India’s Supreme Court punishes prominent lawyer for criticizing its role in assault on democratic rights

Kranti Kumara

Despite a public outcry, India’s Supreme Court has convicted and sentenced prominent Indian lawyer Prashant Bhushan for “contempt of court” for having accused it of complicity in the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s assault on democratic rights.

The court’s victimization of Bhushan for his trenchant remarks is a gross attack on democratic rights.

India’s highest court found Bhushan guilty of “criminal contempt of court” for two tweets the well-known “Public Interest litigation” and civil rights attorney made in late June that criticized the court’s conduct and that of the Chief Justice of India. According to the Court, with his tweets Bhushan had sought to “to scandalize the entire institution.”

In the run-up to last week’s sentencing hearing, the three-judge Supreme Court panel that had convicted Bhushan repeatedly threatened to jail him if he did not issue a grovelling apology.

This Buhsan rightly refused to do, insisting he could not issue an apology for exercising his basic democratic right to free expression. In his written response to the court’s threat to hold him in criminal contempt, he stated that if his tweets were “regarded as a contempt, it would stifle free speech and would constitute an unreasonable restriction on the right of a citizen,” as guaranteed “under Article 19 (1) (a) of the [Indian] Constitution,” to “freedom of speech and expression.”

Under conditions where COVID-19 is raging across India, jailing the 63-year-old Bhushan would have placed his health and life in peril.

Ultimately, the court backed down, and offered Bhushan a way of avoiding jail if he paid a token fine. His lawyer promptly did this.

However, in passing sentence, India’s highest court continued to insist on its “right” to punish and jail those who criticize its actions.

The Court’s 82-page sentencing verdict conceded that India’s contempt of court law is “vague” and “colonial.” It also claimed there “cannot be any compromise” in upholding the “Right to Free Speech and Opinions.” But all this was just a crude attempt to give a veneer of legitimacy to a flagrantly anti-democratic judgement that is meant to silence opposition to the court’s role as a resolute defender of Indian big business and accomplice of the Hindu supremacist BJP.

The verdict proclaimed that when criticism of the Supreme Court’s conduct goes “beyond a permissible limit,” it has a duty to act. The court must wield “the strong arm of the law” to “strike” those who challenge “the supremacy of the law by fouling its source and stream”— that is, those who dare to criticize its anti-democratic actions.

In this case, the court gave Bhushan the option of paying a 1 rupee (1.25 US cent) fine, but not without adding that if he failed to do so by Sept. 15, he would be imprisoned for three months and “debarred from practising in this Court for a period of three years.”

What then, were the remarks made by Bhushan that so enraged India’s Supreme Court justices?

On June 26, he tweeted:

When historians in the future look back at the last 6 years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the Supreme Court in this destruction, & more particularly the role of the last 4 CJIs (Chief Justices of India).

In speaking of the “last 6 years,” Bhushan is referring to the rule of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government. The most powerful sections of Indian big business propelled the BJP to power in May 2014 in order to accelerate the pace of pro-investor “reform” and more aggressively pursue their great-power ambitions on the global arena, above all by integrating India more fully into Washington’s strategic offensive against China.

In pursuit of this agenda, the Modi government has jailed opponents on trumped-up sedition and terrorism charges, turned a blind eye to Hindu supremacist violence, carried out a constitutional coup to strip Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous constitutional status, and increased censorship of social media.

Three days later, on June 29, Bhushan posted a second tweet:

CJI rides a 50 lakh [rupee] motorcycle belonging to a BJP leader at Raj Bhavan, Nagpur, without a mask or helmet, at a time when he keeps the SC [Supreme Court] in Lockdown mode denying citizens their fundamental right to access Justice!

Here Bhushan was pointing to the glaring contrast between the privileged life of Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, a supposed motorcycle enthusiast, who could afford, in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown, to check out a Rs. 5 million ($68,000) Harley Davidson motorcycle in the hope of buying one, even while the Supreme Court was shut down, purportedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the lockdown, numerous constitutional challengers to the Modi government’s violation of basic democratic rights, including the imposition of an effective state of siege in Indian-held Kashmir, are in limbo. Bhushan’s post was also meant to draw attention to the chummy relations between Chief Justice Bhode and a BJP leader in Bhode’s hometown of Nagpur.

Under government pressure, Twitter denied access to both of Bhushan’s tweets in India in July, even before the Supreme Court had ruled that they constituted contempt of court.

Time and again over the last six years, India’s Supreme Court has aided and abetted the anti-democratic and Hindu communalist actions of the Modi government.

It legitimized the violent, decades-long agitation that the BJP and its Hindu supremacist allies have mounted to raze a famous mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, and erect in its stead a temple to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram. Although the Babri Masjid was destroyed by BJP-incited Hindu fanatics in 1992 in express opposition to the Supreme Court’s own orders, the court handed the site over to the BJP’s allies last November and “ordered” the government to supervise the construction of a “Ram Temple.”

The court has also repeatedly come to the government’s support during the COVID-19 pandemic, defending its ruinous handling of the pandemic and threatening the media with “fake news” charges if it doesn’t publicize government propaganda about the health crisis.

The most shameful example of the Supreme Court’s complicity in the Modi government’s attack on democratic rights has been its sanctioning of its coup against Kashmir. This began with the abrogation by executive fiat of Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status on August 5, 2019, and has involved mass detentions without charge, months-long curfews under the British colonial authored Article 144 of the Criminal Code, and the suspension, now into its 14th month, of internet access to the 7 million people living in the northern Kashmir Valley.

With the intent of making it a fait accompli, India’s highest court has thus far flatly refused to take up any legal challenges to the change in Jammu and Kashmir’s status and the imposition, via its division, into two Union territories, of permanent central government rule. For months, the court stalled hearing challenges to the suspension of internet service, at one point admonishing the editor of the Kashmiri Times to have faith in the claims of the government and intelligence services that it would soon be restored. Then in January, it issued a ruling that ostensibly established a constitutional right to internet access, yet gave the government a free hand to continue to deny internet access to Kashmiris.

India’s judiciary, like all it state institutions, is increasingly staffed by outright Hindu communalists. Bhode’s predecessor as Chief Justice, Ranjan Gogoi, was rewarded with a nominated-seat in India’s upper house of parliament, just five months after the court under his leadership had given legal sanction to the building of a Ram Temple on the site of the razed Babri Masjid. Gogoi, who had to step down as CJI last November when he reached 65, is reportedly going to be the BJP’s Chief Minister candidate when Assam next holds state elections in 2021.

