French ministers resign as Macron government plunges in polls

Francis Dubois 

After Ecology Minister Nicolas Hulot resigned last week, a second resignation by Sports Minister and former fencing champion Laura Flessel on Tuesday deepened the sense of crisis besetting French President Emmanuel Macron’s government. Flessel, whose budget Macron had cut from €530 to €348 million, said she will “continue her struggle by other means,” adding that she supported Macron and defended his “values and patriotism.” She was the second minister to resign even before Macron’s planned reshuffle of his cabinet.

Afterwards, the Macron government announced Hulot’s replacement by François de Rugy, the speaker of the National Assembly and former Green, who joined Macron before his election. Swimming champion Roxanna Maracineanu will replace Flessel.

The government also announced Tuesday night, after 10 days of hesitations, that it would introduce on January 1, 2019 tax withholding by private corporations. The decision, which provoked protests from hundreds of thousands of small businesses, was announced after the main French business federation, the Medef, abandoned its opposition.

The government seems adrift, and Macron overtaken by events. The press reported his remarks, at a school visit in Laval, that being president “is not really a job.” He added that “some days are easy and some are not.” The pro-Macron daily Le Monde wrote in an editorial that “every element of optimism that there existed in the message of Macron’s candidacy” has been undermined.

Disastrous polls last month had already underscored his government’s isolation from the population. An Elabe poll showed that only 16 percent of Frenchmen think his policies help the country, and only 6 percent think his policies help them. After Macron’s repeated overtures to Trump, his bombing of Syria and his reform smashing rail workers’ wages and conditions, which was signed by the trade unions, the growing anger with Macron in small business, as well as among workers, leaves Macron with virtually no base of support.

The fairly weak illusions the media promoted after his election that his parliamentary majority, “drawn from civil society,” would be “close to the people” and would bring economic dynamism back to France, have disappeared in barely a year.

For small businessmen, peasants and artisans who are struggling, or whose children and employees are facing unemployment, Macron’s policies threaten their living standards like those of wage workers. And behind these social layers, anger against Macron is rising particularly among the main target of his policies: the working class.

The collapse of what little support Macron had retained comes amid a broad radicalization of the working class in Europe. This year, after a decade of deep austerity, an initial wave of strikes spread across Europe—mobilizing not only rail and airline workers in France, but teachers and railworkers in Britain, airline and retail workers in Spain, and metalworkers in Turkey and Germany. Already last year, the Generation What poll found that a majority of Europeans under 35, including 62 percent of the under-35 French, wanted to join a “mass uprising.”

The way for workers to win over the growing layers of small business opposed to the attacks of the European Union (EU) and of Macron, and to prevent a shift of the middle classes further to the right, is to wage a resolute and uncompromising struggle against their austerity policies. The critical question in this context is to arm the working class with a clear perspective of struggle, on a revolutionary and socialist basis, against European and international capitalism.

This requires a political break with the bureaucracies of the pseudo-left parties and trade unions who continue to negotiate social austerity with Macron. It is not a question of changing trade union tactics or of imposing on Macron a more supposedly “radical” prime minister like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who volunteered himself for that role last year. It is a question of reorienting the working class in France and across Europe towards a struggle against the dictatorship of the banks, as took place a century ago in Russia.

As Trotsky wrote in 1934 in Whither France, “It is false, thrice false, to affirm that the present petty bourgeoisie is not going to the working class parties because it fears ‘extreme measures.’ Quite the contrary. The lower petty bourgeoisie, its great masses, only see in the working-class parties parliamentary machines. They do not believe in their strength, nor in their capacity to struggle, nor in their readiness this time to conduct the struggle to the end.”

Even 82 years later, the writings of the great revolutionary still shed light on the situation today. If Macron can press on with austerity despite growing strike action, and the neo-fascists win broader sections of middle class and working class voters, it is because masses of people have had devastating experiences with the social-democratic Socialist Party (PS) and the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF). After decades of austerity following the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, the PS, the PCF and the unions are empty shells, without any working class base.

To stop Macron’s onslaught and block the rise of the neo-fascists, the critical question is to build new organizations of struggle independent of the union bureaucracies, and build the Socialist Equality Party (PES) as the alternative to pseudo-left politicians like Mélenchon.

The first year of Macron’s term has vindicated the warnings made by the PES. Even before the second round of the 2017 presidential elections, the PES denounced the political blackmail of the ruling elite, which demanded that workers vote for Macron to block neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen. The PES called for an active boycott of the Macron-Le Pen runoff, to provide a politically independent axis for the coming struggles of workers and youth in the next presidential term.

The last year also vindicated the PES’ opposition to the pseudo-left parties and trade unions. Whatever their claims to having “radical” politics, they drove these struggles into a dead end. All discussed, negotiated and signed the smashing of rail workers’ wages and conditions in the face of broad opposition, and discussed plans for broad attacks on pensions and health care. Nevertheless, Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France and the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) insisted that workers had to struggle within the framework of a “united front” with the unions’ negotiations with Macron.

To carry out a resolute struggle against austerity and militarism requires a break with Mélenchon and the NPA. The PES advanced the policy of building committees of action in the workplaces, factories and working class neighborhoods, to mobilize the entire working class in the coming struggles, and make contact with its natural allies: workers across Europe and beyond.

In this movement, which is heading towards the eruption of a national and European general strike, 50 years after the French general strike of May-June 1968, the PES intervenes to explain the necessity for the transfer of state power to the working class.

May’s Africa visit highlights Britain’s decline

Jean Shaoul

Prime Minister Theresa May’s three-day visit to Africa last week was part of the British government’s desperate attempt to drum up trade, promote investment and attract business for the City of London and Britain’s construction and security companies as the UK prepares to leave the European Union (EU) in March 2019.

May promoted the trip, which took in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, as an opportunity for Britain “to deepen and strengthen its global partnerships” and to “continue to work together to maintain stability and security.”

Africa was home to five of the world’s fastest growing economies, she said, although these were not the ones she visited. While May described South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya as “key partners” for the UK after Brexit, their combined GDP is about $770 billion, similar to the Netherlands. In fact, Britain’s total trade with Africa in 2016 amounted to some $36 billion (compared with $305 billion with the EU) and is a fraction of China’s $188 billion trade with Africa.

May took with her a 29-strong delegation, made up of figures from financial services, including David Schwimmer, the London Stock Exchange’s chief executive, and Bill Winters, the chief executive of Standard Chartered, a bank with a long history of dealings in Africa, as well as executives from the construction, technology and security industries. She said that Britain aimed to overtake the US and become the biggest G7 investor in Africa—although in 2017, British investment of $2.3 billion lagged far behind China’s $8.9 billion in greenfield projects.

