Guatemalan government launches witch-hunt against journalists, judges and prosecutors

Andrea Lobo

Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, internationally renowned for exposing corruption and human rights violations, was sentenced last Wednesday to six years in prison and a US$38,000 penalty for allegedly laundering money. 

Giammattei welcomes US Vice President Kamala Harris, June 7, 2021 [Photo: @GuatemalaGob]

The indictment marks the culmination of a politically motivated campaign by the far-right government of President Alejandro Giammattei against Zamora and the newspaper he founded and led, elPeriódico, which was forced to permanently shut down last month. 

This witch-hunt and the complicit silence by US imperialism represent a stark warning. Four decades after the brutal US-backed junta that killed over 200,000 people, the Guatemalan ruling elite is dispensing with its democratic trappings and turning again to the methods of dictatorship and fascism. 

Zamora was jailed in July 2022, only five days after elPeriódico published its latest corruption allegations against Giammattei. The police raided the headquarters of what was the main investigative newspaper in the country, temporarily detained numerous other employees and froze its bank accounts. 

Zamora’s defense insisted that the $40,000 allegedly laundered were used for paying salaries and were donated by a businessperson who did not want to be openly associated with the paper for fear of reprisals. 

The journalist received a show trial. No concrete evidence was presented against him, and Zamora was denied the right to present his own evidence and witnesses. He also had to switch lawyers eight times, with four being prosecuted themselves for their participation in the case and others facing various difficulties. His final lawyer was given just 12 hours before the process began. 

His lawyers were also threatened by the fascist Foundation against Terrorism, which was created in 2013 to defend military officials accused of human rights abuses. Ironically, one of the group’s first actions was to publish ads in elPeriódico protesting the conviction against the military dictator José Efráin Ríos Montt (1982-83) for carrying out a genocide against Mayans. Now it has filed dozens of lawsuits against those investigating corruption cases. 

On Wednesday, Zamora declared, “We live in a dictatorship. A veiled, multi-party, tyrannical dictatorship.” He also explained to reporters: “I have a son in exile with an arrest warrant and, luckily, my wife left the country last night because I fear that they’ll capture her.”

His son described to BBC the long history of reprisals for Zamora’s work, including an attempted murder with grenades in 1996, a raid by armed gangsters who kept the family hostage for hours while mock executing Zamora in 2003, a kidnapping in 2008, a beating in 2013, and numerous death threats. 

Highlighting the vindictive character of the case, prosecutors were demanding a 40-year sentence over blackmail and influence peddling charges, which were rejected by the court. 

Several prominent journalists have faced similar trumped-up charges of money laundering and “criminal association,” as well as raids and harassment by the police and the military under Giammattei, and at least half-a-dozen have been compelled to leave the country. 

These attacks against the press are part of a broader crackdown against journalists, judges and prosecutors in charge of investigating vast networks of corruption of politicians and leading businesspeople. These cases were launched under the aegis, at least initially, of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). 

At least two dozen judges and prosecutors have been compelled to leave the country—most prominently Miguel Ángel Gálvez, who sent Ríos Montt to trial for genocide, sentenced former President Otto Pérez Molina for corruption and was handling a case against military officials for torturing and massacring 175 left-wing professionals and students. Gálvez has stressed that threats against him come from the military leadership, and that it is again taking over each government department as in the 1980s. 

The CICIG, several officials and news publications were being sponsored by the US government, which was using select corruption cases as one of its weapons to keep the local bourgeoisie and state aligned with US interests. The case against Otto Pérez Molina triggered mass protests, which were ultimately channeled behind support for the CICIG.

However, since the actor-turned-President Jimmy Morales dissolved the CICIG in 2019 to halt investigations against him, the tables turned, and the prosecutors became the persecuted. The move was backed by the Trump administration, after the US Congress had virtually halted funding for the “anti-corruption” campaign.

Now, as US imperialism has done countless times, the Biden administration has effectively endorsed the repression of the forces it was sponsoring. The White House has limited its response to Giammattei’s crackdown to placing the General Prosecutor María Consuelo Porras, the leader of the Foundation against Terrorism, Ricardo Méndez Ruiz and several other officials on a list of “Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors.”  

The US government has continued handing millions in military aid to Guatemala and working closely with the Guatemalan security forces.

In a recent interview with El Faro, the now exiled judge Gálvez explained that meetings with US officials in Washington led him to conclude that “the United States will not dare to take tougher action [against Giammattei].” He added: “The US is running out of allies in Central America and doesn’t want to lose Guatemala… there is the issue of China and Russia. The stage is complex, and they fear that, if they take a firmer decision, Guatemala will lean on someone else.” 

The regional bourgeoisies have tried use their current or potential ties with China, as well as Washington’s demands to detain migrants traveling north, to negotiate a greater share of the profits from the exploitation of local workers and natural resources for themselves. But any tussle with imperialism rests on the ability of the weak ruling elites to suppress the class struggle amid rampant inequality and poverty. 

Since 2018, there have been repeated waves of mass protests and general strikes across Latin America and internationally that represent the greatest threat to both US imperialism and its local client elites. In November 2020, Giammattei responded with police-state repression to major protests against social austerity, which were triggered by the lack of anti-COVID protections and the indifferent response to those losing their livelihoods to the pandemic, droughts and tropical storms and hurricanes, whose intensity and frequency have increased as a result of climate change. 

Giammattei then agreed to the demands by the Trump and Biden administrations to deploy thousands of troops along its borders to detain and return migrants. In return, the Biden administration has repeatedly embraced the Giammattei administration. 

