Clashes erupt across France as police assault record protests to defend pensions

Anthony Torres & Alex Lantier

Yesterday was the first national day of action organized by the union bureaucracies in France after President Emmanuel Macron succeeded in ramming through his pension cuts without a vote in parliament. He trampled underfoot the opposition of nearly 80 percent of the population who reject Macron’s cuts. Over 3.5 million people marched across France yesterday, as working class anger explodes against this naked assertion of dictatorial power.

There is no “democratic” way forward for the working class within the framework of the capitalist state, and there is no deal to be made with Macron. Aware that his imposition of the cuts would produce an eruption of anger, he instead mobilized the largest police deployment yet to attack the protests. With 5,000 elite, heavily armed riot policemen deployed in Paris alone, clashes erupted and fires broke out in cities across France.

There were record protests in Marseille (245,000), Toulouse (120,000), Bordeaux and Lille (both 100,000), and Lyon (50,000), according to trade union sources. Many smaller cities also saw record participation, such as Brest, Caen and Nice (40,000), Saint-Etienne (35,000), Rouen (23,000), or Laval (9,600). In Paris, the trade unions estimated that 800,000 people protested in different gatherings.

Police clearly had received instructions to attack marchers far more aggressively even than in previous days of action. In cities across the country, they systematically blocked the onward movement of marches and charged individual sectors of the march, provoking clashes that intensified over the course of the evening. Last night, the Interior Ministry reported 177 arrests, and that 149 policemen or military police had been wounded nationwide.

In Bordeaux, police fired tear gas and charged the march early in the demonstration, and clashes spread across the center of the city. In the evening, a group of protesters marched on city hall and burned down its main entrance.

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Marchers in Marseille went to the nearby fuel depot at Fos-sur-Mer to give support to fuel depot and refinery workers, who are taking nationwide industrial action. A heavy police presence surrounded the facility at Fos. As fuel shortages spread across France, especially in the southeast, the government is cracking down, trying to serve requisition orders to force strikers back to work. Defying the requisition order is punishable by six months in prison and a €10,000 fine.

To help workers at the CIM fuel depot in Normandy evade requisition orders, dockers from Le Havre, France’s second-largest port after Marseille, have placed shipping containers across the entrance to the facility, blocking it off.

In Rouen, an investigation has been opened after a police stun grenade fired at a group of striking teachers tore part of a woman’s hand off.

In Rennes, police fired two water cannon and tear gas in streets and squares across the city. Nathalie Appéré, the city’s PS mayor, sent an open letter to Macron that reflects fear growing in layers of the ruling class that he is losing control. She said: “Day after day, violence is repeated in our streets, we see scenes of chaos. Day after day, police are mobilized in large numbers. But it is no longer enough to protect our city. ... I call on the President of the Republic: You have the power to stop this downward spiral.”

Similar points were made by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of the Unsubmissive France (LFI) party allied to the social-democratic Socialist Party and the Stalinist French Communist Party. He appeared last night on TF1 television, begging Macron to defuse the situation by giving the state bureaucracy time to study his cuts.

Mélenchon said, “Mr Macron, withdraw your cuts and give the matter over to the Administrative Council for Social Security. From 2027 to 2029 the pension budget will be balanced, so it’s a matter of dividing things up? People do not need to work two years more.”

The explosive conflict between the working class and the capitalist state will not be resolved by the French state administration, whatever the arguments of Mélenchon. Far broader class forces have entered the fray. Macron, having publicly boasted in his TV interview Wednesday afternoon that he is willing to be unpopular, is leading a class war of the financial oligarchy and the riot police on the workers. And the workers, having risen up against Macron’s dictatorial measures on pensions, are entering into a direct confrontation with the capitalist state.

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In Paris, police charged demonstrators in the main march early on in the afternoon. Clashes with protesters continued across the center of Paris throughout the evening, with riot police totally sealing off Opera Square during the evening, kettling large numbers of protesters inside. Mobile teams of military police appeared from the subway also to fire tear gas into the crowd, which responded with chants of, “Everyone hates the police.”

For the first time during protests against Macron, riot police in Paris also deployed attack dogs against protesters.

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Certain reports indicate that constant street fighting with large numbers of people is beginning to exhaust the riot police. Some units were seen standing and resting in the street; in one instance, separate units lost overall coordination and fired tear gas at each other.

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In Paris, the WSWS spoke to Maia, a high school student, on Macron’s imposition of the cuts without a vote, despite overwhelming popular opposition. She said, “We are not in a democracy. We have protested many times since the beginning. So now what this means is that basically they dictate their laws every time and they are not afraid of losing elections, so they can do anything. It will be too easy.”

Fanny and Ninon, two university students, also denounced Macron’s imposition of the cuts without a vote: “It is shameful, it is an attack on democracy. ... At no point have the people been listened to, it has been treated with contempt. One has the feeling that the only thing that bothers him is that the trash is not being picked up” because of the garbagemen’s strike.

Ninon spoke of the growing anger among youth, as the capitalist state systematically shuts off every avenue inside the existing political system for the masses to advocate for policies in their interests.

She said, “It has been several years that we have gone on protests, we feel it is necessary. Each time we have had this same impression of contempt on the one side, and of enormous anger that has existed for a long time on the other. We use every democratic means at our disposal and they do not work, so questions are posed. We play by the rules of that game, but on the other side, they do not.”

