Is there any alternative to anti-government outburst in Bangladesh?

Amir Mohammad Sayem

In the politics of Bangladesh, opposition parties including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party frequently say that massive movement will be carried out to oust the government, whereas the ruling party, the Bangladesh Awami League, repeatedly responds that oppositions’ anti-government movement will be tackled with full strength. Even if no massive anti-government movement was carried out as said and political situation remains calm at least for around the last two years and especially at the time of the pandemic, a pertinent question obviously remains on whether there is any possibility of such an outburst in Bangladesh — sooner or later. The possibility of anti-government outburst, in my opinion, cannot be discarded altogether, given the overall political context of the country.

For many, there is, in fact, no room for the transfer of political office through free, fair and credible elections — ranging from the parliamentary to Union Parishad — in Bangladesh. While the 10th parliamentary elections held in 2014 were boycotted by the BNP and some other parties, the participatory 11th general elections held in 2018 were, as frequently claimed, massively unfree, unfair and incredible because of the manipulation of state power by the ruling party, leading to a landslide defeat of the National Unity Front — a joint political platform that was created by a number of parties including the BNP and Gono Forum in 2018 aiming at the 11th parliamentary election in particular. Other subsequent elections, including City Corporation, are also claimed by oppositions as unfree and unfair.

In addition to electoral cause, political space of oppositions at national and local level is usually not good in Bangladesh — a constitutionally democratic country. There is small room for opposition parties including the BNP, which was in power for four times, to participate in political assemblies or hold political rallies, rendered as a crucial ingredient of democratic politics. As recurrently criticized by opposition leaders and political analysts, oppositions get very limited opportunities for political rallies or demonstrations, whereas the ruling party can hold political rallies without any barriers. As further said, many opposition leaders and activists are killed for political reasons and many others are repressed and harassed through several forms — politically motivated cases, arrests, threats of arrests, etc.

But an important question remains on oppositions’ capacity, though there are reasons for massive anti-government movement. In fact, several causes including systematic and consistent repression on opposition leaders and activists for years (as particularly claimed by oppositions), the BNP’s staying away from power for around fourteen years, lack of dynamic and effective leadership, indifference among leaders and activists, a lack of people centric agenda, and a lack of effective coordination among oppositions have enormously lessened strengths for successful anti-government outburst. Yet, a great deal of strengths owing to a large number of leaders, activists and supporters across the country may unsurprisingly make oppositions able to successfully carry out a stronger political movement with effective coordination sooner or later for the establishment of political rights, even if they failed earlier and the pandemic can halt any such possibility at this moment.

Under the context of political challenges and counter-challenges and potential circumstances, a question can relevantly be raised on whether the anti-government movement or the capacity to carry it out is mandatory for making sure justifiable concerns are addressed, given that Bangladesh is a democratic country. To me, the necessity of showing capacity — or the necessity of anti-government outburst — does not seem good at all especially when Bangladesh needs to go a long way for its better internal and external position, despite the fact that political movements are sometimes essential for making some significant changes in many countries. In fact, it can possibly lead to catastrophic economic, social, political and other impacts and indicates the culture of politics that is unprogressive and might-based, which are needed to be changed for improvement of the very politics.

It also seems that any massive political movement is now undesirable to most general people, who are more engaged for developing themselves in economic and other terms. But, if do not make any mistake, people simultaneously do not want to see the political culture of revenge and political hegemony that lead to relentless efforts to suppress oppositions and limit political space for oppositions. I think that most people do not accept neither the 21st August grenade attack on the Awami League’s political gatherings in 2004 and other forms of coercion by the then ruling alliance nor the current government’s repression on oppositions, manipulations of elections, etc. In fact, people’s vote for the Awami League in 2008 and reluctance to cast votes at present clearly indicate such a position.

It is often said that the running government has contributed much, since it’s coming to power in 2009, to national development with many remarkable nationally and internationally oriented steps. Obviously, I do not disagree with many significant improvements occurred in diverse sectors including economic, educational, infrastructural and communication, even if there are controversies on some occasions including a lack of fair share of economic development among all segments. But is it possible to develop sustainably without political and civil rights, rendered as crucial for human development from broader viewpoint? To me, desired progression of a country means the one which takes economic, social, political and other aspects into account for all — the ruling party and others.

Expectedly, more needs to be done to avert any undesired potential political outburst — sooner or later — and make political environment from local to national level better with qualitative changes in the culture of politics that are facilitative for progression of all. In this respect, both the ruling party and oppositions have some dissimilar but undeniable roles to play; yet, it is unsurprising that the ruling party has some exclusive responsibilities for addressing diverse justifiable political concerns of oppositions. In my opinion, the ruling Awami League should come out of its present hegemonic stance, realize potential negative impacts of political unilateralism on the future politics of the country and make earnest efforts to address all justifiable concerns — electoral and non-electoral.

But all parties need to play desired roles for improving quality of politics. Obviously, use of diverse forms of coercive techniques against opposition leaders and activists with administrative means, usage of muscle powers of party men, subversive protest activities, the political culture of revenge, etc. are almost common scenario in Bangladesh, though there are variations. It has turned to be around 50 years since the glorious Independence in 1971, but changes do not seem significant in terms quality of politics, although immediate post-independence start was good. In fact, mass people now want to see that all future elections are fair, opposition parties are no more suppressed for political reasons and oppositions play their responsible roles for the country.

Solomon Islands government to ban Facebook

John Braddock

The government of the Solomon Islands in the south west Pacific has announced it will move to ban Facebook. The cabinet is also looking at banning the Messenger app.

Communications Minister Peter Shanel Agovaka confirmed the decision to Solomon Times Online, blaming public misuse of the social media platform. “Abusive languages against ministers, prime minister, character assassination, defamation of character—all these are issues of concern,” he said.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sogavare with Australian PM Scott Morrison in June 2019 (Photo: DFAT)

It is not yet clear when the proposed ban might be implemented, for how long, or how the government intends to enforce it, but according to Agovaka the decision would not necessarily require parliament’s approval. “The government is still in discussion with the operators to work out how this can be done. The operators shall need to establish a firewall to block Facebook,” he declared.

