Israel Rejects ICC Investigation: What Are the Possible Future Scenarios?

Ramzy Baroud

The Israeli government’s position regarding an impending investigation by the International Criminal Court of alleged war crimes committed in occupied Palestine has been finally declared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It will be made clear that Israel is a country with rule of law that knows how to investigate itself,” Netanyahu said in a statement on April 8. Subsequently, Israel “completely rejects” any accusations that it has committed war crimes.

But it won’t be so easy for Tel Aviv this time around. True, Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, according to which the ICC was established, but it can still be held accountable, because the State of Palestine is a member of the ICC.

Palestine joined the ICC in 2015, and the alleged war crimes, which are under investigation, have taken place on Palestinian soil. This grants the ICC direct jurisdiction, even if war crimes were committed by a non-ICC party. Still, accountability for these war crimes is not guaranteed. So, what are the possible future scenarios?

But first, some context …

‘Blatant Impunity’

On March 22, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, declared that “the time has come to stop Israel’s blatant impunity”. His remarks were included in a letter sent to the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and other top officials at the international body.

There is modest – albeit cautious – optimism among Palestinians that Israeli officials could potentially be held accountable for war crimes and other human rights violations in Palestine. The reason behind this optimism is a recent decision by ICC to pursue its investigation of alleged war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Mansour’s letter was written with this context in mind. Other Palestinian officials, such as Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, are also pushing in this direction. He, too, wants to see an end to Israel’s lack of accountability.

Till Netanyahu’s official position, the Israeli response has been most predictable. On March 20, Israeli authorities decided to revoke Al-Maliki’s special travel permit in order to prevent him from pursuing Palestinian diplomacy that aims at ensuring the continuation of the ICC investigation. Al-Maliki had, in fact, just returned from a trip to The Hague, where the ICC is headquartered.

Furthermore, Israel is openly attempting to intimidate the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to discontinue its cooperation with the ICC, as can be easily gleaned from the official Israeli discourse. “The Palestinian leadership has to understand there are consequences for their actions,” an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post on March 21.

Despite years of legal haggling and intense pressure on the ICC’s outgoing Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to scrap the investigation altogether, the legal proceedings have carried on, unhindered. The pressure was displayed in various forms: direct defamation by Israel, as in accusing the ICC of anti-Semitism; unprecedented American sanctions on ICC officials and constant meddling and intervention, on Israel’s behalf, by member states that are part of the ICC, and who are described as amici curiae.

They did not succeed. On April 30, 2020, Bensouda consulted with the Court’s Pre-trial Chamber regarding whether the ICC had jurisdiction over the matter. Ten months later, the Chamber answered in the affirmative. Subsequently, the Prosecutor decided to formally open the investigation.

On March 9, a spokesman for the Court revealed that, in accordance with Article 18 in the Rome Statute, notification letters were sent by the Prosecutor’s office to ‘all parties concerned’, including the Israeli Government and the Palestinian leadership, notifying them of the war crimes probe and allowing them only one month to seek deferral of the investigation.

Expectedly, Israel remains defiant. However, unlike its obstinacy in response to previous international attempts at investigating war crimes allegations in Palestine, the Israeli response, this time, appears confused and uncertain. On the one hand, Israeli media revealed last July that Netanyahu’s government has prepared a long list of likely Israeli suspects, whose conduct can potentially be investigated by the ICC. Still, the official Israeli response can only be described as dismissive of the matter as being superfluous, insisting that Israel will not, in any way, cooperate with ICC investigators.

Though the Israeli government continues to maintain its official position that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel and occupied Palestine, top Israeli officials and diplomats are moving quickly to block what now seems to be an imminent probe. For example, Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, was on an official visit to Germany where he, on March 18, met with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, thanking him on behalf of Israel for opposing the ICC’s investigation of Israeli officials.

After lashing out at the Palestinian leadership for attempting to “legalize” the conflict, through an international investigation, Rivlin renewed Israel’s “trust that our European friends will stand by us in the important fight on the misuse of the International Criminal Court against our soldiers and civilians.”

Unlike previous attempts at investigating Israeli war crimes, for example, the Jenin massacre in the West Bank in 2002, and the various investigations of several Israeli wars on Gaza starting in 2008-09, the forthcoming ICC investigation is different. For one, the ICC investigation targets individuals, not states, and can issue arrest warrants, making it legally incumbent on all other ICC members to enforce the Court’s decisions.

Now that all attempts at dissuading the Court from pursuing the matter have failed, the question must be asked: What are the possible future scenarios?

The Next Step

In the case that the investigation carries on as planned, the Prosecutor’s next step would be to identify suspects and alleged perpetrators of war crimes. Dr. Triestino Mariniello, member of the legal team that represents the Gaza victims, told me that once these suspects have been determined, “the Prosecutor will ask the Pre-trial chamber to issue either arrest warrants or subpoena, at least in relation to the crimes already included in the investigation so far.”

These alleged war crimes already include Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements, the Israeli war on Gaza in 2014 and Israel’s targeting of unarmed civilian protesters during Gaza’s Great March of Return, starting in 2018.

Even more ideally, the Court could potentially widen the scope of the investigation, which is a major demand for the representatives of the Palestinian victims.

“We expect more crimes to be included: especially, apartheid as a crime against humanity and crimes against Palestinian prisoners by Israeli authorities, especially torture,” according to Dr. Mariniello.

In essence, this means that, even after the investigation is officially underway, the Palestine legal team can continue its advocacy to expand the scope of the investigation and to cover as much legal ground as possible.

‘Narrow Scope’ 

However, judging from previous historic experiences, ideal scenarios in cases where Israel was investigated for war crimes rarely transpired. A less than ideal scenario would be for the scope of the investigation to remain narrow.

In a recent interview with former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Occupied Palestinian Territories, Professor Richard Falk, he told me that even if the narrow scope remains in effect – thus reducing the chances of all victims seeing justice – the investigation is still a “breakthrough”.

The reason why the investigation may not be broadened has less to do with justice and much to do with politics. “The scope of the investigation is something that is ill-defined, so it is a matter of political discretion,” Professor Falk said.

