As the world approaches 7 million cases of COVID-19, the pandemic casts a broader net

Benjamin Mateus

A little more than four months had passed since the declaration of the Public Health Emergency of International concern on January 30, when only 80 cases of COVID-19 existed outside of China, and no deaths had been recorded. By the close of this weekend, the number of cases of COVID-19 around the world is expected to exceed over 7 million, and the number of deaths will have continued its climb with over 400,000 victims who should by all accounts still be alive had the governments of a multitude of nations taken the necessary public health measures as the declaration required.

The inability of the producing nations to heed the critical concerns raised by various health institutions and infectious disease experts has placed the world in a calamitous position where every social aspect of life on the planet has been threatened. The protests that have erupted since the murder of George Floyd more than 10 days ago in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the international and multiracial character of this mass movement, speak to the fundamental inability of capitalism to address the most urgent and necessary needs of society, and instead, indiscriminately value property more than life.

The trend in new daily cases has been consistently climbing for more than two weeks, while case fatalities have halted their decline and began to uptick again. In the categories of total and daily new cases and deaths, the United States has remained a constant presence among the worst-hit nations. With all the promises of expanded testing capacities, the US has not been able to exceed 500,000 daily tests, far below that needed for adequate public health containment measures that need to be instituted. More worrisome, testing centers are being closed, using the protests as an excuse to stop testing.

In the US, the number of new cases, on a seven-day average, has exceeded 20,000 per day since March 29. The decline in fatality cases has stalled. According to the New York Times, California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Washington and Mississippi have seen recent growths in newly reported cases over the last two weeks.

Massachusetts, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin have seen their daily cases hold steady. The White House task force guidance on reopening the country was simply another hoax by this administration and their political accomplices in both Wall Street parties to force workers back to the factories. The Financial Times headline reads, “unemployment rate in the US falls unexpectedly to 13.3 percent. Markets rally as economy adds 2.5 million jobs in May to ease concerns over coronavirus impact.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 830 points to close at 27,111.

Given the world’s experience with the nature of the outbreak over the last several months in hard-hit countries like Italy, Spain, and, specifically, New York City in the US, the course of the virus in Mexico, Brazil and India bodes disastrous. The curves of their outbreaks continue to accelerate and by all accounts represent only a fraction of the true toll of the pandemic on the poorest who face the main brunt of the consequences. The per capita testing in Mexico is at 2,438 per one million; in India, 3,181 per million; in Brazil, 4,643. Where is the global response in bringing their experience to these regions to aid them in their moment of struggle?

San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery in Mexico City, Mexico [Credit: Carlos Jasso]

Brazil presently has 614,941 total cases and over 34,000 deaths. The states of Amazonas, Maranhão and Ceara are the hardest hit, though cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are facing a collapse in their public hospitals. Mexico has 105,680 cases, with 12,545 deaths. Mexico City has suffered the highest case number at 28,389, with 2,862 deaths, however, news sources report that the Mexican government’s number is undercounted by a factor of three. According to a Mexican physician, Dr. Giovanna Avila, “It’s like we doctors are living in two different worlds. One is inside of the hospital, with patients dying all the time. And the other is when we walk out onto the streets and see people walking around, clueless of what is going on and how bad the situation really is.” Reports of patients lying on floors, turned away dying in search of care, and propped up in chairs are reminiscent of images that first poured out of Italian hospitals in Bergamo.

Despite the World Health Organization’s insistence at repeated press briefings that the coronavirus has not demonstrated that it has become more benign and adapting into a seasonal contagion, media outlets have promoted comments by the likes of Dr. Alberto Zangrillo’s, head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, and Matteo Bassetti, head of infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.

Zangrillo: “In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy. The swabs that were performed over the last ten days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month ago.”

Bassetti: “The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today. It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different.”

According to Dr. Francois Balloux, professor of Computational Systems Biology and Director of UCL Genetics Institute at the University College of London, the genetic composition of the viral population that has been screened has not changed much since it first emerged in December 2019. “The outbreak in Italy has been waning over recent weeks despite the relaxation of the social distancing measures previously in place. This is in line with what has been observed in most European countries. The extent to which this is only due to residual social distancing measures in place, or whether seasonality or some other factors are playing a role remains debated. That said, we should definitely not rule out a second epidemic wave later this year.”

In a little-too-late reversal of opinion, Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s infamous state epidemiologist promoting a laissez-faire attitude to containing the epidemic, conceded that stricter restrictions should have been imposed earlier to avoid the high death toll Sweden has faced. “If we would encounter the same disease, with exactly what we know about it today, I think we would land midway between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did,” he said in an interview on Wednesday, stepping back from his previous endorsement of a controlled herd immunity strategy.

In a world stricken by a lack of therapeutics to treat COVID-19 patients, the scientific community is roiling from its controversy. The Lancet observational study on the increased mortality associated with hydroxychloroquine published on May 22 was retracted on request by the authors this week. “We can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data source.” The results of the study had led to the WHO halting their arm of the trial using the medication until safety data could be analyzed to ensure patients were not unduly harmed. They have since resumed their investigation, noting no increased mortality.

Soon after the peer-reviewed study was published, the study came under scrutiny by many researchers who pointed to the study’s implausible numbers, flawed demographics, and inconsistent dosage of medication that stretched the limits of possibility. The supposed multinational, multi-hospital data was obtained through the Chicago-based Surgisphere, an American health care analytics company operated and founded by CEO Sapan Desai, a vascular surgeon. Surgisphere has refused to release the data underlying this and two other important studies despite promising they would. The dataset claiming access to 1,200 hospitals had multiple errors including incorrectly locating Asian hospitals in Australia. There are no indications of how Surgisphere amassed the data. According to the Guardian, one employee was a science fiction author and another an adult model and events hostess.