May said this investment would be channelled through the CDC Group, the former Commonwealth Development Corporation and the Department for International Development’s (DfID) development finance institution. The largest single investor in private equity funds in Africa, it would invest £3.5 billion in Africa by 2022, alongside similar private sector investment.

The CDC has been heavily criticised for its investments in “development projects” such as hotels and shopping centres—Kenya’s largest travel market is the UK with nearly 170,000 visitors—as well as losing most of its $140 million investment in a Kenyan cement maker.

May’s statement marked an explicit shift in Britain’s foreign aid policy. While aid has always been about Britain’s geo-strategic interests, in future DfID’s aid budget will be used not to alleviate poverty but to boost Britain’s business interests, under the cover of job creation. This is in line with former International Development Secretary Priti Patel’s earlier argument that Britain’s aid budget should be cut unless it works in the national interest and was tied to trade deals.

Based on the UK’s National Security Council’s new Africa strategy, May said Britain would “radically expand” its diplomatic presence in Africa and expand its missions in west Africa. This would include reopening its high commissions in Lesotho and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), appointing the first-ever resident British ambassador to Mauritania and opening the first British diplomatic office in Chad, to be paid for by transferring £50 million from the foreign aid budget. It marks a change in focus towards the western Sahel region.

May also focused on “security cooperation,” saying she wanted to boost security and support for “fragile” African states that would involve “help” and “support” from Britain’s armed forces and growing security industry. The UK provides Nigeria counter-terrorism and counter-extremism support and carries out military training in Kenya.

In part at least, this is bound up with efforts to reduce migration to Europe, with Britain sending three RAF Chinook helicopters to work with French forces in Mali earlier this year. But geostrategic issues are involved. According to Michael Jennings of the Royal African Society, security cooperation would also include “development projects” in the high-risk conflict zones of the Sahel, based on “British expertise” developed in Syria and Afghanistan.

Last year, London hosted a conference on Somalia; Chancellor Phillip Hammond visited South Africa in late 2016; DfID Secretary Liam Fox visited Ethiopia, South Africa, Mozambique and Uganda in 2017; former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson visited more African countries than any senior UK government official in many years and attended the Africa-EU summit in Côte d’Ivoire; and Patel and her successor Penny Mordaunt visited several African countries over the past two years.

May visited Africa’s two largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, and Kenya, which ranks ninth. In South Africa, Britain’s 29th largest trading partner at $8.7 billion in 2016, she met President Cyril Ramaphosa. She went on to Nigeria, home to the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell, which controls more than 20 percent of Nigeria’s oil production, meeting President Muhammadu Buhari in the capital Abuja, and pledging to help fight terrorism and human trafficking. She also made a brief stop-over in Lagos, where she met Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, who recently indicated that he would list his $10 billion cement business on the London Stock Exchange. Half of Nigeria’s 180 million population exist on less than $1.90 a day.

Her last stop was in Kenya, where President Uhuru Kenyatta treated her with some disdain, complaining that no British prime minister had set foot in the country for 30 years, and saying he was pleased she had “found time” to visit. He then made a show of forgetting the surname of the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson.

The Daily Nation newspaper noted sarcastically that the last time a British prime minister came to Kenya, “Land Rover was the official government car, East African Industries [now Unilever] was market leader and most Kenyans banked at Barclays.”

Despite all the hype, May’s delegation came away from Britain’s former colonies with little of substance, further exposing Britain’s catastrophic political, diplomatic and economic decline over the last decades.

May’s much-televised timorous and awkward attempts to dance with school children in South Africa epitomised the trip. She refused to discuss their urgent pleas to reduce the cost and difficulty of obtaining work, study or holiday visas to visit Britain or to extend visa exemptions, even though the National Health Service is dependent on African health care workers to staff its facilities, and foreign students entering British universities are one of the country’s most important export earners. The number of Africans studying in the UK has fallen from 17,815 in 2012-2013 to 13,990 in 2016-2017.

Whereas May’s trip was the first by a prime minister since 2011, aside from David Cameron’s brief trip to attend Nelson Mandela’s funeral in 2013, French President Emmanuel Macron has already visited eight African countries and Chinese leaders have made no fewer than 79 trips since 2007.

Britain’s declining position in Africa is reflected in the number of its diplomatic missions, just 31, compared to Germany’s 39, China’s 46, and America’s 49. France has 42 in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Turkey, which had 12 embassies in 2009 now has 39, while India announced in July it would open 12 new embassies. Crucially, Britain has had no less than six ministers of state for Africa since 2012.

Aware that she had little to offer, May conceded that Britain could not match the “economic might” of China or the US. Just days after her visit, Beijing is hosting the huge Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, expected to be the largest ever, where China will welcome dozens of African heads of state and is expected to offer new trade and finance deals. It follows President Xi Jinping’s second tour of Africa when he visited Senegal, Rwanda, Mauritius and South Africa.

In wake of credit downgrade huge job cuts looming at Ford

Shannon Jones

In the wake of the recent downgrading of Ford credit by the rating agency Moody’s, the financial press is full of speculation about a major round of job cuts by the US-based automaker as part of its already announced restructuring plan.

On August 29 Moody’s lowered Ford’s senior unsecured rating to Baa3, only one step above junk status. A downgrade makes it more difficult and expensive to finance debt. The downgrade was accompanied by a warning that there is an increased chance of a further lowering of Ford credit in the next 12 to 24 months.

The moves by the credit rating agency represent a shot across the bow at Ford on the part of Wall Street, which is demanding a further assault on workers in order to boost what it views as inadequate rates of return by the auto manufacturer. It follows decades of relentless cuts, facilitated by the unions in the US and globally, that have resulted in the decimation of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the steady erosion of wages and benefits at all the US-based car companies.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times of London reported this week that Ford could cut up to 24,000 jobs at its European division as a result of a reorganization being discussed by top executives. The plan reportedly outlines $11 billion in restructuring costs including job buyouts and plant closures. The Sunday Times noted Ford employs 12,000 in Britain, with engine plants in Bridgend and Dagenham threatened.

The paper also reported that Ford Europe President Steven Armstrong said the company is focused on “aggressively attacking costs, implementing facility and product program efficiencies to lower product and material costs as well as capital intensity in Europe.”

Ford has been losing money on its European operations in contrast to North America, where it is still making profits. The plans by Britain to leave the European Union, Brexit, has added further uncertainty to Ford’s future in that country.

For its part, Moody’s noted the potential for a “cyclical” slowdown in the automotive industry. Indeed the increasingly volatile world financial situation, including the threat of auto tariffs on the part of the US Trump administration, points to the likely eruption of another major economic crisis that could put the 2008 crash in the shade. It is implicitly understood by the financial elite that the costs of such as shock would be shunted onto the backs of the working class.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who recently projected a 12 percent cut of Ford’s 202,000 worldwide workforce, said, “We do not see restructuring at Ford as a ‘nice to have’ … but as a crucial step to set the global business on a more balanced footing,” Jonas wrote August 20.

