Christian persecution and human rights

Ranjan Solomon

In  the last three years, India ranks as tenth most dangerous for Christians across the world

Christians have traditionally adopted a posture of social leadership to the wider community in multiple ways. Education, medical care, social services, rural development, services to the hungry and poor, vocational training, community development, and a host of other development models were introduced by the church and its lay affiliates through Indian history. The post-independence model of community development adopted by the Government in 1952 when Five Year Plans were inaugurated by the Government had its origins in YMCA philosophy and ideology.  One could reel off unending and vibrant specifics about Christian contribution to Indian society; the facts are astounding. Christians have imbibed the notion of ‘Antodya’ – welfare of the people in the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. It is, therefore, a shocker that the persecution of Christians today is currently on overdrive countrywide despite its historical and continuing accomplishments in favour of the least and last of society.

In 2014 the Ministry of Home Affairs reported a “steep 30 per cent rise in the number of communal violence incidents in 2013 as compared to 2012. Reported incidents of abuse carried out against Christians in India went up to 177 in 2015, and have, since, steadily escalated. Those figures have sharply risen and today the escalation is full-fledged.

The Pew Research Centre has noted that conversion is now a dangerously contentious issue in India. Nine states have enacted laws against proselytism as of early 2021. While Christianity is a proselytizing religion, many other religions in India are non-proselytizing, and religious conversion is rare in the country. Overall, just 2% of respondents report a different religion than the one in which they were raised, including 0.4% who are converts to Christianity. Christian converts in India are former Hindus and tend to belong to lower castes – that is, they identify with Dalits, Scheduled Tribes or Other Backward Classes. Most converts also come from poor backgrounds.

It was during and after the Kandhamal  riots in August 2008, which left 39 Christians dead, over 395 churches vandalized, 600 villages ransacked; over 5,600 houses were looted and over 54,000 people left homeless, that it became clear to Christians that communalism did not draw boundaries among minorities.

Anti-Christian hate crimes have doubled since 2014. Catholic churches in New Delhi, have faced vandalization. Christian leaders pleaded with PM Modi for intervention only to be rebuffed.  The United Christian Forum reports that growth in recorded incidents is increasing “not just year-on-year, but even month-on-month.” UCF counts a total of 511 incidents reported as of Nov. 21 this year as against 505 in 2021. PM Modi’s promise of “inclusive growth” has gone astray. There is resentment that Christian communities now exceed on indicators of human development. Therefore, schools, including those where the major percentage of students are non-Christian, are frequently attacked in anti-Christian riots.

In almost all incidents of Christian persecution, reported from across the country, vigilante mobs comprising extremist elements were involved. They construct allegations of religious conversion, attack prayer gatherings, attack individuals or small groups of Christians. Mob crimes are carried out with impunity as the police turned a blind eye. They even arrested Christians under charges of forced conversions. UCF’s President A C Michael further observes:  “This is despite a slew of directions to the government from the Supreme Court of India to stop the horrendous acts of ‘mobocracy.” There are 79 cases registered against pastors in the country alleging their involvement in religious conversion activities, though not a single case has been proved in court so far. Several lay people are languishing in jail under denial of bail by courts.

Human Rights Watch has classified violence against Christians in India as a tactic by right-wing Sangh Parivar organizations to encourage and exploit communal violence and advance political ends. Persecution often includes: arson of churches, conversion of Christians by force, physical violence, sexual assaults, murders, rapes, and the destruction of Christian schools, colleges, and cemeteries.

Multiple sources have reported an increase in the number of incidents of violence against Christians after the new BJP government under Narendra Modi came to power after the general election in April–May 2014.   In 2016, India was ranked 15th in the world in terms of danger to Christians, a sharp surge from rank 31 in 2012. A church was burnt down or a cleric beaten on average 10 times a week in India in the year to 31 October 2016, a threefold increase on the previous year. The All India Christian Council testified to an attack on Christians recorded every 40 hours in India in 2016. Persecution Relief reported from its study that crimes against Christians increased by 60% from 2016 to 2019.

Upper-caste Hindu nationalists fear that with the arrival of non-Hindus, higher fertility rates among minority groups and conversions to Christianity, the Hindu majority might become a minority.  The fear of being overtaken is irrational.  Christians have remained 2.3 percent of the population since the 1951 census. Still they seek to integrate a larger section of middle castes, Adivasis and Dalits to sustain a majority.

The Centre must declare a zero-tolerance policy to persecution. It would have dramatic impact. 93 Former Civil Servants in an Open letter to the PM described the ‘Climate of Fear among Christians’ and underline increasing incidents of outright discrimination. The Union government is inert and not protecting Christians. The PM must guarantee Christians that they will get justice from the executive and the law, they suggest.

Article 25 of the Constitution of India asserts “all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practices, and propagate religion subject to public order, morality and health.” 

In Goa, Christians feel defenseless at the frenzied anti-minority sentiment being whipped up in the name of rebuilding temples destroyed by the Portuguese. The claim about the Portuguese is plausible. The matter obliges political prudence, rather than communal propaganda.

