Protests erupt in Russia over sentencing of Bashkir nationalist Fail Alsynov

Lev Novitsky & Clara Weiss

In mid-January, the Republic of Bashkortostan, also known as Bashkiria, (including the regional capital Ufa) was shaken by protests in support of Fail Alsynov, a leading Bashkir nationalist activist. Bashkiria is home to about 4 million people and named after its native Bashkir people, a Turkic ethnic group. The Republic is one of the most important oil-producing regions in Russia. It is also rich in other raw material resources. 

Bashkiria or Bashkortostan on the map of the Russian Federation [Photo by Stasyan117 / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]

The protests were reportedly the largest in Russia since the NATO-provoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which marked the eruption of open conflict between the NATO imperialist powers and Russia. 

The protests developed initially in the small town of Baimak during the court hearing and after the verdict in the case of Alsynov. The court scheduled the verdict announcement for January 17. On January 16, he was classified as a terrorist and extremist, and the next day he was sentenced to four years of imprisonment in a general regime penal colony.

The number of protesters on January 15 was in the hundreds or thousands. Already by January 17, it had grown to potentially tens of thousands, according to some media reports. During the first protest on January 15, people gathered near the court where Alsynov was tried to support him. They chanted the words “Freedom!” in Russian and Bashkir, “Freedom to Fail Alsynov!” and “Fail, we are with you!” The police did not intervene.

The January 17 protest in Baymak started in the same place near the court building where the activist was sentenced. People refused to disperse and shouted “Shame!” This time there were clashes with law enforcers after the announcement of the prison sentence. The footage showed officers of the National Guard of Russia, armed with shields and batons, pushing back the protesters, who threw snowballs in response. 

The protesters managed to block the truck carrying Alsynov from passing for quite a long time. Messenger apps and social networks, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, were disrupted by authorities, and the entrance to the city was blocked. By the end of the day, the situation in the city had stabilized.

Later, police in the region opened a criminal case against the protesters for being involved in “mass riots,” while Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin, rejected the categorization of them as riots.

Already on the morning of Friday, January 19, a rally in support of Alsynov took place in Ufa, the capital of Bashkiria, in one of the city’s main squares. Reports indicate that between several hundred and more than a thousand people took part in the protest. When people began to dance and sing national songs, the police warned the crowd that the rally was unauthorized, arrested several people and eventually forced the people out of the square.

The immediate basis for Alsynov’s arrest in August 2023 was a phrase he used in April 2023 at a rally against a gold mining company: “Kara khalyk.” It literally means “black people,” a derogatory and racist term in Russian to denote people from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Alsynov claims that his words have been mistranslated. Regardless of the interpretation of that word, the statement for which he was sentenced oozes of nationalism. He said, “Armenians will go to their homeland [after the war in Ukraine], the ‘kara khalyk’ to their own, Russians to their Ryazan, Tatars to their Tatarstan.” “We won’t be able to resettle, we have no other home, our home is here!”

Prior to his August arrest, in March 2023, his home was raided by officers of the FSB, the Russian secret service, and he was charged with “discrediting” the Russian army. Alsynov has described the war in Ukraine as a “genocide” of the Bashkir people, pointing to the large number of Bashkirs drafted into the Russian army.

Of course, the Kremlin’s persecution of Alsynov has nothing to do with concern with the right of immigrants and non-Bashkir national minorities. The Kremlin itself has pursued a viciously racist policy of discrimination toward immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia who are brutally exploited by Russian companies.

In order to understand what is at stake in the case of Alsynov, it is necessary to review his political history and the character of Bashkir bourgeois nationalism. 

Fail Alsynov

Fail Alsynov became known as a leader of the Bashkir nationalist and separatist movement for serving first as the deputy chairman of the Bashkir national organization “Kuk-Bure” and then as the leader of the nationalist organization “Bashkort,” which was banned and categorized as extremist in Russia. 

Bashkir bourgeois nationalism originated at the end of 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. It erupted into the open after the overthrow of the Tsar in the February Revolution in 1917. Already then Bashkir nationalists began to issue ecological demands, such as the demand to stop cutting down Bashkir forests. Such demands remain central to the Bashkir nationalist movement to this day, and they have also prominently been raised by Alsynov. Like other bourgeois nationalist movements in the former Russian Empire, the Bashkir nationalists were bitterly anticommunist and fought against the Soviet power.

With the establishment of the Soviet Union in December 1922, which acknowledged the equal rights of national minorities in its constitution, and the creation of autonomous republics, the early Bolshevik regime under Lenin and Trotsky fought for the internationalist unification of the oppressed masses of the former Russian Empire. This involved, in the case of the Bashkir people, the granting of significant rights of autonomy to what was then the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

The borders of the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics as it was constituted on December 30, 1922

However, the nationalist reaction under the Stalinist bureaucracy encouraged the resurgence of the most vile forms of bourgeois nationalism, including Great Russian chauvinism but also extreme nationalism of national minorities. 

After the destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in 1991, nationalist organizations mushroomed in Bashkiria. In 2006-2007 “Kuk-Bure” was founded, and Alsynov, then only in his early 20s, became its deputy head. The ideology of the organization was inspired by both the Turkish and Russian far right. “Kuk Bure” means “Grey Wolf,” an allusion to the Grey Wolves movement, a far-right Turkish paramilitary organization that has been involved in terrorist attacks and assassinations. “Kuk-Bure” reportedly also used the Grey Wolves’ salute.

