Local reports of COVID-19 deaths in UK schools confirm concealed impact of pandemic

Harvey Thompson

COVID-19 deaths in Britain continue to mount with another 599 fatalities reported Monday. This brings the death toll as measured by the government to almost 90,000 (89,860). However, the true figure, counting cases where coronavirus was noted on the death certificate, passed the 100,000 mark last week.

Among the deaths are those of educators.

The ToryFibs twitter group on —which collates school infections based on reports from school websites, local news reports and National Health Service updates—published a list of eight school staff who have died of COVID-19 during the months of November and December.

No similar reporting is taking place in any national media outlet.

The governments’ propaganda that schools were “COVID-safe” was dealt a devastating blow when the Tories were forced to include schools in the latest national lockdown. Prior to Prime Minister Boris Johnsons’ January 4 lockdown announcement, the government had even threatened legal action against those schools intending to close due to high infection rates.

The government’s hand was forced as it became clear that school staff and parents had begun to boycott schools.

The school closures have come four months after the full reopening of schools in September following the first national lockdown, a deadly endeavour predicated on a policy of “herd immunity” that has led to tens of thousands of infections and a spate of deaths in schools.

Year seven pupils arrive for their first day at Kingsdale Foundation School in London, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Even now, nurseries and special educational needs schools remain open and many “closed schools” are reporting up to 70 percent attendance due to new criteria around children of essential workers as more of the economy is opened up. Many poorer children are also being forced into classrooms due to an inability to access online learning.

According to recent data supplied to TES ( Times Educational Supplement ) by the NASUWT teaching union, virus rates among school staff in some areas are currently as high as four times the corresponding local authority average.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has not updated its published data on the deaths of educators since June, (before the full reopening of schools after the first national lockdown). That data revealed that 148 education workers in the UK had by then died of COVID-19.

Below is a summary of the deaths of school staff that have been reported locally or on social media in the last months.

· On November 11, Bob Dick, 72, former head of art at Wintringham school in Grimsby died of COVID-19. He had taught art for around 40 years. According to the Grimsby Telegraph, he had suffered a stroke and later tested positive for the virus while receiving treatment.

· On December 4, a funeral service was held, in Blackpool, for Michael Haigh, 60, who died of COVID-19 the previous month. Haigh began working as a school site supervisor at three schools run by the Blessed Edward Bamber Catholic Multi Academy Trust in April 2016. Having suffered a heart attack in 2013, he began shielding in March during the national lockdown, but returned to school on June 21, during the partial reopening of schools.

In April, Haigh’s father, Neville Haigh, 88, a former civil engineer, also died from contracting the virus.

· On November 28, Cath Strangwood, 57, a support assistant at Moor Park Primary and Nursery school in Bispham, Blackpool lost her fight for life to COVID-19. She contracted the virus after returning to work to look after the children of key workers during the first national lockdown. Moor Park Primary School was forced to shut temporarily following a recent outbreak, when seven members of staff contracted the virus.

· Kent Online reported on the death of Michele Cockrill, 62, a teaching assistant in Milton Regis, near Sittingbourne in Kent. She tested positive and died at home on November 22, a day after paramedics had visited her. She is not thought to have had any underlying health conditions.

Cockrill’s son said, “We’re furious mum was still allowed to be working at a school at 62. In a lot of other areas, schools are closing. Why wasn’t mum shielded or furloughed because of her age? Why has the council not been tougher and overruled any government judgement and closed schools and colleges, knowing what the score is in Swale? … We feel that this was a completely avoidable death. It’s a real failure of the system.”

· Nick Hague, 53, headteacher at Marner primary school in Tower Hamlets, London died from COVID-19 on December 23. According to London’s Evening Standard, Hague had tested positive for the virus at the start of the Christmas holidays. It is thought that he had then “completed a period of isolation and was recovering from the illness before he travelled to stay with his mother in Nottingham for Christmas, where he died unexpectedly.” Hague had been forced to close the school early for the Christmas break as so many staff were ill or self-isolating.

· Jan Docker, 55, a special educational needs co-ordinator at Stillness Junior School in Lewisham, London died on Christmas Day. Believing that she was recovering from the virus, she developed severe breathing problems and called an ambulance at midday. She was admitted to Croydon University Hospital where she died six hours later, her family told the Evening Standard. Docker had no significant underlying health issues and had been fit and working before she contracted the virus, according to family members.

· The Northern Echo reported the death of secondary school teacher, Paul Hilditch, 55, on December 27. Hilditch, who taught engineering and technology for four years at Conyers School, in Yarm, North Yorkshire, had been in hospital for two weeks before dying of the virus.

· On December 29, the Island Echo reported that Lynne Morgan, a learning support assistant at Christ the King College in Newport on the Isle of Wight, had “caught COVID-19 early in December and eventually succumbed to pneumonia during the early hours of Monday morning. She had an underlying health condition which left her more vulnerable.” It was announced last week that military helicopters could be used within days to airlift coronavirus patients from the Isle of Wight, as the “astronomical” rise in infections has all but overwhelmed the island’s only hospital.

· Essex Live reported the death from COVID-19 of Stuart Hall, head of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at St Clere’s School in Stanford-le-Hope, Thurrock, Essex on December 31. Hall had joined the school at the beginning of the year and had taught many of the pupils in ICT and Business Studies.

Other fatalities from COVID-19 in schools have only surfaced on social media platforms, such as the recent death from the virus of Ray Phillips, 72, who was nearing retirement as a site supervisor at Mansel Primary school in Sheffield.

On December 3, the headteacher of La Retraite Roman Catholic Girl’s school, in the London Borough of Lambeth, notified all parents at the school of the death of a Year 11 student from the virus on the school web site. The student was due back in school, having seemingly recovered from contracting the virus when she died.

Her death confirms the warnings of many scientists and the World Socialist Web Site that children are not only vectors for the spread of COVID-19 but can succumb to the virus themselves.

