Australian government denies palliative care to dying refugee

Max Newman

Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal-National government is continuing its punitive and inhuman treatment of refugees by refusing to provide a 63-year-old dying man with the palliative care he requires. Ali, an Afghan refugee, is dying from lung cancer in one of Australia’s offshore prison camps, located on the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru.

The Australian Border Force (ABF) told Ali he would not be moved to Australia. It claimed that Ali had “refused treatment” because he declined an offer to be transferred to Taiwan to receive care. Ali told ABF he did not want to go because it is most likely there will be no translator for his language, Hazaraghi, and no one who could perform the Shia Muslim rituals before he died.

The ABF also offered Ali $25,000 to return to Afghanistan, where his wife and children live. However, he is a member of the historically persecuted Hazara ethnic minority. Hazaras have been the target of killings and assaults by the government and Sunni extremist groups, such as the Taliban.

Ali is currently imprisoned in the RPC 1 camp on Nauru, which cannot provide him with the necessary palliative care. Doctors on the island described the camp as “dangerously inadequate,” saying his prognosis is “dire” and his life expectancy is “a matter of months.”

Members of the Hazara community on Nauru condemned the denial of Ali’s request for transfer to Australia. They told the Australian media he “is very angry, he is very upset as well. He said these people do not have a human heart.”

Australia’s government is condemning Ali to an excruciating death. Dr Barri Phatarfod, speaking for Doctors for Refugees, said: “In Australia, we have well-defined palliative care standards [and the ability to] deliver powerful analgesia to offset the agonising pain of cancer ... none of these are available in Nauru.”

Sources inside the detention centre reported that executive-level Department of Home Affairs officials decide on requests for medical transfers. When asked to comment, department officials said medical transfers are determined on a “case-by-case basis.”

Already, two deaths in the detention camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have been directly linked to the denial of medical transfers. Faysal Ishak Ahmed, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Sudan, died in December 2016 after suffering a seizure and Hamid Kehazaei, an Iranian refugee, died in September 2014 from a treatable virus.

Australia’s bipartisan “border protection” regime, maintained by Liberal-National and Labor governments alike, involves militarily turning back or forcibly imprisoning all asylum seekers who try to reach Australia by boat.

Like the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of ripping refugee children away from their parents and imprisoning them in separate tent camps, the denial of medical treatment is a deliberate measure to punish and deter people from fleeing persecution and oppression.

This is coupled with a lack of health care facilities to treat a number of medical issues, including childbirth and endemic mental health problems. The conditions in Australia’s prison camps are so severe that detainees, including young children, are driven to harming themselves, and numbers have committed suicide. In 2016, a leading doctor who worked at the camps likened the conditions to torture.

There have been at least 12 preventable deaths since the Greens-backed Labor Party government reopened the offshore detention centres in 2012. The latest victim is Fariborz K, a 26-year-old Iranian man whose body was found by his wife last Friday on Nauru. He was only recently married, and his wife and mother have been hospitalised after the incident. His 12-year-old brother has been taken into care by the camp authorities.

In April, Fariborz’s young brother made a video issuing a public plea for assistance. “I feel helpless because there is no one to help us,” he said. “There is no one to see how we are suffering. My mother is very sick and my brother is totally depressed.”

The International Health and Medical Service, which operates the medical facilities in the camp, assessed Fariborz on April 24 as “being severely traumatised” due to being held captive as a 10-year-old child in Iran.

Fariboz and his family have been imprisoned for more than five years on Nauru, with no options for transfer to another country. There is mounting evidence that a US-Australia refugee swap deal is deliberately excluding anyone from Iran, Somalia or other countries on the Trump administration’s travel ban list.

The swap deal involves heavily-vetted refugees being transferred to the US, in exchange for an undisclosed number of Central American asylum seekers. This agreement is itself reactionary, consigning refugees to opposite sides of the world, denied the right to reunite with their families.

However, the agreement did offer detainees some glimmer of hope to escape their horrible conditions. For Fariboz and his family, even this limited option was not available.

Fariboz’s death came just weeks after a Rohingya man died in an apparent suicide on Manus Island. He jumped from the window of a moving bus travelling at 60 kilometres an hour.

Starting with the Labor government’s mandatory detention of refugees in 1992, successive Australian governments have pioneered many of the brutal measures now being taken in Europe and the US. In 2017, US President Donald Trump praised the “Australian model” as the standard for the treatment of refugees and immigrants worldwide.

The “Australian model” combines cruelty toward refugees with a “points-based” immigration program that discriminates in favour of wealthy applicants and those whose labour power can be most readily exploited by Australian-based employers.

UNICEF Innovation Fund for Drone Startups in Developing Countries 2018

Application Deadline: 22nd July 2018

Eligible Countries: UNICEF programme countries (see Link below)

About the Award: The UNICEF Innovation Fund is looking to make up to $100K equity-free investments to provide early stage (seed) finance to for-profit technology start-ups that have the potential to benefit humanity through the use of drones.

Type: Grants, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Applicants must:

• have already had their startup registered.
• be resident in one of UNICEF’s programme countries
• have a working, open-source drone prototype or service (or you are willing to make it open-source) showing promising results

Selection Criteria: The UNICEF Innovation Fund is currently looking to invest in a group of companies developing drone solutions. Examples of these include, but are not limited to:
1) Software to collect, share and analyse data from UAVs (for low-connectivity areas)

• Remote transfer or processing of visual data over low bandwidth networks
• AI / Machine learning / Deep learning algorithms for feature detection and counting
• Data management portal/stakeholder access protocol management

**Of particular interest software applications that work in low-connectivity areas
2) Software to manage flight and delivery operations

• Manage supply chain payments and quality of assets for sensitive products
• Load, delivery or flight navigation optimization
• Digital management of delivery execution
• Feature detection to land or drop deliveries autonomously on landing pads

3) Business models and sustainable drone services in emerging markets

• Develop new services through the use of existing third-party drones for transport, image capturing and analysis (e.g. to support health care, crop disease detection, risk  mapping, search and rescue, disaster preparedness, etc.)
• Explore ways to combine existing services into multi-role service applications