Avoka falsely denied the ban is an attack on freedom of expression, claiming that freedom of the press is protected. He said the country lacks legislation on internet usage and cybercrime and cited purported concerns about what children were accessing. The internet needed to be regulated “to safeguard our young people from harmful content,” he said.

Facebook has 2.4 billion users globally. In the Pacific it is a primary means of communication and used as a forum for public discussion as well as connecting expatriates with families at home. About 20 percent of the Solomon Islands’ 650,000 population has internet access. A Solomon Islands Media Association spokesperson Georgina Kekea told Radio NZ the body was concerned people’s voices were being suppressed and the ban contravened their constitutional rights.

Transparency International’s Ruth Liloqula said the government was responding to adverse reactions to its COVID-19 economic stimulus package. “A lot of people are really pressing the government to make an explanation why some constituencies are getting $3 million and why some are just getting $600 and why the economic stimulus package has to go through members of parliament at all,” she told Radio NZ.

The chamber of commerce said the ban was a threat to many businesses and would bring negative press on the world stage.

The Solomon Islands joins four other countries, China, Iran, Syria and North Korea, in banning Facebook. Exploding social struggles are driving governments internationally to impose internet censorship and attack freedom of speech and other basic democratic rights.

Spain’s Socialist Party-Podemos government last month introduced measures to allow the state to monitor and suppress internet content under the pretext of combating “fake news” and “foreign intervention.” New Zealand has also passed legislation making it easier for the government to “take down” content from social media that is deemed to be “extremist.”

Social media platforms, including Facebook, are also actively involved in their own political censorship, targeting left-wing organisations and the World Socialist Web Site in particular, all in the name of halting the spread of disinformation and “fake news.” Various methods have been used, including the manipulation of search results to downgrade or block particular websites.

In the Solomon Islands, Facebook was cited as a factor in riots and looting in the capital, Honiara, in April 2019 following a protest at the parliament over Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s re-election for a sixth term. Facebook was widely used by those organising the protests over deepening inequality and poverty.

Like other privileged political elites in the region, the Solomon Islands establishment is embroiled in corruption scandals and instability. Two by-elections were forced last week after the courts found their respective former MPs guilty of bribing voters during the 2019 national election. Although both were disqualified from the by-elections, their spouses stood. One, Ethel Vokia, was successful in Northeast Guadalcanal while two former prime ministers, Derek Sikua and Gordon Darcy Lilo, were defeated.

The Facebook ban is, significantly, taking place amid rising tensions over the Sogavare government’s relations with China. The leader of the Malaita province, Daniel Suidani, is threatening a separatist split after the national government’s diplomatic switch last year from Taiwan to Beijing.

The proposed split by the country’s most populous province follows a series of provocations by the regional premier, who is backed by US and Australian imperialism. Suidani has organised pro-Taiwan demonstrations and fomented anti-Chinese sentiment. His administration has effectively sought to maintain its own foreign policy, coordinating aid and economic assistance from Taipei. Suidani seized on the Facebook ban to further criticise the central government, saying it was “not the answer to people’s frustrations.”

Between 1999 and 2003, a low-intensity civil war involving the separatist Malaita Eagle Force militia cost around 200 lives and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes. The threat of renewed conflict has been stoked by the United States, as part of its aggressive drive to undermine China’s influence in the Pacific.

Class struggles are also erupting. Sogavare suspended the Solomon Islands Nurses Association (SINA) early this month for staging an “illegal” rally. Hundreds of nurses had gathered in the carpark of the National Referral Hospital in Honiara to protest non-payment of allowances for work done during the COVID-19 emergency. After failing to get a reply to a formal request to hold the demonstration, the nurses went ahead with the strike, against opposition by the SINA executive.

Sogavare claimed the SINA suspension was because the nurses’ actions put lives at risk. “It is important that we follow the regulations, especially when there is a State of Public Emergency,” he declared. Sogavare further warned the unions against becoming “an instrument of division instead of unity.”

The Solomon Islands is not the only Pacific country to suppress Facebook. In July, the Samoan government threatened a ban after blogger Malele Paulo, also known as King Faipopo, was jailed for seven weeks for making false statements on social media allegedly defaming Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi. Similar measures have also been threatened or implemented by Nauru in 2015, Papua New Guinea (2018) and Tonga (2019).

The turn to authoritarian measures is escalating as the deeply impoverished countries face mounting economic and social crises. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pacific economies were extremely fragile due to a colonial legacy of poverty and underdevelopment. Now governments in the region, many unstable and in crisis, are imposing tough new controls on the pretext of fighting the pandemic.

The International Labour Organisation has reported that thousands of jobs in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga are dependent on tourist visitor numbers, which have fallen to zero. Australian academic Stephen Howes forecasts that the shutting down of global trade will result in crises of food, water and medicine in the short term, and unemployment and poverty in the longer term, throughout the region.

Preparations to suppress widespread social unrest are well under way. Civil society organisation Civicus last December singled out Fiji, Nauru and Papua New Guinea as having “obstructed” basic civil rights, including media censorship. The Melanesia Media Freedom Forum warned after its annual meeting in Brisbane last year that threats to the media across the Pacific are increasing with “restrictive legislation, intimidation, political threats, legal threats and prosecutions, assaults and police and military brutality and illegal detention.”

Embattled Australian Labor Party leader appeals for business support

Mike Head

Facing rumoured challenges to his leadership, Australian Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese has made his most craven pitch yet to big business for support, both for himself and for the return of a Labor government.

Albanese used a Labor Party business fundraiser last week to declare Labor is “pro-aspiration, pro-entrepreneurship, pro-wealth creation and pro-growth.” Such language embodies Labor’s commitment to meeting the profit requirements of the corporate elite, and enforcing them against the working class.

