Eligibility: Foreign applicants who have gained a first university degree in the field of the Performing Arts at the latest by the time they commence their scholarship-supported study programme.
What can be funded?
In this study programme, you can complete
a Master’s degree/postgraduate degree leading to a final qualification, or
a complementary course that does not lead to a final qualification (not an undergraduate course)
at a state or state-recognised German university of your choice. This programme only funds projects in the artistic field of the Performing Arts (Drama, Theatre Directing/Theatre Dramaturgy, Musicals, Performance Studies, Dance, Choreography). Other DAAD scholarship programmes are available for applicants from the fields of Theatre and Dance Studies or for artists with a scientific project.
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value of Award:
A monthly payment of 850 euros
Travel allowance, unless these expenses are covered by the home country or another source of funding
One-off study allowance
Payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance cover
Under certain circumstances, scholarship holders may receive the following additional benefits:
Monthly rent subsidy
Monthly allowance for accompanying members of family
To enable scholarship holders to learn German in preparation for their stay in the country, DAAD offers the following services:
Payment of course fees for the online language course “Deutsch-Uni Online (DUO)” (deutsch-uni.com) for six months after receipt of the Scholarship Award Letter
if necessary: Language course (2, 4 or 6 months) before the start of the study visit; the DAAD decides whether to fund participation and for how long depending on German language skills and project. Participation in a language course is compulsory if the language of instruction or working language is German at the German host institution.
Allowance for a personally chosen German language course during the scholarship period
Reimbursement of the fees for the TestDaF test which has either been taken in the home country after receipt of the Scholarship Award Letter or in Germany before the end of the funding period
As an alternative to the TestDaF for scholarship holders who have taken a language course beforehand: the fee for a DSH examination taken during the scholarship period may be reimbursed.
Duration of Program:
Masters/Postgraduate study programmes: Between 10 and 24 months depending on the length of the chosen study programme or project
Complementary studies not leading to a final qualification: One academic year
How to Apply: The application procedure occurs online through the DAAD portal. You are also required to send additional documents by post to the specified application address.
Last Friday, September 2, a far-right extremist attempted twice to fire a pistol held centimeters away from the face of the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who ruled the country from 2007 to 2015, following a one-term presidency of her late husband, Nestor Kirchner.
Moment assassin pointed gun in the face of Vice President Cristina Kirchner (Twitter)
The gunman was identified as Fernando Andrés Sabag Montiel, 35 years old. Born in Brazil, he was naturalized and a resident of Argentina since 1993.
Footage from the assassination attempt shows that Montiel has a number of Nazi tattoos, and he has been identified by authorities as a far-right sympathizer. So far, police have revealed no wider organizational links.
Yesterday, the leading judge in the case sealed the investigation just after ordering the arrest of Montiel’s 23-year-old girlfriend, Brenda Uliarte, identified as a supporter of the far-right Argentine House member Javier Milei, an apologist forArgentina’s 1976-1983 fascist-military dictatorship. Shortly after the attack, Uliarte posted a social media video dissociating herself from it, but ranting against “corruption,” in a backhanded endorsement of the action.
Also yesterday, Security Minister Aníbal Fernández offered his resignation to President Alberto Fernández after it was revealed that the gunman’s cellphone had all the data erased under unknown circumstances after its seizure by security forces.
The attempted murder came in the midst of an extraordinary political crisis. On August 22, Kirchner was charged with corruption in the so-called “Vialidad” case, accused of favoring a fraudulent building company in dozens of construction projects in her native Patagonian state of Santa Cruz when she was president between 2007 and 2015. The Prosecutor’s Office has called for her to be imprisoned for 12 years and banned from holding political office.
The gunman infiltrated a crowd of supporters who have held a vigil below her private apartment in the upscale Recoleta neighborhood since the indictment, and was greeting her as she returned home.
Minutes after the attack, President Alberto Fernández decreed a holiday for the next day and called on Argentines to support “democracy” and repudiate the attack. Authorities report that 500,000 demonstrators rallied against the attack in front of the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, on Saturday.
The attempted murder and the indictment of Kirchner, a former president associated with the so-called “Pink Tide” of bourgeois-nationalist governments in South America in the early 2000s, take place against the backdrop of a crushing social and political crisis in the country. It has seen the ruling Peronist Justicialista Party hemorrhage support and lose the control of the Argentine Senate for the first time in the party’s 80-year history last year. The crisis also saw the far-right, led by Milei, win 1 million votes and enter Congress for the first time.
In August, Argentina suffered a sharp acceleration of monthly inflation to 7.4 percent, setting annual inflation on a path to surpass 90 percent by the end of the year, and potentially hit three digits—the highest anywhere in the world. Poverty stands at over 40 percent, with just under 10 percent of Argentines facing food insecurity. A recent Caritas charity report revealed that 60 percent of Argentines have been poor at some point during the last 10 years, and 30 percent of them have been poor for the whole of the last 10 years.
