Eyes on China: The Quad Takes Scattered Aim

Binoy Kampmark

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has had its fits and starts, but nothing encourages such chats than threats, actual or perceived.  In 2017, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono felt that it was time that a strategic dialogue between Japan, the United States, Australia and India should be revived.  The Quad, as it was termed, was on the way to becoming a more serious forum, having had its tentative origins in the cooperative efforts of the four countries in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.  Formally launched in 2007, the initiative petered out.

The evolution of such a forum typically begins at senior official level, followed by a ministerial upgrade. Levels of seniority get roped in until the leaders of the countries take the reins. But at its inception, brows creased in Beijing.  These were not, however, meant to reach the level of full blown frowns.

The prospect of this somewhat misnamed “Asian NATO” was not to be taken too seriously, though officials in the Trump administration did contemplate a collective with teeth and persuasiveness.  In October 2020, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was all about using the grouping to combat China.  “This is for the soul of the world.  This is about whether this will be a world that operates … on a rules-based international order system, or one that’s dominated by a coercive totalitarian regime like the one in China.”  At the time, Pompeo had to settle for a more mild-mannered proposal – that of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific – an idea advanced by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2016.

Nonetheless, the four powers have been painting a picture that will not find cheer in President Xi Jinping’s quarters.  At a press conference in September last year, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, when asked about the government’s views on the upcoming October Quad meeting, curtly spoke of being against the “forming of exclusive cliques”.  The “targeting of third parties or undermining third parties’ interests” was surely less preferable to conducive cooperation towards “mutual understanding and trust between regional countries.”

Last month, the Quad’s four foreign ministers met.  Japan’s Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi described “candid talks about cooperation toward the free and open Indo-Pacific and on regional and global issues.”  US State Department spokesperson Ned Price noted in a statement that discussion also included “the priority of strengthening democratic resilience in the broader region” and maintaining “support for freedom of navigation and territorial integrity.”

The Biden administration is also making an effort to elevate the status of the Quad.  The president intends holding a virtual meeting on March 12 with the prime ministers of Japan, Australia and India.  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki rolled out the now frequent message that such meetings demonstrated Biden’s keenness to take allies and partnerships seriously.  According to the press secretary, topics to be discussed will include “the threat of COVID”, “economic cooperation” and the “climate crisis”.  Only the dimmest of dolts could avoid the prospect that China would not come up in the virtual chat feast.

A senior administration was more forthcoming in telling Reuters that, “This sends a very strong signal of common cause and purpose.  And the goal here is basically to introduce the Quad as a new feature of regular diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific.”  Similarly, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke of the Quad becoming “a feature of Indo-Pacific engagement,” a gathering of “four leaders four countries” and not “a big bureaucracy with a big secretariats”.  And just to make the point of a counterweight to Chinese power clear, without naming Beijing, Morrison envisaged the arrangement as an “anchor of peace and stability in the region”.

Each of the nations, however, have their individual differences in how to deal with China.  Australia remains obsessed with foreign interference and Chinese moves into regional Pacific politics, piggy backing on US power in order to stem that influence.  Japan considers good relations with China important, while still happy to concede ground to the US as being the dominant Asian-Pacific power.

India remains the most cautious participant. Its foreign policy harks back to the days of non-alignment maintained during the Cold War.  Unlike Japan and Australia, there is no fondness for the idea of having one dominant bully in the playground, dressed up in the clothing of strategic primacy.  But its relationship with China remains fractious.  The border dispute in the Himalayan region, which also features a competition to build infrastructure, turned bloody in June 2020 in a Galwan Valley clash that left over 20 Indian soldiers dead.  Accusations about provocations by both sides have been traded with increasing frequency since last year, with a mutual disengagement between the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army from disputed points yet to take place.

In November 2020, New Delhi invited Australia to participate in the annually held Malabar naval exercises, frequented by US and Japan.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi seemed to be turning.  This week, India confirmed that he would be attending the virtual conference, with the Ministry of External Affairs revealing that discussions would cover the ground traversed by the foreign ministers in February.  “The leaders will discuss regional and global issues of shared interest, and exchange views on practical areas of cooperation towards maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region.”

Despite much common ground, the prospects of the Quad flowering into a security arrangement that will ring-fence China seem unlikely.  Provocative as it may well be, the more measured sages in Beijing will consider the differences between the four powers and deal with each of them accordingly.  The cannier ones might even choose to manipulate them.

Tens of thousands of cancer sufferers denied treatment in UK during pandemic

Jean Gibney & Ben Trent

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the dire situation facing tens of thousands of UK cancer patients. At the end of December 2020—the worst month for medical backlogs since records began in 2007—almost 4.52 million patients in England were waiting to start hospital treatment. 224,205 people had been waiting more than a year.

Tens of thousands of cancer sufferers are among those waiting. Hundreds of them will die needlessly because of the Conservative government’s criminal response to the pandemic.

An article by the Cancer Research UK charity highlights the increasing numbers of patients waiting for cancer referrals, diagnoses and treatments. The article notes that, since the onset of the pandemic, waiting times for screening, tests and treatment have been steadily increasing. Roughly 40,000 fewer people started treatment for cancer in 2020 compared with previous years. According to Jon Shelton, senior cancer intelligence manager at the charity, the drop in numbers of cancer patients is primarily driven by a lack of diagnoses.

Many cancer diagnosing tests cannot be carried out due to the sustained pressure on hospitals created by the pandemic. Around 600,000 fewer endoscopies were performed in England between March and November.

Dorset Breast Screening Service mobile centre station in Bournemouth, July 2018 (credit: WSWS Media)

Patients with operable cancers that can be removed by carrying out surgeries have also had to wait for months, often becoming unsuitable candidates for such procedures as their condition worsens.

In reference to a study from October 2020, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) noted that across the seven major cancer types each four-week delay between diagnosis and surgery was linked to a 6-8 percent increase in mortality rates. Four-week delays for radiotherapy and chemotherapy could see mortality rates increase by as much as 23 and 28 percent respectively.