4) Air Safety, risk management tools and Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Systems

• Simulation or predictive tools for managing altitude, navigation deconfliction, schedules, routings, or fleet management
• Use case specific risk assessment tools (integratable with ICAO, EASA, NASA or other internationally recognised frameworks in development)
• APP for field operations and decision-making process management
• Machine-to-machine / V2V anti-collision software, neural networks

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Seed funding. The Fund provides $50- $100,000 in equity-free seed funding. The money is intended for  prototype testing and validation, and to get it to a stage where the company has proof that the solution works.
• Product and technology development. Selected startups will receive technical assistance from the UNICEF Ventures team to help validate and improve their solutions.
• Business Growth. The Fund taps into a network of mentors who help startup teams develop their business model and strategy to grow their company and ultimately profit.
• Networks and platforms. UNICEF Ventures has a Drones lead and data science team with access to corporate and academic partnerships and use cases that selected drones start-ups can benefit from.
• Maximize impact. As the world’s leading organisation for children, UNICEF has a network of experts and partners across its Country Offices who can provide geographically localized advice and partnerships needed to reach more users.
• Drone Corridor.Selected start-ups will have access to the UNICEF Drone corridor in Malawi providing the physical space for testing their solutions. Data from peer companies testing in the three drone  corridors where UNICEF is present will be made available.

How to Apply:  Check the general eligibility criteria:

• You must be registered as a private company in a UNICEF programme country;
• You are working on open source technology solutions or willing to be open-source under the following licenses or their equivalent: BSD (software), CERN (hardware), or CC-BY (content);
• You have an existing prototype of the solution with promising results from initial pilots;
• Your solution has the potential to positively impact the lives of children.

If your company and project meet the eligibility criteria and is aligned with the tech use cases we have outlined above, visit our site to read more about the application process and submit an application.

• Go to www.unicefinnovationfund.org
• Click on ‘Submit’ and then ‘Submissions by Start-ups’.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: UNICEF Innovation Fund

Possibility Of Global Nuclear Disarmament?

Sandeep Pandey & Bobby Ramakant

After a hiatus in the movement for global nuclear disarmament it is heartening to note that there are some positive developments over the last couple of years. The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution for ‘taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations’ on 23 December, 2016 which culminated in the adoption of ‘Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ on 7 July, 2017, with 122 countries voting in its favour, only one voting against it and 70 not participating. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize ‘for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic human consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.’ And more recently, on 12 June, 2018, United States and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have agreed for denuclearization of Korean Peninsula in peace talks held at Singapore.

It is noteworthy that the very first resolution of General Assembly of UN adopted on 24 January, 1946 called for elimination of nuclear weapons. Since then a number of resolutions have been passed. However, there has hardly been any movement in that direction. Number of nuclear weapons and number of countries possessing them have gone up. The dishonesty of the big five – all members of Security Council, US, United Kingdom, Russia, France and China, officially described as the Nuclear Weapon States – in continuing to hold on to the weapons while trying to ensure that no other nation produces these weapons through imposition of Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has made a mockery of the exercise of global nuclear disarmament. 191 States have joined NPT, the largest number to have done so in any arms limitation or disarmament agreement, which includes the five nuclear weapon States. India, Pakistan and Israel have kept out of these treaties with all three having ‘illegally’ acquired the nuclear weapons. India did not go along with CTBT as it thought that the treat failed to include a commitment by nuclear weapon States to eliminate their nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework. US and China have not even ratified CTBT. North Korea had acceded to NPT in 1985 but came out of it in 2003 following testing of its nuclear weapons.

In 1988 the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi put forward a comprehensive proposal for global nuclear disarmament which till date remains the only such initiative by a head of any government at the UN. He described these weapons as immoral and abhorrent as they don’t distinguish between combatant and non-combatant, criticized them for making international politics undemocratic and thought that these inexcusably expensive weapons divert planet’s precious resources away from most pressing needs of human beings. He castigated the much touted principle of nuclear deterrence as the ‘ultimate expression of the philosophy of terrorism, holding humanity hostage to the presumed security needs of a few.’ However, when Rajiv Gandhi saw that the nuclear weapon States were not serious about the goal of global nuclear disarmament he gave up what was the last serious effort by India to pursue the objective of nuclear weapons free world. Ten years after this famous speech at UN, India tested its weapon at Pokaran. Quite predictably India has not voted for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Two Strategic Arms Limitation Talks took place between US and Soviet Union in 1969 and 1979, which led to another two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties in 1991 and 1993, proposing limits on number of nuclear weapons which each side could possess. In spite of all these well intentioned efforts the world today has a combined stockpile of over twenty thousand nuclear warheads, enough to wipe out all human population from the face of earth. Ironically, these weapons exist for human security.

The Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons believes that the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances is to completely eliminate them. It raises concerns about disproportionate impact of nuclear weapons on health of women and girls due to ionizing radiation. It considers suffering and harm caused to victims, such as Hibakusha, the Japanese survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tragedies, as unacceptable. Significantly, it also raises concerns about impact of nuclear weapons activities on indigenous population. Most Uranium, the raw material found in nature for making nuclear weapons, mining sites are located in habitats of tribals or aborigines. The Treaty considers production, maintenance and modernization of nuclear weapons as waste of economic and human resources. It says nuclear weapons pose risk to all humanity because of possibility of detonation by accident, miscalculation or design. The Treaty highlights the need for a legally binding prohibition of nuclear weapons which includes irreversible, verifiable and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. It believes nuclear weapons to be abhorrent to principles of humanity and dictates of public conscience.

Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons prevents its party States to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. It also precludes the possibility of stationing, installation or deployment of nuclear weapons in any party State’s territory.

Article 6 of the Treaty holds States responsible for providing medical care, rehabilitation, psychological support, social and economic inclusion for any victims of use or testing of nuclear weapons. This shows that the Treaty is comprehensive and sensitive to all aspects of nuclear weapons programme.