The court’s attack on Prashant Bhushan is all the more striking given his establishment connections. His father was the Law and Justice Minister in the Janata Party government of the late 1970s, and he himself was among the founders of the Aam Aadmi Party, which forms the government in the National Capital Territory, Delhi.

Clearly his criticisms struck too close to home.

While Bhushan draws a sharp contrast between the Supreme Court’s conduct over the last six years and previously, the reality is India’s ruling elite, its parties and state institutions have been lurching sharply right for decades. Modi, his authoritarian measures, and foul communalist politics are the outcome of the Indian bourgeoisie’s three-decade drive—long spearheaded by the Congress Party and supported by the entire political establishment, including the Stalinist CPM and CPI—to make India a cheap-labour haven for global capital and a junior partner of US imperialism.

Moreover, this process is paralleled around the world. The various rival nationally-based bourgeois cliques, whether led, as in France, by the ostensible liberal Emmanuel Macron, the fascistic Donald Trump, or his Brazilian ally and acolyte, Jair Bolsonaro, are turning to authoritarian methods of rule to suppress mounting social opposition and cultivating the extreme right as shock troops against the working class.

Democratic rights cannot and will not be defended, as the Stalinist CPM claims, by clutching to the tattered coattails of the “secular” Congress Party or the Supreme Court and the other putrefying “democratic” institutions of the Indian Republic.

The struggle to defend democratic rights and defeat Modi and communal reaction must be based on the working class. It must be mobilized as an independent political force, rallying the toilers behind it, against all sections and parties of the ruling capitalist elite, and by fusing the defence of democratic rights to the fight for social equality, and against war and New Delhi’s alliance with US imperialism.

Hong Kong police carry out mass arrest of protesters

Ben McGrath

Police violently attacked demonstrations held last Sunday in Hong Kong over the delay of the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo) elections. Protesters also denounced the new national security law passed at the end of June, which is designed to further clamp down on free speech and democratic rights in Hong Kong. Police responded by arresting at least 289 people.

The LegCo general election was originally slated for Sunday, but was postponed for one year at the end of July, with the government claiming it was necessary in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The delay was clearly a political decision, made over concerns that the pan-democrats, an election bloc of the city’s official political opposition, might win a majority. In local district elections last November, the pan-democrats took 347 out of 452 district council seats and 17 of 18 councils. Twelve opposition candidates had also been barred from contesting the election prior to its postponement.

The protests were promoted by anonymous online activists. While the organizers’ exact affiliations are unknown, undoubtedly there are many in Hong Kong concerned about the growing attacks on democratic rights who supported the call to demonstrate but feared that voicing their feelings openly could lead to arrest.

The organizers hoped to gather 50,000 people, but the demonstrations were smaller than those in the recent past. Protests began in the Jordan neighborhood of Kowloon before spreading to Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok. Some participants chanted, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” a slogan popularized by right-wing “localist” groups.

In response, the authorities mobilized 2,000 heavily armed riot police, with water cannons and armored vehicles on standby. Despite the relatively small numbers involved, police violently assaulted demonstrators with pepper spray and pepper balls. Protesters were hit with batons and knocked to the ground, including a 12-year-old girl whose mother said she was not involved in the demonstration.

Police targeted journalists, threatening them with arrest for covering the rally and the violent response of the police and claiming that they could be considered protest participants. At least one photographer was detained.

Senior Police Superintendent Li Kwai-wah used the pandemic to justify the assaults and the arrests. “If you organize, incite or participate in such gatherings, you are breaking the law and will be arrested,” Li stated. Under COVID-19 restrictions in the city, public gatherings of more than two people are banned.

The majority of those arrested were accused of illegal assembly. Others were detained for disorderly conduct, obstructing police officers, or for failure to produce identity cards. One woman was held for supposedly chanting pro-Hong Kong independence slogans, a violation of the national security law. The last mass arrest of protesters was on July 1 when 370 people were detained.

League of Social Democrats (LSD) members were among those arrested, including Leung Kwok-hung (also known as “Long Hair”), Raphael Wong, and Figo Chan. The LSD is a middle-class protest group founded in 2006 by Leung and Albert Chan, a former Democratic Party member. It uses radical-sounding slogans and phrases combined with support for the pan-democrats in the LegCo as a means to prevent workers and youth from breaking with the political establishment.

Tam Tak-chi, a leader of the People Power group, which is allied with the LSD, was also arrested on Sunday for “uttering seditious words” and accused under a British colonial era law. Tam had set up street booths between June and August where he criticized the government’s COVID-19 response.

The fact that the protests have dwindled in size is not only due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It is a result of the politics of the pan-democrats as a whole. The bloc is a collection of capitalist parties, though some like the LSD attempt to appear more radical, which fear that a genuine united movement of workers and youth fighting for democratic and social rights will threaten the pan-democrats’ privileged positions within Hong Kong society.

This layer of the political establishment gives voice to elements within the Hong Kong bourgeoisie that are concerned about Beijing’s encroachment on their business interests and appeal to US and British imperialism to pressure the Chinese government in their defense. As a result, they were largely absent from the protest movement last year when it was at its height.

When those protests erupted in June 2019 against legislation that would have allowed extradition of Beijing’s political opponents to the mainland, there was far more behind the movement than simple opposition to the bill. Hong Kong is one of the most unequal cities in the world. It is home to the sixth largest number of billionaires on the planet, while one-fifth of the population lives below the official poverty line. Workers’ wages have stagnated and safe and affordable housing is extremely difficult to find.

This economic discontent was reflected in August and September last year when tens of thousands of workers participated in strikes, demonstrating that there are deeper political, social, and economic issues at work. The entrance of the working class into the struggle sent waves of fear through the ruling class.

The movement, however, lacked a revolutionary socialist and internationalist perspective and the pan-democrats and their allies were able to corral the protest movement behind right-wing and pro-imperialist appeals to the US or the UK for aid or even to “liberate Hong Kong.” This cut the working class off from the broader protest movement, creating the situation in which Beijing and the Hong Kong ruling elites could recover and launch this year’s attacks on democratic rights.

Hong Kong workers and progressive youth must not place any faith in the pan-democrats regardless of their rhetoric. Those genuinely motivated by a desire to defend democratic and social rights must fight for the unity of the working class in the city and throughout China and fight for their political independence and for international socialism.