In other words, “the Court takes a position that needs to be cautious about delimiting its jurisdiction and, therefore, it tries to narrow the scope of what it is prepared to investigate.”

Professor Falk does not agree with that view but, according to the seasoned international law expert, “it does represent the fact that the ICC, like the UN itself, is subject to immense geopolitical pressure.”

Still, “it’s a breakthrough even to consider the investigation, let alone the indictment and the prosecution of either Israelis or Americans that was put on the agenda of the ICC, which led to a pushback by these governments.”

Israel’s Missed Opportunity

While the two above scenarios are suitable for Palestinians, they are a non-starter as far as the Israeli government is concerned, as indicated in Netanyahu’s recent statement in which he rejected the investigation altogether. According to some pro-Israeli international law experts, Netanyahu’s decision would represent a missed opportunity.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, international law expert Nick Kaufman had advises Israel to cooperate, only for the sake of obtaining a “deferral” from the Court and to use the ensuing delay for political maneuvering.

“It would be unfortunate for Israel to miss the opportunity of deferral which could provide the ideal excuse for reinitiating peace talks with the Palestinians,” he wrote, warning that “if Israel squanders such an opportunity it should come as no surprise if, at a later date, the Court will hint that the government has no one but itself to blame for the export of the judicial process to The Hague.”

There are other scenarios, such as even more intense pressures on the Court as a result of ongoing discussions between Israel and its benefactors, whether in Washington or among the amici curiae at the Court itself.

At the same time, while Palestinians remain cautious about the future of the investigation, hope is slowly rising that, this time around, things may be different and that Israeli war criminals will eventually be held accountable for their crimes. Time will tell.

UK government accelerates National Health Service privatisation under the cover of the pandemic

Sanya Perera

US health insurance company, Centene, has silently seized hold of 37 General Practitioner (GP) surgeries, adding to their takeover of 21 National Health Service (NHS) primary care services in the United Kingdom (UK).

The lie that American corporations would not be able to reap profits from the NHS has been stripped bare. While Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied the NHS was “on the table” during UK-US trade talks, granting contracts to private healthcare firms to both provide advice on NHS services and deliver them proves otherwise.

The UK division of Centene, Operose Health Ltd., acquired this backdoor handout last February when it merged with AT Medics and became the UK’s largest private supplier of GP practices. The rewards are substantial, with AT Medics reveling in profits of £35 million in the five years prior to the transfer.

People waiting outside at a GP surgery in Bournemouth to have the Covid-19 vaccine (credit: WSWS media)

Operose confirmed the change in ownership by declaring that it had “followed all the required regulatory procedures, including obtaining consent from our CCGs [clinical commissioning groups]. ”

These are the CCGs created under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act of David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal coalition government. The act allowed clinical commissioners to award public health services to any “qualified” provider, paving the way for the wholesale outsourcing of services to the private sector.

Looking at Operose’s history reveals how qualified it is—at closing down GP surgeries. An Operose associate company pulled the plug on Camden Road Surgery in London in 2012, giving the 4,700 patients just four weeks to register elsewhere. The care of a further 11,400 patients was left in doubt after contracts for five surgeries in Brighton and Hove were ended.

In the United States, Centene faces allegations of fraud, for which it is currently being sued in Ohio. The Attorney General of Ohio stated, “Corporate greed has led Centene and its wholly-owned subsidiaries to fleece taxpayers out of millions.”

Despite this record, the provider was approved by the CCGs for the care of 530,000 patients in the UK, who were given no say. The change in ownership was nodded through with no public meetings, no questions and no mention of Centene itself. Only after the decision was made was Centene mentioned in the public domain.

The deliberate secrecy cannot conceal the reality. Decades of underfunding, outsourcing and erosion of services by successive governments have prepared the National Health Service for easy pickings, with corporations searching out new sources of profit from its £150 annual billion budget.

The greedy private companies are not content with just making profits from primary care. The American-based healthcare group Cleveland Clinic is now in pole position for the takeover of NHS staff too. It plans to open a six-storey outpatient centre in September and a 184-bed general hospital next spring.

The company is recruiting for 1,250 roles, including, in a significant shift, the employment of salaried doctors. Ordinarily, medics are employed by the NHS but can conduct private work outside their normal working hours. Gaining a lucrative yearly salary in private practice, however, will pull them out of the NHS permanently, despite tax-payers having funded their long years of training. Having endured precarious conditions on the frontline, staff shortages—and now a derisory offer of a 1 percent pay rise—the lure of the private sector is likely to attract a section of desperate health workers. Experts warn that Cleveland Clinic’s move will set off a recruitment drive in the private sector for top medical talent.

The relentless integration of the public and “independent” sector has only accelerated during the pandemic. The government, following the motto of the ruling elite that a good crisis should not go to waste, has plundered millions of pounds and used it towards the upkeep of private hospitals, amid a public health crisis.

Staff in private hospitals returned to NHS roles to cope with demand following the first national lockdown, putting a halt to the majority of private treatments being offered. The private health operators had nothing to worry about though, as the Tory government dished out unprecedented block contracts to keep their hospitals open, supposedly to treat an influx of coronavirus patients.

But the extra beds went unused. An estimated £125 million was awarded every week, with two-thirds of private hospital capacity being left untouched!

According to an NHS source involved in the implementation of these arrangements, “The national contract for private sector capacity was for the company shareholders, not for NHS patients.”

This process was part of an even broader swathe of deals lining the pockets of private contractors. In March 2020, ministers used emergency powers to fast-track deals directly benefiting private firms, “without competing or advertising requirement”, bypassing previous laws meant to ensure transparency and value for money for the taxpayer. As a result, deals to manage healthcare staff, provide personal protective equipment, and run test and trace were ripe for picking, particularly by Tory party donors. By February this year, £24.4 billion had been “streamlined” into the private corporation giants.

With the recent release of the Health and Care White Paper, “ Integration and innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all ”, the so-called “competitive tendering” process has been buried once and for all. While the government claims the prospective legislation moves away from privatisation, in fact, it accelerates it. NHS chiefs will be able to hand out contracts as they see fit, without the need to put services up for competitive bids.