So far 59 States have signed this Treaty and 10 have ratified it. In order to come into effect ratification by at least 50 countries is required. One hopes that countries which have not signed or ratified it will come forward sooner than later to see it through and take it to its logical conclusion, making this world free of nuclear weapons.

Is Indian Democracy Dying?

Arshad M Khan

The prominent journalist and editor, Shujaat Bukhari was leaving work when he and his two bodyguards were shot and killed. Suffice to say newspapers are the lifeblood of democracy and Indian administered Kashmir under the decades-long grip of a half-million strong security force has a questionable claim. Yet brave journalists, unafraid, write and sometimes pay the consequences.

Following Mr. Bukhari’s murder and the thousands attending his funeral, the security services have raided presses shutting down newspapers. The internet is not quite as easily controlled, so some have been busy updating their sites.

Since Gauari Lankesh was brutally murdered at her doorstep in September 2017, another four journalists have lost their lives. She, too, espoused views contrary to the ruling party’s current philosophy of an India aligned only with the mores of upper-caste Hindus.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi, the principal Indian leaders who fought many decades for independence would have been appalled. Gandhi protected low caste untouchables referring to them as the ‘children of god’; they are now known as Dalits. Nehru, a Brahmin by birth, was a socialist in belief. His dream was of a secular, socialist India. The latter is long over, the former under vicious attack as Muslim and Christian minorities are marginalized. In addition to journalists, three heavyweight intellectuals have been killed. All were rationalists, the Indian word for atheists.

Gandhi was assassinated less than six months after independence by a right-wing Hindu nationalist who was angry at Gandhi’s moderate attitude toward Muslims. The assassin Nathuram Godse was a member of the extreme-right Hindu Mahasabha political party, and had his roots in the paramilitary, Hindutva-promoting Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Its militancy has led to its being banned three times: after the Gandhi assassination, during the Indira Gandhi emergency rule in the mid-1970s, and for its role in the Babri Mosque demolition. The British also found its beliefs beyond the pale and banned it during their rule.

Not only is the RSS flourishing now but it serves openly as the ideological mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Together they continue to push their agenda for a Hindu India tolerating only Hindu culture or beliefs, in other words, Hindutva or Hindu hegemony.

Hindutva scholar Shridhar D. Damle confirms what is quite well known, that the RSS is now exerting its influence in academia, government and cultural organizations. The laws restricting cow slaughter are not a Narendra Modi whim. Mr. Modi joined the RSS at the age of eight, was nurtured and nourished by it, the philosophy seeping into his bones like mother’s milk; any moderation necessitated only by political considerations.

The RSS infiltration of academia is pervasive. Last year, its think tank, Prajnah Pravah, summoned 700 academics including 51 university vice-chancellors (presidents) to Delhi to attend a workshop on the importance of a Hindu narrative in higher education; just one example of influencing what can be taught. A gradual loss of academic freedom has been the frightening consequence of constant interference backed up by its militancy — frightening because dying with intellectual freedom, journalists, writers and thinkers is also Indian democracy … slowly but surely, unless the voters stand up to the RSS sharkhas (volunteers) at the next election.

Nobody knows who killed Mr. Bukhari. But when the standards have been set and a certain climate prevails, does it mean much?

Russian authorities ordered destruction of documents on Stalin’s terror

Clara Weiss

On Thursday, June 7, the Russian Museum of the History of the GULAG reported that archival material about people who were kept in the Soviet forced labor camp system and were subsequently released has been systematically destroyed, on the basis of a secret decree from February 2014. The extent of the destruction of archival material is not yet clear.

It is estimated that up to 12 million people fell victim to the Great Terror, unleashed by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the second half of the 1930s: they were either shot, or sent to prison and forced labor camps (GULAGs), where many died or were disabled for life. Up to 7 million people were imprisoned in the Soviet GULAG system. In 1937-1938 alone, 1.7 million people were arrested on political grounds. The vast majority of them were accused of being part of the “Trotskyist-Zinovievite center” or other presumably “terrorist” organizations, allegedly inspired by Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Russian Revolution and anti-Stalinist Left Opposition.

The Great Terror, which the Soviet historian and sociologist Vadim Rogovin described as a “political genocide”, resulted in the physical destruction of the Soviet Left Opposition, which had up to 30,000 members, as well as tens of thousands of dedicated Communist workers and intellectuals, both from the Soviet Communist Party and international sections of the Third International (Comintern). Stunning in its scope, the terror also swept away millions of people who were not actively engaged in politics, let alone the opposition, at all.

As the Soviet writer and sympathizer of the Left Opposition Varlam Shalamov observed, the Stalinist terror was directed against “all those who remembered the wrong part of Russian history” – that is, the historical truth about the Russian Revolution, its leaders, and the inner-party struggle of the 1920s. It was aimed, in other words, at wiping out, not just politically but also physically, the historical consciousness and memory of the Soviet and international working class.

In many cases, archival material, especially the “personal files” or even only minor biographical archival cards, remain the only testimony left of the very existence of a victim of the terror. As Roman Romanov, the head of the GULAG Museum, explained to the Russian newspaper Kommersant :

“When someone died in prison or perished in a camp, his personal file was sent to be kept indefinitely in an archive. But when someone was released, his [personal] file was destroyed. However, there remained an archival card, which included information such as the name, date and place of birth, the camps in which this person had been, as well as the date of his or her release”.

Precisely these cards have been systematically destroyed since 2014 on the basis of a decree issued by several Russian state agencies.

The very existence of this decree, criminal by all measures, has only been revealed more or less by accident due to the work of a Russian historian, Sergei Prudovsky, who collaborates with the GULAG Museum. When requesting information about a peasant, Fedor Chasov, who was repressed during the Great Purges of 1937-1938 and sent to a notorious Magadan camp in Russia’s North East, he found out that the archival card about Fedor Chasov had been destroyed.

Prudovsky told the Russian newspaper Kommersant: “I issued a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Magadan’ Oblast’. They responded that the personal file of the arrested had already been destroyed in 1955 according to a decree from this period. It also became clear that the archival card was destroyed as well”.

