Break the silence: Ending gender-based violence is a human rights imperative

Shobha Shukla

“There is a global epidemic of violence against women – both within conflict zones and within societies at peace – and it is still treated as a lesser crime and lower priority” had said Angelina Jolie, actress and then UN Ambassador for refugees more than five years ago. With the onslaught of the pandemic and global public health emergency and cascading humanitarian crises, these words have only become even more relevant today.

The Asia Pacific region presents some very challenging development indicators for women and girls and socially excluded and marginalized populations. There are deep rooted gender inequalities and discriminatory socio-cultural norms and practices arising out of patriarchal systems and structures, and sexual and other forms of gender-based violence continues to remain pervasive in the region.

According to latest statistics, the proportion of women in Asia Pacific who have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime ranges from 15% in Bhutan, Japan, Lao PDR and Philippines to 64% in Fiji and Solomon Islands. Also 4% (in Japan) to 48% (in Papua New Guinea) of women have experienced intimate partner violence in the last 12 months.

Also, in most countries of the region, women are much more likely to have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of intimate partners, rather than by other perpetrators. Thus women who are experiencing violence are unable to find ways to stop the violence or to leave the violent relationship. Moreover, many communities often stigmatise the survivors and perceive some practices, like domestic violence, as acceptable.

Several studies have proven that sexual and other forms of gender-based violence, which is perpetuated by poverty and various gender-biased sociocultural norms and values, escalates in crises situations. The findings of one such study conducted in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, as shared by Melania Hidayat, National Programme Officer on Reproductive Health, UNFPA, Indonesia, reveal that incidents of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence, sexual harassment, rape and domestic violence increased in the aftermath of a natural disaster (earthquake followed by landslide). However, the general reaction of the survivors was to remain silent due to fear (of the perpetrators), shame and lack of support from immediate family members. They often have to bear the double burden of sanctions and blame from the community as well.

Hidayat rues that even humanitarian workers, programme managers or service providers do not see prevention and management of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence as a priority in emergency humanitarian responses and the mechanism for reporting and management of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence does not exist. At the same time, community awareness and understanding is also low that tends to put the survivor to further risks of violence.

Then again, as the UN Secretary General has very rightly and repeatedly said, the global lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in a “horrifying surge” in the already existing gender-based violence, further deepening gender inequalities.

The heightened risk of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence for women and girls due to the pandemic has deeply affected the Asia Pacific region as well. It has placed additional barriers to operationalize many of the existing prevention strategies, thus limiting the ability of survivors of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence to distance themselves from their abusers and/or access life-saving services related to sexual and other forms of gender-based violence.

But there have been some promising adaptations, as shared by Sujata Tuladhar, Technical Specialist (gender-based violence) UNFPA Asia Pacific. She gives the examples of several countries where a variety of digital tools, including community based radios and televisions, are being used to continue with community engagement and mobilization programmes, in the face of the pandemic.

In Philippines, social media and other online platforms, including text messaging via phone, are being used to raise visibility of violence against women, challenge the stereotypes, and share information about existing services. Where these are not possible, countries are adapting to spread the messages through loudspeakers or in moving vehicles.

In the Pacific Island countries messages around gender-based violence are being included in emergency cards that are given to communities to provide COVID-19 related information.

In Pakistan, Mongolia, Indonesia and some other countries tele-counselling modalities have become very commonplace.

In Nepal trained community based psychosocial workers have been equipped with cell phone credits, so that they can continue to reach out and respond to women at risk of violence in their communities telephonically.

Some countries are also exploring the concept of creating shelters through partnerships with Airbnb, hotels or university dorms that make rooms available for gender-based violence survivors in a safe way.

Service providers are also connecting to gender-based violence survivors via mobile safety apps and other online resources. One such example is a mobile app ‘Her Voice’ that was recently launched in the Philippines.

Community-based health workers, like midwives and female health workers, are being further supported to safely identify cases of gender-based violence, provide first line support and facilitate referrals. A case in point is in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, where midwives sit in women-friendly spaces and provide support to gender-based violence survivors, despite COVID-19 related restrictions in place.

COVID-19 has forced many of the capacity building initiatives to move online and become virtual. Tuladhar says that it has been quite a realization that this modality can work even for very specific gender-based violence related areas – like trainings for case management and for hotline operators – which can be made available online for more participants in far off areas at no extra cost, thus bridging many financial and geographical barriers. While the effectiveness of these virtual modalities of capacity building will need to be evaluated, they seem to hold a lot of promise.

Despite all these efforts, several challenges remain. In most contexts, gender-based violence services and responses are still not considered as part of essential COVID-19 response and remote delivery of gender-based violence services continues to be difficult.

We are also seeing new emerging forms and means of perpetrating violence. Digital technology facilitated gender-based violence, is the new demon on the block. Victim-survivors have little recourse against the many forms of online gender-based violence where the perpetrators use the internet to remotely resort to blackmail, release of personal information and private photos without consent, online stalking and threats of harm, that has devastating effects on the psyche of their targets and often forces them to move out of online spaces.

The way forward

Perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to further evolve and innovate approaches to ensure long term transformative changes to end sexual and other forms of gender-based violence, which is probably going to outlive the pandemic. We will have to take concrete steps to be able to prevent the pandemic’s longterm impacts on gender equality and women’s empowerment after it is over.

One point that emerged strongly during a virtual session of the ongoing online 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSHR10) was that it is important to engage and empower men and boys, and not just women and girls, for prevention of violence. We cannot solely look into the women and girls. For gender equality we also need to work hand-in-hand with the men’s crew, said Professor Thein-Thein Htay, former Deputy Health Minister of Myanmar and noted public health expert.

But Hidayat cautions that while it is good to have initiatives from male groups to work together and fight to end gender-based violence, one needs to be careful to not put male involvement as an area for males to dominate the women more. The intention is to safeguard the women without limiting their activities or work.

Sagar Sachdeva, Programme Coordinator at The YP Foundation, India, blames the growing religious fundamentalism and right wing nationalism in countries like India, which is also getting legally codified and thus having serious impacts in the context of gender-based violence as well as masculinities. It has also resulted in a general increase in violence against minority communities.