The proposals will also hand more powers to the Secretary of State for Health, including the authority to direct the NHS Commissioning Board, create new NHS Trusts and abolish professional regulators without needing legislation in parliament. In effect, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated, he “will be empowered to set direction for the NHS and intervene where necessary”. He will also be the one continuing to open the doors of the NHS to the financial oligarchy and their cronies, as he has done throughout the pandemic already.

The privatisation momentum does not stop there. The free flow of cash provided by NHS block contracts has not only cushioned the private sector against the blow of COVID-19 but also driven up their profits to pre-pandemic levels.

Private cancer treatment has exceeded 2019 levels. One of the biggest providers, Spire Healthcare, announced that with shares tripling since last March, they now have the income to increase their private patient caseload. Having signed up to NHS England’s deals awarding an eyewatering £10 billion to private companies, Spire’s profits, along with more than 90 other providers, are guaranteed for the next four years.

In contrast, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in his budget that the NHS will receive a mere £3 billion this year as part of a “COVID recovery strategy”. As the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal ) reported, according to health leaders, “the budget lacked both the short-term funding required to help the NHS recover from covid next year and a longer-term recovery plan”.

Last year, Sunak had promised that the NHS would get “whatever it needs” to cope with the pandemic. Yet as the British Medical Association’s UK Council chair cautioned, the chancellor’s “rhetoric is far from the reality”. The total budget for the NHS has been reduced by £29.3 billion since last year.

Under the guise of the pandemic, the government has not only cut back spending on the NHS but advanced its demolition with the handing over of services worth billions to the super-rich.

The privatisation of the NHS by stealth is not a new phenomenon. It is part of broader social attacks for which governments over the last four decades, including those lead by the Labour Party, are accountable, starting with sweeping deregulation and privatisation under Margaret Thatcher.

The result is a health service riddled with debt, lacking adequate staff, confronting immense bed shortages and sky-high waiting lists now totaling 4.59 million people. Most sobering of all is that within a once comprehensive NHS, approximately 25 percent of public spending goes to the private sector.

FDA, CDC recommend “pause” in use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine over rare but unusual blood clots

Benjamin Mateus

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have recommended that the US temporarily halt vaccinations with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine over concerns about “rare and severe” types of blood clots.

Reportedly, six people developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) shortly after inoculation with the J&J vaccine. One person died. All six were women between the ages of 18 and 43 who developed symptoms six to 13 days after receiving the vaccines. Thus far, almost 7 million doses of the J&J vaccine have been given, meaning that the negative outcome is literally one in a million.

Last week, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) issued statements that there were plausible links between AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and these very rare and unusual blood clot disorders that are accompanied by a drop in the platelet counts.

In this March 26, 2021, file photo, a member of the Philadelphia Fire Department prepares a dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site setup at a Salvation Army location in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

The J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines share a common mechanism for their products. A modified human adenovirus that contains a gene for making the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is used to inoculate people who then develop antibodies against the coronavirus.

Two recent scientific studies, one from Germany and the other from Norway, have established a causal relationship between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the severe thrombotic complications, according to an account published on Monday on Medscape.

The report says: “These unusual severe thrombotic events that are accompanied by thrombocytopenia (low platelets) are caused by rogue antibodies directed against platelet factor 4 (PF4), which cause massive platelet aggregation and thrombosis, and result in reduced platelet count elsewhere, leading in turn to bleeding. Patients can therefore have both severe thrombosis (blood clots) and severe bleeding.”

The syndrome dubbed “vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT)” is treated like a similar condition known as heparin-induced thrombocytopenia using intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIG) and blood thinners. It has yet to be determined if the immune mechanism that has been elucidated for AstraZeneca will prove to implicate the J&J COVID-19 vaccines, though the diagnoses of these patients are the same.

Dr. Carlos del Rio of Emory University School of Medicine, speaking to CNN, commented that the blood clotting may be connected to the fact that J&J’s vaccine is an adenovirus vector vaccine, the same type as AstraZeneca’s. However, these researchers still do not know why these vaccines are inducing these immune-mediated complications.

Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, issued a joint statement yesterday announcing that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) would meet Wednesday “to further review these cases and assess their potential significance.”

Complications with J&J’s COVID vaccine were first announced last Friday by the EMA through their Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee. They had stated they were reviewing four cases from the US of unusual blood clotting that included one fatality. One of these recipients of the vaccine had developed the blood clot during the clinical trials.

The mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, have had their share of concerns raised with low platelets found after immunizations. A Florida physician developed a severe though unusual blood disorder called acute immune thrombocytopenia, where his platelet counts dropped rapidly. He died of bleeding in his brain 16 days after receiving his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. In total, 20 cases have been reported with low platelets after administration of these vaccines.

In line with these recommendations, J&J issued its own statement on Tuesday stating it is “proactively” delaying the rollout of its vaccine in Europe. “We have been working closely with medical experts and health authorities, and we strongly support the open communications of this information to healthcare professionals and the public,” the company said. They also added that recipients of the J&J vaccine who develop severe headaches, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks of their injection should seek medical attention.

Since receiving emergency use authorization from the FDA in February, J&J’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine has faced a series of serious setbacks, most of them involving production rather than use. The present concerns over these rare complications will certainly impede the accelerating national vaccine rollout.

Just two weeks ago, it was reported that 15 million doses of the J&J COVID-19 vaccines, manufactured at the Baltimore, Maryland, biotech plant operated by Emergent BioSolutions, had inadvertently been contaminated with material intended for production of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was also being produced there.

The ensuing investigation had revealed that Emergent has been facing severe quality control issues at its plant for some time. Internal documents had shown that several batches of its AstraZeneca’s vaccine had to be discarded in October and December, which would have accounted for 2 to 3 million doses.

Additional concerns unearthed by recent audits include lack of strict adherence to protocols and inadequate controls of the movement of staff and materials, with risks of microbiological contamination, all because the company was under pressure to expedite production. Federal regulators had known about these issues, but little has been done to address these growing concerns.

According to an exposé published by the New York Times on April 6, “An examination … of manufacturing practices at the Baltimore facility found serious problems, including a corporate culture that often ignored or deflected missteps and a government sponsor, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), that acted more as a partner than a policeman. Previously undisclosed internal documents and interviews with current and former federal officials and former company employees depict a factory operation that was ill-equipped to take on such a mammoth manufacturing task, despite Emergent’s having received a $163 million federal contract to improve the facility and prepare it for high-volume production.”