When Prudovsky asked why the latter had been destroyed, Mikhail Seregin, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs responsible for the Magadan’ oblast’ told him that the legal basis had been a decree “for purposes” from February 12, 2014. This decree was signed by virtually all significant Russian state institutions: The Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry for Extraordinary Situations, the Defense Ministry, the FSB, a number of other federal secret services, as well as the Main Prosecutor’s office and the State Courier Service .

The head of the GULAG Museum, Roman Romanov, has since written a letter to Mikhail Fedotov, an advisor to the Russian President and the head of the Council of the President for human rights. In this letter, Romanov indicated that the GULAG Museum had received information from the Interior Ministry that confirmed that these cards of convicted victims of the terror had been destroyed.

This is not the first time that the destruction of this kind of archival material has come to public attention. According to the Kommersant report, in 2014, a resident of the Moscow oblast’ tried to find information about her relative who was convicted and sent to Magadan in 1939, only to learn that his archival card had been destroyed. The woman appealed to the Higher Court of the Russian Federation and eventually the Constitutional Court, but lost the case both times.

Fedotov told Kommersant that he was “looking into” the issue and stated, in glaring contradiction to what is going on in reality: “We [the Russian government] will always defend the preservation of archival material, it contains very important historical information… When there is a document, it is virtually impossible to falsify it. But when there is no document, anything can be made up.”

But this is precisely the purpose of this decree which, in this sense, is in line with the aims of the Stalinist Great Terror itself.

While important archival material has been made available since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, access to Russian archival material often remains notoriously difficult, especially when it comes to the Soviet period.

Over the past 25 years, collections have been opened and closed at the behest of the government, with countless files still being withheld from public view, often without clear reasoning provided. The access to “personal files”, in particular, is difficult. Many of them are accessible only through the FSB archives, and work on them always requires the approval of blood relatives, who in some cases may not even exist.

With all these restrictions, and despite a climate of extreme reaction and political confusion that has prevailed in Russia since 1991, important historical documentary collections have come out that shed new light on important aspects of Soviet society and history, and not least of all the struggle of the Left Opposition.

This kind of work is directly threatened by the secret workings of the Russian state to withhold and destroy archival material, as well as the ongoing political and financial pressure exerted on all those working on this history. The 2014 decree is a clear warning of the dangers posed to serious historical research into the crimes of Stalinism by the control of the Russian state over the archives. Much like state operations such as last year’s major television series to slander Trotsky, this decree is a sign of an ongoing state conspiracy and determination of the Russian oligarchy to falsify history and cover up the crimes of Stalinism.

Clashing with Rome, Paris persecutes refugees at Italian border

Athiyan Silva & Alex Lantier

French President Emmanuel Macron is escalating his the offensive against immigrants and refugees in Europe after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Friday in Paris. After briefly criticizing the Italian government earlier this week over its cruel and sadistic refusal to allow the Aquarius and its 629 refugees to land in Italy, Macron called on European Union (EU) countries to make “profound reforms” in order to toughen EU asylum law.

Every sign indicates that the European powers are preparing enormous new attacks on immigrants across the continent. The clash came after last month’s installation of a new Italian government dominated by the far-right Lega party of Matteo Salvini that has pledged to deport a half-million immigrants—mass deportations that would require a police crackdown without precedent since the end of World War II. At the same time, French police are intensifying their illegal persecution of refugees, including unaccompanied children, along the Italian-French border.

Three days before the Paris summit meeting, Macron had attacked Rome for refusing the Aquarius permission to dock in Italian ports, accusing it of “cynicism and irresponsibility.” This provoked a diplomatic spat with the Conte government, which summoned the French Ambassador to Italy, Catherine Colonna, to protest. Italian Economy Minister Giovanni Tria canceled a planned trip to Paris, and Salvini as interior minister sharply denounced Macron’s statement.

“The problem is that our history in terms of generosity and voluntarism does not deserve to be lectured so severely by French government representatives who, I hope and believe, will present official apologies as soon as possible,” Salvini said. “If official apologies are not forthcoming, Prime Minister Conte would do well not to go to France.”

The spat between Paris and Rome took place as a major crisis erupted inside the German government, also triggered by the issue of immigration. Meeting with both Salvini and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer threatened to defy Chancellor Angela Merkel and close German borders, risking a collapse of the German government.

In the event, however, Conte went to Paris on Friday and held a friendly press conference with Macron, where both men laid out their plans for attacks on refugees. Both called for changes to the Dublin accord, which mandates that the EU country where an asylum seeker first arrives handles his or her asylum application. While Conte said Italy is “opposed” to the system, Macron said he wanted a “refoundation” of the system “to better adapt it to the realities of each country.”

While Macron called for reinforcing the EU’s Frontex border agency, Conte called for a bilateral Franco-Italian summit meeting “in the autumn” in Rome.

There are growing signs that the upcoming EU summit at the end of June will feature new attempts by the various EU powers to change EU asylum rules and drastically step up attacks on migrants. The Macron government has passed a draconian asylum law that effectively gives police veto power over asylum applicants’ files, as France mounts mass deportations of tens of thousands of refugees each year. However, Rome and Paris are clearly pressing to step up these fascistic attacks.

Macron and Conte both urged to EU to create more so-called “hotspot” camps, that is, concentration camps in North Africa where hundreds of thousands or million of refugees can be detained. Conte said, “We should create European centers in the countries of departure” to block an “exodus” of migrants towards Europe. Macron supported Conte’s reactionary plan, calling on “branches of our asylum agencies to tackle this question on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea.”

In fact, the “centers” proposed by Conte and Macron are hellish, EU-funded prison camps set up in Libya after the 2011 NATO war to detain masses of Middle Eastern and African migrants fleeing imperialist wars and grinding poverty. After UN officials reported on the mass resort to torture, sexual violence and murder in Libyan camps and CNN broadcast a video of African migrants being sold as slaves in the camps, Amnesty International published a harrowing report on them last year. It confirmed that the EU is funding camps where these atrocities are committed.