Meanwhile, inflation has been compounded by criminal speculation by major soy, wheat and corn producers, who have withheld grain from the market, betting that the government will be forced to devaluate the national currency, the peso, eventually leading to an explosion of profits from exports.
The political response to the social catastrophe on the part of the Peronists has been utterly reactionary. Having lost over 6 million votes between 2019, when it was returned to power, and the 2021 midterm Congressional elections, the government has steadily moved to the right, reneging on each and every election promise in order to meet payments on a massive US$45 billion IMF loan.
Shortly before Kirchner’s indictment, on August 3, the fractured Justicialista party had agreed on the nomination of Speaker of the House Sergio Massa for a new economic “super-ministry” bringing under its control the Development and Agriculture, Grains and Fishing portfolios. Massa, a former right-wing Peronist and favorite of big business, became the third Economy Minister in a month, after the Kirchner-appointed Silvina Batakis resigned less than a month after taking office. The nomination of Massa made President Fernández all but a figurehead.
One of Massa’s first announcements was the end of energy and water subsidies equivalent to 1.0 percent of the GDP, in an attempt to bring the budget deficit to less than 2.5 percent of the GDP next year and fulfill the conditions dictated by the IMF. Only yesterday, Massa announced the government will allow large grain exporters to trade dollars at the rate of 200 pesos to one, while the official currency exchange stands at only 130 pesos to one, providing big agriculture the windfall profits they have demanded, at the cost of generalized hunger. The special exchange rate is being justified as a means of rebuilding the country’s foreign currency reserves and stabilizing the peso, which the government claims will eventually bring inflation under control. It was announced less than 24 hours before Massa was due to fly to Washington to take new IMF orders.
Under these conditions, the prospective presidential candidacy of Kirchner in the 2023 elections has become an ever more urgent matter for the Argentine ruling class. In the almost ritualistic theatrics of Peronism, Kirchner has been a critic of the IMF deal, railing against President Fernández for not being “up to the task” of leading Argentina out of the crisis. For over two years, she has made public declarations opposing cabinet policies, and her son, Máximo, the leader of the Peronist block in the House, quit his leadership in March claiming he was not “fit” to lead the Peronist delegation in voting on the measures demanded by the IMF because he did not believe in them. Shortly after, the current deal being enforced by Massa was approved with the votes of his tiny Renovation Front Party, and the opposition, including the traditional electoral opponents of Peronism, the century-old Civic Radical Union.
Kirchner has been keen to be photographed alongside Massa during office hours, attempting to claim credit for any gains he makes in restoring the “confidence” of the imperialist overlords of the Argentine ruling class, while keeping a safe distance from the brutal austerity that allows her to once again claim the long-exhausted mantle of Peronist nationalism and reformism.
After being indicted a fortnight ago, she was quick to raise the personal connections of prosecutors and judges with her right-wing billionaire successor, former president Mauricio Macri, who engineered the current IMF deal. Her defense pointed to numerous pictures of the prosecution team enjoying parties at posh Macri properties that should disqualify them from the case, but were ignored by the court.
At the same time, she claimed the real target of the prosecutors was “Peronism” and workers’ social rights, with the case concocted to hurt her election prospects. As vice president and head of the Senate, she enjoys wide immunity. Even if the case reaches a speedy conclusion, any enforcing of the sentence against her requires a two-thirds Senate supermajority vote that the Peronists can easily bar, except for an internal party coup. However, the charges will impact her political standing, including within the cutthroat Peronist political disputes, possibly opening the way for more open alignment with Massa’s program.
There is no doubt that Peronism, as an integral part of the corrupt Argentine bourgeois state machine, has committed and is currently engaged in countless crimes against the Argentine working class—of which the IMF-dictated austerity is one of the most brutal. At the same time, its populist rhetoric has attracted the ire of the most ruthless elements within the ruling class, who fear the party may lose control of workers trapped within its countless corrupt unions and “grassroots” organizations. This has been made abundantly clear by the targeting of Kirchner by both prosecutors and a fascist assailant in such a short period.
Furthermore, the ominous revelation that critical data for solving the case, the records on the gunman’s phone, have been lost raises serious questions about whether the security forces themselves collaborated with or are covering up the attack.
The rise of the far-right is not by any means an exclusive Argentine phenomenon. On the contrary, it has been the rule in every country, with the ruling classes preparing to drown in blood the rising opposition of workers to war, inequality, poverty and the unnecessary mass death and disability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a capitalist party, Peronism fears the independent action of workers infinitely more than fascist violence. It has already proven so by exterminating its own left-wing under the government of Isabel Perón in 1975-1976, decapitating the working class and leaving it defenseless in face of the fascist-military coup of 1976, which led to tens of thousands of political murders.
On Sunday, Germany’s coalition government presented its so-called “relief package.” It includes the clear statement that the government will continue the confrontation with Russia at all costs and will pass the burden of the war on to the population. While large corporations continue to receive new financial aid, despite pocketing billions in profits, workers, pensioners and students face drastic income losses.
