“False positives”: The cold-blooded murder of over 6,400 poor civilians by Colombian military assassins between 2002 and 2008

Cesar Uco & Don Knowland

In testimony given in recent weeks before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), thus far 21 Colombian military personnel, including high echelon officers, and one civilian have pleaded guilty to having committed atrocious crimes against the civilian population in Colombia. The case is known as that of the “false positives,” a phrase used to describe civilians recruited from the most distant and poorest villages in order to pass them off as guerrillas and then shoot them.

The aim of this atrocity was to inflate the death toll in order to deceive the Colombian people as to the military’s success in the war against the guerrilla Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (the FARC), which based itself on retrograde Maoist and Guevarist conceptions of peasant war. The murders described occurred between 2002 and 2008, during the far right-wing presidency of Álvaro Uribe.

Plan Colombia and “false positives”

The revelations of the cold-blooded murders of 6,402 young peasants and unemployed people must be understood in the context of Plan Colombia, an agreement signed in 1999 between Colombian President Andrés Pastrana and US President Bill Clinton to fight “narcoterrorism.” Between 2000 and 2005, Plan Colombia received $2.8 billion from the US. Later on, the US Department of Defense increased that sum to $4.5 billion.

Additionally, in 2005, the George W. Bush administration, after meeting with President Uribe, requested $463 million in additional funds from the US Congress for Plan Colombia, and $90 million through the IMF. By then, Uribe and Bush had become personal friends.

While the war against the Colombian guerrillas was being waged, the US government issued to the Colombian Army a “certification” in Human Rights.  This “recognition” of the work of Uribe’s executive qualified it for an additional $62 million from the US for the fight against 'narcoterrorism.' 

These were the years in which the Colombian military carried out the 'false positive' murders.

This past week, the Spanish newspaper El Pais wrote: “[T]he militaries’ accounts of how they deceived unarmed peasants and poor, unemployed young people in need of work, and how they murdered them, dressed them in camouflage and put a gun in their hands, [show this was done] to meet the demands of their superiors to produce casualties in combat.”

Although the SJP has been taking testimony only since April 2022, this unpunished crime was already made known internationally a year ago. In February 2021, France24 described these “illegitimate deaths presented as combat fatalities,” and added that “the majority were carried out between 2006 and 2008, during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe, the political mentor of current President Iván Duque.”

That same month, the Guardian revealed that “Soldiers were rewarded for the manipulated kill statistics with perks, including time off and promotions.” 

BBC NEWS also alluded to what the court has now described as a “macro-criminal phenomenon”—that “around 1,500 military personnel were allegedly involved.”

The statements of the first 21 army personnel to declare themselves culpable

The SJP took the testimony of a recruiter, Alexander Carretero Díaz, the only civilian charged, who described how he carried out the recruitment of innocent civilians for these murders: “I am the person who brought all your loved ones from various parts of Colombia, I am guilty, I declare myself responsible for having brought people from Soacha, from Gamarra, from Bucaramanga, from Aguachica to hand them over to the Army to be killed.'

Carretero Díaz continued: “I am responsible for having lent myself [to this scheme], knowing what was going to happen to their loved ones; I am more responsible because they told me to convince different people.”

The voices of “false positive” mothers

The Colombian newspaper El Universal published powerful statements of relatives given before the SJP.

Carmenza Gómez, mother of Víctor Fernando Gómez, 23, who disappeared on August 23, 2008 and was found dead on August 25 in Ocaña, Santander, exclaimed: “I do not come to speak only for my son, I come to speak for thousands of victims who are not here today, but our voice is their voice, because they cannot speak, because they are afraid, because they are threatened, as they did with the mothers of Soacha.”

Idalí Garcerá, a mother and head of her household, spoke of the disappearance of her son from Cundinamarca in 2008: “I have been here for 14 years to find out about my son who disappeared in the Ducales neighborhood, in Soacha, on August 23, 2008. I have fought a lot and alone. ... I need to know who were those people who asked for results for their own benefit, we all need to know that and the country in general.”

Zoraida Muñoz, another mother from Soacha, pleaded with the witnesses to clarify precisely what happened: “Before this happened to me, I had no enemies. My enemies are the National Army ... You should not do anything with children or young people, because they already carry an accursed cross.”

Gloria Martínez, another victim of the war, stated: “The whole truth has not been revealed. ... You keep privileged information according to the position you held, you have repeatedly said that you want this history not to repeat itself, but I ask you: have you already returned the decorations, the awards you were given for these murders?”

The massacre of innocents: A continuing military pattern in Colombia

Colombia’s capitalist elite waged a five-decade-long bloody civil war against the FARC guerrilla movement until September 2016, when the Peace Accords were signed between the Colombian government and the FARC. FARC turned in its weapons in 2017.

That struggle, and the one against the much smaller ELN (National Liberation Army) Colombian guerrillas, resulted in over 250,000 killed and over 7 million displaced civilians.

It is apparent that atrocities that were the norm have continued even after the creaky peace with the FARC.

The crimes of the “false positives” returned to the front page after Colombia’s current president and Uribe protégé Iván Duque admitted on March 28 to military misconduct that is now known as the “Putumayo massacre.” 

