Tragic death of young Sri Lankan woman exposes horrific conditions in Japanese detention centres

Dehin Wasantha

Wishma Sandamali Ratnayake, a young Sri Lankan migrant worker, died on March 6 at Nagoya Local Emigrant Service Bureau in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. She was just 33 years old.

Sandamali, a former resident of Imbulgoda in Kadawatha, a Colombo suburb, had passed her Advanced Level exam in Sri Lanka and entered Japan in 2017 on a student visa.

Wishma Sandamali Ratnayake

Rather than continue on to higher education in Japan, she hoped to find a well-paid job. Those on student visas in Japan, however, are only able to work 28 hours a week, and so she found it difficult to secure permanent employment.

Sandamali began learning Japanese at an education institute but dropped out, unable to pay the tuition fees, and then confronted a range of difficulties.

Last August she attempted to lodge a complaint with police, because she was being harassed by a young man she was living with. Police ignored Sandamali’s complaint and, instead, arrested and then jailed her at the Nagoya detention camp for overstaying her visa.

Unable to pay for her return to Sri Lanka, she was treated like a criminal and held in brutal conditions for seven months, including being confined to a tiny room.

Sandamali expected immigration authorities to provide her with the necessary security but she received no assistance. According to START official, Yasunori Matsui, she became ill in December and was vomiting blood and unable to walk by January. START is a support group that provides aid to foreign labourers and refugees.

Sandamali, who lost about 20 kilograms, became so weakened that she could only be moved by wheelchair and was too unwell to be returned to Sri Lanka. Immigration authorities rejected her application for refugee status and ignored requests by Japanese aid providers that she be given temporary freedom in order to secure medical treatment.

Ridma Ratnayake, Sandamali’s younger sister, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site from Tokyo last week.

Some of the partipants at Sandamali's funeral (Source: Facebook)

Ridma said that more than 200 Japanese nationals paid their last respects to her sister, when she was cremated on May 16, and about 400 people attended a memorial ceremony in Tokyo on May 29.

“I have no faith in the Japanese government,” Ridma said. “When my sister was dying, an attempt was made to put some food into her mouth. She had been given high-dose painkillers and sleeping tablets and was unable to swallow. She didn’t have any vitamins during the last few days of her life, and was not even given saline.”

Speaking through Ridma, Sandamali’s mother said: “My daughter was treated like an animal. Even animals should get better care than this.”

Sandamali’s relatives have called on the Japanese Minister of Justice Yoko Kamikawa to explain the circumstances leading to the young woman’s death and to release video footage of her in detention. The request has been refused on the absurd and cynical grounds that it would undermine state security and compromise the “dignity” of the young woman. Ridma told the WSWS her sister’s body looked like that of an elderly person.

Brief notes in Sandamali’s diary make clear that her death was caused by the cruel and unlawful way in which she was treated. She wrote: “I cannot eat. They say it is because of tension. They don’t take me to a hospital, as I am in their custody. Please help me recover.”

Sandamali is the 18th migrant to die in custody in Japan since 2007, and the fourth person to perish in a detention centre there in the past 13 months. Official statistics show that less than one percent of applicants are granted refugee- or asylum-status in Japan. Of the 10,375 refugee applications made in Japan in 2019, only 44 were approved.

Sandamali on the left with her sisters

While the current number of migrants held in Japanese detention centres is 300, prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 there were an estimated 20,000 migrant workers incarcerated in 16 centres, including in Osaka, Nagasaki and Ibaraki prefecture. They were released—without being granted residency or the right to work—by Japanese authorities, following the onset of the pandemic and in order to avoid any medical responsibility for the detainees.

Poverty, low wages and unemployment force millions of young people from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America to migrate to the Middle East and the advanced capitalist economies in Europe, the US, Australia and Japan, in search of work. Thousands of people tragically lose their lives in dangerous sea-crossings and other risky travel methods each year, trying to enter these countries.

According to Sri Lanka’s Census and Statistics Department, the official unemployment rate among young people was 9.6 percent in 2020. The jobless rate for those aged between 15 and 24 years was 26.4 percent and as high as 36.3 percent for women in that cohort. Unemployment for women, in the 25 to 29 age group, was 18.9 percent and 7.1 per for men.

As in other countries, the Japanese ruling elite has responded to COVID-19 and the associated economic crisis by further tightening its immigration laws. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s government recently moved to amend the country’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act and allow authorities to repatriate asylum seekers whose applications are under appeal.

Under current laws, those seeking asylum are permitted to submit an unlimited number of applications for asylum status. The Suga government wants to limit the number to three, making it easier to deport those incarcerated in detention centres.

On May 18, the Suga government, in the face of widespread opposition, including mass demonstrations in several cities with many participants carrying placards referring to Sandamali’s tragic death, was forced to withdraw its anti-democratic amendments. The government indicated, however, that it would not shelve the bill altogether, but attempt to push it through the Japanese parliament in the near future.

Sri Lanka’s external affairs ministry and its embassy in Tokyo did nothing to save Sandamali’s life, let alone raise a protest about her brutal treatment or demand that the Japanese government explain how and why she died.

Colombo’s silence is no accident. Like the ruling elites in other underdeveloped countries, the Sri Lankan capitalist class does not want to do anything to undermine the exploitation of its citizens working abroad, and hence disrupt the millions of dollars in foreign remittances flowing back into Sri Lanka.

Likewise, the Rajapakse government is totally indifferent to the plight of thousands of Sri Lankan workers still trapped in other countries, infected with COVID-19 or unemployed, and desperately trying to return home to their families.