An oncologist who works in a north west England National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust told the WSWS, “We see a large drop of patients coming for treatments. This is because hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases. Cancer patients are struggling to get appointments for clinics. Even if they managed to have an appointment, most of the occasions, we currently have telephone consultations.”

He added, “It is very difficult for us to understand the severity of a patient condition without carrying out physical examinations. For instance, when we manage Lymphoma, patients have a lump or tumour somewhere in their bodies. We simply cannot understand the size of it without palpating [examine by touching] it. Patients with myeloma get bone pain and tenderness. How can we understand it without touching and seeing them? To check whether patients have got lymph node enlargement, splenomegaly and hepatomegaly we have to examine their bodies.

“Under the coronavirus situation there is an enormous crisis in diagnosing cancer and determining their severity. This delays cancer treatment. The outcomes of treatment and prognoses suffer as a result.”

“When we start treatment, the cancer patients can have very sinister bacterial, viral and fungal infections. These infections can be fatal for this group of patients who are immunocompromised. But because of the Covid situation, they cannot get admitted to our units quickly. If they need Intensive Care treatment they won’t have it because ICUs are overwhelmed. The kind of patients we used save before, die now, because of this situation,” he explained.

Describing the perilous situation in wards, the oncologist said, “We are forced to discharge patients before their treatments are completed. Bed managers are pressurising us to send the cancer patients home earlier than we used to do before. They say that the bed capacity is dire in the hospital.”

At the start of the pandemic, the WSWS warned: “Thousands of deaths are expected due to delays in referrals and treatment for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses in the UK, as the National Health Service is overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases.” We explained this would be the result of the “herd immunity” policy being nakedly pursued by the Johnson government.

The impact of the pandemic and the herd immunity agenda fell on a health service already being driven into the ground. Figures from the Nuffield Trust show that delays to diagnoses and treatments have been increasing year-on-year for the past six years—the 18-week target was missed for 48 percent of patients in June 2020. These delays stem from over a decade of savage austerity cuts, which have created a massive shortage of National Health Service (NHS) staff, beds and equipment.

According to NHS England data, bed capacity has been slashed by almost two thirds over last 34 years in England. In 1987, the average available daily number of beds for all specialties stood at 297,364. Bed capacity was down to 118,451 in 2020.

Staff shortages are also a hugely significant factor. The WSWS noted in 2019: “One of the main factors in treatment delay is staff shortages, especially of clinical oncologists—those who treat cancer patients with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.” Considering figures then available, we highlighted that “A census carried out by the Royal College of Radiologists in 62 major cancer centres in the UK found that more than 7.5 percent of consultant posts, which amount to 70 full-time posts, were vacant.”

The number of vacant nursing posts is over 40,000, accounting for 40 percent of NHS vacancies, which total a staggeringly high 100,000.

The human suffering caused by the destruction of the NHS is exemplified by patients like Adrian Rogers, whose cancer became inoperable due to delays in his surgery. Rogers was quoted by the BBC as saying, “People will have now died as a result of delays to treatment.” The article revealed Roger’s wife has been forced to start a GoFundMe page to pay for life-saving treatment for her husband as the care he requires is not available on the NHS.

The pandemic has vastly accelerated the premature deaths of workers from treatable cancers. Enormous leaps in technology and medical science have helped scientists better understand cancer, paving the way for earlier and more accurate diagnosis, as well as improving methods of treatment. The subordination of healthcare to the accumulation of private profit, however, keep these advances out of reach for the majority of the population.

Besides Tory and Labour governments, responsibility for the catastrophe in the NHS is shared with the trade unions. They have presided over the increasing rationing of treatments, the profiteering of medical services via privatisation, the loss of staff and decrease of beds.

The unions backed the 1997 Blair/Brown Labour government whose use of Private Finance Initiatives resulted in privatisations and a growing NHS debt burden and laid the foundations for the Tory 2012 Health and Social Care Act. They did nothing to oppose the 2012 Act, which accelerated the process of privatisation. They have not raised a peep over new privatisation plans contained in Hancock’s white paper, “Integration and Innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all”.

Throughout the pandemic, the unions have collaborated with the government to enforce its repeated premature reopenings, resulting in devastating waves of the disease which have crippled the NHS.

Despite vaccination and testing debacle in Germany, federal states are reopening schools and retail

Gregor Link

Since February 15, the downward trend in the seven-day incidence of COVID-19 infections in Germany has abruptly reversed. The average number of new infections has risen steadily since then and already exceeds 8,000 per day. The number of daily deaths from coronavirus is currently 250 and will rise sharply in coming weeks as the number of infections increases. According to a recent report by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant, which accounted for 6 percent of all new infections at the beginning of last month, now accounts for 46 percent.

Schoolchildren arrive at school in Frankfurt, Germany. (Michael Probst / The Associated Press)

Under these conditions, the unsafe reopening of retail and “public life”—as pursued by the ruling class—is a political crime that puts the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people at risk. With their decision to phase out the remaining protections against COVID-19, agreed to by the federal and state governments last Wednesday, a new murderous race for profits and public revenue began among state and local governments.

For example, in Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate—the only states with an incidence rate below 50 per 100,000—all shops were immediately opened on Monday, without the announced rapid testing capacities having been set up. Most of the other federal states opened up retail on Monday based on a “shopping by appointment” rule.

Overall, the decision allows the states to implement reopenings in 340 districts, even though the incidence rate there is in the “red zone” between 50 and 100. In 66 other districts, the incidence rate currently remains above the devastating 100 mark.

Ten weeks since the start of the nationwide vaccination campaign, only 3.1 percent of the population have been fully immunised, although according to a representative survey by the RKI, the willingness to be vaccinated is 80 percent.