Tuladhar calls for continued investment in prevention and social norm changes – whether through parenting programmes, or life skill programmes, or comprehensive childhood education that addresses young girls and boys in their gender norms formative years.

The UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, is one such multi-layer effort aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls. It amplifies the call for global action to bridge funding gaps, ensure essential services for survivors of violence, even during crises, focus on prevention, and collection of reliable data to develop evidence based policies and programmes to end all kinds of violence against women-be it sexual, physical or emotional.

Surge in “excess deaths” points to broader impact of COVID-19 pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

Even as the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States cases surges over 300,000, it is becoming clear that the actual toll of the pandemic is much greater than even those shown by the official death count.

According to a New York Times report, 356,000 excess deaths occurred nationwide from March 15 to November 21, which is 19 percent higher compared to previous years. Even this figure may be an undercount since recent death statistics have to be updated and the Centers for Disease Control’s archaic system is lagging in actual numbers. If the current estimates hold, the total deaths by the end of December will be a staggering 401,000.

Excess mortality all ages in the US 2020—March to November

Excess deaths, also known as mortality displacement, refer to a temporary increase in the mortality rate in a given population attributed to environmental problems, wars or epidemics. Epidemiologists calculate these by determining the difference between the observed and expected numbers of deaths. They are considered a better measurement of total mortality, whether caused by the pandemic or its consequences. According to the Health Foundation, “It measures the additional deaths in a given period compared to the number usually expected and does not depend on how COVID-19 deaths are recorded.”

Last spring, New York City had the highest per capita excess deaths during the first wave, with 320 people per 100,000. Approximately 27,000 excess deaths were calculated, 75 percent above average. New Jersey saw 19,300 excess deaths. Louisiana, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland and Connecticut saw a more than 20 percent rise in excess deaths.

During the summer wave, the shift in excess deaths impacted states like Arizona, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. Florida saw 26,500 excess deaths, while California had 31,100. In the current early winter surge that has seen the virus run rampant throughout the nation, Illinois ranks highest with 18,200 excess deaths, 25 percent above normal levels. Indiana, South Dakota, Arkansas and Missouri have also been devastated. Presently, the pandemic is moving swiftly towards the coasts where population densities are most significant.

It is difficult to determine to what extent deaths are directly or indirectly related and attributable to COVID. More than 25 percent of these “above normal” deaths have been chalked up to diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, hypertension and pneumonia. Regardless, with hospitals throughout the nation seeing admissions for COVID-19 soar, many people are once again deferring their health maintenance or prefer not to brave a trip to the emergency room out of fear of contracting the coronavirus. This very same population of high-risk individuals is also at increased risk of suffering from the coronavirus's consequences.

Adding insult to injury, the economic stress of unemployment, overdue rent, and rising debt has forced millions of families to make the difficult choice of paying for prescription medications, getting groceries or paying their mortgages and credit card bills. The Washington Post noted that almost 12 million renters would owe an average of nearly $6,000 in back rent and utilities come January. Job opportunities remain scarce as small businesses are facing closure with the surge in cases. These same millions will be pushed into poverty, which will claim an untold number in years to come.

The scale of the health crisis in the US due to the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. The only comparison to this event would be the “Spanish flu” of 1918 at the end of World War 1 that killed approximately 675,000 people. In modern times, not even previous wars have kept pace with the death caused by the coronavirus, which has become the leading cause of death in the US, far outpacing even heart disease.

However, even the present coronavirus dashboards being used to track the social impact of the pandemic do not wholly capture the real devastation being wrought on the population. The blame is entirely attributable to the utter disregard of local, state, and national authorities to the consequences of this health crisis, preferring to chastise individual behavior rather than the policies implemented by authorities to keep workplaces and schools open.

A health care worker wears personal protective equipment as she speaks to a patient at a mobile testing location for COVID-19 in Auburn, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)

All this is being compounded by the continuing rise in hospitalizations, which have now reached 110,000 nationwide. One in two patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) is for COVID-19. As these facilities are reaching capacity, the need to ration care is being openly discussed. The eldest and sickest may be turned away.

Exhausted nurses and health care workers have turned to social media to share their horrific experiences.

One nurse from Huntsville, Alabama, wrote, “We are canceling all elective and urgent procedures and converting inpatient holding and PACU to ICU’s … we have a makeshift ER pod in the ambulance bay, holding patients on stretchers because we have nowhere to put them!”

A nurse from Warrick County, Indiana said, “Our ICUs are maxed out, and our CV [cardiovascular] ICU is now having to fill with COVID and MS [med-surg] ICU instead of surgical because of need. They filled our pediatric ICU with adults. And that’s four full ICUs with RNs having to work four and five shifts trying to make staffing better. They had to intubate and hold a patient on a regular floor till our ICU could make room for them.”

Public health experts repeatedly mentioned health system capacity as a milestone of last resort. As they begin to collapse under the weight of rising admissions and understaffing, the case fatality rate will edge upwards, meaning preventable COVID-19 deaths will be added to these grim statistics. These same concerns will impact those seeking medical attention for ailments other than COVID-19, which will further contribute to excess deaths.

However, establishment politicians and scientists would prefer to downplay the death toll as they begin to shift their rhetoric with the vaccine’s rollout. All agree that not much will change until the next few months when the vaccines are manufactured, distributed and administered broadly to the population.

That there are no serious questions raised as to how to stem the present mortality rate points to an acceptance that nothing can be done to stop the parade of death. Meanwhile, the rollout will cost states and taxpayers billions in revenue, impacting poorer states the most. Though the vaccine is being provided to states by the federal government, states will have to hire medical workers, establish storage facilities, conduct educational and community outreach initiatives, and set up vaccine clinics.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Officials in several states said they would spend whatever is needed to get residents vaccinated. Some said that might force spending cuts in areas like education unless Congress provides additional funding, or the federal government reimburses a large chunk of their rollout costs.”

Bipartisan congressional group reveals threadbare stimulus plan

Jacob Crosse

On Monday, Republican and Democratic congressional members of the Problem Solvers Caucus released further details on the so-called “emergency relief framework” that was unveiled two weeks ago, with the full text of the bill slated to be released on Wednesday.