Through the Department of Health and Human Services, the Biden administration intervened soon after news of the contamination of the vaccines was made public by placing J&J in charge of the Baltimore biotech firm, including its employees, and discontinued the production of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines at the Baltimore facility. This was an unprecedented move to transfer leadership responsibility to J&J for overseeing all production and manufacturing at the Emergent plant. White House officials were concerned the debacle would seriously impact public confidence in the product and needed to act quickly to shore up their public relations.

Prior to the present pause in using the J&J vaccine, the CDC had estimated that it would be allocating 86 percent fewer doses of the J&J vaccine across the country than previously promised. The ongoing investigation found that the error had been made some time in February but had gone undiscovered for several days until J&J’s quality control check picked it up before readying the vaccines for distribution.

Though the factory has made roughly 150 million doses of COVID vaccines, government regulators have yet to certify the factory to allow the vaccines to be distributed to the public. Currently, all J&J vaccines being distributed in the US have been produced at J&J’s plant in the Netherlands.

Federal officials had attempted to downplay concerns raised by state governments that the loss in supplies from J&J would impact their vaccination drives, by claiming that Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines could make up the shortfall. However, California has reported it expects to see a 15 percent drop (400,000 fewer doses) in all vaccines next week. Similarly, states like Texas, Virginia and Florida will see drastic reductions in their vaccine allotments.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement last week, “We will not be able to get as many shots into New Yorkers’ arms as we would like. As has been the case since the beginning of our vaccination effort, the X factor is supply, supply, supply.” Maryland Governor Larry Hogan told the press, “The last thing we wanted to hear about was we’re getting less vaccines.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has begged President Biden “to surge vaccines” into her state, where the outbreak is leading to another growing health care crisis. However, none of these state governors has opted to use mitigation strategies to curb the tide of infections.

Additionally, it has been reported that several vaccination sites administering the J&J vaccines—one in Colorado, three in North Carolina, one in Georgia and still another in Iowa—all temporarily suspended operations after several reports of adverse reactions raised concerns over the vaccine’s safety. Approximately 45 people, a number higher than expected, had experienced nausea, dizziness, fainting or lightheadedness.

The current issues emerging with rare but serious complications from COVID-19 vaccines are on par with historical experience. It is important that scientists and specialists have the necessary time to investigate these drawbacks. However, the fundamental problem with the US vaccine campaign is attempting to entirely supplement what is most necessary—a comprehensive public health effort to stem the rising tide of infections.

A vaccination campaign must be conducted in a coherent and well-regulated manner to ensure the utmost safety and thorough documentation of all adverse reactions. More so, a system of reporting post-vaccination infections and health outcomes needs to be in place to assure recipients that their concerns and safety are a priority.

Critical is also the establishment of manufacturing and production centers that have been thoroughly vetted by inspectors providing the highest quality assurance. Redundant safety measures must be in place to ensure these life-saving treatments are produced according to the highest standards. It is precisely under a policy of herd immunity that the frenzy to produce and distribute the vaccine has led to the current debacles that continue to erode the public’s trust, further exacerbating the efforts to bring the pandemic to an end.

Podemos supports ending social distancing amid “fourth wave” in Spain

Alejandro López

The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has announced that it will end the state of alarm on May 9. The state of alarm is the juridical mechanism regional governments use to impose obligatory social distancing measures, such as lockdowns, curfews, limitations on gatherings and mobility restrictions.

Once presented as being less effective than nationwide lockdowns but more compatible with keeping workers on the job, the state of alarm is being ended as a signal that the ruling class seeks to lift any measures limiting the extraction of profits. This ending of social distancing will only accelerate the spread of the virus, provoking countless unnecessary deaths.

Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks in the Spanish parliament in Madrid, Spain, Monday, Dec. 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez defended this policy, cynically claiming Spain would vaccinate 33 million people, or 70 percent of the adult population, by late August, even though it has missed all its previous vaccination targets. He then claimed ludicrously that “We are facing the beginning of the end of the pandemic. ... Spain already has an exit horizon.

“Vaccination is the most efficient economic policy,” he insisted, underscoring the capitalist interests underlying the “herd immunity” policy.

Spain is ending social distancing policies as Europe enters a new wave of the pandemic. The country regularly records around 10,000 infections and dozens or hundreds of deaths each day. Press reports calculate that the new wave could lead at the very least to several hundred thousand new infections, on top of the 3.3 million recorded to date. This means tens of thousands more could die, beyond the more than 100,000 excess deaths recorded by Spain’s National Institute of Statistics.

Not one significant comment has been posted questioning why Spain is eliminating social distancing as a new wave begins. Death on this scale has not been seen since on the Iberian Peninsula since the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), which led to around 500,000 deaths. Nevertheless, all the liberal or pro-Podemos media, from El País to elDiario.es, Público, La Marea, and Infolibre have accepted this policy as an accomplished fact. Such staggering indifference to human life confirms the British Medical Journal’s characterization of ruling elites’ pandemic policy as “social murder.”

The responsibility for this “social murder” lies above all on the “left populist” Podemos party. Having promised radical change and an end to austerity, it has become the PSOE’s chief co-conspirator in the ruling elite’s pandemic policy. Podemos is reacting to the ending of social distancing measures by saying nothing. As always, silence denotes consent.

This is a warning about similar parties and politicians internationally, such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Democratic Socialists of America, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise, Janine Wissler of Die Linke in Germany and Syriza in Greece. Drawn from the affluent middle class and similarly based on the identity politics of race and gender, these parties adopt the same murderous policies as their right-wing counterparts in the political establishment.

Podemos’ only comment about the “fourth wave” came from its regional branch in Andalusia. Its spokesperson, Susana Serrano, accused the regional right-wing Popular Party (PP) government last week of “total immobility” in the face of the “fourth wave.” She called on the PP to continue with the “nightly curfew.” However, after May 9, this policy—itself ineffective in guaranteeing social distancing—will soon be impossible to carry out, as her own party will have lifted the state of alarm.

