Warning strike by hospital doctors in Germany: “It’s modern slavery, nothing else”

Marianne Arens

Tens of thousands of doctors drew attention to their precarious situation on Thursday with a nationwide warning strike. Around 4,000 took part in the central rally on Frankfurt’s Römerberg. Almost 500 municipal hospitals throughout Germany were on strike, except for Hamburg and Berlin.

1 Rally of striking hospital doctors at Frankfurt's Römerberg, 31 March 2022

The doctors’ warning strike reveals a striking contradiction. Thousands of doctors made it clear that after two years of the pandemic they are working at their limit and are no longer prepared to carry on like this. They are demanding fundamental changes in a health system that is itself ill and going more and more to the dogs.

However, it is clear this is not the fight their trade union, the Marburger Bund, is waging. The Marburger Bund is a conservative professional organisation. It refuses to fight for fundamental changes to the dire conditions in hospitals and the health care system more broadly alongside other sections of the working class. On the contrary, it is trying to settle the conflict with the municipal employers as quickly as possible.

"2 years of coronavirus, this is your thanks?" reads one cardboard sign. VKA (the municipal employers association) = Completely Knackered Doctors, reads the other (Photo: 3 Waleed and Nisreen (WSWS media)

The conditions facing health care workers are part of a broader destruction of wages and working conditions impacting nurseries and schools, aviation, basic industry and virtually every other sector. To wage an effective struggle, doctors must break out of the straitjacket imposed by the unions and forge links with workers in federal and local governments and the state.

Like nurses, teachers, bus drivers and auto workers, doctors must build independent rank-and-file committees against the “profits before lives” policy of the ruling class. These committees should reach out to other sections of workers to carry out the broadest possible mobilization in defence of health care. Workers must fight for health care system in which it will be possible to work in a humane way that is safe, reasonable, healthy and employing cutting-edge science and technology.

The posters carried by the participants in the Frankfurt demonstration were a testimony to the enormous anger felt by doctors in the face of conditions that have dramatically worsened over the two years of the pandemic. One poster read, “In hospital: exhausted and badly paid!” Others read: “Doctors fight against 70-hour week,” “Work until you drop,” “You burn us out,” “Work-work balance?,” “Fair time recording: enough is enough!,” “Work until the doctor drops,” or: “Without doctors’ health—no healthy patients.”

Other slogans were: “No one is asking for champagne, just 2 weekends off,” “Yes, I am overworked—the hospital doesn’t care,” or: “...and who will look after you in the next pandemic?!”

A young couple, Waleed and Nisreen, emphasised, “For us, working conditions are most important. We have to be healthy ourselves to be able to take care of people,” Waleed explained. “Nisreen is having a baby now, and we are both doctors and we are wondering how we will do it. As a person and as a doctor—how do we go on?” Nisreen pointed out that it was simply impossible for young parents to work through three weekends a month. She also said she was afraid of contracting coronavirus.

Waleed and Nisreen (WSWS media)

“Medical workers are the cardiac mainstays of society,” Waleed continued. “To me, the pay scale is just unfair, if you take into account the training and compare us to other professions for a change.” But what was most important to them both, he said, was to see a rapid improvement in working conditions: “The situation has worsened in the last two years. Doctors are treated so badly—something simply has to change.”

Hanno from Braunschweig explained that doctors in municipal hospitals were mainly concerned with a clear limitation of night duties, on-call duties, and rest periods. “We are demanding fair working conditions,” Hanno explained. “It must be guaranteed that each of us gets at least two weekends off a month.”

Hanno from Braunschweig (WSWS media)

Recently, a survey of 3,300 doctors by the Marburger Bund found that workloads had increased significantly for 71 percent of respondents during the pandemic. Ninety-one percent of clinicians felt regularly exhausted by their work; 31 percent said this was “always” the case, and 60 percent that it was “increasingly” the case.

“We are concerned about our working conditions,” said Kent, who had come with a group of colleagues from Bremen. “They are so bad that we hardly get any new recruits at the hospitals. When I’m on duty at the weekend, I work through from Friday morning to Monday morning. I’m on call then, but for me that often means working through.”

His colleague Ekhard explained: “The employers don’t allow us the rest periods. If it was not possible to rest during the night and we go home after working through the night, this is deducted from our salary.” He added, “The medical profession is the only profession where you earn minus hours through overtime, which you then have to work off at the weekends. This is modern slavery, nothing else.”

On the coronavirus pandemic, doctors reported, “Right now, we have extremely high absenteeism. A third of the staff is missing because of the Omicron variant. They all have families; they have children at home who can’t avoid getting infected at school. But at the hospital, staffing is so thin there is no cushion. Then beds are closed, wards are closed, and treatments are cancelled.”

The Marburger Bund has been negotiating with the VKA about the conditions of almost 60,000 doctors in municipal hospitals since 14 October 2021. No progress has been made in four rounds of negotiations and two exploratory talks. VKA chief negotiator Wolfgang Heyl described the financial costs of this as “unbearable.”