Ulrich Weigeldt, head of the General Practitioners’ Association, explained on Tuesday that with a systematic involvement of the GPs who have been on standby for months, 2.5 million people could be vaccinated every week. Charité virologist Christian Drosten had also recently urged this approach. According to the National Vaccination Strategy, however, GP and specialist practices should not be “comprehensively involved in the vaccination campaign until the end of March/beginning of April.”

Despite the significant increase in the incidence rate, school reopenings are also to be massively pushed forward with the opening of the retail sector. The chairperson of the Conference of State Education Ministers, Britta Ernst (Social Democratic Party, SPD)—who is also the Brandenburg State Education Minister—told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland yesterday that there was “agreement” nationwide to send all pupils back to school “before the end of March.” Schleswig-Holstein’s Education Minister Karin Prien (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) announced that all pupils were to return to their classrooms in ten cities or districts as of next Monday.

Four weeks ago, the state governments had already reopened primary schools and day-care centres, often without the mandatory wearing of masks, thus exposing teachers and educators, as well as children and their families, to a deadly risk.

The criminal policies of the federal states in reopening schools and retail will intensify the pandemic. The state government of Brandenburg, for example, announced on Tuesday that it would unilaterally raise the nationwide incidence limit of 100—beyond which renewed closures would be due—to 200. Hesse, which currently has an incidence rate of 68, allowed gyms to open despite a summit decision to the contrary at the beginning of the week.

The district of Calw in Baden-Württemberg even manipulated the basis of the data to be able to reopen retail. According to a dpa report, the district authorities had factored out “locally well containable outbreaks,” so that the incidence rate “adjusted in this way” was below 50 for five days. In doing so, the district authorities referred to the Coronavirus Ordinance of the federal state, according to which “the health office can take the diffusivity of the infection occurrence into account appropriately.” This “diffuseness of the infection incidence” in Germany is, in turn, the result of the authorities’ cover-up policy, which has led to the fact that in the statistics of the RKI no place of infection can be cited in four-fifths of all cases.

Meanwhile, Thuringia, which is the only federal state governed by the Left Party, has a seven-day incidence rate more than twice as high as most other federal states and, with 135 weekly infected persons per 100,000 inhabitants, is by far the leader nationwide. After the last conference of federal and national ministers, Minister-President Bodo Ramelow had expressed relief “that we are no longer chained to the number 35” (incidence rate) and had pleaded for “also using the word herd immunity.”

In fact, since the beginning of the pandemic, the ruling class in Germany—as in countless other countries—has proceeded from the premise that profits must take absolute precedence over human lives. The result of this policy, which strictly rejects internationally coordinated shutdown measures, is over 800,000 COVID deaths in Europe alone. In Germany, the total number of deaths last year was nine percent higher than the average of the previous four years, according to a recent evaluation by the Federal Statistical Office. According to the RKI, 72,189 have died from the virus so far in Germany.

With this policy of death, the government is carrying out the interests of German finance capital and defending the profits of big business. After the conference of federal and national ministers, Sabine Hagmann, head of the Baden-Württemberg trade association, told the Stuttgarter Zeitung that she was “positively surprised” by the reopening plans. In the style of right-wing coronavirus deniers, she added that there were fears, however, “that more rapid tests could increase the incidence figures—and this could lead to a renewed lockdown.”

There is no longer any serious discussion of systematic mass testing, which was supposed to have been a supporting “pillar” of the reopening decision. The “top-level talks with the business community” announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel—at which the regular operational testing of all employees was to be discussed—was called off at the last moment on Friday without setting an alternative date. The reason was open “legal and logistical questions,” news broadcast Tagesschau quoted the Federation of German Industries. However, without regular twice-weekly testing of all employees and schoolchildren, cluster infections could not be reliably detected, experts warn.

Instead of expanding the production of reliable mass tests as planned and using them in a scientifically sound manner, the existing rapid test stocks are to be left to the “free market” and subordinated to private profit. Several discount and drug stores have announced that they will sell nasal swab tests for five euros each. On Saturday, the website of the discounter Lidl temporarily collapsed under the high demand for self-tests. Manager Magazin speaks of a state-organised “mega-business” that is likely to fabulously enrich leading biotech companies.

The ruthless intensification of the “profits before lives” policy met with goodwill on the German financial markets. The German DAX stock index closed at an all-time high of over 14,400 points on Tuesday.

Spanish media, politicians denounce youth protesting rapper Hasél’s jailing

Alice Summers

As protests continue in Catalonia and throughout Spain against the incarceration of rapper Pablo Hasél, the Spanish media and the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government have launched a frenzied campaign to slander protesting youth as “terrorists” and “criminals.” Hasél was jailed in February for nine months on bogus charges of insulting the monarchy and “inciting terrorism” in his tweets and songs.

Last week, the Spanish National Police began investigating whether “terrorist” planning or organising had been behind demonstrations against Hasél’s imprisonment, according to online news site El Confidencial. Police are analysing the internal structures of groups involved in coordinating the protests to examine if their division of responsibilities, methodology and leadership bodies resemble those of terrorist organisations, El Confidencial stated.

Demonstrators react as police cordon off the street during a march in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, March 6, 2021. Several hundred protesters are marching in northeastern Spain's Barcelona against the crackdown that has followed the recent violent outcry over the imprisonment of Pablo Hasél, an outspoken anti-establishment artist and activist. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Tens of thousands of demonstrators, mostly aged between 16 and 25 years old, have joined protests opposing these anti-democratic attacks on freedom of speech in cities including Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao and Madrid. The demonstrations have taken place outside the control of the main political parties and trade unions, with protesters organising through social media and Telegram channels.

The demonstrators have faced unrelenting police brutality, with over 200 people injured at the hands of security forces. A 19-year-old woman lost an eye after being struck by a foam bullet fired by the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police). Protesters have responded by throwing bottles and stones at police, with some isolated incidents of buildings or vehicles being vandalised or burnt. At least 137 people have been arrested in Catalonia alone, with more detained elsewhere.