Fanny pointed to the link between Macron’s antidemocratic policies and the 100-billion-euro fortunes amassed by France’s leading billionaires. She said, “For me, that should be illegal. It is impossible to amass that much money without at some point having exploited someone. These are astronomical sums; it is really sick.”

Yesterday evening, the all-trade union alliance that called yesterday’s protest met to call for another national day of action, this time for March 28. These bureaucracies, whose leaders are in discussions with Macron on the pension cuts and the scheduling of protests, are terrified that they might lose control of protests and strikes. They have no intention of fighting to bring down Macron, but call actions to try to keep control of protests in an emerging, objectively revolutionary crisis.

Macron brazenly defends decision to impose pension cuts without parliamentary vote

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, in a mid-afternoon TV address, President Emmanuel Macron defended his move to impose pension cuts opposed by 80 percent of the French people without a vote in parliament. He also pledged to pass a new immigration law that aims to speed up deportations and limit the right to asylum.

Macron’s address totally exposed those, like the leaders of France’s union confederations or the Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, who argued for impotently imploring Macron not to promulgate the law he had just imposed. Even as millions of workers strike and protest today, it is evident that Macron intends to run roughshod over basic social and democratic rights.

His address, timed to fall at a time when few workers could watch it, confirmed that there is no “democratic” way forward in the struggle against Macron. He is trampling public opinion underfoot to impose the diktat of the banks, diverting tens of billions of euros from pensions to bank bailouts and the military build-up for war with Russia. His actions have torn the “democratic” veil off the state, which is a naked dictatorship of the capitalist oligarchy that impoverishes the masses via presidential fiat and police violence.

Before his TV address, speaking to members of his own Rennaissance party, Macron provocatively asserted that the people do not have the legitimacy to challenge his government. He said, “If you believe in the democratic and republican order, riots do not trump the representatives of the people, and crowds have no legitimacy against the people whose sovereignty is expressed through its elected officials.”

This is a conception of elections with which any dictator could agree. According to Macron’s argument, being elected president means that until the next elections, one is free to trample the will of the people underfoot. Mass protests with overwhelming popular support must bow, in this view, to diktat of the president and his hordes of thousands of heavily-armed riot police.

During his TV interview, Macron maintained this anti-democratic pretense, ludicrously claiming that by slashing pensions and living standards, he is defending democracy against the people. “The reform will pursue its democratic path,” Macron claimed about his pension cuts, adding: “This reform is necessary, there are not 36 solutions. … I am ready to be unpopular.”

Asked if there is anything he regretted or would have done differently, Macron said he regretted “not having succeeded in convincing people of the need for the reform.”

In fact, the justifications Macron advanced for his cuts failed to convince the population because they were all lies. These included above all the claims that the pension system is bankrupt, and that there is no more money to be found. In reality, the pension system has a balanced budget; if there is no more money for it, it is that Macron is raising military spending by nearly 100 billion euros over the rest of the decade, while leaving his billionaire backers like Bernard Arnault at a zero percent effective tax rate.

Having admitting that the population is convinced his cuts are destructive and bitterly opposed to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s government, Macron pledged to keep Borne in office. He pledged to carry out a “forced march” on policies like the draconian immigration bill.

Finally, Macron defended himself against press criticisms of his provocative comment that he has more democratic legitimacy than the views of over three-quarters of the French people. He compared workers striking against his cuts to neo-Nazi forces who supported then-US President Donald Trump’s attempted putsch on January 6, 2021 targeting the Capitol building in Washington, or to military officers plotting a coup in last year’s Brazilian elections.

Denouncing workers exercising their constitutionally-protected right to strike and protest as “agents of sedition,” Macron said: “Given that the United States went through what they did at the Capitol, and that Brazil went through what it did, we must say, ‘We respect, we listen,’ but we cannot accept either agents of sedition or rebellious factions.”

This turns reality on its head. Trump’s coup attempt in America took place when the sitting president tried to block the congressional certification of his defeat in the 2020 elections, trampling the election result underfoot. Brazil’s military officials also attempted a Trump-style putsch, working closely with the sitting president, Jair Bolsonaro, after the election result went against him.

It is Macron, using the prerogatives of his office and his control over France’s massive police-state machine, who is also trying to trample the will of the people, not tens of millions of workers in France who are opposed to the slashing of their pensions and living standards.

Class tensions are continuing to mount rapidly in the run-up to today’s one-day protest against the pension cuts. Macron is continuing to deploy heavily-armed riot police to attack protesters and now also to assault the picket lines of refinery and garbage collection workers striking against his cuts.

The way forward for the working class in this confrontation with the capitalist state and Macron is to take strike struggles out of the hands of forces like the union bureaucracies and the pseudo-left, who tie workers to the capitalist state machine on the fraudulent grounds that it is democratic. The feckless and cowardly response of the French political establishment to Macron’s address shows they are bankrupt and organically tied to the capitalist state machine.

LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that Macron had acted with “the usual signs of contempt” for the public. Accusing Macron of “living outside of all reality,” Mélenchon asked, “How is it possible, as the country is plunging into a dead end, …[to] lie with such arrogance?”