Duque reported what he called a routine military operation in Puerto Leguízamo, Putumayo Department, which borders on Ecuador and Peru, against armed assailants as part of the #SinTregua [no truce] offensive against “narco-terrorist structures” that resulted in 11 deaths.  Duque claimed those who were “neutralized,” i.e., killed, belonged to illegal armed groups, including FARC dissidents, the relatively small numbers who did not buy into the peace accords.

However, testimonies of the survivors and victims of the family members state that persons killed were civilians. According to the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (Organización Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas de la Amazonia Colombiana, OPIAC), the army arrived dressed in black and wearing hoods at a local market where individuals were raising funds for neighborhood needs, opening fire in an indiscriminate manner. The soldiers then manipulated the corpses of civilians to make them look like combatants.

BBC NEWS reported that a joint independent investigation by Colombian media Vorágine, El Espectador and Cambio concluded that Colombian military forces had tampered with evidence at the scene of the alleged fighting before investigators could arrive. After the investigation, these media concluded that what happened was a “massacre.”

Plainly, “false positive”-style military activity routinely continues as a practice in Colombia. 

And despite the devastating and harrowing events recently narrated by the military in the “false positives” case, former President Uribe last week haughtily issued a communiqué entitled “The Truth Commission or the political lie.” In it Uribe says that the crimes against Colombia’s poor civilians and peasants are perfectly justifiable.

A larger Latin America pattern and the complicity of US imperialism

The atrocious nature and scale of the “false positives” crimes in Colombia bring to mind the atrocities committed by the dictatorships of Pinochet in Chile and Videla in Argentina, among others. None of the crimes in these countries would have been possible without complicity and direct pressure from the US government.  

As Philippe Nassif, the advocacy director for Amnesty USA, rightly put it, “The United States’ role in fueling ceaseless cycles of violence committed against the people of Colombia is outrageous.” 

Uribe remains arrogant and defiant because he knows he acted in coordination with US imperialism, which continues to deem Latin America as its “backyard” for exploitation of the population and resources.

The World Health Organization to meet urgently to review the global spread of monkeypox infections

Benjamin Mateus

A committee of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards with Pandemic and Epidemic Potential (STAG-IH) was to meet yesterday to review the sudden explosion of monkeypox cases across the globe. 

More than 130 cases of known (80) or suspected (50) monkeypox cases are under investigation spanning 12 non-African countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as well as Canada, Australia and the United States. 

This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. [AP Photo/Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC]

Only one of these confirmed cases has been linked to travel from Nigeria, a country known to have endemic monkeypox. The man, who developed a rash on April 29, flew to the UK on May 4 and informed authorities of his symptoms. He was immediately isolated, and the blisters were sampled and sent for PCR testing at Porton Down science park, which confirmed the infection on May 7.

What has public health officials concerned is that cases are geographically dispersed across Europe, the Atlantic and as far as Oceania. They suspect that the disease has been spreading undetected for some time. These developments shouldn’t come as a surprise, as all social restrictions against COVID have been lifted and international flights have begun carrying hundreds of millions of passengers this year. Meanwhile, public health efforts have been decimated by two years of non-stop waves of infections. 

The WHO regional director for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, noted, “Monkeypox is usually a self-limiting illness, and most of those infected will recover within a few weeks without treatment. However, the disease can be more severe, especially in young children, pregnant women, and individuals who are immunocompromised.” It remains to be seen if previous infection to SARS-CoV-2 will predispose people to complications from monkeypox.

Genomic sequencing of the current strain of the monkeypox suggests it is the less severe West Africa clade (genomic family), with a case fatality rate of less than one percent, or the mild version. The clade from the Congo basin carries a ten percent fatality rate. However, n article published in Nature yesterday stated, “Exactly how much the strain causing the current outbreaks differs from the one in western Africa—and whether the viruses popping up in various countries are linked to one another—remains unknown.”

Dr. Raina MacIntyre, infectious disease epidemiologist and monkeypox expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said that answers to these questions are critical in explaining if the sudden rise in cases is a byproduct of a mutation that allows the monkeypox virus to transit more efficiently than the ancestral versions. It would also answer if the outbreaks can be traced back to a single origin.

The deputy director of the CDC’s division of high consequences pathogens and pathology, Jennifer McQuiston, said earlier in the week about the monkeypox epidemic, “[While] we’re seeing this expansion of confirmed and suspect cases globally, we have a sense that no one has their arms around this to know how large and expansive it might be. And given how much travel there is between the United States and Europe, I am very confident we’re going to see cases in the United States.”

Currently six people are being monitored who were close contacts of the man who flew back to the UK from Nigeria. Another man in Massachusetts with confirmed monkeypox had been in Quebec, where several cases have been confirmed. Another man currently at Bellevue Hospital is being investigated for infection, according to the New York City Health Department.

The disparate cases imply undetected spread has been taking place. Usually, the disease manifests in lesions that begin on the face and spread to the other parts of the body, forming into blisters that burst, then scar, leading to the pathognomonic (disease-specific) skin lesions. The consequence here is that monkeypox does not go unnoticed to the infected person or others. If the monkeypox virus is spreading asymptomatically, that would have significant public health ramifications.