However, the demands raised by the Marburger Bund in no way address the explosive situation. It is only calling for reliable rest periods, a general limitation of on-call duty to a maximum of twelve on-call shifts and two guaranteed weekends off per month. In addition, it calls for a 5.5 percent increase in salaries under conditions where inflation had already reached 7.3 percent in March. The 2020 contract already mandates two free weekends, but this does not reflect the reality.

Susanne Johna, national chairperson of the Marburger Bund, criticised the VKA’s “attitude of refusal” in Frankfurt. But this is merely a cover. In the fact that the union is fully prepared to reach a rotten agreement with the municipal employers. Moreover, the Marburger Bund is working to maintain the isolation of doctors and is fundamentally unwilling to extend the fight to other sections of workers.

Group from Rosenheim, Bavaria. Their posters read from the left, “I’m a doctor, not a Duracell bunny”, “The VKA diet=losing 32 weekends a year”, and “Tired doctors make mistakes”.]

When the contract was terminated on 30 September 2021, thousands of nurses at the Charité and Vivantes hospitals in Berlin took industrial action last autumn. Across the country, workers in other sectors of the public sector repeatedly took to the streets to fight against exploitation and wage theft. But in this situation, the Marburger Bund refused to mobilise doctors alongside their colleagues.

At the end of November, the unions Verdi (public service), GEW (education) and IG BAU (construction) agreed to a foul sell-out that condemned over a million workers nationwide to forego any wage increase for 14 months, until 1 December 2022 (!).

French presidential candidates silent on COVID-19’s human cost

Anthony Torres

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed millions and profoundly destabilized global capitalism, accelerating the economic, social, and political crisis in France. It is once again on the rise again in France with more than 200,000 new cases and hundreds of deaths every day. Nevertheless, the candidates in the upcoming presidential election are strikingly silent on the human toll of COVID-19.

France has seen over 26 million infections, or nearly 40 percent of the population, and 142,000 deaths. Across Europe there have been 179 million infections and 1.8 million deaths. Among workers, the pandemic has impacted every family. Everyone has a relative, child or friend who has been more or less seriously infected with COVID-19. In the last seven days alone, France has recorded 1 million cases and 815 deaths from the virus.

A Medical worker watches a patient affected with COVID-19 inside a Marseille hospital, southern France [Credit: AP Photo/Daniel Cole]

The resumption of the epidemic can be explained in part by the arrival of the BA.2 variant, aided by the lifting of health restrictions since February 16. The BA.2 is more virulent than the Omicron variant, which infected around 14 million people in France between December and February.

In the presidential campaign, the suffering of millions mourning the loss of loved ones, living with the short- and long-term effects of the virus, or fighting for their lives against the illness counts for absolutely nothing. Everything is subordinated to the maintenance of economic activity, or to be more precise, to the need to maintain the flow of trillions of euros directly into the pockets of the banks and the financial aristocracy.

At a press conference presenting his re-election platform, Emmanuel Macron did not say a word about the pandemic, only mentioning “a crisis of meaning among many health professionals” when discussing his plans for health care. It was as if the pandemic had never happened. The word “COVID” does not even appear in Macron’s presidential program.

The other candidates, regardless of their political coloration, are silent on the enormous human cost of Macron’s criminal management of the pandemic and do not warn of the deadly danger posed by the resumption of the pandemic and Macron’s lifting of all health restrictions. This is in stark contrast to the warnings from scientists and doctors that the pandemic is not over.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Wednesday, March 9, that “the pandemic is far from over, and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere. The virus continues to evolve, and we continue to face major obstacles in distributing vaccines, tests, and treatments everywhere they are needed. ... [S]everal countries are drastically reducing testing. This inhibits our ability to see where the virus is, how it’s spreading and how it’s evolving.”

The silence of other candidates allowed Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Rally (RN) party to make hollow criticisms of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Asked about the policy she would have applied since March 2020, the former RN leader said she would have done “radically differently on the entire health crisis.” Le Pen claimed she would not have “lied about the masks” or “about the tests,” referring to “statements by Emmanuel Macron and the government on the subject, which have changed over time.”

This is hollow posturing. Le Pen’s goal is not to eliminate the transmission of the virus and stop the pandemic. Her party and other neo-fascist parties have been the driving force behind protests demanding the end to all health restrictions. A real international eradication strategy, like the one China is pursuing, though on a national level, can only be achieved through the conscious, international mobilization of the working class against the ruling elites who are pursuing a policy of mass infection.

The absence of COVID-19 from the candidates’ speeches underlines their support for the “living with the virus” policy of Macron and the financial aristocracy. It also exposes pseudo-left parties like Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise (LFI, Unsubmissive France), who have supported the strategy of mitigation and, ultimately, of herd immunity pursued by Macron and the EU.

