Africa’s elite build VIP hospitals for themselves, leaving workers to die

Stephan McCoy

“We are the only continent that has its leaders seeking medical services outside the continent, outside our territory. We must be ashamed.”— Aaron Motsoaledi, South African Health Minister, 2017

The number of COVID-19 cases on the African continent has now exceeded 10,000, with more than 500 deaths reported. World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is warning of an “imminent surge” on the continent.

The response of the African ruling elite has been to cocoon itself in luxury, distancing even more surely from the impoverished masses it views with hostility and fear, entrenching the ever-deepening class divide.

Unable to jet off to the advanced countries to receive high-quality medical treatment as they did until recently, the African ruling elites are moving heaven and earth to provide themselves with the best possible health care—leaving millions to suffer in dilapidated hospitals and clinics.

According to Zim Live, two private hospitals in Zimbabwe—Rock Foundation Medical Centre in Harare’s low-density suburb of Mt. Pleasant and St. Anne’s Hospital—were requisitioned by Zanu–PF financier Kudakwashe Tagwirei through his company Sakunda Holding, to exclusively serve the country’s business and political elite.

The Zimbabwe Herald reports, “Sakunda Holdings is bringing into the country [100 ventilators], 10,000 rapid test kits, 10,000 disposal protective gowns, 20,000 medical masks, 10,000 disposable shoe covers, 100 infra-red thermometers, 5,000 respirator N95 masks and 2,000 hand sanitisers,” among other resources to stock these hospitals for Zimbabwe’s ultra-wealthy.

A letter sent to St. Anne’s Hospital by Health and Child Care Secretary Dr. Agnes Mahomva shows a ruling elite that will spare no expense and waste no time when its own health and well-being are at stake. Mahomva insisted that the hospitals become functional in “the shortest possible period of time.” Tagwirei reassured her that they have the “resources and funding to do the work and hence refurbishments” will not be at the cost of the hospital. Refurbishments alone will run to US $2.7 million.

This comes as Zimbabwe’s nurses and doctors in public hospitals went on strike to protest an extreme shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and a complete lack of necessary medical equipment to battle the coronavirus pandemic. The Associated Press already reported in 2019 that doctors were forced to perform “bare-handed surgeries.”

“Thorn Grove Hospital in Bulawayo, one of the two infectious diseases hospitals [owned by the local council and will serve the entire Southern region] that have been established to cater for coronavirus patients, is still ill-equipped to admit patients as government has not provided any funding,” according to New Zimbabwe.

Africa’s health systems, underfunded, understaffed and starved of resources by governments for years, now confront a rapidly spreading contagion that is projected to count its victims in the hundreds of thousands.

Foreign Affairs reports that in contrast to the United States, where there are 33 ICU beds to 100,000 citizens, “In sub-Saharan Africa, the situation is even more dire: Zambia has 0.6 ICU beds per 100,000; The Gambia has 0.4; and Uganda has 0.1.”

Rural doctors are facing even more difficult conditions. Dr. Lungi Hobe in South Africa told SABC News, “The rural population basically accounts for about 42 percent of healthcare services and we only have 15 percent of doctors looking after rural care and 20 percent of nurses. This poses a major concern for us in terms of human resources. It has always been a major issue but now with COVID-19, it’s going to be a particularly major issue.”

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the health system, already under strain after a measles outbreak that killed more than 6,000 children, is now threatened by the coronavirus pandemic.

The continent’s overcrowded slums, where many live without proper sanitation and, as Reuters recently noted, entire “families also live in just one room, making it impossible to maintain a physical distance of 2 metres (6 feet),” is another cause for the spread of the contagion. The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study showing that the virus can survive in air for three hours. This will no doubt facilitate the rapid and effective spread of the virus in these cramped conditions, especially given the lack of mass testing.

It should come as a shock to no one if the number of deaths from COVID-19 in Africa quickly accelerates, as dead bodies overwhelm the morgues and hospitals, and overrun the streets, homes and walkways of slums and working-class areas as has already happened in Ecuador.

The indifference and criminal negligence of the bourgeoisie to the possible exposure of millions of workers to the coronavirus is the expression of a ruling elite that will stop at nothing to extract ever more profit from the working class. Despite the possibility that the virus could kill millions without emergency action, the African ruling elite will not relinquish its billions.

Reports of the virus spreading amongst miners have already surfaced. Reuters reported that an Endeavour Mining employee in Burkina Faso had tested positive for coronavirus after returning from the UK.

Displaying mild symptoms, he was placed in quarantine; despite the identification of a case in the mine, the company reported that it had not “witnessed any impact to production or operations at any of its mines or exploration activities.”

Similarly, a worker at AngloGold Ashanti’s Obuasi mine in Ghana tested positive for the coronavirus. He was asked to self-isolate, and his contacts were traced. Miners, who often work together in close quarters, are particularly susceptible to picking up the virus and spreading it to their colleagues and loved ones.

Miners have found themselves in an especially difficult situation—with both governments and employers utilising the pandemic for their own purposes.

All Africa reports that 23,000 miners from Mozambique, with only the option to stay in the mining area, were forced out of South Africa after the announcement of a 21-day lockdown. Tenke Fungurume, a mine owned by China Molybdenum Co., used the lockdowns to enforce longer work hours and stepped-up exploitation, with about 2,000 people ordered to stay on site and avoid “contact with the outside world.”

Anger is mounting amongst truck drivers, as many find themselves hampered by the various lockdowns implemented all over the continent. According to Yahoo! Finance, cargo carriers who transport copper and cobalt from Congo’s mines to ports in South Africa and Tanzania can still cross into Zambia, but new sanitation measures have led to 25-mile backups at the border. At the Congo-Zambia border, more than 1,000 trucks carrying food, equipment, and supplies for mines had to queue last week after a partial lockdown came into effect.

The response of the ruling class to the unfolding crisis exposes the great divide that exists between working people and the bourgeoisie, nowhere more so than in Africa. For the bourgeoisie it is matter of securing its wealth, returning workers to the job under unsafe conditions and destroying whatever gains were made in social welfare. For working people, it is a matter of saving lives, closing all non-essential production and reorganising economic life based on social need and not private profit. For this to be done, a socialist leadership in the working class must be built, allying with the impoverished peasantry and in unity with the working class in the imperialist centres. This requires an intransigent struggle against the banks, corporations and world imperialism and all their agents on the continent.

US deal with Taliban breaks down while coronavirus spreads in Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

A “peace” deal concluded between Washington and the Taliban Islamist movement that was supposed to bring an end to US imperialism’s longest war is rapidly unraveling amid rising violence and the failure of the crisis-ridden Kabul regime to carry out a prisoner release agreement brokered by Washington.