Any attacks on its European workforce would only prepare for attacks on workers in South America, Asia and in the United States itself.

The chorus on Wall Street for decisive action by Ford takes place under conditions where the company is still making substantial profits. The company made adjusted pre-tax earnings of $8.4 billion in 2017, however it is well short of profit expectations. While Ford sales were up four percent overall in August and the profitable Ford F-150 pickup truck is selling at a record pace for the year, Ford sales are down 1.2 percent in 2018.

The company has already announced the ending of most passenger car production in order to focus on more popular light trucks and SUVs. It is reportedly also looking to end production of the Galaxy and S-Max in Europe to concentrate on larger, more profitable models.

In an interview this week with the Detroit Free Press, Bob Shanks, Ford chief financial officer, acknowledged the term “restructuring” suggests, “workforce reductions and closures.” He continued, “A year ago we started a journey that’s going to be a very fundamental redesign of our traditional auto business. It’s a huge, huge transformation.”

He added, [Ford] is “looking at a major redesign in our business, particularly overseas markets. That performance is not good. After years of hard work, restructuring, new products and changes. It just isn’t what it needs to be... The bottom line is unacceptable.”

Despite efforts by the European unions to prevent resistance to Ford’s cost-cutting measures, autoworkers in Germany struck the US-based company and other automakers earlier this year and, in late 2017, 1,000 workers conducted a wildcat strike to oppose a rotten deal signed by the Ford Craiova Automobile Union and Ford Romania.

The deal demanded that 4,200 Romanian workers accept wage freezes for senior workers and a reduction in new hires’ pay to five percent below the current minimum salary, or as little as €300 (US$358) a month. Ford also demanded a reduction in payments for overtime work and “flexible” work hours whenever “operational demands require it.”

In a December 13, 2017 memo to workers, Ford Romania chief John Oldham threatened them with mass unemployment, saying, "We need to reflect on what is critical at this crucial moment for the Craiova plant, to have a higher salary increase or to secure the future of this factory! We hope you understand the importance of this year’s negotiation in the present politically and economically unstable climate.”

Automakers globally are facing pressure for major investments for research and development of electric and autonomous vehicles. The large investment required to implement such technology puts heavy strain on corporate cash flows, increasing the need for cuts.

One possible casualty of Ford’s cost cutting may be its plans for a technology center in Detroit, where the company recently purchased the old Michigan Central Depot with the apparent idea of converting it into a research hub for autonomous vehicles.

The credit downgrade by Moody’s follows the ouster of Ford CEO Mark Fields in 2018 after just three years tenure. In announcing the shake-up, Chairman Bill Ford pointed to the low valuation of the company’s stock and declining profits.

The threat to Ford workers takes place under conditions where financial pressures are mounting on the other US automakers. Speculation is widespread that GM, which sold off its European Opel and Vauxhall divisions in 2017, may soon announce the closure of one or more of its US passenger car assembly plants, in particular its Lordstown, Ohio facility where the company recently eliminated the second shift. GM is the only US car manufacturer that is continuing to build passenger cars in North America.

Fiat Chrysler is in the midst of a restructuring operation that has led to the temporary closure of a number of its biggest plants. The company ended US passenger car production in 2016 to focus on light trucks and SUVs.

The UAW has been predictably silent on the reports of Fords plans for a new round of cuts. This is not only because it is predicted that the cuts will fall most heavily on European autoworkers, but because the UAW takes its stand entirely on the basis of the defense of the profit interests of management.

The UAW has facilitated US layoffs by implementing contract changes that eliminate whatever meager job protections autoworkers had. The union agreed to the elimination of the jobs bank that provided some employment security for laid off autoworkers. Meanwhile, the UAW has sanctioned the use of more temporary part time (TPT) workers who are not eligible for supplemental unemployment benefits and have no pensions or recall rights.

The 2015 contract provided no explicit job guarantees. In place of a fight to defend jobs the UAW is actively inciting fratricidal conflict between US autoworkers and autoworkers internationally, supporting President Trump’s trade war measures and denouncing Mexican and Chinese autoworkers for “taking American jobs.”

The UAW has abetted the drive by the auto companies to force out better paid veteran workers and replace them with TPTs. The impact of the ruthless cost cutting drive by Ford was underscored by the injury earlier this year of Ford Flat Rock Assembly worker Lynn Hagood, age 55, who suffered severe injuries after being placed back on the assembly line with insufficient training.

At all the auto companies the UAW has sanctioned the use of forced overtime by management to avoid the hiring of additional workers. This has led to worker burnout and the increased likelihood of death or injury on the job.

The fight to defend jobs requires that workers elect factory committees, independent of the UAW, to initiate a struggle against plant closings and layoffs. This struggle must be waged in the closest unity with autoworkers internationally to counter the efforts by the global automakers and the unions to play workers off against each other country by country. The defense of jobs is bound up with the struggle for a socialist program, including the transformation of the auto giants into public enterprises under the democratic control of the working class.

Amazon market capitalization surpasses $1 trillion

E.P. Milligan

Amazon’s market capitalization reached over $1 trillion in value on Tuesday, making it the second company to do so in US history after Apple. Although Amazon’s share value receded to $2,039.51 by the end of Tuesday trading, Amazon’s share value has soared by 108 percent over the past year alone.

The growth of massive corporate behemoths like Amazon is not the product of its supposed “creative ingenuity.” Amazon’s soaring profits, like those of Apple, are the direct result of the brutal exploitation of its workforce. Amazon and its owners stand atop a mountain of broken bones, hernias, torn knee and back muscles, heat strokes, stress-induced asthma attacks, and countless other lifelong bodily injuries.

The historic character of the rise of Amazon demonstrates once again that the inevitable outcome of capitalist development is monopolization. Amazon exemplifies how technological advances are subordinated to the profit motive under capitalism.

Amazon is a massive operation, international in nature, which now employs 566,000 people across many countries and 5 continents. It utilizes state-of-the-art technology and information systems to mobilize and integrate the worldwide distribution of millions of goods. But the immense profits produced on the backs of its workforce are not used to improve living conditions for the masses of working people; they enrich a narrow layer of the super-rich.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made $1.8 billion on Tuesday alone. Broken down, this means Bezos made $20,833 per second, an amount roughly equivalent to what an Amazon worker makes in a year. He made $67 billion this year—equivalent to $8 million an hour. Bezos is now the richest man on earth, with a net worth of $164.7 billion. Based on the average US annual income of $28,446, it would take an Amazon worker over five million years to accumulate an amount equal to their CEO’s wealth—about equal to the time since humans genetically split off from gorillas and chimpanzees.