Peace in Colombia Should Mean Land Reform and an End to Hunger

Vijay Prashad & Zoe Alexandra

Since the end of April, Colombia’s streets have smelled of tear gas. The government of Colombian President Iván Duque imposed policies that put the costs of the pandemic on the working class and the peasantry and tried to suffocate any advancement of the Havana peace accords of 2016. Discontent led to street protests, which were repressed harshly by the government. These protests, Rodrigo Granda of Colombia’s Comunes party told us in an interview, “are defined by the wide participation of youth, women, artists, religious people, the Indigenous, Afro-Colombians, unions and organizations from neighborhoods of the poor and the working class. Practically the whole of Colombia is part of the struggle.” A range of concrete demands defines the protest: running water and schools, the disbandment of the riot police (ESMAD), and the expansion of democratic possibilities.

The Comunes party was formed in 2017 by members of the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army). Granda, who is known internationally for his former role as the foreign minister of the FARC, is now in the national board of the Comunes party. As a legal political party, Comunes is a direct product of the 2016 Havana peace accords signed by the Colombian government and the FARC. Over the past two years, members of the Comunes have been on the streets alongside their fellow Colombians who are fighting to bring democracy to the country’s economy and politics. Granda spoke to us about the ongoing protests and helped to put these protests in the context of the long history of struggle in Colombia.

Colombia’s Violent Oligarchy

The current protests remind Granda of the 1977 national civic strike that he participated in, with one difference: then, he says, there was “no international solidarity,” while now the global media attention to Colombia’s struggle allows the people in his country “not to lose heart” during a difficult fight. The 1977 strike emerged out of a long struggle against the country’s oligarchy.

Years before the strike, Granda looked forward to the Colombian elections of April 1970. He hoped that the former president and general Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) would win. Rojas Pinilla was not a leftist, but he offered the country a way out of the grip of Colombia’s oligarchy. Young people like Granda hoped that an ANAPO victory in Colombia and then, later in the year, the victory of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity in Chile would help change the character of South America’s politics. But Rojas Pinilla’s victory was embroiled in fraud, and while Allende won the election, he was ejected from power in 1973 in a coup. Looking back over these 50 years, Granda told us that he feels an “internal frustration” with the theft of that election in 1970 and the tortuous path his country has had to take since then.

The fight has been difficult because the ruling bloc of Colombia, including Duque, is unwilling to honestly participate in a democratic agenda. None of the major political parties that have controlled the state since 1948 have been eager for any kind of change. Suffocation of politics since then and the routine assassination of political leaders moved the left—through the FARC and other groups—into armed struggle in 1964. The FARC regularly called upon the ruling bloc to open negotiations, but with little success. However, talks with President Belisario Betancur in 1982 opened the way to the 1984 La Uribe Agreement, which resulted in a ceasefire from 1984 to 1987. Members of the FARC joined with others on the left to create Union Patriótica (UP) as a legal political party. Attempts to move a reform agenda by the UP came alongside a policy of assassinations by the state against the left. No genuine liberal sentiment pervades the Colombian ruling bloc, which refuses to share even a modicum of power with other groups.

The situation deteriorated under President Andrés Pastrana—who was in power from 1998 to 2002—and U.S. President Bill Clinton, who both signed Plan Colombia, which proved to be the beginning of a policy to define the FARC as “narco-terrorists” and conduct a war of extermination against the rebels. Incidentally, it was Pastrana’s father who stole the election of 1970 from Rojas Pinilla. Brutality characterized the Colombian state’s approach toward the FARC and toward anyone else who questioned its policies. Gradually, the ruling bloc was led by more and more ruthless men, none more so than President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). Uribe, Granda told us, “promised to exterminate us [the FARC] in four years, but he could not.”

Peace Accords

Granda understands why peace had to define the agenda a decade ago. “After the failure of Plan Colombia and a stalemate in the war,” he told us, “we could not defeat the Colombian army in a short time, and the Colombian army could not defeat the guerrillas in a short time either. Therefore, a political solution through dialogue was necessary.” President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) wrote a letter to the FARC saying that he recognized the internal problems in Colombia and also recognized that the FARC was a political organization and not a narco-terrorist organization. This set in motion the negotiation in Havana that resulted in the accords.

The accords put in place a plan for integrated agrarian reform and democracy, as well as restitution for the victims of the long war. “We put down our arms,” Granda said, “but we did not disarm ourselves from an ideological point of view.” The signing of the accords is only one part of the FARC’s plan toward peace, since their implementation is key before other kinds of meaningful change can be made. But the Colombian oligarchy, Granda said, has an entirely different view of what peace would mean. For the oligarchy, peace means that the guns of the FARC are silent. “For us,” he says, “peace means an attack on the factors that generate the violence in the first place.” These include factors like hunger, dispossession and the frustration with the oligarchy and the harsh violence by the state against which the people of Colombia continue to protest.

Naftali Bennett to head Israeli “government of change” to oust Netanyahu

Jean Shaoul

Far-right leader and settler advocate Naftali Bennett of the Yamina Party is set to become prime minister, replacing Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who has led the country since 2009.

It follows March’s inconclusive election, the fourth in two years, that gave Netanyahu’s Likud Party the largest number of seats but left him unable to form a majority government. Netanyahu needed a majority to ensure his ability to evade his trial for bribery and corruption, now entering evidence sessions.

Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett, left, smiles as he speaks to Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid during a special session of the Knesset, whereby Israeli lawmakers elect a new president, at the plenum in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem on Wednesday, June 2, 2021. (Ronen Zvulun/Pool Photo via AP)

Bennett will head a deeply unstable, unprincipled coalition with a majority of one in the 120-seat Knesset. Made up of eight parties spanning almost the entire spectrum of Israeli politics, these political reactionaries have united to try and rescue the Israeli bourgeoisie from a widening social and political crisis and the threat they face from an increasingly disaffected working class—all under the vacuous “anti-corruption slogan of “Anyone but Bibi” (Netanyahu's nickname).

The fractured and febrile state of Israeli politics, along with its proportional representation system, means that no one party can win a large enough majority to rule alone, ensuring small parties wield disproportionate power. After the March elections, two parties emerged as “king-makers”: Bennett’s Yamina Party and Mansour Abbas’ conservative Islamic Movement-affiliated United Arab List, or Ra’am, with seven and four seats respectively.