Mélenchon’s program only mentions the coronavirus a handful of times, to mechanically call for increased spending on health care and hospitals. But like all the other candidates, Mélenchon is silent about the human cost of the pandemic and its management by the Europe’s capitalist governments. Indeed, this is a social crime that has cost millions of lives and in which the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left parties are implicated in the same way as Macron and the far right.

The pseudo-left LFI, the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), and Workers’ Struggle (LO) backed the demonstrations against vaccination and the health pass in the summer of 2021. This winter, they endorsed the “freedom convoys,” inspired by far-right demonstrations in Canada linked to the neo-Nazi forces that staged the January 6, 2021 coup attempt to keep Trump in the presidency despite his election loss to Biden.

These organizations, while acknowledging the presence of the far right in these mobilizations, falsely claimed that they defended the interests of workers against austerity.

Mélenchon’s role is unmasked by the politics of his sister party, Podemos, in Spain, which is in power with the social democrats of the PSOE. The PSOE and Podemos declared in mid-January that the pandemic would be treated in the future like the flu. Testing and contact tracing have been drastically reduced, and the counting of new infections will be suspended in large parts of Spain.

With blatant disregard for the deaths and various illnesses that COVID-19 infections will cause, Podemos is promoting mass infection. Infected people who develop mild symptoms will go to work or school to infect others. Testing or isolation at home will no longer be mandatory. Only high-risk individuals will continue to be subject to the previous health measures. The only obligation that remains for the time being is the wearing of masks in indoor public places, as well as in transport.

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen surges in French presidential polls

Alex Lantier

Over the past week, neo-fascist French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has been rising rapidly in the polls, while incumbent Emmanuel Macron has been falling rapidly. Le Pen’s vote stands at around 21 percent, up 2 to 4 points depending on the polls, while Macron’s fell by 4 points to 27 percent.

It is now clear that the election of a neo-fascist French president is a real possibility, although Unsubmissive France (LFI) candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has also risen in the polls, from 11 to 15.5 percent. According to the latest Elabe poll, Le Pen would win 47.5 percent of the vote if placed against Macron in the second round. In previous polls, she was credited with 45 percent of the vote in a second round match-up against Macron.

Far-right leader Marine le Pen attends a press conference in Toulon, southern France, June 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

The result of these polls has triggered worried speculation in ruling circles, starting with Macron himself. The head of state absurdly insisted that he bore no responsibility for the rise of the far right in France.

“I have never trivialised the National Front,” Macron said at a campaign stop in Fouras, referring to the former name of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party. Asked afterwards about a possible neo-fascist election victory, he refused to comment on “something that does not exist.”

Macron was contradicted by his own former prime minister, Edouard Philippe. “Of course, Marine Le Pen can win,” Philippe told Le Parisien. He continued, “I fear a high abstention, which is never a sign of good democratic health.”

Philippe added that the presidential campaign of far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, who this week caused a scandal by calling for the “extermination of scum” in France, is helping Marine Le Pen. Philippe said, “I also note that the very aggressive nature of Eric Zemmour, the often outrageous nature of his remarks, seem to soften her by comparison.” However, he added, “If she won, things would, believe me, be seriously different for the country.”

Business leaders have already made it clear that they believe Macron’s candidacy is far weaker than it appears and that they also fear the consequences of a possible Le Pen victory.

Movement of French Enterprises (MEDEF) President Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux has already let it be known that the MEDEF could accept a Mélenchon presidency. The president of the employers’ organisation endorsed Mélenchon, whom he said is “ready to govern.” De Bézieux added, “Yes, our disagreements are deep. But even our opponents recognise it: the favourite of the left for the presidential election is ready to govern, with a solid and coherent program.”

The financial aristocracy and the Paris stock market have closely followed the policies of LFI’s sister party, Podemos, which is in power in Spain. Podemos has slashed social spending to increase the military budget, pursued a policy of mass infection during the COVID-19 pandemic, and armed neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine against Russia. The MEDEF is confident that a Mélenchon victory would maintain this right-wing course and therefore gives him a blank cheque.

The leadership of LFI, for its part, has signaled that despite its candidate’s rise in the polls, it will limit itself to the role of supporter to a possible Macron victory. Mélenchon’s assistant in the LFI leadership, Adrien Quatennens, stressed that in the event of a Macron-Le Pen second round, LFI would make a barely veiled call to vote for Macron. “We will take a stand,” he said, to “say that not one vote should go to the far right.”

Quatennens added that the LFI leadership would organise a “consultation” of LFI members and supporters, hoping to determine how best to package a call to vote Macron. However, he said that LFI is concerned that it will not be able to influence its voters: “People will do what they want. And that’s why we are going to consult the base. To find out what they want to do. But let’s be clear: voting RN [National Rally, Le Pen’s party] will not be an option.”

Powerful reserves of opposition exist among workers and young people, directed against both Macron and Le Pen. But this opposition cannot find expression without breaking the political straitjacket imposed on it by reactionary pseudo-left parties like LFI.

