Amnesty International reports Fiji’s police and military using torture

John Braddock

Fiji’s police, corrections and military officers are committing torture against people accused of crimes or in custody, according to an Amnesty International report released on December 4. The report, Beating Justice: How Fiji’s Security Forces Get Away with Torture, details repeated violations of international law by the security forces, including beatings, rape, sexual violence, attacks by police dogs and murder.

Amnesty charges the Fijian authorities with acting with impunity, their brutal activities condoned at the highest levels. Security forces personnel who commit abuses rarely face sanction and even when officials are convicted of crimes, they are usually quickly pardoned and released from prison.

Fiji’s 2013 constitution entrenches “absolute and unconditional immunity” for any government actions between the 2006 military coup and 2014, when a so-called democratic election installed Frank Bainimarama, the coup leader and military head, as prime minister. The election was held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition political parties. The authoritarian, anti-working class regime continues to rule through fear and intimidation, using draconian anti-democratic laws and restrictions on the right of assembly and the media.

In a state visit to New Zealand in October, Bainimarama insisted that the institutions of the Fijian state are “functioning properly” and are “truly independent and free from personal and political influence.” New Zealand’s then prime minister, John Key, downplayed any criticisms. He told the media that “human rights” were an area where “discussion and engagement” was needed. “I have always said the restoration of democracy in Fiji was a good and important step, but it does evolve over time,” Key declared.

The Amnesty report observes that the military continues to play a direct role in all levels of government, as well as in civilian policing. Military officers are routinely appointed to senior government roles, including head of corrections and head of police, effectively militarising the posts and making it impossible to hold officers accountable for their violations of international law.

According to the report, police “are effectively left to police themselves,” while the military brass has frequently interfered in investigations involving military officers. In a few cases where perpetrators have been successfully prosecuted, custodial sentences were reduced under “Community Supervision Orders,” allowing them to be released within weeks of being convicted and return to their previous posts. Bainimarama and Police Commissioner Brigadier-General Qiliho have both expressed support for military and police officers when allegations of torture have come to light.

The brutality routinely handed out by the security forces, dating back at least to the 2006 coup, is ongoing. In a video clip circulated online from October, three police officers are shown beating suspects on the side of the road. In September, Isaac James was taken in for questioning at Nakasi police station, where he was allegedly denied food and water for two days, beaten by police using sticks, a belt and a screwdriver. He escaped custody, fearing for his life, and remained in hiding for most of October.

On November 29, Ricardo Fisher was beaten unconscious by five police officers while in custody. Fisher, who was hospitalised with fractured ribs, claimed that police have not followed up his official complaint. The secretary of the Coalition for Human Rights, Monica Waqanisau, told Radio New Zealand that Fisher’s case showed “little is changing.”

Fijian human rights lawyer Aman Ravindra-Singh told Radio NZ that state-sponsored torture is still happening despite Fiji signing a UN anti-torture treaty earlier this year. He said there had been no progress on prominent cases, including the alleged 2011 torture by a military officer of trade unionist Felix Anthony and the alleged police beating of businessman Rajneel Singh a year ago. Ravindra-Singh said the police stonewall by claiming investigations are “continuing” when there is ample evidence to prosecute.

The Amnesty report cites other videos of police assaults on civilians circulated on social media, including footage shot in November 2012 that shows a half-naked man being beaten and sexually assaulted by police and military officers, while another man has a police dog set upon him.

Police regularly torture suspects in order to obtain confessions. In August 2014, robbery suspect Vilikesa Soko died, four days after being arrested, from a blood clot on his lungs after a sustained physical and sexual assault. His autopsy showed multiple traumatic injuries. The report cites another case of a person having a leg amputated. Witnesses and lawyers also raised concerns about threats and intimidation against them.

At least five people have been beaten to death in police or military custody since 2006, including 19-year-old Sakiusa Rabaka who in 2007 was beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to perform military exercises. He died from his injuries on a military base in Nadi. Eight police officers and one military officer were ultimately convicted over his death and sentenced to prison terms. All were released within a month.

Kate Schuetze, Amnesty International’s Pacific researcher, said that in Fiji “accountability for torture is the exception rather than the rule,” “This amounts to a climate of near impunity. It is the result of the fact that torture is poorly defined in law, immunity is granted, there are few legal safeguards and there is no independent oversight.”

Amnesty has called on Bainimarama’s regime to make limited changes, such as to withdraw the armed forces from policing tasks. But Fiji Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum rejected the Amnesty report out of hand, branding it “biased and selective.”

Moreover, the local imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, have never been concerned about democratic rights in Fiji. After the 2006 coup, fearing that political instability in the region would open the door to China and other countries, wide-ranging international sanctions were imposed. This backfired, with Bainimarama gaining aid and investment from Beijing under his “look north” policy.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with representatives of the regime in 2010, signalling an end to Australian-led efforts to force it into submission. In 2014, Washington, Canberra and Wellington all rushed to endorse the bogus election and re-forge ties with Fiji.

Bainimarama has bluntly called any criticism of Fiji hypocritical. In a speech in October, Bainimarama admitted torture remained an “issue” in Fiji, but claimed there were only “isolated incidents.” He pointed to the US, which uses torture under the guise of combating terrorism, and to Australia’s detention of asylum seekers in “cruel, inhumane or degrading circumstances” as examples of state-sanctioned policies that, he claimed, were “vastly different” from the situation in Fiji.

Corporate tax-dodging in Australia costs billions

Mike Head

Two reports on company taxation show that more than a third of the largest companies operating in Australia paid no tax in 2014–15 and that multinational tax evasion cost an estimated $4.8 billion that year. These reports show the fraud of the claims being made by the Australian government and corporate media that Donald Trump-style tax cuts will boost plummeting investment and benefit the country’s population.

Addressing a business dinner last month, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull renewed his call for the company tax rate to be reduced from 30 to 25 percent in an attempt to meet the demands of the financial elite for his government to match the unprecedented cut from 35 to 15 percent promised to the US ruling class by President-elect Trump.

