Britain’s High Court rules asylum deportations to Rwanda legal

Laura Tiernan

The High Court has ruled that the British government’s barbaric policy of deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda is legal. The court’s decision effectively overturns key provisions of the Geneva Convention (1951) and is a watershed in the assault on fundamental democratic rights.

In their written judgment handed down this morning, Lord Justice Lewis and Mr Justice Swift ruled that sending asylum-seekers 4,000 miles away to Rwanda did not breach the UN's Refugee Convention or human rights laws, “The court has concluded that, it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than in the United Kingdom.”

The High Court was responding to a judicial review application by asylum seekers and their supporters challenging the legality of their deportation. Care4Calais, Detention Action and the Public and Commercial Services Union (whose members are charged with arranging deportation flights) brought the action in June alongside eight unnamed asylum seekers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam and Albania.

Protesters stand outside the High Court where a ruling on Rwanda deportation flights took place, in London. June 13, 2022. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Flights to Rwanda were halted on June 14 by an emergency intervention from the European Court of Human Rights after twenty asylum claims by some of those scheduled for deportation to Rwanda were refused by the Administrative Court, the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court between June 8 and June 14.

A crowdfund launched by Care4Calais to finance its legal appeal explained, “Sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would breach the UK’s legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. The government cannot act with impunity, these proposals violate the most fundamental tenets of domestic and international law.”

This is exactly what the High Court has endorsed.

While the High Court today overruled deportation orders against eight asylum-seekers who brought the judicial review application, their fate is far from certain. The court merely found the Home Secretary had “not properly considered” the claimants’ circumstances, concluding, “For that reason, the decisions in those cases will be set aside and their cases will be referred back to the Home Secretary for her to consider afresh.”

Their fate will be determined by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the equally sadistic successor to Priti Patel who announced the policy in April. Braverman told the Conservative Party conference in October it was her “dream” and “obsession” to see asylum seekers back on deportation flights to Rwanda. She has described English Channel crossings by defenceless migrants as “an invasion of our southern coast”.

Home Secretary Priti Patel and Minister Biruta sign the migration and economic development partnership between the UK and Rwanda. April 14, 2022 [Photo by UK Home Office / CC BY 2.0]

Braverman welcomed today’s ruling, gloating, “We have always maintained that this policy is lawful and today the High Court has upheld this.” She pledged that Rwanda deportations would commence “as soon as possible”.

Refugee rights groups condemned today’s High Court ruling and have indicated they will appeal. The Migrants’ Rights Network called it “a dark day in the UK's history. The Government has now been given the green light to traffic refugees across the globe.”

Josie Naughton, CEO of not-for-profit Choose Love which helped fund the legal action stated, “Today is a dark moment for upholding human rights in the UK. Hostility has come at the expense of compassion, and the country is turning its back on the principle that all should have rights to live in freedom and in safety. Today’s ruling sets a dangerous precedent for evading international and moral commitments towards those seeking asylum.”

Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper attacked the Conservative Party on the most right-wing grounds imaginable, declaring that its Rwandan scheme was “unworkable” and “extremely expensive”. Speaking in parliament, she said the government had presided over a “collapse” in people-smuggler prosecutions and had “totally failed to take action against the criminal gangs”, while its “flawed and chaotic” decisions in the eight cases reviewed by the High Court meant that deportation orders had been overturned.

Stephen Kinnock, Labour's shadow immigration minister, was more bellicose still, attacking the government for a massive backlog of deportations. He claimed that just 21 out of 18,000 inadmissible people had been deported so far, declaring that “sending 300 asylum seekers to Rwanda won't even touch the size of that 18,000”.

The High Court’s 139-page judgment upholds the right of the British government to deport those with asylum claims in Britain, with the ultimate decision on their asylum status contracted out to the Rwandan government under a £140 million five-year deal.

Human Rights Watch has accused the Rwandan government of major human rights violations: “Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities is commonplace, and fair trial standards are routinely flouted.” Yet Britain’s High Court has ruled that Rwanda is a “safe third country” to send traumatised and defenceless asylum seekers.

Rwanda’s Patriotic Front government—whose human rights abuses stretch back to the 1994 genocide—will return unsuccessful claimants to the countries from which they have sought refuge, contravening the core principle of “non refoulment”, the bedrock of international refugee law under both the Geneva Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The High Court has crossed a Rubicon with today’s judgment. Justices Lewis and Swift referenced arguments “that the Refugee Convention imposes an obligation on contracting states to determine all asylum claims made, on their merits”, concluding, “We disagree… An obligation to determine every asylum claim on its merits would be a significant addition to the Refugee Convention.”

In the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust that claimed the lives of six million Jews, the right to asylum from political and religious persecution was enshrined in international law. Throughout the 1930s, the major imperialist “democracies” had rejected asylum applications from persecuted Jews, condemning them to death. In Britain, out of 500,000-600,000 refugee applications in the decade prior to World War II, just 80,000 were successful, with Jews frequently rejected as “undesirable”. More than 80 years later, the capitalist class is reviving such barbaric measures.

There is widespread revulsion toward the government’s brutal crackdown on asylum-seekers. A crowdfund has raised nearly £130,000 to finance the case, with thousands today condemning the decision on social media. There is recognition by workers that anti-immigrant sentiment is being stoked by the government to deflect from its own criminal policies.