Albanese’s message was even more explicit than in his previous “vision” speeches since being installed as Labor leader following the party’s crushing defeat at the May 2019 federal election, in which its vote fell to a century low of 33 percent.

Anthony Albanese (Credit: @AlboMP, Twitter).

In his initial post-election speech, Albanese outlined Labor’s shift to a more openly pro-business program. He vowed to forge closer ties to business leaders, boost “wealth creation,” rather than “wealth distribution,” and pursue bipartisanship with the Liberal-National Coalition government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Last week, Albanese went further. He pledged to collaborate with the business chiefs and the trade unions to impose the restructuring of economic and class relations being prosecuted in the COVID-19 pandemic, which is accelerating at the expense of workers’ jobs, wages and basic conditions.

“We should be cooperating in the knowledge that ultimately, we are all on the same side, striving for the same objectives,” he told the corporate executives in his zoom address to the “2020 Remote Federal Labor Business Exchange Program.” He added that “you will always have my respect—and my ear.”

Albanese insisted: “This isn’t a sudden Road to Damascus moment for me. It’s a message I have been delivering for two decades in public life.” He quoted a speech he had given in 2018 honouring the legacy of Gough Whitlam, the Labor prime minister from 1972 to 1975.

“In the Whitlam Oration in 2018, I said this: ‘Successful Labor governments collaborate with unions, the business sector and civil society to achieve positive outcomes in the national interest.’”

Albanese drew attention to Labor’s “constructive” and “supportive” legislative record during the pandemic. Since March, Labor has passed every Morrison government bill, including multi-billion dollar handouts to business and huge tax cuts for high-income households. Albanese said Labor hoped to replicate this “constructive” relationship with business.

The Labor leader sought to justify his plea to business by saying “when business does well, workers do well, and vice versa.” In reality, the interests of workers and employers are diametrically opposed.

Currently, despite the resurgence of the pandemic globally, corporate profits are being boosted by lifting safety restrictions, regardless of the risk to safety. Mass unemployment and the cutting of JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments are being used to coerce workers into lower-paid employment on worse conditions. To intensify this offensive, governments, both Labor and Liberal-National, are imposing public sector wage freezes.

At the same time, Albanese voiced concern about deepening working class discontent. He warned the business leaders that “as we wrestle with the economic conditions, there’s another challenge waiting for politicians and business, and that is the slow but steady erosion of our standing in the eyes of the public.”

The Labor leader appealed for business to work with Labor and the unions to “solve this growing deficit of trust.” He said business was “working this out and is already working to address it.”

Albanese did not elaborate on this comment, but it evidently referred to the months of closed-door talks since March between government ministers, business groups and union officials to draft new workplace laws that will facilitate a further union-backed assault on workers’ jobs and conditions.

Albanese hails from Labor’s nominal “Left” faction, as did Julia Gillard, a previous prime minister. His stepped-up overture to the corporate elite is revealing on several levels. In the most immediate sense, it is his response to the internal plotting against him. It is not yet clear who might challenge Albanese, but the knives are out. According to the corporate media, the “killing season” has begun, ostensibly triggered by Albanese’s failure to win popularity.

Two days before Albanese’s speech, his deputy chief of staff, Sabina Husic, resigned after a complaint was posted online that aired accusations against personnel in his office. Albanese denounced the dossier as a “fake” and Husic said the document, purporting to be from Labor staff, was “malicious, false, fake and defamatory.”

At the beginning of the previous week, Labor’s national “Right” faction convenor Joel Fitzgibbon quit the shadow ministry in a bid to provoke a move against Albanese. Fitzgibbon denounced Labor’s promises to reduce carbon emissions, despite the limited and pro-business character of its proposals. His stance reflects the interests of the multi-billion dollar coal industry, for all his claims to champion the jobs of coal miners in his rural electorate.

Fitzgibbon embarked on a media blitz that included him calling for Labor’s shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, to be dumped from his portfolio at a planned end-of-year reshuffle.

Former party leader Bill Shorten, who presided over Labor’s 2019 election defeat, has used media interviews to pointedly praise the attributes of Tanya Plibersek, an alternative “Left” standard-bearer. There is speculation of another factional power-sharing challenge, with Plibersek partnering with a “Right” leader.

Whatever the immediate infighting, Albanese’s reaction underscores the true class character of the Labor Party. Labor is a party of big business, with a long record of serving the interests of the Australian capitalist class and its US and other imperialist partners. Any lip service that Labor and its union collaborators pay to a “fair go” for workers is designed to divert and stifle the mounting disaffection produced by decades of widening social inequality, deteriorating living and working conditions and participation in imperialist wars.

Albanese’s main pitch is for the ruling class to again rely on a union-supported Labor government amid the greatest economic breakdown since the 1930s Great Depression, as it did under Whitlam during the global turmoil of the 1970s, prime ministers Hawke and Keating in the sweeping pro-market restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s, and prime ministers Rudd and Gillard during the post-2008 global financial crisis.

From Labor’s birth, formed by the unions in the 1890s, it has been committed to the defence of the Australian capitalist nation state, and provided its founding racist and nationalist ideology of “White Australia.”

Labor leaders always vehemently opposed any perspective based on the necessity to overthrow capitalism, insisting that the working class could improve its lot through militant union struggles or by voting for Labor. Within the framework of a nationally-regulated economy, the ruling class could be pressured for certain concessions, as initially occurred under Whitlam.

But that national reformist program was shattered by the globalisation of production from the 1980s, which enabled transnational corporations to shift their operations from one country to another to secure lower labour costs.

The government-union Accords of Hawke and Keating marked the transformation of Labor and the unions, like their counterparts worldwide, into apparatuses that reverse the past gains of the working class in order to help make “their” national capitalist economy “competitive” on the world market.