[Photo by Tim Reckmann / ccnull.de / CC-BY 2.0]
When presenting the relief package, the leaders of the “traffic light coalition”—the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Liberal Democratic Party (FDP) and Greens—remained extremely vague, refusing to provide concrete figures. The alleged total of €65 billion was not broken down into the various measures and was based on mere estimates. According to Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the measures will only burden the federal budget in 2022 and 2023 with an additional €32 billion.
A large part of this sum is likely to go to businesses and corporations. All aid for companies would be extended until December 31, according to the coalition partners’ joint paper. In addition, “energy-intensive companies” would be supported, “sustainable companies” would be stabilized and private housing companies, which have raked in record profits at the expense of tenants in recent years, would be given development loans. In addition, there is to be financial support for “efficiency and substitution measures” to enable corporations to become less dependent on natural gas imports.
While companies will receive further gifts worth billions, the fabulous profits of numerous large corporations remain untouched. The businesses listed on Germany’s Dax index alone increased their profits by 21 percent in the first quarter of the year. Skimming off the “windfall profits” of energy producers, announced by the coalition in the “relief package,” will not change this in the slightest.
This measure merely slightly reduces the billions gifted to the energy companies on the backs of consumers for months. Electricity prices in the EU are not regulated by the market but are always based on the power plants that produce the most expensive electricity. Since gas-fired power generation has become very expensive, electricity costs are rising disproportionately. All other electricity producers—those using wind power, nuclear power, coal, etc.—can sell their electricity at these horrendous prices, even though they have not seen a corresponding increase in production costs.
The government has now announced that it will retain at least part of these gifts and use them to reduce electricity prices, which were previously driven up by the same gifts. In doing so, it left the scope of the skimming and the amount of the electricity price cap completely open, referring only to the fact that this was to be decided at European level. But even if the entire “windfall profits” were skimmed off and passed on to consumers—which is highly unlikely—households would still face market-based increases in electricity prices.
A similar social attack disguised as relief lies behind the reduction of VAT (sales tax) on natural gas from 19 percent to 7 percent. This measure had long been decided and will come into effect on October 1 but has now been added to the package in order to artificially increase its volume. This is because economists expect that the reduction alone will cost the federal budget €14 billion, almost half of the package’s volume.
However, this money will not reach consumers. That is because the reduction does not even offset the cost of the gas surcharge, which the coalition passed in August and which obliges households to pay an additional 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, which flows directly into the bank accounts of the billion-euro energy companies. Not to mention the additional enormous increase in natural gas prices, which since Friday alone have risen again by up to 30 percent.
At the same time, the incomes of workers, pensioners and students are being decimated not only by skyrocketing energy prices, but also by rapidly rising rents and hyperinflation in food prices. Even according to official statistics, food prices rose by 14 percent in July compared to the same period last year.
The minimal relief that the federal government’s package has decided on for these groups does not compensate for this in any way but is merely incidental to the extreme redistribution from the bottom to the top that the government and companies are currently organizing.
For example, the government cited the conversion of “Unemployment Benefit II” into a “citizen’s income” from January 1, 2023. However, this had also been decided long ago and is only intended to fudge the package. Part of this changeover is the increase in the standard rate from the previous €449 to “about €500.”
This “approximately 11 percent” increase is “at best a bad joke,” as the managing director of the charitable Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband (Parity Welfare Association), Ulrich Schneider, put it. If one includes the last increase in 2022 of just 0.6 percent, the result is an annual increase of only 5.8 percent, which is far below the increased cost of living.
The rise in child benefits is even worse. These will be increased next year by only €18 or 8.8 percent to €222. However, this is the first increase since 2019, which results in an annualized increase of just 2.9 percent. Since the rise only applies to the first two children, a family of six thus receives an annual increase of only 1.4 percent!
Even one-time payments for students and pensioners of €200 and €300, as well as the long since decided housing subsidy reform, will not change the slightest about the disastrous conditions that the coalition itself has created. The nine-euro ticket, enabling a month’s travel on local and regional transport, which at least provided some mobility for poorer classes, will be abolished, and replaced—subject to the approval of the federal states—by a €49 to €69 ticket, which, according to surveys, would only be used by 5 instead of 67 percent of the population.
A significant element of the “relief package” is the “Concerted Action” listed under item 10. This refers to the government’s close collaboration with trade unions and large corporations to push through cuts in real wage against workers. In particular, it is intended to prevent workers from winning increases to compensate for inflation that are incorporated into basic rates in the numerous wage disputes this year.
Instead, the unions have pledged to keep workers quiet with one-off payments that will not be included in basic pay scales. In this way, real wages are severely reduced, and profits are driven up further, while workers only receive a small level of compensation for this year. The government now wants to support this by exempting such one-off payments of up to €3,000 from taxes and deductions—in other words, it is subsidizing the cuts in real wages.
The €32 billion that Lindner estimates these measures will cost remain within “the federal government’s previous budget plans,” according to the finance minister. In other words, the sums, most of which will benefit the big corporations, will be saved elsewhere. The federal government left open in which areas these are, but the massive increase in defence spending, while simultaneously cutting health and education, have long since been decided.