Iraqi health care workers threaten nationwide strike to demand resources to fight pandemic

Jean Shaoul

Medical school graduates and health workers have taken to the streets of Baghdad in protest over the lack of resources to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. They are demanding oxygen for patients and personal protection equipment for staff, as well as jobs for health care graduates.

At least 1,500 doctors have been infected and 44 doctors have died, a likely underestimate, while 3,000 doctors over 60 years of age were instructed to take early retirement.

Health care workers are threatening a partial strike, exempting emergency wards and intensive care units, and later a nationwide strike. It comes as Iraq has recorded around 250,000 coronavirus cases and more than 7,730 deaths. The worst affected areas are Sulaymaniya and Erbil governorates in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq.

Iraq had initially contained the pandemic with lockdown measures, but cases and deaths have more than doubled since early July, when the government began the gradual lifting of restrictions, resumed international flights and opened Iraq’s borders.

Hospitals have been overwhelmed. Iraq’s health care system, once the best in the Arab world, was gutted by the 1991 Gulf War, a decade of US sanctions, the 2003 US-led war and occupation of Iraq, and the wretched political sectarian system imposed by Washington. More than 20,000 doctors have fled the country in recent years because of insecurity, threats, and the assassination of hundreds of doctors in targeted killings.

As a result, the health service now employs only 30,000 doctors, about 0.8 doctors per 1,000 people, which is one of the lowest numbers per capita in the world, with hospitals becoming a place to die as health care budgets were turned into a mechanism for doling out patronage. Today, 31,000 recent health care graduates have been unable to find jobs, leaving them at risk of losing their practicing certificates.

In June, the incoming government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi caused outrage and derision when it called on the governorates to recruit volunteers from retired doctors or graduates provided that they “do not shoulder any financial obligations.”

The health care system, like all of Iraq’s decimated public services, have fallen victim to successive government-sanctioned looting operations and most recently the catastrophic fall in oil prices and the OPEC-agreed cuts in production. Oil revenues, which constitute 90 percent of government income, have been halved, plunging the economy into the abyss.

The approval of the 2020 budget has been delayed by the unrest that started in October when mass protests against the appalling social conditions, government corruption and the entire political setup forced the resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi. It was the first time since the 2003 US-led war that a government had been forced to resign due to popular pressure.

Iraq’s economy has already contracted by more than 9.7 percent, in contrast to 4.4 percent growth last year. The government’s budget deficit, about $20 billion, is expected to soar, while its debt to foreign financial institutions has risen to more than $104 billion. The government is likely to need a further $40 billion of external financing that Washington will only green light if Baghdad implements free market “reforms,” privatisations and the slashing of the public wage bill, subsidies and benefits that will further impoverish the working class. Above all, the US is demanding that the government impose direct control over the mainly Shia Hashid Shaabi militias, which have long demanded Western forces depart the country entirely.

Just 10 percent of Iraqi jobs provide regular employment, largely in the public sector and allocated on the basis of Iraq’s sectarian political system. The remaining 90 percent are casual day work that require two such “jobs” to put food on the table. All this is in a country where 60 percent of the population is under 24 and most young people are without work.

While the spread of the coronavirus and lockdown measures halted the mass rallies and ended the tent sit-ins in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, fresh protests have started amid frequent and long electricity outages during a blistering summer when temperatures topped 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). At the end of July, two anti-government protesters were killed and 21 were injured in renewed clashes with the security forces.

Last month, protests broke out in Sulaymaniya and across the KRG over months of unpaid wages and growing hardship, with workers storming the headquarters of the ruling political parties. Scores of people have been injured in street clashes as the KRG’s security forces carried out dozens of arrests. Doctors went on strike for a second time over unpaid wages.

The KRG blamed the non-payment of wages on the federal government in Baghdad, which according to Iraq’s budget law is required to pay the KRG about 12 percent of the federal budget in return for 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day. In April, Baghdad stopped making the $380 million monthly payments, claiming the KRG had not shared oil production with the federal government.

Following the protests, and under pressure from the US with whom the KRG has close links, Baghdad agreed to restore most of the payments in the August-October period in return for 50 percent of the customs revenue from border crossings in areas under the KRG’s control and to discuss other outstanding disagreements.

In recent months, Iraq has seen a wave of assassinations, including the drive-by killing in Baghdad in July of Hisham al Hashimi, a prominent Iraqi security expert. His assassination has been widely attributed to forces allied to Iran as an indirect warning to Washington.

Iraq has for decades been caught in the crosshairs of US imperialism’s increasingly militaristic confrontation with Iran that is bound up with Washington’s build up for “great power” confrontation with China, attempting to use military force to establish a chokehold over the energy resources upon which the Chinese economy depends.

Some Shia factions allied with Iran were unhappy at Kadhimi’s appointment as prime minister in May. Kadhimi, a former head of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, who spent 20 years in exile in the UK and US, is on good terms with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and is viewed as a US spy and puppet. But they gave him the nod in the belief that their parliamentary majority would be able to neuter him.

Al-Kadhimi accepted a poisoned chalice. He is under huge popular pressure to bring the killers of peaceful protesters to justice. Around 560 protesters were killed and thousands injured since October, with the government taking no action to identify those in the security forces responsible. His government has pledged to investigate the killings and the imprisonment of hundreds of demonstrators, and to pay compensation of $8,380 to the families of those killed.

Al-Kadhimi has announced the holding of new elections in June next year, another key demand of the protest movement. While the elections will be based upon legislation overturning Iraq’s sectarian political system, voting procedures and constituency boundaries have not been finalised, neither has the role of the election commission in organising the polls, widely believed to be rigged. He has also ordered state institutions to stop classifying Iraqis by religious sect following a social media outcry.

Last month, Kadhimi flew to Washington to try to reach a “Strategic Pact” with the Trump administration aimed at securing increased aid in a bid to reduce Iraq’s dependency on Iran.

The last months have seen increasing attacks on US facilities, following Washington’s assassination on January 3 of Iran’s General Qassem Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis—a prominent member of the Iraqi government and Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) leader. Parliament called for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops in the country, but the US refused to leave—with President Donald Trump threatening Baghdad with sanctions if it ordered American troops out. In March, Washington set up at least four new batteries of Patriot air defence systems in Iraq as a preparatory move for an attack on Iran.