Countering these developments, two randomized control trials, one published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the other from the recovery trial, reported that hydroxychloroquine offers no benefit as prophylaxis or for hospital patients in decreasing exposure or mortality.

Dr. Mike Ryan, head of emergencies at the WHO, when asked about these controversies, said, “With a story of such huge public interests and 24-hour coverage of those issues, then the normal process of science can seem confusing. I can assure you the actions that were taken in relation to the signal of potential higher mortality of HCQ [hydroxychloroquine] was taken with the best interest of the patients enrolled in that study to ensure that any indication of higher mortality from a peer-reviewed study will be taken seriously.”

He explained that despite the need for studies on the nature of the virus and the illness it causes, the peer review process becomes even more critical. Oversight committees and boards are needed to ensure that public interest and patient protection remains paramount and can’t be superseded. “We cannot rely on a single paper or a press release. We must collectively look at the evidence before consensus is developed.”

Brazil’s President Bolsonaro calls demonstrators “terrorists,” threatens military repression

Miguel Andrade

In a fascist rant delivered during the opening of a field hospital to treat COVID-19 patients, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro once again denounced demonstrators joining marches in five Brazilian cities held in solidarity with the protests in United States as “terrorists” and “outcasts” aiming to “break the country.”

He called for governors to deploy the National Guard against demonstrators taking part in new anti-government marches scheduled for Sunday, a day chosen as an answer to the weekly fascist demonstrations held by Bolsonaro supporters on Sundays. These rallies feature Bolsonaro himself and regularly call for a military coup and hail the brutal history of torture and executions of the 1964–1985 military dictatorship.

Bolsonaro’s latest threats came on the heels of a frenzied and terrified reaction by the president and his cabinet to the demonstrations last Sunday by youth joining the global wave of protests against the murder of George Floyd and social inequality, police brutality and racism, as well as the promotion of the latter by the Bolsonaro government. The demonstrations were met with brutal repression unleashed by state-controlled military police soldiers, which in turn protected fascist provocateurs bearing flags of the Ukranian neo-Nazi Right Sector. Protests have grown as Bolsonaro supporters respond to the US marches by holding Ku-Klux-Klan-like nightly marches with torches at the Supreme Court and Congress in an appeal to the most backward and disoriented members of Brazilian society.

Most significantly, however, Bolsonaro’s rant came just three days after an opinion piece published by vice president Gen. Hamilton Mourão published by Brazil’s oldest daily, Estado de S. Paulo, calling for demonstrators’ forceful seizure and arrest. In the article, Mourão fully endorsed the denunciations of Bolsonaro, aping Donald Trump’s rants against “antifa” that the demonstrators were “terrorists” that should be proscribed.

In the opinion piece, Mourão charged that “presenting the last anti-government demonstrations as democratic constitutes a clear abuse” and that it was an abuse to “forget who they are and to portray them as a counterposition to government supporters and transform them into legitimate demonstrators,” adding that “troublemakers were a police issue and not a matter for politics.”

He also resurrected known authoritarian tropes of “outside agitators” to denounce demonstrators for “bringing to our country problems and conflicts of other peoples and cultures.” He further rallied against the senior member of the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF), Celso de Mello, who warned on Sunday of parallels between Brazil and the Weimar Republic in the years preceding Hitler’s takeover as “irresponsible,” dismissing Bolsonaro’s fascist rants as “rhetorical excesses,” whose condemnation might lead “everyone to lose their senses”—that is to say, would justify a violent reaction of Bolsonaro against the Court.

Mourão is a notorious ultra-right coup-monger, that was twice punished while in active duty for political statements against toothless attempts by Congress to review the horrific crimes of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. He also presided over the ultra-right Military Club, an association of retired high-ranking officials that was one of the active proponents of the 1964 coup.

But Mourão wrote his Tuesday libel with the authority of someone insistently portrayed as the “adult in the room” of the crisis-ridden Bolsonaro administration by the opposition’s former presidential candidates, Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT), Guilherme Boulos of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT) and governor Flávio Dino of the Communist Party (PCdoB).

Sunday demonstrations were an initial expression of a long-suppressed class anger against Bolsonaro and the abysmal social inequality that defines Brazilian capitalism. In an act of political cowardice, the PT called for their supporters not to join the demonstrations scheduled for Sunday in order “not to offer the government, what it desires, the environment for authoritarian measures.” Hours later, the PT stated they were “in solidarity” with demonstrators and calling for them “to take care and not give in to provocateurs.”

There is wide significance to the unleashing of brutal police violence on peaceful demonstrators and the ominous resurrection of the reactionary dictatorship-era language of “terrorism” and “infiltrators” and “external incitement” by Bolsonaro and Mourão after a week in which Bolsonaro’s bourgeois opposition was celebrating police raids on his supporters as the sign of his demise.

The raids had been ordered by Supreme Court (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presides over an inquiry on the incitement of far-right demonstrations against the STF by Bolsonaro supporters. It runs parallel to another inquiry, presided by the Justice cited by Mourão, Celso de Mello, on the charges presented by former Justice Minister Sérgio Moro as he resigned, accusing Bolsonaro of interfering in the Federal Police (PF) to protect his son, Rio de Janeiro senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Moro charged that Bolsonaro wanted to suppress investigations that might tie his family to criminal organizations known as “militias” which control gambling and drug trafficking and were also named as responsible for the death squad murder of Rio de Janeiro City Councilor Marielle Franco in 2018.

Both are now at the center of the impeachment articles presented against Bolsonaro by the bourgeois opposition led by the PT, which claims Bolsonaro’s militia ties, interference in the PF and incitement of the far-right threaten the “internal security” of Brazilian capitalism.