The announcement by opposition leader Yair Lapid, who heads the second-largest party Yesh Atid and has long sought to depose Netanyahu, that he had cobbled together a “government of change” came just minutes before his mandate to do so expired on Wednesday night.

Lapid told President Reuven Rivlin, “I commit to you Mr President, that this government will work to serve all the citizens of Israel—including those who aren’t members of it—will respect those who oppose it and do everything in its power to unite all parts of Israeli society.”

Under the proposed arrangements, Lapid will not immediately assume the premiership. Instead, king-maker Bennett will become prime minister for the first two years. Only if the coalition survives that long will Lapid take over. In the meantime, he will serve as foreign minister.

This so-called centrist, a former journalist, TV presenter and news anchor who served as finance minister in a previous Netanyahu-led government, has handed the reins of power to far-right, pro-settler champions of the free market. This will inevitably result in a stepped-up assault on the living conditions of the Israeli working class, more than 20 percent of whom live in poverty, and a ramping up of support for settlers at the expense of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s own citizens.

Bennett, a millionaire who once served as chief of staff to Netanyahu, is opposed to a Palestinian statelet. He has called for Israel’s annexation of Area C in the West Bank which is under Israeli military control and is home to most of the settlements, Palestinian Authority control over Areas A and B only under the supervision of Israel’s military and security apparatus, and the transfer of Gaza to Egypt.

The key posts are to go to vicious right-wing nationalists. Ayelet Shaked, Bennett’s Number 2 in Yamina, is to serve as interior minister responsible for “law and order” under conditions where the authorities have encouraged settlers and far-right Jewish vigilante groups to run amok in Israel’s mixed towns and cities. She once served as Netanyahu’s office director, later becoming Justice Minister 2015-19, helping to draft a version of the infamous Nation-State Law, institutionalizing Jewish supremacy. She is bitterly hostile to the Palestinians, virulently opposed to African asylum seekers and determined to limit the role of the judiciary.

Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the secular nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, whose initial support base was immigrants from the former Soviet Union, is to become finance minister. He left Likud in 1997 after Netanyahu granted minor concessions to the Palestinians in the Wye River Memorandum, later proposing the separation of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis via a population “transfer.” In 1998, Lieberman proposed bombing Egypt’s Aswan High Dam because of Cairo’s support for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Lieberman has served under several Likud governments, including as deputy prime minister, foreign affairs minister, when he broadened the campaign against Iran, and minister of defence, resigning in 2018 because of a ceasefire in Gaza he characterized as “surrendering to terror.”

Gideon Sa’ar, who last year formed New Hope as his own political vehicle after failing to unseat Netanyahu in a Likud leadership contest, is to take the justice portfolio. Opposed to a two-state solution, he supports the annexation of the West Bank and Palestinian autonomy in a federation with Jordan.

Benny Gantz, former chief of staff of Israel’s military and leader of the Blue and White Party who fought three elections on an anti-Netanyahu ticket only to join his coalition last year, serving as defense minister, will continue in this post. He was responsible to Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza in 2014, now under investigation by the International Criminal Court, and last month’s 11-day bombardment on the besieged enclave that killed at least 253 Palestinians, injured 2,000 more and damaged or destroyed at least 17,000 homes, six hospitals, nine healthcare centres, a water desalination plant and other vital infrastructure.

These political criminals are joined by the Labour Party that signed the Oslo Accords that was supposed to bring about a mini-Palestinian state. Its legislators, Merav Michaeli and Omer Bar-Lev, will serve as transportation and public security ministers respectively, while another will head the Diaspora affairs ministry.

Meretz, which opposes Jewish settlement in the occupied territories and supports the two-state solution, has also agreed to serve under Bennett, with Nitzan Horowitz set to become health minister and Tamar Zandberg environmental protection minister. Its Arab member Esawi Freige will serve as regional development minister.

The cabinet will include for the first time the leader of the United Arab List or Ra’am, Mansour Abbas, who has agreed to support the coalition in return for an increase in economic support and a temporary freeze on home demolitions in Israel’s Arab community.

It will be the first cabinet without the ultra-religious parties that have participated in most of the coalitions since 2001.

The new government has yet to get the approval of the Knesset, which is not set to vote on the issue for at least another week. Lapid is seeking to replace the current Knesset speaker, a Likud Member, with Yesh Atid lawmaker Mickey Levy to expedite the process.

Netanyahu has insisted that he is not going away and is seeking to secure defectors from the Lapid-Bennett coalition, in addition to Amichai Chikli, one of Yamina’s legislators, who refused to join the “left-wing” government. He excoriated his former colleagues, calling the proposed coalition “illegitimate.”

Netanyahu’s fascistic ally, Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich, accused Yamina leaders Bennett and Shaked of working to “establish a left-wing government with the Arab supporters of terrorism.” Hundreds of his supporters have rallied repeatedly outside the homes of Bennett and Shaked. Such is the concern that they might become the targets of political violence, both politicians have been assigned police protection.

There have been questions raised in the media as to whether Netanyahu would mount new provocations against the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, promote acts of terrorism by Jewish fanatics against Israeli Palestinians, seek to mount a coup similar to that of former US President Donald Trump, or launch a provocative move against Iran to maintain his grip on power.

UK: One million threatened with homelessness as government ends eviction ban

Robert Stevens

Over a million people face being evicted from their rented homes in the next weeks and months, after the Conservative government ended its temporary ban on bailiff-led evictions.

Throughout the pandemic, bailiffs were asked not to carry out evictions, with notice periods being extended to six months from the pre-pandemic period of two months. From June 1, the notice period dropped to four months.