Sweden to increase military budget 64 percent by 2028

Bran Karlsson

Sweden plans on increasing its defense and security budget by 64 percent between 2022 and 2028. The increase, proposed in a draft budget released last month, will see the small country spend about $12 billion a year on defense by 2028.

US Marines work alongside members of the Swedish mechanized infantry during BALTOPS 22. [Photo: US Marines]

The proposed increase follows Finland and Sweden’s application to join NATO in May. While Turkey retracted its veto against the two Scandinavian countries joining the military alliance in June, both Turkey and Hungary have yet to sign off on their membership.

The war in Ukraine has rapidly developed into a direct conflict between the US and its NATO allies on the one hand, and Russia on the other. The Swedish ruling elite was able to exploit Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine to overcome long-standing popular hostility to joining the imperialist powers in NATO and significantly expanding its armed forces.

Sweden’s proposed enlargement of its military budget comes weeks after a new right-wing coalition government took power. The right-wing coalition government rules with the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, a party which originated in Sweden’s neo-Nazi movement and has now become the second-largest party in parliament.

A few days after Sweden announced its massive defense budget increase, Sweden signed a military aid package for Ukraine worth $287 million—more than all its past aid.

Pål Jonson, Sweden’s defense minister and member of the right-wing Moderates, stated that the aid package contained “air defense and winter equipment—because that’s what the Ukrainians need.” He said the “first priority” of his office was to “[step] up economic, military, political and humanitarian support for Ukraine, including the transfer of more advanced weapons systems.”

The NATO-aligned international arms industry has greeted Sweden’s massive military spending increase with enthusiasm.

Defense News exclaimed, “Days after Sweden announced its largest military aid package yet for Ukraine, its lead defense officials are positioning the Nordic country’s contributions as an example of what to expect from Stockholm as a NATO member.”

They continued, “Ramping up aid from portable anti-tank weapons to heavy-duty anti-aircraft systems was just the latest in a whiplash-inducing array of changes for Sweden after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. After 200 years of nonalignment, Sweden is now a NATO aspirant, prompting a fast-tracked rewrite of its defense strategy and—from its new center-right government—a major defense budget boost.”

Sweden has long played an important role in the global arms industry.

The Nobel family, which obtained its wealth primarily from owning Russian oil fields and mines, was also a prolific manufacturer of explosives and ammunition. Alfred Nobel oversaw the invention of dynamite. When he died, his company owned 90 factories that manufactured explosives and ammunition across the world.

Sweden played a major role in the development of anti-tank weapons in the 20th century. The Carl Gustaf M series rocket launcher, now produced by Saab, is one of the most widely used portable anti-tank weapons.

In his press conference for the military budget, Jonson noted Sweden’s important role in the global arms industry, “There’s no other country of 10 million that can produce submarines, surface combatants, advanced artillery systems, combat vehicles and fighter aircraft… For being a quite small country, we have quite a vibrant defense industrial base.”

Saab, Sweden’s major defense company, recently posted a 13.6 percent rise in quarterly earnings. Its CEO Micael Johansson told a press conference, “It’s a multiple-year growth opportunity that we see in Europe and elsewhere, at least until 2030.”

Sweden has effectively been a close collaborator and participant in NATO for years. A staunch ally of the US since World War II, Stockholm’s “neutrality” is belied by its decades-long collaboration with the US military and intelligence agencies during the Cold War and War on Terror. Sweden has been involved in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Sweden has also participated in NATO military exercises for years prior to its formal application to join. It plays a major role in BALTOPS—NATO’s annual Baltic Operation exercise dating back to 1985—which Sweden hosted this year.

Sweden’s integration into the US-led military alliance and massive increase in military spending have been supported by the entire political establishment. While the latest budget is being implemented by a right-wing government, the previous Social Democrat government initiated another major defence budget increase in 2014 and reintroduced compulsory military service in 2017. Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson seized on the US/NATO-instigated Russian invasion of Ukraine to rush through Stockholm’s application to join NATO. The ex-Stalinist Left Party backed the sending of military equipment to Ukraine and promoted nationalism and militarism during the debate on Swedish NATO membership.

Sweden’s major increase in military spending comes as the major imperialist powers are increasing their war budgets to unprecedented levels. Over the past week alone, the United States, Germany and Japan unveiled massive new military spending proposals, underscoring the advanced preparations for World War III. Sweden could emerge as a frontline state in such a war, since it forms together with Finland a northern front that NATO could open up against Russia.

In the Swedish government’s budget draft, military spending will grow by $800 million in 2023 alone. The money will include a significant amount for increasing military personnel. This fall, Stockholm’s major subway stations were filled with advertisements to join the Swedish Defense Force. The budget also includes new money for cyber-defense, intelligence and new armaments.

A few weeks after the new budget was announced, Sweden’s special security and intelligence police (SAPO) conducted a raid with Black Hawk helicopters loaned by the military in Stockholm. According to AP, “The authorities gave few details about the case, but Swedish media cited witnesses who described elite police rappelling from two Black Hawk helicopters to arrest a couple that had allegedly spied for Russia.”

Two Iranian-born men were arrested earlier in November on charges of spying for the Russian military. One of them was previously a member of Sweden’s intelligence service SAPO.