Turnbull insisted that investment would flood out of the country and into the US and other lower-taxing countries, unless the population accepted tax cuts for the corporate giants and other pro-business “reforms” to boost profits. “Hard decisions” required “winners and losers,” he declared.

Yet billions of dollars in corporate tax concessions—all permitted by the law—have failed to halt the slump overtaking Australian capitalism. Far from using tax windfalls for investment, major corporations have continued to boost their profits and reward their wealthy shareholders while restructuring their operations at the cost of workers’ jobs and conditions.

In the most recent result, the Australian economy contracted by 0.5 percent in the September quarter, driven by an ongoing collapse in business investment—down 9.7 percent over the past year.

Almost 700 of Australia’s largest 1,904 companies paid nil tax in the 2015 fiscal year, according to an annual corporate tax transparency report issued by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) this week. It showed that 36 percent of the companies—whether locally-listed, private or foreign-owned—paid no tax. But the ATO insisted that this was perfectly legitimate and not a sign of tax evasion or avoidance.

Of the companies that paid no tax, 291 reported an accounting loss. Another 125 reported an accounting profit but reconciliation items (for example, tax deductions allowed at higher rates than accounting permits) resulted in a tax loss. A further 128 reported a taxable income but prior-year losses were available to deduct against that profit so no tax was payable. Lastly, 135 reported a taxable income but were entitled to offsets (such as research and development incentives) at least equal to the tax otherwise payable.

One reason that the ATO cited for the outcome was the collapse in commodity prices, which continued into the 2016 fiscal year. In all, energy and resources corporations paid $3.2 billion less tax to the government during fiscal 2015, with almost 60 percent of the companies in this sector paying no tax at all.

The world’s biggest mining company, BHP Billiton, more than halved its tax bill from $3.95 billion in 2014 fiscal year to $1.7 billion after its taxable income fell from $40.4 billion to $33 billion. Its effective tax rate fell from less than 10 percent to about 5 percent.

Mining giants were not the only tax-dodgers, however. Among the big names that paid nil tax, IBM paid nothing despite recording $3.6 billion in total income and $49.3 million in taxable income. Amazon Corporate Services paid just $4.3 million on $148.3 million in revenues and $14.2 million in taxable income.

Apple and Google increased their tax payments a little in 2014-15, after coming under public fire for global tax evasion. Apple’s tax bill almost doubled to $146.3 million, on the basis of local income of $8.4 billion. That is an effective tax rate of less than 2 percent. Google’s tax bill lifted $3 million to $12.2 million, on reported income of $438.7 million—a rate of under 3 percent.

The Business Council of Australia, representing the largest firms operating in Australia, backed the ATO’s declaration that nil tax returns were not a sign of tax evasion or avoidance. “This includes 109 companies that paid no tax, despite reporting more than $1 billion in total income,” BCA chief executive chief executive Jennifer Westacott said.

Westacott claimed the discrepancies could be explained by the fact that companies only pay tax on their profits, “after paying all expenses including wages, capital replacement, supplier costs, fleet costs and other operating expenses.” Such items, however, often allow companies to reshuffle their results to minimise tax liabilities.

An Oxfam report on global tax evasion, due out next Monday, estimates that Australia loses more than $4 billion a year due to the use of 15 of the worst global tax havens by multinationals.

The top three offshore financial centres used by those multinationals operating in Australia were Switzerland, Singapore and the Netherlands. On a global basis, Bermuda topped the list as the most serious tax haven, with 0 percent corporate income tax, 0 percent withholding taxes, evidence of large-scale profit shifting and a lack of transparency.

The charity’s report implores the government not to join the “race to the bottom” on corporate tax rates. Oxfam notes the average corporate tax rate across G20 countries was 40 percent 25 years ago. Today it is less than 30 percent.

Despite net profits by the world’s largest companies tripling in real terms over the past 30 years, from $US2 trillion in 1980 to $7.2 trillion by 2013, tax contributions of large corporations were diminishing, the report says. On top of that, Oxfam says 90 percent of the world’s biggest companies had a presence in at least one tax haven.

Oxfam’s report appeals to the Australian government to ensure that companies pay their “fair share” of taxes, so that money is available for schools, hospitals and other social services. In reality, as the record of the past 30 years demonstrates, what the financial elites regard as “fair” is determined purely by their capacity to keep ramping up profits and dividends via a combination of tax-dodging, cheap labour exploitation and free-market deregulation.

In this process they constantly play one country, and one section of the working class, off against the others, shifting production and financial operations to wherever they can extract the lowest costs and biggest margins. As a result, social inequality has widened immensely, and even more so since the 2008 global financial breakdown.

Trump’s tax cuts and “America first” economic program will only heighten this endless international “race to the bottom” at the expense of workers and young people, who face further job destruction, the driving down of wages and conditions and the devastation of essential social services.

While Turnbull’s Liberal-National government is under immense corporate pressure to accelerate this offensive, it has long had bipartisan support in the political establishment. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Labor governments of Hawke and Keating began the assault, lowering the corporate tax rate from 49 to 30 percent, and the top marginal personal tax rate from 60 to 49 percent. Even so, as the latest reports confirm, major corporations and the wealthy often pay little or no tax.

Social Democratic Party wins Romanian elections

Andrei Tudora & Tina Zamfir

Romanian elections held December 11 were won by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which gained 45.5 percent and will be able to form a government alone or with its neo-liberal ally Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), which won 5 percent. Voter turnout, at 39.49 percent, was one of the lowest in the country’s history.

The vote represented broad rejection of the technocratic government headed by former EU Commissioner Dacian Ciolos. The government was imposed last November by conservative President Klaus Iohannis, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after the ouster of the Social Democratic government headed by Victor Ponta.