One of the leading proponents of such charges of Bolsonaro as a threat to “internal security” of the Brazilian state, Estado de S. Paulo editorialized only a day before Mourão’s threats that “something is moving” in Brazilian society and celebrated that the issuing on Sunday of the so-called “We Are Together” manifesto, a right-wing piece stating that “as was the case with the ‘Direct Elections Now!’” at the end of the 1964-1985 dictatorship, “it is time to leave aside old disputes and seek common good,” calling for “left, center and right” to be united “to defend law, order politics, ethics, families” and “responsible economics.”

The manifesto brought together virtually all of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois opposition to Bolsonaro, from former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to billionaire banker Alice Setúbal to former presidential candidates of the pseudo-left Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), Guilherme Boulos, Workers Party (PT), Fernando Haddad and his Communist Party running mate, Manuela D’Ávila.

Every major news outlet, from Globo to Estado de S. Paulo, immediately endorsed the manifesto, which has as a rallying point that Bolsonaro is a threat to Brazilian capitalism for “sowing disorder” by inciting the far-right—that is, that opposing Bolsonaro is necessary from the standpoint of avoiding mass political reaction from the working class.

The apparent contradiction between a paper celebrating the “opposition” to the government in one day and opening it pages for a fascist rant by the vice-president in the next lays bare the unifying feature of such a so-called opposition: its loyalty to bourgeois institutions, and, above all, the repressive apparatus, which they see as being irreversibly demoralized by Bolsonaro.

That includes the criticism made of the manifesto by former PT president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who reportedly refused to sign the manifesto after his handpicked candidate for 2018, Fernando Haddad, in order to placate criticism from PT supporters to its right-wing, “law and order” language. The next day, however, he endorsed the right-wing manoeuvers on CNN International on Tuesday by saying the House Speaker Rodrigo Maia would have to choose “one of 36 impeachment petitions against Bolsonaro”—which includes the PT’s own petition accusing Bolsonaro of threatening “internal security”—in a vote.

Even more revealing is the fact that such a “unity” movement is echoing the campaign spearheaded by the pseudo-left PSOL after Bolsonaro’s election. This campaign views Bolsonaro as the product of a subversion of an otherwise healthy Brazilian capitalism through a massive fake news campaign.

All of these forces have even adopted PSOL’s portrayal of Bolsonaro, according to which his chief crime is not the management of Brazilian capitalism and its absolute disregard for workers lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, or his all-out assault on workers social rights, but being tied to Rio’s militias, as “rogue element” of bourgeois rule that should be suppressed in order not to demoralize the bourgeois setup.

Now they are all hailing the fact that the Supreme Court is working to dismantle the “virtual militias” organized by his supporters, possibly uncovering evidence that could be used in PSOL’s petition to annul the 2018 elections because of the spread of “fake news.” Exposing the right-wing character of this whole movement spearheaded by the PT and the pseudo-left PSOL, Estado de S. Paulo even compares Bolsonaro to the late Hugo Chavez, an unmistakable pro-imperialist trope that is only the corollary of PSOL’s campaign against Bolsonaro’s “threats” to the bourgeois order.

While Gen. Mourão responds to the objective needs of the Brazilian bourgeoisie as it presides over the world’s most unequal major economy, Bolsonaro’s fascist drive also feeds on the complicity of the bourgeois opposition, which shares his and Mourão’s class interests and fears above all mass social opposition. Such opposition has nothing to do with the massive display of solidarity to US workers and opposition to social inequality and police violence by Brazilian working youth seen since Sunday. This movement must now proceed in conscious opposition to the bourgeois manoeuvers to channel it back behind the capitalist state, tying its hands in face of massive repression.

The police murder of George Floyd sparks mass protests throughout the world

Thomas Scripps

This weekend, hundreds of thousands of workers and youth will protest the police murder of George Floyd, not only in the United States, but in Australia, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Brazil, South Korea and many other countries.

Demonstrations have already taken place this week in over a hundred towns and cities, in countries on every inhabited continent in the world.

In South and Central America, thousands of people protested in front of the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil. Others demonstrated outside the state government building in Rio de Janeiro. Hundreds have also protested in Mexico and demonstrations have been held in Bermuda and Argentina.

Australasia has seen dozens of protests, including of more than 3,000 people in Sydney, Australia, more than 2,000 in Perth and tens of thousands in Auckland, New Zealand. They carried banners that declared, “The government does not care! We the people must help each other!” and “Australia is not innocent.”

In Asia and the Middle East, demonstrations have been held in India, Japan, the Philippines, Turkey, Israel and Iran.

In Africa, rallies have been organised in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and South Africa.

At least nineteen towns and cities in Canada have seen protests, including 20,000 in Ontario and 3,000 in Toronto.

Across Europe, Germany saw thousands protest outside the US embassy in Berlin and the consulate in Hamburg. Slogans included “Your Pain Is My Pain, Your Fight Is My Fight.” Thousands have protested in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands; in Athens, Greece; in Copenhagen, Denmark; Stockholm, Sweden; Helsinki, Finland; Oslo, Norway and Reykjavik, Iceland. Other demonstrations have been held in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and Switzerland.

The United Kingdom has witnessed at least 25 separate protests. Over 15,000 people gathered in Hyde Park on Wednesday and marched to the Prime Minister’s residence on Downing Street, carrying placards reading “If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor” and, as in Australia, “The UK is not innocent.” In France, 5,000 marched in Montpellier and 25,000 people defied a ban to protest in Paris. A speaker at the rally announced, “What’s happening in the United States highlights what is happening today in France.”

Of extraordinary significance, in Austria, a massive 50,000 demonstrated in Vienna Thursday. If a similar percentage of the urban population protested in New York, this would equate to a rally of over 200,000 people.