Albanese personifies the true anti-working class character of this party. His entire political career as a Labor apparatchik and parliamentarian occurred during this period, ultimately becoming a key cabinet minister under Rudd and Gillard.

In the 2019 election, millions of workers based on bitter experience, simply did not believe Labor’s phony promises to secure “fairness” from the wealthy elite. But votes of disgust and protest are not enough. What is necessary is a clear political break from Laborism itself, and the turn to building a new socialist leadership to overturn the bankrupt capitalist profit system.

COVID-19 infections spread rapidly in Spain amid government inaction

Alice Summers

Tens of thousands of people continue to be infected with the coronavirus in Spain every day. Despite a slight dip in the number of daily cases reported, infection rates remain extremely high: 15-20,000 a day, according to official statistics.

Spain has now recorded around 1.6 million coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. It surpassed one million cases on October 21; in the space of just 20 days, the case total increased by 50 percent, reaching 1.5 million on 17 November.

People walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Last Tuesday, Spain reported 435 deaths from the virus in a 24-hour period, the highest daily fatality figures in the autumn. Between 250 and 400 people have died of COVID-19 across Spain every day over the last two weeks. At the end of last week, the 14-day cumulative incidence rate stood at 436 per 100,000 inhabitants, a decrease from the start of November, when this key indicator stood at 529.

Despite these dangerously high figures, the Podemos-Socialist Party (PSOE) government has refused to take the action required to curb the virus, imposing only limited and ineffectual curfew measures, with some areas of the country even scaling back restrictions.

After implementing limited closures in October across the hospitality and leisure sector to combat the pandemic, the Catalan government announced last Thursday that regional restrictions would start to be relaxed. This week, bars and restaurants will be able to reopen at 30 percent of their capacity and with an enforced closure time of 9:30 p.m. Cinemas, theatres and similar venues will also be allowed to open again at 50 percent of usual capacity.

While the number of cases reported in Catalonia has gradually started to decline, thousands of infections are still being discovered each week. In the week ending 17 November, 13,907 cases were discovered in this region alone, with 414 deaths from the virus. There has been little change in the number of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital, with 2,402 admissions during this period, compared to 2,661 and 2,720 reported in the previous two weeks.

Furthermore, the proportion of COVID-19 tests which return a positive result stands at 7.75 percent, meaning that the virus is still far from under control in Catalonia. According to criteria published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in May, a positive rate of less than 5 percent is an indicator that the epidemic is under control in a country.

Across Spain, the average coronavirus test positivity rate is 11.9 percent, rising to 17 percent or above in four areas: Andalucía, Aragón, Castilla y León and Valencia. A test positivity rate this high indicates that many cases are probably going undetected.

Meanwhile, the proportion of Intensive Care Unit hospital beds occupied by coronavirus patients stands at over 30 percent in Spain and at more than 50 percent in the regions of Aragón, Melilla and La Rioja. The vast majority of Spain’s provinces are considered to be at “Extreme Risk”—the highest level—according to the government’s own four-stage framework.

At the end of October, Socialist Party Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared a state of alarm, allowing regional governments to implement measures to confine areas with high rates of infection. A countrywide 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was also imposed, which regional authorities could adjust by up to an hour each way. The state of alarm was initially passed for 15 days, before being extended to May next year by a vote in the Congress of Deputies.

Last Tuesday, several of Spain’s 17 autonomous provinces declared that they will keep their regional borders closed into late November or early December, after initially shutting them for short durations at the end of October. These measures prevent people from entering or leaving the areas unless for authorized reasons such as work, medical appointments or taking care of dependents. All of Spain’s regions other than Galicia, Extremadura, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands have now imposed some sort of perimetral lockdown.

In Madrid, however, regional lock-down measures will only be in place for ten days, between 4 and 13 December, covering the public holidays on 7 and 8 December, when large numbers of Spaniards would usually travel to visit family and friends across the country.

Such limited measures are completely inadequate to curb the spread of the virus and save lives. The PSOE-Podemos government has ruled out “stay-at-home” orders or closing workplaces and schools. This forces workers and children to travel on crowded public transport and gather in facilities where hygiene and social distancing measures are non-existent, creating perfect conditions for continued transmission of the virus.

In order to facilitate these efforts to keep workers at work and children at school no matter the risk to their health and lives, the right-wing Popular Party regional president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, announced last week that the region would be rolling out “COVID passbooks.” These documents will include each individual’s health records relating to the virus, including results of PCR tests and antibody tests, in order to demonstrate if they have been infected with the coronavirus and are therefore supposedly immune.

Such “immunity passports” were condemned by the World Health Organization when they were first suggested in the early weeks of the pandemic, due to their anti-scientific and discriminatory nature. There is still no evidence to suggest that those who have been infected with the virus once and have antibodies have any lasting or strong immunity to it or that they are incapable of carrying the virus and passing it on to others.

There is widespread opposition to these attempts to force a “return to normality” across the country. According to a survey conducted by daily El País, the majority of Spaniards support stricter confinement measures to stem the spread of the virus. The poll, based on interviews with 2,000 people, showed that more than six in ten (61.2 percent) would support a second home confinement policy if it helped curb the pandemic. Meanwhile, 72 percent of respondents said measures aimed at protecting health should be prioritised over the economy.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents thought that the pandemic had exacerbated economic inequality in Spain.

The economic impact on the working class has already been devastating. With millions more workers left unemployed and without financial support as employers carried out a jobs massacre, many families in Spain have been unable to afford basic necessities to live.

According to the charity Spanish Federation of Food Banks (FEBA), the number of families forced to rely on food aid from their organization has increased by about 70 percent since the start of the pandemic.

FEBA spokesperson Ángel Franco stated that the pandemic had significantly “exacerbated” reliance on food banks, which even prior to the outbreak of the virus had been very high. “In 2019, we had 1.05 million beneficiaries,” he stated, “when the [first] state of alarm ended [in June] we had got to 1.5 million, and we calculate that we will end December with 1.8 million.” FEBA predicts that they will hand out 192 million kilos of food this year, compared to 145 million in 2019.