US complicity in Nord Stream bombing stands exposed

Andre Damon

On September 30, 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked by a reporter if the US or its allies were to blame for the attacks that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany three days earlier.

“I really have nothing to say to the absurd allegation from President Putin that we or other partners or allies are somehow responsible for this,” Blinken said.

Asked about claims by Russian officials that the US was responsible for the attacks, US President Biden replied after the bombings, “Just don’t listen to what Putin’s saying. What he’s saying we know is not true.”

Six months later, on Tuesday, the New York Times and Washington Post carried news reports, based on interviews with intelligence officials, asserting that a “pro-Ukraine group” destroyed the pipelines.

In a separate article, the German newspaper Die Zeit stated that the attack was carried out from a yacht owned by two Ukrainians operating from Germany. Building on that narrative, the Times of London reported that the attack was carried out via a “private venture originating in Ukraine.” The newspaper added, “The name of the suspected private sponsor, a Ukrainian not affiliated with President Zelensky’s government, has been circulating in intelligence circles for months but not revealed.”

This flood of news reports follows the publication by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh of a report that the US Navy directly planted the explosives that destroyed the pipelines, using military operations in the Baltic Sea as a cover.

Based on his contacts within the military and state apparatus, Hersh reported that the plan for the attack began in December 2021, months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

All variants of the story have one thing in common. They show that Blinken was lying on September 30. The US “or other partners or allies” clearly did carry out the bombing.

With regard to the reports in the Times and the Post, the notion that a massive, highly sophisticated international undersea terror attack simultaneously destroying four separate pipelines would have been launched by Ukrainians operating from Germany without the knowledge of the Ukrainian government, Germany or the United States is laughable. If a “pro-Ukrainian” group was in fact responsible, it was, at the very least, carrying out the openly stated wishes of the White House, which vowed to “end” the existence of the pipeline.

Whether the US Navy carried out the bombing, or had its Ukrainian proxy forces do it, the United States is clearly to blame.

Biden himself had declared that the US would “bring an end to” the pipeline as part of a war over Ukraine, and US officials gloated over the destruction after it happened. In congressional testimony in January, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said, “I think the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

These revelations confirm what the World Socialist Web Site wrote on September 28:

Accusations of Russian involvement in the bombings lack all credibility and detract from the far more likely perpetrator: the United States. The first question that has to be asked about the Nord Stream bombing is: Cui bono? Who benefits, and who had the motive to carry it out?

The revelations also fully implicate the entire US media in an effort to blame Russia for the crime. Responding to the attack on Russian energy infrastructure, the Washington Post wrote on September 27:

The leaks are more likely a message: Russia is opening a new front on its energy war against Europe. First, it weaponized gas supply, halting shipments, including via the Nord Stream pipeline. Now, it may be attacking the energy infrastructure it once used to ship its energy.

The Heritage Foundation, a US think tank, declared, “Russia’s Attack on Nord Stream Pipelines Means Putin Has Truly Weaponized Energy.”

Critically, even after the exposure of Washington’s lies, the cover-up continued. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius suggested that the evidence of Ukrainian involvement means the attack may have been a “false flag” operation conducted by Russia. “We have not been able to determine who was behind [it],” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday.

The exposure of the involvement of the US or its proxy forces in Ukraine fits a definite pattern, including the assassination of the Russian fascist intellectual Daria Dugina and the bombing of the Kerch Bridge, in which US and Ukrainian officials categorically declared that they had no involvement, only for subsequent media reports to attribute the attacks to the Ukrainian government.

Just minutes after Blinken flatly denied that the US had carried out the bombing on September 30, he gave a very clear explanation of the United States’ motive for the attack. Blinken declared:

And ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity.  It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.  That’s very significant, and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come.

Indeed, major US energy companies profited massively from this “opportunity,” selling Europe record quantities of liquified natural gas, at record prices, and fueling record profits. The US and NATO allies utilized it as an “opportunity” to justify a further expansion of the war.

There can be little doubt that the collapse of the official narrative of the bombing was a major subject of discussions between US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last week. But the concern of Biden and Scholz was how to manage the popular reaction and outrage to the exposure, and how to ensure that this criminal act would not lead to the expansion of popular opposition to the war.

The exposure of US complicity in the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline raises ominous and troubling questions. If the United States was capable of carrying out what was in effect an act of war and international terrorism, not only against Russia but also against Germany, what else is it capable of?

It remains an inescapable fact that after the US pledged itself to the most sweeping and far-reaching goals in the Ukraine war, the Ukrainian military is suffering major setbacks on the battlefield. There exists no public support for further escalation of the war, much less the deployment of NATO troops necessary for the achievement of these aims.

Manchester Arena bombing inquiry delivers cover-up “in the national interest”

Laura Tiernan

“…the bereaved families are entitled to know all of the evidence, except in so far as it would damage national security to disclose it publicly.” Sir John Saunders, Inquiry Chairman

The final report by Sir John Saunders from the inquiry he led into the Manchester Arena terrorist bombing is a state cover-up. It conceals the role of MI5, MI6, the Ministry of Defence and successive British governments in the grooming and protection of far-right Islamists who were deployed to achieve imperialist foreign policy objectives in Libya and throughout the Middle East.