Now, the presidential elections, which will take place next Sunday, have seen four candidates disqualified, including the right-wing TikToker Carlos Pineda, who was leading the polls. The top candidates have all based their campaigns on promises of iron-fist tactics against gangs, including building up the security forces and building mega-prisons, largely imitating El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele.

Most strikingly, the top candidate for the traditional right-wing parties will be Zury Ríos, the daughter of fascist military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. She has argued that “The military had every right to execute the necessary actions” under her father and “took care of protecting the state.” She has also expressed admiration for Bukele, who has imprisoned more than 1 percent of the population and established police-state rule across El Salvador.

Particularly since the dissolution of the USSR, US imperialism has been relying on military force, including endless wars and furthering its historic ties to the local military castes, to counter the accelerating erosion of its economic position vis-a-vis China. 

If Washington has decided to give a green light to the Guatemalan ruling elite’s attacks on journalists, judges and prosecutors, it is because it supports a turn to dictatorship and placing military officials trained and armed by the United States in control of the government, as it has done repeatedly in Guatemala and across Latin America throughout the last century, in pursuit of regional hegemony.

Kakhovka Dam explosion exacerbates social catastrophe facing the Ukrainian working class

Jason Melanovski

While the Ukrainian government continues its vaunted NATO-backed counter-offensive against Russian-held territory in the east at a horrific human toll, the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam, which occurred in the first 48 hours of the counter-offensive, is set to inflict huge consequences on the already catastrophic economic and social situation facing the Ukrainian working class.

Already, the collapse of the Kakhovka dam has led to a major ecological and humanitarian crisis. Within less than two weeks following the dam’s explosion at least 17 deaths have been reported, and thousands of local residents in both Ukrainian and Russian-held territory have been evacuated from their homes.

A local resident makes her way through a flooded road after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed overnight, in Kherson, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jun 6, 2023. [AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka]

At least 35 people, including 7 children, are missing. Rescue efforts continue, but they have been complicated by the ongoing war.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, 300,000 people are without clean drinking water and over a million could face water shortages according to the head of the regional council. The right-wing government of President Volodymyr Zelensky has allocated $4 million to provide alternate sources of water, a paltry sum compared to the billions currently being spent on sending Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths in the counter-offensive.

Over 150 tons of machine oil were swept into the Black Sea, which was already Europe’s most polluted sea. Large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers have been washed away and the risk of outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera has greatly increased.

Anti-tank and amphibious mines were also washed away and will now pose a huge danger to civilians who encounter them even far away from the frontlines. Debris from the dam has been spotted as far away as in the city of Odessa on the Black Sea.

Aside from the immediate ecological and humanitarian disaster, the dam collapse has immense economic consequences for an already devastated Ukrainian economy. The Kakhovka dam played a central role in providing irrigation for farmland and hydroelectric power to important factories in the region.

Completed in 1956 as part of the Soviet Union’s development of hydroelectric power, it also created Ukraine’s second-largest freshwater reservoir and provided four separate provinces with water through a system of canals.

The dam’s primary role as an irrigation reservoir was essential to turning an area typically subject to regular droughts into Ukraine’s most productive agricultural region.

Vadym Dudka, an agronomist and CEO of Agroanaliz Ltd, an international agro-consulting company, told the Kyiv Independent that prior to the dam breach, the region contained 330,000 hectares of irrigated land and provided 80 percent of all vegetables in Ukraine as well as a large percentage of fruits and grapes. According to Dudka, 85 to 90 percent of the region’s fields were dedicated to corn and soybeans. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of both.

Over the previous year and a half, the war had already caused global food prices to skyrocket and the dam’s explosion will further accelerate global food inflation. In Ukraine itself, food prices rose 26 percent within the first year of the war and prices for basic items such fruits and vegetables have continued to rise over 20 percent compared to the previous year. Prices for eggs have increased nearly 130 percent.

As UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told the BBC in a recent interview, “This is a breadbasket—that whole area going down towards the Black Sea and Crimea is a breadbasket not only for Ukraine but also for the world. We’re in difficulties already on food security but food prices, I’m sure, are bound to increase.”

“It is almost inevitable that we are going to see huge, huge problems in harvesting and sowing for the next harvest. And so what we are going to see is a huge impact on global food security—that’s what’s going to happen,” Griffiths predicted.

Within the first year of the war alone, Ukraine’s agricultural sector already lost $4.3 billion according to the Kyiv School of Economics.

While the extent of the damage on the Russian side of the flooding is unclear, Monika Tothova, economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, told Al Jazeera that Ukraine’s harvest this year will almost certainly be a disaster.

Based on the satellite images and modeling of the flooding, “it is very likely this year’s harvest will be a complete loss, depending how long the water stays,” Tothova said.

The dam collapse has also forced the closure of a number of factories in the region while national unemployment is already shockingly high at 26 percent. This number does not include the nearly 8.5 million Ukrainians who fled abroad as a result of the NATO-backed war, nor the hundreds of thousands who have been drafted—willingly or not—into the Armed Forces.

The region around the Kakhovka dam is still a major steel-producing region and the reservoir’s water was used in manufacturing processes. Ukrainian steel companies Metinvest and ArcelorMittal had a number of factories in the region employing tens of thousands of workers. One day after the dam collapse, on June 7, ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer, which owns Ukraine’s largest steel factory, suspended crude and rolled steel production, while Metinvest was already operating at 35-45 percent capacity due to the war. 

In addition to the consequences of the flooding, both companies have lost a number of factories to Russian forces, including the massive Azovstal factory in Mariupol. Metinvest alone employed 37,000 workers in now Russian-controlled territory, and the war has effectively split in half a major productive industry.