Further camps are being set up in Chad, Niger, Morocco and in countries across North Africa, to block masses of refugees from attempting the hazardous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.

The row between Paris and Rome reflects bitter struggles erupting inside the European ruling class over the fate of the EU and its global policy. The refugee question plays an enormous role in this crisis. Decades of US-led imperialist wars have devastated entire countries and regions—from Iraq to Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Mali, Burkina Faso and beyond—killing millions and forcing tens of millions to flee their homes. Ten to fifteen thousand refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean, provoking horror and outrage among millions of workers across Europe.

The deepening crisis of relations with the United States, the recent collapse of the G7 summit talks with Washington, and initial US trade war measures against Europe are accelerating these political conflicts inside the European bourgeoisie, as it seeks to fashion a new, militarist and anti-immigrant politics in order to push through European militarist policy.

The European powers are haggling over how to divide the limited numbers of refugees and asylum seekers they will admit. At the press conference with Conte, Macron said that “if Austria, Hungary and some others, thanks to these special contacts, can provide more of the solidarity that Italy needs, it’s very good news for Italy and for everyone.” Seehofer, for his part, called on Austria and Italy to “ally themselves with Germany to work at the interior minister level on security and immigration.”

Macron’s anti-immigrant stance and his ties with the far-right Italian government are a further vindication of the Socialist Equality Party of France’s stance in last year’s presidential elections.

It insisted that workers could not support Macron as a lesser evil than neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen, based on claims, for example, that Le Pen would be more hostile to immigrants than Macron. Rather, the SEP insisted that the task was to mobilize independent opposition to both candidates and give revolutionary leadership to the movement in the working class that would erupt again—as indeed it has, with masses of strikes and protests particularly since the beginning of this year.

Similarly, neither the more explicitly nationalist Italian government nor the Macron government, which seeks to coordinate its persecution of immigrants more broadly through the institutions of the EU, have anything progressive to offer to masses of workers and youth.

One indication of this are the terrible reports about French police abusing immigrants, including immigrant children, that are emerging along the Franco-Italian border in the Alps, as refugees try to flee across the border from Italy to France. The Italian government protested to the French government earlier this year that French police had violated Italian sovereignty by crossing over into Italy to dump refugees back on the other side.

Last week, new reports emerged from Oxfam that French border guards along the Italian border in the Alps near Ventimiglia are abusing, detaining and illegally deporting back to Italy children as young as 12. They are also cutting the soles of children’s shoes, stealing their mobile phones’ SIM cards, and refusing shelter, schooling, and access to clean water, toilets and medical care to minors, including pregnant teenagers.

“Children, women and men fleeing persecution and war should not suffer further abuse and neglect at the hands of the authorities in France and Italy,” commented Oxfam’s Elisa Bacciotti, adding, “Children should never be kept in jail cells or subjected to cruel abuse.”

NATO, Germany build up for war against Russia

Gregor Link

The defence ministers of all NATO member states met in Brussels on June 7 and decided to take all necessary steps over the next two years to be able mobilise a total of 90 military, naval and air force combat units at short notice and at any time.

To this end, two new headquarters will be built, with one of them located in Norfolk, Virginia. According to the US Defence Department, the Norfolk centre will organise the rapid deployment of combat units across the Atlantic, so that the “entire spectrum of transatlantic missions” can be successfully carried out.

“The return of the major powers and a resurgent Russia demand that NATO focus on the Atlantic to ensure a capable and credible deterrent,” Pentagon spokesman Johnny Michael declared in early May. The new NATO command will be “the linchpin of transatlantic security.”

The second new Joint Support Enabling Command (JSEC) will be built in Ulm, Germany, following a proposal made by the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

“It will be a new NATO command tasked with coordinating all military troop movements within Alliance territory in the event of a crisis,” von der Leyen said at the NATO defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels. The construction of the new command is to be based on the Multinational Command Operational Command operating in Ulm. This unique centre is already carrying out NATO, UN and EU tasks and, according to the German army (Bundeswehr), has already begun preparations for the JSEC.

The JSEC should reach full operational readiness by 2021. Already by 2020, 90 units from all three military branches (army, navy, air force) are to be upgraded so that in case of emergency they can be sent into action within 30 days.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that 30 army battalions (30,000 troops) would be available for this purpose. In addition, 30 aircraft squadrons, and 30 large warships as well as submarines should be able to mobilise within “30 days or less.” In the future, these units will strengthen the already existing NATO Response Force (NRF). Up to now, the NRF has consisted of 20,000 rapid deployment troops and a reserve pool of another 20 battalions. In addition, Stoltenberg announced an increase in the number of positions in NATO’s multinational planning and management staff from its existing level of 1,200 to 8,000.

The German army has made no secret of the fact that this massive rearmament is aimed at preparing for a major war. “This is basically about preparing for intervention,” von der Leyen said. It must be possible “to keep troops in high operational readiness, so that they can be deployed quickly.”

According to a report from the army command, “In the event of an attack on an ally, the Command Center will be responsible for troop and material transports within Europe and coordinate their protection. Already on the way to the operational area and well in advance, planning can be centralised and the tasks of protection harmonised.

“The possible area for intervention extends to the area of responsibility of SACEUR [Supreme Commander of NATO in Europe], ranging from Greenland to Africa, Europe and its coastal waters.”

The preparations for war are specifically directed against Russia, a nuclear power. Just a few days before the meeting of NATO defence ministers, the European Commission announced that it would invest 6.5 billion euros to build new roads in Europe by 2027 to enable troop-carriers and military vehicles to reach the Baltic countries at short notice. Currently bridges and rail networks are often not designed for the heavyweight tracked vehicles.

The preparations for war in Eastern Europe are already in full swing with Germany playing a key role. It is already central to the strengthened NATO presence in Lithuania, with 4,000 soldiers on the eastern border of the NATO. In addition, the Bundeswehr will take over leadership of the “NATO Spearhead” VJTF (Very High Readiness Joint Task Force) in 2019 and 2023.