Forensic officers work near the Manchester Arena in Manchester, Wednesday, May 24, 2017. [AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth]

Saunders’ final volume released last week includes a “closed” report whose content and findings are being withheld from the victims’ families and the British public because it “contains material that would be damaging to national security if it were to become public.”

On May 22, 2017, Salman Abedi detonated a bomb inside Manchester Arena killing 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert. His youngest victim, Saffie-Rose Roussos, was just eight years old. Most of the other victims were young.

Saunders’ “Volume 3: Radicalisation and Preventability”, purports to examine the causes of Abedi’s terrorist atrocity, and whether it could have been prevented by Britain’s security services. His carefully circumscribed finding of an undisclosed “missed opportunity” for investigating Abedi, including “a failure by a Security Service officer to act swiftly enough” (also unidentified) secures a finding that “It is not possible to reach any conclusion on the balance of probabilities or to any other evidential standard as to whether the Attack would have been prevented.”

Family members of those killed have spoken out in response. Caroline Curry, whose 19-year-old son Liam Curry died in the blast, told the press, “From top to bottom, MI5 to the associates of the attacker, we will always believe that you all played a part in the murder of our children.”

Andrew Roussos, father of Saffie-Rose said, “MI5, for me, had most of the blame”. The domestic intelligence service had “22 pieces of information about Salman Abedi” but had failed to act.

Roussos has instructed lawyers to investigate grounds for a lawsuit against MI5 over its failure to stop the bombing, and several other families are reportedly willing to join a class action against Britain’s domestic intelligence agency. Roussos has campaigned tirelessly, alongside other families, stating previously, “MI5 has blood on its hands”.

What are they hiding?

The Manchester bombing occurred at the height of the 2017 snap general election triggered by the Brexit crisis. It was seized on by Conservative government Prime Minister Theresa May to bolster her re-election on national security grounds, beating the patriotic drum and pouring hundreds of armed British troops onto the streets. After Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn timidly suggested a connection between British military interventions in the Middle East and the rising threat of domestic terrorism—a phenomenon known as “blowback”—he was branded by senior military and political figures as an apologist for terrorism and a threat to national security who must never become prime minister.

British military personnel alongside armed police guarding the Palace of Westminster as part of Operation Temperer [Photo by Katie Chan / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The campaign against Corbyn, spearheaded by the Parliamentary Labour Party, reached fever pitch, stoked by corporate and state media outlets and the military. Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British military forces in Afghanistan, insisted, “Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister would simply aid our enemies”, while General Lord Dannatt, former head of the British Army, declared that a Corbyn premiership would threaten Britain’s security. Their comments ratcheted up threats by senior military figures after Corbyn’s election as party leader in September 2015, when an unnamed general threatened a “mutiny” by the armed forces if Corbyn ever became prime minister. Chief of defence staff, Sir Nicholas Houghton, had spoken of the “worrying constraints” of parliamentary consent.

The execution and timing of the Manchester Arena bombing, carried out by an individual known to the military and security services, raised sinister issues. The World Socialist Web Site warned that the democratic rights of the working class were endangered by the ensuing campaign against Corbyn, which sought to subvert the election and criminalise opposition to Britain’s filthy military operations in Libya and the Middle East.

Prime Minister Theresa May and the leader of the opposition Jeremy Corby process through Central Lobby to the House of Lords at the 2017 State Opening of Parliament [Photo by UK Parliament/Flickr / CC BY 2.0]

While Corbyn refused to challenge the state forces raised against him, public sentiment against May’s government hardened, fueled by widespread suspicion of a cover-up. Leaks from US and French intelligence agencies revealed within days that Abedi was a known terror threat. US sources claimed the FBI had warned MI5 that Abedi was planning to attack political targets in the UK.

At the general election on June 8, the Conservatives lost their overall majority and were forced into a confidence and supply agreement with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Labour gained 30 seats, winning 40 percent of the vote, its highest increase in vote share since 1945 when it defeated Churchill’s government in a landslide victory after World War II. It was the closest contest between Labour and the Conservatives since the 1974 general election, held in the midst of strikes by miners and dockworkers, which Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath lost under the slogan, “Who rules Britain?” Corbyn’s popularity reflected an underlying leftward shift in the working class, which Britain’s ruling class feared he would be unable to contain if he were elected prime minister. The bomb that tore through Manchester Arena created the conditions for a state witch-hunt aimed at intimidating the working class and concealing the truth. Corbyn offered no resistance to this state conspiracy.

Britain in Libya

Saunders concluded the intelligence agencies had no forewarning of the Manchester bombing, but his report provides ample evidence of a terrorist atrocity planned and executed virtually under the nose of MI5. The 22-year-old Abedi worked with Islamist fighters who were trained, armed, and financed by the British state and NATO to topple Libyan leader Muammar and install a puppet regime.