The ban on evictions was introduced at the start of the pandemic by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government as part of series of concession to placate mounting anger in the working class. It offered protection for tenants who fell into arrears, as many workers lost their jobs or were furloughed and suffered major cuts in income. The government has sought to end the ban several times over the last year but in the face of public opposition was repeatedly forced to extend it.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick at a Covid-19 press conference in 10 Downing Street. 29/03/2020 (Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street-Flickr)

Johnson’s statement in February that this would be the last lockdown and that the economy had to be “irreversibly” reopened in June finally cleared the decks for the ending of the evictions ban. Housing Minister Robert Jenrick announced on March 10 that the restriction would end May 31.

The government is ensuring that almost nothing will prevent landlords from evicting tenants, stating only, “Evictions will not be carried out if a member of the home has Covid-19 symptoms or is self-isolating.”

According to research by the London School of Economics and Political Science, at least 100,000 claims over landlords attempting to kick out tenants could be subject to a court case this year.

Those in power and in the opposition parties have a vested interest in the evictions ban being lifted. Almost one in five of Parliament’s 650 MPs are landlords. Last month, the Inside Housing website noted that Labour’s shadow housing secretary, Lucy Powell, “According to parliament’s register of financial interests… is a private landlord and has rented a room in her London flat since 2015, and has a rental income of more than £10,000 a year.” It added, “She is also a shareholder and unpaid director of New Road Management, which owns the freehold of six flats in London, in one of which she lives.”

According to research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) on Monday, based on a survey it commissioned of over 10,000 households, 400,000 people (5 percent of all renters) have already either been served an eviction notice or told they could be served one. A further 1 million households (11 percent of all renters), are concerned about possible eviction in the next three months. Half of these consist of families with children. Fully 1.7 million renting households are worried about paying their rent over the same period (20 percent of all renters).

Landlords in England are now able to evict tenants with just four weeks’ notice if they have more than four months in rent arrears. There are 450,000 households currently in rent arrears and 18 percent of these (around 81,000 households) have been in arrears for more than four months.

Throughout the pandemic renters have received very little targeted support, despite them being more likely to have faced a major drop in income. In April this year, Local Housing Allowance (housing payments for private rented tenancies) was frozen again and kept at September 2019 levels. This is in effect a cut, as rental costs have continued to rise across the country.

Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, a charity that works to end homelessness, said, “There is no doubt that protections put in place to help renters has kept people in their homes as they were hit with wage cuts, job losses and illness brought on by the pandemic. But we know that hundreds of thousands of renters will now be anxiously counting down the days until they are forced from their homes unless further action is taken.”

The eviction ban is being lifted under conditions in which millions will face the loss of all their income through unemployment and cuts in welfare payments. At the end of September, the government will withdraw a £20 per week uplift in Universal Credit put in place at the start of the pandemic. Millions of workers who have relied on the state paying 80 percent of their wages under the furlough scheme will be placed in dire straits as the scheme is ended.

The JRF noted, “Unemployment is not forecast to peak until after this period [June to end of August], and the furlough scheme and the £20 per week uplift in Universal Credit are not due to end until the autumn. It is deeply worrying that so many renters are concerned about eviction before these protections are withdrawn.”

Those already living on a low income/in poverty were most at risk of eviction, the JRF survey found. “Households with three or more children are more than twice as likely to be worried about being evicted (21%) compared to households without children (9%).” Moreover, “Households with annual incomes below £25,000 are three times more likely to be worried about paying rent (24%) compared to households with incomes of £50,000 or more, and they are also significantly more likely to be behind with household bills and rent payments compared to households on higher incomes.”

During the pandemic, many renters have become poorer in an effort to keep their homes, with nearly 1.5 million renting households cutting spending to offset lost income: “33% of renters in arrears turned to borrowing, with a quarter (24%) borrowing from friends or family, one in ten (11%) borrowing from a bank or building society and, worryingly, 7% borrowing from a payday lender.”

According to Citizens Advice, in January this year 28 percent of those on a zero-hour contract were behind with their rent, as were 27 percent of agency workers, 16 percent of students, 13 percent of furloughed workers 12 percent of disabled people.

Tenants have spoken out on social media. One said on Twitter, “This is wrong. A ban on evictions should stay whilst this pandemic continues… Government should use the time to bring in laws protecting tenants. They will not as they back greedy landlords.” A mother commented on Facebook on the threat of eviction, “That’s what will happen to my daughter and I if I don’t get another job soon. 8 months unemployed is taking its toll.”

The pandemic has exacerbated the never-ending programme of austerity which has plunged millions into poverty over the last decade. The Socialist Equality Party opposes all evictions of tenants in rent arrears and demands the restoration of the evictions ban and the cancellation of arrears accrued during the pandemic through no fault of tenants. Only on the basis of a workers’ government and a socialist programme can the social right of access to affordable, quality housing for all be secured.

Tensions between Washington and Moscow mount in lead-up to summit

Andrea Peters

In the lead-up to the June 16 summit between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, tensions between the two countries continue to mount. Whatever emerges out of the discussion between the two heads of state later this month, it is clear that Washington is pressing ahead with war preparations against Moscow while the Kremlin searches about for military and economic means to hold onto power.

In this March 10, 2011, file photo, then Vice President Joe Biden, left, shakes hands with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

On Thursday, the Russian government declared that it is liquidating its dollar holdings in its National Welfare Fund (NWF), a financial reserve built up largely on the basis of the country’s oil wealth that is estimated to be now worth about $186 billion. After shedding $41 billion of American currency, the NWF will be made up of a combination of the euro, the yuan, and gold.

The decision is widely seen as a preemptive move intended to shield the country against the possible imposition of economic sanctions by Washington that target Russia’s ability to carry out financial transactions in the US dollar. It follows on the heels of statements by Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina that the government is exploring the creation of a digital currency, with a similar aim in mind. Already, most of the trade between Russia and China is not denominated in the US dollar.