Similarly, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, director of communications at the Spanish Red Cross, stated that “after the declaration of the state of alarm [in March], we put in place a response program to Covid-19, and we have so far helped 2.7 million people, the vast majority in need of food. Demand has increased five-fold since the start of quarantine. Food distribution has shot up and 75 percent of those who came to us in 2020 were new users, who had never resorted to the help of an NGO [Non-Governmental Organisation] before, not to ours or any other.”

Nigerian government goes on offensive against youth protesting police brutality

Jean Shaoul

The government of President Muhammadu Buhari has launched an all-out offensive against people who played a prominent role in the weeks-long nationwide rebellion against police brutality.

The crackdown follows the brutal suppression of the #End SARS protests—the most widespread in decades—that led to the deaths of 69 people and the wounding of hundreds across the country.

It is aimed at intimidating and criminalising peaceful protests and media reporting in the interest of Nigeria’s kleptocrats and the transnational energy corporations that have looted the country’s wealth.

A man holds a banner as he demonstrate on the street to protest against police brutality in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday Oct. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Some 1,500 people have been arrested, some in Gestapo-like operations. Detainees include a number of activists and journalists arrested in the capital Abuja who face charges of criminal conspiracy, unlawful assembly, inciting public disturbance and public nuisance. Others have been arrested for managing a WhatsApp platform to coordinate the protests in Osun State, while an artist who had played a prominent role in the protests in Lagos and was planning another protest, was seized at his home and thrown into jail.

Pelumi Onifade, a 20-year-old reporter with Gboah TV who was arrested and wounded by the Lagos State Task Force on October 24, was found dead two weeks later. Wearing a jacket clearly identifying him as a reporter, he had been filming clashes between protesters and the Task Force.

Having set up panels of inquiry into the well-founded accusations of systematic intimidation, extortion, kidnapping and murder by the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) as a means of placating the protesters, the government is using them as a means of harassing and intimidating activists.

Two youth panelists have boycotted the hearings after one of them had his bank account frozen by Nigeria’s Central Bank, which has frozen the accounts of at least 20 activists involved in the protests as well as six financial institutions, alleging they are involved in “terrorism financing.” While protest organisers have sued the central bank to have their accounts unfrozen, they are unlikely to get a speedy court decision.

The authorities at Lagos’s international airport seized the passport of Moe Odele, a lawyer who arranged free legal aid for protesters and is involved in the defence of Eromosele Adene, a musician who helped organise protests in Lagos and was released on bail after being held for 11 days without charge. Prevented from travelling, Odele was only given her passport back a week later after a public outcry.

Other high-profile activists have reportedly gone into hiding or left the country. Those targeted include journalists and the broadcast media. Gatefield, a communications firm based in the capital Abuja, had an account dedicated to funding independent journalism frozen. Adewunmi Emoruwa, lead strategist at Gatefield, accused the government of clamping down on the protest movement and instilling fear, saying “The instruments of state are being weaponised in unprecedented ways, especially the [central bank], which should be highly independent and steer clear of political issues such as this.”

Police are also clamping down on gatherings, banning a symposium on the “lessons and tasks” of the #EndSARS movement that the family of the late internationally renowned Afrobeat musician and activist Fela Kuti had planned to hold at their music venue, the New Afrika Shrine, in Lagos.

The protests in Nigeria, with a population of over 206 million and Africa’s largest economy, started after a video clip of the killing of a young man by SARS went viral. Taking their cue from the mass worldwide protests against the police murder of George Floyd in the US, Nigeria’s youth—the country’s median age is 19—took to the streets. United across ethnicities, tribal groups, and religions, they attracted support from the Nigerian diaspora throughout the world.

The government’s pledge to replace SARS with a new unit, the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), only inflamed the protests. Last month, it emerged—after initial denials—that the UK, the former colonial power whose Shell Oil company has major investments in the Niger Delta, had in 2019 provided training and equipment for Nigeria’s police and security forces, widely recognized as one of the worst in the world. The program was organized through the Foreign Office’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), whose funding comes from the Department for International Development’s so-called “aid” budget.

What began as an outcry against the widespread brutality of the police and security forces soon turned into a mass protest against rampant corruption, banditry, organised crime syndicates and the government’s economic mismanagement and mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The military’s firing of live ammunition at peaceful protesters blocking the toll gate at the Lekki-Ikoye bridge in Lagos on October 20, killing at least 12 people and wounding 50, further inflamed tensions. The protesters had been sitting down on the road, waving the Nigerian flag, and singing the national anthem.

The protests continued in defiance of curfews, with crowds setting fire to police stations, banks, TV and media buildings and government offices. Shopping malls and government food warehouses storing food were looted amid widespread accusations that federal government officials had misappropriated pandemic relief funds and were hoarding food for their families and friends.

The authorities have announced their intention of introducing some form of censorship of social media following the worldwide spread of images, videos, and an Instagram live feed of the deadly shootings at the Lekki toll gate. Information Minister Lai Mohammed said that “fake news” was one of the biggest challenges facing Nigeria and that “the use of the social media to spread fake news and disinformation means there is the need to do something about it.”

Mohammed has also threatened to sanction CNN, the US cable news network, over its investigative report into the shooting of protesters by soldiers at the Lekki Tollgate, Lagos, accusing the network of disseminating false news and disinformation. He denied that the soldiers had fired at the protesters, contradicting a previous statement denying the soldiers’ presence at the tollgate. While he did not specify what action the government would take, his silence was assumed to mean that the government would revoke CNN’s broadcasting license, sparking outrage across the country.

CNN defended its reporting, saying it was carefully and meticulously researched and based on statements from dozens of witnesses and verified footage of soldiers shooting in the direction of protesters.