Indeed, in the Macron-Le Pen run-off in the 2017 elections, two-thirds of LFI voters were hostile to both Macron and Le Pen. It was by appealing to this opposition that the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) of France launched the call for an active boycott of the second round in 2017, and for the building of a politically independent movement in the working class against the winning candidate, whoever that might be.

However, in 2017 Mélenchon as well as New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) candidate Philippe Poutou both made clear, in language mirroring that of Quatennens in 2022, that they backed Macron. Even if their support for Macron was somewhat masked, it was nonetheless very real. The NPA and LFI played a key role in the first major eruption of social opposition to Macron: “Yellow vest” protests for social equality were violently repressed by Macron while the NPA, LFI and the union bureaucracies did nothing to mobilize workers in their support.

It is this working class opposition, not an aversion to neo-fascism, that underlies the MEDEF’s unease about Le Pen. The bourgeoisie accommodated itself to the installation of Philippe Pétain as a Nazi collaborationist dictator by the vote of the National Assembly on July 10, 1940 following the defeat of France by the Nazi Wehrmacht. It could accommodate a Le Pen president. But it fears the conclusions that millions of workers and youth would draw from the election of a president whose political heritage goes back to the collaboration with Nazism.

Indeed, the increasing danger of the installation of a neo-fascist government only underlines the warning issued by the SEP in 2017: The turn of the ruling elites towards fascistic dictatorship cannot be opposed from within the framework of the institutions of the capitalist state.

This requires mobilizing workers internationally in a struggle against capitalism and imperialist war, in opposition to all of the political forces that try to bind them to a bankrupt capitalist system.

Macron’s presidency has seen an international eruption of class struggle. The first major strikes in decades in the US in auto factories, schools and mines, and struggles like the “yellow vests” in France and the 2019-21 Algerian protests (called Revolution of Smiles or Hirak Movement) have launched a wave of strikes and protests that are now shaking every continent in the world. The LFI, the NPA, the CGT union apparatus and their counterparts internationally have gone in a diametrically opposed direction in response to the explosive entry of the masses into political struggle.

The evolution of the ruling elite, including its supposedly “left” fractions, has been to the right, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. LFI and its allies aligned themselves with neo-fascist-dominated anti-health pass protests that opposed a scientific fight against the transmission of the virus. Now they are all supporting the intervention in Ukraine by France and NATO, which are arming far-right Ukrainian nationalist militias against Russia.

Shanghai under citywide lockdown as COVID-19 cases continue to climb

Benjamin Mateus

“It is an arduous task and huge challenge to combat the Omicron variant while maintaining the normal operation of core functions in a megacity with a population of 25 million,” Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said over the weekend as she toured Shanghai amid its lockdowns. New cases have been climbing rapidly, necessitating harsh measures to bring the outbreak under swift control.

A health worker in protective suit takes a throat swab sample from a resident at an outdoor coronavirus testing site, Wednesday, March 23, 2022, in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

The outbreak in Shanghai is primarily a byproduct of local authorities having resisted employing more stringent measures earlier, allowing the situation to spiral to its current state.

The visit by Sun, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, served to assure the population that there would be “unswerving adherence to the dynamic Zero-COVID approach and mobilizing COVID-19 testing capacity, medical personnel, and COVID-19 prevention supplies to support Shanghai in the fight against the epidemic.”

It was also intended to quell concerns raised in Chinese social media, which had been gaining international interest about the death of a nurse suffering from an asthma exacerbation who was denied entry into a hospital. Additional concerns being raised are that the lockdowns were being extended beyond what authorities had promised and concerns over access to food and supplies.

However, consistent with President Xi Jinping’s previous concerns over minimizing disruptions to the economic infrastructure, Sun stressed that “key industries and institutions” would operate under a “strict closed-loop management” that could ensure “the normal operation of core functions and the stability of supply and industrial chains.”

A concept borrowed from the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021 and applied to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics meant that some large-scale manufacturers with the ability to house workers in their compounds and act quickly ahead of lockdown orders could continue running their operations. Reuter reported last week that “GM, which said [last] Monday that its Shanghai joint venture was producing normally, declined to comment on the arrangements at its factory. A spokesperson said the company and its joint ventures had developed and were executing contingency plans with their suppliers to mitigate uncertainty related to COVID-19. SAIC [Chinese state-owned automaker in joint venture with GM] did not have immediate comment.”

Shanghai’s two-phased lockdown was modified into a full-scale lockdown late Thursday night as new cases of COVID-19 were discovered, underscoring the silent uncontrolled community spread that had been underway for several weeks.

The National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China reported there had been 13,146 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Sunday, of which 11,691 were asymptomatic. In March alone, there were more than 100,000 infections reported.

Yesterday’s numbers make for the highest single-day figure in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. The high number of asymptomatic cases has been attributed to both the character of the Omicron strain and early detection due to mass testing, a fundamental strategy for the Chinese Zero-COVID strategy.

Figure 1 Daily COVID cases China March 1 to April 3, 2022. Source WSWS

Zhang Boli, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and head of the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, explained that the increase in vaccination rates has helped boost population immunity. Health officials have reported that more than 3.27 billion doses of COVID vaccines have been administered.