Since May there have been large transfers of NATO forces through Germany to Eastern Europe, which will continue until the end of June. As part of the operation “Atlantic Resolve III,” 3,500 US soldiers and about 1,400 vehicles, plus supplies, are to be transferred to Poland and the Baltic states. In addition, massive exercises are already underway with German participation.

The NATO exercise “Saber Strike” is currently taking place in Lithuania, with the Bundeswehr leading the eastern flank reinforcement. According to the US Army, about 18,000 soldiers from 19 countries are taking part in the exercise. Among other things, the operation includes the simulated storming of the Russian Kaliningrad exclave through the Suwalki gap between Lithuania and Poland. The Bundeswehr is participating in NATO exercises this year with about 12,000 troops, a tripling of its commitment compared to last year.

Under conditions of growing conflicts between the NATO powers themselves, the German Defence Ministry sees the NATO offensive against Russia as a means of increasing its own military clout. The leadership of the VJTF must “invest and modernise certain units to bring them up to their best,” von der Leyen said. This will be high up on the agenda for the upcoming NATO summit in July.

Reclaiming the UN’s radical vision of global economic justice

Adam Parsons

What are the political implications of meeting the established human right for everyone to enjoy an adequate standard of living? In short, it necessitates a redistribution of wealth and resources on an unprecedented scale, which is why activists should resurrect the United Nations’ radical vision for achieving Article 25. 

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the most translated and celebrated documents in the world, marking its 70th anniversary this year. But relatively few people are aware of the significance of its 25th Article, which proclaims the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living—including food, housing, healthcare, social services and basic financial security. As our campaign group Share The World’s Resources (STWR) has long proposed, it is high time that activists for global justice reclaim the vision that is spelled out in those few simple sentences. For in order to implement Article 25 into a set of binding, enforceable obligations through domestic and international laws, the implications are potentially revolutionary.

Since the Universal Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, the United Nations never promised to do anything more than “promote” and “encourage respect for” human rights, without explicit legal force. The Universal Declaration may form part of so-called binding customary international law, laying out a value-based framework that can be used to exert moral pressure on governments who violate any of its articles. But in the past 70 years, no government has seriously attempted to adapt its behaviour in line with the Declaration’s far-reaching requirements.

While civil and political rights have enjoyed an increasing degree of implementation throughout the world, the historical record on economic and social rights is far less sanguine. This is forcefully illustrated by the UN’s current Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston. In his first report submitted to the Human Rights Council, he argued that economic and social rights are marginalised in most contexts, without proper legal recognition and accountability mechanisms in place. Indeed, he even questioned the extent to which States treat them as human rights at all, and not just desirable long-term goals.

Even many of the States that enjoy the world’s highest living standards have disregarded proposals to recognise these rights in legislative or constitutional form. Most of all, the United States has persistently rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full-fledged human rights, in the sense of “rights” that might be amenable to any method of enforcement. It is the only developed country to insist that, in effect, its government has no obligation to safeguard the rights of citizens to jobs, housing, education and an adequate standard of living.

In their defence, governments may point out the historical progress made in reducing extreme poverty across the world, which has generally been achieved without adopting a strategy based on the full recognition of economic and social rights. But the extent to which these rights remain unmet for millions of people today is unconscionable from any kind of moral perspective. Consider that more than 60 percent of the world population struggles to live on less than $5 per day, an amount which the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has considered the minimum daily income which could reasonably be regarded as fulfilling the right to “a standard of living adequate for… health and well-being”, as stipulated in Article 25.

The International Labour Organisation of the United Nations also estimates that only 27 percent of people worldwide have access to comprehensive social security systems, despite almost every government recognising the fundamental right to social security, as also enshrined in Article 25. The fact that many thousands of people continue to die each day from poverty-related causes, while the number of chronically undernourished people increases once again, is an affront to the very idea that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living.

Even in the most affluent nations, millions of people lack access to the financial system, struggle to pay for food or utilities and die prematurely. Across the European Union, for example, one in four people are experiencing income poverty, severe material deprivation and/or social exclusion. There is no country which has secured fundamental socioeconomic rights for the entire population, including the generous welfare states of Scandinavia that are also being gradually eroded by market-driven policies.

Such facts demonstrate how far we have strayed from realising the modest aspiration expressed in Article 25. The challenge is well recognised by civil society groups that advocate for a new direction in economic policymaking, beginning with a reversal of the austerity measures that are now expected to affect nearly 80 percent of the global population within a couple of years.

Rendering Article 25 into a truly “indivisible”, “inalienable” and “universal” human right would also mean, inter alia, reforming unfair tax policies that undermine the capacity of countries to invest in universal social protection systems. It would mean rolling back the wave of commercialisation that is increasingly entering the health sector and other essential public services, with extremely negative consequences for human wellbeing. It would also demand regulatory oversight to hold the out-of-control finance sector to account, as well as domestic legislative action in support of a living wage and core labour rights.

In short, implementing Article 25 would call for a redistribution of wealth, power and income on an unprecedented scale within and between every society, in contradistinction to the prevailing economic ideology of our time—an ideology that falsely views economic and social rights as inimical to “wealth creation”, “economic growth” and “international competitiveness”.

This only serves to underline the enormous political implications of achieving Article 25. For it is clear that rich countries prefer to extract wealth from the global South, rather than share their wealth in any meaningful way through a redistribution of resources. Yet we know the resources are available, if government priorities are fundamentally reoriented towards safeguarding the basic needs of all peoples everywhere.

To be sure, just a fraction of the amount spent on a recent US arms deal with Saudi Arabia, estimated at over $110 billion, would be enough to lift everyone above the extreme poverty line as defined by the World Bank. If concerted action was taken by the international community to phase out tax havens and prevent tax dodging by large corporations, then developing countries could recover trillions of dollars each year for human rights protection and spending on public services.

