 reported on July 9.

Mississippi reported 1,092 cases on June 25, the highest one-day total in the state during the pandemic. On July 9, State Department of Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs stated that Intensive Care Units (ICU) in five of the state’s 122 hospitals were full. As of Friday, there was a total of 109 outbreaks in long-term care facilities; 2,927 residents in those facilities have been diagnosed with COVID-19, with 586 deaths.

The state’s current total of coronavirus cases is 37,542 with 1,272 deaths. The highest concentration of cases has been in the Jackson metro area and in north Mississippi, near Memphis, Tennessee. Hinds County, the state’s most populous county, has the highest number of cases at 3,102, closely tailed by Desoto County with 2,050 confirmed cases. Madison County ranks third with 1,560 confirmed cases. Mississippians aged 60-69 make up the largest number of hospitalizations with 777. Those aged 70-79 make up the largest number of deaths with 325 as of July 10.

Meanwhile, Arkansas has a current total of 29,733 cases of coronavirus and 323 deaths. The hospital system in Arkansas is being stretched to its limits on resources and bed occupancy. A report published by Harvard Global Health Institute predicts that demand for hospital beds will be 156 percent greater than what is currently available at the pandemic’s peak in Little Rock, the state’s capital and largest city, concluding that demand will overwhelm ICU capacity.

A 2018 census found that Little Rock had 4,850 hospital beds available, in which 55 percent were occupied, leaving 2,170 bed available. The bed count included 520 beds in ICU, as reported by the American Hospital Association and American Hospital Directory. With a population of about 1.6 million, and infection and fatality rates on the rise, and a strain of resources, hospitals in the city are soon to exceed maximum capacity.

In Alabama, 57,255 people are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 and 1,164 have died. The number of confirmed cases has been rising by more than 1,000 for the last week. In a dire warning for the state of the healthcare system, Alabama Hospital Association President Dr. Don Williamson asserted, “Right now, we’re managing it. But you know, with 200 ICU beds, with 1,100 plus patients with COVID in the hospital, with 1,700 adult medicine beds, we can cope with where we are now. What we can’t cope with is the sustained increase in the number of patients.”

The Tennessee Department of Health (TDOH) reported an additional 1,514 cases on Monday, bringing the state's total to 66,788. TDOH officials also included in their report 38,272 recoveries, 767 deaths, and 3,378 hospitalizations.

On Friday, ICU beds were at over 80 percent occupancy, while on July 8, that number was at 75 percent occupancy, and 72 percent on July 7. In addition to ICU beds decreasing in availability, overall available hospital bed occupancy increased from 73 percent on July 7 to 82 percent on Friday.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) reports that 89,484 people in the state have tested positive for the coronavirus, with 1,552 deaths and 1,109 hospitalizations. According to the NCDHHS, 78 percent of ICU beds were occupied as of Friday, for which the total of hospitalizations in the state sat at 1,046, surpassing the previous record of 1,034 reported at the day before, marking the fifth record-breaking day in a row.

The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) recorded the second highest single-day increase on Friday, seeing 2,600 new cases. This was the highest increase of cases in a 14-day observational period. As hospitalizations continue to rise, increasing from 75 to 1,362 people, 146 patients in the state are now on ventilators. The LDH reported a total of 82,042 cases Tuesday—an increase of 7,346 from Thursday—along with 3,337 deaths since the first cases were diagnosed in March.

On Tuesday, the Georgia Department of Public Health (GDPH) reported 123,963 confirmed cases of coronavirus, a 9,562 increase from Sunday, 2,662 ICU admissions, and 3,054 deaths. The number of available hospital beds to treat critically ill patients afflicted with COVID-19 is dropping across the state as more and more cases are reported. Statewide, 13,685 people are currently hospitalized due to COVID-19.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that 82 percent of Georgia’s hospital ICU beds are currently in use. As of Thursday, the hospitals in Columbus, Georgia’s Region I had less than 10 critical care beds available.

Florida is now one of the main epicenters for the outbreak in the United States and globally with 291,629 total confirmed cases with 4,409 deaths reported by the Florida Department of Health. The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), which updates the data in real time, reported on July 10 that 6,974 patients were hospitalized statewide with a “primary diagnosis of [COVID-19].”

Furthermore, on the same day, the AHCA dashboard reported that there were only 917 ICU beds available. With a population of 21.48 million, hospitals across the state will not be able to accommodate a large influx of new patients. In Miami-Dade County , 1,578 patients were hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, with those in critical condition taking up 87 percent of the county’s ICU beds.

The explosive increase in cases of COVID-19 throughout the Southeast is attributable to the premature push to reopen the economy by state governors, following the lead of President Donald Trump, along with hostile work conditions conducive to the spread of the virus. The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting has tied 7,185 cases of coronavirus directly to poultry titan Tyson foods, based in Springdale, Arkansas. At least 24 Tyson workers have died of COVID-19. In addition, a large contributing factor to the rapid spread of the disease is the lack of proper personal protective equipment.