The “relief package” is another step by the coalition to militarize the whole of society and subordinate it to its war policy. After systematically provoking Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine, it now wants to use this to inflict a military defeat on Russia and bring the country, with its vast mineral resources, under its own control.
The German government wants to become “independent of Russian gas,” as Chancellor Scholz put it when announcing the package, in order to be able to push this confrontation further. The price explosion is convenient because it forces the population to save energy and thus guarantees supplies for industry.
The ruthlessness and contempt for democratic rights with which the government is proceeding in this regard was made clear by Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock at a conference in Prague last Wednesday. Speaking there about price increases and the upcoming winter, she declared she would continue the confrontation with Russia, “no matter what my German voters think.” Even before that she pledged support for the Ukrainian government until Crimea was also under its control, that is, until Russia was defeated militarily.
But it is not only the costs of this war and the insane costs of rearmament that are being passed on to the population. War abroad also serves the ruling class for a war at home. Like the coronavirus pandemic, it is using the Ukraine war to carry out a fabulous orgy of enrichment at the top of society. The government’s “relief package” further accelerates this process, relying on close cooperation with corporations and unions.
The elevation of Liz Truss to the position of prime minister heralds a decisive conflict between the Conservative government and the British working class.
Truss has been chosen by 80,000 well-heeled reactionaries among the Tory Party’s ageing 170,000 membership to occupy Britain’s highest office. She is the candidate considered most ruthless in implementing an agenda of war with Russia and China, and class war in the UK.
Liz Truss speaks after winning the Conservative Party leadership contest at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London on September 5, 2022. Truss will become Britain’s new prime minister after an audience with Queen Elizabeth II on September 6. [AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali]
As the Socialist Equality Party explained following the forced resignation of Boris Johnson in July, “The political fear animating a leadership challenge that almost led to the meltdown of the government is that Johnson is such a divisive and discredited figure that he could not be entrusted with the next stage of the ruling class offensive against the working class or with prosecuting NATO’s war in Europe.
“The British bourgeoisie is in the throes of a political crisis rooted in a global capitalist breakdown, a still raging pandemic, a worldwide inflationary spiral, trade war, the eruption of war and, above all, the resurgence of the class struggle.”
Immediately before Truss’s election was announced, the Daily Telegraph declared that “for the first time since Margaret Thatcher, Britain is about to have a principled, classical liberal, pro-market, well-read, economically literate and policy-driven PM.”
She began building this position in the Tory party a decade ago when, as a newly elected MP, she co-authored Britannia Unchained, along with others in the party’s Thatcherite Free Enterprise Group. It decried the UK’s “bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation,” described British workers as “among the worst idlers in the world,” hailed “economies like Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea” and urged the creation of multiple Free Trade Zones.
More recently, on the pandemic, she declared, “No lockdown would happen under my leadership,” and there would be “No mask mandates.”
Behind this monstrous personality, a government with no popular mandate to rule is seeking to impose a political agenda dictated by the financial oligarchy that threatens millions with destitution, dictatorial rule, the eruption of world war and nuclear destruction.
Truss takes office amid a devastating cost-of-living crisis, with rampant inflation and soaring fuel costs leading to a strike wave encompassing rail, post and telecom workers that threatens to explode into action involving millions more.
She is notorious for her warmongering against Russia. This reached a crescendo in August, when she was asked whether she would activate Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons, even though “it would mean global annihilation.” Truss replied without any emotion, “I’m ready to do that.”
Truss has also pledged to raise military spending to 3 percent of GDP by 2030, which would have vast implications. According to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) military think tank, this would mean a 30 percent troop increase and cost a staggering £157 billion.
Paying for this would mean income tax increases of 5 percent and unprecedented cuts in social spending. £157 billion is equivalent to the annual spending on the National Health Service (NHS) for the whole of the UK.
The ruling class knows that the escalation of war in Europe, military aggression against China and its drive to claw back the hundreds of billions handed out to big business during the pandemic, under conditions of a raging economic crisis, cannot be carried out by democratic means.
RUSI’s appraisal of Truss’s military spending pledge calls it “the end of the peace dividend.” It states, “Since the mid-1950s, the UK has been able to fund the growing share of its national income devoted to the NHS and state pensions through cuts in the GDP share spent on defence.”
Ramping up defence spending “would be a radical shift in priorities,” and “there has been little attempt to ready the British public for the sacrifices that will be needed.”
Preparations are well advanced for the brutal repression of social opposition.
The day before Truss’s victory, the Sunday Times reported a leaked strategy paper of Britain’s police chiefs laying out contingency plans to deal with the cost-of-living crisis that anticipates a rise in crime and a breakdown in public order. The threat of mass civil unrest “as a response to prolonged and painful economic pressure” led one senior officer to warn of “a return to the febrile conditions that led to the London riots in 2011.”
The central concern of the Tories, however, is not riots but collective working class resistance.