British imperialism has a long and bloody record in Libya. The north African country was placed under British and French occupation during World War II, with nominal independence granted in 1951 under King Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi, whose regime, bankrolled by the US and Britain, was overthrown by Colonel Gaddafi’s 1969 military coup. Gaddafi’s bourgeois nationalist regime took over the holdings of British Petroleum and ultimately controlled around 70 percent of domestic oil production. But the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 ushered in three decades of imperialist violence as the United States asserted military dominance over the oil-rich Middle East, opening a renewed scramble for Africa.

While Gaddafi believed he could find a place in this new world order, especially after Tony Blair’s 2004 “deal in the desert”, he was instead assassinated in 2011 by Libyan “rebel” forces backed by the US, Britain and France.

Saunders’ report found Abedi’s actions were driven by “noxious absences and malign presences”. Dr. Matthew Wilkinson, an expert in Islamist extremism, testified about Abedi’s background, “I have never seen such a complete picture of the petri dish absolutely brimming with germs”. His analogy captures the lawless and toxic character of imperialist foreign policy and its diseased domestic repercussions.

The inquiry found, “the Abedi family holds significant responsibility for radicalisation of SA and HA” (Abedi’s younger brother Hashem Abedi is serving a 55-year prison sentence for his role in the mass killing). The family’s connections with Islamist terror groups in Libya—including al-Qaeda, February 17th Martyrs Brigade and Islamic State—are described by Wilkinson as a “malign presence” in the brothers’ lives. Saunders writes, “The long-running conflict in Libya represents the critical background to SA’s journey to radicalisation.”

All the more striking then that his final report rules the issue off-limits, evading any examination of the role played by the British government, military and intelligence agencies in Libya, “The interaction between various factions involved in the Libyan civil war, which began on 17 February 2011 is ‘dizzyingly complex’ and beyond the scope of this report.”

Salman Abedi’s family had extensive contacts with Islamist terror groups in Libya, although Saunders’ report provides only the sketchiest outline. His father Ramadan Abedi was offered political asylum by the British government in 1993 and granted citizenship in 2007, despite his connections to known terrorists. In passing, Saunders notes that Ramadan Abedi was “friends” with Abu-Anas al-Libi, an al-Qaeda commander linked to the 1998 terrorist bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Abedi’s sons were photographed with al-Libi’s sons in military uniform and carrying weapons in 2011, most likely with the February 17th Martyrs Brigade.

The entire Abedi family travelled freely between Libya and Britain throughout the civil war. In 2014, Britain’s Royal Navy war ship MHS Enterprise evacuated the Abedi brothers from Libya “because extremist militias were fighting in the area” (Saunders). The report is silent on the subsequent debrief they reportedly made to military and/or intelligence officers. It was during their repeated visits to Libya from 2011 to 2017 that Salman and Hashem Abedi joined rebel training camps, “and it is probable they obtained some form of training and assistance in how to build a bomb”.

HMS Enterprise sea training in UK waters in 2019 [Photo: Ministry of Defence-Open Government Licence version 1.0]

The British military spent £212 million supporting Libyan rebel forces in 2011, according to then Defence Secretary Philip Hammond.

The extent of British and NATO involvement with Islamist terror groups was exposed during extraordinary testimony by jailed ISIS recruiter and convicted terrorist Abdalraouf Abdallah, who communicated with Abedi in the lead-up to the Manchester Arena bombing and was found by Saunders to have been a significant radicalising influence on Abedi. Abdullah testified he was trained by NATO and fought alongside NATO military forces in Libya, backed by the British government, “David Cameron praised us very well.” Britain backed Islamist groups in Libya which it had designated elsewhere as terrorist, “maybe for their own gain or something like that.”

Saunders interjected at once, “I don’t want to get involved in that because it’s not relevant to what I’m deciding, do you understand?” The exchange appears in a video produced by Declassified UK which has been censored (i.e., removed) by YouTube.

Significantly, key members of the Abedi family—father Ramadan and eldest brother Ismail—were able to evade testifying at the inquiry, in circumstances that are deeply suspicious. Ismail left Britain despite being stopped at Manchester airport just 24-hours prior. Doubtless the family has information that the British state would prefer to keep secret.

While the inquiry had broad powers under the Public Inquiries Act to compel testimony, neither former Prime Minister David Cameron nor Theresa May were called to explain their governments’ open door policy for Libyan terrorists. Neither did Saunders’ inquiry compel representatives of MI6 or the Ministry of Defence to testify on their relationship with the Abedis and the extensive network of Islamist rebels in Libya, Syria and elsewhere.

Questions that Sir John Saunders refused to ask of Britain’s intelligence agencies, military and government include the following:

Was the Abedi family listed by MI6 as a protected asset due to its role in furthering British foreign policy objectives in Libya?

Why were the Abedi brothers evacuated from Libya by the British Royal Navy and what information did they supply to the British government? What did the British military or intelligence agencies provide to the Abedi family in return?

What intelligence did MI5 and MI6 receive from French and US security agencies about the threat posed by Salman Abedi? Who received the intelligence and why was it not acted on?

No mainstream media outlet has opposed the inquiry’s blatant cover-up or its withholding of information from the public on national security grounds. The Guardian’s defence and security editor Dan Sabbagh wrote last week, “it would be unwise to be excessively critical” of the final report. He concluded, “There is no independent way of knowing whether this amounts to a cover-up.”