Fulfilling the common people’s dream of “freedom from fear and want”, therefore, is not about merely upscaling aid as a form of charity; it is about the kind of systemic transformations that are necessary for everyone to enjoy dignified lives in more equal societies with economic justice.

These are just some of the reasons why the human rights of Article 25, however simply worded and unassuming, hold the potential to revolutionise the unfair structures and rules of our unequal world. Because if those rights are vociferously advocated by enough of the world’s people, there is no estimating the political transformations that would unfold. That is why STWR calls on global activists to jointly herald Article 25 through massive and continual demonstrations in all countries, as set out in our flagship publication.

The UN Charter famously invokes “We the Peoples”, but it is up to us to resurrect the UN’s founding ideal of promoting social progress and better standards of life for everyone in the world. It is high time we seized upon Article 25 and reclaimed its stipulations as “a law of the will of the people”, until governments finally begin to take seriously the full realisation of their pledge set forth in the Universal Declaration.

Despite rising social anger, Macron pledges to step up austerity attacks in France

Alex Lantier

Despite rising social opposition after both houses of parliament voted to privatize the French National Railways (SNCF), French President Emmanuel Macron plans to intensify austerity and develop closer ties with the far right. This is what emerged from Macron’s speech to French health insurers in Montpellier on Wednesday and then during a trip to Vendée to meet far-right royalist politician Philippe de Villiers.

Tuesday night, as the National Assembly prepared to vote the SNCF pact, Macron released a video in which he contemptuously denounced social spending. The 40-year-old, transformed by the Rothschild bank into a multimillionaire after a few years of work, made clear he believes the population is lazy and reliant on state aid. “We spend too much money, we let people evade their responsibilities, we are in curing mode,” he complained about French health care, while attacking the “crazy amounts of money” France spends on social issues even though “the poor stay poor.”

At the same time, polls emerged showing a continuing erosion of Macron’s popularity. With only 40 percent approval ratings, Macron has lost the support of 19 percent of the voters who cast ballots for him on the first round of the elections, a group that counted only 16 percent of registered voters. The presidential staff at the Elysée palace commented only, “Our base isn’t abandoning us.”

In Montpellier on Wednesday, Macron endured catcalls during his speech but nonetheless insisted he would press ahead with social cuts at all costs.

He called for drastic cuts in social spending: “We should not believe that there are some who believe in social transformation and are looking to borrow money, and others who do not believe in it who want to cut spending. There is bad news: social spending, you pay for it, we pay for it.”

Macron briefly mentioned mass anger in the French population at social conditions: “We live in a country where democratic promises are often not kept, because we have kept many formal rights that often exist only on paper, and that leads to the contemporary French indignation. And yet we keep spending more of more of our wealth on social issues.”

For the millionaire in the Elysée, the solution to this problem is clear. If the French are not properly grateful for their social situation, more cuts should be made to concentrate wealth where the divine right of kings says it should be: at the very top. Macron went on to promise to “liberate” France from what is holding it down, comparing his plans for a “deep revolution” to the creation of Social Security by the National Resistance Council (CNR) in 1945.

Macron’s speech was a reaction to growing concern inside his own party about the collapse of his popularity and growing strikes among rail workers, electricity workers and at Air France—and in similar industries not only in France but across Europe. These fears were particularly intense as the rail workers are overwhelmingly opposed to the reform that has been voted by the parliament.

Last week, three Macron advisers—Philippe Aghion, Philippe Martin and Jean Pisani-Ferry—had cynically proposed an attempt to improve Macron’s image in a memo that was partially leaked to the press. While detailing stepped-up austerity measures they were proposing against the workers, the three advisers also stressed their concern that Macron “gives the impression of being indifferent to the social question.”

Macron’s speeches were designed to make clear that there will be neither a change in his policy, nor a cynical PR campaign to try to soften his image. The president’s contempt for the French electorate is itself a sign of a broad movement of the entire ruling class towards the far right, where it no longer even postures as seeking to work out a policy in line with the will of the people.

A revolutionary situation is emerging in France and across Europe. Macron is counting on the trade unions to suppress the continuing strikes against the SNCF reform and other austerity measures. However, he is leaving no room for maneuver or compromise if workers mount a rebellion against the trade union bureaucracy to defend themselves against Macron’s attacks. Against such a struggle, Macron is preparing a vast police-state machine inherited from the state of emergency, even if this risks provoking an all-out confrontation with the working class.

As he cynically applauds the Gaullist and Stalinist reforms of the post-1945 era, Macron is very well aware that he aims to destroy them. The Labor Code has been effectively abrogated by the 2016 labor law, which allows employers to violate the Labor Code if they have union approval and which Macron is using to privatize the railways. And more cuts to Social Security, pensions and other basic social programs are being prepared.

These programs were created in their current form by the Gaullist, social democratic and Stalinist forces of the CNR, which pledged that France would be a “social” republic that would organize “the eviction of great economic and financial aristocracies from control over the economy.”

Three quarters of a century later, under Macron, the bourgeoisie has openly repudiated the reforms that the CNR implemented at the Liberation from Vichy-Nazi rule, in order to head off a revolutionary struggle of the working class led by the Fourth International. All its state institutions, including the trade union bureaucracies, work to impose austerity and disorganize workers’ struggles against austerity.

This vindicates the call advanced by the Socialist Equality Party for the struggle against Macron. The only viable strategy for the workers is to mount a rebellion against the unions, organize independent rank-and-file committees to unify the different ongoing struggles in France and across Europe, and take the road of the struggle for power.

As for Macron, he is developing his ties with the far right. After leaving Montpellier, Macron went to the Vendée region to visit the royalist de Villiers, the former leader of the Rally for France (RPF) party and operator of the Puy du Fou theme park.

Macron had provoked some hostile comments in the press prior to his election by criticizing the French Revolution and insisting that France needs a king: “There is a void in the democratic process. In French politics, this void is the figure of the King, whose death I think the French people fundamentally did not want.”

After having gone to visit the royal tombs at the St. Denis basilica in April, Macron stressed this week his good relations with de Villiers, saying that he had “colorful” discussions with him while adding that de Villiers “does not defend the same values or principles as I do.”