The pay for many US workers is even lower. Base pay at Amazon is $12 per hour, which amounts to less than $25,000 per year.

Coverage by the International Amazon Workers’ Voice (IAWV) newsletter has cited reports by workers at multiple facilities who have seen coworkers sleeping in their cars. Inside the facilities, workers face a high-tech dystopia, characterized by long hours and an authoritarian industrial regime. “It is like being tortured in your mind and your body for 10 hours a night,” one worker, Shannon Allen, told the World Socialist Web Site. Another worker described the work as “modern day slavery.”

A worker in the UK said that the company penalizes workers for getting hurt. “Someone hurt on the job? It gets raised to a leader who then calls first aid, they take a statement then ask if you are returning to work or going home. Going home incurs a half-point penalty.”

All over the world, the company forces workers to labor at fast, tiring, and often dangerous speeds. The UK worker said: “I still have near misses and collisions from people rushing…now it’s faster, faster, faster. It’s all about being on the go, meeting rates and targets.”

Amazon is ramping up the exploitation of its workforce as it prepares for another massive expansion. Last year, the company announced plans to open a second headquarters, though the decision as to where the facilities will be located has not yet been finalized. It also recently purchased 20,000 vans from Mercedes-Benz, with which the company plans to establish a network of contractors to carry out their last-mile delivery services. This development will deal a harsh blow to the US Postal Service, which currently handles 40 percent of last-mile deliveries. It also has begun to muscle its way into the $88 billion online ad market, with clear plans to surpass tech giants Google and Facebook.

Amazon workers have begun to fight back against their grueling working conditions and low pay. Strikes broke out at facilities in Spain, Germany, Poland, Italy and France this summer, and hundreds of workers have written in to the IAWV to describe the brutal exploitation they face at the hands of the company.

The ruling class has begun efforts to neutralize the growing opposition to social inequality, low wages, and sweatshop conditions. In particular, the Democratic Party is seeking to take control of these struggles and direct them back into safe channels like the Teamsters Union and the political orbit of Bernie Sanders, who endorsed Hillary Clinton for president after the 2016 Democratic primaries.

On Wednesday, Sanders introduced a bill that would tax corporations for the federal benefits their employees receive. The bill, named Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies or “BEZOS Act,” would establish a 100% tax on companies equal to the public assistance programs their employees depend on to live.

This legislation does nothing to address the unsafe conditions workers face and will not raise wages or lead to an improvement in their lives. It is significant that the bill instead is intended to provide the government money which it will likely hand back over to the corporations in the form of tax cuts and deregulation. On top of this, the bill’s authors and sponsors know it has no chance of passage.

In contrast, the Socialist Equality Party demands the immediate seizure of all of Jeff Bezos’s assets and their immediate distribution to meet the needs of the working class, including by massive expenditures on public transportation, healthcare, education, and the provision of food, water and housing to those in need. The corporation must be transformed into a public utility to be run not for the private profit of a few but to meet human need.

To accomplish this historical task, Amazon workers require organization—not through the corrupt trade unions that take their dues money to pay the salaries of bureaucrats—but fighting organizations run by and for the workers themselves. Such organizations, workplace committees, will be based on the principles of democracy and workers’ control of production, and will fight to educate the working class as a whole about the conditions Amazon workers face while inviting other sections of the working class to join in a common struggle against the massive corporations.

NNPC/SNEPCo National University Scholarship for Undergraduate Nigerian Students 2018

Application Deadline: 24th September, 2018.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Undergraduates in universities in Nigeria

To be taken at: Nigerian Universities

Accepted Subject Areas: The merit-based scholarship is open to FULL TIME undergraduates studying any of the under listed courses in Universities within Nigeria.

• Agricultural Science
• Chemical / Process Engineering
• Chemistry
• Civil Engineering
• Economics
• Electrical Engineering
• Finance
• Geophysics
• Geoscience / Geology
• Instrumentation Engineering
• Marine Engineering
• Materials / Corrosion Engineering
• Mathematics / Applied Mathematics
• Mechanical / Aerospace Engineering
• Medicine
• Metallurgical Engineering
• Mining Engineering
• Petroleum Engineering
• Pharmacy
• Physics / Applied Physics
• Process Control Engineering

About SNEPCo Scholarship: SNEPCo on behalf of itself and its co-venturers is launching the SNEPCo National Merit University Scholarship Scheme.  The programme aims to promote academic excellence and improve the skills of young Nigerians.

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility: Applicant must:

• Be a citizen of Nigeria, currently enrolled in an accredited and approved university in Nigeria.
• Currently be in their second year of fulltime study in a Nigerian university accredited by NUC.
• Have a minimum grade point average of 3.0 – 5.0 at the time of application (attach  transcripts or official records).
• Not be a beneficiary of any other scholarship.

Number of Scholarships: Several

Scholarship Worth: Grant for the remainder of student’s Program

Duration of Scholarship: Scholarships are renewable through graduation. Recipients are expected to maintain high academic / ethical standards, and other conditions outlined in the scholarship award letter.

How to Apply: Please take the following steps to access the website:

1. Use the direct link https://www.nnpc-snepco-scholarship.shell.com/
2. Every applicant should have a valid personal email account (for communication purposes)

Candidates who meet the above entry qualifications should apply via the link above online and provide the required personal and educational details, and load scanned copies of the following:

• A recent passport-sized photograph of the applicant (i.e. jpeg format, not more than 200kilobytes);
• University or JAMB (UTME or D/E) Admission Letter;
• Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) Scores;
• ‘O’ Level Result(s); and ‘A’ Level /OND /NCE Result(s) as applicable; and
• Letter of Identification from State (showing Local Government) of Origin.
• Students are to upload their 100l results

Sponsors: Shell Nigeria Exploration Production Company (SNEPCo)

50 Travel Fellowships for Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) Entrepreneurship Forum 2018

Application Deadline: 12th September 2018

Eligible Countries: African Countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Lagos, Nigeria

About the Award: The TEF Entrepreneurship Forum 2018 will be the largest gathering of African entrepreneurs and other ecosystem stakeholders from across the continent. It will be a showcase of the innovation and entrepreneurial potential that exists in Africa and has the potential to be the debut of the next generation of African business titans onto the global stage.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Working Journalists affiliated with African national or global media houses
• Documented support provided from Supervisor/media outlet

Number of Awards: 50

Value of Award: The TEF Entrepreneurship Forum Travel Fellowship provides 50 fellowships that cover travel, accommodation, and a per diem. TEF will handle travel arrangements, accommodation and assist with visas.

Duration of Program: October 25, 2018

How to Apply: Each member of reporting teams should apply separately. Maximum two-person reporting teams.
To Apply, Fill in the application details (Link below).