These measures signal that Nigeria’s ruling elite will use every possible means to silence and suppress workers and youth who face social misery and hunger as food prices soar. The official rate of unemployment is 27 percent, amid falling oil revenues and the pandemic-induced recession. Major food items cost significantly more than a few months ago, with a 50kg bag of rice that used to cost ₦26,000 now costing ₦32,000 and onions quadrupling in price, which the government has blamed on the protests and looting. At the same time, the government has increased the price of fuel and electricity, even as power cuts are the norm not the exception.

Average annual income is just $2,000 in this oil rich country. Public education, with high user co-payments, is in an appalling state. Health care is virtually non-existent as the COVID-19 pandemic grows and yellow fever has made a comeback, with more than 70 people dying of the disease since September, compared to 47 throughout the whole of 2019.

Similar conditions of poverty and police brutality are replicated across the continent, with protest hashtags trending in at least seven countries, including Congo, Zimbabwe and Namibia, prompting the hashtag #AfricaIsBleeding. The sheer scale of the continent’s young population—some 20 percent of Africans are between the ages of 15 and 24, few with any realistic prospect of a secure job and a decent future—testifies to the powder keg that is Africa.

Tens of thousands made homeless in UK as winter looms and temperatures plummet

Simon Whelan

Tens of thousands in the UK have been made homeless since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic despite an ostensible government ban on tenant evictions. Since April this year, only eight months ago, over 46,000 people have been thrown out on the streets and another 45,000 left facing the same fate.

These devastating figures were revealed by the Guardian through a Freedom of Information request. Responses from 204 local councils showed that 36,359 people had been threatened with homelessness since the pandemic started, 6,184 people had received Section 21 eviction notices, and a further 46,894 people had already been made homeless. A Section 21 allow landlords to remove tenants with two months' notice once their fixed-term contract has ended, without giving a reason.

During the first pandemic lockdown in March, Boris Johnson’s Tory government falsely claimed it had eradicated rough sleeping through its “Everyone in” scheme. Even this limited measure minimised to a degree the risk of contracting coronavirus and saved an estimated 266 lives, according to a recent study in The Lancet medical magazine. But thousands of newly homeless have been created since then.

A homeless person in Manchester city centre sleeps as the temperatures reached freezing in January 2019 (credit: WSWS)

Writing in the Independent, London GP Tom Gardiner points out how “Winter night shelters normally provide a vital lifeline for rough sleepers, but the risk of coronavirus transmission in these communal areas is just too high, despite the best efforts of staff to make them Covid secure.” The doctor referred to figures from a study in New York which showed the mortality rate from COVID-19 for those staying in shelters was 61 percent higher than the rate among the general population.

Homeless charities are demanding that the government relaunch the “Everyone in” scheme and halt all plans to deport foreign-born rough sleepers. By some estimations as many as half of London’s rough sleepers are migrant workers.

New post-Brexit immigration measures announced last month mean that officials can refuse a person permission to stay in the UK if they believe they have been sleeping rough. A number of housing charities including Shelter, St Mungo’s, Crisis and Homeless Link believe such moves will drive workers into modern slavery-style exploitation in order to avoid being rendered homeless and deported forthwith.

These organisations are demanding ministers reopen hotels to rough sleepers as winter approaches. Epidemiologists have warned that failure to take action by the government will kill hundreds of those sleeping rough.

The homeless are more likely to contract COVID-19, to receive delayed and inadequate healthcare provision when required and to suffer the most severe outcomes of the virus, including death. They are three times more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions, and, through a lack of even basic hygiene provisions and access to healthcare, are left extremely vulnerable to infection.

Research conducted by the Guardian among both UK-born and migrant rough sleepers found that many had been made homeless in recent months after losing their jobs in the service sector—especially restaurants, clubs and event security. Some explained how domestic pressures created by lockdown or the difficulty of sofa-surfing, i.e. sleeping on friends or family’s couches, during the pandemic were responsible for their homeless status.

Young people are especially vulnerable to rapacious landlords. The destruction of public housing over the past four decades and the extortionate price of housing means low-paid and vulnerable workers, disproportionately the young, are largely reliant upon private rented accommodation. Almost two million young people are frightened they will not have a safe place to stay if they lose their main source of income, according to new figures from homeless charity Centrepoint.

Many young workers are employed in the hospitality sector notorious for low wages, brutal conditions and a serious lack of workplace protection. It is estimated that 60 percent of the half million who lost jobs between the March lockdown and this summer were aged 16-25.

The number of young people sleeping rough in London, which has some of the highest accommodation rents in the world, has risen to a record high. Figures released by the Homelessness and Information Network, Chain, show how the number of 16 to 25-year-olds sleeping rough has risen to 368 in 2020 from 250 in the same period in 2019, an increase of 47 percent. Young people now make up 11 percent of London’s rough sleepers, a figure charities describe as “a historic high”.

Under mounting popular pressure, the government recently announced a pause in eviction actions against renters—but only until January 11 next year. An exception was made for cases of anti-social behaviour or domestic abuse, leaving an opportunity for unscrupulous private landlords to exploit.

The government claims nobody will be evicted by bailiffs while restrictions are imposed on business activity, but many do not live in orthodox housing arrangements.

Head of public affairs for the homeless charity Centrepoint, Paul Noblet, told the Guardian, “Through our helpline, we have been hearing about lots of people losing their homes despite a ban on evictions—some of the calls are from young people who work in the hospitality industry whose home may have been linked to their job, so someone living at a hotel or a pub.”

Noblet added that many young people were unaware of their rights under the circumstances and would be enormously stressed by receiving a Section 21 eviction notice.

Lucy Abraham, chief executive of the homeless charity Glass Door, said it was seeing a large number of people in precarious living situations who had found themselves homeless. “Workers who were sharing overcrowded houses found these situations untenable because everyone was suddenly supposed to be home the whole time rather than just sleeping there”.