Yet, those over 80 years of age and the most vulnerable are the least vaccinated in China. And a considerable number of those 60 and older have only received two doses. Like Hong Kong, a policy of allowing the virus to spread with meager mitigation measures would have deadly consequences.

Wu Zunyou, principal epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the Global Times about the vast number of asymptomatic cases , “It is the result of our effective epidemic prevention work, namely the early identification of the epidemic, timely response, and the whole process management of all infected people, including the asymptomatic cases…” However, Wu acknowledged epidemic controls will grow more challenging if daily infections continue to rapidly rise above 10,000 in the city.

Resources are currently being mobilized to protect the health system in Shanghai. Health care workers from neighboring provinces are being mobilized to assist in mass testing and the building of makeshift hospitals to manage asymptomatic infections. Additionally, food and necessities are being directed to support the population with volunteers working round the clock.

According to the Shanghai Health Commission, the city launched a citywide COVID-19 antigen self-testing campaign to identify early cases based on a self-reporting system. This will be followed by Monday’s citywide Nucleic Acid testing (PCR). In all, 32.74 million PCR tests have been conducted in the city since March 28, 2022, when the phased lockdown commenced. For this monumental undertaking, a sample collection site has been set up for every 3,000 residents, with the samples reaching testing institutes about once every hour.

However, rather than acknowledging the complex network of operations that have had to be mobilized in short order to ensure that millions are protected from infection and the virus can be suppressed and eliminated, the primary focus of the Western mainstream media is to take advantage of the chaotic nature of these developments and malign these efforts in the realm of public opinion.

In particular, the New York Times has chosen to focus on the separation of some children from their parents during the lockdown and mass testing, which was met with an outpouring of anger and frustration on Chinese social media.

They wrote, “In the images [photos and videos], a series of hospital cribs, each holding several young children, appeared to be parked in the hallway of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in the city’s Jinshan District. A video showed several of the children crying.” The health center acknowledged that these images were authentic. And indeed, these are concerning. However, in the context of the outbreak and its dangers to the population, it is self-serving of the New York Times which is using this to discredit the tremendous effort undertaken in the face of the Omicron variant in Shanghai. The same leading press of American liberalism has repeatedly published demands for living with the virus.

Meanwhile 243,000 children in the US have lost a caregiver to COVID-19 over the last two years. Of these, 194,000 lost both parents. As Scientific American noted, “The psychological and economic aftershocks can have lifetime negative impacts on their education and career.” Meanwhile, as the BA.2 surge begins to catch steam, more than 700 people are dying from COVID-19 each day in the United States. Almost 1,500 children in the US have been killed throughout the pandemic, two-thirds of them during the last eight months, as a byproduct of the bipartisan policy of ensuring schools would remain open during repeated waves of infection.

Meanwhile, the Chinese CDC has said a new strain of the virus was isolated from a patient with mild COVID-19 symptoms in Suzhou, approximately 43 miles from Shanghai, which has never been sequenced before. According to Bloomberg, it appears to have evolved from the BA.1.1 branch of the Omicron variant .

Despite the stringent measures, the dynamic Zero-COVID strategy remains popular in China. The global experience with COVID-19, particularly in the US, where 1 million people have been killed by COVID-19, has not escaped the population. Dr. Q, a cardiologist in Shenyang, acknowledged that a “live with the virus” scenario in China would lead to the death of well over a million people. “And I would be the first to catch it and bring it to my mother, who is over 70, and I fear what would happen to her.”

COVID-19 deaths escalate across the Pacific

John Braddock

Thousands of COVID-19 cases, including of the virulent Omicron strain, which gained a foothold in Pacific nations in January, are continuing to be recorded across the region. Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, and Vanuatu all recently recorded their first COVID-related deaths.

The Pacific islands, which saw virtually no infections in 2020–2021 due to their geographic isolation, small populations and strict border controls, are now battling outbreaks—even as local governments end restrictions in line with the global drive to open borders and economies at the expense of public health measures.

Medical staff of Papua New Guinea’s Defense Force received hands-on training on COVID-19 response. (WHO/ Papua New Guinea)

Health experts and aid organisations fear the virus could be devastating to the impoverished countries, made more vulnerable by fragile health care systems and high rates of noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease.

In Tonga, COVID-19 infections are continuing to climb as the kingdom reels from the destructive January 15 volcanic eruption and tsunami. Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni has recently been in self-isolation, along with half the cabinet, after testing positive for COVID.

On March 21, the government imposed a week of new lockdown rules after health authorities recorded a total of 1,819 active cases and the country’s first 2 deaths, a figure which has now risen to 6. Some COVID victims initially had their deaths attributed to other illnesses.