The international outpouring of solidarity is animated by opposition to Donald Trump’s brutal repression of peaceful multi-ethnic protests. Their scale also indicates an initial recognition of the dangers posed to the American working class and billions throughout the world by Trump’s drive to establish a presidential dictatorship. Moreover, the working class in every country sees in the scenes playing out in the US an echo of its own social conditions, dominated by extreme and growing levels of inequality, which dictate ever more fascistic forms of rule the world over.

In addition to the state violence in the US, Tuesday’s demonstration in Paris protested the death of French youth Adama Traoré, beaten and asphyxiated by police in 2016. It follows more than two years in which “yellow vest” protests against social inequality have been brutalised by the riot police of President Emmanuel Macron, the man who has sought to rehabilitate the Nazi collaborator Marshall Petain.

Brazilian workers are demonstrating against the wave of killings carried out by police in Rio de Janeiro’s favellas under the oversight of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro.

German workers and youth have spent the past six years watching the unfolding of a conspiracy within the state and academia to rehabilitate the Third Reich, bring the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the fore and prepare a return to unrestrained imperialist militarism. Trump’s threat to designate protestors as “terrorists” follows the German state security service’s placing of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei on its extremism watchlist for the “crime” of conducting a fight against this fascist revanchism.

The global protests sparked by Floyd’s killing have also erupted nearly three months into a pandemic that, due to the deliberate and criminal actions of the ruling class, continues to have a devastating impact on billions of workers and young people. Hundreds of thousands have died, and millions have lost their jobs while trillions are funneled into the coffers of the major corporations by governments of the financial oligarchy. Now workers are being forced back to work in unsafe conditions on pain of poverty and starvation.

The police murder of George Floyd, and the daily scenes of unrestrained state violence against black, white and Hispanic youth have acted as a trigger event setting simmering class tensions alight.

Last year saw a massive escalation of class struggle worldwide, with millions protesting worsening social inequality and the assault on democratic rights.

At its May Day Rally last month, the WSWS drew attention to a concerned report by the leading imperialist think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which warned:

“We are living in an age of global mass protests that are historically unprecedented in frequency, scope and size… The coronavirus will likely suppress protests in the short term both due to government restrictions in urban areas and citizens’ own reluctance to expose themselves to large public gatherings. However, depending on the future course of this likely pandemic, government responses may themselves become another trigger of mass political protest.”

The WSWS and the International Committee have sought to politically alert the working class in anticipation of precisely such a re-eruption of the class struggle and to provide a revolutionary perspective and orientation.

The moment lockdowns were ended, the first act of murderous police violence in America triggered a social explosion. Even under conditions in which millions rightly fear an escalation in the spread of the coronavirus, “global mass protests” have returned, in united opposition to the brutality of the capitalist state.

The American media will give little or no indication of these events, which testify to the real state of class relations and the real balance of forces in the US and across the world. They prove that the American working class, now involved in a struggle that demands the removal of Trump, has immensely powerful allies. The fight against Trump, hated throughout the world as the thuggish personification of rule by the oligarchy, will find huge support in the working class and youth in every country entering into conflict with their own rulers.

Workers and young people must counter Trump’s offensive with the adoption of an internationalist program of struggle on which to remove Trump, Mike Pence, and their co-conspirators from office. On this basis, a world movement of the working class will begin to take shape that will take on and defeat Trump’s plan to impose a police-military dictatorship in the struggle for socialism.

As 42.6 Million Americans File for Unemployment, Billionaires Add Half a Trillion Dollars to Their Cumulative Wealth

Chuck Collins

In a turbulent week across the nation, the wealth of U.S. billionaires surged past half a trillion dollars since the beginning of the pandemic unemployment.

The announcement on June 4th that an additional 1.9 million more have filed for unemployment in the last week means that 42.6 million Americans have filed since March 18th, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This doesn’t include the millions more who have applied for help as self-employed workers.

Over these same 11 weeks, between March 18th and June 4, the cumulative total wealth of U.S. billionaires has increased $565 billion, an increase of 19.15 percent.The markets have risen, but certain individual fortunes have surged significantly over market gains.  In the 11 weeks since March 18th, these billionaires have seen their wealth accelerate:

Jeff Bezos – up $36.2bn

Mark Zuckerberg – up $30.1bn

Elon Musk – up $14.1bn

Sergey Brin – up $13.9bn

Larry Page – up $13.7bn

Steve Ballmer – up $13.3bn

MacKenzie Bezos – up $12.6bn

Michael Bloomberg – up $12.1bn

Bill Gates – up $11.8bn

Phil Knight – up $11.6bn

Larry Ellison – up $8.5bn

Warren Buffett – up $7.7bn

Michael Dell – up $7.6bn

Sheldon Adelson – up $6.1 billion

One commentator complained that by picking March 18th, IPS research is only capturing the recovery in billionaire wealth that plummeted in the proceeding weeks in late February and early March.  It is true — the market has done better since then. But a large segment of the U.S. billionaire class is beating the market. And we stand by our analysis that it is newsworthy and meaningful that billionaire wealth is accelerating while others are experiencing job losses, declining savings, debilitating illness, and death.

The reason IPS pinpoints March 18th as a date for tracking wealth is because that date is tied to this year’s annual Forbes Global Billionaire survey, published on April 7th.  This year, Forbes reported that total U.S. billionaire wealth had declined from its 2019 levels, from $3.111 trillion down to $2.947 trillion.  But our report showed that these losses were quickly erased within weeks. As of June 4, total U.S. billionaire wealth is $3.512 trillion, a $565 billion increase over March 18th and a $401 billion increase over last year’s Forbes billionaire survey. There are also 16 more billionaires than two months ago.

Some billionaires have lost wealth since the beginning of the year, especially those in the oil and gas sector. Warren Buffet is down over $14 billion since the beginning of the year. But even during a time of unprecedented economic adversity, some billionaires are riding higher than ever.