At a time when some 54 million people are food insecure, catastrophic job losses continue to climb, with over 1.3 million state and federal first-time applicants last week, and millions of people are behind on rent and mortgages, with between 2.4 and 5 million households facing eviction January 2021, according to Syracuse University professor Gretchen Purser, the so-called “emergency” relief is woefully inadequate to deal with the present crisis.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer at the Capitol (Credit: Flickr.com/AFGE)

The insulting measures were described at various points by multimillionaire politicians Joe Manchin, (D-W. Va.) Mark Warner (D-Va.) Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) as a “gift,” a “Christmas miracle” and a “ray of hope” to the population, with Manchin remarking that “cooperation and bipartisanship are alive and well in Washington.”

While there are plenty of “gifts” to businesses and banks in the proposed legislation, for students, jobless workers, and those facing eviction and their families, the bill provides lackluster support, if anything at all.

Due to alleged disagreements between the big-business parties, the $908 billion package has been split into two separate bills, a smaller $160 billion bill which includes funding for state, local and tribal governments as well as a coveted “liability shield” that would relieve business of responsibility for any COVID-19-related injuries suffered by workers or patrons.

The sweeping language provided in previous iterations of the liability shield, and what appears to be in the new bill, would give companies a blank check to continue forcing workers to toil in dangerous, coronavirus-infested workplaces as long as the employer could prove they were “trying” to be “generally following applicable government standards and guidance.”

US “government standards and guidance” throughout the pandemic have been criminally insufficient, leading to over 305,000 deaths since February 6, or approximately one COVID-19 fatality every 40 seconds. It would also shield for-profit nursing homes that have been home to thousands of preventable deaths. The liability shield would last for approximately two years, a reduction from the five years in previous iterations of the bill.

Of the $160 billion allocated for state, local and tribal funding, approximately $91.2 billion would be for the states, $60.8 billion for counties and municipalities, with roughly $8 billion for tribal governments. Each state would get a minimum of $500 million. However, none of the funds could be used to pay for worker pension programs.

The second bill is a $748 billion package featuring $300 billion for the Small Business Administration (SBA), including a reported $288 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The PPP has been a financial windfall for the well-off, politically connected, and large Wall Street banks, which, according to a recent investigation by the Miami Herald, have collected over $18 billion in fees. JPMorgan Chase leads all banks in profiting off the PPP, with over $1 billion generated in fees from PPP loans.

Should the second bill come to pass, it is nowhere near enough to address the catastrophic social, economic and medical crisis befalling the population, reflecting the ongoing indifference of the ruling class to the suffering of millions of workers and their families.

Funding for the $748 billion bill could be pulled from previously passed CARES Act legislation, which, according to testimony from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last month, would amount to approximately $580 billion, meaning less than $200 billion of the bill is actually “new” funding.

After $300 billion is allocated to the SBA, the remaining $448 billion in the bill is to be split among unemployment benefits, education, food assistance, healthcare provider relief, rental assistance, substance abuse prevention, broadband internet, transportation, testing, tracing and vaccine distribution.

For unemployed workers, the miserly federal unemployment benefits are to be extended for only 16 weeks at $300 a week, less than half of what was included in the CARES Act. While there have been “rumors” from anonymous congressional aides of a stimulus payment being added to the larger bill, at the present it does not contain $1,200 direct payments to people like the previous $2.2 trillion CARES Act, passed nearly 9 months ago.

Of the $82 billion directed towards education, $54 billion is allotted for K-12 funding, with $20 billion dedicated to higher education. A summary of the “Bipartisan Emergency COVID Relief Act of 2020” notes that “targeted aid” will also be given to private and religious schools as well out of the education funding. The distribution of these funds is a key element in the ruling class “back to school” drive, which President-elect Joe Biden has promised to initiate within the first 100 days of his administration.

Funds to actually fight the virus and distribute the vaccine total about $48 billion, with $35 billion going to health care providers, $2.6 billion allocated to the Centers for Disease Control vaccine distribution and infrastructure. Another $3.4 billion would be provided in the form of “grants” to cities and states for storing and transporting the vaccine with another $7 billion allocated to states for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.

The package extends the federal eviction moratorium, but only until the end of January 2021, leaving it up to the incoming administration to enact an executive order to extend it at the end of the month if another deal is not reached in time. In leaked audio reported by the Intercept last week, Biden shot down proposals from supporters in a closed-door meeting requesting that he use the executive branch to carry out limited criminal justice reform, citing his alleged respect for “the Constitution.”

The $25 billion allotted for rental assistance comes with strings attached, including the stipulation that someone cannot receive more than 12 months’ worth of assistance. Considering that some 10 million jobs have yet to return since March, and for those workers who have found work, it has generally been for fewer hours and less pay, millions of people will likely require more than 12 months of assistance.

London becomes epicentre of pandemic in the UK

Robert Stevens

London, the capital and most populated area in the UK with nearly 9 million residents, is now the epicentre of the pandemic.

Every one of London’s 32 boroughs is seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases. In the week to December 9, London recorded 242 cases per 100,000 people—the highest rate of any region in England. This represented a 40.5 jump in cases on the previous week. One London borough, Havering, recorded the fifth highest rate of all new COVID-19 cases in England. There are more than 2,000 patients with Covid in London’s hospitals--up from just over 1,000 a month ago.

On Monday, Conservative Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that London, much of the adjacent county of Essex, and some of Hertfordshire, will be placed under the highest Tier 3 restriction level from midnight today. The Daily Telegraph cited a health ministry source who said that the latest data on infections in London was “terrifying,” and significantly worse than those of northern cities Liverpool and Manchester when they entered the highest tier. How catastrophic is the spread of the virus in the capital is clear in that Greater London’s population is over 3 times as large as Greater Manchester’s.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock speaking on Monday at the government's Covid-19 Press Conference inside No10 Downing Street (credit: picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street--FlickR)

The engulfing of London’s population by the virus is the direct consequence of the government’s homicidal herd immunity policy. On December 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ended a month-long national, albeit limited, lockdown, which did not include workplaces, schools or colleges, and brought in its ineffectual Tier system to “save Christmas”, i.e., the profits of the corporations at what is normally their busiest time of the year. This was accompanied by the criminal move, in the middle of a pandemic, to allow all shops nationally to open for 24 hours a day in December and January .

