New Zealand government introduces internet censorship legislation

Tom Peters

Legislation introduced to New Zealand’s parliament late last month would vastly expand the power of state agencies to censor and remove online content deemed “objectionable.”

The Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill is presented as a response to the Christchurch massacre on March 15, 2019, in which fascist Brenton Tarrant killed 51 and injured another 49 at two mosques. The gunman live-streamed a video of his terrorist attack and shared it on social media.

In a May 26 statement, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin said the Bill would help to fulfill the government’s commitments under the so-called Christchurch Call to Action. Launched last year by the New Zealand and French governments, this initiative urged governments and corporations “to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.”

Ardern with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy at the swearing-in of the Cabinet on 26 October 2017 (Image Credit: Governor-General of New Zealand /Wikipedia)

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has campaigned internationally for the Christchurch Call. Speaking at the United Nations last year she said it would combat the online promotion of terrorist violence and “language intended to incite fear” against ethnic and religious groups.

What constitutes “extremist” or “terrorist” content, however, is determined by the state. The Call has been signed by more than 50 countries including India, Japan, Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany and Indonesia. India has blocked internet access in Jammu and Kashmir, while Indonesia last year blocked access in Papua province—in both cases to assist in the repression of separatist movements labelled “extremist” or “terrorist.”

US President Donald Trump has labelled protests against killings by police as the work of “terrorists,” in order to justify violent repression.

While the Christchurch Call is not officially backed by the US government, it was signed by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft—giant corporations that work closely with governments on surveillance and censorship, in particular of socialist, progressive and anti-war content.

The New Zealand legislation would empower the country’s Chief Censor “to make swift time-limited interim classification assessments of any publication,” including anything posted on social media sites. Content classified as “objectionable” can then be immediately blocked or censored.

An “Inspector of Publications” will be able to issue “take-down notices,” requiring online platforms such as Facebook or Google to remove “objectionable” links or be fined up to $200,000. This mirrors similar measures enacted in Australia immediately after the Christchurch shooting.

To enforce the new law, the Ardern government last year gave an extra $17 million to the Chief Censor and the Censorship Compliance Unit, essentially doubling their funding and allowing the unit to expand its staff from 13 to approximately 30 people.

The Bill would also enable the government to proceed with “the establishment of a government-backed... web filter if one is desired in the future.” The draft legislation acknowledges that such filters, which would prevent access to blacklisted websites, could “impact on freedom of expression.”

In the UK, a web filter introduced in 2013 on the pretext of combating child pornography has blocked numerous websites which had nothing to do with illegal activity.

New Zealand’s two biggest internet service providers, Spark and Vodafone, told Newsroom they support such a filter, along with the other measures in the legislation.

The lobby group InternetNZ criticised the proposal. Its chief executive Jordan Carter told Stuff on May 28 that the Bill “leaves a whole heap of discretion for the secretary of internal affairs about how [the filter] would work, who it would apply to, and whether it would be compulsory or not, and we don’t think that putting a really broad power like that in this legislation is a good idea.”

A press release by Internal Affairs Minister Martin vaguely stated that “content is deemed to be objectionable if… [it] is likely to be injurious to the public good.” Examples “include depictions of torture, sexual violence, child sexual abuse, or terrorism.”

The definition can easily be interpreted to include media coverage and exposures by members of the public of police brutality, fascist violence and war crimes.

Indeed, Chief Censor David Shanks has already suppressed the video of the Christchurch massacre—which appeared in news reports throughout the world—and outlawed possession of Tarrant’s fascist manifesto. Shanks also warned that reporters who quoted from the document “may” be breaking the law.

The corporate media has complied with a request from Ardern to self-censor reporting about Tarrant’s fascist views. The aim is to cover up the manifesto’s striking similarity to the xenophobia, racism and anti-socialism promoted by the political establishment.

Significantly, Internal Affairs Minister Martin, who is overseeing the internet censorship law, is a member of the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, which has stoked anti-Chinese and anti-Muslim sentiment. Ardern gave NZ First a major role in her government, with several ministerial positions (Deputy Prime Minister, Defence, Foreign Affairs, Internal Affairs and Regional Development), because Labour essentially agrees with the right-wing party’s anti-immigrant politics.

The Greens, which are also part of the government, have made no statement about the internet censorship bill, but the party has previously made clear it supports censorship in the name of stopping “hate speech.”