Health authorities have also been perplexed by the fact that most of the cases have been among young and middle-aged men, many of whom are gay or bisexual and have sex with men (GBMSM). MacIntyre told Nature she suspects “that the virus was coincidentally introduced into a GBMSM community, and the virus has continued circulating there.” Such reports will certainly lead to stigmatizing this community once more, as with HIV.

However, Dr. Kluge warned, “As we enter the summer season in the European region, with mass gatherings, festivals and parties, I am concerned that transmission could accelerate, as the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity, and the symptoms are unfamiliar to many.”

Vaccines against smallpox offer 85 percent protection against monkeypox, as the variola virus is very similar. However, smallpox vaccination ended in 1980 when the disease was eradicated, meaning that those younger than 45 are unvaccinated and thus fully susceptible to the monkeypox virus. This of course includes all children, who are not less severely infected, as they have been so far with SARS-CoV-2 virus. Also, decades of waning immunity to smallpox have likely made the elderly vulnerable again.

Public health authorities are attempting to assure the public that ample supplies of smallpox vaccines, including antiviral treatments against monkeypox virus, are available. But instead of employing these in mass vaccination campaigns, healthcare workers would utilize a method called “ring vaccination,” where close contacts of infected patients would receive these treatments. However, this implies a program of contact tracing would be necessary to detail every chain of transmission.

Countries are beginning to secure contracts with the maker of the smallpox vaccine, Bavarian Nordic, a Danish company. On Wednesday, the company said BARDA (the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for the Strategic National Stockpile) had exercised a $119 million option to manufacture the freeze-dried doses of Jynneos (smallpox and monkeypox vaccine live, non-replicating) in 2023 and 2024 to replace the current stock of bulk vaccine, according to Fierce Pharma.

They also said, “U.S. company Emergent BioSolutions also has an FDA-approved smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, which isn’t available in the EU. Emergent nabbed an award worth up to $2 billion to deliver ACAM2000 to the Strategic National Stockpile over 10 years.”

German Chancellor Scholz’s government statement: Rearming for war against Russia

Johannes Stern

Germany is playing a prominent role in the NATO proxy war with Russia and thus accepts the risk of a third world war. The government statement made by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the federal parliament on Thursday morning and the ensuing debate made clear how aggressively German imperialism is behaving once again, 77 years after the end of the Second World War.

In his speech, Scholz bluntly explained the war aims of Germany and NATO: A military victory over nuclear-armed Russia. “We all have one goal: Russia must not win this war. Ukraine must survive,” said the chancellor. This is the aim with “everything we do. With our sanctions against Russia, the reception of millions of refugees in the European Union, the humanitarian, development and economic assistance to Ukraine and, indeed, the supply of weapons, including heavy weaponry.”

After initial hesitation, Germany is delivering weapons to Ukraine en masse. Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday, “in the past two weeks alone, 2,450 RGW 90 anti-tank weapons, 1,600 DM22 anti-tank missiles and 3,000 DM31 anti-tank mines have arrived in Ukraine” and “been distributed to units of the local army.” This was confirmed by Ukrainian government sources.

The list of German arms deliveries gets “ever longer with the latest tranche,” commented the news magazine. Previously, Berlin had already “delivered anti-tank weapons, armored vehicles, millions of ammunition rounds of various calibres and explosives to Ukraine.” On the lists, in addition, “there are also 15 bunker-breaking weapons, so-called bunker fists, or remote detonators for explosive devices.”

At the end of April, Germany’s parliament officially decided to deliver heavy weaponry to Ukraine. Since then, this has moved ahead at full speed. On Wednesday, the Social Democrat-led Ministry of Defense announced another “circular exchange” with the Czech Republic. The German army provided Prague with “15 Leopard 2 A4 tanks” and “also took over the training of Czech soldiers,” the ministry announced on Twitter. In return, the Czech Republic supplied tanks of Soviet design to Ukraine.

A similar circular exchange has already been agreed with Poland and Slovakia. At the same time, Germany is also pushing ahead with the delivery of tanks and other heavy equipment from its own stockpiles. Among other things, 50 anti-aircraft Cheetah tanks and seven self-propelled howitzer 2000s will be delivered to Ukraine. The delivery of 88 Leopard 1 combat tanks and 100 Marder artillery tanks is also being prepared by the German arms giant Rheinmetall.

In line with the official propaganda, Scholz tried to portray the massive arms deliveries as de-escalating peace measures. “Helping a brutally attacked country to defend itself is not an escalation, but a contribution to warding off the attack and thus ending the violence as quickly as possible,” he claimed. Nor is anything being done “that will turn NATO into a war party.”

Chancellor Scholz at the May Day rally in Düsseldorf

This is a lie and an absurdity in several respects. On the one hand, Scholz is well aware that the growing military support for Ukraine poses the risk of a nuclear third world war. On April 22, he told Der Spiegel that “every effort must be made to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a highly armed superpower such as Russia, a nuclear power.” The issue is “preventing an escalation that leads to a third world war.”