Like Sánchez, Serrano called for accelerating vaccinations as the only possible solution. She called for “hitting the accelerator with respect to vaccination,” which is “what is going to stop the spread of the virus.” In the absence of closing nonessential work and a subsidised shelter-at-home policy, however, this condemns countless thousands more to die as they wait for vaccinations.

Serrano ended her press conference claiming that Podemos “evades the false dichotomy between health or economy.” This is a political lie. Podemos has implemented the official policy of prioritising capitalist profits over human life throughout the pandemic. Its leader, Pablo Iglesias has routinely been tasked with falsely presenting his government’s pandemic policy as being based on science.

Last May, Iglesias said that while the government had done some things “badly,” “we have also done good things, like listening to specialists and epidemiologists.”

This was part of the victory speeches last May and June, which culminated in Prime Minister Sánchez’s now-infamous statement: “We have defeated the virus.” At that time, excess deaths due to the pandemic stood at 48,000, well less than half the total today.

Underlying these cynical statements was a clear strategy to force millions back to work and school and lift confinement measures. This led to thousands more deaths in a second wave. By the end of the year, 22,000 more people died, raising the excess death toll to 70,000. It exposed the lie that the PSOE-Podemos government’s policy was based on science.

Ahead of the third wave, Iglesias declared in mid-December as the first vaccines started to roll out, “Thank you to science and the health workers. We are seeing the end of the tunnel. Thanks a lot all of you who have given everything to our citizens.” Sánchez also declared, “With the arrival of the vaccine, I insist, the beginning of the end is near.”

Once again, the underlying motive was to lift social distancing measures to boost Christmas profits. A third wave was then presented as inevitable. State epidemiologist Fernando Simón publicly admitted in mid-December, “It is very likely that we will maintain an upward trend, if the forecasts are what we are seeing, until the middle or end of January.” Nonetheless, the government lifted social distancing for the holidays. By the end of the third wave in February, Spain accumulated a death toll of over 100,000 excess deaths and 3.2 million infections.

Now, as Spain enters its “fourth wave,” Iglesias is remaining silent. So has his colleague Yolanda Díaz, Podemos’ new deputy prime minister and labour minister, groomed to become Iglesias’ successor.

Díaz has played a key role, working with the unions to implement herd immunity policies. With the Workers Commissions (CCOO) and General Union of Labour (UGT) unions, Díaz forced millions of workers back to nonessential work. They did this even as unions recognised that most companies “are not in a position to guarantee these health and safety conditions,” as CCOO leader Unai Sordo declared in April 2020. This led to disaster. According to conservative estimates, at least 25 percent of COVID-19 outbreaks in Spain originated in workplaces.

CCOO and UGT have also claimed that schools are safe environments, suppressing teachers’ and students’ anger against school reopenings. Schools have now become one of the main sources of the spread of the virus, surpassing for the first time other environments, such as social or family gatherings, nursing homes, health care centers or workplaces.

This means that tens of thousands of deaths and infections provoked by the back-to-work and back-to-school orders are directly attributable to Podemos and the trade unions.

As Spain enters the “fourth wave,” moreover, the CCOO and UGT have made clear they will not call for any measures to limit the spread of the virus. CCOO posted a statement on March 29, titled “CCOO asks to not repeat the mistakes of Christmas period to avoid a ‘fourth wave’.” Analysing data, it said that “confirmed cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths nationwide doubled in the period between December 2, 2020 and February 24, 2021.” Nevertheless, CCOO did not propose or call for any concrete actions.

Similarly, UGT has absurdly called for avoiding a “fourth wave” last week, by which point it was clear that this wave is already under way. The unions’ major concern, however, is not workers’ lives but the possibility that new restrictions would affect the accumulation of profits.

UGT Secretary of Social Policies, Work and Social Security Mari Carmen Barrera said, “It is essential to avoid a fourth wave of contagion that would produce new work stoppages and put more stress on the economy and employment. This is key to ensuring the summer [tourist] season. For this reason, it is necessary to continue the restrictive measures until collective immunity is achieved, in the same way it is necessary to accelerate and strengthen the vaccination campaign because together with prevention measures, they are essential to recover the [economic] activity."

The following day Sánchez announced the ending of the state of alarm. UGT did not follow up on its initial, symbolic call for limited “restrictive measures.” Instead, it has remained silent.

Workers and youth must assimilate the bitter lessons of this past year. The PSOE-Podemos government and the trade unions cannot be “pressured” to carry out a more humane pandemic policy. Their sole concern is to keep profits flowing into the coffers of the financial elite, regardless of the cost in human lives. Only an international political struggle by the working class, organized independently from the pro-capitalist unions and on a socialist program opposed to pseudo-left parties like Podemos, will be able to impose effective measures to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control.

Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron in Greensill lobbying scandal

Thomas Scripps

Former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has been exposed for using his personal and political connections to lobby the government on behalf of financial services company Greensill Capital.

Greensill went into administration in March after the German regulatory authority filed a complaint about suspected balance sheet manipulation and several insurance groups withdrew their cover. The company was heavily exposed financially to GFG Alliance, run by Sanjeev Gupta, which also faces collapse.

Cameron resigned as prime minister in 2016 and became an advisor for Greensill in 2018. According to an investigation by the Sunday Times, Cameron made repeated appeals to senior government ministers last year to secure access for the company to the Tory’s COVID-19 corporate slush fund.

David Cameron announces his resignation as prime minister in 2016 (credit: Wikimedia Commons/Tom Evans-Open Government Licence)

Just hours after the company was denied access to loans through the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), Cameron e-mailed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior special adviser to demand the government reconsider. He wrote, “What we need is for [Chancellor] Rishi [Sunak] to have a good look at this and ask officials to find a way of making it work.” He also sent multiple texts to Sunak’s personal phone and called two junior Treasury ministers. Sunak sent a message back to Cameron explaining he had “pushed the team” to reconsider Greensill’s proposals. After having originally given Greensill a firm “no”, the department went on to have nine meetings with the company over a two-and-a-half-month period.

The Treasury ultimately still rejected Greensill for the CCFF scheme, but the company was allowed to lend out £400 million in taxpayer-backed loans under the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme—all of it to a single steel empire, owned by Gupta, despite the maximum for any one group being £50 million.