A close friend and associate of Aslynov, Ruslan Gabbasov, recalled in his memoirs, “Notes of a Bashkir nationalist,” that the organization was also principally influenced by the neo-fascist ideology of the Russian National Unity (RNE) party, the largest fascist organization in Russia in the 1990s, which demanded the expulsion of all non-Russians from the country and idealized Adolf Hitler. He wrote, “… Azat Salmanov [one of the founders and leaders of the organization] ... borrowed the entire ideology of Kuk Bure from his classmate, a Russian skinhead named Maxim. Maxim was a member of the Bashkir branch of the RNE [Russian National Unity—an ultranationalist, neo-fascist organization in Russia]. At that time, Azat was not very interested in Bashkir nationalism, but gradually, communicating with Maxim, he began to adopt the ideas of the RNE.” According to Gabbasov, Salmanov would then later “apply” the ideology of the RNE “in the formation of Bashkir nationalist ideology. ... Subsequently, he used it all in ‘Kuk Bure.’”

Members of Kuk-Bure were reportedly involved in violent clashes with both Russian nationalists and immigrants from the Caucasus. 

After the dissolution of Kuk-Bure, Alsynov became a leading figure in the organization Bashkort, which largely recruited from disaffected rural youth. Like Kuk-Bure, the organization embraced a pan-Turkic ideology and reportedly maintained ties to nationalist circles in Kazakhstan. Its demands included greater autonomy for the Republic of Bashkortostan within the Russian Federation, national quotas for Bashkir people and the nationalization of enterprises that were involved in the processing of raw materials.  

In 2019-2020, Alsynov led protests against the development of Mount Kushtau by the Bashkir Soda Company (the region’s largest industrial company). After that, his organization was banned as “extremist,” and the governor of the region, Radiy Khabirov, wrote a statement denouncing Alsynov.

With his protest against companies and demands for environmental protection, Alsynov no doubt seeks to appeal to widespread and legitimate social discontent over extreme levels of poverty, as well as the destruction of the environment. However, there is nothing progressive about Alsynov’s political program. It expresses the interests not of the people of Bashkiria but rather those of a small stratum of the Bashkir elite and upper class that benefited from the restoration of capitalism and see the Putin regime as an obstacle to their further self-enrichment. They hope to benefit from more direct links with American and European imperialism and immediate access to the world market.

Bashkiria is one of the richest regions in Russia. It provides for a large share of Russia’s oil reserves and also holds significant natural gas, coal, ferrous metal ores, timber and other raw material resources.

Consequently, the social interests of a section of the regional elite and upper middle class coincide with the aims of the US and the European imperialist powers, which seek to bring about the disintegration of Russia and its transformation into a raw material appendage of imperialism. As was the case in the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the fueling and exploitation of national, ethnic and religious tensions is a central component of that strategy.

There are many indications that significant ties already exist between the Bashkir nationalist movement and the imperialist powers. The above-quoted Ruslan Gabbasov, whom the Russian outlet Novaya Gazata, which is itself sympathetic to the pro-US “liberal” opposition in Russia, described as Alsynov’s “closest associate,” is a former journalist at Idel.Realii, the Tatar-Bashkir service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Radio Free Europe is widely known to be associated with the CIA since the Cold War. Today, Gabbasov lives in Lithuania, a NATO country and one of the key bulwarks in the war against Russia. 

The Putin regime, for its part, has nothing to counter-pose to the growing nationalist and separatist tendencies within the oligarchy and upper middle class other than the promotion of Great Russian chauvinism and state repression, combined with ongoing attempts to find a negotiated settlement with the imperialist powers. It sees its greatest enemy not in the imperialist powers or rival factions of the oligarchy, but the working class.

Sri Lankan government imposes repressive social media laws

Saman Gunadasa

The Sri Lankan government bulldozed its anti-democratic Online Safety Bill (OSB) through the parliament on Thursday. The new measure, which has nothing to do with online safety or fighting internet crime, is a direct attack on free speech and freedom of expression, directed against suppressing all anti-government dissent and particularly its socialist and working-class opponents.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, accompanied by heads of the armed forces, at 75th Independence Day ceremony in Colombo on February 4, 2023. [Photo: Sri Lanka president’s media division]

The government was in so much haste to push through the new media law that the Speaker declared the bill passed without a vote on Thursday, immediately after the final committee stage discussions in parliament. The first reading of the bill was passed the previous day with 108 votes from government MPs and 62 against. The new measure will become law as soon it is signed by the Speaker.

The Online Safety Bill provides President Ranil Wickremesinghe with wide-ranging powers to suppress anti-government opposition and take harsh punitive measures against anyone deemed to have violated its laws. The measures are clearly aimed at crushing all working-class resistance to the government’s International Monetary Fund-dictated attacks on jobs, wages, and social conditions.

Wickremesinghe will appoint a five-member Online Safety Committee and its chairman to implement the new Act’s regulations. He also has the power to remove the committee members and its chairman at any time. The committee can request the courts to imprison Sri Lankan citizens—in or outside the country—accused of violating the online safety laws. It can also order internet service providers or their intermediaries to disable the accused services and to block any financial support.