At the start of March, the PSOE-Podemos government’s Public Prosecutor’s Office demanded an additional five years and three months of imprisonment for Hasél, sparking further protests. The new indictment relates to Hasél’s participation in a 2018 protest against the arrest of deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont in Germany. The Public Prosecutor’s Office claims Hasél and 10 co-defendants tried to break into a government building in the Catalan city of Lleida.

Spain is a social powder keg, with opposition mounting to mass unemployment, poverty, the PSOE-Podemos government’s move to authoritarian rule and its “herd immunity” policy on the pandemic. Terrified that the protests will keep spreading, the entire ruling class is relentlessly demonising protesting youth and demanding a further brutal crackdown.

At the end of February, Pedro J. Ramírez, the director of right-wing online newspaper El Español, appeared on TV channel La Sexta to denounce the “revolutionary” situation in Catalonia, claiming that protesters were launching “attacks in which they use the techniques of urban guerrillas.”

Protesters come from a “radicalised minority in the orbit of Puigdemont” and are “of a xenophobic character and are the inheritors of the old Catalan fascism,” Ramírez claimed. “The majority are from the extreme anti-system left.”

The Catalan nationalist parties echoed these hysterical denunciations. Miquel Sàmper, Minister of the Interior in the Catalan regional government for Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party declared that groups linked to “combative communism,” “very violent anarchism” and a “large number of common criminals” were leading the protests.

The media and the main parties have also whipped up a frenzy over an incident in which eight protesting youths set fire to a police van in which two officers happened to still be inside. The officers quickly escaped the van and were unhurt. The protesters have been imprisoned pending trial on charges of “attempted murder,” attacking officers, public disorder, criminal damage, illegal protesting and belonging to a criminal group.

Sàmper responded with a tirade against the “pure, uninhibited and unprecedented violence” of protests in Catalonia. Ada Colau, mayor of Barcelona and a leader of Barcelona en Comú—a coalition including Podemos and the Initiative for Catalonia-Greens (ICV)—also declared her “most absolute rejection, most firm and resounding condemnation of the acts of violence.”

The PSOE’s Santiago Illa, who gained the most votes in the recent Catalan elections, took the opportunity to rant that “whoever does not explicitly condemn the violence and does not support the Mossos d’Esquadra and the security forces and bodies is unfit to govern.”

The Supreme Court has reportedly opened an investigation into Podemos parliamentary spokesperson Pablo Echenique for supposedly inciting violence in a mildly worded tweet in support of the demonstrations. On 17 February, Echenique had tweeted: “All my support to the young anti-fascists who are demanding justice and freedom of speech in the streets…. The violent mutilation of the protester’s eye [by a police foam bullet] must be investigated and those responsible must be decisively held to account.”

The investigation into Echenique came at the instigation of the far-right Vox party, who lodged a complaint against the Podemos spokesperson, claiming that he was supporting “terrorist acts.” Two police unions, the Spanish Confederation of Police (CEP) and the Unified Police Union (SUP), also filed complaints against Echenique. Another police society, JUPOL (Police Justice), declared that Echenique had “encouraged street terrorism.”

This hysterical campaign comes only a week after Ignacio Garriga, president of Vox’s parliamentary group in Catalonia, demanded in a press conference that the “anti-fascist movement must be declared a terrorist organisation.”

This call for the effective illegalisation of anti-fascist protests comes directly out of the playbook of US ex-president Donald Trump, who threatened to declare Antifa a terrorist organisation in 2019. Trump ramped up his campaign to brand domestic opposition as terrorism after mass protests against police brutality shook the United States last year, in response to the police killing of George Floyd.

As with Trump’s targeting of “Antifa”—a loose network of anti-fascist individuals, not a clearly defined organisation—Vox’s demands to designate the broad “anti-fascist movement” as “terrorist” would criminalise many thousands of left-wing individuals who participate in protests against police violence, attacks on democratic rights and austerity, regardless of their views or actions.

Trump subsequently launched a failed coup attempt aiming to overturn the US presidential elections on January 6, 2021. The fact that the Democratic Party and the Biden administration have covered for this coup attempt and sought to hide its implications from the public has simply encouraged far-right political forces across Europe, including in Spain, to more aggressively press attacks on democratic rights.

Garriga insisted that political groups supporting “violence” in Catalonia “should be subjected to the current law of parties.” This law, passed in 2002 with votes from the PSOE, People’s Party (PP) and numerous regional Catalan, Andalusian and Canary Islander parties, provided for the illegalisation of political groups supportive of the Basque-separatist ETA, considered a terrorist group in Spain.

At the press conference, Garriga denounced youth and workers in Catalonia protesting Hasél’s jailing, claiming that “organized bands of terrorists” had carried out violent attacks in Catalonia.

Garriga falsely denounced the Catalan government and the media for supporting the protests, declaring that “Catalan institutions, motivated by separatism, are transferring absolute impunity to those committing violence, who are attacking shops and causing destruction in the streets.” The media is hiding the real ideology of those “responsible for the altercations by street terrorists,” he continued, “who are separatists and from the far-left.”

India: Union betrays more than 3-month-long strike by Toyota workers in Bangalore

Arun Kumar

Despite the enormous militancy and courage shown by over 3,000 striking workers attached to two Toyota Kirloskar Motors (TKM) plants near Bengaluru, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, the more than three-month-long strike against speed-ups and witch-hunts against militant workers by management has ended in defeat. The company successfully engineered a split in the leadership of the TKM Employees Union (TKMEU) to conclude the sell-out earlier this month.

Toyota workers and Karnataka farmers stage joint procession in Bengaluru

After the company persuaded a faction of the TKMEU executive committee to sign an “undertaking” on company terms, management declared on March 1 that the union had agreed to end the strike. Although the rest of the TKMEU leadership initially rejected the company’s claims and vowed to fight on, the union performed an about-face two days later and ordered workers back to work as of March 4. This meant the three-month strike came to a conclusion without a single demand being won, including the reinstatement of 70 workers who were vindictively suspended by management.