One reason why Macron can lie with such arrogance is that he is sure that Mélenchon and his allies will make no serious attempt to mobilize opposition against him. During the 2022 presidential elections, Mélenchon received nearly 8 million votes, including majorities in the working class districts of almost all of France’s largest cities. Now, as two-thirds of the French people support a general strike to stop Macron, a campaign by LFI for a general strike could rapidly bring down the Macron government.

But Mélenchon has abstained from making any such appeals and is instead trying to drive the workers behind the union bureaucracy and its impotent perspective of seeking negotiated settlements with the capitalist state machine.

Yesterday, the leader of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) bureaucracy, Philippe Martinez, lamely insisted that his union should not bear the blame for actions the workers may take against the Macron government in anger at his remarks. Martinez said, “These remarks will stoke the anger. He did not take into account either our warnings, or the anger. … The trade union organizations asked him to invite us for talks. We pointed to the explosive situation.”

Macron refused to invite union leaders, Martinez complained, and has “taken no heed of the determination” of workers.

Martinez and other high-ranking CGT bureaucrats failed to make any appeal to mobilize workers more broadly in defense of refinery and garbage workers assaulted by Macron’s police.

Chinese and Russian presidents meet as US targets both countries

Peter Symonds

Chinese President Xi Jinping has just concluded his high-profile two-day trip to Moscow and meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin at which the two leaders declared their cooperation had “reached the highest level in history” and, in opposition to the United States, declared their determination to “safeguard the international system” based on the United Nations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands after talks at The Grand Kremlin Palace, in Moscow, Russia, March 21, 2023. [AP Photo/Mikhail Tereshchenko, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool]

Their joint statement not only outlined agreements reached to strengthen bilateral economic and strategic ties but amounted to a diplomatic counteroffensive against Washington’s belligerent propaganda as it recklessly escalates the conflict against Russia in Ukraine and accelerates its preparations for war with China.

The two leaders hit out at Washington, urging “the United States to stop undermining international and regional security and global strategic stability in order to maintain its own unilateral military superiority.”

The US media paints Xi and Putin as a threat to the “international rules-based order”—that is, the post-World War II order in which Washington set the rules. But China and Russia have been driven together, despite longstanding disputes and disagreements, by necessity out of weakness, not great strength, to push back against US aggression and provocations that threaten to engulf the world in a global war between nuclear-armed powers.

There was absolutely nothing progressive about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the chief responsibility for the devastating war rests with Washington, which pushed NATO towards Russia’s borders and poured billions into the Ukrainian military to destabilise and ultimately subordinate Russia. The US and its allies have imposed crippling sanctions on Moscow and effectively excluded it from global finance.

With staggering hypocrisy, the US has pushed for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin for alleged war crimes—a move that would be far more appropriate for a string of US presidents, including Biden.

Washington, however, regards the war against Russia as the prelude to a conflict with China, which it regards as the chief threat to its global dominance. In a replay of the lead-up to the Ukraine war, the Biden administration is seeking to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan as the pretext for war with China.

The US is engaged in an accelerating arms build-up throughout the region, including provocatively in Taiwan, and the strengthening of its military alliances in Asia, including with NATO members such as Britain, France and Germany. At the same time, the Biden administration has maintained the massive tariffs on China imposed under Trump and is seeking to cripple Chinese hi-tech industries by banning the sale of advanced semiconductors and related equipment.

The Xi-Putin summit in Moscow marks the end of American geopolitical strategy pioneered more than 50 years ago by US president Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger who engineered a rapprochement with China and de facto alliance against the Soviet Union. The deal was sealed by Nixon’s visit to Beijing and meeting with Mao Zedong in February 1972.

Mao’s pact set into motion the process of the restoration of the market in China amid the rise of economic globalization in subsequent decades. The effect of these global processes on the Soviet Union and the crisis of the nationalist dogma of socialism in one country also produced the crisis that led to the dissolution of the USSR.

The US strategy set in train processes that ultimately led to the dissolution in 1991 of the Soviet Union, the establishment of Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics as separate nation-states and a massive economic and social regression. Mao’s pact with US imperialism also opened the door for the processes of capitalist restoration, spurred as in Russia by the globalization of production.

More than 30 years after the end of the Soviet Union, US imperialism, facing a continuing historic decline and an immense economic and social crisis at home, has swung geopolitical policy into reverse over the past decade. Russia and China, now two capitalist powers, have retained a degree of independence from the US-dominated world order that is intolerable to Washington. That is particularly the case with China, whose economy ballooned as a result of the massive influx of investment and technology by American and international corporations eager to make super-profits from cheap Chinese labour.

Significantly, it is Xi who is projecting China on the world stage as the peacemaker in opposition to the US. A key aspect of the discussion between the two leaders was Beijing’s proposals announced last month for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia for a ceasefire and an end to a war that is devastating both countries.

On Tuesday, following talks with Xi, Putin embraced the Chinese peace plan, declaring it could “be taken as the basis for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, when the West and Kyiv are ready for it.” In a barely disguised criticism of NATO’s encroachment in Eastern Europe, the joint statement opposed “any country or group of countries harming the legitimate security interests of other countries in pursuit of military, political and other advantages.”

Not surprisingly, the US slammed the Chinese peace plan as it cuts across Washington’s aims to use the war to bring Moscow to its knees. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced any call for a ceasefire “that does not include the removal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory,” claiming it would effectively be “the ratification of Russian conquest” and “allow President Putin to rest and refit his troops.”