The broad-ranging and anti-democratic scope of the repressive laws are spelled out on part 12 of the bill. It states: “Any person, whether in or outside Sri Lanka, who poses a threat to national security, public health or public order or promotes feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of people, by communicating a false statement, commits an offence.”

Punishment for any such offence, which clearly means the prosecution of organisations and individuals calling for mobilisation of workers and youth, is imprisonment for five years and a heavy fine. If charged and convicted for the same offence a second time the punishment and fine is doubled.

Forty-five petitions from various civil society groups and opposition parties opposing the planned law were filed in the Supreme Court last year when the bill was published in the gazette. Petitioners noted that the planned measures contravened Sri Lanka’s constitution and violated the fundamental rights of its citizens.

The OSB was so blatantly anti-democratic that the Supreme Court said that 31 parts of the planned measures violated Sri Lanka’s constitutionally guaranteed rights and it presented a number of proposed amendments. If these amendments were not included in the bill’s final form, it stated, then it would need a two-thirds majority of MPs to approve it.

One of the Supreme Court’s objections related to the executive president having the sole authority to appoint and remove members of the Online Safety Committee. It called for committee members to be approved by the existing but already politically compromised ten-member Constitutional Council, which is currently tasked with the appointment of independent commissions.

Parliamentary opposition parties have alleged that the government not only ignored many of the Supreme Court’s proposals but introduced new provisions during the final day of discussion on the bill.

Sri Lankan workers and the oppressed masses have been kept in the dark about the final shape of the new social media law and will only be able to get access to it after it is approved by the Speaker then prepared for implementation by the attorney general.

The OSB has been opposed by the Asian Internet Coalition (AIC), an alliance of global online technology corporations such as Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple and X/Twitter which cites 13 points of concern. The opposition of these global giants has nothing to do with the defence of democratic rights but reflects concerns about the impact on their business profits.

Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles, who introduced the bill, responded by assuring AIC that he would accommodate their interests in a separate amendment in the future.

This week’s ruthless ramming through of the Online Safety Bill follows the Wickremesinghe government tabling on January 10 of its draconian Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB).

The bill, which is to replace the country’s notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) of 1979, is even more repressive, expanding terrorism to include any anti-government activity, political dissent or opposition.

The “offence of terrorism,” it states, is “intimidating the public or a section of the public,” as well as “wrongfully or unlawfully compelling the Government of Sri Lanka, or any other Government, or an international organisation, to do or to abstain from doing any act.”

It also targets anyone “who publishes or causes to be published a statement, or speaks any word or words, or makes signs or visible representations which is likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public as a direct or indirect encouragement or inducement for them to commit, prepare or instigate the offence of terrorism.”

The ATB’s broad-ranging definition of “terrorism” means that Sri Lanka’s capitalist state apparatus can be unleashed against any individual or organisation calling for mobilisation of workers and youth against the government which is escalating its assault on their jobs, wages and democratic rights. Those accused of terrorism can be punished with life imprisonment while those accused of “direct or indirect encouragement” of terrorism can be jailed for 10 years with heavy fines.

The PTA was ruthlessly used by successive Colombo governments against anti-government activists, including workers, the rural poor, youth and students and the broad Tamil minority, particularly during the 26-year war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Today the Sri Lankan government is confronted with rising mass working-class opposition to its brutal austerity measures, as seen in recent protests and strikes.

While the Wickremesinghe regime depends on the trade union bureaucracies to divide and politically disorient the working class, it is determined to bolster its state power to crush any resistance by workers. It has currently unleashed a vicious witch hunt against Ceylon Electricity Board employees who held a three-day protest to oppose the privatisation of the state-owned corporation.

The Sri Lankan ruling class and its government are acutely fearful of the masses increasing their use of internet and social media platforms to not just voice their opposition to the government, the state apparatus and the opposition parties but to coordinate and organise their struggles. This technology was powerfully used during the mass uprising against former President Rajapakse and his government in April–July 2022.

Every government—from the major powers to the ‘backward’ countries—are stepping up their attacks on freedom of expression, gagging social media, websites and other internet facilities.

Early this month President Wickremesinghe announced that there will be presidential elections in September and national elections in January 2025. The ruling party and the opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and its National People’s Power (NPP) are stepping up their election propaganda, even as the government implements its anti-democratic measures.

While the SJB and the JVP/NPP have criticised the Online Safety Bill, they both insist that government regulation of social media can be introduced without taking harsh measures. These parties are committed to the IMF austerity agenda and will impose these policies if given the chance. If elected, they will no less ruthlessly attack basic democratic rights.

During debate on the Online Safety Bill, leading NPP parliamentarian Dr. Harini Amarasuriya said the measure was anti-democratic but insisted that there “needs to be measures” so that people are not harmed, people are not slandered.”

SJB parliamentary opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa echoed this stating, “Hate statements, multiple news items and information based on wrong information must be regularised with legal process and to reveal the truth. Character assassination based on lies should be avoided.”

International Court of Justice rules against Israel but declines to order end to genocide in Gaza

Tom Carter

South African, left, and Israel's delegation, right, stand during session at the International Court of Justice, or World Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday, Jan. 26, 2024. [AP Photo/Patrick Post]

On Friday, the International Court of Justice issued an 86-paragraph written decision on the request for “provisional measures” in the pending case by the government of South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Employing restrained but nevertheless damning language, the judges wrote, “At least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention.”