According to Bloomberg estimates, with their just-in-time analysis of the top 50 U.S. billionaires, Jeff Bezos is still $34 billion ahead of where he was on January 1st.  Steve Ballmer is up $9 billion.  Elon Musk is up $15.3 billion.  Mark Zuckerberg is up $9 billion. The top 50 billionaires as a group, however, are up over $39 billion during the worst health and economic calamity of the modern era.

How Has Bolivia’s de Facto Regime Taken Advantage of COVID-19 to Consolidate Its Power and Repress Political Rivals?

Lola Allen

On April 29, Bolivia’s de facto president, Jeanine Áñez, announced that the country would be moving into a “dynamic quarantine” phase on May 11. This decision was intended to alleviate the social and economic repercussions of the pandemic by loosening lockdown restrictions. However, the most heavily affected areas ― located primarily in poor communities ― were ordered to remain in full lockdown. This meant that many of those in greatest need of getting out and earning money were still unable to do so; emergency subsidies were insufficient and unevenly distributed, and many have been left on the verge of starvation, according to on-the-ground accounts. On June 1, the de facto government announced that it had lifted most of the remaining lockdown restrictions, and that it was handing over the responsibility for quarantine management to local authorities. This is a significant move in that it implies that the pandemic no longer constitutes a national emergency.

Jeanine Áñez has faced harsh national and international criticism for using the pandemic as a way of consolidating power and repressing political rivals. Protesters in Cochabamba have accused the government of leaving people without the means to feed their families. On May 10, the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples sent an open letter to Áñez calling on her to provide food supplies to the indigenous communities most affected by shortages. A week and a half later, in the midst of these appeals, Bolivia’s health minister was arrested in a corruption scandal in which he is accused of paying $4.7 million to acquire COVID-19 ventilators for a contract believed to be worth $1.2 million. The minister, Marcelo Navajas, had only assumed the post six weeks before. Protests have also recently broken out in El Alto and in Cochabamba demanding new elections and an end to the privatization of natural resources and of other state companies.

The Áñez government’s response to COVID-19 has involved strict military enforcement of restrictions on movement and a series of aggressive containment measures. Meanwhile, the government has used the pandemic as an excuse to mount a full-fledged offensive against its political rivals.

The early lockdown has meant that Bolivia appears not to have experienced the rapid spread of the virus seen in neighboring countries such as Brazil, Peru, or Ecuador. As of June 3, the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center estimated Bolivia to have 10,531 confirmed cases and 343 deaths from the virus, although these numbers undoubtedly underrepresent the actual situation, given low testing rates. If in fact the government has had success in stemming the pandemic’s spread, it will have come at a high social cost, as we shall see.

Supreme Decree 4200 and Flagrant Violations of Freedom of Expression and Persecution of Political Rivals

The Bolivian government has used the pandemic as a pretext to impose decrees that criminalize dissent and severely curtail press freedom. Though international pressure forced the government to rescind some of the decrees’ most egregious measures, this was not until after a short period of harsh repression.

On April 30, The Washington Post reported that “a striking example of a crackdown during the pandemic comes from Bolivia,” and noted “the government has arrested dozens of opponents under a new decree passed last month.” José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas Program, also condemned the decree, Tweeting: “The Bolivian government appears to be taking advantage of the pandemic to give itself the power to punish anyone who publishes information the government deems ‘incorrect.’”

The Post and Vivanco were both referring to Supreme Decree 4200, which the de facto government passed on March 25. Article 13.2 of this decree states: “individuals who incite non-compliance with this decree or misinform or cause uncertainly to the population will be subject to criminal charges for crimes against public health.” Those convicted of violating the decree can receive sentences of up to 10 years in prison. By mid-April, some 67 people had already been arrested for allegedly violating the decree, and, according to de facto interior minister Arturo Murillo, 37 people have already been tried, convicted, and sentenced for supposed involvement in “destabilization and disinformation movements.”

These measures drew criticism from a wide array of national and international actors, including Bolivian social organizations; international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International; the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR); Freedom House; and US Congressman Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

On May 7, just days after World Press Freedom Day, the de facto government announced another law intended to extend the scope of Supreme Decree 4200. Decree 4231 outlaws “disinformation” in print or through “artistic media.” On May 12, the IACHR sent a strongly worded warning to the Áñez government against the use of criminal law to police public expression. The most problematic provisions of Decree 4231 were removed on May 14.

Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) Central and South America Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick said:

The COVID-19 pandemic must be taken seriously, but vague regulations that criminalize ‘disinformation’ make Bolivia’s interim government look more concerned about its public image than about an effective response to the crisis. These overly broad provisions that criminalize speech open up the dangerous possibility of abuse against journalists reporting vital information and facts.

Following intense international pressure, Bolivia’s de facto government modified some of the most heavily criticized clauses of the decree in mid-May.

Áñez Overrules Bill that Would Have Ensured New Elections Within 90 Days

Bolivia’s 2020 snap elections, originally scheduled to take place May 3, were postponed indefinitely on March 22 by the country’s electoral authority as a result of the pandemic. Over a month later, former president Evo Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) shepherded a bill through the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies obliging the de facto government to organize general elections before August 2, 2020. The law, seeking to ensure that new elections are held within the constitutional time limits for an interim presidency, was ratified in an extraordinary session in Bolivia’s senate on April 30.

As expected, Áñez vehemently opposed the bill, claiming that elections should be postponed until the pandemic has passed, and Tweeting: “Any damage to people’s health and lives caused by the folly of calling elections will be the responsibility of the MAS.” Then she went further and announced that the pandemic justified postponing the elections indefinitely.