Shoppers were encouraged to flood the high streets, with the pro-Labour Party Daily Mirror's front page, “Go shop for Britain," typical. Encouraged by government propaganda and the media, for weeks London’s main shopping streets and shopping centres have been teeming with people packed together like sardines. London’s shops are national and international destinations. Nothing has been put in place to curtail the influx into London during the holiday season, enabling the disease to spread like wildfire and not just in the capital.

Keeping schools open since their re-opening in September, has had even more devastating consequences. Despite it being confirmed within days of this decision that schools were the cause of up to 50 percent of coronavirus infections in communities, they were kept open for the sole purpose of ensuring that parents were able to go to work.

After months of lies that schools were “Covid-safe” zones, the situation in London has blown these claims apart. On Sunday, the Royal Borough of Greenwich in the south east of the capital announced it was closing all its schools from the end of day on Monday and moving classes online. In an open letter the Greenwich’s Labour Party council leader Danny Thorpe declared that he had been briefed by “Public Health England that the pandemic in Greenwich is now showing signs that we are in a period of exponential growth that demands immediate action.” In just this one borough 90 schools, tens of thousands of children, and hundreds of thousands of people in their families are affected.

Greenwich’s infection rate shot up by 48.6 percent, from 151.4 per 100,000 to 225 cases per 100,000 people in the first week of December.

Greenwich is only the 14th worse borough in London for COVID infections. Havering, in the east of the city, recorded 1,314 new cases to December 9 and has over double the cases of Greenwich, with 470.8 per 100,000 people. Five London boroughs—Redbridge, Waltham Forest, Barking and Dagenham, Enfield, and Newham—are all in the top 25 areas with the highest rates in England.

On Monday, another London council, Islington, announced that it would close all the schools within its boundaries from the end of Tuesday and continue online learning until January 11. Islington Council leader Richard Watts, also Labour, said, "There is a serious and very worrying rise in coronavirus across London, with cases doubling every few days.”

Essex County Council announced that nearly all secondary schools in Basildon, just 26 miles from the capital, have moved to full remote education.

These measures are too little, too late. It is proven that the Tier system is inadequate to contain the virus. Under Tier 3, all shops are still able to remain open, with only pubs, restaurants and cafes having to close (except for takeaway services). Indoor entertainment venues such as cinemas, theatres and bowling alleys also close. Hancock confirmed that there is still no ban on people coming to London for pre-Christmas shopping, as he only advised that outside Tier 3 should not come to London for shopping.

The government is refusing to accept the move by the London councils to close schools. On Monday, Regional Schools Commissioner Claire Burton wrote to Greenwich and Islington councils threatening that, under schedule 17 of the Coronavirus Act 2020, the government “could make a direction to require schools to enable all pupils to attend full-time… I would ask you to reconsider your position immediately and retract your message to schools.”

The government has already used the extraordinary powers it has under the Coronavirus Act—that it passed in March and renewed in September with Labour backing—to ensure that schools were kept open in the north east of England.

Of all the UK’s cities the contrast between the richest and poorest is the starkest in London. Entire streets and gated communities are comprised of houses and mansions worth tens of millions, located just a stone’s throw from areas marked by entrenched poverty.

The central concerns of the Tories and Labour Party throughout the pandemic has been to ensure the profit interests of the capitalist class. In the lead-up to Hancock’s decision, former Tory leader and London MP, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, denounced to the Daily Mail any suggestion that London could be put into the highest tier as an “unmitigated disaster”. He insisted, “London is the powerhouse of the UK economy, we must not be moved into Tier Three”. Attacking the move in parliament after Hancock announced the measure, Felicity Buchan, Tory MP for Kensington, one of the most socially polarized areas on the planet and the location of the Grenfell Tower inferno, said in like fashion, “Whether this House likes it not, central London is the powerhouse of our national economy".

The main concern of Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan ahead of Hancock’s announcement was not for the safety of millions of people, but that the impending move to Tier 3 was "catastrophic to our hospitality, to our culture and to retail."

Khan has played a criminal role in the spread of coronavirus. Speaking to LBC radio Monday he said that the move to Tier 3 was a “blunt instrument” as the main sources of infections were not hospitality venues, but schools and colleges (he never mentioned workplaces). Earlier Monday, Khan and Georgia Gould, the chair of London Councils, wrote to Johnson calling for the closure from Tuesday of secondary schools, sixth forms, and further education colleges, and an expansion of community testing. “The biggest spread of the virus in the capital is within education settings and specifically amongst the 10-19 year old age group.”

Khan conceals the fact that he was instrumental in backing the government and opposition Labour Party’s back to school order in September. This led to over 250,000 school children in London being sent back to the classrooms, vastly increasing the spread of the virus.

London is the new epicentre of the virus, but it continues to spread nationally. Another 232 deaths were recorded yesterday with cases of COVID-19 increasing 14 percent in the last week. In the week to December 9, 208 out of 315 local authority areas recorded a week-on-week increase. With London’s population under Tier 3, this means that 34 million people will be in that tier and 21.5 million in tier two.

These appalling figures could be the tip of the iceberg, with Hancock announcing in parliament that a new variant of COVID-19 has been discovered that “may be associated with the fastest spread in the south-east of England.” He stated that “initial analysis suggests that this variant is growing faster than the existing variants. We’ve currently identified over 1,000 cases with this variant, predominantly in the south of England, although cases have been identified in nearly 60 different local authority areas, and numbers are increasing rapidly.”

New data expose catastrophe of Turkey’s “herd immunity” policy

Barış Demir

The record COVID-19 case numbers in Turkey reflect the results of the murderous “herd immunity” policy of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, supported by the parliamentary opposition parties and trade unions. It shows that government “restrictions” on movement during the pandemic only aim to control the anger of the working class, not to halt the spread of the disease.

With nearly 30,000 daily cases, Turkey is in third place in the world after the United States and Brazil and now has risen to first place in Europe. The number of daily deaths—over 200 in recent days—is the highest since March 11, when the first case was detected in Turkey.