Escalating assault on workers’ living standards in New Zealand

Tom Peters

The soaring cost of living is placing increasing pressure on working people in New Zealand and driving many into poverty, and the situation will continue to worsen in the coming year. As is the case internationally, the ruling elite is forcing the working class to shoulder the full burden of the mounting economic crisis, which is being fueled by the pro-business response to the pandemic, as well as the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at press conference at Parliament in Wellington, Oct. 11, 2021. [AP Photo/Robert Kitchin/Pool Photo via AP]

The Labour Party-led government used the COVID-19 pandemic to transfer tens of billions of dollars to big business, in the form of tax relief, direct bailouts and so-called wage subsidies. At the same time, during 2020–2021 the Reserve Bank printed $NZ53.5 billion ($US34.08 billion) to buy up government bonds from the commercial banks, boosting their profits to record levels and contributing to rampant inflation.

As a result of these handouts, the banks and major businesses are reporting substantial profits. The Deloitte Top 200 Index, released on December 8, shows that New Zealand’s 200 biggest companies increased their combined after-tax profits by 54.6 percent from $6.8 billion last year to $10.5 billion in 2022.

This goes hand-in-hand with an intensifying assault on the working class. Finance minister Grant Robertson told Newshub on November 26 that government spending reached approximately 35 percent of gross domestic product during the early response to the pandemic, and “it’s now coming down, by the end of this year, to 31 percent and it will track down further from there.”

He did not mention what services would be worst affected by funding cuts, saying it would be made clear in next year’s budget. Healthcare and education are already grossly underfunded. Hospitals face a shortage of thousands of staff, made worse by the Ardern government’s criminal decision in late 2021 to abandon its previous COVID elimination strategy; this has led to approximately 2,700 deaths and more than 22,600 hospitalisations.

The Reserve Bank, meanwhile, has declared that hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs: unemployment, currently 3.3 percent, must reach 5.7 percent in two years in order to suppress workers’ demands for wage increases.

Claims that this is necessary to bring inflation under control are a fraud: wages are not driving inflation. According to the Labour Cost Index, wages rose by 3.7 percent in the year to September, about half the inflation rate and nowhere near the 54.6 percent increase in company profits.

On November 24, Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr was asked in parliament whether he was “deliberately engineering a recession,” after he announced a steep increase in the official cash rate, from 3.5 to 4.25 percent. He replied: “I think that is correct. We are deliberately trying to slow aggregate spending in the economy.” The rate is set to be lifted to 5.5 percent by mid-2023.

Official inflation is currently 7.2 percent, and the real increase in costs facing households is considerably higher. According to Statistics NZ, if mortgage interest is factored in, inflation stands at 8.2 percent. CoreLogic estimated last month that rising interest rates could add $12,000 a year to the cost of a $500,000 home loan.

This will add to already-exorbitant housing costs. Interest.co.nz reported on December 10 that house prices have declined 12 percent from last year’s peak, but remain 30 percent higher than their level before the COVID pandemic: “The current median New Zealand house costs $820,000—more than 10 times the median household disposable income.”

The median weekly rent continues to soar: it increased 8 percent in the year to September, from $500 to $540. Rents have now gone up 35 percent since late 2017, when Jacinda Ardern became prime minister following a campaign in which Labour made false promises to reduce the cost of housing and alleviate poverty and inequality.

According to the Human Rights Commission, more than 102,000 people—2 percent of the population—were homeless or in overcrowded or inadequate housing in 2018, and the figures are undoubtedly worse now. There are around 25,000 applicants on the public housing waiting list. Nearly 10,000 homeless people, including thousands of children, have been crammed into hotels and boarding houses that are serving as “emergency housing.”

Total household debt stands at $340 billion, an average of around $85,000 per adult. Economists at ASB bank recently estimated that by the end of 2023 high debt servicing costs will add $80 a week to an average household’s budget, and an extra $70 a week will be needed to keep up with other cost pressures. In other words, a typical family would need $7,800 more per year to maintain their standard of living.

Food inflation stands at 10.7 percent. Charities across the country are reporting unprecedented levels of demand, including from working families unable to afford food and other essentials. Auckland City Mission recently told Radio NZ it was distributing 2,000 food parcels per week—about three million meals a year—compared with 450 before the pandemic.

A survey by the Consumer Advocacy Council in October found that, in order to save on electricity, one in four people were cutting back on showers and other hot water use, and around half were only heating the room they were in.

Officially, 187,300 children (16.3 percent) live in households with an income below the poverty line (less than 50 percent of the 2017/18 median income after housing costs). One in six children (14.9 percent) were in households that frequently ran out of food due to lack of money. These figures were recorded before the recent period of high inflation.

These conditions are leading to growing levels of despair. Last month Ipsos released disturbing findings from a mental health survey of 1,000 adults in New Zealand: one in four had considered suicide or self-harm in the past year. Among young people aged 18–34, the figure was 40 percent. Ipsos said concern about personal finances was having the biggest impact on respondents’ mental wellbeing.

This followed a report by the NZ Drug Foundation that deaths caused by drug overdoses increased by 54 percent between 2017 and 2021. Last year, 171 people died from overdoses, compared with 111 in 2017.