The vote for the conservative National Liberal Party, which supported a second Ciolos government, collapsed, standing at little over 20 percent, with the party facing a protracted internal crisis including the risk of breaking up. Another party that supported Ciolos was the Save Romania Union (USR), formed in February this year on an anti-corruption platform by various civil society organizations, ranging from free-market NGOs to pseudo-left “activists.” The party expected to play a major role in a new governing coalition, but only managed to pick up 8.83 percent of the vote.

The Social Democrats, running in the election as an opposition party, had in fact supported the formation of the technocratic government and backed it in parliament for the past year. The PSD is preparing to take power at a time when the European Union (EU) is in rapid disintegration and the country finds itself at the forefront of the war drive led by Washington against Russia.

The Social Democratic Party, formed from the remnants of the former ruling Stalinist Communist Party, has acted as the main pillar of capitalist rule in Romania. Backed to the hilt by the trade unions, it has presided over the privatization of state-owned enterprises in the early 1990s and the implementation of the savage attacks on workers’ rights demanded for entry into the EU. Its ruthless bureaucrats have admitted to complicity in crimes against humanity perpetrated by the CIA, and justified them with the “success” of accession to NATO.

The right-wing, anti-working class character of the new administration is evident in its election program. While attempting to cultivate a basis among sections of the middle classes with nationalist rhetoric and measures to prop up small entrepreneurs, the Social Democrats aim to prop up big business by drastically slashing taxes and contributions to social funds.

The Social Democrats were supported in the campaign by the trade unions, who tried to sell for good coin their election promises to increase pensions and salaries for state employees and increase the minimum wage from €277 to €321. The union bosses showed signs of nervousness when, after the elections, it became obvious the promises were not destined for the 2017 fiscal year. Dumitru Costin, leader of the National Union Bloc for the past 25 years, said, “We are not talking here about questioning in the first day after the election a promise of President [Liviu] Dragnea [PSD leader], we’re becoming slightly ridiculous. Mr. Dragnea was more than exact in his words; we have the documents.”

After the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the PSD was also the main political driving force of the militarization of the country. In January 2015, then prime minister Victor Ponta met President Iohannis and the leaders of the other parliamentary parties to sign a political agreement that whoever came to power would uphold an increase in military spending of at least 2 percent of GDP beginning next year.

On December 1, RomanianNews.ro cited a report delivered by the British trust Jane’s Information Group, that showed that Romania’s military spending has surpassed for the first time the sum of US$3 billion. This is, the report shows, the second highest spending in Eastern Europe, surpassed only by Poland.

PSD leader Dragnea, likely to become the new prime minister, reiterated his unwavering commitment to the EU and NATO immediately after the first exit polls came out.

Although the European press largely focussed on the corruption allegations associated with the PSD, more astute bourgeois commentators recognize in the Romanian PSD a valuable ally of the imperialists’ interests. Writing for the Euractiv web site, Nicolas Tenzer complained: “Russia now encircles Romania with new puppet presidents and Russian troops stationed in Crimea are just 250 kilometres from Romania’s Black Sea coast.” Tenzer notes that “Due to his former position, Ciolos is very popular among his fellow European leaders. The rest of the Union, however, should not overlook the strong pro-European stances of the rest of Romania’s political sphere as well.”

Significant rise in UK homelessness

Joe Mount 

Shelter has revealed that the number of homeless people in England has risen to over 250,000.

The homelessness charity included the following sources in order to record an accurate figure: national government statistics on rough sleepers, statistics on those in temporary accommodation, the number of people housed in hostels, and those waiting to be housed by social services departments (obtained through Freedom of Information requests).

Of these homeless people, almost half are children.

Shelter released the new figures to mark the 50th year since it was founded in response to the appalling social conditions of post-war Britain. Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb explained, “Shelter’s founding shone a light on hidden homelessness in the sixties’ slums. But while those troubled times have faded into memory, 50 years on, a modern-day housing crisis is tightening its grip on our country.”

Shelter explained that their analysis gives a conservative, lower-end estimate and real homelessness figures are much higher. They report that calls to their helpline are up by 50,000 since last year, so they now receive one call every 30 seconds. The number of families living in temporary accommodation rose by 15 percent. Further thousands do not qualify for formal housing assistance.

The geographical breakdown of the figures reveals homelessness hotspots in the urban centres. London is worst affected, with a shocking 2 percent of people facing housing insecurity. Here, the number of people sleeping rough has doubled in five years from 3,673 in 2009-10 to 7,500 last year. The city hosts widespread social deprivation alongside incredible wealth as one of the world’s major playgrounds for the corporate and financial oligarchy.

In Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, 9,650 people lack proper accommodation each night and dozens are forced to sleep on the street. At the end of last month Chiriac Inout was found dead after sleeping rough when temperatures plunged to six degrees below freezing.

The next worst affected cities are Luton, where one in every 63 people are housing insecure, Brighton (one in every 69), Slough (one in 164), Bristol, Coventry (one in 204), Reading (one in 170) and Manchester (one in 266).

Around 3,600 people sleep on the streets each night in England. Precise figures are not available and the real number is likely to be much higher. These numbers have doubled since 2010.

Homelessness is a frightening and isolating experience that causes difficulties finding employment and has a massive impact on mental and physical health. The life expectancy for homeless people is only 47 years of age, dramatically lower than the national average of 81. Rough sleepers are 35 times more likely to commit suicide and are extremely prone to mental health and drug problems. Homelessness causes permanent psychological damage to the children it affects.

Thousands are being forced out of their homes by rising rents and cuts to housing benefit. The biggest immediate factor is eviction from accommodation in the private rented sector, as many face tighter budgets and insecure tenancies. This causes two-fifths of homeless cases in London and the figure nationally has risen fourfold between 2010 and 2015, according to homelessness charity Crisis. The financial issues are often compounded by social problems, mental health disorders or relationship breakdown.

Existing state aid for homelessness is barely adequate, with hostels or bed-and-breakfasts often run-down and at a large distance from schools and local connections. Councillor Martin Tett of the Local Government Association stated, “Funding pressures are combining with housing and rents continuing to rise above household incomes to leave many councils struggling to cope with rising homelessness across all areas of the country.”