Until recently, the Turkish government has refused to announce real data over the pandemic so as to force workers back to work and contain public anger, making an arbitrary, unscientific distinction between “cases” and “patients.”

However, growing popular outrage against inadequate restrictions and figures announced by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and other institutions have forced the government to announce daily and total cases. On November 25, the Health Ministry announced 28,351 daily cases. The day before, it had announced only 7,381 “patients.”

Sources: Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. Last updated: December 13, 2020

On December 10, the Health Ministry also announced that there had been 1,748,567 total cases since the pandemic began. Case and death figures are still not reliable, however, and are likely underestimates.

One of the world’s biggest cover-ups over the pandemic has taken place in Turkey as part of the criminal “herd immunity” policy implemented by governments all over the world in the interests of the financial aristocracy.

Turkish Medical Association (TTB) Chair Prof. Dr. Şebnem Korur Fincancı stated that the Health Ministry’s latest figures are not completely transparent: “The table mentions 20 million tests. We know that the positivity rates, which were around 10 percent in March and April, have increased to 30 percent since mid-November. ... [I]f there is a 15 percent average test positivity, the number of cases should be 3 million.” Experts also pointed out that it is unrealistic to record one-third of all cases in the last few weeks.

The Science Academy’s web site Sarkac.org reported that from March 12 to December 2 a total of 13.857 excess deaths occurred in Istanbul, compared to the 2015–19 average, based on Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality data. This number was almost equal to the number of total COVID-19 deaths (14,129) across Turkey announced by the Health Ministry. The number of deaths from COVID-19 in Istanbul has not been reported by the Health Ministry since October 25.

Head of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Cemeteries Department Dr. Ayhan Koç asked the following about rising deaths: “While there is an average of 200 funerals as daily every year, how did the number of funerals reach 400 in November this year, how will we explain this?” He added, “11,500 people lost their lives per month; the average of November of the previous years was 6,000. The excess 5,500 deaths compared to the previous years in November 2020 should also explain the doubling of funerals as well.”

Moreover, according to data from 20 municipalities accounting for 48 percent of Turkey’s population (nearly 41 million of 83 million people), the total death toll from infectious diseases was 21,084 as of November 23. However, Health Ministry figures on the same day gave only 12,511 official COVID-19 deaths for all of Turkey.

Last month, the Erdoğan government announced a nationwide curfew only for weekend nights; then the curfews were extended to weekdays, running from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Education is continuing online until the end of the year. Working hours for shopping centers, markets, barbers and hairdressers are limited to between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. And restaurants and cafés are open only for takeaway and deliveries.

The banner reads “Enough is enough! Full lockdown is essential to stop deaths!” Doctors of the Istanbul Medical Chamber stand in homage to Dr. M. Mustafa Kartal who died of COVID-19, December 11, 2020, Istanbul. [Credit: Istanbul Medical Chamber

These measures, however, do not, aim to contain the pandemic and save lives. On the contrary, they aim to contain growing opposition in the working class to the government’s response and lies over the pandemic. The government’s priority was summed up by Erdoğan. He said the curfew had to be implemented “so as not to disrupt supply and production chains in the country.”

That is, the government is prioritizing capitalist profits over human lives. As a result of these token restrictions, there has been no serious decrease in the pandemic in Turkey.

The same reactionary calculations are apparent in the government’s vaccine policy. Turkey has a population of more than 83 million, but Health Minister Fahrettin Koca recently said that the first batch of 20 million doses from the Chinese-developed CoronaVac vaccine will be received in December and January. The second batch of 10 million doses will arrive in February. Since two doses will be used per person, sufficient vaccination will not take place in a short time.

Millions of people will be denied a vaccine for months, but Koca could not deny that the vaccine brought from China was privately purchased by wealthy people.

All over the world, experts warn that COVID-19 will continue to be a danger for a long time and it is necessary to take full lockdown measures to avert hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths before the vaccinations can take effect.

Moreover, Turkey’s health care system is on the verge of collapse. In a recent statement, the TTB’s Central Council stated: “In many metropolitan cities, information from hospital administrators, local administrators, medical chambers, health and labor-occupational organizations are shared with the public. They say that public hospitals are full and that there is no space in intensive care units due to the increasing number of patients.”

The total number of health care workers testing positive exceeds 120,000, and 249 health workers have lost their lives as of Monday. Every day four or five of them die. While there was no improvement in working conditions for health workers, the government ignored their demands for COVID-19 to be considered an occupational disease.

The danger of a social explosion is so great that even the bourgeois opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) recently called for at least a 14-day lockdown. In fact, the CHP and its allies have only raised tactical criticisms against the government and did not oppose the financial aristocracy’s “herd immunity” policy. Moreover, in the face of increasing public anger, especially among health care workers over the collapse of the health system, trade union confederations including Türk-İş, Hak-İş, DİSK and KESK, and professionals’ unions were forced call on December 6 for a “full lockdown” against COVID-19.

They proposed to “stop the production in all workplaces and businesses except health, municipality, cleaning, energy, food production and sales for 21 days; implementation of a full lockdown; free COVID-19 tests; forming of pandemic committees at the workplaces; the uninterrupted payment of the wages of all the workers; and humane living wages for the unemployed people.”

This “demand” is empty, however: they made no call for protests or strikes to force the government to immediately implement these measures. In fact, all the union bureaucracies have been complicit in the government response to the pandemic. Their main concern is the same as that of the ruling class: to contain and suppress the growing anger among workers.

The pro-opposition DİSK declared on March 30 that in 48 hours it might invoke the constitutional right to not work in unsafe conditions. Ultimately, however, it did not call strikes. The KESK, also controlled by bourgeois opposition parties and their pseudo-left accomplices, openly supported the government’s back-to-school campaign in September.

15-year-old is assassinated while being treated in hospital in Mexico as homicides reach record levels

Angel Andres

On Sunday, a 15-year-old youth was shot and wounded and later assassinated while being treated for his wounds at the General Hospital of Tecate in the Mexican state of Baja California. Tecate sits on the US border and is home of the internationally known Tecate beer.