Before this year, Tonga, with a population of 105,000, had recorded just one COVID-19 case. By April 1 there were 6,423. The outbreak began with two port workers unloading ships bringing in aid to the capital Nuku’alofa following the eruption. The Australian navy vessel, HMAS Adelaide, had reported 23 of its crew were infected with the virus when it arrived on January 26, but the ship has not been confirmed as the source.

A lockdown in early February was eased by the government, allowing the virus to spread. Now a daily average of 229 new infections are being recorded. Tonga has administered 147,193 doses of COVID vaccines, enough to have vaccinated just 70.4 percent of the population. At the current rate, it will take a further 80 days to cover the next 10 percent of the population. This does not include booster doses needed to counter the Omicron variant.

Tonga is dealing with a double disaster. Editor of Matangi Tonga, Pesi Fonua, told Radio New Zealand that the volcanic eruption recovery has been severely hampered by the COVID-19 outbreak. Under the recent “hard” lockdown all businesses, including retail and petrol stations, were closed for a week. The public, with essential health workers exempted, were only allowed to venture out between 8am and 8pm to go to health facilities and tend to plantations.

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano left more than 84 percent of the country covered with volcanic ash. The cost of recovery is estimated to be more than $US90 million. Officials estimate more than $US20m in damages to the agriculture sector, which involves roughly 86 percent of the population. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has warned the ash could delay or stunt harvests and impact fisheries, crops and livestock.

At the end of March, Samoa, American Samoa and Vanuatu all reported their first COVID -related deaths. The Samoan fatality, of a 67-year-old man, came 13 days after the first community transmission case was detected on March 17. Fifteen initial infections were passengers on a repatriation flight from New Zealand in early March. Case numbers have since risen sharply to 2,331 with over 1,500 active. Health Ministry data shows that 101 children under five have tested positive, with infections significantly higher among those aged from 15 to 35.

The Samoan government extended an existing lockdown for another two weeks on March 24 because of the rapid community spread. Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said the surge in cases was “expected” and would continue to increase due to the transmissibility of the virus. Only 66 percent of the population is double vaccinated.

Notwithstanding the ongoing surge of the disease and risks involved, cabinet last week reduced the quarantine time for visitors to seven days. Over 200 passengers on a March 29 flight from New Zealand were the first to quarantine for a week rather than 14 days. The move is particularly reckless given New Zealand is grappling with an Omicron outbreak that has resulted in nearly 400 deaths so far. In October 2019, a measles outbreak in Samoa, originating in Auckland, led to 83 deaths, mostly of children.

Vanuatu’s Ministry of Health also confirmed the first two Covid-19 related deaths in the country on March 31. Minister Bruno Lengkon said the victims, a 22-year-old woman from Port Vila and a five-year old boy, both had underlying conditions. The total number of confirmed cases since the beginning of 2022 is now 3,881.

Authorities are blaming “hesitation” about vaccinations, especially in the capital. Only 27.7 percent of the 307,000 population is double vaccinated. Meanwhile, the first 20,000 AstraZeneca vaccines have been destroyed after they expired. The Ministry said they arrived on time but were not used soon enough.

Low vaccination rates across the Pacific are bound up with the policies of vaccine inequity, which have seen wealthy countries appropriate supplies of vaccines for their own use, as well as the low numbers of the necessary medical equipment and personnel to carry out mass campaigns. According to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, 75 percent of the world’s vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries.

Vaccine access has been thwarted by nationalism, profiteering and opposition by the imperialist powers to any coordinated international campaign to combat the pandemic. The situation across the Pacific is exacerbated by the legacy of a century of neo-colonial domination, which has left the region with disastrously low levels of health and education infrastructure.

In Vanuatu, life expectancy is just 67 years for men, and 70 for women. Health expenditure per capita is under a quarter of the Western Pacific regional average. There is a severe shortage of qualified health care professionals and equipment. Travel restrictions due to the pandemic meant that overseas health specialists could not enter to undertake consultation and treatment work or for training of the local health workforce.

American Samoa recorded its first death from the virus on March 22. The number of COVID cases in the US territory has been climbing steadily since the first community case appeared in mid-February. Total cumulative infections have reached 2,751.

In mid-March, the StarKist Samoa tuna cannery, the territory’s largest private employer, was allowed to reopen after being closed for two weeks due to the community spread of COVID. The chairman of the COVID-19 Task force, Lieutenant Governor Talauega Eleasalo Ale, said authorities decided to move away from “mass and indiscriminate lockdown” policies and place emphasis on “self-responsibility.”

Elsewhere across the region, the Solomon Islands has recorded 11,470 cases at a rate of nearly 300 a day and 133 deaths. Nauru last week confirmed its first two infections, both detected in quarantine after a flight from Brisbane. Kiribati has 3,066 cases and 13 deaths, forcing the government to extend a curfew for another month. The Cook Islands, despite registering 1,442 infections between March 19 and April 1, is preparing to reopen its borders to the world and ease remaining COVID restrictions.

Imperialist powers escalate Ukraine war over allegations of Russian war crimes in Bucha

Clara Weiss

This weekend, a major campaign over alleged war crimes by Russian troops in Bucha, a city of about 28,500 inhabitants northwest of Kiev, swept the Western press.