Moscow is preparing for the prospect of being frozen out of the dollar-denominated global financial system as political and military pressure on the Kremlin intensifies.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declared Wednesday that hackers operating from Russian territory were responsible for a recent cyberattack on American meat producer JBS, which owns about one-quarter of the US beef processing plants. Despite failing to make public any evidence and acknowledging that there was no indication that the Russian government was behind the attack, the White House warned that it was “not taking any options off the table, in terms of how we respond.”

The same day, NATO-member Turkey announced that it is expelling an entire cohort of Russian specialists working in the country to help it set up a Russian-made S-400 anti-aircraft weapon system. Turkish officials said that the decision was made after discussions with the US. Sudan, where Russia was to have established its first African military base, simultaneously announced that it is reviewing its decision to allow the Russian navy to set up in its port on the Red Sea.

At the start of June, American forces began training operations with Sweden in the Arctic, a region that Moscow has identified as being of key economic and geopolitical significance. Russia’s arctic region accounts for 10 percent of the country’s GDP and 20 percent of its exports.

This is unfolding as NATO is conducting massive anti-Russian, European-wide military exercises, known as Defender-2021, over the course of the summer. They involve ground, air and naval forces along the entire stretch of Russia’s western borders, focusing on areas of key geostrategic significance for Russia.

On May 24, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reported that so far, in just this year alone, the American-led alliance has carried out seven training operations on Ukrainian territory and in the Black Sea.

On May 31, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu accused NATO of intending to use a military exercise unfolding in late June and early July in Ukraine to deploy weapons intended for use in the Donbass, where breakaway pro-Russian republics were formed after the coming to power of a far-right, anti-Russian government in a US-backed coup in 2014. Kiev said this spring that it intends to retake the region by force. With the aid of Washington, Russia’s western neighbor has massively upgraded its fighting capacities over the last several years and currently has 255,000 regular troops and another 900,000 in reserve. It spends the equivalent of 4.1 percent of its GDP on the military, up from 1.5 percent prior to the 2014 coup.

Shoigu, who declared earlier this week that “the actions of our Western colleagues are destroying the system of security in the world and forcing us to take adequate countermeasures,” has announced the creation of 20 new Russian military divisions on the country’s western front. They are being formed with the express purpose of fighting NATO.

The upcoming US-Russia summit was called after Russian ally Belarus hijacked a civilian aircraft in order to detain a government opponent on board. While Washington stopped short of accusing Moscow of green-lighting Minsk’s actions, which the Kremlin only hesitatingly defended, the sanctions unleashed against the Belarusian government damage Russia too because of the close economic ties between the two countries and their shared border.

This summer, alongside a nationwide review of the country’s fighting capacity, Russia is initiating military exercises jointly with Belarus in an operation titled Zapad-2021 (West-2021). On June 3, Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s director of foreign intelligence, accused the West of engaging in hybrid warfare aimed at undermining Russian and Belarusian sovereignty. “We will not tolerate this,” he declared.

Following the Biden administration’s confirmation that the US would withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, a unilateral step decided by the Trump administration last year, Moscow this week also formally pulled out of the international agreement. The Open Skies Treaty allowed for over-flights of each other’s territory to monitor one another’s military forces and activities. In addition, Moscow is ending the so-called “open lands” accord, a 1992 agreement with the United States that allowed diplomats from each state to travel freely within each country without special permission.

The American war drive against China, which has escalated dramatically in recent weeks with the announcement that the US is once again investigating the prospect that the coronavirus was leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, looms over the conflict between Washington and Moscow.

With the Kremlin driven into a corner, speculation abounds about the prospect of a Russian-Chinese military alliance, which some in the Russian oligarchy see as a way out. In a recent interview with Gazeta.ru, Russian Army General and former Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, Yuri Baluyevsky, declared, “In terms of a military alliance, personally I would want the conclusion of such a union between Russia and China.” He added, however, that “it was still too early” to talk about joint operations between the two countries.

But even as ties between the two countries are deepening and both face relentless threats from the United States, tensions between China and Russia remain. China, which has an economy eight times the size of Russia’s, vastly overshadows Russia in terms of its economic capacities, potential military might and population size. While China is Russia’s top trading partner, Russia, in turn, does not rank even among China’s top 13. Sections of the Russian elite are fearful of being drawn into an alliance that could come at a very high cost.

Also speaking to Gazeta.ru, General-Colonel Sergei Kizyun, former head of the Leningrad military district, observed, “It’s entirely unclear in the event of a military conflict which of Russia and China’s armed forces could act together. For example, for us there is no point in participating in an armed struggle by Beijing for the island of Taiwan, any other island in this region, or in supporting the People’s Liberation Army in a hypothetical war with India.”

As Colombia’s right-wing government mounts savage repression, Canada criticizes “violence” of impoverished protesters

Roger Jordan

Strikes and protests in Colombia triggered by a regressive tax reform and fueled by hostility to police violence, widespread poverty, social inequality and political corruption have been ongoing for over a month. According to Amnesty International, at least 400 people have been disappeared by the country’s paramilitary police, which had committed 1,876 acts of violence against protesters as of May 9.

The latest estimates put the death toll at over 60 since the protests began. This figure rose by at least 10 last weekend after police savagely repressed demonstrations in the city of Cali on Friday, May 28. Far-right President Ivan Duque responded by calling in the military.

Protesters clash with police in Madrid, on the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

Yet as far as Canada’s Liberal government is concerned, the protesters are as guilty of perpetrating “violence” as the thuggish US- and Canadian-backed Duque regime. In a cynical statement released last month that painted a fraudulent picture of even-handedness, Foreign Minister Marc Garneau managed to avoid mentioning Duque or his far-right government, never mind the heavily armed paramilitary police force that has used American- and Canadian-made weaponry to terrorize protesters.