The social crisis and the out-of-control pandemic have led to a sharp drop in support for Labour.

The party won the 2020 election with more than 50 percent of the vote, largely due to its since-abandoned Zero COVID policy. In a recent One News/Kantar poll, Labour’s popularity stood at 33 percent, the lowest level since the 2017 election, compared with 38 percent for National.

In a by-election held earlier this month in Hamilton West, Labour’s candidate Georgie Dansey lost with just 30 percent of the vote, compared with 46 percent for the conservative National Party’s Tama Potaka. The low turnout, estimated at 31.4 percent of enrolled voters, points to widespread disaffection and lack of support for any of the big business parties.

Major struggles are looming as workers seek to oppose state and corporate austerity. Earlier this month over 20,000 high school teachers voted to hold a one-day strike next year after rejecting a below-inflation pay offer. In recent months, healthcare workers, firefighters, university workers and manufacturing workers have all taken industrial action.

The main obstacle to the development of a unified movement for decent wages and conditions, is the trade unions, which enforce government and big business cuts, telling workers they have no choice but to sacrifice for the good of the economy.

Canada preparing to lead new military intervention in imperialist-ravaged Haiti

Roger Jordan & Keith Jones

At Washington’s behest, Canada’s Liberal government is leading preparations for yet another imperialist military intervention in Haiti, the Western hemisphere’s most impoverished country.

Under conditions where the country’s 11 million inhabitants face a desperate health and social crisis—including mounting deaths from cholera and famine—and where there is mass opposition towards the imperialist-installed government of President Ariel Henry, Washington and its imperialist allies are determined to stabilize capitalist rule in the island nation through military force.

Henry public requested foreign military intervention in October. His regime has been increasingly crippled and discredited by a combination of mass popular protests demanding his resignation and new elections, and the occupation of large swathes of the county by criminal gangs with ties to rival factions of the Haitian oligarchy.  

The Biden administration quickly made clear its support for a military deployment by drafting a UN Security Council resolution authorizing such action. However, given the popular anger in Haiti over Washington’s long and bloody record on the island—including its colonial occupation from 1915 to 1934 and support for the bloody dictatorship of the Duvaliers—the US prefers that Canada assume responsibility for organizing and leading the new mission.

Protesters calling for the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry run after police fired tear gas to disperse them in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

The Trudeau government is eager to oblige its closest ally and principal military-security partner. But it also fears being sucked into a bloody quagmire. The gangs are heavily armed, and even more importantly, any foreign military intervention led by Canada risks facing mass opposition, especially from the working people of Port-au Prince, Cap-Haïtien, and other large cities. In recent years, Canada has been increasingly targeted by protests over its role as Washington’s partner in imperialist brigandage in Haiti, including through the so-called Core Group of nations.    

The push of Henry and Washington for a military intervention intensified as protests swept Haiti following September’s abolition of oil price subsidies at the behest of the International Monetary Fund. Henry’s appeal for military aid triggered further demonstrations, which were brutally suppressed by the Haitian National Police (HNP). To further this repression, Canada airlifted armoured vehicles to Haiti in mid-October.

Widespread food shortages, combined with a cholera epidemic that has claimed over 290 lives and infected an estimated 14,000 since October, are fuelling fears in Ottawa and Washington that the social devastation in Haiti could destabilize the entire region and trigger social unrest in neighbouring countries. Of especial concern to the imperialist vultures in Ottawa and Washington, who have imposed one savage IMF restructuring program on the country after another, is that an implosion of Haiti will produce a “refugee crisis”—i.e., a flood of people seeking to escape repression, violence and unspeakable social misery.    

The cholera epidemic is taking an especially horrific toll on children, with those aged between 1 and 5 making up more than 40 percent of infections. An emergency vaccine campaign launched December 18 with the aim of vaccinating more than one-tenth of the population, and a higher percentage of young children aged 1 to 5, is expected to fail in many areas that are under gang control due to the inability to guarantee the health care workers’ safety.

Estimates suggest that at least 70 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is currently under the control of the gangs, who have long received support from the government and its backers in Haiti’s oligarchy.

The gangs have unleashed sustained violence in Port-au-Prince and other cities. Official figures put the death toll from gang violence this year at 1,448, while 1,005 have been kidnapped for ransom. Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, one of the most notorious gang leaders, is a former officer in the Haitian police, and was, at least for a time, working in close association with Henry’s assassinated predecessor, Jovenel Moïse.

On top of the epidemic and violence, there is a rapidly worsening food crisis. Last week, Jean-Martin Bauer, head of the World Food Program in Haiti, warned that the country is on the verge of famine. Large portions of the population have nothing to eat due to the drying up of imports and the criminal gang’s control of key transport routes, including the north-south highway. The food that remains available is beyond the financial reach of the vast majority of the population, which relies on the informal sector to make ends meet.

Trudeau’s “new approach” to securing imperialist interests in Haiti

Earlier this month, Canada’s UN ambassador, Bob Rae, travelled to Haiti for a three-day “fact-finding mission,” during which he held talks with leading government officials and opposition politicians. The trip was in response to mounting pressure from Biden for Canada to take the lead in putting boots on the ground, likely in cooperation with several Caribbean and South American states. Following a meeting late last week of Trudeau and his national-security crisis Incident Response Group that Rae and Canada’s ambassadors to the US and Haiti attended, Ottawa announced that it would be sending additional armoured vehicles to Haiti, as well as a small number of experts to assist the Haitian National Police. The HNP has consistently been a key source of support for the pro-government gangs, with widespread evidence of collusion in brutally suppressing popular protests.