All historical experience demonstrates that the danger of fascism cannot be addressed by giving more powers to the state. In the US, Europe and internationally, fascist forces are being actively promoted by governments and military-police agencies to divide the working class and defend the discredited capitalist system.

In New Zealand, successive Labour and National Party governments are responsible for encouraging the anti-Muslim bigotry that fueled the Christchurch massacre, including through their support for the criminal US-led wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both major parties also utilised the so-called “war on terror” to expand the powers of the intelligence agencies to spy in on New Zealanders and internationally.

As well as pushing online censorship, the Ardern government exploited the Christchurch massacre as a pretext to further militarise the police and give more money to the spy agencies, which for years turned a blind eye to threats of white supremacist violence.

The real reason the state apparatus is being strengthened is to prepare for an explosion of mass struggles, including protests against fascist and police violence, such as those unfolding in the United States. Above all, the political establishment is seeking to suppress working-class opposition to social inequality, unemployment and poverty in New Zealand, which is expected to reach levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Turkish government arrests opposition and Kurdish deputies

Ulas Atesci

In a new attack on democratic rights moving Turkey towards authoritarian rule, Enis Berberoğlu of the bourgeois opposition Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Leyla Güven and Musa Farisoğulları of the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were stripped of their parliamentary mandates last Thursday, by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government backed by the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

All three deputies were arrested and jailed on the same day. Only Berberoğlu was released on Friday, until July 31, on the grounds that he can legally benefit from measures implemented in April to protect prisoners from COVID-19. Güven and Farisoğulları were sentenced on “terror” charges, of “being a member of the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party]” in September 2019. They were sentenced to six and nine years in prison, respectively.

This “measure” unconstitutionally excludes political prisoners from the right to protection from COVID-19 across Turkey and in its prisons.

Elected as a deputy in June 2015, Berberoğlu was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in 2017 for giving the daily Cumhuriyet a video of trucks carrying weapons supplied by Turkish intelligence to Islamist “rebel” groups in Syria in 2014. He was re-elected in the 2018 elections, but his prison sentence of five years and 10 months was later endorsed by the Supreme Court in September 2018.

While these rulings could be suspended until the end of the parliament session, the Erdoğan government suddenly decided to implement them last week.

On Thursday, in its first statement on these events, the HDP called them a “coup” and issued “a call to unite all democratic forces against this aggression and arrogance targeting all social groups,” adding: “Stopping this aggression against our people today is the shared duty of us all as the opposition. We call on everyone to fulfil this duty.”

HDP co-chairs Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar held a press conference Saturday, at which Buldan said: “This coup is directed not only against the parliament but also our elected mayors,” referring to the latest attack on HDP municipalities in May. The government dismissed five more HDP mayors; as a result, the HDP governs only 14 of the 65 municipalities it won in the 2019 local elections.

The Kurdish-nationalist HDP is orienting not only to the CHP, the Turkish bourgeoisie’s traditional party of rule, but to two AKP split-offs, the Future Party of former AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) of former AKP Economy Minister Ali Babacan. Sancar stressed that “all other democratic forces should also be aware of their responsibilities.”

Asked about the CHP, the HDP leaders said, “we still maintain our insistence that the solution is through a line of struggle that covers not only the CHP, but all democratic forces.”

This line was also endorsed from prison by Selahattin Demirtaş, the jailed former HDP co-leader, who declared: “By drawing lessons from the past, we should be able to make bolder and bigger political moves, broader and more open alliances for democracy, freedom, peace and economic prosperity.”

However, the CHP’s response to the AKP onslaught exposes that this undeclared alliance aims not to defend democratic rights, but to advance the reactionary agenda of a faction of the ruling class. CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was silent on the HDP deputies’ fate on Thursday, only tweeting: “Enis Berberoğlu’s being stripped of MP status is a result of the July 20 Civilian Coup [in 2016] process, this disregards the will of the nation. We will continue the struggle for democracy to secure justice, rights and the law.”

While Kılıçdaroğlu criticized the government’s policy following the NATO-backed military coup against Erdoğan on July 15, 2016 as a “July 20 civilian coup,” the reality is that the CHP pushed for national unity behind the AKP at the time. Similarly, the HDP complained about its exclusion from the “national consensus” between the AKP, CHP and MHP after the July 15 coup.