Deciding how to handle voting during a pandemic is inherently difficult, but indefinite postponement had raised fears that the post-coup administration had little interest in giving up power, especially considering the strong lead that MAS presidential candidate and former economy minister Luis Arce has had in the polls over other candidates, including Áñez herself. The agreement reached between TSE and key political parties on June 2, states that elections will be held on September 6; this can be seen as a positive step towards easing current political tensions in Boliva.

Áñez’s Border Crisis: Closing Land Borders to Bolivian Nationals

The Áñez regime has claimed that MAS and other political rivals, including 2019 opposition presidential candidate Carlos Mesa of Comunidad Ciudadana, are undermining its response to the pandemic, and attempting to politicize the country’s dire situation.

In the same vein, Áñez’s director of migration services, Marcel Rivas, blamed the MAS for social turmoil resulting from the government’s refusal to allow Bolivians stranded on the Chilean border to reenter the country, claiming “MAS sought to break the quarantine to generate riots and chaos.” This followed an incident during the first week of April in which several hundred Bolivian nationals trying to return to Bolivia clashed with armed forces near the Bolivian town of Pisiga. The camps were heavily militarized. Many have criticized Áñez for allowing in Bolivians fortunate enough to travel by air, but blocking those coming by land, including poorer Bolivian migrants trying to return from Chile.

Evelyn Matthei, mayor of the Chilean municipality of Providencia, made a video appeal to Áñez on April 28 for the 400 Bolivians stranded on the Chilean side of the border to be allowed to return to Bolivia. Matthei pledged to meet the necessary conditions, including provision of food and shelter, to allow these Bolivians to fulfill quarantine requirements in government camps in Chile before being allowed to travel within Bolivia. On May 1, in the face of growing international pressure, Áñez finally allowed these Bolivians to return to their country.

The de facto government’s actions preventing Bolivians from returning home violated a number of national and international laws. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (and former president of Chile) Michelle Bachelet issued a statement on April 15 reminding Bolivia’s de facto president of her obligation to allow Bolivian citizens back into their own country: “Under international law, everyone has the right to return to their home country ― even during a pandemic.” Bachelet went on to say: “When migrants wish to return home voluntarily, Governments have an obligation to receive their own nationals, and to ensure that they have access to health care and other rights.”

The International Organization for Migration had been assisting other stranded Bolivians who were being held at the Tata Santiago quarantine camp in Pisiga, providing food and shelter in the absence of adequate support from Áñez’s government.

Blocking MAS Social Organizations from Providing Food Packages for Those Most in Need

During the last week of April, the military prevented MAS senate candidate Andrónico Rodríguez from distributing food in Cochabamba, accusing him of breaching government restrictions on political gatherings. Rodríguez declared that low-income Bolivians urgently need more access to food, as had Zenón Pizarro, mayor of Oruro, the first city in Bolivia to be put under lockdown. Pizarro had called for more flexible isolation measures, warning that hunger is a serious risk. With many people left without access to their savings or any kind of support, then “if the virus doesn’t kill them, hunger will,” Pizarro stated.

The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia’s main labor union federation, has also decried that around 80 percent of the population, largely informal workers and the unemployed, are not eligible for the subsidies the de facto government has offered to address the economic effects of the quarantine. COB leader Juan Carlos Huarachi proposed that the eight million people left without protection be paid 50 percent of the minimum wage for the next six months. Yet on April 29, the government suspended a one-off cash transfer (Bono Universal) intended to offer a lifeline to those on the brink of starvation, saying lines outside the banks were too long. This left many people without income or access to other support during the pandemic.

Territorial Isolation Policies in Chapare, Cochabamba

In some cases, the de facto government has opted for more sweeping and regionally focused repression, as in Chapare. This rural province in the department of Cochabamba has been a bastion of support for ousted president Evo Morales. It has also been the prime target for the Áñez government‘s anti-narcotics policy involving the criminalization of peasant coca growers. Áñez’s approach is reversing years of a successful counternarcotic strategy under Morales that had offered viable alternatives for small-scale coca growers to enter the formal economy. Under Áñez, these campesinos have been criminalized, labeled “narco-terrorists,” and blocked from selling certain legal and licensed coca-based goods such as shampoos, sweets, and creams on the local market. During the lockdown, security forces have arrested and detained farmers on broad, poorly defined charges, mostly tied to narcotrafficking. So far, little evidence has been provided to sustain such claims.

The US government has supported Añez’s counternarcotics policies and has kept silent about flagrant human rights violations carried out by her government. De facto interior minister Arturo Murillo, the key architect of the US-led anti-narcotics strategy, is publicly vocal about the support he has from the United States government.

On May 6, the human rights ombudsman of Cochabamba, Nelsón Cox, denounced that “detainees from the Chapare are singled out for beatings and abuse in prisons in Cochabamba.” The Andean Information Network calls this “the latest chapter in the stigmatization, discrimination and human rights violations against residents of that coca growing region.”

Cochabamba is also home to over 14,000 small fish farms, each holding around 1,500 fish. The Áñez government has restricted these farmers’ access to any fuel ― under the pretext that this could be used to fabricate cocaine ― putting the fish farms in jeopardy. Already some 11 million fish, around half the existing fish stock, have perished from lack of fuel needed to oxygenate pools. This is a tragic loss of a much-needed food stock. Observers point out that these fish could have supported campesino families during the lockdown.

Boomerang Accusations: Áñez, Not Her Political Rivals, Is Politicizing the Crisis

The widely held belief that the government’s quarantine restrictions have been unequally applied has been fueled by public scandals revealing the double standard for Áñez and other senior officials. Just in the first few weeks of May, it was revealed that Áñez had used a military plane to transport a family friend to a birthday party. During the same period, a government minister came under fire for using a state aircraft to transport a former beauty queen between cities.