The TKM workers began their sit-in strike November 9 against management’s summary suspension of Umesh Gowda Alur, a TKMEU leader who raised various grievances raised by workers. The workers’ main concern was a grueling speed-up regime requiring workers to produce a vehicle every two and a half minutes, compared to the previous target of three minutes.

Management reacted by declaring a lockout, claiming that the strike was “illegal.” It imposed a series of lockouts over subsequent months and victimized over 70 striking workers. Despite this, the TKM workers continued their valiant struggle against speed-up and workplace victimization.

The Toyota strike was seen as a threat by the ruling class, which feared that the job action would spark similar protests among other sections of workers, who all confront ruthless attacks on their wages and living conditions.

On November 17, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwath Narayan of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led state government, issued a “prohibit” order on the ongoing strike. Highlighting the Indian ruling class’ broader aim of developing India as a cheap labour platform for global capital capable of competing with China, Narayan justified the back-to-work order by commenting, “The whole world is looking at India as an alternative to China, and countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are eager to set up shop in Karnataka. Under such a situation, there should not be any talk of strikes and lockouts.”

B.C. Prabhakar, the President of the Karnataka Employers’ Association, sent a letter to state Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar in late November to demand repressive measures against the ongoing strike. These included the immediate declaration of a curfew around the premises of TKM, the arrest of troublemakers and the imposition of prohibitions on entering the Bidadi area. The employers’ association president bluntly stated his fear that the strike could “vitiate” industrial relations throughout the entire region, i.e., encourage workers to rebel en masse against brutal exploitation and low wages.

As part of their joint effort to break the Toyota strike, the TKM and the BJP-led state government, in line with demands from the employers as highlighted in Prabhakar’s letter, issued threats of mass firings and arrests. However, they ultimately decided to avoid such an open confrontation due to their fear that it could trigger an explosion of anger among the working class more broadly.

The prospects for the Toyota workers’ struggle to serve as the catalyst for an expansion of strikes and protests by the working class in November were extremely propitious. On November 26, tens of millions of workers throughout the country joined a one-day general strike against the Modi government’s pro-investor economic reforms and associated austerity measures. On the same day, hundreds of thousands of farmers launched an agitation demanding the repeal of the Modi government’s pro-agribusiness farm laws. Pushing Modi’s BJP government into a serious political crisis, tens of thousands of farmers continue to protest on the outskirts of Delhi more than three months on.

The TKM strikers were prevented from giving a lead to this swelling social opposition through a combination of state repression and the strangling of their struggle by the union leadership and its Stalinist-affiliated parties. TKM management, with the full backing of the BJP state government, sought to bully and intimidate workers to return to their jobs and sign an “undertaking of good conduct.” The company insisted that none of the suspended workers would be reinstated until a company-orchestrated “inquiry” against them was complete. The company subsequently revised its position to allow the TKMEU to sign the “good conduct” undertaking on behalf of the entire workforce.

The employer was able to proceed so arrogantly because the TKMEU systematically isolated the striking autoworkers. They made no effort to broaden the struggle of the TKM strikers throughout Karnataka’s industrial factories, let alone to the millions of industrial workers labouring across India in similarly exploitative conditions. This was because the union’s chief concern was to reach an accommodation with company management that would guarantee its position as the bargaining agent within the plant, not secure the workers’ demands.

Having isolated the determined workers for close to four months, the TKMEU leadership as a whole bears considerable responsibility for creating the conditions in which the joint efforts of TKM management and the state government to foment divisions in the union to sabotage the strike could succeed. On March 1, the four defectors signed an undertaking demanded by the company and submitted it to the state government. This prompted TKM’s March 1 announcement that the strike had been called off.

Gangadhar, the media secretary for the TKMEU, initially contradicted the company statement, declaring, “We have officially not called off the protest. Four executive committee members went to the management and gave an undertaking. … The executive committee members are those below the office bearers.”

However, the TKMEU rapidly capitulated. In a desperate attempt to save face, the TKMEU stated March 3, “Since the workers and union were firm on not giving any undertaking and since the management issued notice for workers to report for duty without undertaking, the union has advised its members to report for duty as it was a moral victory for the union.”

In an attempt to contain worker anger over its betrayal, the TKMEU made a vague promise to carry out “further protest and strikes.”

Through their three-month-long strike in defiance of the government’s back-to-work order and the company’s threats, TKM workers showed their readiness to fight against the slave labour conditions to which they have been subjected. However, the TKMEU sought throughout to subordinate the workers to fruitless appeals to company management and the institutions of the capitalist state apparatus. The union leadership rejected any attempt to broaden the struggle precisely because social anger in India is at a boiling point and they did not want to risk the TKM strike from triggering a mass worker-led mobilisation that would have rapidly escaped their control.

No appeals were made by the TKMEU for solidarity strikes and protest actions by workers in other industrial facilities. Instead, the TKMEU sowed illusions among the strikers that the leaders of the pro-investor opposition parties, including the Congress Party and Janata Dal (secular), would come to the aid of the striking workers.

Chief political responsibility for the isolation and ultimate betrayal of the TKM strike lies with India’s Stalinist parties. No action to support the TKM strikers was forthcoming from the Joint Committee of Trade Unions (JCTU), which is aligned with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), the trade union affiliates of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, and the Communist Party of India (CPI). The JCTU made no call for the mobilisation of workers throughout Bidadi or in other industrial areas of India, even though the TKM strikers enjoyed widespread support. No call was issued to autoworkers engaged in similar class battles, like at Magna Cosma and Motherson in Tamil Nadu, where workers have shown their great militancy by continuing their strikes in the face of harsh repression by the government and companies.

The treacherous role of the Stalinists flow from their policy of politically subordinating the working class to India’s bourgeois opposition parties and the institutions of the capitalist state. Faced with a powerful expression of working class anger at the Modi government in the form of two general strikes during 2020 involving tens of millions of workers, the Stalinist parties endeavoured to tie this opposition to the Congress Party so as to block it from developing into an open challenge to Modi’s right-wing agenda of pro-investor austerity and militarism.