Tett is leader of the Conservative-led Buckinghamshire County Council and neglects to mention that his party has vastly exacerbated the homelessness crisis over the past seven years with its imposition of over £100 billion in austerity cuts to services and job losses.

Local authorities of all political stripes are imposing harsh measures affecting the homeless following central government spending reductions. Labour-run Birmingham City Council is cutting its “supporting people” budget, which covers homelessness among other social problems, by £10 million over two years. Another Labour-run authority, South Tyneside, recently imposed £100 fines, under draconian Public Spaces Protection Orders, on homeless people who accept food and drink from members of the public.

Fully 1.5 million private renters rely on some form of welfare benefits, rising to 4.6 million, including social housing tenants. Around 500,000 are in paid work but still rely on such support—a figure that has almost trebled since 2009. The Tory government freeze means that housing benefits are falling in real terms due to rising rents, affecting over 300,000 of the poorest households. The government’s £25 billion housing benefits budget has been cut by £7 billion in recent years. According to Shelter, by 2020 four-fifths of local councils will not be able to provide housing benefits sufficient to afford even the cheapest accommodation.

More broadly, a dearth of affordable housing has developed over the past few decades due to the anti-working class policies of consecutive Labour and Conservative governments. Council housing has been privatised and no new stock has been constructed to replace it. In 2013-14, only around 140,000 new houses were built, far below the 250,000 required to meet demand.

It is notoriously difficult to be accepted for homelessness assistance. Local authorities are only obliged to assist those who fulfil a strict set of criteria. Of the 275,000 people that applied for local authority support last year, only half were accepted, according to research by several homelessness charities. As Matt Downie of Crisis explained, “It’s only half a safety net.” In Wales, the proportion of accepted applications is only 36 percent.

Most single homeless people are not entitled to assistance and form many of the “hidden homeless” getting by in hostels and staying with friends. There are around 35,000 hostel beds for single homeless people nationally—down 4,000 since 2012—due to funding cuts.

The government denied the new figures, with the Department for Communities and Local Government claiming that rough sleeping had fallen to half its peak figure in 2003.

In reality, economic stagnation and government austerity measures are driving hundreds of thousands into poverty. The bourgeoisie requires that the bank bailouts that followed the 2008 global financial crisis be paid off by the working class through a new “age of austerity.” This agenda could only be imposed with the complicity of the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Alongside years of cuts to welfare entitlements, last month the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Theresa May imposed a draconian welfare cap, agreed by her predecessor David Cameron. This massively reduces the income of the most vulnerable layers of society.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond promised an additional £1.4 billion for housing in England in his Autumn Statement—enough to construct just 40,000 homes. Even if these houses are built, it is far below what is required to meet the real scale of the housing crisis.

Massive protests in Germany against deportations to Afghanistan

Marianne Arens & Martin Kreickenbaum

On Wednesday, 34 Afghan refugees were forcibly deported to Kabul from Frankfurt on a charter flight from the Frankfurt-Rhein-Main Airport. This is the first time such a mass deportation has taken place in Germany. A spontaneous demonstration at the Frankfurt airport involved about a thousand people, including many young people. They wore stop signs and chanted slogans such as “Deportation is torture, deportation is murder. A right to stay for all, immediately!”

Protests and demonstrations have already taken place. On Saturday, the “International Day of Human Rights,” thousands of people in Berlin participated in a demonstration to stop deportations to Afghanistan.

In spite of these protests, the German government went ahead with the deportations using extreme brutality. It is deporting refugees, many of whom have been tolerated for many years, back to a country where war rages and basic human rights are nonexistent.

In October, the EU agreed a repatriation agreement with the puppet government in Afghanistan and assured the payment of €1.7 billion when the Afghan government accepts refugees in return. The driving force behind the shabby deal was the German government. On this basis, the German Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière (CDU), wants to expel up to 12,500 people from Germany to Afghanistan whose asylum applications have been rejected and only have “toleration” status.

It was originally planned to deport 50 Afghan refugees on Wednesday. Fifteen people had gone underground, however, de Maizière explained. He announced that “in future families and women would also be deported.”

The deportees were by no means “criminal asylum-seekers,” as had been claimed earlier. Most of them were refugees who had lived in Germany for years and were now being deported overnight. Twenty-two-year-old Babur Sedik told the Frankfurter Rundschau that he had been in Germany for four years and had lived exclusively in refugee homes and camps. Rahmat Khan, also 22, had fled from the fiercely contested region of Paktia and has now been deported.

The Bavarian refugee council reported that an Afghan refugee from Dingolfing had jumped out of the window at 3 a.m. when police sought to arrest him. He was taken to a clinic and apparently placed on the plane after short-lived treatment.

The ruthlessness of the security authorities against Afghan refugees is also shown by the case of 24-year-old Samir Narang from Hamburg, who went to the Aliens Office to extend his toleration status. Instead of the extension of his residence permit, however, he received an expulsion permit and was put into the deportation prison in Büren, and has now been deported to Kabul. Samir Narang is a Hindu and belongs to a persecuted religious minority in Afghanistan, and who now has to fear for his life there.

The deportation of one 29-year-old Afghan was stopped at the last minute by the Federal Constitutional Court, because he was still pursuing an asylum procedure. This means that the authorities planned to deport refugees whose asylum applications had not yet been finally rejected.

The Federal Constitutional Court reported that the question of whether deportations to Afghanistan were constitutional had been expressly left open. Despite the obvious concerns of the highest German court, the deportations on Wednesday were carried out in a hurry.

The collective deportation is a clear violation of human rights. This is also the position of the international medical organization IPPNW (Doctors for social responsibility). According to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which is also applicable in Germany, deportations of refugees to countries where they are threatened with death, persecution or torture are illegal.