Homelessness in the UK is having a devastating impact on children. According to a survey by Shelter and YouGov, more than half (56 percent) of 1, 507 teachers surveyed had been employed in an educational setting with children who were homeless and in the past three years had resided in temporary housing. There are 136,000 homeless children living in Britain.

Shelter reported last week, “88% of these teachers reported children missing school as a key issue. This is often because children can face significant difficulties with their journey to school if they become homeless and are accommodated a long way from their former home.

“87% reported children coming to school hungry. Temporary accommodation such as B&Bs and hostels are often not equipped with suitable or any cooking facilities.

“94% reported tiredness as an issue for homeless children and those living in bad housing. In overcrowded accommodation children may struggle to sleep.

“89% reported children arriving at school in unwashed or dirty clothing. This can be caused by a lack of proper or affordable washing facilities in temporary accommodation, as well as issues such as mould and damp in poor-quality housing.”

UK universities expose thousands of international students to raging pandemic

Henry Lee

Universities have played a major role in the UK’s second wave of COVID-19 infections. Daily infections almost doubled over the first week of October as campuses reopened.

This was the entirely predictable result of the reckless drive to encourage students back to the campuses for in-person teaching this term, with lies about “COVID-secure” campuses and a normal “university experience”.

The marketised universities, increasingly dependent on private loans, feared that a move to fully online teaching would lead to masses of students deferring their entry, not taking up places in rent-racking student accommodation blocks or paying into the network of private interests with a place on university campuses, and demanding reductions in tuition fees.

One of their primary concerns was that international students would view coming to the UK as too risky.

Women wear a face mask to protect against the coronavirus in London, Thursday, March 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

International students have long been viewed by universities as "cash cows", with their financial strategies based on ever more aggressive international recruitment strategies and on increasing the fees charged to international students. According to the Times Higher Education, international students now often pay between £10,000 and £26,000 per year for undergraduate study.

In April, there was widespread panic among UK universities as the pandemic looked likely to deter students from abroad travelling to the UK for study in the coming academic year. A briefing from the House of Commons library observed in April that international students paid £7 billion in fees alone in the academic year 2018-19 (17.3 percent of the income of the university sector).

Many universities reacted to this prospect by announcing plans for staff take redundancies and pay cuts or freezes. Some, such as Lancaster University, even asked staff to voluntarily return part of their pay as a donation to the university's balance sheet.

However, the threat of an exodus of international students failed to materialise. The number of international students accepting offers from UK universities in fact increased by seven percent over the previous year. This was in large part due to lies promoted by the government and universities that a safe return to campuses was possible. They sought to capitalise on the huge importance of UK university degrees for the life chances of many international students—whose families often save for years to meet the extortionate fees.

The criminality of this policy is most glaringly exposed in the case of the thousands of Chinese students being flown to UK universities, taken from a country where the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has been virtually halted to one where it continues to spiral out of control.

In July, Queen's University Belfast (QUB) announced that it would be arranging charter flights directly from Beijing to Belfast to guarantee that hundreds of Chinese students, who make up around five percent of the student population of QUB, would attend in-person rather than use distance learning. After arriving in September, these students will have been exposed to a far greater risk of infection than they faced at home. The infection rate per 100,000 people in Belfast was 68.1 for the week they arrived, compared with 1.4 cases per 100,000 people in China at the time. Promises of an in-person teaching experience then evaporated as all but essential teaching was moved by QUB to online delivery on the October 14, in response to a surge in infections.

The same happened on a far greater scale in England. A “working group” involving universities across Greater Manchester, local authorities and businesses arranged 31 charter flights to Manchester Airport to bring 7,000 Chinese students to the north of England—with the encouragement of the Chinese Consulate. The original plan, only prevented due to travel restrictions, was to bring between 20,000 and 30,000 Chinese students by September. In comments reported in the Manchester Evening News, the University of Manchester's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, said, “one of my responsibilities is to make sure the University of Manchester is financially sustainable,” and commented that the loss of international students would have a big impact on the university's finances.

Winning Chinese investment is a key mechanism by which Greater Manchester’s regional business interests, and those throughout the UK, seek to increase profits. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham commented previously on growing relationships with China: “Manchester is a city of collaboration, with academic institutions working with the city’s public authorities and businesses to drive forward a dynamic economy.”

The thousands of Chinese students flown into Manchester—where the infection rate was over 550 per 100,000 at the start of October and over 370 per 100,000 in the past week—were assured that they were safe. But such are the horrendous conditions, with the Conservative government set to end its national lockdown on December 2, that many international students will contract this deadly disease. Chinese news site CGTN reported the comments of Lyu Xiaomei at the Chinese embassy in Manchester that “[e]ach university, has taken, or they've pledged to take, very draconian measures to contain the spread on campus when students arrive.”

“Draconian” is the right word. Measures taken by the University of Manchester (UoM) have not been directed against the pandemic, but against the student population itself.

Three weeks ago, students at UoM tore down seven-foot high fencing that had been put up, without any warning, around the Fallowfield campus. Protests last week to mark the start of an occupation of Owens Park Tower at Fallowfield were met with an enormous deployment of police and university security, who filmed protesting students and blockaded the occupied building to prevent food deliveries.

Students began the occupation in protest against high rents, the scapegoating of students for the spread of the pandemic, and threatened staff redundancies. The action won widespread support as students increasingly recognised that the return to campuses had nothing to do with their educational needs, but was all about making universities "financially sustainable".

The response of the university to the protests and occupation was to declare they would increase security patrols on campus, a measure intended not to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but to intimidate students.

Universities’ callous treatment of international students in the pandemic is a dramatic exposure of a vastly marketized higher education system.

Over the past period, the UK higher education sector has become increasingly reliant on income from the enormous fees it can charge international students. According to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, between the academic years 2014-15 and 2018-19 enrolment in full-time undergraduate study grew by 3.6 percent for UK and EU students, who pay maximum annual fees of £9,250. For students from outside the EU who pay much higher fees, the increase in enrolment was by 17 percent.