On Wednesday, Washington agreed to a face-saving reduction in US forces in Iraq, cutting its presence from 5,200 to 3,000 troops this month as part of a wider draw-down in the region. It leaves intact the far larger number of US private military contractors.

Turkish government prepares to reopen schools as pandemic escalates

Barış Demir

As in countries around the world, the coronavirus pandemic is out of control in Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government reopened the economy with support of the political establishment and trade unions in the interests of the ruling class. The total official number of cases in Turkey reached 286,455 yesterday, with 6,895 deaths. The number of daily cases was 1,761 on September 8, the highest since May 15.

The actual figures are undoubtedly much higher. While health care workers from various provinces state on social media that the situation in hospitals is the worst it has been since the pandemic began, official figures are well below the worst period recorded in Turkey.

Under these deadly conditions, the government is preparing to reopen schools across Turkey on September 21, supported by the official opposition parties and their allied trade unions. There are nearly 18 million students and 1 million teachers in K-12 schools in Turkey. The Education and Science Workers’ Union (Eğitim-Sen) declared that it had already detected positive cases at schools among teachers preparing for the new year at the end of August.

However, the very same pro-opposition union declared its support for government on Monday, stating, “Eğitim-Sen thinks that face-to-face education should be started in schools as soon as possible.” This is yet another example of the reactionary collaboration between the government, so-called opposition parties and trade unions against workers and their families.

Turkish Medical Association (TTB) President Sinan Adıyaman drew attention last week to the growing coronavirus crisis, stressing the contradiction between the statements by local governors and figures announced by the government.

Speaking to RS FM, he said: “Tests are done in 214 centers now. But doctors cannot learn the test results of their patients. The results go to a center in the ministry and only two or three people know them. If you talk about ‘transparency,’ why this privacy? Why do you sign a confidentiality agreement with these centers? What are you hiding? It turned out that these numbers do not reflect the truth ...”

He pointed out the disastrous situation in the capital, denouncing the government: “I have dentist friends working in the public hospitals in Ankara. They do contact tracing and these tests. According to their information, there are around 2,000 daily cases in Ankara. What are you hiding? People are dying. Physicians and health care professionals are dying. Tell the facts so that people take precautions accordingly.” Within just one week, the TTB’s Ankara office claimed Wednesday that new cases in Ankara had reached 4,000 daily.

At the end of August, the TTB also declared: “The proportion of infected and dying health workers is in first place among the world’s countries,” calling for immediate implementation of security measures. According to Adıyaman’s latest statement, at least 80 health care workers, including 32 doctors, have lost their lives.

Last week, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 29,865 health care workers have been infected and 52 of them have died.

The government’s deadly response to the pandemic is provoking anger among all sections of the working class. After another doctor died on August 31, a doctor took to Twitter to stress the growing willingness to fight among health care workers: “My classmates are in anger, not sadness. These deaths are not destiny. I hear calls from health care workers to stop working collectively.”

With the reopened economy, the increasing numbers of cases and deaths are particularly concentrated among workers sent to work in factories and plants to produce super-profits for the banks. The pandemic is affecting too many factories and workplaces around Turkey to report on each one. However, appliance maker Vestel, Turkey’s largest factory and one of the largest in Europe, exemplifies the criminal policy of the ruling class. While it increased its profit 17-fold in the first half of the year, there are nearly 1,000 cases, and at least 8 workers have lost their lives in the factory.

The TTB prepared a report on the pandemic in the factory, located in the Manisa Organized Industrial Zone, where 16,000 workers work in total. Vestel management asked and received a court order banning news coverage of the report. The report stated that workers who showed symptoms were prevented from going to the hospital, that measures were insufficient and that workers worked 12 hours daily. Moreover, it declared that a workplace doctor at the Vestel factory was fired on charges of “leaking information about the workplace.”

According to Dr. Şahut Duran, chair of the TTB’s Manisa branch, workers in the Vestel factory formed “platforms to speak up and reached them via these platforms.” This points to increasing militancy and willingness to struggle among the workers and vindicates the calls by the World Socialist Web Site for workers to build independent the rank-and-file safety committees internationally.

On the other hand, the coronavirus crisis further exposes the collaboration between the government, big business and trade unions at workers’ expense.

The wage arrangement protocol signed by Turkish Airlines (THY) and the Turkish Civil Aviation Trade Union (Hava-İş) reveals the massive assault on the rights of workers, and the role of trade unions in these attacks amid a raging pandemic. Vast attacks are underway against airline workers internationally, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the protocol, by the end of 2021, 50 percent of the wages of cockpit personnel, 35 percent of the wages of cabin personnel and 30 percent of the wages of others will be cut. Workers will feel the impact of these huge cuts much more due to depreciation of the Turkish lira, causing high inflation.

The trade union states that the protection of employment is its top priority and that it agrees with the employer on this issue. This is a lie, however. The protocol does not state that there will be no dismissal or that unpaid leave cannot be imposed.

Moreover, in an email to the workers, the THY reportedly declared that those who do not accept the terms of the protocol would be forced to leave, supposedly of “their own consent.” Those who do not accept or do not make any choice will be forced to take unpaid leave, receiving only 1,170 Turkish liras (about US$160) per month from the state unemployment fund.

With the votes of the bourgeois opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), President Erdoğan’s government extended the forced “unpaid leave” process, meaning hunger conditions until July 2021 for hundreds of thousands or millions of workers. While minimum wage in Turkey is about 2,300 liras, a family of four goes hungry if it earns less than 2,400 liras per month.

The trade unions are not only collaborating with the ruling class in attacks on the working class, but also to ensure that the deadly back-to-work campaign is implemented without any social opposition from workers. Indeed, they are complicit in the death of workers and their families from COVID-19 in the workplaces.

The pro-opposition Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DİSK) declared at the end of March that in 48 hours it might invoke the constitutional right to not work in unsafe conditions. However, it has never called strikes up to this day.

US universities emerge as battlegrounds as students and faculty fight back against reckless reopening plans

Genevieve Leigh

Hundreds of college and university campuses throughout the US are emerging as central battlegrounds in the fight to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. In this fight, teachers, students, faculty, and staff stand on one side of the barricade, fighting for an end to the reckless policies of in-person learning, for resources to be allocated for safety measures and online learning, and for policies based on science, that put life over profit.

On the other side of this fight stands the university administrations, the corporate-controlled trade unions and both the Democrats and Republicans.