Prior to the war, Ukraine provided a tenth of Europe’s steel imports, a fading remnant but still substantial sign of the industrial power that was concentrated in Ukraine during the Soviet Union. Overall Ukrainian steel production has fallen over 70 percent since the start of the war to 6.26 million tons.

Like the war as a whole, the collapse of such massive productive industries, with huge job losses and lives ruined, is ultimately a consequence of the destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991.

Rather than immediately pause the war to address the ecological and humanitarian crisis caused by the war, the Ukrainian ruling class with the backing of Western imperialism is driving its forces on an ever larger scale and with ever greater speed into mass slaughter.

Moreover, the loss of jobs caused by the flood will undoubtedly drive large numbers of Ukrainian workers into unemployment, where they will be subject to conscription in the war. A recent report in the Ukrainian news outlet Strana indicated that a desperate Zelensky government is now requiring Ukrainian men to register with the military in order to obtain a job. Thus, many are now torn between being unemployed and the risk of being handed a military summons and sent to the front.

As the WSWS has reported, despite the virtual ban on dissent and criticism of the war, widespread opposition exists among Ukrainian workers and youth who are bearing the brunt of the catastrophe unfolding around them.

Meanwhile, both Russia and Ukraine continue to accuse one another of intentionally destroying the Kakhovka dam. This week the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War reported that “flooding has deprived Russian forces of previously held positions in at least 12 settlements on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River and has pushed Russian lines back as far as 10 kilometers in some areas.” If true, the dam collapse which occurred just as Ukraine began its counter-offensive might well have been the result of an act of sabotage by the Zelensky government.

China’s second wave of COVID infections, deaths, Long COVID, and government lies: Part 3

Lily Zhao

Long COVID and reinfections

In the months after China’s first wave of mass infections with COVID-19 last winter, in which the vast majority of the population was infected, the term “Long COVID” gradually entered public consciousness as many discovered that they are still troubled by prolonged symptoms months after “recovery.” Long COVID researchers’ and advocates’ assessment of the pandemic as a “mass disabling event” has again been tragically confirmed by this experience.

Contrary to the claims of officials like Dr. Li Tongzeng that reports of Long COVID outside China are relatively rare and concentrated among “the vulnerable,” ample medical research has demonstrated that the virus can cause lasting damage to every organ system of the body, especially the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological, endocrine, respiratory, and genitourinary systems. Symptoms of long COVID, including extreme fatigue, difficulty breathing and shortness of breath, painful muscles, ageusia (loss of sense of taste) or anosmia (loss of sense of smell), and others have been reported by millions of patients globally.

Some of the most prevalent symptoms of Long COVID [Photo: WSWS]

As early as late March, online discussion about Long COVID started to expand across China, as people complained that they have been coughing for three months since their infection, were out of breath after doing basic house chores, and more.

On April 6, a Long COVID patient posted a widely shared thread on Douban, titled, “Please tell me who said COVID is just like a cold? My 20-year-old body is like a broken machine now.” It received a few hundred “likes” and more than 300 comments from people with similar experiences. The original poster said their symptoms include “shortness of breath and difficulty breathing.” They added:

My quality of sleep declined as well and I sweat a lot in the middle of the night. I felt pains in my chest and back. I used to sleep very well and never had to wake up in the night. Now I always wake up in the middle of the night with cold limbs and sweats…

I also experience fatigue. Both my physical strength and my appetite dropped a lot. I always came top in 800-meter races, but now I have to take a break after a 10-minute walk. Lifting something feels like it can almost kill me. Due to the lack of appetite, I recently only had two real meals in five days and almost passed out on the curb because of low blood sugar levels.

Lastly, I have palpitations from time to time, along with panic attacks.

The most popular comment under this thread said, “Same here, my immune system has been completely wrecked,” and received 900 “Likes.” Other replies shared what they have been suffering through:

• I now have lung nodules. I don’t know what to say because now I have to have surgery to remove some of the more serious ones.
• Same here…[before COVID] my heart rate was slow (around 45-50 BPM when at rest). After the infection, my heart rate can go up to 130 BPM after walking a few steps. I feel a really heavy burden on my heart.
• When I was in hospital a while ago, I saw several doctors keep coughing. They said it has been like this ever since they got infected.
• I get hives a lot more frequently after having COVID.
• I don’t have enough energy to do anything. I sweat very easily and cannot sleep well. I think I might die if I’m infected a few more times.
• After getting COVID, I could only sleep for 3 hours each night. Two or three months later, I can finally sleep for 5 hours straight. I’ve never known what it’s like to have a good night of sleep since having COVID.
• After jogging for just 300 meters at a very slow pace, it feels like someone is strangling my neck with a rope.

Over the past two months, the ongoing second wave of COVID-19 infections has reignited discussions about Long COVID. Social media has been flooded with posts by people sharing their symptoms, seeking help, and even all sorts of very confused folk remedies. Many comments about being infected a second time note that they have not even recovered from prolonged symptoms from their first infection.

One complained, “It’s been six months but I haven’t had one comfortable day.” Another said, “Today this symptom seems to go away, but another one comes tomorrow. [All sorts of symptoms] come back in different combinations all the time.”