In response to the rail strikes, the government has already legislated for the use of agency workers as scabs. Truss will now implement “minimal service” legislation that effectively outlaws strikes in all essential industries and services, including education and the NHS.
The content of this legislation was laid out by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps in the Daily Mail, who boasted, “We WILL take on these Luddites ... just like Thatcher.” It includes increasing the ballot threshold for strike action, doubling the notice period for strike action, enforcing a compulsory “cooling-off” period, demanding endless ballots by allowing only one strike action per mandate, further curtailing the right to picket and fining unions £1 million for breaking anti-strike laws.
The ability of the Tories to mount such an offensive is the political responsibility of the Labour Party and the trade unions.
The Tories first came to office in 2010, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, due to the political alienation of millions of workers from Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, above all over the 2003 Iraq War and then the 2008 bailout of the banks that inaugurated the “age of austerity.”
Workers looking to fight back against the Tories and the Blairites voted in massive numbers in 2015 and again in 2016 for Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, only for him to capitulate in the face of both.
Today, Labour under Sir Keir Starmer functions in a de facto coalition with the Tories, supporting their war policy and joining in opposing strikes. Immediately following Truss’s election, with even the Liberal Democrats calling for a general election, Starmer congratulated “our next Prime Minister Liz Truss as she prepares for office.”
Outside Parliament, the trade union bureaucracy police and suppress the class struggle, limiting the summer strike wave and preventing a broader upsurge of industrial action. Strikes have been kept separate, with many sold out based on below-inflation pay awards, while a drawn-out process of balloting has prevented the largest battalions of workers in the NHS, local government and education from acting.
The US and Western media have seized on a UN report published last week on human rights in China’s Xinjiang region to again denounce Beijing for its treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim groups. The accusations of China’s abuse of Uyghurs are a prominent feature in the propaganda constantly broadcast by the US and its allies as they ramp up their provocations and preparations for war against China.
A protester holds an anti-China placard during a protest in Istanbul, Thursday, March 25, against against the visit of China's FM Wang Yi to Turkey. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) [AP Photo]
The report produced by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a threadbare document that relies on the same paucity of evidence as Western propaganda—Chinese government documents, public and leaked, satellite images of alleged detention centres in Xinjiang, the biased reports and studies of anti-China academics and journalists and “eyewitness” accounts of individuals, unnamed in the case of this report, often connected to CIA-funded Uyghur exile organisations.
UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet, whose term of office ran out last week, conducted a six-day mission to China in May that included a visit to Xinjiang where she raised concerns over the broad use of counter-terrorism measures against the Muslim population of the region.
Despite the lack of evidence, the report concluded that “interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights” are evident in Xinjiang. It claimed there has been “the large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities” and credible allegations of “torture or ill-treatment” and of “individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.” It alleged broader discrimination against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, including “the coercive and discriminatory enforcement of family planning and birth control policies” and “indications” of forced labour.
What is striking about the UN report is the lack of any substantive evidence and what it omits, rather than what it cautiously concludes. It puts no figure on the number of Uyghurs allegedly held in prisons, vocational education facilities and detention centres, whereas Western politicians and media commonly declare as fact their unsubstantiated claims that a million or even two million are being imprisoned.
Moreover, the report acknowledged that “the available information at this stage does not allow OHCHR to draw firm conclusions regarding the exact extent of such abuses.” Nevertheless, it concluded that “the highly securitised and discriminatory nature” of the detention facilities, “provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale.” In reality, this statement rests on the biased accounts of individual exiles.
The most significant absence is the lack of any claim of the “genocide” of China’s Uyghur population which is central to Washington’s propaganda as it prepares for war against China. This blatant lie, which rests on a gross distortion of China’s One Child policies, is recycled as fact by Uyghur exile organisations and has been taken up by the Biden administration as a key element of its list of accusations against China.
Not content that the report declared that China’s actions “may constitute… crimes against humanity,” the failure of the UN report to include any reference to “genocide”—for which there is no basis in evidence—has been criticised by various Uyghur advocates and organisations. Rahima Mahmut, UK director at the CIA-funded World Uyghur Congress, declared that she was disappointed that UN had not “called this what it is: genocide.”
Nevertheless, these same advocates recognise the importance of the UN report for adding weight to the farrago of lies and distortions on which their organisations rely. The well-heeled American Uyghur spokeswoman, Rushan Abbas, who is very well connected in Washington, told the New York Times: “It is imperative that nations take this report and make concrete steps toward stopping these crimes against humanity and holding China accountable for them.”
China has predictably denounced the UN report. Liu Yuyin, spokesperson for the Chinese mission to the UN in Geneva, branded the “so-called ‘assessment’ on Xinjiang” as a “farce,” declaring it to be “completely a politicised document that disregards facts, and reveals explicitly the attempt of some Western countries and anti-China forces to use human rights as a political tool.”
An annex to the report by the Chinese mission in Geneva stated it was based on “disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces and out of presumption of guilt.” It went on to declare that “all ethnic groups in Xinjiang” were living a “happy life” because of the government’s measures to “fight terrorism and extremism.”