The fact that there is no systematic collation of infections and deaths from COVID-19 in schools is an indictment of the education trade unions who have massive resources and could easily establish the true number of fatalities and infections. They choose not to do so as it would upend their collaboration with government in keeping schools either fully open or continuing to admit ever larger groups of children and staff.

The only way to stop the ever wider spread of the virus is to shutdown all non-essential workplaces, including schools, accompanied by the financial support necessary to sustain the population until the virus is contained or eradicated.

Surge in COVID-19 on UK’s Isle of Wight overwhelms health care infrastructure

Paul Bond

COVID-19 infection rates have risen so sharply that the Isle of Wight’s medical director has planned “unthinkable options” to meet the crisis, including using military helicopters to transport patients to the mainland.

Ambulance demand is up 40 percent on this period last year. The island’s one hospital, St Mary’s, has seen a fourfold increase of Covid patients since Christmas and is in danger of being overwhelmed. Stephen Parker, medical director of the island’s National Health Service (NHS) Trust, has warned this could be imminent: “If the NHS is going to be overwhelmed, it is going to be in the next two to four weeks.”

The island, with a population of 140,000, lies off the south coast of England. Its offshore isolation was hailed as one of the safest places in the country for much of last year. When Boris Johnson’s Conservative government introduced its inadequate new tier system of restrictions in November, the island was one of only a handful of places in the lowest Tier 1.

But in the second wave of the pandemic, shortly before Christmas, after a rapid rise in infections, it was elevated straight to Tier 3, and placed in Tier 4 a week later. A month after being classed in the lowest risk category, a 71-fold increase in cases gave it the 13th highest infection rate across the UK.

By January 15, the island had seen 4,770 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Of these 3,091—nearly 65 percent—have been recorded in 2021. Since January 1, there have been 20 more deaths recorded in hospital where the person had either tested positive for Covid-19 or had Covid-19 on their death certificate, taking the cumulative total to 113. By January 5, St Mary’s Hospital in the island’s principal town, Newport, had 40 confirmed Covid-19 patients with five on mechanical ventilation.

As of January 12, there were 66 COVID patients in St Mary’s, compared to 40 the week before. From the beginning of the pandemic to January 3, St Mary’s had treated 355 patients. A week later this had risen to 424.

St Mary's hospital on the Isle of Wight (Photo ©Mark Pilbeam (cc-by-sa/2.0)

While 90 percent of the current cases are being attributed to the new variant of the virus, which is more transmissible than the earlier strain, the catastrophic and worsening situation is not just, or even primarily, a medical question.

The island’s Conservative council and MP have backed every twist and turn in the government’s “herd immunity” response to the pandemic. The government’s over-riding concern has not been to combat and control the virus, but to keep businesses open and profits rolling in, facilitating its spread.

The Isle of Wight was used by the government as a test area for an early contact tracing app. This was quickly shown to be of no practicable use because of its incompatibility with other technology.

Even while Tory MP Bob Seely was echoing the government’s propaganda, he had to apologise for breaching lockdown regulations by attending a barbecue where at least four other people had been present. Seely claimed he only stayed long enough to eat “half a sausage.”

The barbecue, two weeks after the high-profile breach of regulations by Boris Johnson’s key advisor Dominic Cummings, was hosted by Freddy Gray of the right-wing Spectator magazine, at his mother-in-law’s house, despite clear guidance against travelling to second homes. Also present were Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice and his partner, journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who boasted of travelling to her second home on the island to work.

Seely and the council supported the government’s insistence on reopening schools in September. The ensuing upsurge in cases demonstrated that the government’s isolation advice had nothing to do with limiting the spread of the virus.

When a staff member at Christ the King college in Newport, tested positive in September—the second case there within a week—parents of children who had been in contact were told to keep that child at home for a week.

One parent with two children at the school was emailed, but not told which child was involved. When it was clarified, the parent was advised that the rest of the household—including the other sibling at the same school—did not need to isolate unless the first child developed symptoms!

The college remained open. In December, a Learning Support Assistant there, Lynne Morgan, died weeks after testing positive.

Compounding the lie that spread in schools was either minimal or not dangerous, the island’s authorities supported keeping them open, and encouraged a resumption of “responsible” tourism during the October half-term break.

This was a clear prioritisation of profit over health. Council leader Dave Stewart looked forward to “a busy couple of weeks,” saying, “That is good and visitors are welcome.”

Will Myles, managing director of Visit Isle of Wight declared, “Attractions are open and there are plenty of events and activities for our visitors to enjoy.”

These policies enabled the continued spread of a virus known to be likely to mutate, ensuring it was a question of when, not if, the variant would arrive on the island, leading to an increase in infections. Stewart is now blustering about there being “some people over here who shouldn’t be.”

When the island was in Tier 1 in November, the nearest mainland towns, Southampton and Portsmouth, were both in higher tiers (3 and 4 respectively). Naturally, with no restrictions in place, there was anecdotal evidence of travelers coming over to enjoy the greater leniency.

The result was predictable. When a pub in Shanklin closed over Christmas following an outbreak among staff, management said they had taken all the required precautions, noting customer details and only permitting entry to Tier 1 and 2 residents. Tier 2 residents, however, had to travel through worse-affected areas to get there.

The half-term situation was repeated over Christmas, with more devastating effect. The Council’s latest urgent email, “Please stay at home to keep the Island safe,” contains exemptions for the benefit of business.

The results now being seen across the island are worsened by the infrastructural failures caused by decades of cuts and privatisation. St Mary’s hospital was already struggling. Placed in Special Measures in 2017, it was cancelling operations because it could not cope with patient numbers.

To cope with the COVID influx, the hospital has now had to clear a ward to use as a dedicated second Medical Assessment Unit. Rumours that Isle of Wight COVID patients were already being treated on the mainland were denied, but Parker’s announcement about possible military airlifts strongly suggests it may happen. Firefighters are being deployed as ambulance drivers to meet increased demands.