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Tony Elumelu Foundation

Criticism of Saudi leadership seeps through cracks as report questions kingdom’s utility for Britain

James M. Dorsey

Signs of opposition to policies of Saudi King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and potentially increased domestic polarization have in the past week spilled on to the streets of London while a just released report questioned the economic and political benefits of Britain’s relationship with the kingdom.

The London incidents, involving a brother of King Salman as well as an assault on a Saudi critic, suggest a long suspected greater degree of domestic questioning of Saudi Arabia’s 3.5-year-old ill-fated war in Yemen than has been publicly evident until now.

The Salmans have sought to crush dissent with mass arrests of activists, religious scholars, businessmen and members of the ruling Al Saud family; a power and asset grab last November under the mum of an anti-corruption campaign that targeted some of Saudi elite’s most prominent figures; and legal measures criminalizing criticism.

Although focused on British-Saudi economic and political relations, the report by King’s College London and the Oxford Research Group calls into question not only British but also by implication long-standing Western willingness to turn a blind eye to the kingdom’s violations of human rights and its conduct of the Yemen war that has produced one of the worst humanitarian crises in post-World War Two history.

The London incidents coupled with increasing European questioning of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including this week’s cancellation by Spain of the sale of 400 laser-guided precision bombs, suggests that Saudi Arabia is finding it more difficult to keep domestic dissent and international criticism under wraps. Spain follows in the footsteps of Germany, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium who have suspended some military sales.

The Spanish cancellation came on the heels of last month’s Saudi-Canadian spat sparked by a call on Saudi Arabia by Canada’s ambassador to the kingdom, Dennis Horak, to release detained women activists, including Samar Badawi, the sister-in-law of a recently naturalized Canadian citizen, Ensaf Haidar.

Ms. Haidar is married to Ms. Badawi’s brother, Raif Badawi, who was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for promoting freedom of expression and women’s rights.

It also came in the wake of the withdrawal of Malaysian troops from the 41-nation, Saudi-sponsored Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition (IMCTC) and the closure in Malaysia of the Saudi-backed King Salman Centre for International Peace (KSCIP).

In a rare public distancing from the Salmans, Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Abdelaziz – one of the few still living sons of the founder of Saudi Arabia and a younger brother of King Salman, asked anti-Saudi protesters on a London street chanting “down, down Al Saud” and “Al Saud criminal family”: “What does the al-Saud family have to do with your chants? We have nothing to do with what is happening (in Yemen). Certain officials are responsible.”

Asked by protesters who he held responsible, Prince Ahmed, who served as deputy interior minister for 37 years and briefly as interior minister under King Salman’s predecessor, King Abdullah, said “the king and his heir apparent,” a reference to King Salman and Prince Mohammed.

The state-run Saudi News Agency subsequently quoted Prince Ahmed as seeking to roll back his comments captured on video by saying that he said that “the King and the Crown Prince are responsible for the state and its decisions. This is true for the security and stability of the country and the people.”

Meanwhile, video on social media showed Ghanem al-Dosari, who hosts a satirical show on YouTube critical of Saudi Arabia, being accosted by supporters of King Salman and Prince Mohammed.

In a bid to stymie criticism, Saudi prosecutors this week reportedly sought the death penalty against prominent cleric Salman Al-Odah who was detained a year ago.

“The Saudi attorney general accused my father @salman_alodah of 37 charges and asked for his execution,” his son Abdullah said in a tweet. He said some of the charges were related to comments Mr. Al-Odah had posted on Twitter and membership in organizations associated with Qatar and Qatari-Egyptian Islamic scholar Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Al-Odah has 14 million Twitter followers.

Prosecutors last month demanded the death sentence for five human rights activists, including Israa al-Ghomgham, a Shiite activist arrested with her husband in 2015. Ms. Al-Ghomgham is thought to be the first female Saudi campaigner to face execution.

Applying a cost-benefit analysis, The Kings College/Oxford Research Group report concluded that, contrary to the projections of the government of Prime Minister Theresa May and popular perception, Britain enjoyed limited economic benefit from its relationship with Saudi Arabia while suffering considerable reputational damage.

The report noted that Britain’s US$ 8 billion in exports to Saudi Arabia accounted for a mere one percent of total exports in 2016. The British Treasury reaped US$ 38.5 million in revenues from arms sales or a paltry 0.004 percent of the Treasury’s total income in 2016. Overall, Britain’s defense industry produced in 2010/11 only one percent of the country’s total output and created a meagre 0.6 percent of all jobs.

The analysis stroked with the conclusion of a 2016 study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) that “arms exports cannot be said to represent an important part of the UK economy, and even less so of the labour market, despite the prominence of the ‘jobs argument’ amongst politicians and industry figures seeking to promote and defend arms exports.”

The King’s College/Oxford Research report took issue with assertions by successive British governments that trade and weapons sales as well as support for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform programme enabled Britain to influence Saudi policy and introduce democratic and human rights values.

“There is little evidence, based on publicly available information, that the UK exerts either influence or leverage over Saudi Arabia. In fact, there is greater evidence that Saudi Arabia exerts influence over the UK. There is a contradiction between the UK presenting itself as a progressive, liberal country and defender of the international rules-based order, while at the same time providing diplomatic cover for a regime, which, based on our analysis, is undermining that rules-based order,” the report said.

It warned that “the UK appears to be incurring reputational costs as a result of its relationship with Saudi Arabia, while the economic benefits to the UK are questionable.”

The report’s call on the British government to critically analyse its foreign policy and limit and be more selective and transparent in in its engagement with Saudi Arabia could constitute an approach that would appeal to other European governments.

It could also attract support from some members of the US Congress, despite US President Donald J. Trump’s backing of Saudi policies, with public criticism of the kingdom mounting in Europe and the United States as well as growing unease among some officials and politicians.

Saudi Arabia “is a case study in what happens when a country’s supposed economic interests come into conflict with its stated norms and values and its international obligations. The situation cannot carry on indefinitely,” said Armida van Rij, one of the report’s authors.

The Russian minority in the Baltics live under ‘apartheid’ states

Max Parry

It has been nearly three decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Despite Russia’s reemergence on the world stage as a respected power after market-oriented ‘reforms’ destroyed its economy for the duration of the nineties, the breakup of the USSR is an event regarded by an increasing amount of Russians as a catastrophic tragedy rather than a triumph of ‘freedom and democracy.’ In recent years, there have been numerous polls showing that more than half of Russians not only regret the collapse of the Soviet Union but would even prefer for its return. However, the nostalgia only comes as a surprise to those who have forgotten that not long before the failed August Coup that led to its demise, the first and only referendum in its history was held in March of 1991 which polled citizens if they wished to preserve the Soviet system.