As a result of Greensill’s financial collapse, thousands of jobs are under threat in Britain, France and Australia if companies owned by Gupta, once touted as the “saviour of steel,” are forced into administration and possibly wound up.

Cameron held tens of millions of pounds worth of Greensill share options, reportedly telling friends he was set to earn as much as £60 million personally—taking him into the super-rich territory of former Labour Prime minister Tony Blair, who has raked in between £30 and £50 million since leaving office in 2007.

Cameron had been able to peddle his political connections for the company before. In 2019, again according to the Times, Cameron arranged for a “private drink” between himself, Greensill founder and billionaire Lex Greensill and Health Secretary Matt Hancock to discuss a new payment scheme for the National Health Service (NHS). That meeting led—via Lord Prior, the chairman of NHS England and a minister under Cameron—to Greensill securing a contract with NHS Shared Business Services, managing the payroll for 400,000 NHS workers, all achieved without any competitive tendering process or transparency.

The payroll service, provided by Greensill subsidiary Earnd, allowed workers to receive their salaries daily or weekly, with money provided by Greensill, which would later be recouped from the NHS. Two senior former employees told the Times that the plan was to monetise the NHS’s future payments by turning them into bonds and selling them internationally. Earnd was planning to roll the system out to other NHS trusts until the company filed for administration last month.

A similar early payment scheme, also run by Greensill, had already been established for pharmacies. The policy was developed by none other than Lex Greensill himself while working as an advisor to David Cameron when he was prime minister—a position he gained in 2012.

Also in 2019, Cameron attended a genomics conference on behalf of American private healthcare company Illumina, for which he is a paid adviser. Hancock was among the attendees. Shortly afterwards, Illumina was awarded a £123 million contract with the Department of Health. While prime minister, Cameron had announced a £78 million deal between Genomics England and Illumina. He then joined the company as a consultant and chairman of its international advisory board in 2017.

The scandal over Cameron’s use of his political connections has lifted the rock on the sordid world of corporate lobbying and sent the UK’s political elite scrambling for cover.

After keeping silent on the issue for weeks, Cameron delivered a 1,800-word statement to Associated Press on Saturday. Insisting he had broken “no codes of conduct and no government rules,” and that it was “right” for him to contact the government on behalf of Greensill. He said, “There are important lessons to be learned. As a former prime minister, I accept that communications with government need to be done through only the most formal of channels, so there can be no room for misinterpretation.”

Labour shadow minister Rachel Reeves said the Greensill scandal was “just the tip of the iceberg in Conservative cronyism, which has been endemic during the pandemic and long before”. But all Labour proposes is a vote by MPs Wednesday for a parliamentary inquiry into lobbying.

In an attempt to stem a crisis that reaches into the heart of government, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered a formal inquiry which will examine “issues of supply chain finance and the role Greensill played” and “the way contracts were secured”.

However, Johnson was careful to ensure that the inquiry will have no legal powers. Its toothlessness was confirmed by Cameron, who announced he would “be glad to take part”. According to the Guardian, the man chosen to lead the investigation, Nigel Boardman, was a partner at law firm Slaughter and May in 2013 when it opposed, ironically, a few tame lobbying reforms Cameron had proposed. It argued that the measures “may have the effect of stifling productive, even essential, dialogue between legislators and those who consider the implications and practicalities of relevant legislation on a day-to-day basis.”

As for the sudden widespread outrage over lobbying, the type of grubby wheeling and dealing exposed in the Cameron/Greensill affair is the most open secret in bourgeois politics. Cameron himself warned in 2010 after the MPs expenses scandal —in a doubtless much-rued piece of political posturing—that “the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money” was “the next big scandal waiting to happen”.

He was one to know. According to the i newspaper, at least 66 members of Cameron’s 2010-2015 government have since taken up private sector jobs with links to their former government portfolio within two years of stepping down.

Most prominent among them is former Chancellor George Osborne, who became an adviser to asset manager BlackRock while still an MP, being paid £650,000 a year for four days a month work. He was also paid £800,000 for 12 speeches, mainly to financial firms, before leaving parliament and is reported to have received £500,000 a year in speaking fees since. After standing down as an MP in April 2017, Osborne became the editor of the London Evening Standard, paid £200,000 a year for a four-day week. He recently gave up his BlackRock and Evening Standard positions to work for boutique investment banker Robey Warshaw. He will keep his position as chair of investment firm Exor’s advisory committee.

Another former Tory chancellor, Philip Hammond, has notified the appointments watchdog of 13 different jobs or consultancy positions in less than two years. These include roles as a partner at fund manager Buckthorn, senior adviser at bank OakNorth and non-executive director at packaging company Ardagh Group.

Sajid Javid, a former chancellor under Johnson for less than a year, was appointed as a senior adviser to bank JP Morgan, receiving £150,000 a year, almost as soon as he left office.

To the extent that “lobbying” refers to a process of one party seeking to influence another separate party for financial gain, the term is somewhat outdated. The sated social layers staffing the government and the upper echelons of big business are one and the same, moving seamlessly between government offices and corporate boardrooms.

Cameron entered government with an estimated personal wealth of around £3 million, Osborne around £4 million and Hammond £9 million. Javid was reportedly earning £3 million a year at Deutsche Bank before he moved into politics and owns multimillion-pound homes in Fulham and Chelsea.

Johnson, who is used to such levels of wealth, was described as “miserable” by close friends last year, due to being forced to live on a measly salary of £150,000 as prime minister. The current chancellor, Sunak, understood to be the richest MP in the House of Commons, is married to the daughter of an Indian multi-billionaire. Her fortune is estimated to be higher than the Queen’s. This is government of, by and for a super-rich oligarchy, dedicated to preserving the immense fortunes of a parasitic elite.

The Cameron/Greensill scandal exposes the real class relations in a country run by and for the financial oligarchy. Cameron and his ilk expect and receive the best access to the highest levels of government where they issue their demands on behalf of big business. Cameron will be treated with kid gloves and at most might face a slap on the wrist. In sharp contrast, the government is cracking down and illegalising any form of protest by the working class and is impervious to all demands to protect jobs, health and education and services.