A Guardian editorial next day judged that “missed opportunities” by MI5 to stop the terror attack came from a “faulty mindset”. According to the Guardian’s editors, “Britain’s air force was deployed with no proper intelligence analysis, and the mission drifted [!] into an unannounced goal of regime change”. Britain was “shirking its moral responsibility to rebuild Libya”. It lectured, “Levels of secrecy that go beyond MI5’s operational needs damage public confidence and breed conspiracy theories.”

The Guardian speaks for affluent, corrupt upper middle class “liberals” who have embraced imperialist war under the banner of “humanitarian intervention” and whose only real fear is that the crimes of the British state are being exposed. The verdict of Andrew Roussos and other families who lost loved ones, that “MI5 has blood on its hands”, speaks to a growing awareness that British and NATO ‘s military operations for oil and resources are a criminal enterprise, with deadly consequences for the working class in Britain, the Middle East and internationally.

The most explicit recommendation from Saunders’ final report is that the 2021 Commission for Countering Extremism report, currently under consideration by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, be acted on “as a matter of urgency”. Its definition of “hateful extremism” is “activity or materials directed at an out-group who are perceived as a threat to an in-group motivated by or intending to advance a political, religious or racial supremacist ideology.”

Pacific Island of Vanuatu devastated by twin cyclones

John Braddock

The small Pacific nation of Vanuatu, 2,600 kms north east of Sydney, is under a state of emergency after two cyclones and two earthquakes hit in as many days last week.

Satellite image of path of Judy and Kevin cyclones that swept through Vanuatu, March 4 and 6, 2023. [Photo: Zoom Earth]

Tropical Cyclone Kevin built to a category four on March 4 as it passed the capital Port Vila and travelled south-east. Wind gusts reached up to 230 kilometres an hour in the early morning hours.

Hundreds of people were in emergency evacuation centres as destructive winds and heavy rainfall hit. No casualties were immediately reported but a number of properties were flattened and many homes and businesses reported power outages.

Initial reports from Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office indicated about 80 percent of the country’s population of 320,000 has been affected, including 125,500 children. Many still remain without power, clean water or telecommunications.

Cyclone Kevin came just two days after category four Cyclone Judy, that caused widespread damage and flooding. Cyclone Judy battered Port Vila the previous Wednesday, cutting power and forcing some residents to evacuate.

Port Vila experienced the full force of Kevin’s winds. Evacuations took place in the capital. Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry told Radio NZ Port Vila had been “badly knocked about.” Fuel was in short supply and a boil water order was in effect. UNICEF's Eric Durpaire said: “It’s crazy, Vanuatu is used to natural disasters, but I think this is the first time it has had two cyclones back to back.”

Devastated Vanuatu village. [Photo: @KatiegIFRC]

Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau announced a state of emergency last Friday, saying the cyclones had created a “sad state of affairs.” He called on local authorities to “support the communities in their clean-up and prevent the spread of diseases.” Boats were advised to avoid going to sea and a red alert was in effect for Tafea province, home to just over 30,000 people.

As with all such “natural disasters,” the twin cyclones are exposing the consequences of mass poverty and the lack of basic infrastructure. Thousands of people who live in makeshift shanty towns will be homeless in coming weeks and months and left to fend for themselves.

Up to two thirds of the population relies on subsistence agriculture of yams, taro and sweet potato and face the destruction of their crops. According to McGarry, vulnerability to the impact of the cyclones was most evident in poorer communities, many in rural areas. “The most vulnerable are those living in impromptu housing… they’re the ones who lost their houses and had their belongings destroyed,” he said.

Dickinson Tevi, secretary general of the Vanuatu Red Cross Society, noted that medical centers, hospitals, and schools have been affected. “Some children may not be able to go to school for weeks, maybe months,” he said.

Making matters worse, the island of Espiritu Santo was rocked by twin earthquakes as residents began to clean up Cyclone Judy’s damage. The first, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake, struck around 90 km from the city of Luganville at 5 a.m. on Friday, while a second 5.4 magnitude tremor was felt at 6.30 a.m. The island of 40,000 residents reported no casualties, but with communications down the situation remains unclear.

Spread across 13 principal islands, Vanuatu is in the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where tectonic plates collide, and experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

As the cyclone system moved away from Vanuatu, Fiji was the next hit. Fiji’s National Disaster Management Office on Monday reported flash flooding in the West, North & Central Divisions. Schools were closed on Tuesday due to continuous rain, flooding, and disruptions to public transport. Heavy rain and flood warnings remain in place for Fiji.

While the damage from the twin cyclones was reportedly not as bad as Cyclone Pam in 2015, which devastated Vanuatu, Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu has now invoked the Disaster Risk Management Act to extend a six-month state of emergency to cover the entire nation.

McGarry has previously noted that Pacific governments are increasingly quick to invoke extraordinary emergency powers “to secure themselves in positions of increasing impunity.” Vanuatu’s Disaster Risk Management Act has been used by successive governments, but the constitution requires that a state of emergency extension may only be made by parliament, and only for three months. The state of emergency has never been debated in parliament, McGarry reported.