The results were more than three quarters of the population in the entire socialist federation (including Russia) voting a resounding yes with a turnout of 80% in the participating republics. In Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan the outcome was more than 90% voting for renewal. Even the country with the lowest amount of support, the Ukraine, was still 70% in favor. While the measure was officially banned in six republics— Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and the three Baltic states— despite being unrecognized by their local governments the vote was still organized and the outcomes were all over 90%. Ironically, the union dissolved five months later under the pretext of establishing ‘democracy’ in Eastern Europe just as it ignored the very wishes of Soviet citizens. After more than 25 years of suffering at the hands of economic and trade liberalization, gutting of state subsidies and mass privatization of the former state-run industry, is it any wonder that Russians are yearning for a return to socialism?

The consequences of the disintegration are still felt in the relations with the United States today. It planted the seeds for the carefully arranged revival of the Cold War that was hiding in plain sight until it surfaced with ‘color revolutions’, proxy wars and dubious spy poisonings. One source of the strained relations between the West and Russia has been the Baltic states, which burgeoned following their integration into the European Union and enrollment in NATO membership in 2004 during its enlargement. NATO continues its provocations with massive war games bordering Kaliningrad, while Moscow is painted as the aggressor even though the U.S. defense spending increase this year alone surpasses Russia’s entire military budget.

The antagonism between Latvia, Estonia and(to a lesser degree) Lithuania with Moscow stems partly from from the cessation of the USSR itself. The conclusion of the Cold War resulted in more than 25 million Russians instantly discovering themselves living abroad in foreign countries. For seventy years, fifteen nations had been fully integrated while Russians migrated and lived within the other republics. The Soviet collapse immediately reignited national conflicts, from the Caucasus to the Baltics. While the majority of the ethnic Russian diaspora live in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, nearly 1 million reside in the post-Soviet Baltics and since 1991 they have been subjected to a campaign of forced assimilation, discrimination and exclusion.

The Baltic republics made nationalism their official state policy while moving away from Russia’s sphere of influence into a closer relationship with the West. Boris Yeltsin’s subservience to Washington eclipsed any concern for the fate of captive Russians as the Soviet Bloc was herded into the EU, but his administration did quarrel with the new Baltic authorities and accused them of creating an anti-Russian ‘apartheid.’ As geopolitical tensions have increased under his successor, Vladimir V. Putin, who has embarrassed Western imperialism in the international arena, so has Moscow’s disapproval of the treatment of its minority held hostage in the Baltic Rim. Is a comparison to South Africa warranted? Even if the similarities are only partial, the three states show evidence of deep ethnocracy.

While less than 10% of Lithuania is ethnically Russian, in Latvia and Estonia the number is much higher at a quarter of their entire populations. The three governments have passed laws promoting their official languages and restored citizenship requirements that existed up until 1940, demanding that their Russian minorities apply or risk losing basic rights and guarantees. Russia has interpreted these measures as a form of slow-motion ethnic cleansing intended to coerce Russians to immigrate elsewhere. When the three states first became independent, in an act of systematic discrimination they distributed non-citizen ‘alien’ passports to ethnic Russians and excluded them from obtaining citizenship automatically, even if they had lived and worked in a Baltic state for their entire life. In fact, citizenship was not immediately granted to anyone whose ancestry arrived after 1940, a policy that specifically targeted ethnic Russians who without naturalization are left stateless.

For example, when Estonia first declared its independence more than 30% of its population (or every third person) did not have citizenship of the country of residence. This inscribed ethnic division into their society and although many Russians have become naturalized over the last two decades, there are still more than 80,000 in Estonia without determined status who are mostly former Soviet citizens and their descendants. In Latvia, segregation runs even deeper where more than 250,000 Russians (15% of the population) remain stateless. Even when they do become citizens, the parliaments have attempted to pass laws banning non-EU immigrants (predominantly Russians) from possessing voting rights on several occasions. Polls also show the prejudice within their societies, with many Balts indicating they would prefer their Russian-speaking neighbors to repatriate. Meanwhile, the Russian population has expressed concern about the reemergence of neo-Nazism. The authorities have nurtured holocaust denial, such as the Latvian government objecting to an UNESCO Holocaust exhibition of the Salaspils concentration camp on the basis it would ‘tarnish the country’s image.’ No kidding.

One criteria for the naturalization exams is based on language where in order to become citizens Russians must become fluent in Latvian and Estonian, even though they are such a large minority that in larger cities they often constitute 50% of the population and Russian may be the most spoken language. Simultaneously, any attempt to make Russian a second official language have been struck down. It is a deliberate effort to assimilate the Russian-speaking minority and erase remnants of Soviet culture. In order to obtain basic entitlements, Russians have to pass the tough naturalization tests which many fail several times (especially the elderly), facing fines and risking losing their employment in the process. The tests are notoriously difficult as Latvian and Estonian languages bear little resemblance to Slavic Russian and are much closer to Finnish. Apart from ethnicity, 40% of Latvia as a whole identifies as Russian-speaking and have been accustomed to schooling in their native tongue where they already have low career prospects and income rates. Rather than inclusion, they have been mandated to adopt the Baltic languages. Beginning in 2019, the Russian language education options in Latvia will be discontinued altogether in higher education at colleges and universities as well as many secondary schools, which has sparked demonstrations in protest.

Russian-speakers protesting Latvia’s language reform laws

It should be made clear that what ethnic Russians experience in the Baltics has its own particularities that make it significantly different from the institutionalized racism and violently enforced segregation that existed in South Africa (or what many believe is applicable to the Palestinians under Israeli occupation). The word apartheid itself originates from the Afrikaans word for ‘separateness’ (or apart-hood), but an exact comparison is not the real issue. There are many overlapping characteristics that make an analogy arguable. For instance, the use of an ID system denoting ethnicity and alien status with the inability of Russians to participate in the democratic process or politics. Their reduced standing contributes to a society where ethnic groups often do not intermingle and are concentrated in particular areas with Russians mostly residing in urban cities. Yet even Israel recognizes Arabic as a second official language, while none of three Baltic states do so for Russian. When referendums have been held on whether to adopt Russian as a second language, the non-citizen communities are excluded from voting, ensuring its inability to pass.

The exams also coerce Russians to accept a nationalist and historically revisionist account of the last century where the Soviet Union is said to have “occupied” the Baltics. A history lesson is needed to understand how this is untrue and based on pure Nazi mythology. During the Romanov dynasty, the Baltic states had been part of the Russian Empire but became independent for the first time in centuries following the February Revolution in 1917. Along with Belarus and Finland, the Bolsheviks were unable to regain the three republics during the Russian Civil War. During the 1930s, the three nations were officially sovereign states but under their own brutal nationalist regimes. The Soviet liberation of the Baltics can hardly be seen as a ‘forceful incorporation’ considering what they replaced were not democracies themselves and they were absorbed in order to block Hitlerite expansionism.