Striking University of Michigan grad students

The sharpest expression of this struggle is unfolding on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan where nearly 2,000 graduate student instructors are in the midst of a strike against in-person learning. The strike has the backing of thousands of undergraduates, lecturers, university staff, and workers from the community. Support from other campuses facing similar situations has also started to pour in, including from Columbia University, where grad students issued an open letter Wednesday in support of the Michigan students.

Despite the brave stand taken by students and workers, the University of Michigan administration has refused to meet the grad students’ demands. During a contentious general membership meeting of the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) on Wednesday night, strikers voted 700 to 400 to reject the university’s proposal—which ignored their demands for remote learning only—and to continue their strike. There is no doubt that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the parent organization of the GEO, exerted pressure to end the strike before it became a catalyst for a broader movement against the reckless back-to-school policy, including in the public schools, where at least six teachers have died from COVID-19 over the last few weeks.

In fact, the expansion of the strike beyond the campus is exactly what is required for the struggle to be successful and lives to be saved. And there are already similar strikes brewing among students and faculty throughout the country.

The situation at the University of Michigan is far from unique. In almost every case, campuses that have reopened around the country have turned into hotspots for the virus. Students, faculty, and teachers are beginning to fight back.

California

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD), is working to implement its “Return to Learn” program, which includes a plan to offer 12 percent of fall 2020 courses using an in-person or hybrid modality. The 12 percent figure is deceptive; some 14,000 students will be brought back to campus under this plan.

UCSD has announced that at least 47 students, 21 campus employees and 184 healthcare employees have already tested positive for COVID-19. Despite these alarming figures, the university is planning to re-open for the fall quarter at the end of the month.

In opposition to this reckless policy nearly 600 UCSD students, faculty, and staff have signed an open letter to the university. The letter demands that administrators cancel in-person classes, limit housing to those with no other options, and cancel layoffs and furloughs.

The mounting opposition at UCSD comes as San Diego State University (SDSU) has announced a staggering 440 positive COVID-19 cases so far this semester, with 110 cases being added in the course of just two days. The positive cases are among students living both on and off-campus, and have increased exponentially since the surge was reported one week ago, from 64 to 440.

There are many indications of widespread hostility to SDSU’s reopening policies among the students and faculty. Students have spoken out on social media, exposing the inadequate response from the administration. One student post on Reddit outlines many of the issues in great detail, and gives a sense of the sentiments of students toward the administration’s policies. The student writes, “They ONLY care about taking our money, but will act under the guise of ‘caring’ about our health and safety, and do everything to avoid the easy and obvious solution because it doesn’t bring in money. And where is our money actually going? Does anyone really know?” The post has been “upvoted” over 500 times.

It should also be noted that SDSU is planning to allow contact sports such as football to continue, despite the obvious health risks, while canceling other non-contact sports. The lucrative nature of college sports is one major factor driving these decisions.

New York

New York University (NYU) opened its doors at various buildings throughout New York City to over 10,000 students for in-person learning on September 2. The university is endangering the lives not only of thousands of students, faculty and staff, but also countless city residents who will inevitably come into contact with students and faculty as they go about their lives. NYU has been at the forefront of the relentless campaign to reopen colleges in the fall since mid-March. The university has launched a plan titled “NYU Returns” in order to promote the illusion that the reopening is safe. As part of the plan, NYU promised a COVID-19 tracking dashboard that has still not been launched more than a week into the reopening. It is clear that the real aim of “NYU Returns” is to absolve NYU of any responsibility for an outbreak of COVID-19 and exempt it from having to reimburse tuition by placing all the blame for infections on students, faculty and staff.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at NYU has called for mobilization of students, faculty and other workers to oppose the reckless reopening.

Columbia University began in-person classes on Tuesday. About 1,000 students are on campus, and about 13,000 are living off-campus, with 4,400 living in Columbia-owned housing and the rest in other apartments, according to President Lee Bollinger. While there has yet to emerge any organized opposition at Columbia, the Columbia grad students issued a statement of support for striking University of Michigan graduate students on Wednesday.

At Cornell University, Resident Assistants went on a one-day strike in opposition to unsafe reopening.

Texas

Baylor University reported the most COVID-19 cases yet for Texas schools, a total of 824, with around a five percent positivity rate. As of Thursday evening, there were 256 active cases in the Baylor University community, according to the school’s COVID-19 dashboard. Baylor, the school with the most infections, is suspending students who violate the rules and increasing off-campus university police patrols.

And the University of Texas, Austin reported 103 new cases between September 1 and 3 alone. The university’s confirmed cases increased by 109 on Wednesday and now totals 282 student cases after the school began adding off-campus cases to its official tally. Students at UT Austin are not routinely tested. However, college athletes are reportedly tested three times a week.

UT Austin students have also reported that not all residents in dorms with confirmed cases were made aware of the outbreaks by school officials through any medium. Instead, students found out about the cases through the school newspaper, The Daily Texan, which spread the word through Twitter.

Students have started a petition at UT Austin demanding that all residents, faculty and staff working and living on campus be notified when COVID-19 cases are confirmed. At the time of writing 1,167 people had signed the petition.

Many other schools have seen outbreaks.

This week West Virginia University was forced to suspend in-person undergrad classes amid a spike in COVID-19 cases. West Virginia University enrolls nearly 30,000 students across all its campuses and programs. The state had a staggering 11,600 confirmed cases as of Monday. Similarly, University of Wisconsin, Madison was forced to temporarily move classes online after a spike in cases. However, both WVU and UW-Madison are planning to reopen campus after just a two-week break.

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence and the most recent experiences at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Notre Dame, scores of universities are still pushing forward with reopening plans. According to the College Crisis Initiative, a research project at Davidson College in North Carolina, more than 1,000 four-year colleges and universities in the United States planned to bring students back to campus in some form this fall, with 45 planning to operate “fully in person.”

The cost of these decisions is now playing out in real time. They will result in more cases, more hospitalizations and more death if not stopped. The Socialist Equality Party and its youth and student wing, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, urge students, teachers and staff to link up their struggles to put an end to the sacrifice of human life for corporate profit.

Colombian security forces massacre 10 youth protesting police murder

Andrea Lobo

On Wednesday night, Colombian police used gunfire to massacre at least 10 people protesting the police killing of Javier Ordóñez, a 43-year-old lawyer and taxi driver, the previous night in the capital city of Bogotá.