Earlier in May, Áñez invited Bolivians to pray and fast together to combat COVID-19, and she has coordinated helicopter flights so that Catholic bishops can bless the Bolivian population from the sky. Áñez seems to have learned few lessons since she first marched into the Presidential Palace, having been sworn in without the required quorum in the Senate, to announce that the “Bible had returned to the Palace.” Her de facto government has repeatedly come under fire for its overtly racist policies, sparking a December 2019 OAS resolution in which 18 member states denounced its recurrent and overtly racist actions. Áñez’s response to the pandemic signals a continued uphill struggle for recognition of the basic rights of Bolivia’s massive indigenous population.

Ironically, Áñez claims that opposition to her government has politicized the pandemic, but the evidence suggests that it is Áñez’s de facto government that has been most guilty of extracting political gains ― including by repressing its critics ― in the context of the current health crisis. Beyond the controversial cultural and religious dimensions of the government’s response, there are deeper implications for civil and political rights. Áñez’s de facto government appears to be taking advantage of political opportunities afforded by COVID-19 to try to hold on to power at all costs.

Dialetics of Coronavirus

T. Vijayendra

The coronavirus pandemic has released an unprecedented level of actions and reactions that has shaken the world. In this article we will focus only on India and see what good can come out of this major shakeup. As you can see we are optimists!

We will consider the following aspects:

1. The lock down
2. The sufferings of migrant labour
3. Dependency versus self reliance
4. Global versus local

The Lock Down

We have had one of the biggest lock downs in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. Innumerable experts, journalists and ordinary people have said and ‘proved’ that the lock down did not achieve anything. The cases per day have been rising after the lock down. Everyone, including the industry is questioning the wisdom of the lock down. So let us conclude that the lock down did not help to control the pandemic.

But what did it achieve? Since all the fossil fuel based transport was stopped and the factories were closed, they did not emit foul gases and the air quality in the cities became very good. Also since the factories did not send their foul effluents to the rivers and lakes they got purified. Thus it achieved the cleaning of the environment – air and water bodies – lakes and rivers. Yamuna cleaned herself in 60 days. Dolphins were seen in Hooghly at Kolkata. Increase in type and number of birds in the cities occurred.

It also gave paid holidays (sorry, coronavirus sabbatical!) to several liberal intellectuals to reflect deeply on fundamental questions. And they had an audience. Many people who lived in comfort zones thought deeply about the predicament, about the meaning of development, about the future of their children etc.

The sufferings of migrant labour

Everyone has condemned the suddenness of the lock out declaration. Only four hours between 8 pm and 12 midnight! Millions of the workers in the city woke up to find that they had no jobs, very little money and notices to leave their rented places. Within days hundreds of thousands of workers decided to go home to their villages. No trains or buses! So they started walking and some lucky ones had bicycles and at least one child carried his parents on a cycle rickshaw! It was an exodus and the poet Gulzar compared it to the partition exodus of 1947. Almost every one of them suffered and many died on the road.

But it also released the hidden goodness among hundreds of fellow citizens. They came out with community kitchens, shoes and chappals, dressed the wounded, arranged transport wherever they could. Others generously donated money and resources. And there was widespread anger against the government and against the capitalist system.

The workers themselves showed heroism. They walked enduring the hardships, they cycled breaking all kinds of endurance records – 1100 Km in 7 days carrying wife on pillion, a young girl carried her sick father on her ladies’ bicycle on pillion from Guragaon to Darbhanga and so on. They were given warm supports all along the road and back at home. Many workers resolved never to go back to the city.

Dependency versus self reliance

A large number of political parties, NGOs and individuals have been demanding from the government relief and long term effective action. The government too has released emergency ration and cash payments to many individuals. But as it happens in government schemes, many are left out and there is immense suffering among the poor in the city. Also millions have lost their jobs and there is no sign they will get them any time soon. The capitalist system has received the biggest jolt/recession/depression in its history. No one knows how much and when it will recover.

On the other hand a large number of communities have been self reliant and their case studies are coming up. Viklap Sangam has been and is advocating this for a long time and so are many other grass root organisations. With the collapse of the system this is gaining increasing significance. Many workers retuning home have started working on eco restoration projects – notably for recovering water bodies so that people can store water during the coming monsoon.

Global versus local

Almost everyone agrees that it is the globalisation that has spread the coronavirus. So today if we have to build an alternative to capitalism it will have to be some kind of local self sufficient economy and polity based on equality and sustainability. A polity of federalism – federating with the neighbouring community on the basis of ‘a fee association of free people’.

The future-which way to go?

Today we are standing at the cross roads. One road leads to, ‘nothing will change – we will go back to the old ways’. So we keep on criticising the government and demanding it to do something. In a sense this kind of politics also legitimises the system particularly when the government is losing its credibility among people. The other road leads to ‘give up on the capitalist system and build an alternative. Rebuild the community and restore the ecology. Build a self reliant local community.’ Once we decide, the path will open up.

Some people will say: ‘It is not a simple either/or situation but the important thing is our understanding and the priority we give to the kind the action we get involved in’. True, but in the final analysis the real choice is between chaos and transition because in my opinion capitalism is doomed anyway. So if we take one road it will lead to chaos and the other may take you to a possible ‘heaven on earth’!

“If I am not for me who will be? If I am only for me what am I? If not now when?”
– Rabbi Hillel (110 BC -10 AD)

Zambia’s bid for IMF rescue deal thwarted by Washington’s anti-China campaign

Jean Shaoul & Stephan McCoy

The International Monetary Fund has rebuffed Zambia’s appeal for an emergency loan as the country faces a deepening economic crisis amid the pandemic.

Zambia’s Finance Minister Dr. Bwalya Ngandu said the IMF would not grant his government’s request for a loan due to the country’s “unsustainable debt.” The US-dominated IMF said that countries with unsustainable debt levels before the pandemic must first discuss with their creditors—meaning China—how their loans can be managed.