Blinken also latched onto Putin’s arrest warrant conveniently issued just days before Xi’s visit to criticise China for failing “to hold the Kremlin accountable for the atrocities committed in Ukraine, and instead of even condemning them, it would rather provide diplomatic cover for Russia to continue to commit those very crimes.”

Despite the US stance which Kiev publicly echoes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was open to “dialogue” with China about its proposals. Prior to Xi’s arrival in Moscow, a possible online video call was mooted between the Chinese and Ukrainian presidents. Citing a senior Ukrainian official, CNN reported on Tuesday that discussions were underway between the two countries to facilitate such a call but nothing had been scheduled.

The joint statement between Xi and Putin highlighted an extensive list of geopolitical issues on which the two agreed, and areas of economic cooperation to be facilitated.

The leaders expressed their “serious concern” about the AUKUS pact between the US, United Kingdom and Australia and the timeline just announced for the provision of nuclear-powered attack submarines to the Australian navy that are clearly targeted against China. They also express the same serious concern over “NATO’s continued strengthening of military security ties with Asia-Pacific countries, which undermines regional peace and stability.”

Putin and Xi also announced a further boost to China’s purchase of Russian energy and the building of a second major gas pipeline—the Power of Siberia-2—across Mongolia to China. Russia in return is helping to build several new nuclear power reactors in China. The joint statement listed other major joint projects “in civil aircraft and helicopter production, nonferrous metallurgy, space exploration, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, as well as other science-intensive areas.

Under intense pressure from the US and its closest allies, Russia and China are being driven together—economically, politically and militarily. The latest Xi-Putin summit is another sign that what is rapidly emerging are opposing blocs in a world war driven by US imperialism but for which neither the Chinese or Russian regimes have any progressive solution.

Sri Lankan president anti-democratically shuts down local government elections

Wasantha Rupasinghe

In violation of the country’s constitution, Sri Lanka’s unelected president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has blocked local government elections due to be held before March 19.

The legal authority of the country’s existing 340 local government bodies—29 municipalities, 36 urban councils and 275 local councils—has now expired with these entities now operating under the supervision of unelected special commissioners. The special commissioners are controlled by a senior state bureaucrat, working directly under the government until the local elections are held at some later date.

Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe with airforce commander Air Marshal Sudarshana Pathirana, background left, and police chief Chandana Wickremeratne, right, watch during the 75th Independence Day ceremony in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023. [AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]

This blatant anti-democratic repudiation of basic voting rights is a sharp warning to the working class and another indication of the Wickremesinghe regime’s determination to suppress all opposition to International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures.

While the four-year local elections were due to be held on March 19, 2022, they were postponed for 12 months by former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

Amid the rising anger of workers and the poor to his rule, Rajapakse postponed the election, fearing the defeat of his ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). In April, the popular opposition erupted in mass protests demanding resignation of the president and his government. Ongoing demonstrations and strikes in July forced Rajapakse to flee the country and resign.

Although the Election Commission (EC) announced that local elections would be held on March 9, President Wickremesinghe, who was also the finance minister, blocked all funding. With cabinet approval, he instructed Treasury Secretary Mahinda Siriwardana to only release funds for essential services, but did not include local elections. Without these funds, the EC was unable to pay for the printing of ballot papers, hiring of police and other essential requirements.

Contrary to Wickremesinghe’s directives, 10 billion rupees had already been allocated for the local government election in the national budget announced in November and passed by parliament in December. Wickremesinghe attempted to justify his decision not to release the money, declaring that his priority was “economic recovery” from Sri Lanka’s unprecedented economic crisis.

Like his predecessor, Wickremesinghe feared that the local elections would result in a disastrous defeat for his SLPP-dominated government. More importantly, Wickremesinghe and a major section of the ruling elite, feared that this would increase the political instability of the government and derail its imposition of the IMF’s social attacks.

On March 3, the Supreme Court, in response to a fundamental rights petition filed by the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), issued an interim order preventing the treasury secretary and the attorney general from withholding allocated funds for the local government elections.

Opposition parliamentary parties and various human rights formations immediately hailed the Supreme Court ruling as a victory for democracy.

Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa declared in a tweet: “The historic order of the Supreme Court… confirms the fact that democracy in Sri Lanka is very much alive and the independence of our noble judiciary is further reaffirmed.” Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran declared: “Hope the EC fixes the date before [the] legally mandated [March] 19th.”

The working class should have no illusion that the Supreme Court is an instrument for defending democratic rights. Notwithstanding its current differences with the government’s refusal to release local government election funding, the Supreme Court is another wing of the capitalist state and defends the interests of the Sri Lankan ruling elite.

Following the Supreme Court’s interim order, the EC scheduled April 25 as the new date for the elections, hoping the funds could be obtained. The finance ministry, however, has not released any money and the treasury secretary has refused to meet with the EC to discuss the issue. Siriwardana’s decision not to follow a Supreme Court interim order could only have been made under the directive of Wickremesinghe and his government.

In what appears to be a crude attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court, some government MPs have made various allegations against the court. Addressing parliament, MP Premnath Dolawatte declared that the Supreme Court’s interim order was a violation of privileges and it had no right to rule on financial matters.