This shocking incident has unfolded amid record levels of both coronavirus cases and homicides across the country, which are placing intolerable burdens on the already underfunded health care system. The response by local authorities and the federal government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), which inflexibly prioritize capitalist profits over the lives of workers and youth, has only exacerbated the twin crises.

Mexico's National Guard (gob.mx)

While minimizing the danger of COVID-19 and seeking to normalize mass deaths, the AMLO administration refuses to carry out any policies to counter the widespread conditions of poverty and social inequality that lie at the root of the homicide levels and the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19.

The government has projected that Mexico will reach 40,000 homicides by the end of the year, breaking 2019’s record of 36,476 killings. The bulk of the homicides are tied to organized crime and operations conducted by the Mexican police and military, ostensibly to combat the drug-trafficking cartels.

At the same time, Mexico has reported more than 1,250,000 coronavirus cases and 114,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, as hospitals in Mexico City, Ciudad Juárez and other cities begin to fill up. Hospital occupancy in Baja California has increased from 33 percent to 72 percent since early November.

At around 2 in the afternoon on Sunday, 15-year-old Martin W. was shot in the back. A local Facebook news service, CNR TECATE, reported the incident and showed the body of the young man being treated for a gunshot wound by the paramedics.

There was reportedly still hope that the youth would recover. After he was transported to the hospital and was being treated for his wounds, a gunman walked into the hospital with the sole mission of finishing him off. The gunman found the youth in the emergency wing of the hospital, where he delivered the coup de grâce as horrified medical staff looked on.

This sort of barbarism and unabashed act of criminality was once a rarity in the small city of 73,000 people. Nowadays, stories of execution-style murders are becoming ever more common. Organized crime is increasingly taking control of the city, even to the extent that cartel thugs can kill a young man in his hospital bed in plain view of the public.

These acts are already routine in large cities like Tijuana, which is located south of the border of San Diego, California, and 30 miles west of Tecate.

AMLO campaigned on the promise to solve the issue of violence, partly by removing the military from the streets, but homicides have kept increasing during the first two years of his tenure. While proclaiming a policy of “Hugs not Bullets,” he secured approval for a new National Guard, composed of military and former federal police, with total disregard for their long record of crimes, human rights abuses and involvement with the drug cartels themselves.

AMLO proved his salt by coming to the aid of General Salvador Cienfuegos, also known as the “Godfather,” by securing his return from the United States, where he was imprisoned and facing trial, and setting him free without charges. Cienfuegos was indicted by the US government on charges of providing the H-2 cartel with protection, taking bribes, and deploying the military against its rivals during his tenure as defense minister.

Mexican youth like Martin W. make up the vast majority of victims of organized crime and government operations in what constitutes a war against Mexican working class youth. Most homicide victims are young men under the age of 30 from the poorest layers of the population.

Recently, there have been protests by pseudo-left, anarchist and feminist organizations that have demanded that the authorities end the “femicides” in Mexico. In the capital of Mexico City, they occupied a Human Rights Commission building, chanting “Stop killing us.” AMLO criticized the protests as the wrong way to enact change. Last month, local police under AMLO’s Morena party in Cancún used gunfire to disperse a similar feminist protest as National Guard troops stood watch.

Pseudo-left organizations have focused their activism on the increased killings of women under the artificial label of “femicides” coined by the identity politics milieu. While there has been a horrifying increase in the killings of women, they form a small fraction of the overall homicides. Out of the 40,000 projected homicides, just over 3,000 of the victims will be women.

The bourgeois media and pseudo-left activists blame the homicides on a culture of violence in Mexico rooted in Machismo. Thus, they frame the problem as one of culture and identity. The enemy is not fundamentally the complicit government or organized criminal organizations with ties to the business elites and the state, but a long-ingrained hatred of women that supposedly lies deep within Mexican culture. This is patently false and hides the true causes of the homicide epidemic in Mexico, which are tied to Mexican capitalism under the auspices of U.S. imperialism.

The pseudo-left’s focus on “femicides” obscures the fact that the overwhelming majority of homicide victims, men and women alike, are drawn from the working class and the most impoverished layers of society. The immense inequality between the rich and poor in Mexico and oppressive poverty afflicting Mexican youth are creating conditions where organized crime thrives. It is a question of class and global capitalism.

This devastated environment creates the conditions in which both the cartels and state forces are able to recruit youth and send them to war against each other. The cartels have no respect for age or sex. They possess government-sanctioned impunity to dispose of Mexican working-class youth. Local, state, and federal authorities demonstrate complete indifference to the terrible conditions and suffering of the working class, which have now been vastly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mexican youth and workers need to join their international brothers and sisters to form their own independent political movement to get rid of the parasitic cartels and capitalists that are plundering their livelihoods and destroying their lives. Only an international socialist revolution can achieve this aim.

Chilean health unions suspend indefinite strike, provoking anger among workers

Mauricio Saavedra

Less than two weeks after calling an indefinite strike, public health unions announced December 6 its suspension as they re-entered negotiations with the ultra-right government of President Sebastian Piñera. The decision provoked widespread opposition among health workers who rightly accused the unions of preparing a “sellout.”

Patricia Valderas of the Confederation of Health Workers (FENATS Nacional) told CNN Chile that seven health unions had agreed to suspend the strike to demonstrate their “conscientiousness” towards the Chilean public under conditions where the capital city of Santiago has experienced a recent spike in coronavirus cases. By December 6, the total number of confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in Chile reached 639,492 with 20,767 confirmed and suspected deaths.

Chilean healthcare workers march in Santiago. Banner reads “Less applause and more resources for Public Health”. (Credit: Guillermo Correa Camiroaga)

Valderas also told the CNN reporter that the unions were eager to conclude an accord with the government even if it meant reducing the so-called “COVID bonus.” A tripartite working group was agreed to on December 4 with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance and representatives of the seven health unions with this end in mind.

“I think that in times of pandemic we can understand that they don’t want to give (the full bonus) but let’s reach an agreement and set up a roundtable to define that,” Valderas said appealing to the government not to “close (discussions) immediately, seeing that there were already agreements with the ministry.”