The campaign marks a significant escalation of the war in Ukraine and comes right after Russia reported that two Ukrainian helicopters had entered Russian territory and bombed an oil depot in Belogorod on Friday.

Heavy smoke billows after a Russian bombardment on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

The campaign is based on allegations by the Ukrainian authorities and army that Russian troops, while being in control of Bucha, tortured and murdered large numbers of civilians, with figures cited in press articles ranging widely, from a few dozen to over 400. Several bodies were reportedly found in ditches. Human Rights Watch has published a report, based on interviews with eyewitnesses in Bucha and other towns, that described rape and forms of torture, and called for an investigation into these as “war crimes” by Russian troops.

The Kremlin has denounced the claims of atrocities against civilians as a “provocation by Ukrainian radicals” and has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday. The Russian Foreign Ministry has pointed out that Russian troops had withdrawn from Bucha by Wednesday, March 30, one day after Russia had promised at peace negotiations that it would dramatically reduce its forces near Kiev.

The Kremlin also noted that a video message by Bucha’s mayor from March 31 makes no reference to any atrocities and that the images and reports only started circulating after Ukrainian troops and television had entered the town on Saturday, April 2.

The video message by Anatoly Fedoruk, indeed, shows the mayor exalted, proclaiming that all “Russian orcs”, as he called the Russian troops, had left the town, without any mention of atrocities or war crimes having been committed.

While the facts of what happened in Bucha and who perpetrated what crimes remain murky, two things are clear: First, the campaign brings the cynical hypocrisy of the imperialist powers over war crimes to a new level; and, second, it is used to significantly escalate the war.

The same imperialist powers that are now crying “shock” and “horror” at unproven allegations over killings by the Russian army have reduced large parts of the Middle East and North Africa to ruins. US wars since 2001 alone have claimed, according to conservative estimates, between 3 and 4 million civilian casualties.

In fact, the rhetoric of the press campaign over Bucha and the claims of a “genocide” and “atrocities” bear the hallmark of the imperialist propaganda that has preceded the launching of or the escalation of countless wars in defense of “human rights” since 1991, including in Yugoslavia, the Middle East and North Africa.

It is impossible to provide anything close to an exhaustive list of the war crimes that have been perpetrated by the US, as well as by British, Australian, French and German imperialism in the past decades. Future historians will have to fill volumes to document and analyze the crimes committed.

A few recent cases, however, should be recalled:

· The Kunduz Massacre in 2009, the single biggest war crime of the German army since the end of World War II, which resulted in at least 90 civilian deaths.

· The US siege of Mossul, Iraq, in 2014, that claimed an estimated 40,000 lives.

· The destruction of Raqqa, Syria, in 2017, by US forces with over 1,600 civilian casualties.

In none of these cases, which have by now been abundantly documented, were those responsible held to account. Julian Assange, who has exposed some of the most horrendous crimes by US imperialism, has been cruelly tortured and confined for over a decade at the behest of Washington. He is now being threatened with extradition to the US and a 175-year prison sentence.

It should also be noted that, on Thursday, Human Rights’ Watch published a report, indicating that Ukrainian troops may have committed war crimes by shooting Russian prisoners of war in their legs and filming it. The Ukrainian army has, in fact, publicly announced such war crimes and has been engaged in a weeks-long social media campaign, sharing images of killed Russian soldiers. This itself constitutes a violation of the Geneva Convention for the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Of this, however, there has been almost no word in the Western press.

The campaign over Bucha now serves as the basis for a significant escalation of NATO’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, just days after both Russian and Ukrainian negotiators evaluated peace negotiations as “positive.”

The response in Germany has been particularly hysterical. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the dead bodies in Bucha as “a war crime” and announced further weapons deliveries to Ukraine as well as sanctions by NATO against Russia in the coming days.

Writing for the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Korenlius raged that the “revelations” of dead bodies in Bucha showed that Ukraine was subject to “a war of annihilation,” directly comparing the ongoing war to Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. This is a conscious minimization and relativization of the crimes of German imperialism in World War II. As part of Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, the Nazis occupied Soviet Ukraine, killing over 5 million Ukrainians, among them 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews.

Ukrainian nationalists, the antecedents of the Azov Battalion and other paramilitaries that are now functioning as shock troops by the imperialist powers and the Kiev government, participated in these crimes, perpetrating massacres against Jews, Poles and civilians who opposed fascism.

Now, the German ruling class is again relying on these far-right forces and seizes on the war as an opportunity to ram through a record 100-billion Euro war budget, tripling the country’s defense spending—something not even Hitler dared to do after coming to power in 1933.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the dead bodies in Bucha evidence of an unfolding “genocide” and effectively ruled out any significant progress in peace negotiations, stating, “We can only have peace by fighting.” His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba said that now there could be no more hesitation about further weapon deliveries to Ukraine, “We need weapons—now!”