Since the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe, the Baltic states have waged a campaign of diminishing and obscuring the Holocaust into a ‘double genocide’ of equal proportions , conflating the Nazis and the Soviets as twin evils. Western ‘democracies’ have helped obfuscate the truth about the widely misunderstood Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the treaty of non-belligerence between Germany and the USSR. The 1939 non-aggression pact has been painted as a ‘secret alliance’ between the Nazis and the Soviets, disregarding that France and Great Britain had done the same with the Germans the previous year with the Munich Agreement. Only the Soviets are said to have ‘conspired’ with Hitler, just as when the West fought the Germans it was for ‘liberal values’ but when the USSR did so it was for competing ‘dominion’ over Europe. In order to mask their own fascist sympathies, the West has falsified the historical reasons for the accord. In reality, there were measures incorporating the Baltic states into the USSR as part of a mutual defense and assistance against German imperialism and their ‘master plan’ for the East.

The truth is that the ruling class in the West feared the spread of communism much more than fascism, and actually viewed the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe as an opportunity to crush the Soviet Union. Leading up to WWII, not only was it Western capital investment which financed the rapid buildup of Germany’s armed forces, but the U.S., Britain and France did everything within their power to encourage Hitler’s aggression toward the USSR. More than once they collectively refused to sign any mutual security alliance with Moscow while appeasing Hitler’s expansionism in Czechoslovakia, with the British in particular guilty of sabotaging negotiations to isolate the Soviets and pit them into a war against Germany.

Stalin was well aware the Nazis planned to expand the Lebensraum further East, but the Soviets were in the midst of a rapid industrialization process that accomplished in a single decade what took the British more than a century. They needed time to guarantee they could defeat an offensive by the Wehrmacht, the most powerful and developed military force in the world at the time. It provided an additional year and ten months of further buildup of Soviet armaments — if not for this move, it is possible the Germans would never have been stopped twenty kilometers short of Moscow and turned the outcome of the war in their favor. The real reason the pact infuriated the West was because it obligated them into having to fight the Germans, something the imperial powers had hoped to avoid altogether.

More disturbingly, the Baltic governments have drawn from the traditions of the far right by whitewashing the local nationalists that sided with Germany during their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The Nazi collaborators have been restored and normalized as ‘freedom fighters’ who fought solely for Baltic independence. The Estonian parliament has even adopted resolutions honoring the Estonian Legion and 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) without any such equivalent measure for the more than 30,000 Estonians who courageously fought in the Red Army. To most Russians, it is an absolute insult to the 27 million Soviets who died defeating the Nazis, including the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians who did so as well. Today, if they wish to become citizens they must swear an oath of allegiance to this rewriting of history which has been made a precondition for obtaining citizenship. The three states also do not recognize the May 9th Victory Day as a holiday, forcing the Russian minority to celebrate it informally.

The rehabilitation of the local nationalists who fought alongside the Germans has been done under the false premise that the collaboration was a purely strategic alliance. The Soviets are portrayed as equal to or worse than Nazi Germany, a false equivalency between fascism and communism that is a ubiquitous trait among ultra-rightists today. Tens of thousands of Latvians and Estonians volunteered and were conscripted into legions of the SS which participated in the Holocaust, as did Lithuanians in the Nazi-created Territorial Defense Force and their Security Police. They did not simply coordinate on the battlefield with the Germans, but directly participated in the methodical slaughter of Jews, Roma and others because they shared their racism. In Lithuania, for example, quislings welcomed the Wehrmacht as liberators and for the next three years under Nazi occupation helped murder 200,000 Jews, nearly 95% of the country’s Jewish population, a total which exceeded every other European country in terms of percentage of extermination. It is certain that the only thing that prevented Lithuania’s Jews from extinction was the heroism and sacrifice of the Red Army.

During the Cold War, the US and NATO sought to whitewash certain Nazi war criminals when it suited its strategic interests against the Soviets. This went beyond the Germans themselves, whether it was recruiting their spies for espionage, atomic scientists in Operation Paperclip, or making Hans Speidel the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Central Europe. The Nuremberg Trials had ruled the entire Waffen SS as an organization to be guilty of war crimes during the holocaust, but the US chose to make a distinction between the 15th and 19th SS divisions in Latvia (Latvian Legion) and 20th division in Estonia from the German divisions of the SS. In 1950, the US Displaced Persons Commission determined:

“The Baltic Waffen SS Units are to be considered as separate and distinct in purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore the Commission holds them not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States under Section 13 of the Displaced Persons Act, as amended.”

While the displaced persons laws let Jewish refugees into the United States, it also provided cover for the reserved spaces for thousands of Nazi collaborators in an open-door policy providing them safe harbor. Following the end of WWII, many of the former members of the Baltic SS units became anti-Soviet partisans known as the Forest Brothers who carried on a guerilla campaign against the Soviets with the assistance of the CIA and MI6 until it was defeated in mid-50s. Unfortunately, Nikita Khruschev then made one of a series of colossal mistakes by permitting the exiled Baltic nationals to return as part of the de-Stalinisation thaw.

The idea that regiments of the Schutzstaffel were fighting purely for Estonian and Latvian independence is a horrifying fabrication in defiance of the overwhelming evidence documented by holocaust historians. The West has exploited this sanitizing of history that reappeared following the reinstatement of free enterprise in eastern Europe which has proliferated the far right in the EU as a whole. Why? It serves their cynical immediate interests in undermining Moscow. The same manipulations are occurring in the Cold War’s sequel. Last year, NATO even produced a short film and a-historical reenactment entitled Forest Brothers: Fight for the Baltics, glorifying the anti-Soviet partisans as part of its propaganda effort against Russia.

Any crimes that were committed by the Soviet NKVD during the war are dwarfed by the tens of thousands of Jews and Roma which were exterminated on an industrial level by the Nazis and their co-conspirators using the race theory — there is no comparison. Not to mention that the reintroduction of the free market to Eastern Europe killed more people than any period in Soviet history, reducing life expectancy by a decade and undoing seventy years worth of progress. We only ever hear of the faults of socialism and the inflated numbers of losses of life attributed to its failure, never the daily crimes of capitalism or the tens of millions lost in the wars it produces. The Soviet brand of socialism was far from perfect, but nevertheless a model for what humanity can achieve in the face of tremendous adversity without being shackled by the contradictions of capitalism — an industrial society with relative equality in education, wealth, employment and basic necessities. Now that Western capitalism is once again collapsing, it is making friends with nationalists to revise its ugly history and the Russian minority in the Baltics are suffering the consequence. It will continue to apportion blame on the up-and-coming power in Moscow, no longer the quasi-colony of the Yeltsin era, for its soon-to-be expiration. Let us hope it does not start another World War in the midst of it — for all our sake.