Cyclones Judy and Kevin hit Vanuatu late in the region’s cyclone season, which stretches from November to April, but the coincidence of two such events occurring at the same time is extremely rare. They followed Cyclone Gabrielle, which hit New Zealand on February 13 and left large parts of the North Island, including the major city of Auckland, in a state of devastation after unprecedented flooding, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

Cyclone Gabrielle also followed similarly catastrophic flooding in California in January and in Lismore, Australia last year. While individual extreme weather events cannot be traced directly to global warming, a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (2022) found that catastrophic flooding is becoming more likely.

The report noted that small islands such as those in the Pacific are “increasingly affected by increases in temperature, the growing impacts of tropical cyclones (TCs), storm surges, droughts, changing precipitation patterns, sea level rise (SLR), coral bleaching and invasive species.”

A 2018 communiqué by the Pacific Islands Forum declared climate change as the “single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific.” According to the UN World Risk Index, Vanuatu is more vulnerable to natural disasters than any other country on the planet. The 10 most vulnerable countries also include the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Papua New Guinea. Yet the populations of these countries lack basic protection against disasters.

The regional imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, which have maintained neo-colonial control over the region for over a century, keeping Pacific nations in a state of impoverishment and backwardness, have done nothing to mitigate the increasingly existential threats of climate change.

Last week, Vanuatu’s United Nations representative said that 105 states, including Australia, had co-sponsored a bid to have the International Court of Justice rule on the legal obligations that states have to respond to climate change.

A General Assembly vote would seek a formal opinion from the international legal body on what “legal obligations” countries have in countering climate change. Any ruling, however, will not be binding. The initial bid did not have signatures from China or the United States, nor Indo-Pacific powers such as Indonesia and India.

As has become usual with such disastrous events, the response of the major powers is not to address the urgent needs of the population but to utilise them to boost their diplomatic and geo-strategic interests and push back against China, including despatching military hardware and personnel.

Canberra has sent the naval ship HMAS Canberra to Port Vila with more than 600 Australian Defence Force personnel on board along with supplies. A small, 12-strong Australian rapid assistance team is in the country and Australian Air Force aircraft are conducting aerial surveillance. France has meanwhile mobilised military assistance from its base in New Caledonia.

Whatever aid funding is allocated to the disaster-affected region will be a miserable pittance compared to what is required. New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta has announced an “initial” financial contribution of just $150,000, along with an Air Force transport plane containing some supplies.

The earthquake disaster in Turkey and Syria and the role of German imperialism

Ela Maartens

In an earlier comment, the World Socialist Web Site described the major earthquake disaster that shook large areas of southern Turkey and northern Syria in early February as “a devastating indictment of world capitalism.” While governments worldwide expend enormous resources on rearmament and war, they are neglecting the most urgent needs of the broad masses of the population. The victims of the earthquake are being given only paltry handouts.

Aerial photo shows the destruction in Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahmet Akpolat]

German imperialism is playing a particularly vile role in this regard. To date, the German government has pledged just 108 million euros to support those in the affected region. Compare this sum to the 100 billion euros made available virtually overnight to finance the biggest military rearmament in Germany since Hitler, announced a year ago by Chancellor Scholz (SPD) in his infamous “new foreign policy era” speech. The sum allocated for extra spending on the German army is almost a thousand times more than the money allotted for the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria!

Almost a fortnight ago, both Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Green Party) and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) travelled to the earthquake region to feign sympathy for the victims.

“Our sympathy is not exhausted in words,” declared Baerbock, adding that such sympathy would not abate even if the catastrophe and its consequences were replaced by other headlines in the news.

Her colleague Faeser laid it on even thicker: “It tears our hearts to see the inconceivable devastation and endless suffering this earthquake has caused in Turkey and Syria.” It was very important for the German government to provide immediate and comprehensive assistance in close coordination with the Turkish authorities, the Interior Minister said.

Who are Baerbock and Faeser trying to kid with their crocodile tears? The German government is coldly abandoning the people in Turkey and Syria to their fate. The special funding provided by the government to escalate NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine would be sufficient to repair the worst of the earthquake damage and also provide considerable reconstruction aid.

According to the World Bank, the material damage caused by the earthquake, which caused countless people to lose all their belongings, amounts to at least 34.2 billion US dollars (about 32.4 billion euros) for Turkey. For Syria, the property damage is estimated at around 5.1 billion US dollars (around 4.8 billion euros), although this figure is provisional. The reconstruction costs for both countries are estimated to be about double that sum. Although severe aftershocks may still increase the property damage (and also the human suffering), even then the 100 billion euros would probably not be exhausted.

The sum pledged so far by the German government to earthquake victims is merely a drop in the ocean, at the same time the ruling class in Germany is demanding even more for rearmament. More and more heavy weapons are being delivered to Kiev for the NATO war against Russia, as Scholz revealed in his government statement on the anniversary of his “new era” speech.