Parker pinned the rapid rise in infection on social interaction over Christmas, both with visitors to the island and with islanders visiting the mainland. Many islanders, including in essential services, work on the mainland. Seely, mindful of his earlier embarrassment, insists there is “no basis in fact” for suggesting second-home owners are responsible for spreading the new variant.

The surge in infections has exposed the island’s transport crisis, with all ferry services run by private companies. Services have been reduced during lockdown, primarily for the benefit of the companies rather than health.

Wightlink, Red Funnel, and Hovertravel, have received between them some £11.5 million in government support during the three lockdowns over the last year.

Transport workers have just voted to take strike action against Wightlink’s plans to close its Defined Benefit Pension Scheme to existing members, and in opposition to the reintroduction of flexible working practices implemented during the first six months of the pandemic.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport workers union (RMT) said the ferry workers had “bent over backwards to help the company survive during this pandemic only to be treated as cannon fodder.” The RMT agreed to this implementation of flexible working practices, and the deferment of 20 percent of all salaries until the end of September 2020.

While corporations look to exploit the pandemic to implement their cost-cutting and profiteering, the crisis brings home the need to reorganise society for social need not profit.

Under the profit system, the slashing of services will only continue and worsen. The Isle of Wight Council is already discussing a “significant increase” in council tax next year. A £10 million funding gap caused by the pandemic has been reduced to £5.5 million with government funding. The council is looking to balance this through increased taxation, while also implementing a further £3.5 million in cuts.

Ukraine begs Europe for coronavirus vaccine

Jason Melanovski

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky begged Europe’s richest countries last week for assistance in obtaining coronavirus vaccines as the virus continues to rip through the country’s impoverished population.

Meeting with newly elected Moldovan President Maia Sandu in Kiev, Zelensky said that countries like Ukraine and Moldova, which are part of the EU’s Eastern Partnership program, “should be given increased attention by the EU states in matters of joint procurement procedures and accelerating the supply of vaccines.”

The Eastern European country of approximately 42 million has reported over 1.2 million cases and 20,000 dead due to the pandemic. The ongoing recession may push more than 9 million people in the country into “extreme poverty,” according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The fact that the virus continues to ravage the population is a direct result of the policies of the Zelensky government which, like its counterparts across Europe and the Americas, has pursued a policy of “herd immunity.” Despite seeing daily case rates as high as 15,000 per day and the overwhelming of the country’s short-staffed and decaying hospitals, the Ukrainian government refused to enforce any quarantine measures during the holidays. Instead, it waited until after Orthodox Christmas on January 7 to implement a limited two-week lockdown.

As the country’s working class and elderly continue to disproportionately suffer the effects of the pandemic, the country’s ruling oligarchy has subordinated its vaccination efforts to the whims of Western imperialism, refusing to purchase the more readily available Sputnik V from neighboring Russia.

US and European imperialism orchestrated a coup in Kiev in 2014 with the help of far-right forces under the fraudulent pretext of supporting “democracy.” Subsequent Ukrainian governments have conducted a civil war against Russian-backed separatists in East Ukraine and have stood at the forefront of military provocations against Russia in the Black Sea region.

At the same time, they have implemented aggressive austerity measures against the Ukrainian working class which have pushed millions deeper into poverty and have signified further devastating cuts to the health care system. Now, while still providing military backing to the Kiev government in the civil war in East Ukraine, the US and NATO powers are refusing to provide even minimal vaccine assistance to what has become the poorest country in Europe.

After initial talks with the companies Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson collapsed due to the Trump administration’s ban on vaccine exports, the country was left with few other options other than turning to Moscow for assistance. As it stands, the earliest delivery of the major Western vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna will not take place until at least late 2021. However, Zelensky stated last month that to accept the Russian vaccine would be “another geopolitical blow, it will be another strong information war on the part of Russia.”

According to its developers, the Russian Sputnik V vaccine is more than 90 percent effective and markedly cheaper and more available than its Western counterparts. However, the vaccine has not undergone all the necessary trial phases before the government released it in Russia, and large sections of the Russian population therefore distrust the vaccine.

Facing pressure from his political rivals at home for refusing to accept medical assistance as people continue to die needlessly, Zelensky stated in a recent interview with the New York Times, “Of course, it is impossible to explain to Ukrainian society why not to take the vaccine from Russia if America and Europe do not give you the vaccine. It is impossible to explain that to anyone who dies.”

Zelensky, who usually profusely thanks his Western allies for their military assistance against Russia, bitterly complained to the Times, “We are supposed to be like political acrobats to manage to get into a priority list,” noting that the American ban on vaccine exports had “put Ukraine at the end of the line.”

His main political rivals from the “Opposition Platform—for Life” party, which is led by oligarch and Putin’s personal friend Viktor Medvedchuk, have used the vaccine issue to gain support. The party has begun collecting signatures for a petition, urging the government to allow for production of Sputnik V in Ukraine.

During a meeting with Putin this past fall, Medvedchuk obtained permission from the Russian President for Ukraine to receive the Sputnik V vaccine and obtained a license for Biolik, a pharmaceutical company based in eastern Ukraine, to manufacture the vaccine in Ukraine.

So far, Ukrainian medical authorities have outright refused to move forward with Sputnik V production. Echoing the stance of NATO and the United States, the country director of medical procurement stated, “We cannot rely on a Russian state company during an armed aggression against Ukraine.”

President Zelensky has seen his approval ratings steadily decline as the ongoing pandemic and its economic fallout have impacted the country’s working class hard. Moreover, while the promise to end the now nearly seven-year-long war in eastern Ukraine war had played a central role in his election in 2019, Zelensky has continued to subordinate his government’s policies to the US- and NATO-led war drive against Russia. The war, triggered by the Western-backed coup of 2014, has claimed the lives of over 14,000 people, displaced 1.4 million and left 3.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

Recent polls show that the pro-Moscow Opposition Platform—For Life party is now the most popular political party in Ukraine, ahead of Zelensky’s own Servant of the People Party.