The flat denials of any abuse of the democratic rights are no more credible than the sweeping and unsubstantiated allegations made by the US and its allies against China. The Chinese regime relies heavily on repressive measures to stamp out any sign of opposition—above all from the working class.
In Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party has confronted a rising tide of opposition which its policies have generated. Its measures are justified as a response to terrorist acts carried out by militant Uyghur separatists who have their roots in the CIA funded and armed “jihad” in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Beijing, which backed Washington’s “secret war,” experienced its own “blowback” in the form of the rise of Uyghur extremism in Xinjiang, and is carrying out its own crackdown on “terrorism” and “extremism”.
The US, however, has cynically seized on the alleged abuses of Uyghurs for its own predatory purposes. It is no defender of “human rights” in Xinjiang, nor for that matter in Tibet or Hong Kong, and certainly not of the Chinese working class. Once again Washington and its allies are raising the phony banner of human rights as the justification for the preparations for war, while ignoring the gross abuse of democratic rights of its strategic partners and allies such as the Saudi monarchy.
The very fact that the OHCHR has chosen to focus on alleged human rights abuses in China, while turning a blind eye to the crimes of the US speaks volumes about the role of the United Nations as a tool of imperialism. No such UN investigation has been carried out into the criminal US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan or Iraq, despite a mountain of evidence of war crimes, torture, arbitrary killings and wanton destruction.
The UN is a “den of thieves,” to use Lenin’s phrase regarding its predecessor, the League of Nations—a clearing house for the intrigues, provocations and conflicts of the major imperialist powers where they can haggle over the spoils.
The 27 governments of the European Union have agreed on a “complete suspension” of the visa agreement between the EU and Russia. As a result, the number of new visas for Russian citizens will be “significantly reduced”, declared EU foreign affairs commissioner Josep Borrell last Wednesday at a summit of EU foreign ministers in Prague.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock with her then Estonian counterpart Eva-Maria Liimets in March [Photo by Estonian Foreign Ministry/CC BY-SA 2.0]
The measures include doubling the visa fee from 35 euros to 80 euros and eliminating the standard processing time of ten calendar days after receipt of an application. A freezing of the current 12 million valid visas is also being considered by EU officials. Borrell justified the aggressive move by citing a “significant increase in border crossings from Russia to neighbouring countries”, which allegedly pose a “security risk”.
In addition to the millions of holidaymakers directly affected, Russian middle-class and working-class citizens are also to be systematically excluded from Europe. Only a few days after the war began, the EU imposed an airspace ban on Russian planes and airlines, which has since forced holidaymakers from Russia to enter the EU by land via Finland, Estonia and Lithuania, where they face open hostility from governments and authorities.
The visa agreement between the EU and Russia had allowed easier visa issuance for travelers since 2007 but, following the start of the war, it was initially suspended for businesspeople, government representatives and diplomats. The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Green Party)—who is said to have played a key role behind the scenes in negotiating the agreement between EU states—explained that in future, visa applications from Russian citizens would take “several months in cases of doubt”.
For pro-European oligarchs, however, all doors remain open. According to a report in the daily Die Welt, front companies and offshore registrations are routinely used to disguise the owners of aircraft and circumvent the airspace ban. Those able to invest between 1.15 and 2 million euros can also obtain citizenship documents in Malta, Cyprus and Bulgaria which guarantee freedom of movement throughout the Schengen area.
A number of EU states had called for even more comprehensive measures, up to and including a complete halt to the issuing of visas. These included the Baltic countries as well as Poland, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and the Czech Republic—which currently holds the EU Presidency—have already announced or introduced such travel bans. According to the magazine Der Spiegel, Baerbock warned that the aim of Western sanctions must be to ensure the Russian people turn “against their own president”.
In reality, the measures are an escalation of the collective forms of punishment against Russia deployed by EU states since the start of the Ukraine war. The measures are aimed at fueling the war and strengthening the most right-wing forces in Russia, Ukraine and the countries of the EU.
The war is a murderous proxy war, triggered by the invasion of the Russian military but systematically provoked and planned by the main Western powers over many years. Contrary to the deafening propaganda of governments and bourgeois media, the NATO powers, in arming Ukraine and weakening Russia, are pursuing an imperialist agenda aimed at bringing Ukraine under Western control and dividing up Russia.
The visa restrictions are part of the EU states’ efforts to foment nationalist agitation and attack anti-war sentiments, which have deep roots in the working class following two world wars. By pressuring and attacking Russian artists, scientists and now travelers, the aim is to prepare the people of Europe for even more brutal wars, up to and including nuclear war with millions of lives at stake.
Baerbock made clear to the press that the end of the visa agreement was the prelude to an aggressive “strategic reorientation” of the European Union’s policy towards Russia. This comprises “four points”: further “support for Ukraine”, “support for Russian opponents of the regime”, “strengthening our own defences” and “cooperation with global partners to defend international law”.