In fact, Ukraine has been flooded with weapons by NATO, especially the US and now also Germany, which is sending tanks, drones and anti-tank weapons. According to the Washington Post, the Biden administration has spent $2.3 billion on “defense support” for Ukraine since coming into office. Of these, $1.6 billion were committed in the first five weeks of the war.

Last week, Biden announced another $500 million of “budget aid” for Ukraine. On Saturday, the Pentagon pledged yet another $300 million for military equipment, including drones, armored vehicles and machine guns.

These massive weapons deliveries have already had a major impact on the war. Even judging by figures provided by the Kremlin, Russian military casualties (1,351) are higher than the official Ukrainian civilian death toll, which stands at 1,232. However, the real death toll among Russian soldiers is widely believed to be much higher, with the Pentagon estimating that 7,000 Russian troops may have been killed.

According to the Economist, Russian generals are dying at a rate unprecedented since World War II. Reports suggest that as many as 18 high-ranking military commanders have been killed in combat, including several generals.

While the Economist cited a number of possible reasons for the high exposure of Russia’s highest-ranking military—including poor equipment, logistics, and morale among troops—the report also noted that NATO was likely helping Ukraine in intercepting Russian military communication and locating troops. Moreover, the Economist referenced a report by Yahoo News that revealed many years of US training of Ukrainian paramilitaries, including snipers. One former American official told Yahoo News, “I think we’re seeing a big impact from snipers…the training really paid off.”

Stanford Seed Transformation Programme 2022

Application Deadline: 1st June 2022

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): African countries & at your company

About the Award: The Seed Transformation Program (STP) is a year-long, part-time intensive leadership program for CEOs/founders of established businesses. Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty and other experts deliver strategy sessions for CEOs and their management teams, in which leaders learn and apply skills, tools, and mindsets to drive growth and innovation. CEOs and their management team members will be challenged to refine their strategy and value proposition, and set a course for scalable growth and impact.  During and after the STP, leaders will network with approximately 1,000 entrepreneurs from across Africa and South Asia – joining current and past participants.

Covid policy: The program will include both in-person and online components.  Any in-person components may be shifted online if health conditions do not permit in-person delivery. A reliable and strong internet connection will be required to derive maximum value from the program.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: 

• CEOs/founders of for-profit companies and for-profit social enterprises
• Companies based in Africa & South Asia with annual revenues between US$150,000 and $15 million

Number of Awards: Not specified

Cost of Participation: 

• US $5,000 (Fee has been subsidized by philanthropic contributions)
• In Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, the cost of the program has been further subsidized by the De Beers Group.
• Fee includes value-added tax.
• Limited scholarships for women CEO or founders and social entrepreneurs are available. Information will be made available to admitted applicants upon request.

Value of Stanford Seed Transformation Programme:

• Take advantage of a world-class curriculum from Stanford GSB and the innovative thinking that has shaped so many of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley.
• Get the support from trained local facilitators to help you introduce what you’ve learned to your company and promote buy-in.
• Develop relationships with like-minded leaders to share experiences and develop an ongoing peer-to-peer support network.

Duration of Program: 12 months (September 2023 – October 2024)

How to Apply: Apply Here

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Visa Creator Program 2022

Application Deadline:

11th May 2022

Tell Me About Visa Creator Program 2022:

Introducing the Visa Creator Program, a one-year immersion program geared towards entrepreneurs working in art, music, fashion and film looking to accelerate their small business through NFTs. The goal of the Visa Creator Program is to bring together a global cohort of digital creators and empower them through product strategy mentorship.

The Visa Creator Program is global and all interested creators are invited to learn more and submit their information for consideration to be part of the Visa Creator Program. We will contact potential candidates and announce the final class later this year. The deadline to express interest in the program is Wednesday, May 11th, 2022.

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Entrepreneurship

Who can apply for Visa Creator Program 2022?

This inaugural class is for digital-first creators and artists who are engaging with NFTs and blockchain technologies in their businesses.

We envision a creator class reflective of rich cultural and global perspectives across artistic disciplines, races, genders, beliefs and backgrounds. Our goal is to foster a community of passionate and purpose-driven creators.

Which Countries are Eligible?

Any

How Many Positions will be Given?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of Visa Creator Program 2022?

Selected creators will join a cohort-driven program designed to build and deepen their fluency in crypto commerce and traditional payments. The program is focused on supporting creators in five key areas: 

• Join a community of creators in various stages of their NFT journey.
• Mentorship with Visa’s team of crypto product and strategy leaders
• Work with thought leaders across digital commerce, web3, crypto and payments.
• Opportunities to engage with Visa’s network of clients and partners.
• One-time stipend to help creators kick-start the next phase of growth.  

How to Apply for Visa Creator Program 2022:

Join us

Learn more about Visa’s commitment to the digital economy, blockchain innovations like NFTs, and how we’re making them more accessible to digital creators by lowering barriers and scaling business models across the globe.

It is important to go through all application requirements before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details