A video posted online showed Ordóñez being repeatedly beaten and tortured with tasers by police officers, who detained him for allegedly violating the COVID-19 quarantine. The scenes, with Ordóñez pleading for his life, saying “I’m choking,” and witnesses asking the officials to stop, recalled for many the police murder of George Floyd in the United States.

Motorcycle police in Bogota.

In employing deadly force against protesters, the Colombian government of far-right President Iván Duque is following the lead of its imperialist patron in Washington, the Trump administration, which has used the federal forces to kidnap protesters in unmarked vans and carry out the targeted killing of a demonstrator in Seattle.

The massacre in Bogotá has only fueled more anger. Numerous protests are being planned for the rest of the week in Bogotá, Medellín and Barranquilla, marking a resurgence of the mass protests against social inequality that erupted across Latin America last year. Colombia itself witnessed an initial wave of protests across university campuses and strikes in the public sector.

Since the early afternoon Wednesday, as the video of Ordoñez’s murder went viral, protests led by youth began spreading across predominantly working class neighborhoods in the Bogotá metropolitan area and other cities of the country. Focusing their anger on the police, demonstrators, according to police reports, burned down 22 local police stations and defaced 49 others.

After initially employing tear gas, stun grenades and charges with batons and vehicles, after dusk, the National Police began using live ammunition in various parts of the city, in a clearly coordinated and systematic fashion against unarmed protesters.

The Bogotá district authorities have reported that seven civilians were killed and 248 were injured, 66 of them from gunfire. In the working class municipality of Soacha, which belongs to the Bogotá metropolitan area, the mayor confirmed that three additional demonstrators were killed. At least three of those wounded are still in intensive care.

The police killing of Javier Ordóñez

Videos shared on social media show groups of police officers employing their firearms to enforce an undeclared curfew. Others are seen chasing down lone protesters and executing them. Without any potential danger nearby, police in uniform and plainclothes indiscriminately shot volleys of gunfire in at least three separate locations, as confirmed by Semana. Police were also filmed damaging businesses to scapegoat demonstrators.

In a radio interview, the partner of the youngest of the victims, 17-year-old Jaider Fonseca, described the incident: “The police began shooting in the air and then forward at people who were protesting with rocks. [Javier] ran as soon as the shots started; his only defense was a door, he hid, but still was hit with four shots; he was riddled.”

“They were not killing anyone, they were not stealing, they were demanding their rights,” she concluded.

The Duque regime and police authorities have unabashedly initiated an intensification of the crackdown, including the deployment of 300 more troops to Bogotá to assist the police in the repression.

Duque himself has shown absolutely no remorse. Instead, he threatened anyone who dared call the police “killers,” and denounced “the violence, vandalism and hatred … any incitement to act above the law.”

Despite that, the one-sided and criminal character of the onslaught was clear from widely seen videos, the chief of the National Police, Gustavo Alberto Moreno, ominously defended the role of the police, declaring: “This police, with humility, recognizes its errors, but also celebrates the heroic work of thousands of police.” Moreno has received training from the Secret Service and FBI and worked as a police attaché in Washington D.C.

Javier Ordóñez with his two children

The Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, who oversees the military operations of the Pentagon’s closest ally in the region, threatened demonstrators with further police-state measures. “Regarding those who participated in the violent acts and vandalism yesterday, we have identified profiles on social media that made publications against the police … all of them aimed at discrediting the performance and service of the National Police.”

He then offered bounties of $13,500 for information that helps “to find and identify” the participants in the protests.

Bogotá Mayor Claudia López of the Green Alliance acknowledged that she was presiding over repressive operations Wednesday from police headquarters, but claimed on Twitter that no order was given to employ firearms. Amid confrontations between the heavily armed police and the unarmed youth, however, López continuously denounced the “vandalism” and “violence.”

Later on Thursday, López sought to deflect any blame by pointing her finger at “the commander of the National Police, that is, the President of the Republic,” while adding, “ we have serious and solid evidence of the indiscriminate use of firearms by members of the police.”

These responses from the political establishment confirm that the ruling class is rushing headlong toward dictatorial forms of rule. Any calls for administrative wrist-slapping are aimed at diverting mass social anger, relying on the corporate media, the “opposition” politicians and the trade unions to continue appealing for “police reform.”

This was already exemplified earlier this year, when a handful of suspensions and internal “inquiries” were used to quiet down a scandal over a profiling and spying operation by military intelligence against over 100 journalists, activists and politicians.

The Colombian ruling class is well aware that it sits on a social powder keg. The Duque government recently extended until June 2021 a $43 monthly stipend per household, which has barely kept about 2.6 million of the poorest households from starvation during the pandemic crisis.

Employer associations have welcomed this program, with the small cost of $2 billion, as a means of averting mass upheavals. However, this miserly amount has done little or nothing to protect the growing layers of impoverished workers and unemployed from the virus and economic desperation.

According to the state statistical agency DANE, 90.3 percent of confirmed coronavirus deaths correspond to the poorest three strata of the population, which qualify for subsidies for utilities, while the richest sixth stratum accounts for just 1 percent of COVID-19 fatalities.

Juan Daniel Oviedo, director of DANE, told El Tiempo, “Poor households, with elderly and less educated adults, unable to abide by isolation rules due to the need to find their sustenance, were more exposed to the pandemic, which is reflected in their higher mortality.”

Colombia has the sixth highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world (686,851) and the 11th highest confirmed death toll (22,053). DANE, however reported that as of August 23, there were 7,257 suspected COVID-19 deaths that were never tested, and more than 10,000 excess deaths above the official count. Bogota is the country’s pandemic epicenter with a third of the cases.

Meanwhile, the wealth of Colombia’s billionaires listed by Forbes has only increased during the pandemic to over $13.7 billion. Now, the Colombian oligarchy, in partnership with its financial and corporate backers on Wall Street and in Europe, is moving to greatly intensify the exploitation of Colombia’s working class and natural resources.

The Duque government lifted most lockdown measures on September 1, except for schools, social gatherings and indoor entertainment.

The massacre of protesters in Bogotá signals the willingness of the Colombian ruling class to employ deadly violence and authoritarian rule to crush opposition from below to its criminal response to the pandemic. It has already showed its indifference to the lives of workers claimed by COVID-19.

The turn to authoritarianism by capitalist governments in Colombia and internationally derives from the efforts of the capitalist class to defend its massive wealth amid record levels of inequality and widespread social devastation.