Far more serious than the material damage is the human tragedy of the disaster: According to current estimates, 53,000 people have died so far. In Turkey, 45,089 deaths have been confirmed and 8,476 in Syria. More victims are being added every day, and the number of unreported cases is likely to be far higher than the official figures for both countries. Meanwhile, an entire region suffers from homelessness, hunger and adverse climate conditions. Many have to hold out in emergency shelters or even in tents.

Many people in Germany want to help their relatives in the affected region in Turkey, but the German Foreign Office’s supposedly “simplified, pragmatic visa procedure” reads like a bad joke. In cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior, this procedure is supposed to enable relatives from the disaster area to travel to Germany quickly.

The list of required documents, which according to the Foreign Ministry have been reduced “to a minimum,” is utterly cynical in view of the situation on the ground. In order to go through the procedure successfully, earthquake victims are expected to submit the following documents:

• Official application form
• Valid Turkish passport
• Health insurance for the Schengen area
• Biometric passport photo
• Letter of commitment from a first or second degree relative
• Copy of the identity card/passport and, if applicable, the residence permit of the inviting person
• Proof of residence (which must have been in the earthquake area at the time of the disaster)
• Proof of relationship
• Written description of the emergency situation
• Signatures/notarised consent of parents in the case of minors

The Foreign Office’s requirements are not only an extra affront for traumatised people from the Turkish earthquake region trying to save their lives; the actual and bureaucratic hurdles simply make it impossible to fulfill the requirements of the visa process.

A special arrangement for those who have lost their travel documents in the rubble of their former homes—which is likely in the vast majority of cases—has been ruled out by the Foreign Office. In such cases, those affected must rely on the (unlikely) cooperation of the Turkish authorities.

In addition, the declaration of commitment of the relatives in Germany must be sent as a copy to an existing address to the applicant in Turkey—a completely hopeless undertaking in view of the destruction on the ground. The same applies to the copy of the inviting person’s identity document.

In the meantime, families in Germany have set off by car to the dangerous earthquake region to bring their relatives the required documents in person. The route from Berlin to the completely destroyed city of Gaziantep in Turkey is no less than 3,635 km.

Moreover, many families of Turkish origin in Germany do not know whether and for how long they will be able to bear the financial burden (currently up to 500 euros per person per month) that comes with the declaration of commitment. The scurrilous demand to describe the personal plight of the applicant in writing shows the utter indifference with which the German ruling class regards the earthquake region.

About 20 million people in Turkey have been affected by the earthquake, according to the German Foreign Office, but only 1,097 three-month visas have been issued so far under the “simplified” procedure for Turkish citizens. Just 159 persons, about half of them from Syria, have received a visa for the purpose of family reunification.

Earthquake victims in Syria are excluded from the ostensibly “simplified” visa procedure. They have been allowed their own ostensibly simplified procedure for permanent residence in Germany, but in fact the hurdles are even higher than for those trying to migrate from Turkey.

Those who want to take advantage of the visa procedure must, in addition to having the financial means to travel to Lebanon, Jordan or Istanbul, embark on a journey that was already almost impossible before the earthquakes. (The German embassy in Damascus remains closed.) Only in exceptional cases is it even possible to cross the Syrian-Turkish border.

The German ruling class bears a massive share of responsibility for the fact that Syria has been plunged into an even deeper social catastrophe by the earthquakes and that necessary aid has failed to arrive. Since 2011, it has supported the war for regime change in Syria, a war which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and forced millions to flee with large parts of the country destroyed.

At that time, the then German government led by Angela Merkel supported EU sanctions against Syria, which have been extended every year since. According to the aid organisation Malteser International, these sanctions make it even more difficult to deliver aid today to the earthquake zone.

The German Foreign Office boasted at the beginning of February that the sanctions took into account the need to avoid “negative consequences of any kind for the civilian population.” This is a blatant lie. As a result of the sanctions, direct bank transfers, for example, which could be used to support relatives on the ground, are prohibited. Nor can any sort of medical care in hospitals be guaranteed because equipment, spare parts or medicines cannot be paid for by bank transfer.

European Union ramps up ammunition production and organizes war economy

Johannes Stern

The meeting of European Union defence ministers in Stockholm on Wednesday was dominated by NATO’s escalation of the war with Russia. The aim was to quickly provide the Ukrainian army with massive amounts of ammunition in order to repel the Russian army on the front in eastern Ukraine and to move on to the counter-offensive.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, right, talks to soldiers during a visit to Bundeswehr tank battalion 203 at the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks in Augustdorf, Germany, Wednesday, February 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

Significantly, Ukrainian Defense Minister Olexiy Resnikov also attended the meeting. He called on the EU member states to provide Ukraine with 1 million rounds of ammunition worth €4 billion so that Kiev can “continue to defend itself.”

The EU ministers agreed in Stockholm to supply Kiev ammunition. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, called it a “fundamental agreement on a procedure.” He proposed initially to release €1 billion from the so-called European Peace Facility in order to supply Ukraine with rounds of ammunition from its own stockpiles.