On the other hand, “NATO has in fact long been a war party,” and not only since the Putin regime invaded Ukraine. The imperialist powers have been waging war for decades in order to assert their economic and strategic interests. The wars of aggression and regime-change operations in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, which all violated international law, have in the last 30 years destroyed entire countries and killed millions of people.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the NATO powers have systematically encircled Russia with the aim of turning the resource-rich country into a semi-colony that they can dominate and exploit. In 2014, Washington and Berlin orchestrated a right-wing coup in Ukraine to install an anti-Russian regime in the former Soviet republic. Subsequently, the Ukrainian military and far-right militias in the country were systematically upgraded. Moscow's invasion on February 24, 2022 was the desperate response of a reactionary capitalist regime to NATO’s offensive.

Today, Germany is no more a “peace power” than it was on the eve of the First and Second World Wars. Together with the United States, it is the most aggressive imperialist actor. The ruling class is using the war in Ukraine provoked by NATO to implement long-cherished plans for armament and emergence as a great power.

The focus is on the massive rearmament of the German army. “We will secure and strengthen our own defence capability,” Scholz announced in parliament. For this, “the military needs the special fund of €100 billion.” He added that “good talks” are also ongoing with the opposition parties to obtain the necessary majority “to anchor the special fund in the Basic Law.”

A key goal is the strengthening of Germany within NATO and militarising Europe under German leadership. “With the special fund, we are sending a clear message to friends and allies,” Scholz explained. As Europe’s “most populous and economically strongest nation,” Germany is “serious when we talk about the duty of assistance and collective defence.”

In the future, “our defence systems and our investments must also be coordinated more closely and agreed upon at the European level.” The key is “more efficiency and more complementarity ... to integrate the European defence industry more closely,” and thus “take a big step towards the future in the direction of a common European defence.” He added that “the necessary steps” will be discussed at the EU special summit at the end of the month.

German tanks arriving at Sestokai station, Lithuania, Feb. 24, 2017, for the deployment of the German-led NATO battlegroup (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

Berlin’s war and great power plans, which also aim to strengthen Germany against the US and China, are supported by all parties in parliament. In the debate, spokespersons from all political groups sought to outdo each other with calls for more arms supplies for Ukraine, tougher economic warfare against Russia and a more aggressive German rearmament programme.

The leader of the parliamentary group of the Greens, Katharina Dröge, underlined that the former pacifists are today the leading militarists. “Our message to Putin is: we will never stop supporting Ukraine,” she insisted. “Our support applies as long as it is necessary. Yes, that means the supply of heavy weaponry, because Ukraine must be able to defend itself. And that means adopting further economic sanctions packages.”

Christian Dürr, the chairman of the Free Democrats’ parliamentary group, also praised the Federal Government’s war policy, which has an increasingly dramatic impact on the lives of millions of people: “As part of the traffic light coalition, we have indeed started a new era here. We deliver weapons to war zones. We are breaking off economic relations with a former trading partner. We are investing heavily in our army. That has never happened before.”

The “opposition leader” and leader of the Christian Democrat/Christian Social Union parliamentary group, Friedrich Merz, called for a faster implementation of the promised arms deliveries. At the same time, he assured Scholz that his parliamentary group “is with you on what you said in your government statement on 27 February, namely €100 billion for the military and, in the long term, more than 2 percent of our GDP each year for defence.”

Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, described “Russia’s war of aggression” as “a catalyst that has exacerbated the crisis and exposed the shortcomings of our military and security policy.” She called on the Federal Government to “actually invest the €100 billion earmarked for the German army in our own army.”

The Left Party is also part of the war conspiracy. Putin “should not win the war,” demanded the leader of the Left Party’s parliamentary group, Amira Mohamed Ali. At the same time, she warned against never-ending arms deliveries. From the Left Party’s point of view, Russia is to be brought to its knees primarily by economic warfare. “Sanctions must be directed against the economic power base of the Putin system,” demands a motion from the party executive for the upcoming party congress.

In major attack on free speech, Migrants NZ Facebook group forced to close

Tom Peters

In a blatant attack on freedom of speech, the popular Facebook group Migrants NZ, with a membership of more than 75,000 people, was recently forced to shut down after threats of legal action from the New Zealand Immigration Advisers Authority (IAA), a government agency.

A screenshot of the Migrants NZ Facebook page

The group, started by a number of migrants in 2020, expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provided an important forum, independent of the established parties and unions, for migrants and supporters to share experiences and to criticise the Labour Party-NZ First-Greens coalition government’s anti-immigrant policies. Like capitalist governments internationally, the Labour-led government responded to the pandemic and the resulting economic and social crisis by stoking nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Members of Migrants NZ opposed Immigration New Zealand’s (INZ) decision to halt the processing of tens of thousands of residency applications during 2020, and other draconian policies including the separation of families by the border closure. Throughout 2020 and 2021, the government refused to provide sufficient quarantine facilities to allow thousands of people legally entitled to live in New Zealand to enter the country. Migrants NZ played a significant role in helping to organise nationwide protests last year against the government’s policies.

The Facebook group has been subjected to what can only be described as politically-motivated censorship—at the very point when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government is launching a new round of attacks on immigrants. The threats against Migrants NZ point to the increasingly anti-democratic methods that are being used internationally, as governments seek to block the development of working class opposition to their pro-business policies.