Rae also indicated that Canada supports the far-right, Duvalierist-led attempt to revive the Haitian army, telling CBC, “Name me a country around the world that doesn’t have an army. The main thing to recognize right now is that Haiti has a profound security problem.”

Discussing Haiti in an interview last week with La Presse, Trudeau asserted, “We recognize that we will play a leading role in this.”

Indicating that Ottawa is well-advanced in its plans to deploy Canadian Armed Forces personnel to Haiti, Trudeau then said, “We have not taken anything off the table, but with 30 years of experience in Haiti, we know very well that there are enormous challenges when it comes to interventions. It is clear that our approach has to change this time.”

No one should be fooled by such rhetoric. Like the previous “interventions,” the one now being plotted by Ottawa and Washington has nothing to do with bringing “democracy” or “security” to the people of Haiti. Rather its aim will be to uphold and advance the North American imperialist powers’ predatory geopolitical and economic interests. In so far as there is change in “approach” from the US-led imperialist “regime change” operations launched in 1994 and 2004, it will only be how the intervention is packaged.

The first of these two interventions saw the deployment of a 20,000-strong military force to Haiti in September 1994 to reinstall Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president just three years after his ouster in a US-backed coup. The Clinton administration mounted the operation on the calculation that allowing Aristide to serve out the little more than a year remaining in his presidential term would better correspond with Washington’s global “human rights” imperialist agenda than continuing to prop up Raoul Cedras, an unpopular dictator whose rule was characterized by a reign of terror in Haiti’s impoverished urban neighbourhoods.

Nearly a decade later, Canadian and US troops united to topple Aristide, who, in spite of prostrating himself before the imperialist powers, was seen as an obstacle to their unfettered domination over Haiti and despised by the traditional oligarchy that was a key backer of the decades-long Duvalier dictatorship. The intervention of Canadian and American forces was coordinated with an uprising of fascist gangs—composed of former army personnel and Tonton Macoutes who had served as killers under Cedras—to remove Aristide for a second time. There followed a decade of military occupation by foreign troops under a UN mandate that propped up a series of right-wing, kleptocratic regimes with ties to the old Duvalier dictatorship, including President Michel Martelly.

Following the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, which claimed the lives of over 200,000 Haitians, UN troops from Brazil, Nepal, and other less-developed countries inadvertently introduced cholera into the impoverished nation. The outbreak claimed the lives of over 10,000 people over the subsequent decade.

The Montana Accord and the political forces behind it

In the hopes of reducing Haitian opposition to a Canadian-led imperialist occupation of Haiti and so as not to so blatantly appear as intervening to uphold an unelected, repressive and corrupt regime, the Trudeau government is trying to cobble together a power-sharing deal between Henry and sections of the pro-imperialist opposition.

While in Haiti, Rae met with various opposition politicians associated with the Montana Accord. Named after the hotel where it was negotiated, the accord calls for a “transitional government,” including leading oppositionists, to hold office prior to any election, so as to prevent the neo-Duvalierist faction from using its control of the state apparatus and gangs to manipulate the vote.    

In a marked shift, Ottawa recently announced sanctions against leading figures within the Haitian Bald Head Party (PHTK), which has held power with staunch US and Canadian support almost uninterruptedly for over a decade, and with which Henry, although ostensibly “independent,” has worked closely. The half-dozen leading politicians targeted by the sanctions included Martelly and former prime ministers, along with several businessmen.

While at the Francophonie summit in Tunisia last month, Trudeau said of Haiti, “Our approach now is not about doing what one political party or the government wants. We cannot simply support one side or the other on the political spectrum in Haiti, but this time we’ve implemented serious sanctions on the elite, on these oligarchs, specific individuals who for too long have been directly profiting from violence and instability in Haiti that is harming the Haitian people.”

In early December, Canada announced that it would freeze the assets of Gilbert Bigio, Reynold Deeb, and Sherif Abdallah, three of the richest members of the country’s tiny oligarchy. Known as the “15 families,” they provided the critical backing to the Duvaliers and have dominated economic and political life ever since. Bigio, the country’s only billionaire, owns a private port through which weaponry and drugs have reportedly been smuggled. It is from this layer of oligarchs that support has been provided for the gangs, who were implicated in a series of massacres of government opponents over recent years.

Under Moïse, who was bloodily assassinated in July 2021, massacres of anti-government protesters involving gang members were reported in the Port-au-Prince districts of Bel-Air, La Saline and Cite Soleil. According to Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, these incidents showed collusion between the government, gangs and HNP, the very same institution Canada and the US are now supplying with weapons.

The supporters of the Montana Accord, with whom Canada is now working to lend an air of popular legitimacy to a new imperialist military occupation of Haiti are in fact a motley group of venal right-wing politicians who felt excluded from power positions under the Martelly-Moïse governments. They are jockeying for positions in and control of the government for their individual enrichment. These include figures such as Fritz Alphonse Jean, a former governor of the central bank who was briefly prime minister in 2016 under the interim presidency of Jocelerme Privert.    