The Taliban warned on Sunday that the agreement signed in the Qatari capital of Doha on February 29 is breaking down under the impact of what it charges are US violations in the form of airstrikes that have targeted its forces and killed civilians.

The latest reported airstrike took place early Sunday in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, leaving at least eight civilians killed and two others gravely wounded according to regional officials. The Taliban blamed the US and its NATO-led “coalition” for the attack.

In another incident on Sunday, the Taliban charged that an airstrike carried out against a funeral in southern Zabul province killed two civilians. The Afghan Ministry of Defense claimed that its forces had attacked Taliban fighters there after a clash at a checkpoint manned by security forces of the Kabul regime.

Warning that its deal with the US was reaching the breaking point, the Taliban stated that the attacks had created “an atmosphere of mistrust that will not only damage the agreements, but also force the mujaheddin to a similar response and will increase the level of fighting.”

A spokesman for the US military dismissed the Taliban charges as “baseless,” while insisting that American occupation forces “will defend our ANDSF [Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces] partners if attacked.”

Negotiations between the Taliban and the Kabul regime on a prisoner swap have also broken down, with the Islamist movement announcing that it was withdrawing its negotiating team from the Afghan capital after what it termed a series of “fruitless meetings.”

An agreement that Kabul would release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in return for the freeing of 1,000 soldiers, police and other pro-regime elements was part of the deal signed with the US in Doha. It was described as a “confidence-building measure” that was to precede “inter-Afghan” talks that had been scheduled for March 10.

The US-backed Kabul government headed by President Ashraf Ghani, however, said that it had not been party to this agreement. The Taliban refused to negotiate with it, regarding it as a US puppet, and Washington tacitly acknowledged this characterization by excluding it from the talks. The Kabul regime subsequently attempted to link the prisoner release to the imposition of new conditions upon the Taliban, including a halt to attacks on government security forces.

The Doha-based Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen said that the technical team sent to Kabul would not continue participating in “fruitless meetings,” charging that the release of the movement’s prisoners had been repeatedly “delayed under one pretext or another.”

Spokesmen for Ghani’s government have claimed that the Taliban has demanded the release of 15 of its senior commanders held prisoner by the regime. Matin Bek, a member of the government’s negotiating team, told reporters on Monday that the government refused the demand. “We don’t want them to go back to the battlefield and capture a whole province.”

The regime is loath to release the prisoners without extracting concessions from the Taliban. It sees them as one of its few bargaining chips under conditions in which the Taliban has gained control over more territory than at any time since the October 2001 US invasion that overthrew the regime headed by the Islamist movement. Today, over half the country is either controlled or contested by the Taliban.

The Kabul regime’s negotiations with the Taliban have been hamstrung in part by its continuing failure to resolve its own internal crisis over a disputed presidential election held last September, whose results were announced only in late February, proclaiming incumbent Ghani the victor.

His challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, who had been installed as “chief executive” as part of a US-brokered deal following the last disputed election, charged that the results were the result of fraud and claimed that he was the legitimate president. Both he and Ghani held simultaneous inauguration ceremonies last month. Abdullah declared all actions by Ghani illegitimate and went so far as to appoint one of his loyalists as governor of Sar-e Pol province in north-central Afghanistan.

On March 23, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an unscheduled trip to Afghanistan, where he announced that Washington was cutting off $1 billion in aid to the Kabul regime this year and would do the same in 2021 if the two rivals did not reach an accommodation. According to a report by NBC this week, he also threatened that the US would carry out a complete withdrawal of all of its troops from the country.

Under the agreement signed in Doha, the number of US troops in Afghanistan was supposed to be cut from the present deployment of 13,000 to 8,600 by July, with a complete withdrawal within 14 months. In return, the Taliban pledged to deny the use of Afghan soil by Al Qaeda or any other group that poses a threat to the “security interests” of the US and its allies.

The threat of renewed fighting, government paralysis and the slashing of US aid—with foreign aid accounting for 40 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP—comes amid a mounting threat that the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic will exact a devastating toll on the country’s impoverished population.

After more than 18 years of US war and occupation, the country’s health care system is devastated, while over 40 percent of its 38.4 million people live below the poverty line, without access to clean water or sewerage systems and living in crowded communal dwellings. There are more than 1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan as a result of the war, while millions more have fled into exile.

The threat that the coronavirus will sweep the country is based not only on these social conditions, but also on the impact of hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrant workers returning from Iran, having lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus outbreak and the impact of tightening US sanctions. Iran has one of the highest rates of infection in the world, with over 62,000 confirmed cases and nearly 4,000 deaths. Both figures are believed to be extreme underestimates.

Afghanistan has reported only 423 cases and 14 deaths thus far, but with the near total absence of testing and the lack of medical care for much of the population, these figures are a fraction of the real toll.

In the western province of Herat, on the border with Iran, officials have reported that 41 health care workers from one regional hospital have tested positive with coronavirus. Doctors and nurses there say that they lack personal protection equipment. On Monday, there was the first case of a doctor dying from the disease at a private hospital in Kabul.

More than 200,000 Afghans have poured back across the border from Iran since the beginning of the year. At the height of this exodus last month, 15,000 were crossing a day. None of them were checked for symptoms or subjected to quarantines, and they have scattered throughout the country, doubtless many carrying the virus with them.

The path for the coronavirus to ravage Afghanistan has been paved by a US war of aggression that has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of Afghans and laid waste to the entire country, while claiming the lives of nearly 2,400 US troops.

While the estimated cost of this war is over one trillion dollars, Washington has offered a miserable $15 million in aid to Afghanistan to fight the pandemic. Imperialist foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. Just as the ruling class is shoveling trillions of dollars into Wall Street, the banks and corporations while failing to provided resources to save the lives of the sick or protect those of health care workers at home, so it is prepared to spend a trillion dollars on war in Afghanistan, while offering a pittance to stem the tide of the pandemic sweeping over the war-torn and impoverished country.

Africa’s refugees and internally displaced: The weakest link in the human chain

Jean Shaoul

As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

The coronavirus pandemic’s death toll has until now largely been confined to the advanced industrialized countries, whose health care systems have nevertheless proved unable to cope. But as the pandemic spreads to Africa, Asia and Latin America, the coronavirus will hit the world’s most vulnerable, including refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people (IDPs) even harder.

Africa’s public health provisions are totally inadequate, with little in the way of emergency care facilities to save lives; the Central African Republic has just three ventilators for its 5 million citizens. Endemic poverty and densely packed cities teeming with slums make social distancing and self-isolation restrictions well-nigh impossible. The potential for a continent-wide humanitarian catastrophe is clear.

But far less has been said about Africa’s refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs), who constitute more than a quarter of the world’s 71 million forcibly displaced people. This is the highest number since World War II, the result of terrible armed conflicts, persecution and natural disasters. Their numbers—in the Sahel, East Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region—continue to increase due to ongoing conflicts that rarely get mentioned in the media and the devastation caused by locust swarms.