At the same time, the ICJ declined to call for a halt to Israel’s months-long assault against the civilian population of Gaza, merely ordering as “provisional measures” that Israel comply with its existing obligations under international law and submit a report within a month. This blatant failure to demand the end of the slaughter, which follows logically from the court’s findings, will be seen for what it is: a capitulation to political pressures exerted by the imperialist powers.

The ICJ stops well short of the resolution passed by the UN General Assembly itself in December, in which 153 member states out of the 193 voted for a “ceasefire,” with 10 voting against (including the US and Israel) and 23 abstaining (including the UK and Germany).

Instead, the ICJ merely orders that Israel file a “report” in 30 days regarding its implementation of the order.

At this early stage of the proceedings, which were initiated on December 29, the judges are only tasked with determining whether the allegations are “plausible” before issuing interim orders. The case itself is likely to drag on for years before reaching any definitive conclusion.

The ICJ’s ruling will rightly be seen as a damning indictment, not only for the Israeli government, but for US-NATO imperialism, which has supplied, financed, justified and defended the ongoing genocide in Gaza.  

On January 3, for example, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby denounced the case as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” On Friday, the ICJ decided the precise opposite.

The ICJ decision is also a stinging rebuke to figures such as US State Department spokesman Matt Miller, who dismissed the allegation of “genocide” with a wave of the hand earlier this month, telling reporters that the US government is “not seeing any acts that constitute genocide.”

The German government, which sought to intervene in the case on behalf of Israel, likewise stands exposed. So does New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who authored a prominent column on January 16 calling the genocide charge against Israel a “moral obscenity.”

For tens of millions of students, workers, and young people who continue to attend protests and demonstrations around the world in defiance of all the repression, violent provocations, and witch-hunting accusations of “antisemitism,” the ICJ decision will justifiably be seen as a vindication.

The ICJ decision presents the following figures: “25,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 63,000 injuries have been reported, over 360,000 housing units have been destroyed or partially damaged and approximately 1.7 million persons have been internally displaced.”

The decision quotes UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, contradicting Israeli government assertions that it does not target civilians or hospitals: “Areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety have come under bombardment. Medical facilities are under relentless attack.”

The decision also quotes the Commissioner-General of the UN Nations Relief and Works Agency, Philippe Lazzarini: “In the past 100 days, sustained bombardment across the Gaza Strip caused the mass displacement of a population … constantly uprooted and forced to leave overnight, only to move to places which are just as unsafe. This has been the largest displacement of the Palestinian people since 1948.”

The ICJ’s decision juxtaposes this human suffering inflicted on a mass scale with genocidal rhetoric issuing from the highest levels of the Israeli state, including defense minister Yoav Gallant’s assertion that Gaza is populated by “human animals” and that, “We will eliminate everything.”

The ICJ also quoted Israel Katz, then Minister of Energy and Infrastructure of Israel, who wrote on October 13, “All the civilian population in [G]aza is ordered to leave immediately. … They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

The ICJ concluded that these facts “are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible,” including “the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide.”

While the proceedings in the ICJ have been underway, Israel has continued carrying out war crimes and massacres at a relentless pace. In the hours leading up to the ICJ’s decision Friday, Israeli forces fired on a crowd of thousands waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza City, killing 20 and injuring 150. In a 24-hour period from Wednesday to Thursday, Israeli forces killed over 200 Palestinian civilians.

Referencing Israel’s ongoing blockade of food, energy, medical supplies and fuel to Gaza, the ICJ decision states that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the court renders its final judgment,” which in turn justifies adopting “provisional measures.”

The hollow character of the ICJ’s “provisional measures” is underscored by the fact that Israel’s own appointee to the court, Aharon Barak, joined in many of them, including the admonition that Israeli officials refrain from further genocidal incitement and enable humanitarian assistance to reach Gaza.

For all of its significance as a rebuke to the accomplices of the genocide, as Foreign Affairs magazine noted yesterday, the ICJ’s decision was a political one: an attempt to find a “middle ground,” acknowledging on the one hand the “overwhelming world concern for extraordinary loss of life in Gaza” (mass popular protests around the world that continue in the face of all efforts to discourage and repress them), but without, on the other hand, actually ordering “an end to Israel’s military operation,” which “Israel and the United States would have almost certainly dismissed.”

Responding to the decision yesterday, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu called the ruling “outrageous,” while Israel’s fascistic minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is named in the case, denounced it as “hypocrisy.” Netanyahu had previously stated that Israel’s operations in Gaza would continue no matter what orders the ICJ gave, saying, “No one will stop us—not The Hague, not the axis of evil, and not anyone else.”

The refusal of the ICJ to even call for a cease-fire in the face of overwhelming evidence of the genocide unfolding in Gaza underscores its character as an imperialist institution. In March 2022, within weeks of the start of the war in Ukraine, by contrast, the ICJ had no such qualms about ordering that Russia “shall immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February.”

Britain’s top army general issues call for conscription and “whole of nation mobilisation” for war

Laura Tiernan

General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff and Head of the British Army, has declared the government must prepare now to “mobilise the nation” for war. He said a “citizen army” would be needed to boost Britain’s armed forces during wartime.