In comments to the CBC in late October, Monique Clesca, a former UN official and now a leading member of the opposition Montana Accord, made clear that the opposition is just as ready to support an imperialist intervention as Henry, provided it has the necessary “legitimacy.” Denouncing Henry’s request for military assistance as “treasonous,” Clesca asked, “Why is (US Secretary of State) Antony Blinken talking to Canada and not talking to us? Why are (Canadian Foreign Minister) Madame Joly and Mr. Trudeau talking to Antony Blinken rather than talking to us? … We have said we would need technical assistance, we need financial assistance, we would need equipment.”

Nobody should be under any illusions about Ottawa’s intentions. While Trudeau recently invoked a “special relationship” between Canada and Haiti, the reality is that Canadian imperialism has treated the impoverished nation and the entire Caribbean as a source of profit and plunder for well over a century. Its actions and those of its principal allies in the Core Group, the US and France, are what are principally responsible for the social misery and oppression to which capitalism has condemned the Haitian people.

Who is responsible for China’s COVID catastrophe?

Evan Blake

A tragedy of monumental proportions is unfolding across China as a result of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lifting its Zero-COVID policy and embracing the “forever COVID” policy demanded by the US and European imperialist powers.

It is still very early, but reports coming in from all over the country indicate that China is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis. Hospitals are being overrun with patients and bodies are piling up at morgues with extraordinary speed. At the insistence of world finance capital, the CCP has effectively dropped the pandemic bomb on their own country.

In the span of just one month, beginning on November 11, the CCP scrapped every aspect of Zero-COVID, including mass testing, contact tracing, lockdowns and the quarantining of people exposed to others infected with COVID-19. On Monday, the local government in Chongqing, home to 32 million people, announced that public sector employees who test positive for COVID-19 can continue working “as normal.”

The rapidity with which Zero-COVID has been abandoned and the Chinese population subjected to mass infection is staggering. Official infection and death figures are now entirely inaccurate, but the reality of the deepening crisis is impossible to conceal as scenes reminiscent of Wuhan in February 2020 and New York City in March 2020 become ubiquitous throughout China.

Chinese social media platforms are now dominated by discussion of this medical and social catastrophe, with millions sharing stories of their loved ones, colleagues and neighbors being infected, experiencing high fevers and other symptoms, becoming hospitalized or dying at home. Photos showing overcrowded hospitals, including with patients dying on the floor, are being widely circulated.

In numerous posts, individuals estimate that at least 50 percent of their coworkers are currently infected. Pharmacies in multiple cities have sold out of fever medicine and rapid COVID tests. Funeral homes are already being inundated with deceased patients, with some reporting more than quadruple their normal number of bodies and wait times upwards of 10 days.

The elderly population in China is the least vaccinated and most at risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19, but there have also been numerous reports of pediatric hospitals exceeding capacity and children of all ages dying in the past week alone.

In cities throughout the country, streets are empty due to masses of people either being infected or staying home out of fear of infection. Numerous people have caught COVID in their apartments despite taking precautions, effectively unable to escape the virus. This is due to the highly infectious character of the Omicron BF.7 subvariant now spreading in China, combined with the antiquated character of most housing in the country, which facilitates airborne transmission between apartments.

On Saturday, Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, stated that the current surge will likely continue from now until mid-January, followed by two more waves between late January and mid-March as a result of mass travel for the Lunar New Year. Multiple studies and models published in recent weeks estimate that well over 1 million people could die from COVID-19 in China in the coming months.

The CCP government abandoned Zero-COVID knowing full well that this would result in hundreds of millions of infections and upwards of 1 million deaths. They are guilty of a monumental social crime and are thoroughly discrediting themselves.

However, it must be understood that the instigators and principal agents responsible for this calamity are the governments, corporations and media of the imperialist powers, above all the United States. Having let COVID run rampant in their own countries, they encircled China in a web of unending mass infection which has produced increasingly immune-resistant and infectious variants. Maintaining Zero-COVID on a nationalist basis was always impossible, but the reckless and criminal policies pursued outside China hastened the demise of this policy everywhere.

For over two years, the imperialist powers have demanded that China accept mass infection in order to advance their corporate, financial and geopolitical interests. A major precipitating factor in the lifting of Zero-COVID was threats from Apple, Nike, and other corporations to move production elsewhere. Wall Street and the financial oligarchs refused to tolerate any further disruptions to capitalist production within China, the nucleus of global supply chains.

As the World Socialist Web Site has commented on numerous times, the Western powers and their media have continuously advocated for the rapid and total lifting of Zero-COVID in China. Most recently, a deluge of propaganda in the entire Western press celebrated the reactionary anti-Zero-COVID protests that took place across China in late November, which prompted the final lifting of all mitigation measures.

Typical are the New York Times and the Financial Times, two of the central mouthpieces of Wall Street and the City of London, respectively.

On December 3, the New York Times Editorial Board praised “the remarkable protests across China against the government’s strict ‘dynamic zero Covid’ policy” and supported their call “to lift onerous Covid restrictions.” They gleefully quoted a protester from Shanghai stating, “We were all very happy last night. We started to picture how life would be after the whole country’s restrictions are loosened.”