Moreover, the government can only attack these deputies thanks to the CHP’s collaboration with AKP and MHP. In 2016, the CHP voted for an AKP constitutional amendment removing HDP deputies’ parliamentary immunity; several HDP leaders, including Demirtaş, are still in jail since 2016. While the CHP always supported the Turkish army’s operations in Syria and in Turkey against the Kurds, Davutoğlu and Babacan helped carry out the Erdoğan government’s attacks on the working class and on Kurdish people for 15 years.

Ultimately, both HDP and CHP are right-wing bourgeois parties both unwilling and incapable of defending democratic rights. They are not less bankrupt and reactionary than the AKP. Their aim is to install a new government more openly aligned with the NATO imperialist powers in the interests of Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie; Erdoğan is responding to this political challenge by stepping up attacks on the potential alliance emerging against him.

According to a recent poll made by Avrasya Araştırma, while total votes of the AKP-MHP alliance are less than 45 percent, an open or tacit alliance between the CHP (30 percent), the far-right Good Party (10 percent), and the HDP (10 percent) could take 50 percent of all votes if elections were held today. However, the Future Party and DEVA could gain only 2.3 and 3 percent, respectively.

The AKP government’s attacks on the bourgeois opposition undoubtedly involve a desperate attempt to divert growing social anger among workers at the AKP government’s negligent response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to stem the AKP’s own collapse in the polls. It is also bound up with broader conflicts, however, between Ankara and its NATO imperialist allies, especially over the Syrian and Libyan wars.

The Turkish government recently accused Washington and Paris of using the Syrian Kurdish National Council, an affiliate of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by the Barzani family in Iraqi Kurdistan, to “legitimate the YPG-PKK” and to build a “terror state” in Syria. Ankara regularly denounces the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria as a terrorist organization and views any enclave in Syria controlled by the US-backed YPG as a threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity.

Speaking to Rudaw on May 28, HDP’s co-leader Buldan pointed out these tensions, saying, “the AKP has also come out against Rojava [the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria] and the independence referendum in Bashur [the Kurdistan Region of Iraq]. This means [the attacks] are not only associated with us and our party.”

Last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu declared: “Amid efforts to create a statelet [in eastern Syria], now US efforts to integrate [the YPG] into the political systems are proceeding. In particular, they are trying to integrate the YPG with the SKNC.” He added, “We won’t allow the creation of a terror corridor, and we will not allow the legitimization of terrorists there.”

Speaking to France24 on May 25, Erdoğan’s spokesperson İbrahim Kalın pointed to Turkish-French conflicts as they support rival sides in the Libyan civil war, adding: “In Syria, we have disagreements as well not only with France, but also with the United States, because both are supporting the PYD-YPG which is the PKK’s Syrian branch. … The PYD/YPG’s main agenda is to create its own Kurdish enclave in Syria.”

Commenting on this interview, PKK Executive Committee member Murat Karayılan stressed that his organization was determined to reach a deal with other Kurdish-nationalist groups under US and French auspices, stating: “A few days ago, Turkish presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın said in his statements about Rojava: ‘They are trying to establish a place for the Kurds there, we will never accept this,’ so the United States and France should not help the [Kurdish] forces there.”

Events are yet again vindicating warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site: no faction of the Turkish or Kurdish bourgeoisies can defend democratic rights. There can be no fight for democratic rights without a struggle against imperialist war and for socialism. The way forward is to build an independent political movement in the working class of all ethnicities in the Middle East, fighting for workers’ power and the perspective of international socialism.

German government’s stimulus package: €50 billion for automakers, €1 billion for childcare

Peter Schwarz

After two days of talks, the parties in Germany’s grand coalition government agreed on a €130 billion stimulus package for the years 2020 and 2021.

It comes on top of a series of other existing programmes, including the coronavirus bailout programme, which was adopted in March and now amounts to close to €1.2 trillion, the European Central Bank’s bond buying programme, which will surpass €1 trillion by the end of the year, and the European Union’s €750 billion bailout measures, some of which will provide financing to Germany.

The main beneficiaries of all of these programmes will be big business and the stock exchanges. Since its collapse in March, triggered by the coronavirus, Germany’s DAX has enjoyed massive gains and is approaching the historic record high it achieved prior to the crisis. As a result, the wealth of the shareholders of all of the companies listed on the DAX has risen by a combined €360 billion in two-and-a-half months, almost three times as much as the stimulus package.

Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday (Michael Kappeler/DPA via AP, Pool)

“The current stock market boom is the best stock market boom money can buy,” commented Gabor Steingard, the former editor-in-chief of financial daily Handelsblatt, in his Morning Briefing podcast. “The treasuries in Washington, London, Berlin and Paris are wide open, and the champagne is flowing in the financial districts ... The financial markets around the world have long understood that the coronavirus does not represent an imposition, but rather an injection of cash. The investors there are among the biggest profiteers of the efforts to combat the pandemic.”

The latest stimulus package does nothing to change this assessment.

The grand coalition, and the Social Democrats in particular, are doing their best to sell it as a tremendous act of social welfare. In the face of major class struggles developing in the United States and other countries, they are focused on portraying themselves as parties of social compromise. In this, they are receiving support from economists and the media. For example, the Süddeutsche Z eitung claimed that the package strengthens “the socially vulnerable.”

This is a flat-out lie. Like the previous bailouts, the latest package showers cash on the rich, concealed behind a few modest rations for families. Additionally, it is already clear that the vast sums will be offloaded onto the working class in the coming period through austerity measures, as was the case following the 2008–2009 financial crisis. It is noteworthy that the financing of the programme through an increase in taxes for the top income earners and wealthiest individuals was not even considered.

As a result, the stimulus programme will produce a further increase in social inequality by enriching the super-rich at the expense of the vast majority. And this under conditions in which major companies like Lufthansa, ZF, and all automakers have already unveiled plans for large numbers of job cuts. The unemployment figures in April and May have already risen substantially. More than 7 million people are currently in short-time work and fear losing their jobs. In addition, the threat of a second global wave of the pandemic looms large as a result of the irresponsible policy of lifting all lockdown restrictions.

The socially balanced character of the package was allegedly demonstrated by the reduction of the sales tax for five months from 19 to 16 percent, or from 7 to 5 percent at the reduced rate, at a cost of €20 billion. “People with low and middle incomes, who spend most of their net wages on consumption goods, profit in particular from a cut in sales tax,” wrote the right-wing daily FAZ.

But basic consumption goods, like food, have already risen by a much greater margin during the pandemic than they will now decline as a result of the tax cut. Vegetable prices rose by 26.3 percent between January and March. Fruit, milk and butter have also risen sharply.

Under these conditions, cutting the sales tax will primarily benefit big business and traders. Gabriel Felbemayr, president of the Kiel-based Global Economic Institute, told Handelsblatt, “It is not clear to me if the businesses will reduce their prices for this short time or just keep the tax cut themselves.” Companies with a powerful market position could just wait out the six months without reducing their prices.

The minuscule sums designed to help those hit hardest by the coronavirus crisis are more of an insult than a help.

Parents will receive a one-off increase in child benefit of €300 for each child under 18. The total cost for this is around €4.3 billion. This is a ridiculously low sum when one considers that many parents have been forced to give up large portions of their income over many weeks or pay hefty fees for childcare while schools and kindergartens were closed.

Another €1 billion is being made available nationwide to renovate dilapidated kindergartens and improve hygiene guidelines. This amounts to one ninth of the amount they are making available to rescue Lufthansa.

The entire package does not include a single cent for poor people without children, as Ulrich Schneider, the head of the Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband welfare organisation, commented. The word “care” does not even appear in the text of the package. However, the coronavirus crisis has exposed the terrible conditions in elderly care homes, which have led to numerous avoidable deaths.

The municipalities, which have seen their budgets systematically gutted by the federal government, will receive a mere €6 billion. And this in spite of the fact that they have been affected especially severely through collapsing business tax revenues, increased social welfare spending, and a major drop in revenues from cultural institutions. The proposal to write off the municipalities’ outstanding debts was scrapped. Instead, the federal government will pay for part of the costs of accommodating people on social welfare.

The vast majority of the €130 billion stimulus package will flow directly into the coffers of big business. Eleven billion euros is earmarked to cut the renewable energy surcharge. Although this will result in a minimal decline in bill payments for private households, the main beneficiaries will be large industrial customers.

Twenty-five billion euros in bridge financing will be provided to small and mid-sized businesses in sectors hit especially hard to cover the collapse in revenues. In addition to tax relief, the plan includes rebates of business operating costs up to a limit of €150,000 for hotels and restaurants, bars and clubs, travel agencies, travelling performers and professional sports clubs in the lower leagues. To reduce the burden of the coronavirus crisis on cultural institutions, a minuscule €1 billion is planned.