While condemning the “disproportionate” use of force by vaguely defined “security forces,” Garneau emphasized, “We are also concerned with the acts of vandalism and attacks directed against public officials responsible for the protection of all Colombian citizens. Canada calls upon those responsible for road blockades to allow the free passage of goods and services essential to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This is the same lying propaganda used by the Duque regime to blackguard any opposition as illegal and thereby justify its vicious repression, and covers up the fact that the main reason for the disastrous COVID-19 situation is the refusal of successive governments to adequately fund health care and social services. Underscoring that Ottawa is firmly on the side of its authoritarian ally in Bogota, Garneau concluded his statement by praising the Duque government’s bogus “commitment to fully investigate and hold accountable those who may be guilty of violating human rights.”

In other words, even though photographic and video evidence together with eyewitness testimony confirm that widespread abuses have been carried out by state forces at the behest of the Duque government, Ottawa is not only content with the perpetrators investigating themselves but is also calling into question whether human rights violations have in fact occurred.

Garneau’s statement, like the brutal state repression of the Colombian protesters, has passed almost without comment in the Canadian media and political establishment. This only goes to show the hypocritical double standards of Canadian imperialism. While establishment politics has been rife in recent months with lurid allegations about a “genocide” carried out by China against the Uyghur population, for which there is no evidence, the well-documented killing and sexual abuse of protesters in Colombia have provoked barely a peep of concern from the “human rights” crusaders in the editorial offices of the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, or from the Liberal, New Democrat, Greens, Conservative and Bloc Québécois parliamentarians.

The NDP, which has been propping up the Liberal government since the 2019 federal election, chose for its own reasons to totally ignore Garneau’s defence of the repressive Duque regime. In its only statement to date on Colombia, released nine days after Garneau’s declaration of support for Duque, the NDP provided cover for the Trudeau government by portraying it as a neutral arbiter in Colombia. “Canadians are very concerned about what is happening in Colombia and want to be assured that the Liberal government is doing all it can to stand up for human and civil rights,” stated the NDP.

Canadian imperialism is in no position to lecture anyone about human rights anywhere in Latin America, especially Colombia. The country, whose capitalist elite waged a five-decade-long bloody civil war against the FARC guerrilla movement until 2017, is one of the closest allies of Canadian and US imperialism in the region. It has served as a base of intrigue and is a firm ally in imperialist-orchestrated provocations against the Maduro regime in Venezuela, which the US-Canada imperialist alliance sees as critical to maintaining their dominance in the hemisphere against rivals like Russia and China. Colombia is also home to billions of dollars in investments by Canadian mining and other commercial interests.

Bogota played host in February 2019 to a meeting of the Lima Group at which then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued belligerent threats against the Venezuelan government and demanded that the Maduro regime recognize the self-appointed interim president and opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.

The Lima Group is a coalition of North and South American states led by Canada that has worked tirelessly since its founding in 2017 to give Washington’s aggressive military provocations against Venezuela a degree of diplomatic legitimacy. It was central to the US-backed regime change operation fronted by Guaido, who declared himself Venezuelan president in January 2019 after receiving assurances of support from Canadian diplomats and backing from the Lima Group.

Just one week prior to the Bogota meeting of the Lima Group, Colombia’s top military commander was in Florida for a meeting with the US Southern Command to discuss military operations against Venezuela. Six weeks later, Guaido and his right-wing pro-imperialist backers launched another ill-fated coup that was rapidly suppressed.

Throughout the Colombian civil war and up to the present day, Washington has supplied firearms and other military equipment to the army and police, both under the control of the country’s Defence Ministry. Earlier this month, Amnesty International issued a statement noting that it has visual evidence of US-made weaponry being used to repress protesters.

“The United States’ role in fueling ceaseless cycles of violence committed against the people of Colombia is outrageous,” commented Philippe Nassif, the advocacy director for Amnesty USA. “The United States government has been an agonizing party to the killing, disappearances, sexual violence and other torture, and horrendous repression of dozens of mostly peaceful demonstrations.”

Much less known, however, is Canada’s booming business in supplying lethal weaponry to the murderous regime in Bogota. Under the Chretien-Martin Liberal government, Canada shipped its surplus military CH-135 helicopters through the US to Colombia to evade export controls on military equipment to countries engaged in armed conflict. In a 2001 briefing, Amnesty International Canada and the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America noted that Canadian companies carried out extensive maintenance and repair work on Colombian military equipment, including helicopters. Prohibitions on the conducting of such work on military equipment destined for countries engaged in armed conflict were circumvented by classifying the helicopters as “civilian” aircraft.

In 2012, the Harper government added Colombia to the list of countries that are eligible to receive exports of high-powered assault weapons from Canadian manufacturers. Among the weaponry this decision allowed Canadian producers to sell to Bogota were electric stun guns, fully automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines. At the time, Colombia was the only country in Latin America to receive such a designation from Ottawa.

In 2017, the Trudeau government announced the deployment of a small contingent of Canadian police officers to help train the Colombian police, the same force that is now savagely gunning down protesters.

Ottawa’s firm backing for the repressive Colombian government expresses the predatory interests of Canadian imperialism, which has enjoyed a significant economic and financial presence in Latin America and the Caribbean for over a century. Over the past two decades, Colombia has emerged as Canada’s second most important export market in South America, after Brazil. Canadian companies have invested more than $5 billion in Colombia, including in the mining and energy sectors, financial services and lucrative public/private partnership contracts for infrastructure projects.

Ottawa finalized a free trade agreement (FTA) with Colombia in 2011. By 2019, trade between the two countries had risen by 50 percent. Export Development Canada, a government agency that helps Canadian businesses establish and maintain a presence in foreign markets, enthused in a 2019 that the Colombian market had been “reinvigorated” for Canadian big business. “The FTA provides Canadian companies with a competitive edge by protecting our intellectual property and investments,” noted the EDC. “Today, more than 100 Canadian companies operate in Colombia.”