For its part, the Financial Times published an article on November 27, “China rocked by protests as zero-Covid anger spreads.” The article hailed the protesters, who “complained about a lack of freedom and what they said was the unscientific nature of China’s Covid policies, which aim to eliminate the virus through mass testing, quarantine and lockdowns.”

On Monday, both outlets responded to the escalating health crisis in China by publishing prominent articles which amount to alibis intended to provide cover for their prior promotion of mass infection. Well aware of their responsibility for the looming wave of mass death in China, they seek to absolve themselves and shift all blame onto Xi Jinping and the CCP.

In an Editorial Board statement titled, “China’s botched Covid reopening,” the Financial Times questioned “the capacity of China’s administration to make wise and timely decisions,” stating, “the current rushed and poorly co-ordinated transition from ‘zero-Covid’ towards living with the virus is undermining China’s own claims to ‘put people first.’”

In their lead article Monday, the New York Times wrote, “China suddenly abandoned the ‘zero Covid’ strategy on which Mr. Xi had staked his reputation. Now the country faces a surge of infections, and Mr. Xi has left officials scrambling to manage the disarray and uncertainty.”

They added, “Mr. Xi’s own formula for beating back Covid may have inadvertently set China up for this jolting and potentially devastating turn… For two years, his Covid war enjoyed widespread public acceptance, but eventually the effort exhausted staff, strained local finances, and appeared to drown out attempts to discuss, let alone devise, a measured transition.”

The level of cynicism and hypocrisy of these statements is breathtaking. Just days after vociferously demanding an end to Zero-COVID, these propagandists attempt to wash their hands of any responsibility for the consequences.

What is unfolding in China is the final extension of the policy of “forever COVID” enforced by capitalist governments throughout the world since the emergence of the Omicron variant in late 2021. It is a social crime of monumental dimensions, which will have the most far-reaching consequences within China and internationally.

The opening up of one-sixth of the world’s population to infection is giving the coronavirus a new lease on life, allowing it to mutate and evolve into even more dangerous variants that will ricochet throughout the globe. The imperialist powers and their media have sought to destabilize China by fomenting this crisis, but in doing so they will further destabilize the entire world economically, medically and socially. A whole new chapter and stage of the pandemic is now opening.

Political lessons must be drawn from this experience. Behind all their threadbare lies about “democracy” and “human rights,” this is the real face of capitalism. When it comes to defending profits and the accumulation of wealth, there is no crime which the imperialist powers will not commit.

The UK’s Strep A child deaths and the causes of the “tripledemic”

Liz Smith & Thomas Scripps

Nineteen children in the UK have been killed by Strep A in recent weeks, approaching the 27 child deaths recorded in the whole 2017-2018 season, the last major outbreak. The majority of cases normally come between early February and April.

There have been 7,750 cases of scarlet fever—caused by Strep A infection—so far this season, more than treble the number at the same point in 2017-2018, with doctors worried that numbers still have not peaked.

S. pyogenes (also known as GAS) is the causative agent in Group A streptococcal infections, (GAS) including strep throat, acute rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, acute glomerulonephritis and necrotizing fasciitis. [Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library]

In rare cases, the bacteria can get into the bloodstream and cause invasive group A strep (iGAS). According to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data published December 2, there have been 2.3 cases of invasive disease per 100,000 children aged one to four, compared with an average of 0.5 in the pre-pandemic seasons (2017 to 2019), and 1.1 cases per 100,000 children aged five to nine, compared to 0.3 pre-pandemic.

The deaths of these children, caused by a very treatable disease, have been the focus of much national attention. But it is important to separate the genuine popular sympathy and concern from the ulterior motives of the corporate media, which has used these tragedies to bury the broader public health disaster this winter under an exclusive focus on Strep A.

Earlier in the year, the phrase “tripledemic”—referring to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and COVID-19—was commonplace. Its use in the papers and broadcast networks has declined as the predicted surge has begun to take hold.

Positivity rates for RSV were 7.7 percent between December 5-11, and 20 percent for children under five. For these younger children, the hospitalisation rate is 18.5 per 100,000.

Diseases with their heaviest impact on older people are also on the rise. In the last week, the number of patients in hospital with the flu increased from 966 to 1,377. At the current rate, admissions next week could pass the peak of the 2017-18 flu outbreak which caused close to 30,000 deaths.

COVID is also surging, with the number of patients in hospital being treated primarily for the disease increasing 17 percent December 6-13, to 5,982. An estimated one in 50 were infected in the week to December 3, up from one in 60 the week before. More than 37,000 peoplehave already been killed by the virus this year, with its deadliest phase usually beginning in late December.

The causes of surging infections

The precise balance of causes of these unprecedented increases in non-COVID diseases is being debated in the scientific community. Two things are certain. The government is responsible, as with COVID, for allowing the crisis to develop. And the anti-public health right-wing is using people’s suffering to sow confusion and agitate against measures to prevent the spread of disease.

These reactionaries, given a platform in papers like the Daily Telegraph, have promoted the idea of an “immunity debt” caused by lockdowns—a slackening in each person’s immune system due to a lack of exposure to illness, which must be repaid through infection. This is just a new rendering of the pseudo-scientific “herd immunity” policy, used to justify the claim that it would have been better had no public health measures been implemented in the last two years.