Sanders addressed 1,000 top military leaders, government officials and arms suppliers from around the world at the International Armoured Vehicles Conference (IAVC) in London.

General Patrick Sanders in 2022 [Photo by Open Government Licence v3.0]

He described the civilian population as “a pre-war generation” who must “think like troops” and be “prepared mentally to fight”. This was a “whole-of-nation undertaking”.

Sanders’ speech on Wednesday was framed as a warning that war against Russia could not be won based on the size of the UK’s 74,110 full-time regular army. He called for an expansion in troop numbers to 120,000 within three years, including regular soldiers, reserves and a “strategic reserve” of retired military personnel.

But this expanded professional and reserve army would not be enough. NATO’s war in Ukraine showed that a “civilian army” is needed. “Regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them”.

“Our friends in Eastern and northern Europe, who feel the proximity of the Russian threat more acutely, are already acting prudently, laying the foundations for national mobilisation,” he said. “We need an army designed to expand rapidly to enable the first echelon, resource the second echelon, and train and equip the citizen army that must follow”.

Sanders invoked recent warnings by NATO chiefs and the Swedish government that civilians must be prepared for European-wide military conflict against Russia, up to an including nuclear war.

“As the chairman of the NATO military committee warned just last week, and as the Swedish government has done, preparing Sweden for entry to NATO, taking preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing when needed are now not merely desirable, but essential.”

Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, told a meeting of top defence chiefs last week that NATO allies must be ready to “find more people if it comes to war”, and consider “mobilisation, reservists or conscription”.

Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, this week predicted all-out war between Russia and NATO “within five to eight years”. Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden’s Minister for Civil Defence, told civilians they must be war-ready, “Are you a private individual? Have you considered whether you have time to join a voluntary defence organisation? If not: get moving!” Ahead of its entry to NATO, Sweden has recently reintroduced a form of national conscription.

Media blackout

While Sanders’ speech was heavily trailered by the British media, Downing Street intervened to block journalists from obtaining a copy. This sinister prohibition extended to a ban on television networks broadcasting Sanders’ speech from the venue.

Sky News Security and Defence Editor Deborah Haynes tweeted Wednesday that “TV cameras weren’t permitted to broadcast his speech unclear why.”

The Guardian reported the speech had been “released by the British army on behalf of the senior general” but not by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

But the British Army’s press office (run by the MoD) refused to provide a copy to the World Socialist Web Site. A press officer confirmed that Sanders’ speech “has not and will not” be made available. The MoD refused to give a reason. The Guardian’s Defence Editor did not reply to our request for a copy of the speech, in keeping with its role as a mouthpiece for the military and intelligence agencies.

By Wednesday night, the Times, Telegraph and Independent were reporting that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office had intervened to prevent Sanders’ speech being aired or published.

Sunak’s official spokesperson told media outlets that “hypothetical scenarios” about future conflicts were “not helpful”. His office claimed there were “no plans” for conscription.

The Times reported, “No 10 has repeatedly blocked military chiefs from speaking to the media and insiders have blamed Rishi Sunak for being paranoid about messaging before the general election.”

The reason for Sunak’s intervention is clear: nothing must be done to alert the British public to the catastrophic consequences of the government’s escalating military operations with US and NATO powers across the globe.

In this election year, with approximately half the world’s population going to the polls, capitalist governments are determined to prevent any discussion or debate on the life and death issue of war. No opposition will be brooked, either to imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza, or to an expanding global war by NATO powers extending from Ukraine to the Middle East and by the AUKUS military alliance which is spearheading a military build-up against China.

The opposition of millions of ordinary people toward genocide and war could not be clearer, with mass protests sweeping the globe. As news of Sanders’ speech spread yesterday, #Conscription trended across social media. A poll by actor Ricky Tomlinson on Twitter/X asked: “Would you sign up and fight for King and Country?” It was viewed more than 45,000 times, with 93 percent voting “no” to conscription.

Thousands more angrily denounced the mere suggestion of military conscription. Comments on Twitter/X included, “National service? Rich people asking poor people to die for a country they give zero f***s about”, and: “If they think, for one second that they’re sending my 21 year old son to be cannon fodder for rich idiots who can’t govern, they can f*** right off. Literally, over my dead body.”

Tory-Labour war alliance

Mass anti-war sentiment is colliding not just with the Tories but with a Labour Party demonstrating total commitment to war and domestic political repression. Leader Sir Keir Starmer has openly backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza, branding protests in defence of the Palestinian people as “hate marches” and opposition to Israel’s fascist government as “antisemitism” that must be eradicated.

Yesterday, Starmer posted on Twitter/X that “Labour will always act in the national interest to protect Britain’s security at home and abroad”. It included a video of his speech to the House of Commons backing British air strikes against Yemen, declaring, “Let me be clear, we back this targeted action to reinforce maritime security in the Red Sea… we must stand united and strong”.

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Labour and the Tories function as a single party of war. Starmer has provided seamless backing to Britain’s military deployment to the Middle East since October 7, including bombing raids on Lebanon aimed at preparing for war against Iran. British surveillance aircraft are actively supporting Israel’s genocide from RAF bases in Cyprus.

Sunak has no differences with Sanders, he merely wants to keep further British war planning, including plans for conscription, under wraps. His Defence Secretary Grant Shapps delivered a speech last week at Lancaster House in which he declared a historic shift from a “post-war to a pre-war world”.