Valderas knows that if the ministry continues to stonewall, the unions will be left with an explosive situation difficult to contain. The bonus was originally offered to healthcare workers in June as a sop for the disastrous mishandling of the pandemic by the former Health Minister, Jaime Mañalich. The COVID bonus wasn’t even initiated the union bureaucracy, but rather by the parliamentary left congressmen who proposed giving a measly 500,000 pesos (US$645) to the workers at the coalface of the pandemic. Involved were the Stalinist Communist Party, the pseudo-left Frente Amplio and the Socialist Party who collectively control the leadership of the various union federations.

These political operators knew that they had to quell an incendiary situation. The deeply hated minister, Jaime Mañalich, was forced to resign following the scandalous exposure that he had been providing reduced coronavirus figures to the general public. For months, he faced hostile protests whenever he appeared at public hospitals. He was hated for his callous indifference to deplorable conditions and the spread of the virus especially among overstretched and burnt out staff, forced to sew masks, wear makeshift eye shields and don garbage bags for personal protective equipment from the onset of the pandemic.

The number of health professionals testing positive for COVID-19 has surpassed 37,500, and 72 workers have died due to the lack of resources and protective attire. Staff have been working 24, 36 and even 48-hour shifts due to the high number of workers falling ill, on top of insufficient staffing levels to begin with.

The latest Health Minister, Enrique Paris, has continued with the same “herd immunity” policies that aim to keep the country’s non-essential economic activity operational amid a threatened second wave. The ousted Mañalich in many ways served as scapegoat to protect not only the Piñera government, but the entire political caste that includes the parliamentary left, the true culprits in creating a systemic crisis in public health and causing so much wanton death.

Following the CIA-backed 1973 military overthrow of the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, Milton Friedman, the principal figure in the Chicago school of economics, was called upon by Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet to devise a “free market” program based on the deregulation of the economy and privatization—abolishing the minimum wage, quashing trade unions, privatizing the pension system, state industries and banks, and lowering taxes on incomes and profits.

The main author of the dictator’s constitution was Jaime Guzmán, founder of the ultra-right and fascistic UDI and proselytizer of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. Guzmán’s politically authoritarian and neoliberal economic philosophy enshrines the conception of the subsidiary state which meant guaranteeing private ownership and placing on the market all areas including education, health and social security, and utilities, including water. Any attempt at nationalization was strictly proscribed.

The Friedmanite free market nostrums, imposed through state terror and then consecrated in Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution, were maintained and intensified under the Center-left coalition that took power in 1990 with the return to civilian rule—with the assistance of the corporatist trade unions that they dominate and whose primary concern has been to oversee the implementation of pro-corporate policies.

For the public health system, which copes with over 80 percent of the population who subscribe to the National Health Fund (FONASA), this has meant chronic underfunding, under-resourcing and understaffing for over four decades. Outside of 2020, the yearly budget has not exceeded four percent for many decades.

One of the ways this has been achieved is by keeping health professionals in a permanent state of employment insecurity and precariousness. Last year, the number of permanent staff running the entire public health system in Chile—a nation of 19 million—was an extraordinary 39,740 employees.

The majority of staff, which for 2019 consisted of 109,217 employees, are obligated to sign contracts for a maximum of one year, expiring every 31st of December. In some instances, such as at Tomé Hospital in Talcahuanot, the contracts of nurses, kinesiologists and other health professionals have been only partially renewed until March 31, 2021, even though they may previously have had ongoing employment at the institution for four to seven years.

Underneath contracted staff are the “personal a honorarios,” which roughly translates to independent contractors, who can be hired and fired at will. The 11,999 honorarios hired in 2019 lack the right to sick leave, annual leave or maternity/paternity leave or any of the productivity-linked bonuses. And on the lowest rung are the substitute and replacement workers (15,355 for 2019) who replace contract staff away for more than a fortnight. This highly precarious sector must remain registered and technically up to date if they are to receive any work.

Healthcare workers reacted angrily to the unions’ suspension of the indefinite strike. Over the last week, many have posted hostile comments on the union’s Facebook page. Many are demanding renewed strike action.

Victor Arriagada from a hospital in Concepcion said: “Always remaining as martyrs without receiving any reward… We are already tired, they restricted our vacations, some of us still continue to take 24-hour shifts. Who thinks about us? Damned dictatorship in which we are surviving, they make fun of us and still do not give us what we deserve. Hopefully, there will be an indefinite strike, enough of putting others first.”

Erica Perez from a family health center in Temuco said: “We do not live on applause. What do they expect us to do with 380 lucas (US$514 per month) that I earn? A complete family depends on me. I am a replacement and I do not get any bonus. Let’s fight so that for once we are all equally respected.”

Tatiana Saldías said: “A mockery...lack of respect for the people that have been working so closely with this pandemic on exhausting shifts...we are physically and mentally exhausted and this is how they recognize our work.”

Janet Herrera from Santiago said: “now (the unions) say they’ve been disrespected, when they have lifted the strike. What did they expect? Pressure is created by fighting and not being sellouts to the government. We need leaders who are the voice of the members (not) inconsequential leaders who do not represent us.”

Claudia Flores, also from Santiago: “They should have called an indefinite strike today already! What are they waiting for? They just go out and make a show of being indignant and blah blah blah. They have me fed up!!!!”

Hugo Barrientos from a hospital in Talcahuano said: “Listen this is the same crap as every year. It’s all stitched up, damned sellouts as always including the C.U.T. (Workers’ Central).”

Nicol Hidalgo a nursing technician from La Serena wrote: “A voice is telling me NATIONAL STRIKE.”

The healthcare unions’ latest demands are an insult added to the injuries inflicted by the ultra-right government. They are calling for a four percent increase for monthly incomes of 3,000,000 (US$4,085) and under, but outside the upper stratum of employees no-one receives such an income. This is revealed in their other demand to increase the minimum salaries of assistants to 409,000 (US$557); of administrative staff to 455,000 (US$619), technicians to 484,000 (US$659) and for professionals to 850,000 (US$1,157). These are starvation wages that the unions will help impose!

No faith can be placed in these thoroughly corrupted and pro-corporate organizations. The resources and wealth collectively produced by millions of workers is hoarded by a parasitic financial and corporate aristocracy and defended by the state, its institutions and the political parties that serve their interests.