Surging global food and fuel prices add further hardships for workers

Gabriel Black

Global food prices increased for the 10th consecutive month in March, reaching levels not seen since 2014, according to a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) assessment released Thursday. The surge in food prices, since May of last year, joins a larger trend of global inflation and scarcities in key commodities that have dug into the livelihoods of the working class at an already exceptionally difficult time.

The FAO’s Food Price Index increased by 2.4 points in February, up from 92 points in May of 2020. This level has not been seen since June 2014. Two key staples of consumption—cooking oil and grains—have led the surge, but the price of dairy, sugar, and meat has also risen.

The rise in food prices forms part of what economists are calling the ‘K-shaped’ recovery from the economic downturn caused by COVID-19. While prices for staple goods like food, fuel and household supplies have substantially increased since last year, this increase disproportionately impacts the broad mass of working people, leaving the rich less affected. An analysis from Bloomberg found that the top 10 percent of American households experienced almost half the level of inflation that the median household did in February 2021, a rough trend seen since July of last year.

A worker at a market in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

The divergent impact of inflation can be seen globally, especially in some of the world’s poorest countries. For example, in Pakistan, a country of 216 million people, the population spent more than 40 percent of its income on food, according to 2015 data from the World Economic Forum. The same went for the Philippines (41.9 percent) with a population of 108 million, Algeria (42.5 percent) with 43 million people, and Nigeria (56.4 percent) with 201 million people. In the U.S., the bottom quintile of the population spent 36 percent of their income on food in 2019.

In March, the UN issued a warning of a “looming food crisis,” identifying Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Zimbabwe as being at extreme risk. In the West African and Sahel region, for example, 27 million people, or 10 percent of this region’s population, needs immediate food aid relief, with the severity of the crisis expected to worsen through the summer.

In the United States, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that grocery prices had increased by an average of 3.5 percent compared to a year ago, resulting in an average increase of more than $500 per year. Some of the leading price increases were in meats, poultry, fish and eggs, a 5.2 percent increase, citrus fruits, 9.5 percent increase, canned vegetables, 6 percent, and carbonated drinks 6 percent.

On Tuesday, the US Department of Labor released data that showed that in March US consumer prices increased by the largest amount in eight and a half years. Increases in gasoline and food prices led the way.

The surging cost of food for the broad mass of workers and peasants, around the world has been compounded by the global pandemic, which has officially killed almost 3 million people. The global downturn in the economy has sharply exacerbated the pre-existing gulf in livelihoods between the rich and the poor in every country. To the extent that lockdown measures have been imposed in most countries, they have been done so with little to no economic relief, care or support for the population which must forgo income.

Meanwhile, the concentration of the poorest sections of the working class in jobs like retail, restaurants, tourism, hospitality and other hard-hit in-person services has led to a more permanent downturn in employment. A study from the Harvard affiliated Opportunity Insights research group found in October of last year that lower-income Americans, making less than $27,000 a year, remained stuck at a 20 percent lower employment rate than prior to the pandemic. Higher paid workers, above $60,000 a year, had just begun to return to pre-pandemic levels. These official employment statistics, however, do not consider those who have altogether given up looking for work, estimated at above 4 million people in the United States.

Globally, Bloomberg estimates that 150 million people who had, in the previous decade, joined the global “middle class,” a term which refers to workers making between $10 and $20 a day, had been pushed back into a lower pay bracket by the pandemic.

Workers around the world are therefore being hit by two forces: rising prices and lowered wages. This combination is a recipe for misery and social explosion.

However, while the broad mass of the world’s population is caught between these forces, those who rule society, in whichever country they call home, are being launched to new heights. The collective wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by more than 60 percent last year, from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion. While the bottom half of Americans, some 164 million people, captured just 4 percent of the wealth made in 2020, the wealthiest 10 percent captured 70 percent of it, according to the US Federal Reserve.

There are several reasons behind the rise in food prices, but above all it is the unplanned, anarchic, and nationalist character of the profit system which drives it.

Agriculture, globally, is dependent on a highly exploited group of migrant farmworkers who frequently cross multiple national boundaries to harvest crops. Because there has been no scientifically guided, internationally planned response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have imposed extended border shut-downs that prevent the flow of migrant labor. Extreme weather events, associated with climate change, are also thought to have caused some on-farm damage this winter, further disrupting supply chains.

The price of oil likewise plays an important factor in food costs, both because of farm inputs and transportation costs. While the price of oil has not surged as much as food prices, it has returned to pre-pandemic levels between $60 and $70 a barrel for Brent crude (a global benchmark for oil prices) driven by rising demand and prior cuts to production in response to the pandemic. The price of food, traded on global commodity spot markets, can be immediately impacted by these day-to-day shifts in oil prices. The AAA predicts fuel prices to increase through the summer, especially as many Americans make plans to travel. The price of gasoline at the pump has increased by 93 cents in the United States since one year ago, generally increasing the cost of living by broadly increasing all prices.

Pakistan: Unions shut down Balochistan government workers’ strike as state threatens crackdown

Zayar

A two-week strike by thousands of long-exploited government sector workers in Pakistan’s Balochistan province was shut down by an alliance of trade unions last Friday following a court order declaring their job action “illegal.”

The strikers, who are confronting menacing threats of state repression, are demanding a pay hike of 25 percent, and allowances like those paid provincial government workers in other provinces. The demand for higher wages resonates among working people across the country, who are struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living skyrockets.

Announcing the strike’s suspension, leaders of the All Balochistan Employees union and Workers Grand Alliance claimed the job action will resume in one month if progress is not made in negotiations with the provincial government, which is a close ally of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Islamist populist Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Sit-in of striking Balochistan government workers. (WSWS)

Such delaying tactics, which provoked outrage among many workers, are the typical means by which trade unions the world over demobilize militant struggles and pave the way for their defeat.

In its order to both end the strike and a sit-in in the “red zone” of the provincial capital, Quetta, the Balochistan High Court called on negotiators on both sides to show “flexibility” in their talks. Making clear that in practice this means that the workers must give up their demands and accept whatever the government claims it can afford, Chief Justice Jamal Mandokhail declared threateningly, “Until the end of the protest, we will stay inside the court, and if the demonstrators don’t leave everyone will go to jail.”