The package includes €5.3 billion to cap social insurance contributions at 40 percent of total income. Half of this will flow directly into the pockets of the employers.

The largest portion of the package, €50 billion, is set aside for investments in climate change and new technologies. This fine-sounding headline conceals a flood of cash for the auto industry.

Despite intensive lobbying, the automakers were not able to persuade the government to implement a purchase premium for petrol and diesel-powered cars. Instead, they will benefit even more from a higher premium for electric vehicles. The purchase of an electric vehicle will be financed in the future by a €6,000 premium instead of the current €3,000.

In addition, other funding programmes for automakers are included: €2.5 billion will be invested in expanding the battery charging network for electric vehicles and another €2 billion will be spent on battery production. And the automakers will also profit from the reduction in sales tax on petrol- and diesel-powered cars. For a mid-range car worth €30,000, the saving amounts to €900.

The government also intends to increase the capital available to the Deutsche Bahn railway company by €5 billion. Another €2.5 billion is set aside to support public transport.

The stimulus package was praised by all economic institutes and business associations. The president of the Ifo Institute, Clemens Fuest, described it as “balanced.” The director of the employer-aligned German Economic Institute, Michael Hüther, praised it as “surprisingly large and fiscally responsible.” The scientific director at the trade union-aligned Institute for macroeconomic and Growth Research (IMK), Sebastian Dullien, said it was “to be welcomed that the government agreed on a stimulus package of a substantial size.”

Alongside fresh attacks on the working class, the package aims to secure an advantage for German big business in the trade wars with their European and international rivals. This is why it enjoys the unreserved support of business associations and the trade unions.

German corporations seize on pandemic to implement mass layoffs and welfare cuts

Dietmar Gaisenkersting & Ulrich Rippert

In May, the number of unemployed in Germany increased by 170,000 to 2.8 million. An additional 7.3 million workers have been placed on short-time working, involving wage losses of up to 40 percent. This latter total is four times as many short-time workers as was the case following the financial crisis of 2008–2009. The figures were announced by the Federal Employment Agency last week.

The actual number of unemployed is significantly higher. Those over 58 years of age, people with short-term illnesses, carers for small children and those assigned by job centres for further training or other measures are not included in the statistics. The number of Hartz IV welfare recipients has increased since March by 300,000 to just under 6 million. This figure includes almost 2 million children.

The coronavirus crisis has starkly revealed the class character of politics and society as a whole. From the very beginning, the policies of the German government were determined by the interests of the big corporations and banks. An aid package for the economy was put together at rapid pace and has now ballooned to €1.2 trillion (a figure four times the size of the annual federal budget) to be financed by tax revenues in the form of state loans and funds taken from social security reserves.

On Thursday, the ruling German grand coalition agreed on another stimulus package of €130 billion, which is also geared to the interests of German business associations.

This torrent of money will further strengthen the power of the financial oligarchy, which dominates political life and the economy with increasing aggressiveness. Germany’s DAX index, which fell below 8,500 points in mid-March, has since risen by more than 40 percent.

In close cooperation with the German government, major concerns are using the coronavirus crisis and state funding to prepare the economy for global trade war and carry out attacks on the working class that were planned and prepared long ago.

There has been no let-up in recent weeks to announcements of mass layoffs and cuts to social conditions.

At Volkswagen, the company and its works council had already agreed at the beginning of the year to eliminate one-fifth of the concern’s 100,000-strong workforce in Germany. Opel —part of the French PSA group for almost three years—plans to cut a further 2,100 posts in Germany by the end of next year.

At Daimler, the slashing of 10,000 jobs announced months ago is to be expanded to 15,000. BMW has announced that it will cut 6,000 from its 130,000 job total.

The automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs. The supplier Schaeffler announced that the company now wants to cut 1,900 jobs in Europe. The subsidiary of the world’s largest automotive supplier Bosch, Bosch AS GmbH (steering technology), plans to cut at least 2,100 jobs.

The industrial group Thyssenkrupp is in a process of liquidation. How many of the company’s 160,000 jobs will survive is questionable; thousands if not tens of thousands of jobs are at risk.

Aircraft manufacturer Airbus recently announced that 10,000 jobs will be cut. Lufthansa had already announced at the beginning of April the wiping out of 18,000 jobs. The largest German department store group, Galeria Kaufhof Karstadt, is closing almost half of its approximately 170 branches. This endangers the jobs of more than half the company’s remaining 25,000-strong workforce.