On March 31, Migrants NZ’s administrators posted a message saying the group would be “archived”—preventing anyone from making further posts or comments—because the IAA had received a complaint accusing two group members of “providing systemic unlicensed immigration advice.” The post noted: “Providing unlicensed immigration advice is a serious offence and can result in a fine of up to $100,000 and/or imprisonment for up to 7 years.”

A protester outside parliament in Wellington during the May 13, 2021 protest against the government's immigration restrictions. (WSWS Media)

The administrators said they were trying to find a “workable solution” to keep the Facebook group running. However, this proved impossible, and on May 9 Radio NZ reported that the group had folded permanently.

A source closely involved with Migrants NZ explained to the World Socialist Web Site that the administrators, as well as professional immigration advisors supportive of the group, had come under sustained attack and felt that they had no choice but to disband.

In late 2021, a number of licensed immigration advisers (LIAs) took to Facebook to publicly attack Migrants NZ for allegedly providing a forum for free, unlicensed immigration advice; they complained that this was undermining their ability to make money by providing such advice. Several LIAs then lodged a complaint with the IAA against Migrants NZ.

In April this year, the state agency wrote to Migrants NZ’s administrators saying that the group could be in breach of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007. The letter, seen by the WSWS, says that the IAA may take enforcement action against the group if it receives new evidence of offending or inadequate moderation of comments.

The IAA stated that administrators and moderators had a responsibility to remove comments that could be considered immigration advice, even though there were more than 73,000 members in the group.

Administrators were faced with the impossible task of combing through hundreds or even thousands of comments per day and assessing whether they could constitute a breach of the law. Administrators tried to address the issue by making regular posts warning group members not to give immigration advice. But this didn’t satisfy the authority.

The source told the WSWS that, to the layperson, the legal definition of “immigration advice” is not at all clear. While people are allowed to talk about their personal experiences with Immigration New Zealand, “there’s a very fine line. Once you say, ‘In your situation, I would…’ then suddenly you’re giving advice.”

An IAA spokesperson, Simon van Weeghel, admitted to Radio NZ that the “majority” of the comments appearing in the Migrants NZ group would be “exempt from having to be licensed” because they were made in an “informal” context and any “advice” they contained was not being provided for a fee. But this fact did not stop the IAA from threatening to take action against the group.

The shutdown of Migrants NZ prompted an outpouring of dismayed comments from its members. One member said: “It’s ridiculous that someone wants to make this group fall under illegal advice. Let’s say a group of friends decided to hang out every week and discuss laws, will that [mean they are] giving false legal advice?” Another person wrote: “This is probably the most effective advice group… sharing immigration news and updates, we stand by you! Shame on those attackers!”

The silencing of migrants goes hand-in-hand with stepped up anti-immigrant measures. Following the closure of Migrants NZ, the Labour Party-led government this month announced a new immigration policy that entrenches discrimination against low-paid workers. Migrants can apply for residency after working for two years in New Zealand provided they make more than twice the median wage, i.e., more than $115,480, or fall into a number of special occupations.

A “green list” allows some skilled migrants to apply for immediate residency. The list does not include nurses, midwives, aged care workers and teachers, who have to work for two years to qualify for residency. This is despite the drastic shortage of staff in hospitals, schools and aged care facilities. The government is also barring international students from working in New Zealand before they complete a degree.

Large numbers of people who do not meet the occupation or salary criteria can only work in New Zealand on temporary visas, making them much more vulnerable to abusive treatment and underpayment by employers.

The WSWS warns that the legal threats which forced Migrants NZ to close has set a precedent for further attacks on freedom of speech. Groups opposing the growing attacks on living standards, and New Zealand’s integration into US-led war plans, could find themselves similarly targeted—as is already happening internationally.

In Germany, the Socialist Equality Party’s widely-shared Facebook video opposing NATO’s rearmament and proxy war against Russia was banned by the platform in March; the ban was overturned after thousands of people protested against it on social media.

The Ardern government in New Zealand has led a global campaign for censorship of online content deemed “extreme,” and has given the Office of the Censor sweeping powers and resources to remove such content. While the Christchurch terror attack has been used as a pretext for internet censorship, its real target is not the far-right, but ordinary working people, including immigrants.

The attack on the free speech of 75,000 members of Migrants NZ has not prompted any public opposition from the established political parties, the trade unions, or media organisations. The Green Party, which is part of the government, and the opposition National and ACT Parties, have remained silent. Whatever their criticisms of the government’s policy, all these organisations support the “right” of the capitalist state to impose restrictions on immigration. None of them has any genuine concern for the democratic rights of immigrants.

The only constituency for upholding free speech and other basic rights is the working class. We call on workers and young people to oppose the silencing of Migrants NZ and to defend migrant workers who are speaking out and seeking to fight back against the Labour Party-led government’s policies.

Powerful strike movement emerges in the United States

Eric London

A series of powerful strikes and social protests have broken out across the United States against intolerable social conditions and breathtaking levels of social inequality.