In the Sahel, populations and conflicts move freely across borders arbitrarily drawn up by the former colonial powers, meaning the disease will almost certainly spread to Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Algeria, Niger, northern Nigeria, parts of Cameroon and Central African Republic, Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea, and the extreme north of Ethiopia—nearly all of which are home to IDPs.

Decades of wars have ravaged Somalia, giving rise to more than 870,000 refugees in the Horn of Africa and Yemen and more than 2.6 million IDPs within the country itself. Much of the country is under the control of al-Shabaab, a militant Islamic group affiliated with Al Qaeda, limiting access by the state and aid agencies to those in need. With no COVID-19 test kits, swabs must be sent to South Africa for analysis.

There are ongoing conflicts in northeast Nigeria, where over 2 million people are internally displaced. In neighbouring Cameroon, fierce conflicts between the government and separatist fighters in the north and west have forced nearly a million to flee their homes.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has over 5 million displaced persons, by far the largest number in the region, thanks to civil wars and armed clashes that have ravaged the resource-rich country for more than two decades. The DRC now faces the coronavirus pandemic just as it is marking the end of the two-year-long Ebola outbreak.

Oil-rich South Sudan, which has suffered years of civil wars since declaring independence from Sudan in 2011, has about 1.6 million IDPs, some living in densely packed tent camps inside UN peacekeeping bases, with a further 2.2 million refugees in neighbouring countries. More than half the country’s population faces acute food insecurity, while the leading causes of death are treatable diseases and conditions like malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhoea.

Countries bordering on conflicts and wars host huge numbers of refugees, with limited resources. Uganda has over 1.6 million refugees, three quarters of them from South Sudan. Kenya hosts 500,000 refugees, making it the tenth largest refugee-hosting country in the world and the fourth largest in Africa, following Uganda, Ethiopia and DRC. Most of its refugees are from Somalia. Others have fled conflicts in South Sudan, Ethiopia, DRC and Sudan. Dadaab, near Kenya’s eastern border with Somalia, with a population of nearly 218,000 refugees and asylum seekers, is the third largest refugee settlement in the world.

This toll of suffering has in the final analysis been provoked, fuelled and paid for by the imperialist powers in pursuit of cheap and untrammeled access to raw materials and markets in the interests of the corporations they represent. The priority of the local oligarchies is to remain competitive for foreign investments, while at the same time continuing debt payments to the financial vultures and expanding their armed forces.

With no official count of coronavirus cases among displaced populations—impossible without testing--cases have been reported in places with humanitarian emergencies in Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Venezuela, Somalia and Burkina Faso.

Many refugees and IDPs live in cramped conditions in camps, informal settlements or population-dense shanty towns, sharing the same bathroom, cooking and bathing facilities—if they have access at all. Some are forced to share the same tent, while in some countries, asylum seekers and irregular migrants are put in detention, in appalling conditions, making the rapid spread of the virus inevitable.

Refugee camps, often referred to as “humanitarian silos,” are typically located in remote, arid and dangerous areas and almost always have strict prohibitions on socio-economic activity. Longer-term economic needs go unaddressed, exacerbating helplessness and dependency on aid agencies. To cite one example, many of the 350,000 Somali refugees in Kenya’s Dadaab camps have been there since the early 1990s—and none have the right to work.

Taken together, overcrowding, limited access to WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) facilities and even less access to basic health care make refugee camps particularly susceptible to the pandemic. Poverty is staggering, access to food limited. Refugees buy Paracetamol, antibiotics and other anti-inflammatory medications by the pill rather than the packet, if they are able to buy them at all. Most are unable to afford sterilizers, gloves and masks, even if they were available.

Further compounding the plight of refugees, the aid organisations are struggling to get relief to people in need in conflict zones, such as Somalia, Mali and Burkino Faso, because local militias block access or target doctors and medical facilities. Elsewhere, they are hampered by flight bans and travel restrictions, resulting in a shortage of food, goods and the personnel to tackle the crisis.

Travel restrictions are affecting arrangements to resettle refugees. Last month, the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced the temporary suspension of travel for refugees approved for resettlement, while states have called a halt to new arrivals. This is a disaster for those who have had their travel cancelled, sold most of their possessions and given notice to their employers (if permitted to work) and landlords to vacate their homes.

As host countries themselves become embroiled in conflict, displaced people will once again be on the move. In Burkina Faso, where violence has forced more than 700,000 people to flee their homes over the past year and compelled more than 135 health centres to close, more than 1.6 million people living in conflict-affected areas of the country have little or no access to medical care. Malian refugees, who had sought refuge in Burkino Faso, are fleeing back to Mali despite the ongoing violence and with no assurance of safety, exacerbating the risk of the virus spreading. This in turn may lead the authorities or local people to use force to stop them, creating the potential for escalating violence.

COVID-19 is a truly global crisis. Without controlling the spread of the virus and treating its victims among the world’s most vulnerable peoples, the human toll will grow exponentially. The disease will become embedded in the host nations, repeatedly spreading across the world through migration, travel and human movement, causing second- and even third-wave pandemics.

US automakers planning return to work before coronavirus danger subsides

Tom Hall & Jessica Goldstein

On Monday, Fiat Chrysler announced it would push back the restart date for its North American production facilities by three weeks, from April 14 to May 4. Ford indicated the same day that it would likely no longer restart in April as currently planned. General Motors has never officially announced a set timetable to reopen its plants, declaring that it would instead evaluate the situation on a weekly basis.

Also, this week, Nissan, Honda and BMW, which operate assembly plants throughout the American southern states, announced they would place workers on unpaid furloughs for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. While they will continue to receive health insurance, workers will have to apply for unemployment in order to replace their lost income.

Many of the industrial states where the American auto industry is concentrated will likely remain under lockdown orders throughout the month of April. Michigan, the center of the US auto industry, is currently under lockdown through April 13, although this will likely be extended. The Michigan state legislature voted yesterday to extend governor Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers through April 30. Michigan has the third-highest number of cases in the country, at more than 17,000.

The ultimate decision over when to reopen the plants, however, has been left to the discretion of the auto companies, whose operations are considered “critical national infrastructure” under federal Department of Homeland Security guidelines.

The twin announcements do not come out of an abundance of caution for autoworkers’ safety. All three Detroit automakers, with the collaboration of the United Auto Workers, used lies and threats to keep workers on the job until a wave of wildcat strikes and job actions in mid-March forced them to shutter North American production. Rather, the automakers are biding their time, carefully but assiduously planning out a return to work before the pandemic danger subsides.

From the point of view of Wall Street, the potential loss of billions in revenue during a prolonged shutdown is totally unacceptable. Even before the pandemic, the auto companies were under immense pressure from their investors to improve their profit margins, under conditions of declining sales worldwide, through “restructuring,” including mass layoffs and plant closures.