One of the most widely discussed Long COVID symptoms is heart palpitations, especially high heart rate after even a slight movement. Some representative comments include:

• Whenever I stand up or am just walking slowly, my heart rate goes over 100 BPM, sometimes 140 BPM.
• I feel like having a heart attack just after walking a few steps…. [These symptoms] have been on and off for more than four months. Will this ever end?
• I’m gonna lose my mind. When I went to pick up a delivery the other day, I consciously chose to only take a few smaller packages and left the heavier ones there. But all of a sudden I felt shaky and hot. I was short of breath and my legs felt weak. I had to lie down on the road.
• I didn’t have any underlying conditions before, but my heart rate is still abnormal more than half a year after the infection… I’m a typical example of long COVID.

Many Long COVID patients have lost their ability to work as usual and are deeply concerned about where their livelihood will come from. One person shared that their migraine headaches after having COVID have been so severe that they had to resign but are not in a position to seek new employment, especially during a period when the youth unemployment rate is high and the job market is bleak. Another person similarly said they have been out of work for five months after being infected during the first COVID wave.

Fatigue and brain fog are other symptoms that have been widely reported. For example, one thread attracted more than 900 comments from people who are struggling to carry out daily activities, including the following:

• It feels like any memory can stay for no more than 5 seconds.
• Up until now, I still experience dizziness and fatigue. I can hardly walk any substantial distance. I’m very sensitive to temperature change. My heart always feels uncomfortable…. I’m only in my early thirties, but I’ve been on sick leave for months and still cannot return to work. [This comment was echoed by another 300 replies from people who are going through the same thing.]
• I’m an accountant as well and seem to be the only one with Long COVID at work. I used to be so proud of my brain power but now my brain is so slow. I used to be the most hardworking one but now I have no energy to do anything. No one can understand what I’m going through. I’ve taken all sorts of medical exams but nothing conclusive came out of them. I’m so tortured.
• I don’t have enough energy to go to work after being infected. As a single mom who’s not young, losing income makes me really anxious. Insurance payments, my children’s and my family’s living expenses—I don’t know what to do with all these.

It has been more widely understood since the onset of the second wave that the pandemic will not go away by itself. On June 13, the CDC from the city of Pingdingshan in Henan Province published an article based on a Nature commentary about the prospect of having a wave of COVID infections every six months. The article is bluntly titled, “It may become a norm that everyone will be infected 2-3 times a year.”

Once every six months might already be too optimistic, given how quickly the virus can mutate in a vast pool of available hosts. Already, reports about people having third infections are starting to emerge across social media, with some people reporting that they were infected last December, again in late April or early May, and now a third time in June.

Having witnessed or suffered from the not-so-rare cases of Long COVID, many express concerns and anger that Chinese society seems to have collectively entered a game of Russian Roulette, in which every six months one risks becoming debilitated by their next COVID infection. One person asked, “If we get reinfected over and over again like this, can we even survive to our retirement age of 65 years old?”

On top of a substantial section of the population suffering from Long COVID, the pandemic, especially the possibility of being reinfected multiple times a year, has brought heavy tolls to those who are pregnant, an impact hardly ever mentioned by any media outlets.

Outside of China, where the virus has been allowed to spread freely for more than three years, the increase in maternal mortality rates has demonstrated how pregnant and postpartum women have been put at higher risk from infections and/or insufficient medical resources for non-emergency treatment.

Women who try to plan their pregnancy are now uncertain whether there will ever be a good time to become pregnant. As one woman commented:

The social environment today is very unfriendly for those who are preparing for pregnancy. I was infected with COVID twice in just over half a year, plus catching a flu in between. There were only three months in between each infection. How could I ever feel comfortable getting pregnant?

A similar post said:

the central question is that you don’t know when you’ll be infected again. If you start preparing for pregnancy three months after you recover and if you are lucky enough to get pregnant right away, you may well get infected again when you are pregnant for three months. This vicious cycle will never end.

Another woman expressed the same frustration about the danger of constant reinfections in a thread on Xiaohongshu, stating:

I was infected for the first time on [May] 31, but I was already preparing to get pregnant before this. My husband has quit smoking. Both of us were trying hard to quit drinking, stop eating fast food and stop taking medications… now I have to wait for another few months to get pregnant. I wonder if it’s even good to bring a child into this world under these circumstances.

This thread was liked more than 800 times and received almost 600 replies sharing similar sentiments. A representative one which was liked more than 500 times said:

I really feel like it’s bad for the baby to give birth to it. My older kid is three-and-a-half years old and was infected right before she turned three. She got pneumonia from catching the H1N1 flu last month as well. Both times she had high fevers for 3-4 days…. she is probably going to be infected a second time now. I don’t even know if my daughter can survive to adulthood.

For women who are already pregnant, they face the risk of miscarriage or blighted ovum after being infected. One thread on social media talked about how all her maternal exams were normal at week six, but the fetal heartbeat stopped at week eight, soon after she was infected. Among the about 450 comments under this thread, most of them were from women who lost their children after being infected during pregnancy.

Even though factors contributing to complications during pregnancy can be complicated and not singular, pregnant women are indeed at a much higher risk of severe illness if they contract COVID-19, especially if they are not fully vaccinated.

Modi’s BJP foments ethno-communal violence in India’s northeastern state of Manipur

Yuvan Darwin & Kranti Kumara

Since early May, the northeastern Indian state of Manipur has been convulsed by violent attacks on innocent civilians by roving bands of ethno-chauvinist vigilantes. Over 120 civilians, most of them from the minority Kuki ethnic group, have been killed and thousands injured in targeted attacks in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled, majority-Meitei state.

A further 40,000 persons have been made homeless, with churches and whole villages razed by armed gangs of Meitei youth patronized by the BJP state government. If the violence remains unabated after a month and a half, it is because both the BJP state government and India’s national BJP government—led by the Hindu-supremacist Prime Minister Narendra Modi—are complicit, and view it as in their political interest to allow the attacks on the largely-Christian minority Kukis to continue.