Desperate to still somehow get a vaccine, Ukraine has turned to China and is set to receive 5 million doses from the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech starting in March. Another 8 million doses are scheduled to be delivered in March under the WHO-led COVAX global vaccine initiative, which is attempting to distribute vaccines to the world’s poorer countries. These 13 million doses will fall far short, however, from what is needed to implement a comprehensive vaccination program for the 42 million people living in Ukraine.

While the Ukrainian ruling class itself has been criminally negligent in combating the pandemic, the country has now also become a victim of the same “vaccine nationalism” that is plaguing all of the world’s poorest countries.

So far, COVAX has raised just $6 billion of the $7 billion it is seeking to finance deliveries of vaccines to 92 developing nations with limited or no means to purchase the vaccine on their own. Speaking last week while urging the world’s wealthiest capitalist countries and companies to stop making bilateral deals at the expense of COVAX, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated simply, “Rich countries have the majority of the supply.”

Wage theft exposed at Fiat Chrysler/Stellantis Detroit Assembly Complex

Stephen Fuller

Autoworkers have experienced wage theft and dangerous working conditions at Stellantis’ new Detroit Assembly Complex - Mack, according to sources who spoke with the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter. Stellantis is the new global auto company formed by the merger earlier this month between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Peugeot (PSA).

The plant, which opened late last year on the grounds of the former Chrysler Mack Avenue Engine Complex, is the city of Detroit’s first new assembly plant in three decades. This plant and adjacent Jefferson North Assembly Plant will produce the new Jeep Grand Cherokee luxury SUV, which debuts this spring.

FCA Mack Assembly Plant (Source: Stellantis Media)

Hundreds of millions of dollars out of the $2.5 billion price tag for the new facility were covered by incentives from the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. The city paid $50 million for the 215-acre site, $43.5 million of which went to buy a 117-acre parcel from the family of infamous billionaire Manuel Moroun, who owns the Ambassador Bridge, which connects downtown Detroit to Canada. The remaining 132 acres were bought for $4.6 million. The city spent an additional $60 million for environmental cleanup of the former brownfield site.

In May 2019, the Michigan Strategic Fund board approved $223 million in tax incentives for the plant, with a further $92.9 million approved in July 2019 by the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

To sell the project to the city of Detroit, FCA/Stellantis pledged 4,100 new jobs that would go to Detroit residents. In reality, 3,800 of those jobs are going to low-paid supplemental employees already working for the company at other locations, who are being advanced to full time positions at the Mack plant. This has left many impoverished Detroit workers without the jobs they were promised. Stellantis currently employs the highest percentage of temporary and “supplemental” workers out of the Big Three, about 59 percent of its US workforce.

Moreover, several Mack workers have told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter that they have been underpaid since relocating to the new Detroit plant. The wage progression in their contract specified a raise to $23.69 per hour when they hit 3 years. When the time came, they did not get their raise, and they are making $3.60 per hour less than what was promised.

After not hearing from the UAW for two months, a group of employees went to the UAW office to complain. They were met with “outlandish lies and excuses” as to why the low rate was correct, the workers say.

The UAW eventually admitted its “mistake,” saying it would take weeks to fix the workers’ pay rate and issue back pay, even though their contract specifies that pay issues have to be resolved within 24 hours. This created intense hardship for many workers, who had been counting on the pay raise to meet their bills.

“The UAW makes millions and millions in profits for little to no service. And FCA had a record-breaking year in profits while many of us are not even working due to COVID, but they want to try and swindle people out of less than $4 an hour. Not only do they prove time and time again that they do not work for us, they can’t even do simple things such as reply in timely fashion, if at all.”

He added, “They can’t answer a single damn question, which really irks me. When I was a temp worker, they couldn’t answer questions because the temporary full time extortion was new to them. Now I’m full time and a year within our new contract and they still don’t know answers because it’s a ‘new’ contract.”

Workers also reported dangerous working conditions at the Mack plant as the coronavirus rages through the population. Token safety measures by the auto companies, implemented after a wildcat strike wave in the spring forced a two-month shutdown of the industry, have been largely abandoned.

One worker reported, “At first there was only one turn style and there were thousands of us packed in like sardines. It is still inhumane, a complete risk.”

Another worker said, “As you know, the UAW and [Stellantis] management try with all their power to not inform workers about who is out with COVID or who came in contact. You literally have to be close friends with someone and have them personally tell you. This is how bad it is.”

This coverup of infections and even deaths is the norm throughout the industry. No public figures on the extent of the virus in the auto industry have been made public, but the WSWS has uncovered major outbreaks, through discussions with autoworkers, at plants around the country, including Toledo Jeep, Kokomo Transmission, Belvidere Assembly, Sterling Heights Assembly, Sterling Stamping, Warren Truck, Ford Kansas City, Faurecia Gladstone and others.

However, a leaked management report from Stellantis’ Jefferson North Assembly Plant, which was also shared with but not released by UAW local officials, demonstrates that both management and the union are carefully tracking the spread of the virus inside the plants in secret. The UAW, which long abandoned even basic representative functions, today acts as the bribed agent of the auto companies, demonstrated most graphically by the recently-closed corruption probe by federal investigators which brought down two former union presidents.

Migrant caravan attacked by Guatemalan troops as Biden team accommodates anti-immigrant right

Andrea Lobo

With wooden batons, punches, kicks, stun grenades and tear gas canisters, the Guatemalan military Sunday attacked a caravan of thousands of migrants and refugees that departed Honduras over the weekend, many traveling as families.

Videos clearly show the bravery and desperation of the workers and youth lurching into the wall of soldiers as they are brutally beaten. Menacingly, soldiers stood in the background with firearms. Emergency workers reported that dozens were injured, including children, and some had to be transported to the hospital.

Migrants from the caravan at the El Florido border between Honduras and Guatemala. (Twitter/Jeff Ernst @jeffgernst)

Two months after hurricanes Eta and Iota devastated the region and as the pandemic crisis continues, caravan members explained to the media that they are escaping conditions of absolute destitution.