While the stock markets have rallied on the basis of the injection of trillions in cash by the world’s central banks and governments, this money must ultimately be paid out through the increased exploitation of the working class. Following the Wall Street bailout in 2008, the Obama administration carried out a forced restructuring of the auto industry in 2009, which slashed pay for new hires by half, gutted retiree health benefits and vastly expanded temporary labor.

President Trump is escalating his demands for a return to work as soon possible, repeating the mantra taken up by much of the political establishment and corporate media that the “cure cannot be worse than the disease.”

On April 2, the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), a prominent industry think tank, hosted a webinar titled, “Arsenal of Health: How automakers and suppliers are stepping up to support the medical response to the COVID-19 crisis.” In spite of the title, the central preoccupation of the assembled industry analysts and executives was restarting production as soon as possible. CAR is holding another webinar this afternoon, more bluntly titled “The Playbook for Restarting Production.”

The webinar was held shortly before the official death toll among US autoworkers rose to 17, including 11 Fiat Chrysler workers and 6 Ford workers. General Motors has not announced any death totals, although 26 people have already died in Flint and the surrounding Genesee County, where much of its production is still located.

The challenge, auto parts lobbyist Julie Fream, a former vice president for Visteon, told the webinar’s participants, is to balance “employee safety” with the “need of these companies from a financial perspective to get moving.” Fream explained that her lobby group, the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, was heavily involved in crafting the language of the massive bailout passed by Congress last month, ensuring in particular that mid-sized auto suppliers received a cut of the $2 trillion on offer.

Fream admitted that the auto industry’s conversion of a small fraction of its industrial capacity to producing medical equipment such as ventilators and face shields is primarily a “feel good” measure, both for public consumption, and to test out methods the companies need to convince workers to return to work, despite the continued danger. Ford and GM, working with the United Auto Workers union, have recruited a few hundred workers for these projects in Michigan and Indiana.

“When you talk about,” Fream said, “making a product for the medical device companies or [personal protective equipment], especially for suppliers it is a relatively small portion of what they do. There is a really feel good factor about this, but there is also a pulling together of the workforce behind this, and the team supporting this. Many suppliers have looked for volunteer workers at this time and done some unique things to manage the cost basis.”

“This is a North American issue,” CAR president Carla Bailo added. “Returning back to work requires that the US, Canada and Mexico all be in sync. It can’t be a hodgepodge because our sourcing and supply chains are so intermingled together.”

Fream replied, “In looking at that we have to understand what Mexico is saying about businesses coming back on-line so we can define how the rest of the rest of the North American region comes back on-line. We need to work together so we can have a strong, rapid-as-possible and safe start.”

While the US automakers would no doubt like to use Mexican workers as their guinea pigs to restart production throughout the continent, opposition is already spreading among Mexican auto parts workers. Wildcat strikes have broken out among thousands of auto parts workers in the border city of Matamaoros, who have been kept on the job under cover of the government’s malleable definition of “essential businesses.” As with the massive strike last year by many of the same Matamoros workers, waged both against the companies and the CTM union, this new wave of strikes has been completely blacked out in the English language press, with the exception of the World Socialist Web Site .

Much of the rest of the discussion in the webinar centered on social distancing and other measures which the companies could enact, including plexiglass dividers, touchless doors and water fountains. But these are only stopgaps which will, at best, slow but not stop the spread of the virus. By contrast, the city of Wuhan, China’s “Motor City” and the initial epicenter of the pandemic, is only now ending its lockdown after 76 days, after the number of new cases across the entire country has dropped to zero.

Before last month’s wildcats, the auto executives and the UAW made similar promises about sanitizing plants and protecting workers. In reality, workers were forced to stay on the job in filthy conditions, without even access to masks, gloves, sanitizers or even running water in some cases.

The real measures being planned were spelled out in a 51-page “Safe Work Playbook,” published by the parts supplier Lear and intended as advice for the entire industry. Pages 12 and 13 argue that masks are unnecessary for all but a “very limited number” of personnel and advises against using gloves at all. “The COVID-19 virus does not harm your hands,” the document stupidly declares, and people who wear gloves “are less inclined to wash their hands.” Proper removal of gloves would also require training, according to the document, which the company does not want to provide.

The UAW is working overtime to reassure workers that the companies are taking workers’ safety seriously. In a recent notice sent to workers at Fiat Chrysler’s Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit, one of the plants where autoworkers downed their tools last month, UAW Local 7 president Gary Hill acknowledged three confirmed COVID-19 cases among plant workers. The letter then praised the guidelines being prepared by FCA and declared that the plant had been thoroughly cleaned.

Among autoworkers, there is widespread opposition to a premature return to work and the sacrifice of workers’ lives to build unessential vehicles and boost the profits of the corporations. To protect their own safety and to prevent the spread of the virus in their communities, autoworkers should form rank-and-file committees, independent of the corrupt UAW, to organize workers to prevent any premature return to work.

At the same time, autoworkers should fight for an end to all inessential production and the conversion of the auto and other industries into production for life-saving equipment and protective gear for health care workers. Rank-and-file committees must oversee safety conditions in these plants in conjunction with health care professionals.

The safety of workers is incompatible with the relentless drive for corporate profit. That is why the movement to protect workers lives, which is spreading throughout every industry and across countries, must be guided by a socialist perspective, including the transformation of the auto industry into a public utility, collectively owned and democratically controlled by workers themselves.

World Health Organization warns against premature ending of social distancing measures

Bryan Dyne

As countries around the world openly discuss how to send workers back to plants, warehouses and offices—even as the coronavirus pandemic rages on—the World Health Organization has warned that ending social distancing measures prematurely and without sufficient preparation can rapidly accelerate the ongoing public health crisis.

During Monday’s WHO press conference, Executive Director Dr. Michael Ryan stressed “it would be very inadvisable to just lift lockdown if the number of cases coming through the hospital is already at a level where your occupancy of beds is nearly at a hundred percent. You need to be in a position where you now have free beds in your system so that you’re managing and coping with your case load.”

He added, “You’ll see in somewhere like Korea, 2–6 percent of their samples are testing positive. Last week in New York 37 percent of tested samples were positive.” That the rate of positive cases is so high indicates a large number of undetected people infected with the coronavirus.

A medical worker steps over bodies as they search a refrigerated trailer while wearing personal protective equipment due to COVID-19 concerns at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, Friday, April 3, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

These themes were further developed in a briefing on the situation in Europe Tuesday, when WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier made clear: “One of the most important parts is not to let go of the measures too early in order not to have a fall back again.”