The TKM workers’ bitter experience underscores the need for workers to break politically and organizationally from the unions and Stalinist parties, and form their own independent action committees to take forward their struggle for decent working conditions against the onslaught of the government and companies. Above all, they must adopt a program aimed at uniting workers across India and internationally against the multinational giants like TKM and the capitalist system as a whole.

Disastrous impact of COVID-19 on Bangladeshi migrant workers

Wimal Perera

Bangladeshi migrant workers in the Middle East and other regions have been hard hit by COVID-19 deaths and job losses as well as government and employer harassment in the countries where they are working. Those who have managed to return to Bangladesh are confronted with starvation, indebtedness and other miseries.

More than 10 million Bangladeshis, or about one in every 20 people from the country, are migrant workers. Bangladesh is sixth highest in the list of countries that send their workers overseas. More than three million are employed in the Middle East, including nearly two million in Saudi Arabia.

COVID-19 pandemic relief services in Chandpur, Bangladesh [Source: Flickr]

On December 31, the Daily Star reported that Bangladeshi migrant workers “topped the list when it came to infected persons” and that “by July 2020, more than 70,000 Bangladeshis were infected in 186 countries.” On January 21, the newspaper revealed that a total of 2,330 Bangladeshi migrant workers had succumbed to COVID-19 in 21 countries as of December. A quarter of those who died from the coronavirus in Saudi Arabia were Bangladeshis.

The high number of COVID-19 related death rates among Bangladeshi migrants in the Middle East is mostly due to a lack of free access to proper healthcare. On January 20, the Financial Express quoted a Bangladeshi doctor working in Oman, who said: “We have seen Bangladeshi maids paying for health care from their own pocket unless they’re fortunate enough to have kind and generous employers.”

While countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have free COVID-19 testing for all migrants, irrespective of their legal status, “undocumented” workers with coronavirus symptoms are reluctant to seek treatment, fearing they could be arrested and deported. As the Daily Star reported, in reality “[m]igrants in irregular status or those holding so-called free visas for all practical purposes remained outside the purview of health care that these countries were supposed to provide them.”

Hit by the health and global economic consequences of the coronavirus, about 400,000 workers returned to Bangladesh between March and December last year, or between four and eight times higher than in previous years, according to the Dhaka Tribune. Thus, the number of Bangladeshi guest workers fell to around 200,000 last year, drastically down from previous annual averages of 700,000 and 800,000.

On January 29, the Business Standard, citing joint research by the Bangladesh Civil Society for Migrants (BCSM) and the Migratory Movements Research Unit (MMRU), reported that around 27 percent of Bangladeshi migrant workers lost their jobs and 26 percent more dropped to partial employment between April and July last year.

About 67 percent of Bangladeshi migrant workers who were forced to return home were not paid wages, and 62 percent had to leave behind savings and other assets. Last July, the Bangladesh High Commissioner in the Maldives admitted that many Bangladeshi migrant workers had not received outstanding wages and other payments from their employers.

Firoza Begum, a 40-year-old domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, lost her job because of the pandemic. She spent 14 years of her savings in order to get back to her village in Bangladeshi’s Patuakhali district. She had not been paid for six months.

Bangladeshi migrant workers are highly exploited and are often forced to work in dangerous and unsafe COVID-19 conditions. One study found that in Oman, Bangladeshi female domestic workers are paid on average only $234 per month compared to Filipino workers who receive $416, and Indian and Sri Lankan workers $312.

The low paid Bangladeshi workers are often harassed by unscrupulous agents. A female worker named Nazma, for example, was sent to Saudi Arabia through a local broker in December 2018 after they promised her a job at a hospital. According to her family, she was sent to a private house where she was allegedly tortured, sexually abused and killed.

The death of high numbers of Bangladeshi migrant workers was prevalent even before the pandemic outbreak. A February 25 editorial in the New Age reported that over 33,000 died between 2005 and 2017.

An article in the Dhaka Tribune revealed that the bodies of over 60 female workers were sent back home last year. One of the victims included 14-year-old Umme Kulsum who was allegedly tortured to death by her Saudi house owner in September. In February this year, six Bangladeshi workers were killed in a fire at a sofa factory opposite Heraz Marketat near the Saudi city of Medina.

The Hasina government has provided no relief for the thousands of migrant workers forced to return home who now face a range of financial problems and even starvation. Dhaka’s response has been to try and impose the economic crisis produced by the pandemic on workers and the poor.

A BCSM and MMRU survey of 200 households in 21 Bangladeshi districts revealed that borrowings to cover disrupted remittance payments to guest workers’ families constituted about 54 percent of household income between April and July. Prior to the pandemic, monthly household expenditure was on average 17,000 taka ($US200). This dropped to 7,300 taka between April and July, a 57 percent decline.

Firoza Begum explained, “We’re surviving by taking loans from my relatives. I owe them about 150,000 taka but don’t know how this money will be repaid.”

The poverty confronting some of the returning migrant workers is so bad that many have had to return to their jobs overseas, despite the risk to their lives from COVID-19. Last September, hundreds of migrant workers demonstrated in Dhaka demanding Saudi Arabian Airlines provide them air tickets so they could to return to their workplaces in the Middle East.

The Hasina government, which faces declining remittances, falling garment exports and a collapse of tourist income due to the pandemic, is determined to boost the number of Bangladeshi migrant workers.

The New Age reported last month that garment export earnings in January 2021 were down by 5 percent year-on-year to $3.43 billion, compared with $3.61 billion in the same month of 2020. Garment export earnings from last July to January in the current fiscal year fell by 1.09 percent to $22.67 billion, down from $22.91 billion in the same period the year before.