But that is exactly the situation in Afghanistan. Even the guidelines of the Federal Office for Migration, which serve as the basis for asylum decisions, leave no room for doubt. “In all parts of Afghanistan there is a domestic armed conflict in the form of civil war and guerrilla fighting between Afghan security forces and the Taliban, as well as other opposition forces.” Human rights violations are widespread, food supplies are scarce and half of all children in Afghanistan are “endangered by long-term malnutrition.”

The security situation has dramatically intensified in the last 18 months. The UN mission to Afghanistan reported more civilian casualties in the first nine months of this year than since censuses began in 2009. The New York Times reported recently that Taliban militias killed 30 to 50 Afghan security forces every month. They have also increased their attacks on provincial capitals, destroyed roads and infrastructure. The government in Kabul is losing control in more and more parts of the country. According to data from the US government, Islamic groups are increasingly filling the power vacuum.

A commentary on German TV by the journalist Georg Restle described the deportations as a “Christmas present for the extreme right.” He demanded an immediate stop to the deportations.

Restle went on: “The truth is: Germany is safe, Afghanistan is by no means safe. Also because we have fought a war there, which has made things much worse, rather than better. This is why the federal government has a special responsibility for this country and the people who flee from it. That is why the deportations to Afghanistan have to be stopped. And now, immediately!”

The brutality with which the federal government is enforcing illegal deportations in the dead of night and fog recalls some of the worst crimes of German history. The Nazi deportations also began with resettlement, long before the trains rolled into the extermination camps.

As was the case in those days, racist attacks are a reaction to the growing economic and social crisis. The ruling class is trying to divert the growing opposition to unemployment, poverty and distress with racism. This is why xenophobia is systematically encouraged to incite workers against one other. The attacks on asylum law in Germany and the brutal deportation measures are the prelude to massive attacks on all workers.

The choice of the right-wing demagogue Donald Trump in the US has also given rise to a sharp turn to the right in European and German politics or, more accurately, accelerated the turn to the right. Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU) commented on the deportations on television: “I hope this is not a one-time action.” Hundreds of thousands more people would still have to be deported. He based his comments on Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had said that now “return, return, return” was the order of the day.

Just last week a conference of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took up the main slogan of the far-right Alternative to Germany, “Foreigners Out!” in its main motion.

In the implementation of this policy, the federal government works closely with all other parties, which are governed by different coalitions at a state level. The states of Hesse, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg, Saarland and North Rhine-Westphalia all participated in the collective deportation. The main responsibility fell to the Hessen state government, a CDU-Green coalition, which has ultimate control over the Rhein-Main airport and the deportations, which are decided upon at state level. The Greens in Hesse expressly agreed to the deportations.

In the Hessen parliament, Green Party chair Mathias Wagner declared the deportations to Afghanistan “difficult to bear,” but that the state parliament could not assess the security situation there and it was necessary to rely on the judgement of the federal authorities.

In Baden-Württemberg, Green Premier Winfried Kretschmann is working closely with Thomas Strobl (CDU). Strobl is the son-in-law of the federal minister of finance, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) and a right-wing rabble-rouser, who represents the politics of the AfD in the CDU. Green politician Boris Palmer, the mayor of Tübingen, also recently called for deportations to Syria.

As usual, the Left Party plays a miserable double game. It was involved in protests at the airport, but is careful not to jeopardize its coalition with the Social Democratic Party and Greens. In Berlin, it has recently formed a coalition with the SPD and Greens and is also preparing deportations.

In Thuringia, Premier Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) has boasted of his success in deportations. Apparently, deportations to Afghanistan are not taboo. In an appeal issued on the “Day of Human Rights” the Thuringian Refugee Council pointed out: “Many refugees living in Thuringia come from Afghanistan. Very long waiting times for a decision on their asylum application and more and more refusals lead to anxiety about their future among Afghan families, unaccompanied minors, women and men.”

Tennessee wrongfully imprisoned man for three decades, provided only $75 compensation

Shelley Connor 

Lawrence McKinney was imprisoned by the state of Tennessee for 31 years for a rape and burglary he did not commit. Under Tennessee law, McKinney could be compensated $1 million.

However, the Tennessee Parole Board has refused to grant him an exoneration hearing, and the only compensation he ever received was the paltry $75 given to him when he was released from prison in 2009. McKinney has now been forced to bring his case before Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, whose office received the application for executive clemency on November 21.

McKinney was charged in October of 1977 with having raped a Memphis, Tennessee woman and burgling her apartment. Six months later, he and his codefendant were found guilty after the victim identified them in court as her attackers. McKinney, then 22 years old, was sentenced to 115 years in prison for the crime. In 2009, DNA evidence from the victim’s bed sheets demonstrated that McKinney had not been present at the crime scene. He was then released from prison; the state issued him the $75 and the crime was expunged from his record.

Tennessee is one of 31 states with compensation statutes for the wrongly accused. It is also one of many states that complicate the compensation process. McKinney was forced to go before the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole to seek compensation and exoneration, even though he was released from prison and the crime had been expunged from his record. The board voted 7-0 to deny his exoneration in November.

Patsy Bruce, who sat on the parole board that denied his first exoneration hearing, has stated that she is not convinced that McKinney is innocent, despite DNA to the contrary. She also claimed that the judge and the District Attorney failed to provide properly tested evidence to support McKinney’s innocence.

In the United States DNA evidence was used to exonerate a wrongfully-convicted inmate for the first time in 1989. Since then, nearly 350 people, including McKinney, have been freed on the basis of DNA evidence.

The states, however, have been criminally remiss in responding to the life-changing implications of this technology. Nineteen states—Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming—have yet to enact statutes providing compensation for those exonerated of crimes.

In the 31 states where compensation laws do exist, the processes to obtain compensation can be prohibitively time consuming and expensive. In New York, an exoneree has only a two-year window to file civil cases against state and municipal governments to receive compensation. These cases can take years to adjudicate, as demonstrated by the ongoing case of Alan Newton.

In 2010, Newton successfully sued New York City for $18.5 million after his exoneration. Newton had been convicted of rape, robbery, and assault in 1985 in a case that prosecutors had built around eyewitness testimony. He had requested DNA testing of evidence in 1994 and was denied; in 2006, after serving over 20 years in prison, he was finally released on the basis of such evidence.