Macron adviser Bruno Roger-Petit stressed, however, that the president shares the same basic outlook as the RPF royalist: “He and Macron have the same conception of the vertical nature of the exercise of power.” As a summary of Macron’s utter contempt for social and democratic rights, there is not much to add.

British government extends censorship of online activity

Simon Whelan

One year on from the June 2017 attack by Islamist terrorists at London Bridge, Conservative Home Secretary Sajid Javid used the anniversary to announce new authoritarian and anti-democratic “counter-terrorism” powers.

The measures incorporate “the lessons learnt from the attacks in 2017 and our responses to them,” he said. One of the key lessons learnt, he said, was that the authorities could “do better” in sharing information more widely and locally.

The WSWS has noted the intense collusion between British security services and Islamist terror groups. What is clear from the evidence that emerged in the aftermath of last year’s terror attacks is that the reason they were not prevented from their brutal assault was not due to “intelligence” failures.

Rather, there is evidence that the British security services were entirely aware of the activity of the terror cell who carried out the London bridge attack. In the case of the suicide bombing at Manchester Arena, British intelligence knew the bomber and his immediate relatives as members of a Libyan Islamist group they backed to depose the Gaddafi regime in Tripoli.

The real target of Javid’s measures are the democratic rights of working people.

In order to share information, the home secretary announced that local authorities, community police forces and probation officers will be allowed—for the first time—to see declassified intelligence about terror suspects in a pilot scheme to be run initially in London, the West Midlands and Manchester.

Javid declared these new and intrusive measures—whereby the British state accrues ever more dictatorial domestic and international powers—would be used to tackle the dangers presented simultaneously by Islamic terrorism, far-right terrorism and the Russian state.

“The threat to the UK today remains at severe—meaning an attack is highly likely” Javid announced ominously in the speech. The terror attacks in Manchester and at London Bridge, the slaying of Labour MP Jo Cox during the 2016 Brexit referendum, together with the alleged nerve gas attack by Russian actors upon Sergei and Yulia Skripal, were meshed together in order to stampede public opinion behind the further erosion of democratic rights.

Immediately after telling the public they cannot be protected from an attack by terrorists, Javid revealed, “Our security and intelligence agencies are, right now, handling over 500 live operations, they have 3,000 ‘subjects of interest.’ And there are a further 20,000 people who have previously been investigated, so they may still pose a threat.”

The personal information held by MI5 on 20,000 British “suspected” citizens is to be declassified and shared with local authorities, police “and others.”

About the thousands of additional suspects, Javid said, “This is not about people who are the hardened attack planners, out there plotting or being active right now,” before adding, “That will remain predominantly the preserve of the intelligence services and the specialist policing.”

Who are these 20,000 people? What exactly are they meant to have done? Why they are they being targeted? Upon whose say so? Upon what evidence? Exactly where and when are declassified details about the 20,000, and the personal information held on them, to be shared with local authorities, police “and others”?

In addition to creating a new layer of state surveillance, the government expects to increase their cooperation even further with the private sector. As is de rigueur ministerial custom, Javid fawned over big business and their role in censoring the Internet, stating, “As someone with a private sector background myself, I understand that government cannot deal with these kinds of challenges alone. I’m committed to improving how we work with businesses across a range of issues.”

Consequently, the role and responsibilities of technology companies to police the Internet and social media will increase even further. The giant tech corporations will be granted greater responsibility to tackle cases of whatever is deemed as “extremist” online activity, either by the state or increasingly by the self-imposed censorship of the technology corporations.

Javid also called for greater cooperation with small businesses to identify what he described as “worrying buying-patterns.” In addition to increasing the powers of the state and big business to monitor the online activities of all, the government is recruiting small businesses, such as car and van hire companies and various shops, to pitch in and report any assorted petty suspicions they may have.

The response from government for more teachers, nurses and ambulance crews are met with a constant refrain of “there is no money.” Nevertheless, there is an open spigot of funding for the security services to employ vast numbers of spooks to spy on the British public.

Javid said, “In the 2015 Spending Review, this government committed to spending more than £2 billion on counter-terrorism each year. We’re giving counter-terrorism policing a £50 million increase in funding this year—to over three quarters of a billion pounds. And we’re recruiting over 1,900 additional staff across the security and intelligence agencies to improve our response still further.”

Javid also used the opportunity to reaffirm the government’s support for the reactionary and widely despised “Prevent” programme, which criminalises student’s opposition to militarism and makes teachers and lecturers akin to spies in their day-to-day employment. MI5 will apparently warn teachers and police about those it deems suspected “child militants.”

Under the changes proposed by the home secretary, the offence of possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist—the parameters of which have been deliberately left open—would be extended to apply to material viewed online three or more times. The maximum penalty for this offence would be increased from 10 to 15 years in prison.

Certain material freely available to view online will be reclassified as illegal on government say so. Anyone viewing it can be punished under the crude and arbitrary “three strikes & you’re out” policy.

The scope to extend these measures beyond what the government currently deems subversive and politically dangerous is wide open to future redefinition.

In October 2017, MI5 head Andrew Parker grossly exaggerated the threat posed by Islamist terrorism when he claimed that threats were “at the highest tempo I have seen in my 34-year career.” Likewise, the military/intelligence complex and the government are exploiting the actions of a handful of known Islamist extremists and right-wing thugs to strengthen the state in anticipation of an eruption of the class struggle.

The press release issued by the government to accompany Javid’s speech stated, “Responding to the recommendations of MI5 and the counter-terrorism police Operational Improvement Review into the 2017 terrorist attacks,” “new multi-agency approaches—initially in London, Manchester and the West Midlands—involve MI5 and the police using and sharing information more widely, working with partners such as local authorities to improve our understanding of those at risk of involvement in terrorism and enable a wider range of interventions” (emphasis added).

The measures were first trialled months ago and have already received the backing of the Labour Party, with shadow home secretary Dianne Abbott declaring in favour, as well as Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.