In 2019, remittances from migrant workers amounted to $18 billion or around 7 percent of the country’s GDP. Desperate to maintain this inflow, the Hasina government’s foreign ministry is reportedly seeking to find jobs for Bangladeshi workers in “new labour markets,” including Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania and Libya.

Currently, the official number of Bangladesh coronavirus infections is over 550,000, with deaths approaching 8,500. These relatively low figures, however, are a gross undercount because health authorities are only testing about 13,000 per day, instead of the 50,000 recommended by the Hematology Department at Dhaka Medical College.

Australian government and big business demand cheap labour and end to COVID restrictions

Mike Head

An Australian Financial Review business summit this week became a platform for the corporate elite and the crisis-wracked Liberal-National Coalition government to escalate their drive to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to intensify the decades-long offensive against the jobs, wages and conditions of the working class.

Ever-more anxious to satisfy the demands of big business, Prime Minister Scott Morrison laid out an agenda with three main planks to boost corporate profits: 1. End all COVID-19 lockdowns, border closures and other safety restrictions, 2. Launch a massive temporary migration program to supply employers with cheap labour, and 3. Scrap or cut the wage subsidy and welfare payments to coerce workers into low-paid jobs.

Morrison addressing the summit [Screenshot afrsummit.com/]

On the first front, the financial newspaper reported: “States and territories must abandon their policy of eradication and stop closing borders every time there is a small outbreak of the coronavirus, because the vaccine rollout is lessening the health risk and the economic recovery is at stake, business and political leaders say.”

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce and Morrison “were part of a concerted push” to insist that governments had to “put faith in the vaccine rollout and drop their obsession with having zero cases every day.”

With his government’s survival in question as a result of rape allegations against Attorney-General Christian Porter, amplified and driven by corporate media, Morrison emphasised that he “understands” the business “frustration” with the continuation of pandemic restrictions that cut across the full reopening of the economy.

Morrison told the gathering that “encouraging signs” from Israel and Britain about the efficacy of vaccines meant Australia could soon start treating the coronavirus as nothing more than a “bad flu.” A new “risk management” approach was needed that gave greater consideration to “economic risk,” compared to “health imperatives.”

Berejiklian, whose Coalition state government was put on notice when she faced her own media scandal last year, won applause for leading the charge. She declared that as the most vulnerable people were immunised, “success measured by zero cases a day is a flawed model.” Border closures were an “embarrassment.”

Joyce, the Qantas chief, underscored the profit interests at stake. He claimed that had it not been for a COVID-19 cluster in Sydney over Christmas and the other states shutting their borders, Qantas would have been back to 100 percent domestic capacity, rather than the current 60 percent.

Despite the continuing global pandemic and the spread of new more transmissible coronavirus variants, Joyce and CSL chief executive Paul Perreault urged the reopening of international borders. The “sooner the better,” Perreault said.

On the second front, Morrison flagged an uncapped temporary migration scheme to fill jobs that he said Australian workers refused to do. Temporary workers would be compelled by visa conditions to take low-paid and insecure jobs, and denied the right to even apply for permanent residency or citizenship unless they remained in them.

Answering questions, Morrison placed no limit on the proposed scheme, saying temporary work visas were always “demand-driven” by the needs of employers. Areas in dire need included hospitality and agriculture, and “another 1 million aged-care workers alone would be needed by 2050.”

Temporary visas would enable the government to direct workers to where employers required them. “Conditionality is one of the great advantages of the temporary visa program. You can’t put conditions on permanent visas,” he said.

On the third front, Morrison reiterated his government’s decisions to axe the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme and the welfare payment “coronavirus supplement” on March 28. These measures were adopted a year ago to provide businesses with multi-billion dollar stimulus packages and to prevent a social and political crisis over the highest unemployment levels since the 1930s Great Depression.

The programs are now being terminated, directly exposing more than 2.5 million workers to unemployment and sub-poverty JobSeeker dole benefits on $44 a day, in order to further push them onto low wages and poor conditions.

Morrison said “mutual obligations” on dole recipients were being ratcheted-up as a means of tackling “large gaps” in the workforce produced by the previous reliance of employers on “tens of thousands of backpackers,” as well as Pacific islanders, international students and other temporary visa holders. Jobless workers face being cut off benefits unless they apply for 20 jobs a month, even though there are, on average, about 10 unemployed or underemployed workers for every vacancy.

This jobs crisis is about to worsen, and that will be used to intensify the pressure on workers. According to a Commonwealth Bank report this week, around 900,000 workers will still rely on JobKeeper in the days before it is scrapped on March 28, and some 110,000 will then lose their jobs, particularly in the transport, arts and recreation, accommodation and food services industries.

Another report, by CreditorWatch’s latest Business Risk Review, pointed to the added prospect of widespread bankruptcies of small and medium-sized business. It said the number of external administrations had soared 61 percent in February compared to the previous month. Although insolvency protection laws ended on January 1, businesses with debts of under $1 million were given an additional three months to work with an insolvency practitioner to restructure their operations.

Under these conditions, Morrison outlined the government’s intent to start clawing back, from social spending, the mountains of cash handed to the financial elite through last year’s bailout packages. He said the federal, state and territory governments had poured in a total of $398 billion, or 19.5 percent of gross domestic product, over 12 months. “It’s not sustainable,” he declared. “Because you simply cannot run the Australian economy on taxpayers’ money forever.”

In his bid for continued business backing, Morrison claimed that Australia was “leading the world out of the global pandemic and the global recession it caused.” In reality, millions of workers remain unemployed or under-employed and the Department of Health secretary, Brendan Murphy signalled yesterday that the government would not reach its target to vaccinate four million people by early April.

Significantly, Morrison boasted of forming the bipartisan National Cabinet a year ago, bringing together the federal, state and territory government leaders—the majority of whom are from the Labor Party—to achieve “unprecedented cooperation.”

As if to reinforce this united front, federal Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese was the opening speaker on the summit’s second day. Facing mounting moves against his leadership, he was asked by the Financial Review ’s political editor Phil Coorey how Labor would improve its dealings with the business community.