The methods which these companies use to “protect their investments” in Colombia are ruthless. Toronto-based Grand Colombia Gold (GCG), which purchased the title to a gold mine near the town of Segovia for $205 million in 2010, promptly reversed the previous owner’s policies of allowing locals to mine secondary shafts at the site, a practice that has been engaged in for centuries.

GCG labelled these miners, who have no other means of making a living, as “illegal miners” who are “stealing gold” from the company. When the Colombian government refused to enforce the company’s title, fearing a social explosion in Segovia, a town of 42,500 inhabitants, 80 percent of whom are employed by the small-scale traditional mining sector, GCG used the FTA to sue Bogota for a minimum of $250 million in damages.

In Marmato, a mountaintop village about a seven-hour drive from Segovia, GCG proposed razing the village of 8,000 residents to the ground in order to build an open pit gold mine on land it bought up from local miners.

It should come as no surprise that a ruling class capable of employing such brutal methods of exploitation to boost corporate profits turns a blind eye to the massacring of dozens of protesters and the disappearance of hundreds more, especially when the government responsible for these outrageous crimes is a willing partner of Canadian imperialism’s plundering of Colombia’s natural resources.

Macron demands Malian junta endorse French occupation of Mali

Kumaran Ira

Speaking last Sunday to Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), French President Emmanuel Macron arrogantly demanded that the Malian military junta state its support for the French occupation of Mali.

France’s eight-year war in Mali, launched shortly after a coup d’état in 2012, has relied on a series of neocolonial military dictatorships in Mali and across the Sahel. Macron spoke less than a week after Colonel Assimi Goïta, the strongman of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP) junta, arrested interim President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane. Goïta forced them to resign, after having first ousted President Ibrahim Boubakar Keïta in a coup last August.

French President Emmanuel Macron [Sebastien Nogier, Pool via AP]

Yet Macron unblushingly told the JDD that France will not remain “at the side of a country where there is no more democratic legitimacy.” He shamelessly demanded that the Malian government and people should state its gratitude to its French military occupiers.

Macron complained, “It is precisely those who are asking us to intervene militarily who refuse to publicly state their need for France. They are used to saying that their problems today are due to the old colonial powers of yesterday. Of course, colonization has left a deep mark. But I also told youth in Ouagadougou that their problems today are not due to colonialism, they are caused more by bad governance by some and the corruption of others.”

He spoke to the JDD amid mounting anger and disillusionment with the war across the Sahel, as well as in France, and shortly after the National Workers’ Union of Mali (UNTM) bureaucracy called off a nationwide strike to oppose falling living standards in the impoverished country. It was an empty exercise in political damage control, yet after another coup in Mali exposed Macron’s fraudulent claims that France is intervening in Mali to protect democracy from Islamism.

Last week, Washington and the European powers went through the motions of condemning the recent coup and threatening economic sanctions. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union both suspended Mali’s membership. “Like ECOWAS, France believes that organizing presidential elections in Mali on February 27, 2022 is an absolute priority,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Monday.

Such posturing about democratic values is a disgusting political fraud. France and all the NATO powers have close ties with the bloody Egyptian military junta of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, which drowned mass working class protests in blood, and have backed Islamist militias in wars in both Libya and Syria. As for Le Drian, he is infamous not only for his close ties to al-Sisi and other bloody African dictators, but for helping French presidents select targets for France’s extrajudicial assassination program.

Goïta clearly calculated, as he launched his latest coup last month, that Paris will support his junta if he creates conditions for the French war in Mali to continue. Indeed, Macron backed Goïta’s coup last year as the only way to continue the war amid mounting protests and popular opposition to the French military presence in its former colony.

While making clear he would work with the Malian junta, Macron issued a bizarre denunciation of political Islamism in Mali to the JDD. He said, “Radical Islamism with our soldiers on the ground? Over my dead body. I know this temptation exists in Mali. But if things evolve this way, I will withdraw” the troops, Macron said.

Macron’s comments were astonishingly incoherent, as the pretext Paris gave for invading Mali in 2013 was to crush Islamist militias arriving in Mali from Libya. After the 2011 NATO war in Libya, ethnic Tuareg and other militias returned to northern Mali with heavy weapons, provoking a crisis in the country’s capital, Bamako. A coup toppling President Amadou Toumani Touré in March 2012 and a French military intervention in the nearby Ivory Coast militarily prepared the French intervention in Mali in 2013 and troop deployments to Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger.

It appears that Macron’s comment was not intended to seriously suggest that French troops would leave if any Islamist presence was detected in Mali, but as a signal to the Malian junta and also as an attempt at political damage control addressed to a French and European domestic audience. While French imperialism’s back channel ties to Islamist terrorist networks are an open secret in the ruling elite, Paris intends to keep control over the Malian regime’s relations to Islamist groups in order to maintain the political lie that it is present in Mali to wage a “war on terror.”

The junta has not ruled out negotiations with armed jihadist groups, and also it has ties with Islamic preachers in Mali. Goïta made clear that he would work with parties, including the June 5, 2020 Movement-Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP), to form a government. He demanded that “the prime minister’s post go to the M5-RFP.” Several M5-RFP members signaled their acceptance, with Choguel Kokalli Maiga, a M5-RFP member and former minister, declaring, “This went straight to our heart.”

The M5-RFP was the main political organization backing the CNSP’s coup last August, pushing protests by youth in Bamako into the dead end of supporting the CNSP. Paris backed both the M5-RFP and the CNSP in order to block a broader movement of the Malian oppressed masses and youth demanding the withdrawal of French troops. Significantly, France’s petty-bourgeois New Anti-capitalist Party also endorsed the M5-RFF during the military coup last year.

Within the M5-RFP, Imam Mahmoud Dicko, the former president of the Islamic High Commission of Mali (HCIM), has played an important role. He served as a mediator between the Malian government and jihadist groups in northern Mali. After supporting Keïta in the 2013 election, Dicko backed protests against Keïta in 2019 and 2020. In 2019, he launched the CMAS (Coordination of Movements, Associations and Sympathizers). In June 2020, the CMAS joined the M5-RFP.