At the same time, further steps are already being prepared behind the scenes. “In order to help Ukraine, the EU must make fresh money available, and quickly,” said Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur. After the meeting, Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson promised, “We will act quickly to meet Ukraine’s demand for ammunition.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who attended the meeting, said that work was underway to massively ramp up ammunition production. “NATO countries have reached agreements with the defense industry to increase production,” and several NATO countries have already agreed on “joint projects for the procurement of various types of ammunition, but also for the storage of ammunition,” he announced in Stockholm. “The demand is enormous and the current consumption and production rate of ammunition is not sustainable.”

According to reports, about 300,000 155 mm artillery shells are produced in Europe every year. That is about as many as the Ukrainian army shoots within three months. In order to meet demand, replenish their own stockpiles and prepare for a long and comprehensive war against Russia, the European states are in the process of organizing a veritable war economy.

This goal was openly formulated in Stockholm. To ramp up capacity, the arms industry should switch to the “war economy mode,” demanded EU Commissioner Thierry Breton. Borrell said the same thing. He said he was sorry to say so, but a “war mentality” is needed. After all, we are in “times of war.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democrats) began by saying that he “definitely does not adopt the concept of the war economy.” The EU and Germany are “not at war” and “war economy” would mean “that we subordinate everything to the production of weapons and ammunition.”

In fact, that is exactly what is happening. And Pistorius left no doubt about this in his further remarks in Stockholm. Among other things, he called it “worthwhile” to subsidise the defence industry at the ramp-up of ammunition production. “In fact, the arms industry is making real money, that’s macabre, but in times of war it’s just like that, demand rises, and then sales also rise,” he cynically explained. That is why “it is all the more important that we now react flexibly.”

German imperialism in particular is driving the massive rearmament in Europe and the transition to a war economy. In his government statement on the first anniversary of his declaration of a “new epoch” for German foreign policy, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the German parliament last Thursday that he and Pistorius were currently talking to the defense industry “about a real lane change to a fast, predictable and efficient procurement of armaments for the Bundeswehr and other European armies.” This requires “an ongoing production of important weapons, equipment and ammunition” and “long-term contracts and down payments to build up manufacturing capacity” and “an industrial base here in Germany.”

Behind the backs of the population, these plans are being aggressively pushed forward. Last November, representatives of the arms industry met in the Chancellery with the relevant top officials of the federal government for an “arms and ammunition summit” to increase production. According to reports, Germany plans to spend €20 billion on ammunition alone in the next few years.

In doing so, the same corporations that played a central role in the war economy of the Nazis and rearmed the Wehrmacht for the Second World War within a few years are once again rubbing their bloody hands. Shortly before the notorious summit in the Chancellery, Rheinmetall announced the acquisition of its Spanish competitor Expal Systems for €1.2 billion. With an annual turnover of €400 million, Expal Systems is one of the largest ammunition producers in Europe.

Since then, one announcement has followed another. Rheinmetall is currently setting up a new ammunition production facility for the so-called Mittelcaliber cannon rounds (20 to 35 millimeters) at the Unterlüss site in the Lüneburg Heide, a rural area in northern Germany. For safety reasons, the planned annual capacity is secret, but the goal is “to set up the ammunition supply in Germany again in principle independent of foreign production facilities,” said a company spokesman.

The Unterlüss site, where thousands of forced labourers were employed during the Second World War, is already the largest Rheinmetall ammunition site, covering over 55 square kilometres. Currently, large-caliber ammunition is being produced there, including for the Leopard tank, which the Bundeswehr (German army) is supplying to Ukraine. Previous production levels are being massively ramped up.

When Pistorius visited the plant at the end of February, Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger boasted that production had been doubled and in some cases trebled, especially in Unterlüss. They are operating “on full steam” and will increase the production with another shift even more, he commented. Pistorius praised the arms industry and declared that the “new epoch”—a euphemism for the return of German militarism—was “not possible” without it.

In order to defeat nuclear-armed Russia—after the terrible crimes of two world wars—in a third attempt, German imperialism is even planning the production of battle tanks directly in Ukraine. “We are ready to build a plant for the production of the Panther in Ukraine,” Papperger recently announced in the Handelsblatt. So far, the pledges of battle tanks have increased Ukraine’s “clout,” but they are “not enough.” “Russia has vastly greater reserves.” Further “help” is therefore necessary, also and especially with battle tanks,” he continued.

The cost of the insanity of war, which is already claiming the lives of hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers every day and threatens the survival of all humanity in the event of a nuclear escalation, is also borne financially by the working class. Already last year, when the German army special fund of €100 billion was decided, there were massive cuts to health and social affairs. Now Pistorius is calling for an additional €10 billion a year in the war budget, which will lead to further attacks.

But in Germany and throughout Europe, resistance is growing to this ultra-militaristic and reactionary policy, which is being pursued by the entire EU. Tens of thousands of public service workers are currently participating in warning strikes in Germany every day. On Thursday, 120,000 postal workers voted for an all-out strike. In France, several million took to the streets on Wednesday against the planned pension reform, and in Greece hundreds of thousands protested after the deadly train disaster. In other European countries, major strikes and protests are also developing.