In response, Albanese recalled his service to the corporate elite during the last federal Labor government of 2007–2010. “You can look at what I did. I created Infrastructure Australia and the urban policy forum. That gave the business community a seat at the table to allocate capital,” he said.

As the summit demonstrated, while the pandemic has not, so far, had the same devastating public health impact as in most other countries, it is being used no less than anywhere else in the world to restructure working and social conditions for the benefit of the wealthiest layers of the ruling class.

Albanese’s pledge to big business—reiterating his constant theme since being installed as leader following Labor’s 2019 election debacle—shows that Labor and its trade union partners will seek to continue to police that offensive.

Myanmar’s military junta targets striking railway workers

Peter Symonds

Strikes and protests are continuing after Monday’s widespread work stoppages throughout Myanmar. A police raid on the staff compound of 800 striking railway workers in Yangon on Wednesday gives a small glimpse of the opposition of the working class to the February 1 military coup. The workers had joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), which encompasses broad sections of doctors, civil servants, bank staff as well as transport, garment and electricity workers.

Police sealed off the Mingalar Taung Nyunt neighbourhood in Yangon early on Wednesday morning where the Ma Hlwa Kone train station and housing for railway workers are located. A woman who lives on the site told the AFP news agency that “around 300 security personnel are blocking the road searching for the people who are involved in the civil disobedience movement.” She escaped but expressed concerns for the workers “because they [the police] could beat and kill them.”

Protesters take positions behind a makeshift barricade as armed riot policemen gather in Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, March 8, 2021. (AP Photo)

The workers had barricaded themselves into the compound. A Facebook live broadcast showed people chanting: “Are we staff united? Yes, we are united.” A commentator said that police were trying to remove barricades and threatening to shoot. Other eyewitnesses reported that the security forces were seizing supplies donated to the striking workers.

One person tweeted: “Currently Yangon, Ma Hlwa Gone Railway station is like a lockdown!! The Junta’s Terrorist police and military blocked all the streets and ways out, arrested the CDM workers and robbed rice that were donated for CDM workers! Residents are trying to move out the elderly!!”

At least three arrests were reported.

The events at Ma Hlwa Gone Railway station are a microcosm of the far broader movement against the junta. The confrontation took place after 18 unions and workers’ associations issued a statement last weekend calling for extended nationwide work stoppages from Monday to demand an end to military rule.

Well before the appeal by the unions, the Civil Disobedience Movement had drawn in broad layers of the working class as well as aid and support from others. The movement is having a significant impact on sections of the economy and the functioning of the junta, which has responded with increasingly brutal repression—nightly searches and arrests, the shooting down of protesters, and the torture and murder of prisoners.

A Wall Street Journal article noted: “While the young are playing a critical role, the resistance is drawing from all layers of Myanmar society, helped by an array of organizations. These organizations are combined forces of student and labor unions, civil-society groups and other networks with longstanding connections allowing for fast transmission of plans, particularly through social media. Adding to that are striking civil servants and state employees—electrical and railways workers, banking staff, doctors and others—threatening to bring government to a standstill.”

Some of the country’s 600,000 garment workers, many of whom are women, have also been involved in the stoppages. An AFP video shows a group of garment workers in Yangon’s Hlaing township who have been engaged in protests against the junta since the coup on February 1. Their leader, Khine Mar New, a 26-year-old mother, said that the oppressive conditions in the factory taught her the importance of standing up for her rights.

Protests continued on Wednesday in cities and towns across the country, including Yangon, Mandalay, Monywa, Dawei, Myitkyina, Bago, Kalaw and Myingyan, despite the ongoing crackdown by security forces. In Yangon’s North Okkalapa district, press and social media reports indicated that at least 200 people were arrested.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which is monitoring arrests, says that at least 60 people are thought to have been killed in the crackdowns and nearly 2,000 arrested. The figures are almost certainly an underestimate amid reports of security forces taking bodies off the streets in order to cover up their criminal activities. In an indication of sharp divisions in their ranks, a number of police have refused to fire on unarmed protesters and have fled to India.

The media has been a particular target as the junta seeks to stifle any independent reporting. The Myanmar Now news agency has reported that at least 35 journalists have been arrested since the coup, of which 19 have been released. The Mizzima news website has since reported that the Yangon offices of Myanmar Now were subjected to a nighttime raid by security forces who seized computers and other equipment. The junta has revoked the publishing and broadcasting licences of Mizzima and four other new outlets. On Tuesday afternoon, the co-founder of Kamayut Media and a colleague were arrested in Yangon.

Also on Tuesday, Zaw Myat Linn, an official from the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD), died in custody after he was arrested. He is the second NLD official to die in police custody. On Sunday, local NLD official, Khin Maung Latt, died while being held by police from injuries indicating he had been severely tortured.

The NLD overwhelmingly won national elections held last November and was about to form the next government on February 1 when the army seized power on the basis of false allegations of electoral fraud. NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD figures were arrested and continue to be held.

Shortly after the coup, a group of elected NLD parliamentarians formed the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), which denounced the military’s actions as illegal and has established what it describes as a provisional government. On February 15, the military regime charged 17 CRPH members with incitement under the penal code that carries a sentence of up to two years jail.

On Tuesday, the CRPH issued a statement announcing that it had appointed Mahn Win Khaing Than, who is in hiding, as acting vice president to perform the duties of arrested President Win Myint and NLD leader Suu Kyi. It has previously announced the appointment of ministers in the provisional government. The CRPH is appealing to the major powers to intervene with sanctions to pressure the military to make concessions.

Neither the NLD nor the CRPH is committed to defending the democratic and social rights of working people in Myanmar. Suu Kyi has collaborated with the military for a decade, covering up their crimes against the Muslim Rohingya minority and appealing for foreign investment to exploit the country’s cheap labour. A genuine struggle for democratic rights requires a political fight against the capitalist system that is the source of the oppression of working people.