The city appealed the judgment. In 2011, United States District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin set the judgment aside. Newton appealed Scheindlin’s decision. In 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated Scheindlin’s ruling and turned the case back over to her.

In March of this year, Scheindlin reduced the award to $12 million, claiming that the previous amount was excessive. If Newton did not accept the reduced amount, Scheindlin said, he would have to suffer another trial. She also cited the fact that Newton had been accused of a separate rape, although he maintains his innocence and no judgment has been made.

In another case, David Ayers, a Cleveland, Ohio man, served 11 years for a murder he did not commit. He was exonerated by DNA evidence in 2011, and two years later, he sued the two Cleveland detectives—Michael Cipo and Denise Kovach—upon whose manufactured evidence he had been incarcerated. The city of Cleveland was originally named in the suit, but was removed before it went to trial. The appellate court judge in the case stated that there was sufficient “evidence that Detectives Cipo and Kovach conspired to violate [Ayers’] civil rights.” Ayers was awarded $13.2 million by the jury.

Three months after the verdict in Ayers’ favor was delivered, Cleveland Law Director Barbara Langhenry helped Kovach and Cipo obtain a bankruptcy attorney. The city contracted to pay the attorney $1000 for each bankruptcy judgment, as well as the filing fee for the bankruptcies. The contract also stipulated that the attorney was required to obtain permission from the city’s law department to undertake legal research into the cases, effectively discouraging the officers and the attorney from exploring alternatives to bankruptcy. Cipo died a few months after Cleveland contracted with the attorney. Kovach declared bankruptcy. Ayers, now over 80 years old, fights on for his compensation.

McKinney, Newton, and Ayers all live in states where statutes provide for compensation for those exonerated of crimes. In each case, though, state and municipal governments have exploited loopholes designed to reduce payment to those they have incarcerated or avoid payment altogether. In some states, someone who has lost years in prison on false murder charges can lose compensation if they are later convicted of another, unrelated crime. As evidenced in McKinney’s case, a parole board can decide that it is not satisfied with exonerating evidence that has already been recognized by courts.

Those exonerated of wrongful convictions spend, on average, 14-15 years in prison. They are released into a society that has changed drastically, after enduring the myriad stressors and threats inherent to prisons. Parents and other loved ones die during their incarceration.

There is no uniform provision that would allow those exonerated to secure housing, employment, health care, or counseling so they can re-enter society successfully. To the contrary, the governments that energetically and enthusiastically prosecuted and imprisoned them expend just as much energy to avoid paying for the damage they inflict upon these exonerees.

Dylann Roof convicted on all counts in Charleston church massacre

Patrick Martin

After a week-long trial in which evidence of his guilt was undisputed, white supremacist Dylann Roof was convicted of all charges in his federal murder and hate crimes trial. A jury of nine whites and three blacks took only two hours to approve 33 counts against him, 18 of which carry the death penalty.

Family members of the victims sat in the courtroom holding hands as the verdicts were read out, with “guilty” sounded after every one. There had been little doubt about the verdicts, since video footage of Roof confessing to the massacre was played to the jury, and even his own attorneys did not suggest he was innocent.

The defense did not call a single witness, but was entirely focused on laying the groundwork for the sentencing phase, in which Roof declared he intended to represent himself. Federal prosecutors have said they will seek a death sentence. The sentence will be decided by the same jurors who heard the evidence in the trial, and that phase of the proceeding will begin on January 3.

The trial included not only Roof’s videotaped confession, but graphic testimony from the three survivors of the massacre, in which Rev. Clementa Walker and eight parishioners, all African-Americans, were slaughtered, as well as excerpts from Roof’s journal, including a list of churches he was considering as possible targets, and an online manifesto he posted, declaring his desire to trigger a race war.

On the second day of the trial, Roof’s mother Amelia Cowles suffered a heart attack after saying “sorry” out loud several times. She was hospitalized and survived. The 22-year-old defendant’s grandmother also attended the trial.

Defense attorney David Bruck, who specializes in death-penalty cases, told the jury in his closing argument that even though Roof was clearly motivated by racial hatred, he was also mentally ill. He called his client an immature young man who embraced the “mad idea that he can make things better by executing those kind, virtuous people.”

Roof apparently planned to kill himself or force police to shoot him to death in a final confrontation after the massacre, and he left one elderly black woman in the church alive, telling her that he needed her to be the only witness to his murders. In the event, however, he was taken without resistance the next day, after police pulled his vehicle over in Shelby, North Carolina, more than 200 miles from Charleston.

Media coverage of the trial has been completely superficial, repeatedly characterizing Roof as “evil,” without attempting to explain the deeper social roots of his terrible crime. The bloodbath in Charleston is only one of a seemingly endless series of such violent mass killings, many of them motivated by confused right-wing and racist sentiments, others without any discernible rationale except despair and alienation from society.

There has been zero mention in current media reports about the trial of Roof’s connections to ultra-right political circles in South Carolina, a hotbed of what is now termed the “alt-right,” or his “white nationalist” sentiments. Roof cited the web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens as crucial to his own development as a white supremacist.

The president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which calls for opposition to “all efforts to mix the races of mankind,” gave $65,000 to Republican campaigns over the past few years, including the presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum.

Roof cited the group’s web site as a source of his becoming “truly awakened” about racial tensions in the United States, particularly its commentaries on “brutal black on white murders,” justifying the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black youth killed by vigilante gunman George Zimmerman.

The Council of Conservative Citizens has high-level connections in the Republican Party. One of its members, Roan Quintana, was a co-chair in the 2014 re-election campaign of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley—chosen by Donald Trump to be his ambassador to the United Nations.

Worse than that, Steven Bannon, former head of the ultra-right Breitbart News, has been named by Trump as his senior policy adviser at the White House, co-equal with chief of staff Reince Priebus in the inner workings of the new administration.