These conditions are accompanied by generalized gang violence, state repression and gross negligence toward the humanitarian catastrophe and COVID-19 pandemic on the part of the US puppet regime of Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras.

Oscar García, a banana plantation worker, said to Reuters: “We’re suffering from hunger. It’s impossible to live in Honduras, there’s no work, there’s nothing.”

During the repression in Guatemala, another plantation worker, Dixón Vázquez, told AFP that the plantation where he worked in Lima was destroyed. “They have no heart,” he said. “We are risking our lives. There are no jobs in Honduras, especially after the two cyclones and the pandemic… Our goal is to reach the United States.”

In its latest estimates, UNICEF reported that hurricanes Eta and Iota affected 9.3 million people in total, including 4.66 million in Honduras, and left 294 people dead or missing, 110 of them in Honduras. Thousands of hectares of crops and hundreds of roads and bridges were wiped out.

After surviving weeks of almost continuous flooding, landslides and hurricane winds—amid a pandemic that has overwhelmed the already collapsed health care system—millions found themselves stripped of their homes, workplaces, schools, roads, water, electricity and other elements of their basic livelihood.

In December, in an earlier attempt, some 500 Hondurans were harassed, threatened and sent back by the Honduran police before reaching the Guatemalan border.

The latest caravan departed the northern city of San Pedro Sula on January 14 and January 15 and entered Guatemala through the Florido border crossing in three large groups. A smaller group of about 150 people sought to cross on January 14 in the eastern crossing of Corinto but was detained and returned immediately.

On Saturday night, the bulk of the caravan re-grouped at Vado Hondo, Chiquimula, where the barrier of hundreds of troops and police violently stopped them.

The Guatemalan immigration authorities reported on Sunday that more than 9,000 people entered the country with the caravan, while 1,383 had already been deported to Honduras. The group at Vado Hondo is composed of about 6,000 migrants and refugees and, as of this writing, remains trapped there.

According to the Guatemalan National Police on Monday, it has rounded up several small groups of Hondurans that reached the northern department of Petén near the Mexican border.

Under orders from the Trump White House, which for months has been the nerve center of an operation to establish a fascistic dictatorship that included the January 6 storming of the US Capitol, the regional governments are using troops and anti-riot police to violate the right to asylum protected by international law of thousands of Hondurans escaping a humanitarian catastrophe.

Authorities in Washington, Mexico and Guatemala have claimed that they are seeking to enforce COVID-19 protocols by preventing the caravan from crossing. Meanwhile, the three governments have reopened nonessential economic activities and adopted a deliberate “herd immunity” policy of mass contagion in order to safeguard the profits of the major banks and corporations.

Guatemala’s right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei declared a state of emergency in the departments along the migrant route from Chiquimula up to Petén on the border with Mexico. He has insisted that foreigners must have a passport and a negative COVID-19 test.

The administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has in turn deployed hundreds of National Guard soldiers with riot gear to the town of Tapachula on the border with Guatemala. López Obrador had also threatened the refugees and migrants with prison sentences of up to ten years for violating COVID-19 regulations.

In his only public appearance since the January 6 coup attempt, Donald Trump spoke on January 12 at the US-Mexico border to agitate his fascist supporters planning further attacks, including by scapegoating migrants.

By faithfully obeying the orders to attack the caravans, the regional authorities are directly aiding Trump’s coup attempt. In fact, Trump directly thanked his “friend” López Obrador for having deployed “27,000 Mexican soldiers guarding our borders over the last two years.”

“Change the name from the caravans to the gravy train,” Trump added, “because that’s what they’re looking for. This will be an unmitigated calamity for national security, public safety, and public health. It would destroy millions and millions of jobs and claim thousands of innocent lives.”

To blame migrant workers for the calamity in the United States is absurd! The Trump administration, with the collaboration of both corporate-controlled parties, has showered the major banks and corporations with trillions of dollars of “gravy”—what the financial press itself has called “free money”—while rejecting every major effort to halt the spread of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, migrant workers in the United States have taken on an overwhelming share of the burden of providing essential services during the pandemic while suffering disproportionately from COVID-19 infections and deaths.

On the other hand, whatever hopes the Central American refugees had that the Joe Biden administration would help provide desperately needed asylum and relief were immediately opposed by the Biden team. On Sunday, a transition official stated to NBC News that “they’re not going to be able to come into the United States immediately.” Changes “will take time,” he said, and “those in the region should not believe anyone peddling the lie that our border will be open to everyone next month.”

President-elect Biden himself said in an interview on December 22 that “the last thing we want is to stop immediately the access to asylum the way it’s being run now and end up with too many people on our border.”

The response of Biden and the Democratic Party to the January 6 coup constitutes another and even more serious warning. They have worked to cover up the involvement in the coup of Trump’s co-conspirators in the Republican Party and sought to legitimize the integration of the fascistic right and their policy demands into the framework of mainstream politics. A similar process has occurred with the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany, the Vox Party in Spain and similar forces across Europe.

The caravan of Honduran migrants and refugees must be supported by all workers. Across the world, the offensive against the rights of refugees and migrant workers by the ruling class is being used to spearhead a broader assault against the democratic and social rights of the entire working class.

US prompts new “human rights” resolution to push Sri Lanka to line up against China

Pradeep Ramanayake & K. Ratnayake

According to Colombo media reports, a “Core Group on Sri Lanka” is planning to present a new resolution to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on human rights issues. This group includes Britain, Canada, Germany, North Macedonia and Montenegro.

By all indications Washington is behind the move intended to press Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s government to break from China’s “influence.”

During the months of July and August 2014, UNHCR provided supermarket vouchers through a special one-time assistance programme to the most vulnerable asylum-seekers in Sri Lanka. (UNHCR)

Although political turmoil is engulfing Washington amid President Donald Trump’s fascist coup attempt, the US military buildup against China is continuing. The US wants to integrate Sri Lanka into its war preparations.