When a German foreign minister speaks of “working with global partners to defend international law”, this must be understood as a thinly veiled threat. It means that the NATO powers and their allies—who have been responsible for countless wars, mass bombardments, coups d’état and drone terror all over the world in recent decades—are to have the sole right to break “international law” in order to enforce their imperialist interests.
What Baerbock, Borrell and the European capitalist governments have in mind is a comprehensive militarisation strategy that subordinates all aspects of social life to a policy based on war. As Baerbock herself stressed, there must be “no let-up” vis-à-vis Russia, “neither in support for Ukraine nor in sanctions”. Since “social peace” was at stake as a result of Europe’s energy dependency, a “more resilient” society was needed in addition to “new technologies and equipment”.
The “four points” were elaborated in a paper by Baerbock and French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna and presented to the other member states for the informal EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Prague as a “proposal for discussion”. The paper, classified as “confidential” but made available to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, states that “Russia’s war against Ukraine must turn into a strategic failure”. This failure is defined in the “broadest sense” and includes a “decoupling from Russia in the field of energy”.
In a move that will have devastating consequences for hundreds of millions of Europeans, Russia has indefinitely ended natural gas exports to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Nord Stream 1 is the largest source of Russian natural gas exports to Europe, which up to this year amounted to 40 percent of European natural gas imports. Over the past months, Russia has repeatedly cut off supplies via Nord Stream 1 for days in a row.
FILE - Pipes of the gas storage plant Reckrod are pictured near Eiterfeld, central Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
Prices for natural gas, the leading energy source for home heating, have already risen 10-fold over the past year and surged by more than 33 percent on Monday following the announcement.
European households, facing surging energy and food prices, have been driven to the brink, and small businesses are facing bankruptcy throughout the continent.
This massive social disaster is the consequence of the US-NATO war with Russia, which was instigated by the NATO powers by their efforts to bring Ukraine into the NATO alliance. The war has already led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, the deaths of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers and the shattering of Ukrainian economic life.
The primary beneficiaries of the conflict have been US and European defense contractors, which are seeing the largest orders in decades, and US energy companies, which have surged energy exports onto the European market at record prices, leading to bumper profits.
Despite the economic disaster looming for Europe, the US and NATO have only escalated their involvement in the war.
The White House called on Congress Monday to appropriate a further $11 billion for the war in Ukraine, adding to the more than $50 billion that has been allocated to date.
It has become undeniable that the White House is removing nearly all remaining restraints on US involvement in the war, which US President Joe Biden warned earlier this year might risk “World War III.”
In an article entitled “Why the US is becoming more brazen with its Ukraine support,” the Hill reports that “the Biden administration is arming Ukraine with weapons that can do serious damage to Russian forces, and, unlike early in the war, U.S. officials don’t appear worried about Moscow’s reaction.”
The article quoted William Taylor, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine and a leading figure in the first impeachment of Donald Trump, saying, “Over time, the administration has recognized that they can provide larger, more capable, longer-distance, heavier weapons to the Ukrainians and the Russians have not reacted.”
He continued, “The Russians have kind of bluffed and blustered, but they haven’t been provoked. And there was concern [over this] in the administration early on—there still is to some degree—but the fear of provoking the Russians has gone down.”
If Russia has not been “provoked,” the response of US officials is to escalate their involvement in the war until the necessary outcome is achieved.
The article noted that last month, “defense officials said the United States for the first time would send Ukraine ScanEagle surveillance drones, heavily armored MaxxPro mine-resistant vehicles and TOW guided anti-tank missile systems as well as various new munitions and ammo.”
These are added to the AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, as well as a massive increase in the number of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) long-range missile systems being sent to the country.
The Hill wrote, “Looking ahead, multiple reports have indicated that the U.S. plans to soon send Excalibur precision-guided artillery munitions—weapons that can travel up to 70 kilometers and would help the Ukrainians target dug-in Russian positions and command posts.”
The article cited an unnamed US official who said, “I think the instincts of the people in the departments and agencies, particularly State and Defense and the intelligence community, I think their instincts are to be more forward leaning and more aggressive. … We have a lot more space on our side, I think, to take actions that will assist Ukraine without being unjustifiably afraid of how Putin is going to respond.”
While Russian officials have repeatedly called for peace negotiations, the United States and its proxy government in Ukraine have refused any negotiations with Russia short of Ukraine’s goal of retaking Crimea. “It’s a question of dialogue with terrorists. We cannot—you cannot discuss anything with terrorists,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC.
The US media, meanwhile, is cheerleading a Ukrainian offensive in southern Ukraine which the White House is using as the pretext to greatly expand US involvement in the war. To date, the US has provided hundreds of drones and aircraft, hundreds of vehicles, tens of thousands of missiles and millions of rounds of ammunition. But as The Hill makes clear, this is just a down payment as the US prepares a “more aggressive” intervention in the war.