Breitbart, considered a major forum for the alt-right, went on the warpath after the Charleston massacre to defend the Confederate flag, after Haley and other Republican politicians decided that the emblem of the old slavocracy had to be removed from the state capitol in Columbia in the wake of Roof’s racist massacre.

Two weeks after the massacre, Breitbart carried a commentary headlined, “Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage,” effectively declaring its solidarity with the racist murderer.

Beyond the overt white racist motivation of the massacre, the killings in Charleston followed in a long line of such atrocities, most involving young, alienated and deeply troubled young men.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, “What psychological and sociological features do the various perpetrators share in common? A highly advanced state of social alienation, great bitterness at other human beings, self-hatred, isolation, general despondency and the recourse to extreme violence to solve their real or imagined problems.

“These tendencies recur too often and too devastatingly to be mere personal failings; they clearly come from the broader society. They reflect a terrible malaise, the mentality of individuals living perpetually under a dark cloud, who have no hope for the future, who can only imagine that things will get worse. Only look at the Facebook photograph of Dylann Roof if you want some idea of this bleakness and despondency!”

The militarism, bullying and celebration of wealth and privilege that characterize the incoming Trump administration will only insure that such tragedies occur with even greater frequency and ferocity.

Principals Career Development Scholarships at University of Edinburgh 2017/2018 – UK

Application Deadline: 1st February 2017 | Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: UK/EU and International students

To be taken at (country): University of Edinburgh, UK

Subject Areas: Scholars will usually focus on one career development area. These include:

• Teaching
• Public Engagement
• Entrepreneurship
• Research
• Data Science

About Scholarship: In order to attract the best and brightest PhD students, the University of Edinburgh seeks to offer not only unparalleled research facilities and superb supervision, but also to provide development opportunities which will support our research students as they progress beyond their PhD, through an innovative programme of integrated research, training and career development.

This exciting new scholarship scheme provides a valuable opportunity for postgraduate research students to undertake a package of training and development which will help them to develop the necessary skills required to meet their career choices and offer them a breadth of development opportunities in areas such as teaching, public engagement, entrepreneurship, and research.

Type: PhD

Eligibility: 

• The awards are open to UK, EU and overseas students applying to start their first year of study for a research degree in 2017-2018. Award applicants should contact the School with whom they intend to study before applying for the award to ascertain whether the funding is available for the discipline involved.
• Applicants must have already applied for admission to a full-time PhD research programme of study at the University. Applicants intending to study a part-time PhD research programme will only be considered for the scholarship if they have the approval of the School they wish to study with.
• Candidates are required to have good English Language skills with scholarship applicants normally requiring a minimum IELTS of 7.0 achieved within the past two years.  Please check the Entry Requirements for your proposed programme of study for details of other acceptable English language qualifications.  The requirement for an IELTS score of 7.0 (or equivalent) may be higher than the level required for admissions purposes.
• You may apply for the scholarship prior to obtaining the necessary English language test results but the results should be uploaded as soon as possible.
• Please also note that if you have applied for consecutive registration where you will start your Master’s programme of study in 2017 and your PhD the following year in 2018, that you will not be eligible to apply for a Principal’s Career Development Scholarship in 2017. Principal’s awards cannot be held concurrently with fully-funded scholarships but can be held with partial awards such as the Edinburgh Global Research Scholarships.

Selection Criteria: 

• Applicants must be of outstanding academic merit and research potential. Candidates must have, or expect to obtain, a UK first class or 2:1 honours degree at undergraduate level or the international equivalent.
• Other factors such as financial status, nationality and the proposed field of study are not taken into account.
• The University will not generally consider candidates who have already obtained a PhD, or formal equivalent, as a result of direct research training.

Number of Scholarships: 45

Scholarship Benefits: Each scholarship covers the UK/EU rate of tuition fee as well as a stipend of £14,500. Subject to satisfactory progress, the scholarships are awarded for three years.

How to Apply

Eligible applicants should complete an online scholarship application before the application deadline of 1st February 2017.

Please be sure to outline the potential contribution you can make, and the career development opportunities you wish to take under the Principal’s Career Development PhD Scholarship scheme.

Visit scholarship webpage for more details

Sponsors: University of Edinburgh

Important Notes: Shortlisted candidates should expect to be invited to attend an interview which will take place either in person or by telephone.

The winners of the scholarship will be announced in May 2017.

University of Michigan Centre for the Education of Women (CEW) Scholarships for Women 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 15th February, 2017

Offered annually?

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): USA

About the Award: Thanks to the generosity of individuals, organizations, clubs, and foundations, CEW has awarded over 1,600 scholarships since 1970. CEW Scholarship Awards are invaluable they often mean the difference between completing a degree or not doing so, for many students at the University of Michigan. Due to the generosity of donors, CEW was able to expand the program in 2008 to include additional scholarships for students of all genders on the Ann Arbor campus.

Type: Undergraduate, Graduate

Eligibility: 

CEW Scholarship applicants must be attending the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Flint, or Dearborn campuses) during the year for which the scholarship is awarded and 2) Must have at least one (1) of the criteria listed below:

Undergraduates

• A minimum two-year (24 month) consecutive interruption in education anytime since high school OR
• Primary Caregiver*

Graduate Students

• A minimum five-year (60 month) consecutive interruption in education anytime since high school  OR
• Primary Caregiver*

*Primary Caregiver definition:

• Lives in the same residence at least 50% of the time and consistently assumes major responsibility for housing, health, and safety of a minor, older adult, or disabled adult; anticipates this responsibility will continue during the upcoming academic year.
• Lives in separate residence and provides care for a minor, older adult, or disabled adult for a minimum of 20 hours per week without monetary compensation for at least the past 6 months; anticipates this responsibility will continue during the upcoming academic year.

In addition to these criteria, preference will be given to undergraduate students who currently qualify for a federal PELL grant, and undergraduate and graduate students who are first generation students (no parent has completed a bachelor’s degree).