The resolution will be submitted to the UNHRC’s 46th session, to be held in Geneva in March. The Sunday Times reported in its weekend issue that the Colombo government turned down a request by the Core Group to co-sponsor the new resolution.

The resolution’s content is yet unknown. But the US, backed by other imperialist powers, hypocritically exploited the war crimes committed during the final phase of the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to press Colombo to line up behind it.

A nearly 30-year bloody communal war against the LTTE ended in May 2009 during former President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government. His younger brother, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, now president, supervised the brutal military operations as defence secretary.

UN expert committees estimated that the military was responsible for at least 40,000 civilian deaths in the final weeks of war, as well as the killing of several LTTE leaders and the disappearance of hundreds of others who surrendered at the end of war.

Washington supported the war and the anti-democratic Mahinda Rajapakse regime. However, hostile to his close ties with China, which supplied military hardware and financial assistance, the US sponsored several UNHRC resolutions to push him to distance his government from Beijing.

Finally, Washington orchestrated a regime-change operation to oust Mahinda Rajapakse and replace him with the pro-US Maithripala Sirisena as president via elections in January 2015.

Sirisena shifted the country’s foreign policy in favour of the US. In return, Washington helped Colombo to dilute the war crimes investigation demands and to pass a UNHRC resolution in October 2015 calling for the creation of domestic “hybrid courts” to investigate human rights. Such courts were never established.

Last March the current Rajapakse government withdrew its support for this resolution and other related UNHRC resolutions. Rajapakse’s government denies that any war crimes were committed and defends the military. The same position is taken by all political parties in Colombo that supported the prosecution of the war.

Amid a deep economic crisis, Rajapakse is appointing retired and serving generals to key administration posts, rapidly entrenching an autocratic regime based on the military.

Washington approached the Tamil parties to tap their support for a new UNHRC resolution, even as the Trump administration withdrew from the UNHRC objecting to its criticism of Israel human rights violations.

In mid-December the US ambassador in Colombo Alaina Teplitz met with Tamil National Alliance (TNA) spokesman and parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran, who assured Teplitz of his party’s backing.

Sumanthiran later met with Tamil Peoples Alliance (TPA) leader and former Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran and Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam. According to the media, they agreed to prepare a proposal for the UNHRC.

US and UK diplomats also held telephone conversations with Ponnambalam, while British High Commissioner Sarah Halton had a separate discussion with Sumanthiran in December.

These utterly corrupt bourgeois Tamil nationalist parties have long backed US geopolitical interests, particularly against China, and in turn sought the backing of the imperialist powers and India to secure their privileges.

They have no genuine interest in war crimes investigations or the democratic rights of Tamil workers and poor. The TNA played a key role in the US-sponsored regime-change operation in 2015. Sumanthiran then helped to formulate the October 2015 UNHRC resolution, which suppressed the war crimes investigation in collusion with the US State Department.

Last week, after the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres with the US and UK diplomats, the TNA, TNPF and TPA leaders and other Tamil figures wrote a letter to UNHRC member states requesting a new resolution. The letter urges the UNHRC to ask UN bodies, including the Security Council and General Assembly, to “inquire into the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” via the International Criminal Court and “any other appropriate and effective international accountability mechanisms.”

The letter also asks the UNHRC president to refer “matters on accountability in Sri Lanka back to the UN Secretary General for action as stated above” and mandate “the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to continue to monitor Sri Lanka for ongoing violations.”

The letter requests the setting up of an “International Independent Investigation Mechanism” like that invoked against Syria. This means that the Tamil parties are backing the US-led aggressive actions against Syria aimed at regime change.

As part of their perfidious role, these Tamil parties only pay lip service to the continued fight of Tamil people for human rights investigations, information about the disappeared and the release of Tamil political prisoners. They never demand the withdrawal of the military occupation of the island’s north and east.

The Rajapakse government is facing an unprecedented economic downturn caused by the impact of the global pandemic. According to the Central Bank, economic output dropped by 3.9 percent last year. Facing massive foreign debt repayments over the next four years, including $US6 billion this year, the government has turned to Beijing to finance its cash deficits.

Beijing, confronted by the US military buildup and provocations, is keen to develop its influence by providing loans and grants to Colombo. This is part of its drive to develop its relations in other countries in the region.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Sri Lanka in October to demand that Colombo line up with the US. At a press conference, he declared: “We see from bad deals, violations of sovereignty and lawlessness on land and sea, that the Chinese Communist Party is a predator.”

A bill presented to the US Congress on December 21 on financial support to countries hit by the pandemic stated: “US financial support will be contingent on Sri Lanka asserting its sovereignty against influence by the People’s Republic of China.”

In another warning, Washington last month discontinued a 49 billion rupee ($480 million) US Millennium Challenge Corporation grant “due to lack of partner country engagement.”

India, one of the United States’ main strategic partners against China, sent its foreign affairs minister S. Jaishankar to Colombo this month, primarily to express displeasure over the Rajapakse regime’s growing relations with Beijing.

A genuine investigation into the war crimes and the ending of discrimination against the Tamil and Muslim minorities in Sri Lanka can be achieved only through the united struggle of the working class, across ethnic lines, on the basis of an international socialist program against the Rajapakse regime.

This struggle is bound up with the fight against the imperialist war preparations. The latest US actions to line up Sri Lanka show the advanced stage of its geostrategic aggression against China, posing the danger of catastrophic wars.

Tunisian regime deploys army as protests spread 10 years after Arab Spring

Alex Lantier

Ten years after a revolutionary working class uprising toppled President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, the Tunisian regime is deploying the army against demonstrations that have erupted in dozens of cities across the country. Yesterday, Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi’s government arrested 632 youth in an attempt to crush protests that are spreading across the country.

Explosive anger is building in working class districts across North Africa. At the beginning of the year, Mechichi’s government was facing a wave of local strikes by teachers opposing its murderous policy of enforcing in-person learning despite the spread of COVID-19. At that point, Mechichi suddenly decided to declare a four-day curfew starting on the anniversary of Ben Ali’s overthrow, January 14.