Shapps described the fall of the Berlin Wall as a “distant memory”, saying the “peace dividend” following the end of the Cold War was over. He repeated the government’s pledge to raise Britain’s NATO military commitment to 3 percent of GDP, warning, “In five years’ time we could be looking at multiple theatres [of war]” and blaming Russia, China, Iran and North Korea for upending the “rules-based order”. It was a narrative belied by three decades of imperialist violence since the first Gulf War in 1990-91 that has killed and maimed millions.

While the government sought to downplay Sanders’ call for conscription, Britain’s former NATO commander General Sir Richard Sherriff told Sky News Thursday that current global challenges and cuts to defence since the end of the Cold War meant, “we need to get over many of the cultural hang-ups and assumptions, and frankly think the unthinkable.”

“I think we need to go further and look carefully at conscription,” he said.

China’s stock market fall sounds alarm bells

Nick Beams

Throughout 2022 the imperialist powers and global corporations applied tremendous pressure on the Chinese government to lift its successful anti-COVID public health measures. Their eventual success at the end of the year led to death of as many as 2 million people.

An investor walks past the stock price monitor at a private securities company in Shanghai, China, Tuesday, March 6, 2012. [AP Photo]

Today international finance capital is waging a campaign for Beijing to implement an economic stimulus package. If it does not, the threat is that the fall of the stock markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai will continue, leading to major financial problems.

Like the scrapping of the anti-COVID measures, this pressure is a demonstration of the fact that the nationalist policies of the Xi Jinping regime are directly subject to the forces generated by global capitalism with major political ramifications.

Above all, it illustrates the bankruptcy of the schema promoted in some pseudo-left circles that China, along with others, could form a counterbalance to the depredations and power of US imperialism and lead to the development of a so-called “multi-polar” world.

The fall in the markets is clearly causing concern at the top levels of the government. Most of the international finance that came into the markets at the beginning of last year had been withdrawn by the end.

On Tuesday, premier Li Qiang called for “more forceful and effective measures to stabilise the market and boost confidence.”

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, which fell almost 14 percent last year, has fallen a further 10 percent this year. It rose by 2.6 percent on Tuesday, its biggest rise for the year, but the effect was described as “short-lived” and markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen barely moved.

Since they reached a peak in February 2021, stocks in mainland China and Hong Kong have lost $6 trillion. That is roughly equivalent to the entire market capitalisation of Japan. In another measure of the extent of the fall, the Chinese market has never been as far behind Wall Street as it is at present.

In a comment to Bloomberg, George Magnus, a long-time China analyst at Oxford University’s China Centre said: “Xi Jinping’s people are almost certainly telling him that the rout in the equity market is a stability risk.

“Investors aren’t just abandoning Chinese stocks for normal reasons of valuations, but because the whole economic policy and political environment has atrophied. Getting confidence back probably requires major changes in both.”

With his call for “forceful” measures, Li announced the establishment of a 2 trillion yuan ($US278 billion) fund to buy up Chinese mainland stock by state-backed institutions through their offshore trading links.

Over the past year, authorities have introduced several measures aimed at trying to boost the market. They include directives to institutions not to sell stocks. Market regulators have issued instructions known as “window guidance” that prevent some investors from being net sellers of equities on certain days.

Some of these restrictions had to be relaxed at the beginning of the month because mutual funds, which are based on the money provided by smaller investors, were facing redemptions from customers who wanted to get out of the market because they feared further falls.

However, the efforts by the government to halt the stock market slide, not only through restrictions but also inducements such as reducing trading stamp duty and increased purchases by state-backed funds, have largely fallen flat.

Michelle Lam, Greater China economist at the global finance firm Société Générale, referred to the Chinese stock market crisis of 2015 in which it lost around one-third of its value, sending reverberations around the world. She told Bloomberg the experience had shown that “even when the government steps up buying the rally is not necessarily sustainable unless we have a bigger stimulus package to address the economic issues.”

China faces a growing list of problems with one of the key issues being the debt accumulation in the real estate and property sector as well as by local government authorities. The government and financial authorities are desperately trying to avoid the kind of debt-based stimulus measure they have used in the past out of fear it will exacerbate the huge debt levels.

After the global economic crisis of 2008 the regime turned to property real estate and infrastructure development to power the economy. It is estimated that as a result, non-financial debt rose to 294 percent of gross domestic product in November last year, up from 160 percent a decade earlier.

This rapid expansion led the rating agency Moody’s to downgrade its outlook for Chinese debt late last year.

The problems in the property market are being exacerbated by the onset of a deflationary cycle in which producer prices have been dropping for the past year and consumer prices were stagnant or falling for most of the last half of 2023. Deflation works to increase the debt burden.

The lack of what is known as “consumer confidence” about the long-term economic outlook is also reflected in the falling birth rate which, together with COVID deaths, contributed to the fall in the population in 2023 for the second year in a row.

The Chinese regime recognised some time ago that dependence on real estate and property development as the basis of the economy was not viable in the long term and turned to high-tech advancement as a new source of growth.

However, here it has run headlong into the dictates of US imperialism which as imposed trade restrictions on high-tech components in an effort to stifle Chinese economic advancement. The US regards China as the greatest threat to its dominance of the global economy.