This was echoed by State Minister of Finance Sheehan Semasinghe, who told parliament on March 10 that it would be a “serious offence” to proceed with the Supreme Court’s interim order and that the matter had been referred to the Committee on Parliamentary Ethics and Privileges.

On Tuesday, the SJB, and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) filed a petition with Supreme Court alleging that Siriwardana was in contempt of court over his failure to provide the local election funds. JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has repeatedly declared that all issues related to the local government elections should be “resolved in a court of law.”

While the SJB and the JVP have made limited criticisms of the government’s attacks on social rights, they have no fundamental differences with the IMF’s austerity agenda. Their fear is that President Wickremesinghe is so politically discredited that he will not be able to contain and suppress the rising tide of class struggle throughout the country.

The SJB and the JVP are now competing with each other in their denunciations of the government’s shutdown of local government elections. This is not because they defend the right to vote but because they hope a local election defeat for the government would pave the way for a general election, and their own rise to power.

The working class is now coming into struggle across the island as opposition increases to the PAYE income tax and rampant inflation, which is running at more than 50 percent, pensions cuts, as well as privatisation of the state-owned sector. Over half a million workers walked out on strike and held various protests on March 8 and again on March 15, to denounce the government’s social attacks.

The trade unions, with the backing of the fake-left Frontline Socialist Party and the United Socialist Party, are furiously working to limit and divide these struggles, while sowing the illusion that Wickremesinghe can be pressured to change course. Wickremesinghe and the Sri Lankan ruling elite, however, face an unprecedented economic crisis—intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine—and will step up their attacks.

Young people listening to SEP campaigner in Maskeliya township. [Photo: WSWS]

The working class cannot defend its democratic rights by appealing to the capitalist judiciary or by pressuring the Wickremesinghe regime. While the SJB and the JVP, with the backing of trade unions and pseudo-left groups, tie the working class to parliamentary and the capitalist system, Wickremesinghe is preparing dictatorial forms of rule. The government is employing the same methods as Rajapakse, stepping up its strike bans, and using the Prevention of Terrorism Act to mobilise the police and military against workers and students protests.

The Turkish-Syrian earthquake and the impending danger to Istanbul

Ozan Özgür

The official death toll of the two February 6 earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş, which devastated both Turkey and Syria, has now passed 58,000. There are 50,096 confirmed fatalities in Turkey and 8,476 in Syria. On March 20, Vice President Fuat Oktay announced that 6,807 of those who died in Turkey were foreign nationals. The vast majority of these were Syrians who fled to Turkey to escape the war in their country.

Istanbul, Turkey, viewed from Çamlıca Hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus strait, November 2013. [Photo by Alexxx Malev / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

The impact of the Kahramanmaraş earthquake was enormous. After the first quake, nearly 14,000 aftershocks with magnitudes up to 6.7 occurred in the region. These earthquakes, centered in Kahramanmaraş, affected 13.5 million people in Turkey over an area of 1,000 square kilometers. They were felt as far away as Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Iran and Egypt, sending people into the streets to escape the threat of collapsing buildings.

The devastation took on horrific proportions in 11 provinces in Turkey. Environment Minister Murat Kurum said that in cities affected by the quake, 279,000 buildings, with 821,302 independent sections, had collapsed or were moderately or heavily damaged or slated for demolition. In these regions, over 500,000 tents have been set up and more than 2 million people are still staying in tents. While over 40,000 people are trying to shelter in containers in the region, millions affected by the quake have had to leave the region to find shelter. 

Moreover, there are still problems in the earthquake zone in terms of access to tents, containers and basic necessities such as water, food, showers and toilets.

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on the other hand, is addressing the people’s housing problems in its campaigning for the May 14 elections as a servant of the profit interests of the ruling class.

After saying that they had started building 27,253 apartments in 11 provinces affected by the earthquakes since February 21, Kurum said, “We are planning the construction of 15,000 village houses together with our General Directorate of Construction Works in March. Again, together with the TOKİ [Housing Development Administration], our General Directorate of Construction Works and Emlak Konut [Real Estate Investment Company], we will start the construction of 309,000 houses in the next 2 months.” 

The ministry is awarding housing construction tenders to construction companies close to the government without regard for basic scientific criteria.

Scientists are warning the government against starting construction of permanent housing while aftershocks continue in the earthquake zone. Without detailed ground surveys and a scientific study and urban planning, this simply creates conditions for new catastrophes.

Moreover, concerns among the public and scientists about the Marmara earthquake, which could occur at any moment according to scientific data in Turkey, continue to increase.

Scientific studies indicate that the Central Marmara Fault, which runs through the Sea of Marmara south of the metropolis of Istanbul, generates major earthquakes approximately every 250 years. The last major earthquake on this fault occurred in 1766. Moreover, since movements on the North Anatolian Fault in 1999, scientists have raised ever more urgent warnings that enormous stress has accumulated on the Central Marmara Fault.

Dr. Doğan Kalafat, Director of the National Earthquake Monitoring Center (UDIM) at Boğaziçi University’s Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, stated that the probability that a magnitude-7 earthquake will hit Istanbul before 2030 is 64 percent. It has a 75 percent chance of occurring in the next 50 years. Kalafat added that “the probability of a major earthquake in Istanbul happening by 2090 is 95 percent.”