According to many victims of the violence and other eyewitnesses and observers, most of the attacks have been carried out by two reactionary vigilante groups based among the majority Meitei. These are known as the Arambai Tenggol (AT-Arrowhead) and Meitei Leepun (ML).

Both of these ethnic-chauvinist outfits, which describe themselves as cultural organizations, have close links to the BJP state government, including Manipur’s Chief Minister, Biren Singh. They are modelled after the BJP’s parent organization, the fascistic Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the allied Bajrang Dal, which is the violent youth wing of another RSS-affiliate, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or World Council of Hindus.

Members of the Kuki tribe protesting against the killing of tribals in their northeastern home state of Manipur, hold Indian flags and placards during a sit in protest in New Delhi, India, Monday, May 29, 2023. [AP Photo/Manish Swarup]

The state of Manipur with a population of 3.2 million lies in India’s northeast and borders Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, which is ruled by a brutal military regime. The majority of the state’s population live in the Imphal Valley, which lies in the centre of the state. It is surrounded by forested hills, which make up 90 percent of Manipur’s land area.

The state is home to two major ethno-linguistic groups, the Meitei, who are overwhelmingly Hindu although a small percentage of them are Muslims and Christians, and the Kukis. Historically, the Kukis have lived in the forested hills that surround the Imphal Valley, and the majority of them still live there in their traditional villages, making their living from hunting and agriculture.

The Kukis (and other tribal groups including the Naga and Chin) are overwhelmingly Protestant Christians and have strong ties to other states in India’s northeast, Bangladesh and Myanmar, all of which are home to Kuki minorities. Meiteis comprise about 53 percent of Manipur’s population, whereas the Kukis and other tribes comprise about 37 percent.

Historically, India’s northeast has been ignored and abused by India’s central government and dominant bourgeois factions, which have valued the region solely for its natural resource wealth. The Kukis and other tribes are particularly impoverished because the state government—and this has become even more blatant since the BJP came to power in 2017—has deliberately starved the tribal areas of funds for economic development.

According to the Wire news website, from 2016 to 2021, out of a planned budget allocation of Rupees (Rs.) 220 billion (approximately $3.2 billion), the tribal areas received less than Rs. 5 billion ($72 million) for socioeconomic development.

The trigger for the latest violence was a May 3 protest march organized by the All Tribal Students’ Union, Manipur (ATSUM) after a Manipur High Court judge directed the already highly communally-partisan BJP state government to recommend to the Modi government that Meiteis be classified as Scheduled Tribes (ST). Such a classification would allow persons from Meitei households to compete for government jobs, university admission and other benefits under a special quota reserved for STs. This in turn would intensify the competition for the meagre number of jobs and university places among those already classified as STs such as Kukis. ST designation would also enable wealthy Meitei to buy up tribal lands for capitalist development.

Subsequently, India’s Supreme Court struck down this Manipur High Court directive while flaying the judge for issuing so provocative an order.

Although the May 3 march was peaceful, some Meitei chauvinists, acting as provocateurs, desecrated a war monument erected in commemoration of the Kuki victims of the 1917–19 Anglo-Kuki War, which was precipitated by the British Indian empire’s attempts to press-gang Kuki men into serving as World War I military labourers. The attack on the May 3 protest triggered a wave of violent ethnic-communal attacks from both sides.

The BJP had little political presence in Manipur prior to 2017. But having captured the national government in 2014, it injected its foul Hindu communal politics into the region’s ethnic divisions—which are themselves a legacy of British communal rule and the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent—and co-opted sections of the Meitei elite to its Hindu supremacist agenda. This is in keeping with the BJP’s modus operandi across India. It systematically incites communal and caste divisions, while whipping up a bellicose, Hindu supremacist-infused Indian nationalism to channel mounting social tensions behind reaction and divide the working class.

In “retaliation” for the government facilitated AT and ML vigilante attacks, some Kuki extremists have in turn targeted innocent Meiteis.

The Modi-led central government has deployed at least 10,000 heavily armed Indian army troops and a further 10,000 paramilitary forces to the state, but this has largely been for show. Significantly, Modi has himself remained silent and, as in numerous other instances of Hindu supremacist violence, he has not denounced the attacks on civilians. Nor has he called upon the state authorities to take rigorous steps to protect the innocent.

Chief Minister Biren Singh, a nasty bourgeois politician who defected from the Congress Party to the BJP, has been openly communally partisan in his public pronouncements. This has included terming Kukis “terrorists.” He has previously denounced them as illegal immigrants and opium growers. Many rural Kukis are so impoverished that they are compelled to grow opium poppy just to get enough money to feed themselves. Opium poppy is the raw material for the production of both opium and heroin.

The Chief Minister has seized upon this complex reality to justify deploying security forces to destroy fields and evict peasants from their hill-forest lands. He and the Modi government are now waging a “war on drugs” whose victims are mainly poverty-stricken Kuki peasants.

He has also besmirched Kukis as drug dealers, despite the fact that the drug trade is reportedly controlled by politicians and others connected to his own party. In fact, there are reports that one of Biren Singh’s relatives is himself a major drug lord. In 2020 a senior police officer in Manipur filed an affidavit before the Manipur High Court alleging that the Chief Minister had pressured her to release a major drug lord.