Germany’s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, has announced it will cut the number of its full-time staff by around 18,000 by the end of 2022. The bank employs a total of 74,000 worldwide. TUI, Germany’s largest holiday booking firm, plans to cut 8,000 jobs.

The Frankfurt airport operator Fraport plans to downsize its workforce of around 22,000. German Rail has announced that it will probably cut “only” 10,000 of its current total workforce of 213,000—on condition that the rest of the workforce accept wage cuts.

The list could go on and on and is not limited to big corporations. For example, the automotive supplier Eberspächer is shifting its production of heating equipment to Poland. Three hundred employees at the company headquarters in Esslingen will lose their jobs. The decision was planned some time ago, but the pandemic has accelerated the move, the company said last week. “These are the harbingers of a major clear out,” wrote the German business newspaper Handelsblatt .

The workplace massacre is directly related to the increasingly unrestrained enrichment of shareholders and board members. They are filling their pockets as companies receive hundreds of billions in taxpayer money and plunge thousands of workers into poverty and desperation.

The German Association for the Protection of Securities (DSW) announced that the 160 companies listed on DAX, MDax and Sdax will distribute €44 billion to their shareholders this year—despite the coronavirus crisis. This figure, however, is 14 percent less than in 2019.

The automakers VW, Porsche, Daimler and BMW are planning to hand out €6.8 billion in dividends to their shareholders. The main beneficiaries of this orgy of enrichment are major shareholders. VW alone plans to distribute €3.3 billion to shareholders. Dividends at VW have increased continuously over the past four years.

At VW and BMW, the families owning the companies are the main beneficiaries. The Piëch and Porsche families have already received around half a billion euros, and the Quandt and Klatten families are raking in €1.64 billion at BMW.

Even the auto supplier Continental, which was in trouble before the pandemic hit, plans to hand out a total of €600 million to shareholders, including the largest sum to the Schaeffler family. This is despite the company’s current negative balance sheet.

Mass layoffs, social cuts and wage cuts are part of a strategy of the ruling class and German government to prepare for global trade war. The German bourgeoisie is using the coronavirus crisis to reposition itself in the global battle for markets and profits, especially with its rivals, the United States and China. To this end, broad swathes of industry are being rationalised to facilitate the creation of “global champions.”

At the start of last year, German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) presented his concept for a “National Industrial Strategy 2030.” It reads: “Industrial policy strategies are experiencing a renaissance in many parts of the world, there is hardly a successful country that relies exclusively and without exception on the forces of the market to accomplish its goals.” And further: “There are clearly strategies for rapid expansion with the clear goal of conquering new markets for one’s own economy and, wherever possible, achieve a monopoly position.”

Initial criticisms from Germany’s business lobby that excessive government intervention was an obstacle to economic development has ceased since the coronavirus crisis. Billions drawn from tax revenues are now being used to finance mass layoffs, structural programs and key technologies.

A year ago, Altmaier referred to “Internet companies in the platform economy,” the “sphere of artificial intelligence (AI), “new biotechnologies,” the “innovation of autonomous driving” and “the emergence of completely new mobility concepts” in the auto industry. This agenda is now being implemented at the expense of workers.

An important partner in this alliance between corporations and government is the trade unions, which have no rival—not even the far-right Alternative for Germany—when it comes to fuelling nationalism.

For a long time, the unions have been demanding protective tariffs, protectionist measures and more initiative from the government to support national economic interests. Their “defence of individual sites” policy is aimed directly against the working class, which is bound together in global corporations and everyday face the same problems.

The unions are closely linked to corporate management through the German system of co-determination, which permits union representatives to sit on the supervisory boards of companies. From their seats on the executives, the unions directly organise social welfare and job cuts—from the planning stage to implementation—including ritual and harmless protests.

A study by the Institute for Co-Determination and Corporate Management (I.M.U.) organised by the trade union Hans Böckler Foundation (end of April 2020), recorded that the number of companies in which 10 union representatives sit on supervisory boards totals 650. In other words, there are up to 6,500 works councillors and union bureaucrats sitting on supervisory boards, all of whom receive lavish salaries. Union supervisory board members transfer in turn a part of their income to the Böckler Foundation, which means that the unions are financed directly by the corporations to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros.

The German engineering union IG Metall alone has 50,000 works council members and 80,000 shop stewards, whose main task is to suppress any independent movement of workers and any struggle to defend every job.