The catastrophic damage and loss of life caused by the earthquake in Kahramanmaraş is a warning of what such a quake would do to Turkey’s most populous and most industrially-developed region. In Istanbul (15,907,951), Kocaeli (2,079,072), Tekirdağ (1,142,451), Bursa (3,194,720), Balıkesir (1,257,590), Çanakkale (559,383) and Yalova (296,333), a total of 24,437,500 people would be affected by an earthquake centered under the Marmara Sea.

The provinces around the Marmara Sea contribute the most to Turkey's Gross National Product. Istanbul alone has a share of over 30 percent. The Marmara Region overall has the highest population density in Turkey. The results of an earthquake in such a region, whose building stock is not very different in terms of quality and resistance to earthquake damage from that in the Kahramanmaraş region, would be especially devastating.

On this issue, eyes turn to Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Republican People's Party’s (CHP) mayor of Istanbul, with this question: “What has been done about Istanbul's earthquake preparedness?”

In an interview with journalist Uğur Dündar on TV100 last month, he spoke on preparations being made for an expected earthquake. When Dündar asked “Is Istanbul ready for an earthquake,” he replied: “If we move at the past 20-year pace, we will need 100 years to solve Istanbul’s problems.”

Imamoğlu’s remarks blaming his predecessor, the AKP municipal administrations for decades, made clear that the government's grossly inadequate policies have led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the affected region. However, what İmamoğlu has done on earthquake preparedness since his election in 2019 is also completely inadequate.

On March 1, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) published its “mobilization plan” to turn Istanbul into an earthquake-resistant city. At the meeting, however, İmamoğlu delivered an opening speech whose content was almost a confession of having done nothing since he took office in 2019. After the Turkish-Syrian quakes, he announced, “the municipality's earthquake budget will be revised,” in an admission that the previous levels of funding were inadequate.

His proposals included establishing an earthquake council, identifying and preparing temporary shelter, laying foundations for the construction of affordable social housing, and increasing rapid inspections of buildings. He did not say why he waited for four years to begin such policies.

There are, however, 1.17 million houses in Istanbul (255,000 built before 1980, 538,800 from 1980-2000, and 376,000 from 2000-2019). According to IBB rapid inspections, it is known that the concrete, iron and construction standards of houses built before 2000 cannot withstand a major earthquake. Thus, 793,800 houses need to be reinforced, or demolished and rebuilt.

The most difficult question raised by İmamoğlu's statements was about “non-profit building reinforcement.” This is a proposal for state authorities to help private citizens finance the reinforcement of their own homes, by ensuring that construction companies do the work at cost and do not make any profit on the reinforcement operations. However, it leaves private citizens to foot the entire bill for the earthquake reinforcement of their own homes.

This sinister “Non-profit building reinforcement” scheme means the wealthy can reinforce their homes against earthquakes, while workers, who cannot afford to pay to rebuild their homes, are left to be wounded or killed if their houses collapse in the next earthquake.

Workers and the urban poor do not know how they will cover the next day’s basic food expenditures, let alone pay to retrofit or renovate housing they live in. Taking out a loan for this would mean for most working people in Turkey being condemned to crippling debt for a lifetime. 

While Kurum has raised the state credit limit for urban transformation from 600,000 TL to 1.250.000 TL, this is not comforting news for workers. Indeed, if a minimum wage worker devotes his entire wage to loan repayment, he would repay a loan of 1,250,000 TL in 147 months.

Georgia's PM warns of World War III, as political tensions grip country

Andrea Peters

Political tensions continue to roil the country of Georgia, where the government was recently forced to withdraw a law that would have required organizations and media outlets receiving 20 percent or more of their financing from abroad to declare themselves “foreign agents.”

The bill provoked mass protests in the nation’s capital city, Tbilisi, where demonstrators carrying Ukrainian and EU flags demanded the legislation be withdrawn. They denounced the administration of Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili for being pro-Russian and aping the government of Vladimir Putin, which has imposed similar laws.

Georgian Prime Minsiter Irakli Garibashvili [Photo by U.S. Secretary of Defense / CC BY 2.0]

On Tuesday, Garibashvili warned that the war in nearby Ukraine is on the verge of becoming a global conflagration and raised questions about his government’s ability to “maintain peace, stability.”

“Today the world is facing the threat of World War III. This estimate is not exaggerated, it is not speculation. We are witnessing further confrontation, tension and escalation every day,” said Garibashvili. His “main concern,” he added, is to “save the country.”

Georgia, a tiny nation with a population of just 10.8 million located in the south Caucasus, has long been the object of imperialist meddling, with the US and the EU today seeing it as critical to destabilizing Russia. Moscow, which waged brutal wars in the 1990s and 2000s to reassert federal control over the Russian region of Chechnya just to Georgia’s north, is well aware of the dangers posed to it by the ongoing efforts of Washington and Brussels to bring Tbilisi firmly under their domination.

The current Georgian government, while maintaining close ties with NATO and seeking EU membership, refused to completely sever relations with Russia after the latter’s invasion of Ukraine. It also has not signed onto the full raft of international sanctions imposed on its giant neighbor to the north and east.