Top left: Striking CNH workers in Racine, Wisconsin (UAW/Facebook), Top right: Nurses await the sentencing decision for RaDonda Vaught in Tennessee, May 13 (WSWS), Bottom left: Striking Chevron workers (USW L.5), Bottom right: Arconic workers rallying outside Davenport Workers in Riverdale, Iowa (WSWS)

Spurred by the spiraling cost of living, the struggles are breaking down the false barriers erected by the ruling class to divide and weaken workers. They involve workers of every race and ethnicity in every region of the country, in both urban and rural settings. They include workers across many different industries and at many different rates of pay.

• In Racine, Wisconsin, and Burlington, Iowa, 1,200 manufacturing workers at the agricultural and construction equipment company CNH have been on strike for three weeks, with workers telling the WSWS they are demanding at least a 50 percent increase to wages to overcome surging inflation and years of stagnating pay.

• In Richmond, California, 500 oil workers at a Chevron refinery have been on strike since March 21. Richmond is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most expensive regions of the country, and workers reported to the WSWS that they are barely able to afford to fill their cars with gas, which they refine, in order to drive to work.

• Roughly 5,000 nurses at Stanford Hospital in California went on strike earlier in May demanding significant wage increases and adequate staffing levels. Strikes have taken place in recent weeks at hospitals across California, including at Sutter Health hospitals in the northern part of the state and Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles.

• Nearly 3,500 aluminum workers at Arconic in Iowa, Indiana, New York and Tennessee voted unanimously for strike action last week. Like their brothers and sisters elsewhere, Arconic workers are furious over being dubbed “essential” only for the company to make massive profits while attempting to impose paltry wage increases that amount to pay cuts with inflation.

• Also last week, 1,300 autoworkers at Detroit Diesel in Redford, Michigan, who manufacture engines for military vehicles, overwhelmingly rejected a contract that would have raised wages by only 8 percent at the end of six years, a period in which inflation will have risen 45 percent if it stays near the current rate.

• Contracts for 15,000 nurses in the Twin Cities and Twin Ports in Minnesota are expiring next month, and nurses plan to rally at hospitals across the metro area on June 1 to demand major pay increases, adequate staffing and safe working conditions. In addition, 400 mental health nurses in Iowa and Minnesota are scheduled to carry out a one-day strike on May 24.

• An estimated 10,000 nurses protested in Washington D.C. earlier this month over wages, staffing, and the for-profit health system. Hundreds of nurses protested the next day outside the Tennessee courthouse where framed-up nurse RaDonda Vaught was sentenced to probation for a medical mistake that was ultimately the product of understaffing and other hospital system failures.

The intensifying class struggle in the US forms a critical part of an emerging global movement of the working class. In every country, workers are being driven into struggle by the red-hot pokers of economic hardship, exacerbated by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia, and the ongoing pandemic.

The cockpit of world imperialist reaction is no exception. In the US, the price of gas increased 18.3 percent in just one month, from February to March, driven by the war in Ukraine, as well as war-profiteering by the oil and gas corporations. Grocery prices increased 10 percent from the prior year, the largest increase since 1981, while the price of electricity increased 32 percent annually.

Average rent increased 11 percent over the same time period. Rent for America’s 22 million mobile home residents is expected to increase a staggering 70 percent in the coming months because mobile home parks are being purchased by Wall Street investors, which are then squeezing residents for profit.

In the land of credit card debt, interest rate hikes are driving borrowing rates up to levels not seen in decades. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that delinquencies on subprime car and home loans “hit an all time high in February.”

According to the Journal, the increase in loan delinquencies is a product of the fact that the government has allowed social programs enacted at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to expire, meaning that millions are now unable to stay above water. The two capitalist parties found $40 billion virtually overnight to arm fascist battalions in Ukraine but claim there is not enough money to prevent unprecedented social hardship at home.

Demand for food pantries has never been so high, with one Florida food pantry operator telling a Tampa Bay television channel, “We are seeing different types of families coming through our lines, we are seeing first-time families, middle-class families, some families on social security.”

The “all guns and no butter” policy of the Biden administration is having devastating consequences. Although two-thirds of US food banks are experiencing rapidly increasing demand, they are also witnessing “a 45 percent drop in food provided by the federal government,” CNN reported earlier this month. One leader of the non-profit Feeding America told the news outlet, “We are in danger of running out of food. We are doing everything we can to avert a major hunger crisis.”

Millions of workers in “the world’s wealthiest country” are forced to sell their blood in order to survive. On Thursday, the Washington Post featured a 41-year-old teacher with a $50,000 salary who sells plasma twice per week to get by. “I never thought I would be in a position where I would have to sell my plasma to feed my children,” said Christina Seal of Slidell, Louisiana. “I’ve applied for every government program that I can think of. I don’t qualify for food stamps, I don’t qualify for any programs.” The Post explained that plasma donations “have quadrupled since 2006.”

To the world’s financial elite, the relentless pursuit of profit justifies even more social suffering.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell promised future rate hikes to reduce wage pressure and said, “There could be some pain involved.” Michael Tran, managing director for global energy strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said that as the war in Ukraine drags on, “It is going to be an expensive summer.” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told G-7 central bank governors Thursday, “I think what we need to start getting more comfortable with is, this may not be the last shock.”

The claim that workers must “get more comfortable” with economic desperation comes after two years in which workers have had to “live with” a coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 1 million people in the US.