Police officers face demonstrators during clashes in Siliana, Tunisia, Saturday, Jan.16, 2021. (AP Photo/Hedi Sfar)

This cynical and transparent manipulation of the pandemic as a pretext for repression failed to strangle mounting opposition. Unauthorized demonstrations took place in several cities including the capital, Tunis. On the night of the 14th, protesters went out in Kasserine, a largely working-class city in the southern-central district of Tunisia that was a center of the 2011 uprising against Ben Ali. Protesting the lack of jobs and of social support for the unemployed, they burned tires and faced off against the security forces.

In Siliana, the population protested against police violence after videos appeared on social media showing a policeman beating a herdsman whose sheep allegedly got inside an official building. Police fired tear gas at demonstrators, who responded by throwing stones and blocking streets with flaming tires in order to delay deployments by the security forces. On January 15, the police trade unions tried to calm the growing anger by presenting a statement of apology to the herdsman.

In the following days, protests grew and spread in working-class districts of Tunis like Ettadhamen and Al-Karm, as well as Kasserine, Sbeitla, Bizerte, Beja, Kairouan, and Monastir. Clashes between security forces and youth were also reported in Manzel Bourguiba, Sousse, and Nabeul, as well as in other cities.

On January 17, as the Tunisian Interior Ministry announced the arrest of 242 people, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohamed Zikri confirmed that the army would be deployed against protesters in the regions of Siliana, Kasserine, Bizerte and Sousse. Army units were also sent to the center of Tunis. Zikri confirmed that the goal of the military’s intervention was to prevent the population from storming key government buildings.

In a sign of growing panic in ruling circles, the General Union of Tunisian Labor (UGTT), the national labor union historically tied to the Ben Ali regime, issued a statement to denounce and try to demoralize the movement.

While criticizing police repression as “ineffective” and declaring the social anger of the youth to be “legitimate,” the UGTT denounced the demonstrations as a criminal action. The UGTT stated that it “warned young protesters against carrying out night-time demonstrations, when there is a risk that they may be infiltrated, and denounced acts of vandalism and acts of pillage of public and private property committed over the recent days.”

Yesterday, Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Hayouni announced the arrest of 632 people, mainly aged between 15 and 25. Largely echoing the rhetoric of the UGTT, he denounced the protests: “This has nothing to do with movements with demands, which are protected by the Constitution. Such movements normally take place during the day and do not include criminal actions.”

Demonstrations continued yesterday in dozens of cities across Tunisia, defying the army’s threats and waves of arrests by the regime. In Tunis, one protest march headed down Habib Bourguiba Avenue, which was the site of mass protests during the uprising against Ben Ali in 2011. The protesters shouted slogans such as “No fear, no horror, power belongs to the people!”

Press dispatches indicated large-scale clashes with police in several cities and working-class suburbs of Tunis. Police fired tear gas in large quantities against demonstrators, who retaliated by throwing stones and shooting fireworks at the security forces, often from the tops of tall apartment blocks.

These protests make clear that the political struggle launched by the overthrow of Ben Ali by the working class a decade ago continues to this day. None of the demands for greater social equality and for democratic rights that drove the uprising of the workers and youth in January 2011 have been granted.

The course of events fully vindicated the January 17, 2011, statement published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), titled “The mass uprising in Tunisia and the perspective of permanent revolution.” The ICFI declared that the uprising marked “a turning point in world affairs” and opened “a new era of revolutionary upheavals.” It pointed to the international class tensions that had driven the uprising and the role of WikiLeaks’ revelations of Ben Ali’s corruption in spurring on the revolt.

The ICFI also stressed the urgency of creating an international Trotskyist revolutionary vanguard in the working class across the Middle East and North Africa, fighting for the perspective of the overthrow of capitalism and an international socialist revolution:

Weak and dependent, tied by innumerable threads to foreign imperialism and native feudalist forces, the bourgeoisie of countries such as Tunisia is a thousand times more fearful of and hostile to the revolutionary force of the working class than it is to imperialism. … Without the development of a revolutionary leadership, another authoritarian regime will inevitably be installed to replace that of Ben Ali.

The Tunisian uprising was followed by a powerful revolutionary upsurge of the Egyptian working class that toppled Hosni Mubarak, as well as various protests across the region. However, insofar as petty-bourgeois groups like the Revolutionary Socialist (RS) in Egypt and the Popular Front in Tunisia blocked a seizure of power by the working class, the regime stabilized itself. The imperialist powers launched a wave of wars in Libya, Syria, Ivory Coast and Mali. The Tunisian governments that followed Ben Ali were barely disguised tools of international banks and lending agencies.

The government of Mechichi—a former interior minister who still occupies that position, though ostensibly on an interim basis—is based on an unstable coalition of Islamists, liberals and former Ben Ali supporters. Perpetually teetering on the verge of state bankruptcy, it is threatened with strangulation by the major banks and is incapable of offering jobs, decent social conditions and democratic rights to the working class.

The pandemic and official “herd immunity” policies, which in Tunisia have claimed 5,570 lives and vastly intensified the social and economic crisis in the country, have exposed the bankruptcy of the social order not only in North Africa, but in Europe, North America and worldwide. It is widely sensed that the protests now unfolding in Tunisia are part of a global crisis with revolutionary implications triggered by the pandemic.

“The social, economic and health situation created by the COVID-19 crisis is favorable to such demonstrations,” journalist Fateen Hafsia told the Arabic edition of the British Independent. He added: “January in Tunisia generally has been the historic motor of protests, from the 1952 revolution [against French colonial rule] to the 1978 confrontation with the UGTT and the events of January 2011 and the toppling of Ben Ali.”

The January 6, 2021, fascist coup attempted by Donald Trump on the Capitol in Washington, D.C., is a further warning to workers not only in America, but around the world. Capitalism, rotting on its feet, undermines democracy even in the wealthiest and most powerful countries with the longest democratic traditions. For the working class around the world, the struggle to establish and defend democratic rights is today directly tied to an international struggle of the working class for socialism.