Georgia continues to allow Russians visa-free entry into the country. The government in Tbilisi recently floated the possibility of resuming direct flights to major Russian cities. The proposition provoked sharp condemnations from Washington, which has managed to almost entirely seal off Russia’s western border.

While there is widespread hostility to the deeply antidemocratic character of the “foreign agents” law that Garibashvili’s government sought to impose, the demonstrations that took place in Georgia in early March were not simply a spontaneous expression of popular outrage, but a politically orchestrated challenge led by the pro-US, right-wing United National Movement (UNM) to Tbilisi’s somewhat more moderated approach to Russia.

The UNM has called for another antigovernment demonstration on April 9. The choice of date is carefully timed, as it is the 34-year anniversary of the Soviet government’s use of force to crush pro-independence demonstrations in Georgia. Twenty-one people died and dozens more were injured on that date.

The more decisively pro-Western wing within the Georgian ruling elite is clearly trying to use the commemoration of the event, which is now observed as a national holiday, to stoke anti-Russian sentiment.

Yesterday, speaking at a press conference held with his Armenian counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of trying to alienate Russia from its neighbors and foment another “color revolution” in Georgia with the aid of “nongovernmental organizations.”

In 2003, the so-called “Rose Revolution” saw the ouster of a Russian-allied government in Georgia in favor of one led by Mikheil Saakashvili, who can only be described as an American stooge. He was himself later driven from power due to corruption, brutality, and the imposition of policies that led to the impoverishment of the population.

While Lavrov’s denunciations of Western meddling are not driven by the slightest concern for the rights of ordinary people in Georgia, the US has indeed been funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to various “civil society organizations” in the small Black Sea nation.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), just one of dozens of governmental and nongovernment agencies that orchestrate American policy overseas, proudly declares on its website: “USAID began operating in Georgia in 1992. For 27 years, the American people have provided over $1.8 billion in assistance to Georgia through USAID. Building on this successful partnership, the U.S. Government dedicates approximately $40 million annually to 50 wide-reaching programs that support Georgia’s democratic, free-market, Western orientation.”

Obviously, USAID has not been handing over boatloads of money to various “partners” in Georgia for nearly thirty years out of selfless magnanimity.

In the aftermath of the withdrawal of the “foreign agents” law by the Georgian government on March 10, the EU and the US have simultaneously sought to increase pressure on Tbilisi and shore up relations with it. For its part, the Georgian government is clearly flailing about trying to, on the one hand, appease Western powers and, on the other, avoid being crushed by the US-NATO war drive against Russia.

On March 17, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly held a press conference with his Georgian counterpart in which he insisted that relations between the two countries were vital to security, firm and steadfast. In an obvious reference to Russian influence in Georgia, Britain, he claimed, seeks to strengthen Georgian democracy against “those who seek to undermine it.”

Just a few days later, Georgia held meetings with representatives from Brussels about the south Caucasian country’s ongoing bid to become a member of the EU, which it formally initiated last year. The EU recently issued a series of conditions that Georgia must meet in order to gain admittance. All of them, on the alleged basis of “ending corruption,” “promoting democracy,” and “deoligarchizing,” involve imposing one or another right-wing economic reform, bringing Georgia’s political and legal system more firmly under the control of Brussels, or pushing out Russian-allied oligarchs in Georgia in favor of European-allied ones.

Parallel to these negotiations are ongoing discussions regarding military and security ties between the EU and Georgia, which sits along a portion of the Black Sea’s eastern coast.  

Washington, which cheered the antigovernment demonstrations in Georgia in early March, is playing the “human rights” card in its effort to exert pressure on the Garibashvili administration. On March 20, the US Department of State released a report identifying “serious problems” with Georgia’s judiciary and approach towards freedom of the press.

Prime Minister Garibashvili dismissed the allegations as “speculations and conclusions and reports based on false, fabricated information provided by politically engaged, biased individuals.”

In recent weeks, other politicians from the ruling Georgian Dream party have raised the prospect of the overthrow of the sitting government. On March 17, the mayor of Tbilisi and a leading figure in the organization, Kakha Kaladze, accused the former United National Movement Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili and UNM Chair Levan Khabeishvili of seeking to stage “a confrontation, a revolution, a coup.”

The People’s Power party, which is made up of former members of the Georgian Dream party, also released a statement last week describing the protests in early March as being “in the interests of other countries” and intended to drag Georgia “onto the path of war.”

UK Home Secretary Braverman pushes forward policy of mass deportations of asylum seekers

Robert Stevens

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman visited Rwanda over the weekend in a propaganda exercise boosting her Illegal Migration Bill.

The Bill, which will deny the right to asylum to virtually anyone deemed to have entered Britain “illegally”, passed its second reading in Parliament on March 20 and is expected to be on the statute books by summer/autumn, depending on the success of legal challenges. It targets desperate migrants who reach the UK on small boats via the hazardous English Channel.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman shaking hands with with Rwandan Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Dr. Vincent Biruta after signing an expansion of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership. [Photo by UK Home Office/Flickr / CC BY 2.0]

As Braverman introduced the Bill last week, she invoked the fascistic imagery of hordes of migrants laying siege to the UK, “There are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let’s be clear. They are coming here.” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed the policy from a Downing Street podium with a sign reading, “Stop the Boats”.