In fact, as Chair of the British Society for Immunology’s Covid Taskforce Professor Deborah Dunn-Walters told the Financial Times, “Immunity debt as an individual concept is not recognised in immunology. The immune system is not viewed as a muscle that has to be used all the time to be kept in shape and, if anything, the opposite is the case.”

Imperial College London Professor Peter Openshaw told the same paper bluntly, “This would not be a good message for public health: we would still have open sewers and be drinking from water contaminated with cholera if this idea were followed to its logical conclusion.”

Prof Dunn-Walters explained the important difference between individual and population immunity. What is possible is that a smaller group of people than normal were exposed to infectious diseases over the past two years, thanks to physical distancing and masking, leaving a larger than average pool of susceptible people to be infected now that restrictions have been lifted and leading to higher than usual rates of infection.

A paper in the medical journal the Lancet published in July referred to this as an “immunity gap—a group of susceptible individuals who avoided infection and therefore lack pathogen-specific immunity to protect against future infection.”

Imperial College London Professor of infectious diseases Shiranee Sriskandan commented this month, “We know that scarlet fever rates plummeted during 2020-2021… and so we now have a much larger cohort of non-immune children where Strep A can circulate and cause infection.”

These impacts could also be being worsened by the interaction of multiple resurgent pathogens.

Daniela Ferreira, professor of mucosal infection and vaccinology at the University of Oxford and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, told the Guardian, “The rising numbers of strep A cases is unusual for this time of the year because they typically occur in late spring or early summer.”

She explained that there has been a “shift in seasonality of certain diseases following the pandemic” and that “Getting infected with bugs such as strep A, RSV, influenza and Covid-19 can weaken the immune system to the point that pneumonia can develop, either caused by these or other bugs.”

The World Health Organisation warned similarly this month, “It is likely that the increase in cases of iGAS disease in children is also associated with the recent increased circulation of respiratory viruses, including seasonal influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, as coinfection of viruses with GAS [Strep A] may increase the risk of iGAS disease.”

Others have suggested damage done to the immune system by prior COVID infection has left the population more vulnerable.

Summarising recent research, Prof Dunn-Walters told the Guardian, “Covid-19 appears to be skewing the immune system in not a very good way, meaning people may not be able to react to other infections as well.”

Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told the Times, “We know plenty of other viruses that have all kinds of devious tricks for subverting the immune response… We underestimated the Sars-Cov-2 virus from the word go.”

If this hypothesis is confirmed then if there is some permanent damage to individual immune systems it is not public health measures that were the cause, but the disease which governments allowed to spread like wildfire.

An additional complicating factor is the influence of natural variations in strains of Strep A (and other pathogens). Altmann told the Times, “Until we do the studies we just don’t know whether immunity levels have waned and whether that accounts for this apparent peak.”

He pointed out that viruses and bacteria were subject to “unpredictable cyclical peaks and troughs” and to the “enormous variation” in the genome of Strep A, suggesting the possibility that this year’s strain had simply happened to mutate to become more aggressive.

The government’s abandonment of public health

Whatever the scientific explanation, all these possible causes were known and mitigatable risks, made worse by the actions of the government.

To the degree that prior COVID infections have weakened immune systems, then the additional surge of Strep, RSV and flu is the direct result of the “forever COVID” policy.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson chairs a COVID-19 press conference with Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance (right) and Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty (left) on July 12, 2021. At the press conference Johnson gave the go-ahead, with the backing of Whitty and Vallance, to end all COVID restrictions on July 19, 2021 [Photo by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

To the degree that restrictions on physical mixing have had an after-effect, this could have been prepared for in advance. Firstly, as COVID campaigner Dr. Deepti Gurdasani has argued on Twitter, it is not necessary to return to the level of disease that prevailed prior to the pandemic. “What we have learned is that we can massively reduce the burden in children,” using even very unobtrusive measures like air filtration and ventilation.

Secondly, any resurgence could have been managed through the rollout of an extensive surveillance and early treatment system for Strep A, RSV and the flu.

Writing in the Guardian, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Devi Sridhar notes regarding Strep A, “Early use of antibiotics such as penicillin works against the vast majority of infections within 24 hours, and early treatment is vital to better outcomes… rapid strep A tests into primary care would help an overburdened system by allowing nurses and support staff to test children who are unwell, and move quickly to the most appropriate clinical management.”

Instead, the health system is in a state of acute crisis, tests are not widely available, and the supply of medication is patchy.

Pharmacies are reporting shortages of antibiotics, with Chief Medical Adviser at the UKHSA Professor Susan Hopkins telling the Royal Society of Medicine this week, “I’ve been told in the last few days that we’re using five times more penicillin than we were using three weeks ago,” and admitting, “there may be some behind-the-back-of-doors profiteering.” Pharmacists are being told by the government they can supply alternative antibiotics to the ones prescribed.

Strep A test at home kits began to run out last week and were selling online for £100.

Children’s departments and GPs report being put under heavy pressure by confirmed or suspected cases.

The crisis is not merely the result of mismanagement, but the continuation of a conscious policy by the ruling class to abandon advances in public health now considered an unaffordable drain on profit and public spending.