India: Police charge pro-Dalit activists under anti-terrorism laws

Kranti Kumara

With the aim of muzzling opposition to India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and its noxious Hindutva (Hindu supremacist) ideology, Maharashtra state police raided and conducted warrantless searches of the homes of seven left-wing activists on August 28 in six different cities across the country. The seven are all prominent advocates for the rights of Dalits (the former “untouchables”) and Adivasi (India’s tribal peoples).

The raids come amid mounting struggles against social inequality, cheap-labor jobs, and environmental devastation, and growing apprehension in government circles that the BJP could suffer a major reversal in the national elections slated for April/May 2019.

The police arrested 5 of the 7 targeted persons under the notorious Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2012 (UAPA), “anti-terrorist” legislation that in numerous ways trammels the due-process rights of the accused. On an order of India’s Supreme Court, the five are being held under house arrest pending a hearing on the legality of their arrests.

The raids and arrests have provoked a national outcry, which has been joined by the bourgeois opposition, including the Congress Party, and other pillars of the establishment. The former Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court R. M. Lodha has characterized the arrests as “an attack on freedom of speech” and as “an act to undermine the fundamentals of constitutional democracy”.

The police have labelled the five “Urban Maoists”—a term routinely used by officials to criminalize left-wing dissent and justify its violent repression. (For decades, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and its predecessor organizations have mounted an insurgency in remote jungle areas of India.)

The authorities claim, falsely, that the five organized a Dalit-oriented conference, titled Elgaar Parishad (literally “battle-cry conference”), that was held in Pune, Maharashtra’s second largest city, on the last day of December, 2017. They charge the five activists used the conference to incite violence and were the main instigators of a riot that ensued the next day in Bhima Koregaon, a small village about 30 kilometers north-east of Pune.

In fact the riot was provoked by Hindu communalists.

The police also claim to have found a letter in the laptop of one of the arrested that purportedly laid out a plot to kill Prime Minister Modi. This claim has all the hallmarks of planted evidence. India’s police are notorious for fabricating evidence, including, as was conclusively proven, in the frame-up murder convictions of 13 Maruti Suzuki workers.

The arrested include: the US-born Sudha Bharadwaj, a lawyer and a trade-unionist; Gautam Navlakha, a leader of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights who for decades has been a contributor to the Economic and Political Weekly; Vernon Gonsalves, a labor activist; the writer Arun Ferreira; and the 78-year old poet Varavara Rao. The last named has publicly proclaimed his sympathy with the Maoist “people’s war,” but there is no credible evidence linking him in any way to the insurgency.

All of them have long been subjected to surveillance and harassment by the police for their activism. Several were previously tortured and/or convicted on trumped-up charges leading to lengthy jail terms.

The police narrative against the five began to unravel almost as soon as it was propounded.

Two prominent Indian jurists, retired Supreme Court Justice P.B. Sawant and Retired Bombay High Court Justice B G Kolse-Patil, held a press conference the day after the arrests at which they denounced them as “an attack on freedom of speech” and identified themselves as the chief organisers of the Elgaar Parishad event.

Stressed Justice Kolse-Patil: “We have openly been saying this from the beginning. We organised Elgaar Parishad with the simple motive of spreading the message of fighting communal forces.”

Speaking to the Indian daily the Hindu, Justice Sawant stated: “All those who have been arrested and linked to the Elgar Parishad held on December 31, 2017, have nothing to do with it. They were never a part of the Elgaar. They were also not organisers of the Parishad. Justice Kolse Patil and I were mainly instrumental in organising the conference. We had no physical or telephonic contact with any of those arrested.”

The theme of the conference, as indicated by Kolse Patil, was the need to oppose the Hindu right—the BJP and the RSS-led nexus of Hindu communalist organizations—and their drive to transform India into a “Hindu nation.” Modi and his government are systematically installing Hindutva ideologues at the head of India’s educational and cultural institutions and have encouraged the growth of Hindu communalist vigilante organizations, including by appointing the leader of one such organization, Mahant Yogi Adityanath, as chief minister of the country’s most populous state. Modi has conspicuously turned a blind eye to the spate of lynchings targeting Muslims and Dalits that Hindu communalists have perpetrated in the name of cow protection.

Irked by the anti-Hindutva theme of the Elgaar Parishad, two Hindu-extremist leaders, identified by the police as Manohar ‘Sambhaji’ Bhide and Milind Ekbote, rallied a mob of about 1,500 and exhorted them to violently disrupt the January 1, 2018 Dalit-gathering at Bhima Koregaon.

Bhide, it need be noted, has direct ties not just to the BJP, but to Modi himself. At a 2014 election rally, Modi used the honorific “Guruji” (teacher) when referring to Bhide and said he was an inspiration to him.

When attacked, the Dalits assembled at Bhima Koregaon fought back. In the ensuing melee two people were killed and several others injured.

There is a striking contrast between the police’s treatment of the five left-wing activists and the Hindu extremist leaders Bhide and Ekbote. The former face trumped up terrorism charges and the threat of a fast-track trial and lengthy jail terms. Ekbote was released on bail after being briefly detained in March and faces far less severe criminal charges. Bhide has never been arrested.

Even the Pune police concede they are violent reactionaries, describing them as “habitual-offenders creating communal discord,” and that they were principally responsible for fomenting the violence at Bhima Koregaon.

The December 31/January 1 gathering celebrated the 200th anniversary of a battle at Bhima Koregaon where a small army of about 850 soldiers, comprised mostly of Dalit-Mohars serving the British East India Company, defeated a 28,000 strong army of the Brahmin Peshwa dynasty.

This “victory,” attributed to the bravery of the Dalit soldiers, by the brutal British colonial forces over an upper-caste king has been politically recast by middle-class activists, associated with the Ambedkarite movement, as a victory of Dalits against the indignities and oppression meted out to them by the upper castes. The anniversary of the battle at Bhima Koregaon has been transformed into a celebration of “Dalit-pride” and a means of promoting a caste-ist politics that is antithetical to class struggle and the fight for socialism; thus sowing enormous political confusion in the minds of Dalit workers and toilers, who along with poor Muslims, comprise a vastly disproportionate section of India’s most impoverished.

Last week’s arrests are the second time in three months that the police have used anti-terrorism legislation against pro-Dalit activists. On June 6, the police raided and arrested 5 other activists accusing them of similar “crimes.” Unlike those arrested on August 28 and now confined to house arrest, those arrested in June are still languishing in jail.

In its August 29 order, confining the five to house arrest and ordering a subsequent hearing on a motion to strike down their arrests, the Supreme Court expressed concern that the BJP’s authoritarian measures could rebound against the ruling elite as a whole. “Dissent,” declared the court, is the safety valve of democracy. If you don’t allow these safety valves, it will burst.”