Zambia is widely seen as a test case. It is due to make $1.5 billion in debt repayments this year, more than its foreign currency reserves in January.

President Edgar Lungu’s government has hired the financial management firm Lazard, which is also advising Argentina and Lebanon, to deal with its debt so as to access IMF loans and avert default—a move criticized by some within the ruling elite. Zambia could become the first African country to default on its sovereign debt.

Ethiopia, Angola and Ghana are also seen as likely to default, with most sub-Saharan African countries in talks with the IMF and World Bank for emergency loans. South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy, is seeking a loan from a China-based development bank.

According to official figures, Zambia, Africa second largest copper exporter, had debts of $12 billion (51 percent of GDP) at the end of 2018, with about 30 percent owing to China, 25 percent to bondholders and 19 percent to foreign banks, with little owing to the World Bank, IMF and Western governments. The government also had domestic debt of approximately $5 billion and outstanding arrears of approximately $1.2 billion.

The Zambian government is heavily dependent on the multinational copper mining corporations, who are notorious for paying barely any taxes. It spends almost half its tax revenues on debt servicing, with the result that after paying the public sector wage bill there is little left, leading to a budget deficit of 10.9 percent of GDP in 2019.

The corrupt politicians and the Zambian elite whose interests they represent preside over growing levels of inequality, poverty and malnutrition. While the country recorded growth in the decade following debt relief in 2005 up to 2015, the IMF-dictated privatization of major state-owned companies, drastic cuts in government expenditure and social welfare programs meant that little of this growth resulted in changes to income, poverty levels or employment for the vast majority of Zambians. To cite some indicators of the terrible social conditions:

* 58 percent of Zambians live below the international poverty line.

* Rural poverty is 80 percent.

* Stunting is prevalent in 40 percent children and wasting in 5 percent.

* 4.8 million people live without access to clean water.

* At least 40 percent of children in the southern region of Zambia die from malnutrition.

* The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) ranks the country 143 out of 189.

The government closed its borders, banned travel and large gatherings and closed schools and universities as the first COVID-19 cases were announced in mid-March. Zambia has recorded over 1,000 cases that have included two cabinet ministers, and just seven deaths. However, with little testing done, the number of confirmed cases is likely to be a gross underestimate.

The security forces have imposed the lockdown with violence, injuring several in Nakonde, near the border with Tanzania, that became an epicentre for the disease. Lungu has used the pandemic to introduce a bill that would give sweeping powers to the presidency, in effect creating a presidential dictatorship.

Zambia’s bonds are trading at half their price at the start of the year as investors expect the country to default. This fear intensified with the onset of the pandemic, which has seen copper prices fall by up to 16 percent as global demand plummets. The currency has fallen against the US dollar, while border closures have further impacted on the landlocked country.

Several reports have put the real debt figures as at least double the official statistics, mostly off-balance sheet loans from China for public-private partnership infrastructure deals that may include the underlying assets as collateral. This means that the debt repayments are secured by revenues such as commodity exports, and any debt restructuring could involve the transfer of roads, airports or even mines to China.

The IMF has refused to lend to Zambia since the US calculates that the real beneficiary would be China. Zambia has therefore been caught in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump’s reckless campaign to undermine China, which he views as a threat to US global dominance.

While China’s growing role in global trade is well known, its role as a global lender is less so. According to research published in the Harvard Business Review, the world’s debt obligations to China rose from $500 billion in 2000 to $5 trillion in 2017, a sum equal to about 6 percent of global GDP. The Chinese government and its state-owned entities have lent $1.5 trillion in loans, portfolio debts (including the $1 trillion of US Treasury debt purchased by China’s central bank) or trade credits to more than 150 countries, making China the world’s largest creditor, overtaking the IMF and World Bank or all OECD creditor governments combined.

Despite the scale of China’s lending, no official statistics exist on the debt flows and stocks either in China or in the debtor nations that have largely financed large-scale investments in infrastructure, energy and mining. Of the 50 main recipients in the less advanced countries, Chinese debt constituted 15 percent of GDP in 2017, with 12 of these countries owing debt of at least 20 percent of GDP to China. The African countries include Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger and Zambia. Many of these loans go unreported.

While these loans are incurred to build much needed infrastructure, many of the jobs go to Chinese nationals, with some 80,000 working in Zambia building airports, roads, schools, factories and police stations, which has fomented anti-Chinese sentiment.

Lungu’s government has found it increasingly difficult to balance between Washington and Beijing as the US’s anti-China drive reaches new heights, resulting in ever more erratic and authoritarian actions.

Michael Foote, the US ambassador to Zambia, was kicked out of the country after criticizing the government’s decision to sentence a gay couple to 15 years in jail. The government only retracted this decision recently, releasing the couple when it found itself in a diplomatic row with China after three Chinese businessmen were killed in xenophobic attacks, and using the pardon as a way to ingratiate itself with the US government once again.

The government also became involved in a fight with Glencore, the British multinational commodity trading and mining company headquartered in Switzerland, over the Mopani Copper Mines, one of Glencore’s copper mines in Zambia located in the Copperbelt province. Glencore is one of the last major western mining companies to control copper and cobalt operations in Congo and Zambia, as Chinese companies have gradually taken over the industry.

Around 11,000 miners found themselves in danger of being laid off as the company attempted to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to undertake long planned retrenchments and temporarily mothball the mine. The government, which is heavily dependent on copper revenues, blocked the shutdown as illegal to bolster its own position in the Copperbelt province ahead of next year’s elections.

Richard Musukwa, the minister of Mines and Mineral Development, threatened to revoke Glencore’s licence. The government even arrested and detained Glencore’s local CEO Nathan Bullock. Glencore said it would resume production for three months.