Human life, health, welfare and livelihoods will take priority only when the working class breaks with bourgeois politics, especially the Stalinist PCCh, the pseudo left Frente Amplio and the establishment left, who accept the confines of parliamentary legality, capitalist private property and production for profit. The working class must expropriate all socially created wealth and place it in public hands.

Editor of New Zealand’s major corporate think tank exposed as a bigot

Tom Peters

A December 11 Newsroom article by Marc Daalder revealed that New Zealand Initiative (NZI) chief editor Nathan Smith had a personal blog that “attacks Muslims and Jews and espouses incel [misogynist] ideology.”

The NZI is New Zealand’s most significant big business think tank. Its representatives are frequently interviewed in the media and publish op-eds advocating lower taxes, cuts to social services and other pro-corporate policies.

Photo from Nathan Smith's since deleted profile on the New Zealand Initiative website (Credit: https://nzinitiative.org.nz/)

The think tank is funded by international corporations including Google, British American Tobacco and MasterCard; and New Zealand’s five major banks, Fletcher Building, Countdown supermarkets, Contact Energy, Genesis Energy, Mainfreight and Vodafone, among others. The Universities of Auckland and Waikato, and Wellington City Council are also listed as members.

In short, the NZI represents the interests of dominant sections of New Zealand’s capitalist class. Smith, who resigned following the Newsroom article, played a major role in the think tank for at least a year. He edited and co-wrote numerous publications and interviewed people for podcasts.

Many of these items were erased from NZI’s website over the weekend, along with a brief biographical profile which had stated that Smith “brings deep experience writing about business and policy from his eight years as a reporter for the National Business Review, ” where he wrote “weekly columns on foreign affairs and trade [and] coordinated the newspaper’s feature section.”

Smith’s personal “Likebulb” blog, which has been deleted, contained views not very different to those of the fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch on March 15, 2019, and far-right groups such as Action Zealandia.

Newsroom reported: “In a post from April 2018, Smith outright says he ‘just [doesn’t] like Arabs or Africans.” In April 2020, Smith wrote: “While not all Jews encourage immoral behaviour (from a Christian perspective), most people who do tend to be Jewish. Same with influential positions in the West. Not all Jews are in those spots, but nearly all those spots are filled by Jews… The answer to why Jews keep being kicked out of Christian countries is Jewish behaviour.”

In October 2020, he wrote: “The word ‘racism’ is a propaganda tool to pathologise normal human behaviour. Preferring your own race is a survival tool—like eating or sleeping.”

Responding to the Christchurch terror attack, Smith wrote on March 24, 2019: “There is no such thing as racism.” He called for Muslims to “forgive” Tarrant, adding: “Unfortunately, I have never heard a Muslim or a progressive forgive.”

Like right-wing extremists internationally, including the Trump administration in the US, Smith downplayed the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, declaring that hospitals had inflated the death count.

NZI director Oliver Hartwich told Stuff he was “gobsmacked” to read about Smith’s views: “I almost fell off my chair… His sub-editing was extremely good, the podcast extremely good… we had no idea. I’m horrified.” Hartwich, who has known Smith for several years, said all publications Smith was involved in were being “vetted for any traces of his views.”

The National Business Review (NBR), New Zealand’s main financial newspaper, has remained silent about the fact that it employed an anti-Semite as a feature writer between 2012 and 2020.

It is scarcely credible that Smith’s colleagues in the NZI and NBR had “no idea” about his views. Several of his NBR articles in 2012 contained a link to his Likebulb blog.

Hartwich told Radio NZ that Smith’s “public writing in the [NBR] was very good and didn’t expose any of these issues.” In fact, his NBR articles frequently had a right-wing, militarist character and contributed to the demonisation of Muslims as potential terrorists. Smith defended mass surveillance by the US-led Five Eyes alliance, including New Zealand’s spy agencies; criticised the exposure of war crimes by WikiLeaks, and praised New Zealand’s alliance with US imperialism, including preparations for war against China.

An article on July 13, 2012, praised New Zealand’s participation in US-led naval exercises and the US military build-up against China’s increasingly capable navy. In January 2013, Smith wrote that NZ should send special forces to join the French war in Mali. On February 28, 2013, he hailed the CIA propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty, which glorifies the criminal war in Afghanistan and falsifies the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Smith’s November 2014 article, “‘Jandalled jihadis’ a growing threat in NZ,” which NBR appears to have removed from its website without explanation, inflated the supposed “threat” of Islamic extremism to justify “anti-terror” legislation that further expanded the state’s power to spy on the population.

The fact that Smith could fit in comfortably at the NBR and the NZI points to the increasingly far-right views held by the corporate elite and its media lackeys.

The NZI is a reactionary organisation dedicated to defending social inequality and the control of big business over all government policies. Its predecessor, the Business Roundtable, founded in 1986, played a key role in advising the then-Labour Party government as it launched a full-scale assault on the working class. Labour slashed taxes for the rich, deregulated the finance industry, privatised the railways, telecommunications and other industries and implemented tens of thousands of redundancies.

In its “Briefing to the Incoming Government” two months ago, the NZI advised Jacinda Ardern’s government to deepen its attack on workers by slashing the minimum wage “and re-introduc[ing] lower youth minimum wage rates.” It called for the reinstatement of charter schools to cut education spending, and for lifting the age of pension eligibility by two years.

The elevation of fascistic politicians and policies internationally, including in the US, Brazil, India, Hungary, France and the Philippines, is part of the ruling-class response to the unprecedented growth of class tensions, exacerbated by the pro-corporate response to the pandemic and the economic crisis.

Similar developments are underway in New Zealand. From 2017 to 2020, the Labour Party governed in a coalition with the Greens and the right-wing nationalist New Zealand First Party, which repeatedly agitated against Chinese, Indian and other immigrants, and demonised Muslims in terms like those used by Tarrant and Smith.

The Labour government’s anti-immigrant policies are intended to divert workers’ anger over soaring unemployment and the housing crisis. It has also promoted militarism, defending NZ and Australian war crimes in Afghanistan and strengthened New Zealand’s integration into US war plans against China. The views espoused by Smith, no less than the Christchurch terrorist, reflect this broader political environment.