A duty will be placed on ministers to remove refugees “as soon as reasonably practicable” to a third country. Introducing the Bill, Braverman said that one of the countries where they would be deported is Rwanda. Britain has already handed its government more than £140 million since last April under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership, to fund the building of camps for deportees.

Braverman and her sadistic, sociopathic policy are proof of the social scum which has risen to the top of bourgeois politics.

Last October, she told the Conservative Party conference it was her “dream” and “obsession” to see asylum seekers put on deportation flights to Rwanda. She described Channel crossings by migrants fleeing war, poverty and persecution in their homelands—the result of imperialist wars and intrigues backed by Britain over decades—as “an invasion of our southern coast”.

In Rwanda, Braverman visited the hovels being built by the Rwandan regime, at a cost as low as £14,000 each, proclaiming these hellholes ideal lifetime accommodation for migrants deported from Britain. Shown around a block being built in a war-torn, hunger-stricken country, she told her guide, “I really like your interior designer. I need some advice for myself.”

Pointing at an architect’s plan she said of migrants being deported with nothing but the clothes they stood up in, “And if people have a car, they can park their car here?”

While she was there, the Rwanda deportation policy was widened to affect almost any migrant entering Britain, with the Home Office announcing a “memorandum of understanding, expanding the partnership further to all categories of people who pass through safe countries and make illegal and dangerous journeys to the UK.”

Braverman’s predecessor, Priti Patel, who began the Rwanda deportation policy, went as far as to organise flights, but last-minute legal challenges stopped the plane on the runway.

While Britain’s High Court ruled in December that asylum deportations to Rwanda were legal, they are being prevented by a previous ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) via Rule 39 of its Rules of Court. Despite its exit from the European Union, the UK is still a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. Under Rule 39, the Court may intervene and “indicate interim measures to any State” in cases “when the applicants [in this case the asylum seekers being deported] would otherwise face a real risk of irreversible harm.”

The Sunak government is intent on ploughing ahead with a plan of mass deportations that a modern-day Hitler would warm to, declaring its intention to resume deportation flights to Rwanda before the summer. It will do this with the backing of a faithful right-wing media, who fill their daily pages and broadcast time with stories on Britain’s “invasion” by foreigners. They made sure to note that as Braverman arrived in Rwanda, 209 people were confirmed to have made the journey across the Channel the same day.

Nothing was left to chance by the government in ensuring the right-wing narrative prevailed, as it seeks to pass legislation that Braverman herself admitted in a letter to MPs has “more than a 50% chance” of being found unlawful.

Only the most enthusiastic supporters of the Rwanda deportation plan were invited to accompany Braverman on her trip to the country, including Sun political correspondent Jack Elsom, Express senior political correspondent Steph Spyro, Times home affairs editor Matt Dathan, Telegraph home affairs editor Charles Hymas, Daily Mail home affairs editor David Barrett and GB News home and security editor Mark White.

Any media which does not fully endorse the policy was banned. The Guardian, Independent, Daily Mirror and i newspapers were denied access, as was, extraordinarily, the British Broadcasting Corporation—the state broadcaster. The BBC was only able to report on the trip and attend on the ground after it requested and was given accreditation for a crew from the regional BBC bureau.

The government is heavily managing all reporting of its draconian plan because it is aware that the population, despite being drenched in a torrent of anti-immigration filth from the Daily Mail, Express et al., is opposed to the policy and supports the democratic rights of asylum seekers and refugees.

Migrants disembark from a British Border Force patrol boat after being picked up from a dingy in the English Channel in Dover harbour, England, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Lashing out against scrutiny is part of a pattern. Braverman’s trip took place one week after senior Tory party supporters on the board of the BBC removed sports presenter Gary Lineker from the air after he criticised the Illegal Migration Bill and compared Braverman’s language to that of the Nazis in early 1930s Germany. He was restored to his position in a matter of days after receiving widespread public support.

The Tories are so widely despised and politically weak that they cannot bear the criticisms of a sports presenter, yet are only months away from being able to deport migrants more than 4,000 miles away to Rwanda and other remote countries. This can only be explained by the fact that they face no opposition from the Labour Party, which acts as a straitjacket on popular sentiment.

Labour’s only gripe with the Illegal Migration Bill is that it is “the latest in a long line of unworkable gimmicks,” in the words of Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who propose that “the hundreds of millions of pounds… wasted on the Rwanda scheme” be put “into the National Crime Agency so that we can start rounding up and arresting the criminal gangs that are trafficking people.”

As Braverman introduced the Bill to Parliament, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper boasted of how the removal of asylum seekers was so much more effectively carried out by the last Labour government. Tory policies to crack down on migration “did not work” and “didn’t deter anyone,” while Labour had “put forward plans for a cross-border police unit, for fast-tracked decisions and returns, to clear the backlog and end hotel use,” she said.

The fight against attacks on migrants and the right to asylum enshrined in international law cannot be left to such venal forces, or to the courts—whatever temporary rulings are applied.

On Sunday, Britain’s media was filled with celebrations after Braverman confirmed “constructive” discussions with the European Court of Human Rights aimed at possible reforms to the Rule 39 injunction that “would remove a key barrier to getting flights off the ground.” Sky News reported, “As part of the talks with the Strasbourg court, the government has requested a higher legal threshold for any Rule 39 injunction that may be imposed on future deportation flights.”