The warnings of the WHO come as the number of deaths worldwide approaches 82,000 and the number of officially confirmed cases bursts past 1.4 million. The United States alone accounts for nearly 400,000 of the cases and almost 13,000 deaths, with a record 1,970 dead from the virus in the past 24 hours.

While Ryan and Lindmeier did not name names, they are no doubt referencing recent press conferences given by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in which he stated, “We are going to have to restart the economy.” President Donald Trump stated, along the same lines, “We want to get [the economy] opened soon,” justifying this by asserting that the “signs are that our strategy is totally working” and that “maybe we’re getting to the very top of the curve.”

The line being put forward by Trump, Cuomo and the political establishment is that mitigation measures have proven successful and as the number of new cases declines the country should begin thinking about sending workers back to the factories, schools, warehouses and offices en masse sometime sooner rather than later. It is not the massive loss of life that ultimately bothers Trump and the financial oligarchs, but that “the cure should not be worse than the disease [for the financial markets].” Workers must be sent back to work in order for corporations to keep making billions off their labor.

Such a back-to-work order would be disastrous for the working class. First, Trump’s comments dismiss situations like that in Michigan, where the number of cases and deaths is still clearly trending upward. Second, as long as there are any new cases, the pandemic can flare up again, potentially worse than before, if people are forced to work in close proximity while the virus is still active. Historical data on pandemics is very clear that lockdowns should not be ended as the number of new cases is declining, or even when new cases reach zero, but when there have been no new cases for a few weeks or even a month.

As stated by the WHO’s Dr. Ryan, “To chart a path out, you have to build strong public health capacity to take over from the lockdown. In other words, the lockdown is pushing the disease down by putting people back in their homes and separating communities. But once you raise the lockdown you have to have an alternative method to suppress the infection. The way to do that is active case finding, testing, isolation of cases, tracking of contacts, quarantine of contacts, and strong community education.”

Such measures have yet to be placed into action within the US, notwithstanding Trump’s boasts that the US has done the most testing in the world. This has only been true for the past few weeks, before which the number of tests conducted was criminally low, allowing the coronavirus to spread in the population for weeks. And testing is still not available for the population as a whole, or for health care workers on the front line, but remains reserved only for those who are hospitalized with sufficient symptoms, as defined by changing criteria. The implication is that the true extent of the virus is still unknown and pursuing a relaxation of mitigation efforts will be disastrous for the public at large.

It should also be noted that the number of detected cases is related to the amount of testing done. The number of confirmed new cases in New York decreased in previous days as did the number of tests performed by the state. Testing only symptomatic cases indicates that their contacts and suspected individuals are still uncounted. This implies that the scope of the outbreak is more enormous than the numbers suggest.

Alongside laying the ground work to force workers back to work, Trump has also begun to heavily criticize the World Health Organization for its response to the pandemic in order to undermine its stark although understated objections to Trump’s designs. In a tweet Tuesday, he ranted, “The WHO really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”

He continued these themes at yesterday’s press conference, claiming, “They called it wrong. They could have called it months earlier. They would have known. They should’ve known and they probably did know. So, we’ll be looking into them very carefully. And we’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO.”

This was picked up in major news publications, including the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper, in an article published by its editorial board on Sunday headlined “WHO’s bows to Beijing have harmed the global response to the pandemic,” railed that the agency’s “misinformation” allowed the virus to “spread to several countries” because of its “canoodling with Beijing.” It at the same time gushed about Trump’s travel ban against China as “slowing the spread of the virus,” despite the fact that the US has more than a quarter of the world’s coronavirus cases as a result of the administration’s inaction in January, February and the first part of March.

This is not the first time the Rupert Murdoch-owned publication has attacked the WHO for its supposedly Chinese-centric focus. As early as February 13, the newspaper was writing, “WHO bowed to Chinese pressure” in not declaring a public emergency early in January. In fact, WHO did declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 29, before the US assembled its coronavirus task force and well before Trump declared a national emergency. It should be mentioned that Trump had been made aware of the potential consequences for the US by Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s high-ranking assistants, and Alex Azar, head of Health and Human Services, before the WHO's declaration.

Of course, neither Trump, the editors of the Wall Street Journal nor any of the big banks they serve are ultimately concerned about the medical response of the WHO. They see a mortal threat in that “China inevitably gains more international clout as its economy grows.” This is especially true as China’s economy begins to reopen after having been closed since January, while that of the US remains essentially in lockdown.

These are the calculations made by the American ruling elite. They see China emerging from the pandemic in a stronger geopolitical position, which cannot be tolerated. There is no thought given to the tens of thousands that have already died, the hundreds of thousands of infected and the hundreds of millions who face the loss of their livelihoods as a result of this pandemic. They do not consider the ramifications of their actions for the working class by sending them back to face a resurgence of the infection.

The working class must make its own calculations, based on the preservation of human life and the compensation of all those who cannot yet safely return to work. This must be based on the broadest struggle against the control by the capitalist class over all aspects of economic life in the drive for private profit. The resources that have been placed at the disposal of the banks and major corporations must be redirected towards ending this pandemic and establishing a socialist economy based on the interests of humanity on a global scale.

Audi Environmental Foundation Scholarship to attend One Young World Summit 2020 in Munich, Germany

Application Deadline: 30th April 2020 at 24:00GMT

Eligible Countries: Any

To be taken at (country): Munich, Germany

About the Award: Founded by AUDI AG in 2009, The Audi Environmental Foundation works to promote sustainable behavior and technologies that benefit both the environment and society.
Scarce resources, environmental destruction, climate change and population growth – these are just a few aspects that influence society, politics and business. The Foundation recognises that developing sound solutions to these challenges calls for collaboration with a broad network of partners, especially young people and the leaders among them.
Are you eager to join an international discussion of issues like sustainability and the environment? Would you like to build an international network and gain insight into how other people think? Then apply now as an Audi Scholar for the One Young World Summit 2020!
In addition to participating in the One Young World Summit, Audi Scholars will join an exclusive pre-event where they will connect with fellow innovators from the programme as well as experts from the Audi Environmental Foundation. 

Type: Conference

Eligibility: If you are aged between 18 and 30 years, work for or are involved with a non-governmental organisation, social enterprise, community based organisation, or you are an individual making an impact on environmental topics, then this scholarship is for you. 