Chinese students make up the largest nationality among international students, and recruitment of students from China is also growing most quickly, increasing by 47 percent over the same period. Last year, 120,000 Chinese students came to study in the UK, spending £1.7 billion in tuition fees.

A host of prestigious British universities are reliant on the income from Chinese students to stay afloat. The University of Glasgow relies on 31 percent of its total income from Chinese students, the University of Liverpool (29 percent) and University of Sheffield (26 percent). University College London took in £127 million in income from Chinese students last year, followed by the University of Manchester—where one in eight students is Chinese—at £110 million.

The total amount paid by non-EU students is growing far faster than the increase in recruitment, with the £5.9 billion collected in the academic year 2018-19 representing an increase of 39.5 percent over the year 2014-15. This is in part due to increases in undergraduate tuition fees, but a large role is played by the growth in popularity of single-year taught masters courses, viewed as increasingly necessary to find employment in many industries, and marketed aggressively by UK universities.

Safe, high-quality online education was entirely possible for this academic year. Many lecturers undertook hours of unpaid training and studied the enormous literature on how to carry out online education effectively. There was no good educational reason to force international students to travel to one of the centres of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Students and educators alike must fight for the right to education based on a rational plan to guarantee both health and pedagogical needs. This will include asynchronous online lectures, a timetable of online contact hours suitable for all time-zones, arrangements between universities to share lab time, and the allocation of the massive resources and staffing levels required to make this possible.

Such a fight requires a unified struggle of students, university staff and the broader working class against the capitalist system, which has transformed universities into profit-making enterprises and students into funding sources to be exploited.

All intensive care beds occupied in Switzerland after COVID-19 infections explode

Marianne Arens

Last week, a press release from the Swiss Society for Intensive Care Medicine (SGI) caused a sensation. It announced that “All persons—especially those who are particularly at risk from the novel coronavirus—are asked to consider in a living will whether or not they would like to receive life-prolonging measures in the event of a serious illness.”

Zürich and lake Zürich, 2007 (Photo: MadGeographer/Wikipedia)

This request is tantamount to a declaration of bankruptcy of the much-vaunted Swiss health care system. Many elderly people or those with existing conditions rightly understand it as an appeal for them to give up one of the country’s scarce intensive care beds in favour of younger, healthier people and to voluntarily depart this life. The same circular also states that all 876 certified intensive care beds in Switzerland are “currently practically fully occupied.”

This development was “tragic since it was avoidable,” Geneva-based virologist Isabella Eckerle commented. A justified assessment. This latest turn in the pandemic is not a natural disaster, but the foreseeable result of deliberate political decisions. Under pressure from big business and the banks, the Swiss government has expressly refrained from imposing a lockdown to break the second wave of the pandemic. In mid-September, Finance Minister Ueli Maurer (Swiss Peoples Party, SVP), declared, “Switzerland cannot afford a second lockdown. We don’t have the money for that.”

The government’s maxim was clearly to do everything possible to get the economy running again and maintain corporate profits. Since then, not only have all businesses and also schools and day-care centres been kept open, but also bars, restaurants, theatres and museums. In October, a regulation meant to ban events with more than 1,000 people was overturned.

Not surprisingly, the virus has spread throughout society and is now fully circulating among seniors and other at-risk groups. The consequences are outbreaks in old people’s and nursing homes, overcrowded intensive care units and rapidly rising death rates.

“In Switzerland, all intensive care beds are occupied”—Der Spiegel in Germany reported last Thursday. The official Swiss news portal nau.ch quickly protested and assured its readers that this was not true. “Fake news about Swiss intensive care units” was the headline of an article Thursday evening on the website. It claims that the intensive care units could be expanded at any time with “ad hoc” beds. It was just the “foreign media” who had claimed the opposite.

Despite these protests, the situation is increasingly catastrophic. Switzerland has become a COVID-19 hotspot in Europe. The country currently has a 14-day incidence per 100,000 inhabitants of 933 cases, putting it between the Czech Republic (1,002) and Slovenia (939), almost twice as high as Sweden (556).

The high figures are not due to extensive testing: In this respect, Switzerland is on a par with the United States. The positive rate of tests is 27.9 percent nationwide, compared with 8.5 percent in Sweden and 8.3 percent in the United States. According to WHO data, a positive rate of over five percent means the virus is running out of control.

With the second wave of the pandemic, the new infections have literally exploded, and they have also driven up the death rate. Of Switzerland’s more than 290,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, 3,962 have so far ended in death, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Weekly deaths (Federal Statistical Office of Switzerland)

The number of unreported cases and deaths could be much higher, as the Federal Statistical Office shows by citing the excess mortality rate. According to this, in the first week of November—similar to the beginning of April—about 50 percent more people died than statistically expected. This is particularly the case in French-speaking Switzerland, and it affects almost exclusively the population over 65.

In a discussion on Swiss Radio SRF on the topic, “Who should be treated when space in hospitals is becoming scarce,” intensive care physician Miodrag Filipovic from St. Gallen confirmed on Thursday evening that the certified intensive care beds were already 95 percent occupied. It would be possible to create additional beds, but the crucial point was the lack of qualified personnel, he said.

To this end, one nurse working on a coronavirus ward reported working 12-hour shifts and having to cancel vacation days, and a COVID-19 nurse confirmed how exhausted the nursing staff already felt. “In March, they rolled out the red carpet for us, but now everything is expected of us as a matter of course,” the nurse remarked. She was not sure if her team would be able to last this winter.

Listeners posted many interesting comments in response to this SRF programme. They were extremely critical of the call for people to “self-triage” and give up occupying an intensive care bed. “In 2020, Switzerland is in second place among the richest countries in the world,” one listener comments, for example. “I find Social Darwinism in Switzerland unbearable. Clearly, in the coronavirus pandemic, Switzerland wants to defend its wealth at the expense of risk groups (1,605,800 people). Compared to many other countries, it would truly have different options.”