The police officer, Ms. Thounaojam Brinda, also stated to a newspaper that “The drug business– smuggling and production–in Manipur is run by a combined force of powerful politicians, militants, drug lords, top police officials and bureaucrats who manipulate the police administration and judicial institutions to cover up crimes and escape punishment,”

Modi’s chief henchman, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, finally made a trek to the state at the end of May ostensibly to bring “peace.” After meeting with several organizations representing Kukis and Meiteis he promised that a commission of inquiry would be set up to probe the violence.

Subsequently, the Modi government set up a so-called “peace commission” nominating its handpicked cronies, including the Chief Minister and the state’s BJP-nominated governor, without any democratic consultation. Kuki groups have denounced this and promised to boycott the commission.

A petition filed by the Manipur Tribals’ Forum, an umbrella organization, before the Supreme Court of India on May 8 directly accuses the Modi government and the BJP state government of having orchestrated the attacks. The petition states, “the attacks had the full support of the party in power in the State as well as the Centre which supports the dominant group and has planned the attacks on account of a non-secular agenda.”

It also expressed a total lack of trust in the BJP national and state governments as well as the Manipur police and accused them of permitting ethnic-cleansing of Kukis.

Since the 1980s, the state has been declared a “disturbed area” and has come under the iron heels of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). This law grants the Indian armed forces extraordinary powers to arrest and even kill with blanket immunity. India’s security forces are notorious for their long record of wanton human rights violations.

During the six years the BJP has ruled Manipur, it has left the state economically backward and overwhelming impoverished, while deliberately exacerbating the economic inequality between the Imphal Valley and the tribal areas, to the benefit of a tiny capitalist elite that exploits the entire population and their petty bourgeois hangers-on. It has deliberately stoked ethnic divisions between the Meiteis and the Kukis and further inflamed and sought to “nationalize” them, by investing the conflict with a more explicit Hindu versus non-Hindu dimension.

Several of the Kuki politicians, including some aligned with the BJP, have called for the imposition of President’s rule, that is the dismissal of the state government and establishment of temporary direct rule from New Delhi. They have also called for “autonomy” of administration for the Kuki areas in Manipur.

All of these proposals are reactionary. Moreover, there is absolutely no progressive solution to this and similar conflicts within the existing rotten bourgeois nation-state frame-up. Unable to provide any progressive solution to the myriad problems resulting from colonialism, India’s belated capitalist development and continuing imperialist oppression, the national bourgeoisie has continued and further developed the divide-and-rule policies of the British Empire. Under the BJP, whose avowed aim is to transform India into a Hindu rashtra or state, this has reached a qualitatively new level, with the Modi government whipping up communal reaction while employing autocratic methods of rule.

Government Of Malaysian Technical Cooperation Programme (MTCP) 2023/2024

Application Deadline: 30th June 2023

Tell Me About Award: Do you want to study in a country in Southeast Asia? Then apply for MTCP Scholarship in Malaysia 2023. Eligible candidates should not miss to become a part of this tremendous opportunity, which will help them learn and enrich their knowledge in their area of interest. The Malaysian Technical Cooperation Programme (MTCP) aspires to attract a talented pool of candidates from developing nations to Malaysia. In this way, the successful candidates will learn the required skills and abilities that would play their part in the development of their home countries and Malaysia as well.

The Malaysian Technical Cooperation Programme (MTCP) was established in 1980 as Malaysia’s commitment to South-South Cooperation through the sharing of Malaysia’s development experiences and expertise with other developing countries.

The Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education will not only provide you the chance to scale high-quality education but also will help you enjoy the positives of Malaysia in a due manner. Suppose you have a good academic background and an enthusiasm to do something different and bigger in your country. In that case, the Malaysian government is welcoming you with open arms under the global scholarship program.

The objectives of the MTCP are:

• To share experience with other developing countries;
• To strengthen bilateral ties with developing countries;
• To encourage and promote South-South Cooperation; and
• To encourage and promote technical cooperation within developing countries.

Type: Master

Who can Apply? Malaysian Technical Cooperation Programme (MTCP) Scholarship applicants must COMPLY with the following criteria:

a. Not more than 45 years old at the time of application.
b. For Master’s Degree Programme, applicants should obtain a minimum of Second Class Upper (Honours) or
a minimum CGPA of 3.5 or equivalent at the Undergraduate Degree level.
c. Proof of English Language Proficiency:
i. Scanned copy of the original proof of English Language Proficiency such as IELTS (minimum total
score 6) or TOEFL internet-based test (minimum total score of 60); or
ii. Has obtained a previous degree(s) with English used as the medium of instruction.
d. Has an excellent level of health certified by a doctor/physician. The cost of the medical check-up shall be fully borne by the applicant.
e. Applicant must undertake full-time study for postgraduate programmes (Master’s Degree) at the selected Malaysian Universities (Please refer to List of Universities)

f. Application is only open to applicants who have received a valid admission offer letter/s from at least one (1)
university in Malaysia but have not yet started their postgraduate studies or those who have registered for no
more than one semester for a Master’s Degree.

How are Applicants Selected? High potential and excellent graduates who:

1. are citizens of the MTCP recipient countries*; and
2. intend to pursue full-time postgraduate studies (Master’s) in Malaysia.
   *refer to the List of MTCP Recipient Countries in the FAQ section

Applications will be considered according to the following selection criteria:

1. High-level academic and extra-curricular achievement.
2. Excellent communication, writing and reading skills in the English Language.