Spanish government demands schools reopen as COVID-19 deaths surge

Alice Summers

The Spanish government’s politically criminal decision to reopen schools amid a massive wave of COVID-19 infections will lead to countless unnecessary deaths. Both ruling parties, the “left populist” Podemos and the social-democratic Socialist Party (PSOE), are acting with complete indifference to the health and lives of millions of teachers, children and their families.

Spain remains the epicentre of the coronavirus resurgence in Western Europe. This weekend, the country reached a grim milestone, passing half a million infections after recording 26,560 new cases between Friday and Sunday. The officially tally now stands at 543,379. Friday also saw 184 new deaths, the highest number of daily fatalities since the end of May. While the manipulated official death toll stands at 29,516, analyses by major newspapers indicate that at least 45,000 people have died of the virus in Spain.

A student studying (Credit: pixabay.com)

The ruling class is gloating, however, that the school re-openings will allow them to implement its fascistic “herd immunity” policy—allowing the virus to run its course through the population with no regard for the death and destruction that will follow.

On Wednesday, the right-wing regional premier of Madrid, Isabel Ayuso, told Es Radio: “It is likely that practically all children, one way or another, will be infected with coronavirus.”

Ayuso made clear her contempt to the fate of schoolchildren and their families. “Perhaps they will become infected over the weekend at a family meeting,” she stated dismissively, “or in the afternoon in the park or catch it from a classmate. We just don’t know, because the virus can be anywhere.” Nevertheless, she stressed “children must return to school,” to “be with children of their own age,” get back to “their routines,” and “be socialised.”

Aware of explosive opposition among teachers and parents, Ayuso arrogantly demanded that there be “no strikes or threats,” claiming that “This is not the time for ‘me, me, me’ ” from workers.

Ayuso’s fascistic rant is, however, the key to understanding the policy of the PSOE-Podemos government. Speaking to the daily El País, PSOE Education Minister Isabel Celaá parroted anti-scientific, discredited claims that opening schools will not lead to an increase in infections. “Today it is being established in the field of science that closing schools does not bring any benefit to the evolution of the pandemic in terms of the reduction of cases,” she stated. “And the benefits of school are far greater than the risks. …”

In a separate interview with Radio Nacional de España (RNE), Celaá declared that for children, “the safest place is at school,” insisting that school re-opening will go ahead as planned against all scientific evidence and popular opposition.

“As long as there is no uncontrolled transmission,” she stated, “which will have to be determined by the Ministry of Health, schools must remain open because we are all living with the pandemic.”

On this basis, the PSOE-Podemos government is threatening to sue all parents who do not send their children to school to be infected with COVID-19. The Attorney General’s office announced on Thursday that it will initiate “criminal proceedings” against any parent of a child aged 6 to 16 who does not attend school. It declared that in-person school attendance is an “inescapable obligation,” accusing parents who wish to keep their children at home of neglect.

It threatened that parental “voluntary, unjustified and persistent neglect will lead to legal consequences stemming from their failure to fulfil the inherent duties of parental authority.”

The PSOE-Podemos government is acting with open contempt for the lives and health of teachers as well as of students and their families.

Ayuso’s prediction that almost all Spanish children will contract COVID-19 testifies to a staggering contempt for the health and lives of not only their parents and older relatives, who more often contract deadly forms of the illness, but also of the children themselves. It is now scientifically documented that COVID-19 can frequently cause serious and lasting heart damage and diseases such as Kawasaki’s syndrome in children.

Moreover, Spain has one of the highest proportions of older teachers in Western Europe, with 38.2 percent of teachers over 50 and with an average age of 46. There are 22,127 teachers over age 60 in Spain (nearly 5 percent of all education workers); nearly 2,000 of these are over 65. Thousands of educators are therefore being put in severe risk, as individuals above 60 are known to be one of the groups most vulnerable to dying of coronavirus.

The virus is spreading rapidly across Spain. In an indication of the widespread community transmission in Spain, between 2,000 and 2,500 of the 67,000 educators tested (over 3.5 percent) came back with a positive antibody test. Those with a positive result now must be checked to ascertain whether they remain infectious.

Limited measures that have been announced in some of Spain’s 17 regions, such as reducing class sizes, requiring children over age six to wear masks, and implementing social distancing measures, are derisory on the face of it, and in many cases have not even been implemented.

Last week, Ayuso announced at the 11th hour that all teachers in the Madrid region should undergo a coronavirus antibody test before the start of term. Educators were summoned by e-mail on less than 24 hours’ notice to undergo testing, leading to chaotic scenes of thousands of people queuing on the streets of Madrid, with social distancing measures all but impossible.

On Saturday, it was announced that 30 percent of classrooms in Catalan primary schools have as yet failed to meet class-size reduction policies, less than a week before schools are set to reopen. The government of Catalonia had pledged that no more than 20 pupils would be allowed in each classroom, but this ratio, in itself insufficient to prevent the spread of the virus, has not been met in many public schools. There is no pupil limit at all for secondary school classrooms.

The Association of Families for a Safe Education Choice, a Catalan-based parents’ group, condemned the Catalan government for the lack of safety measures in schools, denouncing them for “turning education centres into slaughterhouses.” Schools, the Association declared, “are the ideal setting for a new general outbreak in terms of public health,” with the “use of masks serving no purpose at all in enclosed, restricted spaces, without ventilation or cleaning equipment.”

Around 39,000 more teachers will be needed across the country to keep to the Ministry of Education’s recommendation that class sizes should not exceed 20 children, according to Spain’s regional governments. The Workers Commissions (CCOO) union estimates this figure to be around 70,000. Many regions are far from reaching these hiring requirements.

In an early indication of the disaster which is about to sweep across Spain as schools reopen, one nursery in Seville, in the province of Andalucía, has already been forced to close after a staff member tested positive. Sixty infants between the ages of zero and three who attended the nursery must now self-isolate at home.

Parents who cannot work or bring in an income while their children are quarantining will receive nothing from the state. Despite previously pledging to cover sick leave costs for parents staying at home to care for quarantining or infected children, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has now backtracked, declaring that parents would have to rely on existing unpaid sick leave programmes.

On Friday, Sánchez declared that “there is no zero risk” with opening schools, but that he wanted to convey a message of “reasonable safety” to educators. Spain’s 17 autonomous regions must not close schools “unilaterally,” he stated, whatever the public health dangers.