As they have throughout the pandemic, the corporations and the government are relying on the trade unions to isolate these struggles, subdue workers’ demands and keep production going.

At Arconic, the USW has defied the workers’ unanimous strike vote and is instead seeking to push through a deal with below-inflation raises, sparking outrage among workers. Similarly, at Detroit Diesel, the United Auto Workers (UAW) ignored the workers’ 98 percent strike vote and is forcing them to revote on virtually the same contract they already rejected. At CNH, the strike was sparked in part by anger over the fact that the last contract was negotiated by former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, who was imprisoned for accepting corporate bribes.

The president of the United Steel Workers (USW), Tom Conway, pledged to Joe Biden that his union would help keep wage raises lower than inflation. The nurses unions have done nothing to address staffing issues anywhere. The teachers unions have forced teachers back to school during every wave of the pandemic. So critical have the trade unions been to implementing the policies of the government that the Biden administration is actively promoting the establishment of unions at companies such as Amazon in the name of maintaining labor discipline and managing supply lines.

But workers have passed through important experiences in the last year, including the strikes by 3,000 Virginia Volvo workers and 10,000 John Deere workers, as well as the contract struggle by 3,000 Dana auto parts workers. In each case, workers were able to establish rank-and-file committees and began to assert their strength against both the companies and the corporatist trade unions.

Workers confront not individual bosses or corporations but powerful global financial institutions backed by the world’s governments, police and armies.

War has Wreaked Havoc on Ukraine’s Public Health System

Cesar Chelala

The Russian invasion of Ukraine epitomizes many of the challenges children face today, by inflicting serious damage to children’s health and quality of life. By the middle of May 2022, more than 6.1 million people had fled Ukraine, half of them children. Millions more have been internally displaced. 90 percent of Ukrainian refugees are women and children. Since the beginning of the conflict, hundreds of children have been killed.

In addition, the damage to schools and hospitals has negatively affected education and health services. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science by the end of March more than 500 education facilities, some of which had been used as civilian shelters, have been damaged.

The forced eviction from their homes and unfamiliar personal and social environments are considered Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). They impair children’s cognitive development and their physical and mental health. As a result of an elevated level of ACEs resulting from war, many Ukrainian children now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that, if not addressed with social support, therapy and sometimes medication, can have long-term negative effects on children’s quality of life. According to UNICEF, “every child caught in the conflict in eastern Ukraine is now thought to be in need of psychosocial support.”

Aside from unrelenting bombing attacks, Ukrainians face the challenge of the ongoing COVID pandemic. Basements of theaters and churches, crowded trains and subway stations and refugee processing units increase the risk for other infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), measles and polio. Because of the war, it is difficult to make a real estimate of the actual numbers of patients suffering from those diseases.

Primary care, screening and immunization programs have been affected. Supply of potable water and functioning sanitation systems have been disrupted. Disruptions of care for chronic and for infectious diseases have a detrimental long-term impact on people’s health. Low vaccination rates among Ukrainians –particularly children—puts them at risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

Several organizations working against trafficking of human beings have warned that Ukrainian refugees –particularly unaccompanied minors– are at risk of falling into exploitation and violence, including sexual violence. German authorities advise refugees not to accept help from unidentified people at train stations, and have increased the number of undercover police officers at train stations and other gathering places.

The Russian army attacks on health facilities, including hospitals and maternity wards, have been repeatedly denounced by international health agencies. “To attack the most vulnerable—babies, children, pregnant women, and those already suffering from illness and disease, and health workers risking their own lives to save lives—is an act of unconscionable cruelty,” said a March 13 joint statement from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

On April 7, the WHO’s Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care had verified 103 attacks on health facilities, impacting transport units such as ambulances. “We are outraged that attacks on health care are continuing. Attacks on health care are a violation of international humanitarian law,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. Attacks on health facilities are also a clear violation of Geneva Conventions tenets.

“Across Ukraine, 1000 health facilities are in proximity to conflict areas or in changed areas of control. Health workers throughout the country are risking their lives to serve those in need of medical services, and they, and their patients, must never be targeted. Further, when people are prevented from seeking and accessing health care, either because the facilities have been destroyed or out of fear that they may become a target, they lose hope. The mental health toll wreaked by the war cannot be underestimated, affecting civilians and the health workforce alike,” explained Dr. Jarno Habicht, WHO Representative in Ukraine.

Despite limited resources, Ukraine’s health system has demonstrated a remarkable zeal to respond to increasing demands. However, many hospitals and other health care facilities are in close proximity to conflict areas, limiting their capacity to deal with those demands. In addition, supply lines with essential medicines and other basic items have been derailed. Networks of volunteers have provided assistance, delivering medicines and supplies near the frontlines.

Russian military aggression is having and will continue to have devastating effects on the health and quality of life of all Ukrainians, who will continue to suffer the consequences of this terrible war of aggression for decades to come.

Is This the End of the French Project in Africa’s Sahel?