The global COVID vaccination distribution debacle is mirrored in the US

Benjamin Mateus

The recent experience with the inequitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine only provides further proof that the global allocation of human resources organized under capitalism is an abject failure. Despite the stunning achievement of producing safe and efficacious vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in less than one year, the world faces the reality that the delivery of these life-saving therapeutics is disorganized, chaotic and is managed under the diktat of the markets.

Connecticut National Guard members wait to check-in vehicles for Connecticut's largest COVID-19 Vaccination Drive-Through Clinic, Monday, Jan. 18, 2021, in East Hartford, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

According to the Bloomberg vaccination tracker, approximately 42.2 million doses have been given across 51 countries, a rough daily average of 2.43 million doses per day, a significant majority representing high-income countries. The US has administered 14.3 million doses or 4.4 doses for every 100 persons, with 46 percent of all distributed vaccines administered. At least 1.8 million have completed the two-dose regimen across the globe. Only Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the United Kingdom are leading the United States.

In contrast, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that only 25 doses of the vaccines had been given in one lowest-income country. “I need to be blunt. The world is on the brink of catastrophic moral failure, and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.” With more than 8 billion doses of vaccines set aside in dozens and dozens of deals to secure vaccine access, by all accounts, if these were distributed evenly, at least half the world’s population could be assured two doses to complete the vaccination regimen.

COVID-19 vaccine doses per capita (Source: Our World in Data)

The WHO COVAX initiative was created in partnership with GAVI and the coalition for epidemic preparedness to ensure equitable vaccine access to every country in the world to deliver 2 billion doses. Yet, deliberate hoarding of vaccines by wealthy nations by preordering millions of doses has led many countries that have joined COVAX to make bilateral deals with vaccine makers pushing prices up and limiting access for developing countries to some undetermined distant future.

Across Africa, a second wave of the pandemic is threatening to inundate the frail health care system across the continent. Countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Sudan, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo report that hospital capacity and oxygen supplies are running short.

The Financial Times reported that “the continent-wide death rate this month surpassed the global average for the first time.” With almost 3.3 million infections, Africa has seen 80,000 deaths over the intervening months of the pandemic or a crude case fatality rate of over 2.42 percent, higher than Europe with 2.27 percent and the US with 1.66 percent, by comparison. Despite a much younger median age, without adequate resources, African nations will face a considerable challenge. The delivery of vaccines to frontline health care workers in these regions is a critical priority.

Map of countries by approval status: (Dark Green) Approved for general use, mass vaccination underway (Light Green) EUA granted, mass vaccination underway (Orange) EUA granted, limited vaccination Dark Blue) Approved for general use, mass vaccination planned (Light Blue) EUA granted, mass vaccination planned (Yellow) EUA pending

Despite the United States’ world predominance in terms of its wealth, it has shown its utter incompetence in organizing a massive national vaccination initiative. After promising Americans that 100 million would be inoculated in 100 days, one month after the first vaccine was given, less than 12 million were vaccinated.

The vaccine rollout’s initial phase was intended to inoculate the 24 million health care workers and residents of nursing homes across the nation. Those in the medical field, by the nature of their occupation, have the highest risk of infection. Meanwhile, occupants of long-term care facilities possess the highest risk of disease severity and death associated with COVID-19 due to their age and medical state. Yet, as the federal government left it to each state with little resources to develop their rollout plan, it has been a calamitous embarrassment. As STAT News noted, “Most of the missteps so far stem from the same problem: prioritization decisions that ignore the science of risk assessment and leave too much to chance.”

Perhaps it is characterized best by Dr. Camara Jones, the American Public Health Association’s past president, when he told Business Insider, “You know, it’s the Wild West out there. It’s sort of the opposite of an equitable distribution plan, if there were a plan. But there’s no plan! No plan!”

There are no quick fixes for this developing predicament, making moves to the next phases of the vaccination rollout with the intent to inoculate 180 million a recipe for disaster. States will have to quickly identify tens or hundreds of thousands of people with medical conditions that increase their risk for severe COVID-19. Compounding this will be attempting to stratify them by age in a complicated calculation to see who should get the shots first. Many elderly people face technological challenges, making communicating when and where they must go to get their vaccination difficult.

In a knee-jerk reaction to this catastrophe, states are turning to natural disaster tools to determine vaccine distribution. Their decisions will be based on assessing the number of people that live in a county and using the social vulnerability index (SVI), which utilizes data such as poverty, access to vehicles and overcrowded residents, to provide a vulnerability score for every US census tract. Pharmacies are being made the primary mechanism for administering vaccines.

These endeavors may exacerbate the situation. As STAT News noted, “Using population as a factor means that dense communities, merely because they are populous, will get far more doses than they need. … What’s more, the SVI fails to account for individual clinical history or key social determinants of health at the county level, such as air quality and proximity to grocery stores based on ZIP code. And relying on pharmacies for distribution leaves out people who live in pharmacy deserts, which are more common in low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, and rural areas.”

As states move to rely on pharmacies, CNN recently reported that CVS and Walgreens have come under fire by health officials for the slow rollout of their vaccination programs to nursing homes. Working under a partnership with the federal government, teams from these pharmacies have been tasked with vaccinating nursing home residents and their staff. As of last week, only one-quarter of the 4.7 million doses allocated had been administered.

Joseph Biden, speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, said last week, “We’re sparing no effort in getting Americans vaccinated. We remain in a very dark winter. The infection rate is up 34 percent. We see 3,000 or 4,000 deaths per day. Things will get worse before they get better.”

Though Biden has called for federally supported vaccination centers using FEMA to oversee their construction as well as community immunization sites, like Trump he will rely on commercial pharmacies to distribute vaccines. “The vaccine rollout in the United States has been a dismal failure thus far,” he said. “This will be one of the most challenging operational efforts we’ve ever undertaken as a nation. We’ll have to move heaven and earth to get more people vaccinated.” However, there was no mention of a lockdown to stem the tide of deaths.