The continued escalation of the US-led NATO war against Russia in Ukraine is threatening to spark a financial crisis in European energy markets that could spread more broadly to hit banks and other areas of the financial system.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, second right, shakes hands with Ukraine's Minister of Finance Sergii Marchenko, left, after a signature ceremony on the sidelines of the EU-Ukraine Association Council at the European Council, Brussels on Monday, Sept. 5, 2022. [AP Photo/Virginia Mayo]
Over the weekend the Swedish and Finnish governments announced they were providing emergency assistance, running into the tens of billions of dollars, for energy companies hit by liquidity problems as they confront a 10-fold escalation in gas prices and violent swings in the market which are making it increasingly difficult to finance their trading operations.
The immediate origins of the move, in which the Swedish government said it would provide up to $23 billion in credit for utility companies, lie in the decision by major powers to step up sanctions against Russia.
Last Friday, finance ministers from the G7, comprising the US, Canada, France, Germany Italy, Japan and the UK, agreed they would press ahead with efforts to impose a cap on Russian oil prices in order to reduce the revenue to the Russian government and “build on and amplify the reach of existing sanctions.”
In response, Russia said it was cutting off gas supplies through the Nordstream 1 pipeline, claiming sanctions had impeded maintenance work.
There was an immediate outcry against the Russian response amid claims that the gas market was being “weaponised,” and Moscow’s move was proof of Russian “cynicism.”
Comments by Swedish and Finnish government ministers as well as from industry representatives point to the extent and depth of the financial problems confronting energy companies arising from the way they trade in the gas market.
This involves the use of derivatives in which they try to cover large movements in prices for which they must obtain credit from banks and other financial institutions. But prices have become so high and the movements so violent that the money which they need to place with their creditors as collateral has reached a point where once “normal” operations have broken down.
According to one European trader, cited by the Financial Times (FT): “The amount of cash you need to participate in these markets is getting to impossible levels.”
Announcing the move in the wake of the decision to shut down Nordstream 1, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderrson said the government would provide hundreds of billions of kroner to fund the collateral energy producers need to post to finance their deals.
Standing beside the Swedish financial regulator, the central bank governor, and the finance minister, as she made the announcement, Anderrson said Russia’s decision “not only risks leading to a ‘war winter’ but also threatens our financial stability.”
The Swedish move was followed by a tweet from Finnish Finance Minister Annika Saarikko that similar action was underway. “The concern is shared. Similar preparations are well under way in Finland,” she said.
This was followed by a press conference conducted by Finnish Economy Minister Mika Lintilä in which he outlined the seriousness of the problem which has seen the government announce a €10 billion loan and guarantee package.
“The nervousness in the market is strong,” he said. “Here are all the ingredients for the energy sector’s version of Lehman Brothers.” The collapse of the US investment bank in September was the trigger for the global financial crisis.
Remarks by those involved in energy markets underscore the extent of the financial dangers.
Jean Francois Lambert, the founder of a commodities trading company and a former head of commodity trade finance at HSBC, told the FT other countries were likely to intervene in energy markets.
“The crisis is moving into the next stage. If one of the large energy companies collapses there are fears there could be a domino effect,” he said. “The call for liquidity is so enormous that maybe one day we have a problem that could harm the whole market.”
Speaking in support of the Swedish government’s measures, Stefan Ingvfes, governor of the country’s central bank, the Riksbank, said: “We need to isolate this in one market so it doesn’t infect the financial sector.”
The crisis is not confined to the Nordic countries but extends across the European continent and to the UK.
Lambert said the situation was not yet a financial crisis but indicated that it could become one.
“The large banks in Germany, France, Italy and Spain should be able to stomach this. But if one of their large customers traps them in a liquidity squeeze then you could see all the banks pulling back,” he said.
The effects of the gas price escalation have already been felt. In July the German government announced a €15 billion rescue package for Uniper, the largest European buyer of Russian gas which has been losing tens of millions of euros a day, and the company last month asked for a further €4 billion.
Speaking to the FT about Sweden’s move, the country’s finance minister Max Elger said: “This is a problem that is Europe-wide… liquidity is an issue in many countries. It may be the case that other countries will have to follow suit.”
The crisis is also heavily impacting Britain. The deputy director at Energy UK, a trade organisation which advocates for around 100 energy companies, told the FT that electricity producers in Britain were “really concerned about the situation this winter in relation to liquidity.”
Urging the British government to investigate and understand the scale of the problems confronting companies, he said: “Fundamentally the energy markets is not designed to deal with the scale of market volatility that we have seen over recent months.”
But as the war against Russia intensifies and further economic sanctions are employed the crisis is set to worsen.
The top Russian energy official Alexander Novak said the EU was responsible for the cuts in gas supplies and if it did not roll back sanctions the situation could worsen as prices continued to rise.
“The whole problem is at their end,” he said. “This nearsighted policy is leading to the collapse we see on European energy markets. This is not even the end, because we are still in the warm part of the year. Winter is coming, and many things are hard to predict.”
It has been reported that European energy ministers will meet on Friday in an emergency meeting to consider their response to the crisis under conditions where one electricity executive has warned it would only take “matter of days for not only small but large generators” to collapse because of liquidity problems.