Selection: If you are selected to be a CEW Scholar you:

• Must be enrolled at one of the three University of Michigan campuses for the next Academic Year (2017-18). If you will be a non-enrolled PhD student working on your dissertation for the terms you will be using your scholarship award, notify cew-scholarships@umich.edu.
• Must respond to CEW communications regarding the submission of a digital photo of yourself, the approval of a biography written about you based on your personal statement and recommendations, and the submission of a thank you letter to your fellowship award donor.
  • Recipients are strongly encouraged to participate in the CEW Scholar Community (CEWSC) associated with this award, including:
    • Attendance at at least 2 CEWSC events or programs, and/or participation in a Scholar directory

Number and Value of Scholarship: Approximately 40 scholarships are awarded annually ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, with some larger scholarship awards given.

How to Apply: Before applying, please review the Eligibility criteria outlined above. The application process is online in M-Compass (use Apply Now* button on this page) and includes the following elements:

1. Application Questionnaire, including short answer responses and transcript upload (current transcript only if applying based solely on Primary Caregiver status, all transcripts surrounding interruption if applying based partially or solely on Education Interruption).
2. Financial Information Questionnaire: This is not shared with selection committees. It is used to determine the amount of the award should the applicant be selected, based on merit, as a CEW Scholar
3. 3 Online Recommendations (faculty preferred but not required) – requested within M-Compass
4. Once all requirements are met and all documents are uploaded, click the Submit Application button at the top of the Program Application Page.

Please Note: Apply Now button is visible only when applications are currently being accepted.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: University of Michigan Centre for the Education of Women (CEW)

Israel’s West Bank Tourism Drive Makes Palestinians Invisible

Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: At first glance, it looked like a generous promotional stunt by Israel to aid the Palestinians’ struggling tourism industry. Israeli military authorities published this month a video on social media publicising Palestinian attractions in the West Bank.

Most are Christian, including Jesus’s birthplace in Bethlehem – now the Church of the Nativity – and more obscure locations such as the monasteries of Mar Saba and Wadi Qelt, in mountainous desert terrain few pilgrim coaches ever reach.

The video was produced by COGAT, the Israeli military body that rules over Palestinians. It appears to be the latest initiative in defence minister Avigdor Lieberman’s so-called “carrot and stick” policy – a programme that rewards and punishes Palestinians according to their behaviour.

Lieberman has vowed to bypass the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and deal with Palestinians directly. The head of COGAT, Yoav Mordechai, has become a familiar face to ordinary Palestinians.

Last month, in his first live chat in Arabic on COGAT’s Facebook page, he answered questions from Palestinians on how they could receive Israeli work permits or resolve other bureaucratic headaches his officials created for them. Even Palestinians in Gaza defied Hamas to contact him.

The tourism video is similarly designed to reverse the Oslo accords, which held out a false promise two decades ago that the Palestinians would one day enjoy statehood and self-determination. Israel’s micromanagement of the territories is now such that it is even taking responsibility for attracting visitors to Palestine.

Except that is precisely not where COGAT’s video invites them. Instead it beckons tourists to visit “Judea and Samaria”, the Biblical names Israel uses to justify the illegal Jewish settlements that dominate much of the West Bank.

What is going on?

The deception at the campaign’s heart operates on several levels – and reveals much about Israel’s long-term policy towards the Palestinians.

Lieberman wants Palestinians to view Mordechai’s military administration as a benevolent father figure, the address for their problems, rather than Abbas. Who has the power to bring tourists to the territories and boost the Palestinian economy? COGAT, not the Palestinian Authority.

But Israel’s charity comes at a high price: Palestinians must jettison their national ambitions. The tourists can visit but Palestinians must first concede that these are Israeli sites.

A similar message is directed at the tourists. Christian pilgrims with little understanding of the Palestinians’ long history of dispossession are being encouraged to explore Greater Israel oblivious to which side of the Green Line they are on. The distinction between Nazareth and Bethlehem, in Israel and the occupied West Bank, respectively, is increasingly blurred.

Palestinians themselves are all but invisible. The video at no point mentions that they even live in “Judea and Samaria”. It shows buildings, not people.

This rebranding process is already well under way in Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in violation of international law decades ago. Tourism maps are littered with Jewish settler sites, marked as prominently as important holy places such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Al Aqsa mosque. The latter is identified only by its Hebrew name, Temple Mount.

But in truth the tourism video is even less generous than it appears. Israel controls all entry into the West Bank, meaning that it is impossible for pilgrims to visit without contributing to the Israeli economy.

Israel announced in September a record budget for promoting tourism, a mainstay of its economy. The vast majority of visitors stay in Israeli hotels, are transported in Israeli coaches, eat in Israeli restaurants, visit Israeli gift shops to buy Israeli souvenirs using Israeli money.

In fact, most of the sites visited in the West Bank are controlled by Israel – from the Dead Sea and Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque to Herod’s acropolis near Bethlehem and the Baptism site on the River Jordan.

Tourists absorb the Palestinian presence only as a distant menace, highlighted by the bright red traffic signs warning that it is “dangerous to your lives” to stray from major roads. Pilgrims dart into Bethlehem for a brief tour of the Church of the Nativity, passing through a checkpoint in the oppressive, prison-like wall, hinting that Israel has good reason to treat Palestinians like felons.

If COGAT really wanted to change that impression, and help the Palestinian economy, it would encourage tourists to stay in Palestinian cities such as Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah and Jericho. And meet actual Palestinians.

Last week the Israeli parliament passed the first reading of a so-called legalisation bill, which will retroactively authorise the settlers’ theft of land and property privately owned by Palestinians in the West Bank. The legislation extends to the settlers’ criminal acts the same legal protection as the state’s theft of Palestinian land.

The privatisation of the looting of Palestinian territory is intimately connected to the authorities’ latest moves to plunder Palestine’s tourism economy. The overarching goal in both is the “creeping annexation” of the Palestinians’ homeland. Israel is ready to use any and every means at its disposal.