Selection Criteria: 

• Most delegates are between the age of 18 and 30. The One Young World team will consider applications from those who are older than 30, pending demonstration of appropriate personal impact, initiative, and willingness to engage. We are not able to accept applications from those who will be aged under 18 at the time of the Summit.
• Candidates must demonstrate:
  • A passion for environment issues
  • Impact and capacity for innovation in this field
  • Leadership

Number of Awards: 16

Value of Award:

• Delegate access to the One Young World Summit 2020 in Munich which takes place from 14 – 17 October.
• Hotel accomodation in Munich on a shared basis between 13 and 17 October, 2020.
• Participation in an exclusive pre-Summit event held in in Munich by Audi AG and Audi Environmental Foundation on 14 October.
• Catering which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner on the nights of 14, 15, 16 and 17 October
• Ground transport between Summit venues
• Return air or rail travel for scholars living outside of Germany 

Duration of Award: 14 – 17th October 2020

How to Apply: Apply

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit Award Webpage for Details

US hospitals raise prices, cuts costs and lay off staff in midst of COVID-19 crisis

Warren Duzak & Douglas Lyons

In yet another example of the irrational state of the for-profit US health care system, many hospitals across the country are responding to the COVID-19 crisis—not by increasing services and bringing on more staff—but by raising rates for patients on procedures ranging from surgery to childbirth in an effort to offset lost revenue due to an onslaught of COVID-19 patients.

Along with banning temporarily elective procedures, hospitals have been furloughing skilled, essential staff, including:

* Trinity Health, based in Livonia, Michigan, laid off 2,500 employees.

* Boston Medical Center eliminated 700 staff members or 10 percent of its workforce.

* Bon Secours Mercy Health, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, cut 700 jobs and instituted a wage freeze of all nonclinical workers.

* Essentia Health in Minnesota cut 500 nonclinical staff.

* Connecticut Children’s Medical Center eliminated 400 workers.

* Kansas-based Clay County Medical Center cut 25 percent of its workforce.

Maryland hospitals get go-ahead to raise rates

As of Monday, confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease in the state of Maryland numbered 4,045, up 436 cases from Sunday, with a death count of 91. Seventeen cases have now been confirmed in the Maryland prison system, ranging from inmates, to contractual workers and correctional officers. The state has a confirmed COVID-19 case in every county.

On Saturday evening, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinating official of the White House coronavirus task force, told news reporters that the Washington, DC region, which includes significant portions of the state of Maryland, could become a “hot spot” for infections as the number of cases increase.

In addition to expanded medical staff and affordable services for vast numbers of the afflicted, health centers will need extra beds, ventilators, masks, intensive care units and personal protective equipment (PPE) as more and more people report positive diagnoses of COVID-19.

However, funds to purchase necessary health equipment and increase operating capacity will come by raising the already extortionist rates for procedures and medicine, while telling those individuals who want “elective” care they will have to wait, potentially causing a life-threatening situation.

“Hospitals in Maryland will be allowed to temporarily raise rates charged to all patients as a means of funding emergency and ongoing care for patients during the coronavirus pandemic,” the Baltimore Sun reported last week.

Some regulatory and licensing barriers have been removed by other state agencies to add much needed beds at hospitals, with plans being announced by Mercy Medical Center and Northwest Hospital, in Baltimore and Randallstown, respectively. State officials are also scrambling to be approved for federal funding, according to Maryland health secretary Robert Neall.

Hospital prices are regulated in the state of Maryland by the Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC), which was created in 1971 for rate regulation to ensure profitability and thus stability. It oversees 47 acute general hospitals, three specialty and three private psychiatric hospitals, with regulated revenue above $16 billion annually.

On Monday, March 30, Maryland belatedly issued a shelter-in-place order. Republican Governor Larry Hogan said that in the coming weeks scenes in the state and region could be identical to those in New York City, the current epicenter in the US and globally, in which doctors and nurses lack even the most basic supplies to keep themselves safe and bodies of loved ones have been laid on the streets waiting to be loaded into refrigerated trucks.

Following Hogan’s order, the Maryland National Guard hastily erected a 250-bed field hospital in the Baltimore Convention Center to provide emergency basic care for coronavirus cases. The state still is unable to test everybody who has symptoms or those in close contact with an individual who has tested positive, as tests are limited to those who have a referral from a doctor.

Before the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic, Baltimore, the largest city in the state, was already experiencing a public health crisis, which will only be exacerbated under current conditions. The city has never recovered from deindustrialization and the Great Recession. Over 300 Baltimorians have been victims of homicide for each of five consecutive years.

Lead contamination has barred many public school students from drinking fountain or tap water. Mold, asbestos and bed bugs infest public housing, while many buildings and complexes are abandoned in almost every neighborhood and are on the verge of collapsing. According to Baltimore mayor Bernard C. Young, a Democrat, the city will end the fiscal year with a $42.3 million deficit.

Nashville’s HCA Healthcare puts some workers on “pandemic pay”

Nashville-based HCA Healthcare Inc. announced plans Tuesday to cut costs in an effort to avoid layoffs.

Nashville’s public radio station WPLN reported: “Over the past few weeks, we have experienced significant drops in patient volume as a result of COVID-19,” CEO Sam Hazen wrote in a letter to employees.” “Many of our outpatient facilities, clinics and departments have closed. These circumstances have created situations where we do not have enough patients to support our workforce.”

Last week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee banned elective surgeries.

“HCA is not laying off workers, but those who can’t be put in a new role within the company will be eligible for ‘pandemic pay,’ which gives them 70 percent of their base salary through mid-May, when the hospital chain expects to restart elective procedures,” the Nashville Business Journal reported.

NBJ added: “To pitch in, senior leaders are taking a 30 percent pay cut until the pandemic passes. Directors have also given up their compensation for the year. And Hazen, who made nearly $27 million last year, said he plans to donate all of his compensation for the next two months to the company’s charitable fund that supports HCA employees.”

What does that mean? What do the glowing reports of “sacrifice” by “senior leaders” mean?

“Senior leaders” are making seven figures in total compensation a year. Even with a 30 percent pay cut they would be left as multimillionaires.

Based on a salary of $27 million reported for last year by the NBJ, Hazen was making roughly $2.25 million a month, $560,000 a week, or $11,000 a day in a five-day week, at $1,400 an hour during a 40-hour week. His two-month pay cut of $4.5 million will leave him only about $22.5 million to live on.

Pity the poor rich.

It is worth noting that last year the NBJ pegged Hazen’s 2018 starting salary at $21.4 million after he took over from the HCA’s previous CEO Milton Johnson. That would suggest a $5.5 million pay raise in two short years. The median income for HCA employees then was almost $56,000 a year, meaning one of HCA’s average workers would have to work almost 100 years just to equal the raise Hazen received in two years!

The ratio of CEOs’ compensation to median worker pay for Nashville’s major employers reported HCA’s was fourth highest, at 383 to 1. HCA is the country’s largest hospital company and Nashville’s largest publicly traded company. Last year it managed 185 hospitals and 119 freestanding surgery centers in the US and the UK.

What does the promise of “pandemic” pay mean for workers who, despite what the company says, are effectively laid off? They will receive 70 percent of their “base salary” through the middle of May. No promise of a return to work at full pay, only that HCA expects to begin “elective procedures” again. That is only about $39,000 in a city that requires twice that much to live.