Which Countries are Eligible? Developing countries

Where will Award be Taken? Malaysia

List of Universities

1. Universiti Malaya (UM)
2. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
3. Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
4. Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
5. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
6. Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia (UIAM/IIUM)
7. Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UNIMAP)
8. Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS)
9. Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)
10. Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)
11. Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP)
12. Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT)
13. Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM)
14. Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS)
15. Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI)
16. Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM)
17. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTEM)
18. Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)
19. Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK)
20. Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UNISZA)

How Many Awards? Not specified

What is the Benefit of Award? The MTCP Scholarship is sponsored by the Malaysian government and is dedicated to international students from the developing world to pursue their postgraduate studies in Malaysia, whilst at the same time acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills that could contribute to the development of their home country.

1. This scholarship covered:
   a. Tuition Fees
   b. Other allowances of RM3,500.00 per month which
   includes:

• Cost of Living Allowance
• Book Allowance
• Tools Allowance
• House Rental Allowance
• Placement Allowance
• Thesis Allowance
• Travel Allowance
• Practical Training Allowance
• End of Study Allowance
• Medical Allowance
• Insurance Allowance

c. One-off return economy-class airline ticket from student’s closest international airport to Malaysia and back to student’s home country.

Method of Payment: Scholars will receive allowances as mentioned above from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Malaysia through their individual savings accounts. Scholars are advised to open any Malaysian Bank account immediately upon arrival in Malaysia

Duration of Award: The duration of the award is between 24 to 36 months for Master’s Degree Programme.

How to Apply: The online application system will be made available from 23rd May 2023 until 30th June 2023.

. All applications must be submitted through our online application system via the link
https://biasiswa.mohe.gov.my/INTER/index.php
All the documents below are COMPULSORY and to be UPLOADED via online application (scanned and saved in
PDF format):
a. Application form (to be filled in the online system);
b. Latest Admission Offer Letter from Malaysian Universities for academic intake 2023 (Please refer to List of
Universities);
c. Letter of Recommendation from two (2) referees;
d. Statement of Intent;
e. A certified copy of Academic Transcript;
i. Record of all the courses taken throughout the degree programme must be reflected in the academic transcripts;
ii. Applicants must submit transcripts of their undergraduate studies; and
iii. Applicants must submit an official document issued by the applicant’s alma mater describing the university’s grade system. If an applicant’s transcript does not include information on CGPA, marks or score percentile, the documents must be certified.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

China’s second wave of COVID infections, deaths, Long COVID, and government lies: Part 2

Lily Zhao

Social media reveals brutal reality of ongoing mass infection

While many of China’s health care experts falsely claim that COVID-19 symptoms are mild, reinfections are harmless, Long COVID is largely a myth and all is well, what is the actual social reality?

On June 11, the Chinese CDC released an update on the pandemic, reporting only 2,777 severe cases and 164 deaths between May 1 and May 31. Due to the dismantling of testing and data reporting systems, these figures are vast under-counts. Nevertheless, the test positivity rate for COVID-19 soared from about 3 percent at the beginning of April to 42.5 percent at the end of May, shedding some light on the scale of unreported infections and potentially severe cases and deaths.

Graph showing the test positivity rate for COVID-19 (orange line) and seasonal flu (blue line) [Photo: Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)]

On social media, COVID-19 infections have again come to the center of discussion during the second wave of the pandemic. According to Baidu Index, a large data application that monitors internet activity related to certain keywords, the frequency of COVID-related searches nationwide peaked on May 23, when there were almost 23 million searches about COVID-19. This search index still remains at a high level of 14 million today. Another similar Baidu Index shows that on May 25 almost 280,000 people consulted doctors online about COVID-19 infections during a single day.

For many, the symptoms they have to suffer through are in no way “mild.” It is not uncommon to come across posts by young people who have ended up in the emergency room and hospitalized during this ongoing second wave of mass infection.

The term “blade throat”—describing extreme soreness, so painful that it feels like someone is cutting one’s throat with a blade—has been trending for quite a while. Other common symptoms among previously very healthy young people are body pains, headaches (“as if someone is thawing my skull”), cold sweats, nasal congestion (“cement-sealed noses”), loss of taste and smell, coughing through the night, low fever that will not go away, echoes in the ears, rashes, and more.

These common symptoms, though often not life-threatening, still torture millions of people at present and are by no means comparable to common colds. Most people report that it takes at least a few weeks to completely recover from the illness and resume daily activities. Even for those whose symptoms seemed relatively mild and who recovered quickly, many discovered later through a CT scan that they have already had lung damage or even partial pulmonary fibrosis.

A recent thread asking readers to share their most painful symptom after contracting COVID-19 garnered more than 1,500 replies. Some of the most representative comments are the following:

• It hurts so much. Every swallow feels like torture to me.
• I feel the same [soreness in the throat]. I really want to donate my throat to someone else.
• I got “blade throat” as well … I want to smash my head into the wall so much.
• This is the first time that my head aches so much that I threw up.
• It feels like someone is drilling my head.

Another much-liked comment under the same thread says what hurts most after getting COVID-19 is “losing all my salary because I asked for sick leave,” echoing the dilemma shared by many forced to lose pay or their jobs by staying home to rest and protecting others from infection.

Under another comment that says, “Testing positive means you are ill and you should rest at home,” someone replied, “but my boss disagrees.” Similar comments were made about “having to drag my sore body to work” because working from home is not allowed.