Over 10,500 Florida children test positive for COVID-19 after schools reopen

Matthew MacEgan

According to a report published in the Washington Post earlier this week, cases of COVID-19 among school-aged children in Florida have increased by 34 percent since schools started to reopen in early August. More than 10,500 children under the age of 18 have tested positive since August 10, when about half of the state’s 4,500 public schools began ushering students back into their buildings.

On Wednesday, the Orlando Sentinel reported that more than 800 students and staff in Central Florida schools were now under quarantine orders after potentially being exposed to COVID-19. On Tuesday, a separate report emerged that 500 students and staff in Pinellas County schools also faced a possible quarantine after similar exposures.

Students in class (Credit: pixy.org)

Olympia High School in Orange County, Golfview Elementary School in Brevard County, and Harmony Middle School in Osceola County have all recently been closed after reports surfaced that teachers tested positive for COVID-19. At least nine Manatee County schools reported positive cases between Friday and Tuesday.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, has not held an in-person Cabinet meeting since February. The Capitol in Tallahassee has remained shut to the public, despite DeSantis’ rabid efforts to reopen schools and loosen restrictions on businesses throughout Florida in the middle of a raging pandemic.

A spokesperson for DeSantis recently stated that “the state’s economic engine needs to start running again. While the symbolism of the Capitol opening will be welcome, the fact is, essential work is getting done with essential personnel. In the meantime, we are starting our economic engines.”

On Thursday morning, Florida reported 2,583 new cases of COVID-19 and 211 new deaths from the virus. This brings the state’s official totals to more than 654,000 confirmed cases and over 12,300 deaths. The new deaths reported Thursday include 49 in Miami-Dade County, 14 in Broward County, and 9 in Palm Beach County—all southern counties hardest hit by COVID-19.

The declining number of positive cases over the past two months is entirely the result of a similar decline in testing statewide. In July, the daily average of tests given was 54,400; in August it was 32,000; and so far in September it is 23,000. This is about half of the number of daily tests given two months ago, when the daily number of new cases was also more than twice as high. About 4.8 million people have been tested in Florida—not even a quarter of the recorded 2019 population of 21.48 million.

When it comes to schools, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) has been directing some districts to shut down their individual COVID-19 dashboards, effectively leaving entire communities in the dark about new cases and deaths in their region. This includes Duval County, where a group of courageous educators and parents have launched a rank-and-file safety committee to demand that schools be closed immediately.

Source: Florida Department of Health

The Duval committee invited two local doctors to speak at a virtual meeting this past Tuesday: Dr. Mohammed B. Reza, an infectious disease specialist in Atlantic Beach who is affiliated with the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, and Dr. Nancy Staats, a retired anesthesiologist who has been active in pressuring local politicians and administrators to enforce CDC policies. The meeting was attended by teachers, parents, school counselors, and other workers from Duval and surrounding counties.

Dr. Reza began by exposing the official positivity rate currently being reported by the State of Florida—between four and six percent depending on the day—as a sham. He pointed to a resource independent of the influence of the state that shows the real positive test rate is 13.5 percent, a number which indicates insufficient testing.

“Hiding information like the rate of infection and the positive test rate is just mind-blowing to me,” Reza stated. “Not only this, but the governor has cut down the number of tests being given since the recent hurricane by half. We all know it’s going to get worse. It’s like watching a train crash.”

When asked to discuss some of the science behind how the virus infects people, Dr. Reza explained that there is no defined data on how much of a “viral load” is necessary to cause infection. “In other viruses, there is a certain ‘load’ that you need to be exposed to that can cause you to become infected. With HIV, for instance, you need a viral load of about 200 copies to be able to transmit it to another person. Since COVID-19 is aerosolized, the viral load is likely thousands of copies in just a single cough or sneeze from one infected person to another.”

Dr. Reza also explained that excessive cleaning means very little when students, teachers, and staff are being forced into shared spaces. “Cleaning is of course a good idea, but when you have 500 people coming together, that cleaning goes out the door. We’re not even sure if it’s really surfaces that are the main transmitter of the virus. It’s more likely that most infections come from face-to-face interactions. On top of this, children are known to be petri dishes of infections. They touch their faces; they sneeze and cough. Trying to keep a mask on is just not possible in these school settings.”

Dr. Staats reported to those present at the Duval committee meeting that one county inadvertently released data showing that the rate of staff-to-student cases is in the range of 60 to 80 percent. “What this means is that most of the positive cases are among staff and faculty, which tells us that students are not being tested. This could be due to the children being asymptomatic or parents not wanting their kids to be tested.”

“Sadly, children are the Trojan horse in this situation,” Dr. Reza added.

Parents and educators in Osceola County, like their compatriots in Duval, have also been making efforts to fight their school reopenings. Several community members, including Christina Stewart, who sent a statement to the World Socialist Web Site last week, attended their school board meeting on Tuesday to denounce the reopening policies and relate how frightened educators are to speak out on conditions for fear of losing their jobs.

Megan Carter, a daycare worker, chastised the school board: “I think it’s very disingenuous to pretend that opening schools was going to be less disruptive than going into schools knowing that there were going to be cases and knowing that there were going to be people who would get infected and have to quarantine. With a little creativity, we could’ve gone back to school 100 percent virtually. We could’ve planned for this. It’s a shame that we haven’t.”

Carter demanded that the school board explain why Poinciana High School had its entire cafeteria staff absent from school that day without any explanation or notice that they were being quarantined. She was never answered except with a boiler-plate response later in the meeting from the board and Superintendent Debra Pace that “we are putting all the information that we legally can put on [our] web site.”

The FDOH, which has suppressed public knowledge of COVID-19 infections in schools, has told news outlets that it is working to release data about schools and daycare centers, but has not given a timetable on when this vital information will be made public, saying vaguely that it could take days or weeks. The state’s existing COVID-19 dashboard has been mired in controversy throughout the year. In May, Rebekah Jones, the state’s top COVID-19 researcher who developed the dashboard, was fired after she refused to manipulate data.

Despite having the highest numbers of cases and deaths in the state, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, which remain in “Phase 1” of reopening, are also discussing a deadly return to in-person learning. Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie held a news conference Tuesday saying that schools in his county will be reopening in October “if the current trends continue,” a reference to the incomplete data being issued by the state.

“We need to be prepared for a challenging school year which could be a roller coaster when it comes to the virus,” Runcie stated. His comparison of this deadly situation to an amusement park ride sums up the disdain of the ruling class and its lackeys for the lives of students, teachers, staff, and their loved ones.