HCA’s gesture to its workers is particularly obscene if one knows a little history of the healthcare giant and its crimes and gluttony at the public tax spigot.

After receiving tens of millions of dollars from Nashville in tax breaks, in 2003 the corporation paid “over $2 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties for systematically defrauding federal health care programs,” according to Justice.gov. Fortune Magazine referred to the investigation as the longest and costliest investigation for health care fraud in US history.

In 2018, when Nashville teachers were battling for a tiny raise and basic classroom necessities, the WSWS reported this local news story:

“Among the incentives Metro provided HCA to move three of its subsidiaries into a headquarters building downtown was $1 million for the company to buy office furniture,” CBS affiliate NewsChannel 5 reported recently. “But less was said about the $66 million incentive package Metro gave HCA to build the headquarters for three of its subsidiary companies.”

The furniture the city paid for with money that could have gone to the schools was a “premium wood finishes” table for $8,321.25, a “Guitar Pick Table” (Nashville is also known as “Music City”) for $4,190.18 and, for the executive lounge, a “Tuxedo Sofa” for $6,540.45.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper said because of COVID-19 and last month’s tornado there will be a huge increase in the city’s property tax and cuts in social services It will be Nashville’s poor and working class who will pay to save the rich in the “It” city.

As Peru escalates militarization, COVID-19 spreads to remote rural areas

Cesar Uco

As the government of Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra increases military measures to enforce a nationwide shutdown, the COVID-19 virus continues to spread exponentially, including into remote rural areas of the country, inhabited by the poorest people of Andean or Amazonian origin, who have low immune defenses.

As of last week, the government tightened a lockdown limiting movement in the street to only when absolutely necessary, for example to food markets and pharmacies. A nationwide night-time curfew has also been lengthened to between the hours of 4 pm and 5 am and (before it began at 6 pm). The new provision also allows men to be in the streets only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and women on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. On Sunday no one can leave their homes and public transport is suspended.

Police carry out an arrest in Lima

The number of military personnel protecting the main roads in major cities has doubled. The military and police are rigorously imposing the isolation rules, asking for identification and proof of where one is going. Against those not in compliance, the military acts to “subdue” and handcuff individuals, sending them to the nearest police station.

The police have effectively been granted a license to kill with implementation of a new act, known as the Judicial Protection Law, that exempts the police from either arrest or prosecution over the use of their weapons to harm or kill people during an emergency.

The Vizcarra government is responding to the demands of the national bourgeoisie, which fears popular upheavals. With thousands of citizens having been arrested, there have been at least three prison riots by inmates complaining over the lack of medical care.

Placing profits before the lives and health of Peru’s population, Alonso Segura, former minister of Economy and Finance, and a close ally of Washington, has urged the government to establish criteria to resume companies’ operations.

Playing Russian roulette with workers’ lives, Segura states that “it can take into account some variables such as determining the risk of the spread of the virus from a sector or activity, the mitigation capacity and economic impact that would arise from activating or maintaining the suspension of operations for more time.”

Three weeks after the detection of the first coronavirus case in Peru, the official number of cases has risen to 2,561, with 92 deaths. It was reported on Monday that three more people had died in the Hospital Arzobispo Loayza for lack of ventilators.

The known cases of infection continue to be concentrated in the most populated cities, mainly Lima (with 10 million inhabitants, comprising a third of the national population), Piura and Iquitos, the main city on the banks of the Amazon River.

In the first 10 days of the outbreak in Peru the Andean departments—where the large export mining operations are concentrated—Huancavelica, Ayacucho, Apurímac, Puno, Moquegua and Tacna in the south and Cajamarca in the far north of the country, did not record a single case.

Today, however, the spread of COVID-19 has been detected in the region known as the “mining corridor” in the southern Andes, where transnationals have invested billions of dollars. As of last weekend, the number reported infected in these regions were: one in Huancavelica, two in Ayacucho, two, one in Apurímac, one in Puno, one in Moquegua, nine in Tacna and six in Cajamarca.

Additionally, in the second most populated city, and the commercial and industrial center of the southern Andes, Arequipa (1 million inhabitants), the number of known cases multiplied from seven to 51 in just 10 days.

COVID-19 poses a particular threat to the indigenous peoples of these regions.

The online PERU Support Group pointed out: “Some indigenous peoples live in voluntary isolation in remote areas where even a common cold or influenza can prove fatal ... For those in variable contact with other communities and urban areas, health levels and immune systems are generally low because of poor nutrition levels, the high incidence of malaria and dengue, limited access to potable drinking water and adequate sewerage facilities, high levels of contamination from gold mining and oil, exploitation and the lack of access to health services. Over 60 percent of communities lack a health post and many communities are from six to eight hours or up to three days distance by river from the nearest hospital.”

The Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin demanded that the region’s governments carry out an information and prevention campaign be launched in native languages.

It demanded that the governments of the region and the world “intensify the surveillance and protection of territories invaded by oil tankers, miners, loggers and people from outside the territories.”

In Peru, as elsewhere in Latin American, clinics and hospitals are unable to take more patients infected with COVID-19. They lack beds, respirators, gloves and masks. El Comercio reported Monday that “textile companies will deliver 252,000 masks and 25,200 aprons to Minsa (Ministry of Health) personnel next week,” but this is far short of what is needed. Masks are unavailable to the general population as pharmacies have run out of stock.

The country’s health care system has been steadily eroded by a series of major budget cuts implemented in accordance with the “free market” model imposed by the IMF since the consolidation of power by the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in the early 1990s. After 30 years, the result has been a huge growth of social inequality.

The coronavirus outbreak and the national lockdown has also led to a collapse in blood supplies, with Minsa reporting that the stock of simple platelets of the Hemotherapy Centers and Blood Banks type II decreased by 73.3 percent and that of globular packages, by 23.8 percent between March 16 and 25.

The most affected are children and adults with leukemia. “They need daily blood and platelets. They can’t stop their treatments or stop chemotherapy because the disease keeps progressing,” warns Milagros Ramirez Daniel, head of INEN’s Blood Bank.

Arturo Sagástegui, head of the blood bank at the Rebagliati Hospital says that the situation is the same in all public hospitals—managed by EsSalud—and “is affecting not only leukemia patients, but those with chronic diseases, lymphomas and even those who arrive by emergency and require a blood transfusion.”

Field hospitals are being set up in many of the country’s football stadiums to handle the overflow of sick and dying patients.

The indifference and contempt of the Peruvian oligarchy toward the lives or ordinary working people was exposed starkly with a public protest by a pro-bullfighting association over the use of a centuries-old bullring, Plaza de Acho, as a homeless shelter and hospital in an attempt to combat the virus. The association claimed that this was a violation of a national heritage site.