Commuters wearing face masks walk along a street in the central business district during the morning rush hour in Beijing, Friday, May 26, 2023. [Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/WSWS]

In response to Dr. Zhong Nanshan’s prediction of 65 million weekly infections at the peak of the second wave, people expressed their doubts and anger about whether there will ever be an end to COVID-19 waves under the current “let-it-rip” policy:

• My whole family tested positive. The pediatric clinic here has no more beds. If your kid is not feeling well, you’ll still need to make a reservation in advance. My baby is only a month old but still infected.
• I think [the estimate is real] because I’m the nurse at my company’s hospital wing. Many employees came to get cold remedies from me recently.
• I’m panicking as I just got pregnant. [This comment received almost 100 likes]
• Fine. I just tested positive. But I have to take Gaokao [the national college entrance exam] in just 6 days.
• I don’t understand. Are we just going to have wave after wave every half-year? Everyone would be dead after a few rounds.
• If it’s really like a cold, then it’s not a big deal. But what if your health condition declines after every infection? Not to mention all the lingering symptoms! I feel like we at most can hang in there for a few years. I’ve lost hope in life.
• My 50-day old baby tested positive. I feel even worse when I see my kid suffer.

Others commented on the impossibility of preventing infections on one’s own, without any public health measures:

• It’s too difficult! The first wave was okay, and none of [my family] got infected. But what should I do during this wave? My older kid is in middle school. He goes in at 7 in the morning and comes home at 8 in the evening. He [is at school] for 13 hours a day and has to eat two meals. How could he always keep his mask on? My older kid passed the virus to me and his dad, and I infected the younger kid. My whole family was infected during the second wave, three for the first time, and one for the second time! I just have to ask, how do we protect kids who have to go to school?
• You just cannot [prevent infections at school]. At every class in my school, more than a dozen students are with fever. Teachers tested positive too. I was infected by a student myself.

There is also anger over the blatant lies promoted by the mainstream media and their efforts to deliberately sow confusion, with one comment stating:

It was you experts who said things will be fine and it’s just a cold! It was you who told us to let our guard down. If it weren’t for you, how would it be possible that kindergarten kids are not wearing masks at all? I put on a mask for my kid in the morning but it was gone when I picked her up from kindergarten in the evening. People don’t wear masks not because the weather is getting hot, but because you experts say the virus is not that bad and it’s just a cold. A simple sentence from you has cost so many lives. No wonder no one trusts you anymore.

As health care experts declare that “for normal people, COVID can be treated as regular flus,” they ignore a large section of the population with underlying conditions, as well as the elderly and immunocompromised. According to WHO statistics, China is home to an estimated 141 million people with diabetes and 270 million with high blood pressure. Ample evidence has also shown that Omicron and its subvariants can be dangerous to people who are fully vaccinated and otherwise healthy.

Widespread reports of further deaths of loved ones

Even though social media platforms by no means give a panoramic view of COVID-related tragedies, they can still provide a glimpse into the social crimes committed by the lifting of Zero-COVID, whose scale is vastly greater than the 164 official COVID-19 deaths reported by the CDC in May.

One recent widely shared thread on social media said an elderly person in their family who was recently infected with COVID-19 for the first time has lung damage and has been admitted to the ICU. The thread says, “the doctor told us the hope [of survival] is less than 20% … he cannot breathe without a ventilator … and his lungs are all white [in the CT image].” This thread received more than 1,200 comments from people with similar experiences, including the following:

• My great grandfather is 86 years old. His lungs are more than half white. He has difficulty breathing. After being hospitalized for 8 days, he finally made it through. But it took him really long to recover.
• My grandfather’s lungs were all white too and he passed the day before yesterday.
• My grandfather is 87. His temperature was fine during the day but a fever started in the evening. After he was hospitalized, his lungs were 40% white. … He originally started to recover after receiving proper treatment and was conscious. However, we were told today that his condition was unstable again. His blood oxygen is only 60 and white blood cell indices are going up. The doctor said there’s not much hope, and we should take time to think about what to do.
• My grandmother was recently infected for the first time. She had some low fevers but her [COVID] test result turned negative very soon. However, we found out that her lungs were all white. … She didn’t want to be in the ICU and eventually passed away last weekend. It was only a week between infection and death.
• My grandmother passed away the day before yesterday, and her lungs were all white.
• My grandfather’s blood oxygen was as low as 30-40 last weekend.

Each of these comments is echoed with several heart-broken responses of “the same happened to me as well.”

Under another thread titled, “COVID took away my dad,” over 100 comments spoke of similar tragedies.

• COVID took away my dad. He is only 59.
• COVID took away my dad as well. He is only 66. I’m so heartbroken and filled with remorse. I wish it had all just been a dream.
• My dad left on the same day, because of COVID. My kid is only about to enter middle school. Yesterday, I saw a daughter pushing her dad around in a wheelchair and was so envious. I wept again.
• COVID took away my mom as well. It was only two-and-a-half days from her infection to death.
• My dad passed away on May 10 because of COVID. Just a month from today. I never thought that after taking him to the hospital as usual, I would never be able to bring him home again.
• My father also walked into the hospital himself, and we all thought he would walk out of there as well.
• My father passed away during the first wave of infection, before the New Year, after the lifting [of Zero-COVID].
• My father passed away around the same time, on the last day of 2022. It has been half a year, but every time I think about him, I feel so sad.
• Same for my dad. He left us forever on January 26. I still wake up in tears in the middle of the night.

Threads and comments like these can be found everywhere on the internet in China. Another widely-shared post reads:

My grandfather was infected during this wave and passed away the day before yesterday. Everything happened so quickly. He was able to eat and talk before going into the ICU. Things went down so rapidly just in two days. I’m so devastated. Before he passed, he was trying to speak but could not, because of the ventilator.

In some cases, COVID threatened to take away both parents. “My mother died of COVID just 5 months ago. My father now was re-infected. He has a high fever of 39 and taking antipyretic doesn’t seem to help.”