These measures have been accompanied by the escalation of military threats and provocations over Taiwan. The US has all but recognised Taiwan as an independent state, abrogating in practice, if not yet in words, the “one China policy.”

The fall in the stock market is being regarded as a serious problem both in government and financial circles.

An article on Bloomberg published yesterday began: “A year ago, Hong Kong’s finance industry was hoping that a China reopening would unleash pent-up consumer demand and bring deals and prosperity to the city. There is no such illusion left.

“As the Hang Seng Index selloff deepens, bankers and traders are preparing for the worst. This does not feel like 2008 when the Global Financial Crisis hit but 1998—in the midst of the Asian Financial crisis… The late 1990s started with Thailand. But if another one erupts, China will be its root cause and Hong Kong the epicentre.”

The so-called “Asian Crisis”—it was in fact the expression of the deepening crisis of world capitalism—was characterised by then US president Bill Clinton as a “blip” on the road to globalisation.

However, it had major consequences in the US itself. It set off a crisis in the Russian ruble, leading in turn led to the collapse of the American investment firm Long Term Capital Management. It had to be bailed out in a $3 billion operation organised by the New York Federal Reserve lest its demise set off a crisis for the entire US financial system.

The consequences of the developing crisis in the Hong Kong and mainland China markets threaten to be no less severe.

Maldives gives India deadline to evacuate soldiers

Rohantha De Silva

Relations between the Maldives and India have deteriorated sharply following the election of pro-Chinese Mohamed Muizzu as president in September last year, ousting the sitting President Mohomed Solih, who has close ties with India. Muizzu campaigned on an India-out platform, promising to send Indian troops stationed in Maldives home and to lessen New Delhi’s influence.

Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu [AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool]

Maldives, a small archipelago, is strategically located in the Indian Ocean to the south of India near key shipping water lanes from the Middle East and Europe to Asia. Like the rest of the region, it is embroiled in geo-political rivalry as the US, backed by India, intensifies its aggressive confrontation with China.

The Muizzu government has now issued a deadline of March 15 for India to evacuate its soldiers from the Maldives. New Delhi has agreed to find “mutually workable solutions” to the issue but has said nothing about the deadline.

A contingent of about 80 Indian troops are stationed in the Maldives. According to India, they maintain and operate two rescue and reconnaissance helicopters as well as a Dornier aircraft it supplied by the country to help provide medical assistance to people on remote islands.

During the election campaign, Muizzu’s Progressive Party of the Maldives accused India of intending to take over the nation using a coast guard installation it was constructing on the island of Uthuru Thila Falhu, close to Male.

Muizzu told reporters on January 13: “We are not a country that is in the backyard of another country. We are an independent nation… We may be small, but that doesn’t give you the license to bully us.”

These remarks were clearly aimed at India which is attempting to boost its influence throughout the region. New Delhi has long treated Maldives as its backyard and has arrogated to itself responsibility for maintaining stability.

In 1988, a group of Maldivians led by businessman Abdullah Luthufi and assisted by a Tamil secessionist organization from Sri Lanka, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), attempted to overthrow the government. Indian paratroopers and naval forces were deployed to Male and thwarted the coup attempt, restoring President Abdul Gayoom’s government to power.

The present deterioration of relations with India was underscored when, breaking with tradition, the newly elected president’s first overseas visit was not to India but to Turkey in late November, followed by a trip to China.

Muizzu made a five-day state visit to China from January 8 at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Underlining the importance of Male to Beijing, Muizzu and his wife were given red carpet treatment at the Great Hall of the People followed by a state banquet hosted by President Xi and his wife.

Muizzu has had close relations with China, having hosted infrastructure projects supported by Beijing while serving as mayor of Male, the capital city. During his visit, Muizzu and Xi held official talks and oversaw the signing of 20 agreements covering tourism, disaster risk reduction, the digital economy, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects.

Muizzu also attended the Invest Maldives Forum in Fuzhou where he appealed to China to send more tourists amid a spate of cancellations of reservations by Indian tourists. Bilateral relations were upgraded to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, and China agreed to provide financial assistance to the Maldives.

The Maldives has pledged to lessen its reliance on India by diversifying its food imports and foreign medical services. It plans to import food and drugs from Turkey, the US and Europe. Although most Maldivians travel to India and Sri Lanka for medical care, Muizzu said that those who qualify for the national health insurance scheme could get care in Dubai or Thailand.

Relations with India worsened after three Maldives deputy ministers, Malsha Shareef, Mariyam Shiuna, and Abdulla Mahzoom Majid, branded Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “clown,” “terrorist” and a “puppet of Israel.” To prevent further damage to the relationship, the Maldives government suspended the three ministers on January 8.

The ministers made these comments in response to Modi’s visit to the Indian islands of Lakshadweep, highlighting its beaches and natural beauty. Located 150 miles from the Indian mainland and just 100 miles north of the Maldives, Lakshadweep resembles a miniature version of its southern neighbour. By promoting Lakshadweep, Modi was clearly seeking to undercut Indian tourism to the Maldives. Until recently, the islands saw only 10,000 tourists per year, mostly Indian.

The Maldives is heavily reliant on tourism which brought in $US3 billion in revenue in 2019, accounting for more than 25 percent of GDP. Following the decrease in outbound Chinese tourism in the past few years, India emerged as the primary source of affluent, high-spending visitors.