The danger of contagion has been compounded by unscrupulous merchants selling “snake oil” as a cure. For example, Agencia Andina reported last Friday that “At least 16 people are dead in a remote area of Peru after drinking adulterated liquor supposed to ‘prevent´ COVID-19.”

The tragic incident took place in the Andean region of Huancavelica, 400 kilometers southeast of the capital Lima, where the controversial US$ 5 billion Las Bambas open pit mine and concentrator plant is located. It became a focus of world attention last year when several peasant communities blocked the road used to transport copper ore to be shipped to China.

Emergency amidst Emergency—Modi government denies Internet access imperiling lives

Muzamil Yaqoob & Nilanjana Bhattacharya

On March 24 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a sudden reversal. After weeks of boasting that India was a model for the region and the world in combating the coronavirus, he announced a nationwide 21-day lockdown, saying that to stop the spread of the pandemic and a catastrophic loss of life it was necessary that the entire population self-isolate. Since then, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has risen dramatically from 564 to more than 4,600, and from 10 to at least 140 deaths.

The Indian government, like its counterparts in the United States and Latin America, has been criminally negligent towards the underprivileged working class who have been left by the unprecedented lockdown to face hardships and even death. Not only has the deaths of 22 migrant workers been underreported, the media and the BJP government have in recent days attempted to communalize the whole issue and demonize the minority Muslim community for the widespread health crisis in the country. Similarly, the Indian state has refused to comply with World Health Organization guidelines to lift the internet lockdown in Kashmir.

All information regarding the pandemic, including healthcare protocols, notices and orders are conveyed to the population through internet, news and social media platforms. Yet in Indian-held Kashmir the population, including healthcare professionals, continues to be denied unimpeded access to the internet. The internet was shut down at the beginning of August 2019 as part of the massive security lockdown imposed on the people of Kashmir, when the BJP government illegally abrogated Article 370 of the constitution, which gave the states of Jammu and Kashmir special autonomous status, and divided it into two Union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

After seven months, on March 5, internet services were partially restored. Broadband services remain unavailable, and mobile services are restricted to a 2G cap, thus making it difficult for people to utilize the service effectively.

During the recent wave of protests against the BJP government’s communalist-motivated Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), many states, such as Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur and Assam, imposed internet shutdowns, some of which lasted 24 to 72 hours.

According to the recent estimates, from January 2012 to March 15, 2020, there were 385 state-ordered internet shutdowns in India, of which 237 were said to have been “preventive,” i.e., in anticipation of a “law and order” threat, and 148 were “reactive,” i.e., to help contain a “breakdown” of law and order. However, in all this, Kashmir made headlines as having faced the brunt of the longest ever internet shutdown in history, 213 days.

The spate of crises COVID-19 has unleashed around the globe has further intensified the already chaotic situation in Kashmir, which has among the greatest per capita mobilization of security forces anywhere on the planet. In the absence of good internet connectivity, the Kashmir Valley faces several challenges, ranging from the low downloading speed of documents, making it difficult for doctors to follow medical guidelines, to the lack of dissemination of information regarding basic healthcare protocols and notices to the general public. With the cases of COVID-19 mounting every day, it is imperative the Indian government immediately restore full internet services in the Valley.

The Indian state’s prolonged internet shutdown in Kashmir

Kashmiris have not only been under a brutal security clampdown since last August. They have been further traumatized by a severe communication blockade or blackout and internet shutdown that partially continues even today. Even widespread international condemnation and a severe humanitarian crisis could not force the Indian government to end its inhumane state of siege or lift the sanctions on the internet in Kashmir.

In January this year, the Indian Supreme Court in response to many petitions challenging restrictions in Kashmir held that “Complete curb of internet must be considered by the state only as an extraordinary measure.” While declaring that free access to the internet is a necessary part of freedom of speech and expression, the Court failed to review the situation on the ground in Jammu and Kashmir, which has become even more tragic and miserable.

With the widespread crises created by COVID-19, countries like Cuba have dispatched medical supplies to Italy to help resolve the pandemic through mutual cooperation and medical internationalism. However, the capitalist elites have not only sought to profit off the pandemic, the world powers like the US have been intensifying their imperialist offensives at this time, including Washington’s intensified sanctions on Iran. In Kashmir, not only has Indian state been disinclined to improve the healthcare infrastructure while the COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the state, it has used the pandemic as an opportunity to push through changes in Kashmir’s domicile or resident-property law without any uproar.

The healthcare infrastructure in Kashmir has always been in shambles. Recent appeals by doctors reveal that there is a severe shortage of basic facilities throughout the state, now reduced to a mere Union Territory. With such a paucity of resources, the local healthcare system seems too fragile to deal with any serious pandemic outbreak. The situation is worsened by the nonavailability of information and the difficulty in interacting with the coordinated network of Indian and global medical specialists. Under such a situation, Kashmiris, who were already struggling with the monthslong clampdown, are finding it extremely difficult to access information, so as to understand the pandemic and organize preventive measures.

Criminalization of Kashmiris amidst the pandemic

It is significant to note that the authorities have made the current pandemic a law-and-order situation to further criminalize the existence of an already vulnerable people. The brutality with which freedom of mobility has been curbed again reflects upon the government’s reluctance to resolve crises with dialogue and coordination. The pandemic has been used as a new opportunity to unleash a reign of terror throughout the Valley. In addition to this, the administrative directives to extend the internet blackout, which currently works at a 2G speed, speaks volumes about the criminal negligence of the Indian state and the authorities in Kashmir.

However, highlighting this gruesome situation in the backdrop of the healthcare emergency does not mean that the people of Jammu and Kashmir were not suffering greatly because of the internet shutdown even before the pandemic. Not only were students unable to go to school because of the lockdown, but they were and continue to be deprived of access to the reading materials necessary for their studies.

We are currently faced with a grave situation where thousands of students have not been able to forward their admission applications for higher studies. Researchers have been left with nothing. They can either move outside of Kashmir or keep waiting for the government to restore the internet, not to mention other necessary academic activities at universities and colleges. While students in many parts of world are currently continuing their studies through online classes and high-speed internet facilities, the neglect on the part of administration could cost Kashmiri students their careers and Kashmir a possibly bright future. The denial of internet access is perpetuating a sense of fear and discontinuity which has already created serious mental health problems and social schisms among the populace.

With cases of COVID-19 rising in Kashmir, fears of a human catastrophe loom large over the closed Valley, with minimum or no contact with the outside world. The state of siege which started with a complete blackout on cell phones, internet, landlines and television last year has not found any end yet. Even at this critical juncture, Kashmir finds itself secluded and relegated to struggle for the fundamental right to information. Unless the internet sanctions are completely lifted, Kashmir will continue to reel under fears of another devastation—a health emergency within an antidemocratic state-security emergency—that could have far-reaching consequences.