Dicko, despite holding protests serving as a safety valve for anger at the French occupation, functions as a tool of French imperialism. In 2013, he stated that French intervention in Mali against jihadist groups was not an aggression against Islam, and that France had come to the aid of a people in distress.

At home, Macron is waging an anti-Muslim campaign. He is imposing a charter of principles on French Islam and promoting an “anti-separatist law” aimed against “Islamist separatism,” that is, at preventing any Muslim criticism of French imperialism’s predatory wars—measures designed to consolidate fascistic police-state rule against the working class. There is also mounting dissatisfaction among French troops in Mali following the rise of attacks against them by jihadist forces. So far, France has lost about 50 troops in Mali.

In this context, Macron fears the consequences if Goïta makes Bamako’s ties to Islamist forces too obvious, exposing Macron to criticism on his right from anti-Islamic neofascist forces as Macron attempts to run for reelection in 2022 despite his massive unpopularity.

The corrupt and reactionary dealings underscore the necessity of building a movement in the working class, across the Sahel and Africa as well as in France, against war and for the withdrawal of French troops from Africa.

World food prices rose 40 percent over past year amid expanding global hunger triggered by pandemic

Kevin Reed

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food price index rose by 40 percent over the past year, including a rise of 4.8 percent since April. 

The FAO report released on Thursday states: “The May increase represented the biggest month-on-month gain since October 2010. It also marked the twelfth consecutive monthly rise in the value of the FFPI to its highest value since September 2011. ... The sharp increase in May reflected a surge in prices for oils, sugar and cereals along with firmer meat and dairy prices.” The FFPI (FAO food price index) is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities.

Women wait in line for food donated by the Covid Without Hunger organization in the Jardim Gramacho slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

According to the report, corn prices are 67 percent higher than a year ago, sugar is up nearly 60 percent and prices for cooking oil have doubled. The surging food prices are catastrophic for millions of people around the globe—already facing desperate conditions from the coronavirus pandemic—with hunger driven up rapidly in the poorest countries of the world.

The UN World Food Program reports that 270 million people are currently suffering from acute malnutrition or worse situations in the 79 countries in which the agency operates, double the number in 2019. Among the regions facing a rising hunger crisis that is exacerbated by skyrocketing food prices are Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America.

The World Bank estimates that up to 124 million people sank below the international poverty line—living on less than $1.90 a day—in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Up to 39 million people more are expected to be added in 2021, taking the total number of those living in extreme poverty to 750 million people.

Analysts attributed the food cost increases to a series of global climate and economic factors. Bloomberg, for example, reported: “Drought in key Brazilian growing regions is crippling crops from corn to coffee, and vegetable oil production growth has slowed in Southeast Asia. That’s boosting costs for livestock producers and risks further straining global grain stockpiles that have been depleted by soaring Chinese demand.”

Among the food supply issues driven by China’s economic expansion are an increased demand for feed to rebuild pig herds that were struck in recent years by disease. The pig feed contains staples, such as corn and soybeans, that are also consumed by people.

Other analysts have pointed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global food supply saying that restrictions on movement have increased logistics costs while decreased incomes have driven up demand for less expensive food items.

Economists have warned that the resumption of eating out around the world, following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions despite the ongoing pandemic, is adding to price increases. Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the FAO, said, “The decline in eating out was not totally compensated with eating at home, but as people start to go to restaurants again, you will see food prices rise.”

Comparing the present increases to the food price surge 10 years ago, chief economist at the United Nations World Food Program, Arif Husain, said, “What is unique about this time is that prices are going up, and at the same time people’s incomes have been decimated. The combination of the two, rising prices and no purchasing power, is the most lethal thing you could deal with.”

The extreme global food price increases and expanding hunger are among the sharpest manifestations of the crisis of the capitalist system, posing the necessity for socialist revolution and economic planning by the international working class as an immediate life-and-death matter.

Food price inflation has developed over the past year in parallel with the spread of the deadly pandemic across the globe. While the imperialist powers have hoarded the vaccines and denied them to the poorest countries, the pandemic is now surging among these populations as the cost of the basic necessities of life are becoming increasingly out of reach.

The Wall Street Journal got right down to the primary concerns of the financial aristocracy amid the food price crisis: social instability, migration and political unrest. In an article entitled “Food Prices Soar Compounding Woes of World’s Poor,” the Wall Street Journal wrote on May 20: “Previous spikes in food and fuel prices contributed to political instability in recent decades, including the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions in 2011. While nothing of that scale has emerged this year, expensive food is part of the mix in several countries now experiencing unrest.”

Pointing to mass protests in Colombia and Sudan and rising hunger as a primary cause of migration across the US southern border—the number of people facing acute food insecurity jumped 20 percent in Guatemala and tripled in Honduras this year compared to 2019—the Wall Street Journal is raising alarm bells among the capitalist ruling elite.

The Wall Street Journal spoke with Guatemala’s coordinator of humanitarian programs for the global charity Oxfam, Iván Aguilar, who said: “In terms of food insecurity, we are at the worst point in Guatemala in at least 20 years. It’s a very worrisome combination of factors, and making things worse, you have weak governments in the region with scarce means to help the poor.”

The broader economic implications of price inflation have been discussed in recent weeks and are a growing area of concern within ruling circles, such as the US Federal Reserve Bank and the European Central Bank.

While the Biden administration has officially stated that inflation is not a concern, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on May 4 that the Federal Reserve could easily control inflationary outbreaks with interest rate hikes. However, Yellen tried to walk back those comments later that same day because raising the rates would disrupt the flow of cash into the markets that is the basis of the ongoing spectacular rise of share values on Wall Street and the unprecedented increased in the number and wealth of billionaires throughout the pandemic.