The Balochistan public workers’ struggle is part of a global upsurge of working class struggles in opposition to the capitalist ruling elites’ prioritizing of profits over workers’ lives and livelihoods amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. With virtually no health care system and social safety net, Balochistan, the country’s poorest province by far, has been hard hit by the pandemic.

The province’s impoverished workers and the poor have also been battered by a rapacious pro-market “reform” program championed by the International Monetary Fund and implemented by Imran Khan and his PTI government. Despite the economic disaster triggered by the pandemic, the Khan government has relentlessly pressed ahead with gutting whatever remains of social welfare programs and prices subsidies, raised taxes, and shut down publicly-owned enterprises, destroying thousands of jobs in the process.

Tens of thousands of workers from various government departments, including schools and hospitals, joined the Balochistan strike, which began on March 29. They are all paid poverty wages, notwithstanding the critical nature of their jobs. For the next two weeks there were demonstrations and sit-ins in Quetta and other cities, effectively halting or disrupting government business, until the unions bowed before the anti-worker court-order and called off the strike on the evening of April 10.

That same day, teachers had boycotted the start of high school matriculation exams. A similar boycott by health care workers resulted in the postponing of a mobile polio vaccination campaign. On Monday, April 5, the strikers enforced a virtual cut-off of Balochistan from the rest of the country with a blockade of the highways that connect it to Pakistan’s three other provinces. This protest impacted the transit of supplies for the US occupation forces in Afghanistan.

The strike in Balochistan followed a similar struggle in Islamabad, where the government was forced to concede a pay increase of 25 percent to federal government workers after a brutal crackdown on the strikers failed to break their struggle.

In Balochistan, workers defied a cynical ban of all public gatherings hastily imposed on the eve of the strike by the provincial government on the pretext of combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government deployed massive armed forces contingents to prevent processions of workers from entering key government installations, and to intimidate the daily anti-government demonstrations. For most of the past two decades Balochistan has been under effective Pakistan military occupation, as it employs torture, enforced disappearances, and extra-judicial killings to suppress a Balochi ethno-nationalist separatist insurgency.

The government refused to make any concessions to workers during the strike, instead demanding that they immediately return to work. Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan Alyani responded to the strike by remarking that the strikers should “all be in jail.” He contemptuously declared that the workers “do not perform their official duties properly.” If workers do their job “properly,” the chief minister went on, “we are ready to increase their salaries not only once but twice.”

Chief Minister Khan Alyani lamented the extra financial “burden” that the government would incur if it gave in to the strikers’ demands, which he estimated at 10 to 15 billion Pakistani rupees (US $65.5 to $98 million). He also complained about having to expand the allocation for pensions for retired workers, which has increased from 30 billion to 50 billion rupees during the last two years.

The Balochistan Chief Minister, who himself hails from one of Balochistan’s traditional large landowning families, went on to blame current and retired workers, who are aspiring for a livable stipend, for the utterly bankrupt state of social infrastructure in the province. “Will there be a time when the government will do nothing for education, health, roads, dams, social welfare, agriculture [since] we will only pay salaries, pensions and allowances?” proclaimed Khan Alyani.

Most of the government workers, including clerks, teachers and paramedics, sustain their families on a monthly wage of approximately 18,000 to 20,000 rupees, around $US117 to $US130. An increasing portion of the government workforce is employed as temporary workers, despite their years of service, denying them even the meagre benefits of a worker in a permanent job. The majority of Balochistan government workers are the sole bread winner in their households.

Balochistan has been impoverished and devastated by decades of abuse and negligence by Islamabad, despite its abundant natural resources and its strategic location. The latest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report detailing socio-economic conditions in Balochistan, which dates from 2018, estimated that a staggering 71.2 percent of its 12.3 million population lives in poverty, compared to 38 percent for Pakistan as a whole.

Khan Alyani and his Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) represent a section of the province’s ruling elite, and play a critical role in sustaining the PTI’s “austerity” coalition at the federal level. Typical of the utterly corrupt bourgeois elite in the country, Khan Alyani’s declared wealth is more than 728 million rupees (or almost $10 million), and includes properties abroad. Pakistan’s venal capitalist elite is infamous for hiding much of their wealth offshore.

The PTI government has admitted that an additional 10 million people across the country have fallen into poverty as a result of the pandemic. A more realistic estimation would produce a much worse picture, like the health impact of the pandemic itself. Officially, there have been 730,000 COVID-19 infections and more than 15,600 deaths. But the true figures, which are masked by barely existent testing and, in much of the country, basic health care facilities, are undoubtedly several times higher.

When compared with the rest of the country, the situation in Balochistan is even more horrific. The province conducts only about 1,100 COVID-19 tests per day. When several hundred doctors and other health care workers protested the lack of personal protective equipment to treat patients amid a surge in coronavirus cases in the province last April, Khan Alyani ordered the police to beat them and jail them.

Amid massive job losses and deepening poverty, only about 45,500 people in Balochistan received any assistance from the federal government, while the provincial government extended no assistance whatsoever. Designed as a face-saving measure by Prime Minister Khan, the federal government’s “assistance” was limited to an absurdly inadequate 12,000 rupees (US $78) per household.

In the midst of yet another wave of the pandemic, fueled by more contagious variants, Prime Minster Imran Khan is refusing to take any measures to contain the surge in infections. A tally by Bloomberg estimated that at its current pace, Pakistan would take 10 years to vaccinate 75 percent of its population. The government refuses to allocate necessary funding for vaccination, claiming it cannot afford the cost.

The growing discontent within Baluchistan is not limited to government workers. Protests erupted earlier this month against the state-run Quetta Electricity Supply Company for power shedding, which in some areas extends to 22 hours a day. Protesters blockaded highways on April 1, bringing trade across Balochistan with Afghan cities to a halt.

Balochistan is also engulfed in seething sectarian tensions. When eleven coal miners from the Shiite Hazara minority were dragged out of their sleeping huts and brutally killed by Islamist fundamentalists in January, prolonged protests erupted in Quetta and the dead miners’ coffins were part of a several-day-long highway blockade.