Vijay Prashad

Photograph Source: Thomas GOISQUE – CC BY-SA 3.0

On May 15, 2022, the military junta in Mali announced that it would no longer be part of the G5 Sahel platform. The G5 Sahel was created in Nouakchott, Mauritania, in 2014, and brought together the governments of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger to collaborate over the deteriorating security situation in the Sahel belt—the region just below the Sahara desert in Africa—and to increase trade among these countries. Behind the scenes, it was clear that the formation of the G5 Sahel was encouraged by the French government, and that, despite all the talk of trade, the real focus of the group was going to be security.

In early 2017, under French pressure, these G5 Sahel countries created the G5 Sahel Joint Force (FC-G5S), a military alliance to combat the security threat posed by the aftermath of the Algerian civil war (1991-2002) and the detritus of NATO’s 2011 war in Libya. The G5 Sahel Joint Force received the backing of the United Nations Security Council to conduct military operations in the region.

Mali’s military spokesperson Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga said on May 15 that his government had sent a letter on April 22 to General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno—President of Chad’s transitional military council and the outgoing president of the G5 Sahel—informing him of Mali’s decision; the lack of movement in holding the conference of the G5 Sahel heads of state, which was supposed to take place in Mali in February, and handing over the rotating presidency of the FC-G5S to the country, forced Mali to take the action of leaving both the FC-G5S and the G5 Sahel platform, Colonel Maïga said on national television.

The departure of Mali was inevitable. The country has been torn apart by austerity policies pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and by conflicts that run along the length of this country of more than 20 million people. Two coups d’état in 2020 and 2021 in Mali were followed up with the promise of elections, which do not seem to be on the horizon. Regional bodies, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have also imposed tough sanctions against Mali, which has only exacerbated the economic problems already being faced by the Malian people. The G5 Sahel defense ministers last met in November 2021, and the G5 Sahel member countries’ heads of state meeting in February 2022 was postponed. Mali was meant to take over the rotating presidency of G5 Sahel, but the other states who are part of the platform were not keen on this transfer (Chad has continued with the presidency).

Extra-Regional Power

The statement by Mali’s military blamed the institutional drift in the G5 Sahel on the “maneuvers of an extra-regional state desperately aiming to isolate Mali.” This “extra-regional state” is France, which Mali says has tried to “instrumentalize” the G5 Sahel for French objectives.

The five members of G5 Sahel are all former French colonies, who ejected the French through anti-colonial struggles and attempted to build their own sovereign states. These countries suffered assassinations (such as that of Burkina Faso’s former leader Thomas Sankara in 1987), dealt with IMF austerity programs (such as the measures taken against the government of Mali’s former President Alpha Oumar Konaré from 1996 to 1999), and faced the reassertion of French power (such as when France backed Chad’s Marshall Idriss Déby against Hissène Habré in 1990). After the French-initiated NATO war against Libya in 2011, and the destabilization it wrought, France intervened militarily in Mali through Operation Barkhane, and then—along with the United States military—it intervened across the Sahel as part of the G5 Sahel platform.

Since the reentry of the French military in the region, it has driven an agenda that seems to be more about catering to Europe’s needs than those of the Sahel region. The main argument made for the French (and U.S.) intervention in the Sahel is that they want to partner with the militaries of the region to combat terrorism. It is true that there has been a rise in militancy—some of it rooted in the expansion of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State activities in the Sahel. Conversations with officials in the Sahel states, however, reveal that they do not believe that countering terrorism is the main issue for French pressure on their governments. They believe, although they are wary of going on the record, that the Europeans are worried more about the issue of migration than that of terrorism. Rather than allow migrants—many from West Africa and West Asia—to reach the Libyan coast and make an attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea, they want to build a perimeter in the Sahel to limit the migrant movement beyond that; France has, in other words, moved the southern border of Europe from north of the Mediterranean to south of the Sahara.

Poorest Place on Earth

“We live in one of the poorest places on earth,” former Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré told me before he died in 2020. About 80 percent of the people of the Sahel live on less than $1.90 a day, and the population growth in this region is expected to rise from 90 million in 2017 to 240 million by 2050. The Sahel belt owes a vast debt to the wealthy bondholders in the North Atlantic states, who are not prepared for debt forgiveness. At the seventh summit of the G5 Sahel in February 2021, the heads of state called for a “deep restructuring of the debt of the G5 Sahel countries.” But the response they received from the IMF was deafening.

Part of the budgetary problem is the demands made on these states by France to increase their military spending against any increase in their spending for humanitarian relief and development. The G5 Sahel countries spend between 17 percent and 30 percent of their budgets on their militaries. Three of the five Sahel countries have increased their military spending astronomically over the past decade, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Burkina Faso by 238 percent, Mali by 339 percent, and Niger by 288 percent. The arms trade is suffocating these countries. With the potential entry of NATO into the region, this illusionary form of treating the Sahel’s problems as security problems will only persist. Even for the United Nations, the questions of development in the area have become an afterthought to the main focus on war.

Lack of support for the civilian governments to deal with the real problems in the region has led to military coups in three of the five countries: Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali. The military junta in Mali ejected the French military from Mali’s territory on May 2, a week before it left G5 Sahel. Indications of disquiet regarding French policies swirl around the region. Will Mali’s example be followed by any of the other countries who are part of the G5 Sahel group, and will France’s real project in the Sahel—to limit migration of people from the Global South to Europe—eventually collapse with Mali’s exit from the G5 Sahel?