After a pro-Beijing government came to power, New Delhi has orchestrated a propaganda campaign against Male. High-profile Indians, including Bollywood stars and government officials, have expressed their disapproval of Maldives in a flood of social media posts that included vacation brochure-style photos of Lakshadweep. EaseMyTrip, an Indian travel service, has joined Indian celebrities in boycotting travel to the Maldives.

China is likely to respond with assistance to Male. The stage is set for countries throughout South Asia including the Maldives to be increasingly dragged into intensifying geopolitical tensions that threaten to plunge the region into a US-led war against China.

Doctors in Turkey warn of new pandemic wave

Hakan Özal

Influenza, RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus) and COVID-19 outbreaks have been progressing unabated in Turkey for more than a month. The Ministry of Health is trying to hide the impact of COVID, which is causing thousands of excess deaths every month, to avoid taking the necessary measures against the pandemic.

Despite being aware of the scope of the public health crisis, the Ministry of Health has downplayed the latest wave, describing it as a seasonal cold. In a statement published on the Ministry’s website on January 18, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca responded to the question, “What should be done in this period of increasing upper respiratory infections?” with the answer, “We should act as we normally do in the face of cold and flu-related complaints. As we have all experienced many times, such ailments disappear in a short time with simple measures”.

Relatives of Munevver Kaya, who died of COVID-19, wearing face masks for protection against the coronavirus, offer their prayers during a funeral in Istanbul in 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Doctors disagree with the minister. In an online press statement on January 10, Dr. Emrah Kirimli, head of the Family Medicine Department of the Turkish Medical Association, said that during the pandemic period there were waves similar to today’s, but those waves receded due to the measures taken. Today we are facing a much more serious situation due to the lack of containment measures.

Kirimli noted that they had talked to family doctors all over Turkey and almost all of them painted the same picture: “The minister says it is a cold, but we know what a cold is. Our patients do not have a cold, they have COVID and influenza. We are losing some of them. But there are no tests or diagnoses. People are forced to work sick. The burden of the pandemic is on the shoulders of the health workers. ASMs [Family Health Centers] are turning into areas of infection because of space problems. There is a ‘let the dying die, let the sick get sick’ approach. The Minister of Health is responsible for all this.”

Kirimli evaluated the last month as follows: “All schools are collapsing due to sickness, workers are collapsing due to sickness. Due to the examination period in schools and the working conditions and pressure of the bosses in the workplaces, our citizens cannot rest. They work, work even though they are sick. They go to work and school under these conditions and continue to spread the epidemic to those around them in schools and workplaces or on public transportation.”

Prof. Dr. Esin Davutoğlu Şenol of Gazi University published an article on the Halktv website on January 16 stating that respiratory viruses such as influenza, the new COVID-19 variant JN.1 and RSV, which are the cause of the nationwide outbreaks, are closely associated with strokes, heart attacks and clotting. Excess winter deaths this year have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, she said.

Şenol emphasized when speaking to the BBC that there are problems providing appropriate treatment to people at risk due to the lack of testing. She stated that it is important to perform beta tests in the pediatric age group and flu and COVID-19 tests for those aged 15 and above, and that supportive treatment should be applied according to the diagnosis result. She added that it is very important to protect other people at home when diagnosed with influenza or COVID-19.

With similar warnings, Dr. Kirimli explained that it is important to distinguish these diseases from each other by performing tests for treatment: “Right now, we can’t even test for the influenza. But if we know what it is, we will give a drug for it. If you don’t know what it is, you say ‘let’s use whatever we have’, and that leads to unnecessary use of antibiotics.

“Because we don’t know what we are facing, we may not be able to take precautions for other people at home. It is like living in an older age and trying to treat patients blindly.”

In the spring of 2023, when the World Health Organization formally ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) declaration and the imperialist states began ending COVID testing and monitoring process and the sharing of information on cases and deaths, Turkey followed suit. Experts are left with only very limited data like hospital admissions and excess deaths.

Prof. Dr. Tuğhan Utku, president of the Turkish Intensive Care Association, said in early January that “we felt a little too much pressure in terms of the number of patients. ICU occupancy rates are around 65-70 percent during normal periods. At the moment, we estimate the rate to be around 100 percent”. Utku said that the association had received feedback from colleagues in the field that planned surgeries had to be postponed or canceled for this reason.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr. Hacer Ayşen Yavru, a board member of the Istanbul Chamber of Medicine (ITO), said, “In Istanbul, the province with the highest number of intensive care beds, intensive care units with inadequate infrastructure are opened due to the lack of available beds, but when these are insufficient, intubated patients are monitored on stretchers in the wards, in the red areas of the emergency department.”

Güçlü Yaman, who worked on “excess deaths” in the Pandemic Working Group of the Turkish Medical Association and published several reports, drew attention to increased mortality rates with a post on his X account on January 22. According to Yaman, as of January 19, deaths in Istanbul were 12 percent higher than the 3-year pre-pandemic average. In the week of January 13-19, the average number of excess deaths per day was 32. In the current situation, this equates to about a thousand people per a month in Istanbul alone.

https://twitter.com/GucluYaman/status/1749177157329236429

As well as further deaths, millions more people will develop Long COVID, leaving them debilitated and disabled. The “forever COVID” policy also increases the risk that the virus will evolve into more deadly variants.