IG Metall had already agreed in March to a wage freeze for 4 million employees in the metal and electrical industry until the end of the year. Now the union is working intensively to ensure the resumption of production, although many companies lack the necessary safety measures to protect against further infections from the COVID-19 virus.

Workers can only defend their jobs, wages and living conditions by resolutely opposing the nationalist policies of the unions, breaking with their bureaucratic straitjacket in the factories, and joining forces internationally to work for a socialist reorganization of society.

A few days ago, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) called for the establishment of action committees to protect workers’ safety at work. In addition to reviewing and implementing health protection against the risk of corona infection, the task of these committees is to organise the fight to defend jobs and to prevent any deterioration in working conditions. This requires an anti-capitalist, i.e., socialist program and an international strategy.

India and Australia sign military pact amid tense border conflict with China

Mike Head

Under conditions where hundreds of Chinese and Indian troops are being mobilised against each other along the disputed border between the two countries, the governments of India and Australia last week signed a series of deals that include reciprocal access to each other’s military bases.

An online “virtual summit” between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, raised the relationship between the two countries to a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” with definite military implications, clearly directed against China.

Although the originally scheduled face-to-face meeting had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the timing of the event became bound up with the Indian government’s frontline role in the escalating confrontation by the Trump administration against China.

The one-hour June 4 “summit” occurred just two days after a phone call between Modi and Donald Trump, in which the US president reiterated his support for India’s conflict with China. According to Indian media reports, Modi’s government has begun moving soldiers from other sectors, including those facing Pakistan, toward the contested “Line of Actual Control” that separates India and China in Ladakh.

Earlier, in a May 27 tweet, Trump provocatively intruded into the border conflict, offering to “arbitrate” the “now raging border dispute.” Then on May 29, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh spoke on the phone, vowing to bolster a “strong and enduring US-India defense parthership.”

The official readout of the June 4 Trump-Modi conversation specifically stated that they discussed the Sino-Indian border standoff and the supposed need to reform the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Trump administration has withdrawn funding from the WHO, accusing it of being aligned with China, as part of its totally unsubstantiated efforts to blame Beijing for the worsening global pandemic.

Trump’s call to Modi also came amid a social explosion in the US, triggered by the brutal police killing of George Floyd. Trump had just threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy federal troops to establish martial law.

Shortly after the Trump-Modi call, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian objected to the US interference, saying there was “no need for any third party to intervene” in the border dispute.

It was in this highly-charged context that Modi and Morrison proceeded with their “summit,” clearly making it part of the US offensive against China. They concluded nine agreements, featuring a “Mutual Logistics Support Agreement,” and issued a “Shared Vision for Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.”

In addition to allowing Indian and Australian warships and aircraft to refuel and use logistical facilities at each other’s bases, the military “logistics” pact clears the way for more military exchanges and exercises across the Indo-Pacific region and greater inter­operability between the two armed forces.

A joint statement issued by Modi and Morrison did not explicitly name China as its target, but the language echoed Washington’s anti-China propaganda. It said the two countries “share a vision of a free, open, inclusive and rules-based Indo-Pacific region to support the freedom of navigation.”

Such language has been employed to justify incendiary “freedom of navigation operations” by US warships and planes within the territorial waters of islets occupied by China in the South China Sea.

India, which in 2006 entered into a “global strategic partnership” with the US, has been transformed, especially during the past six years under Modi’s rule, into a frontier state in the US military-strategic offensive against China.

At their “summit,” in his opening public remarks to Morrison, Modi, who heads the Hindu communalist Bharatiya Janata Party, invoked religious fervour as a basis for the anti-China alliance. It was a “sacred responsibility” to uphold values such as “democracy,” “rule of law” and “freedom,” he said.

Morrison, in response, thanked Modi “for your leadership, not just within India, but more broadly throughout the G20, the Indo-Pacific and the stabilising and constructive and very positive role that you have played in these very difficult times.”

Once again, with virtually no publicity, the Australian government has placed the country’s population on the frontline against China. In a barely reported media release, Morrison said: “Our Partnership is in line with India’s increasing engagement in the Indo-Pacific region through her Indo-Pacific vision and Australia’s Indo-Pacific approach and its Pacific Step-Up for the South Pacific.”

Both the Indian and Australian ruling classes are seeking to assert their hegemony over swathes of the Indo-Pacific region, while backing the US drive against China. That is the content of Canberra’s “Pacific Step-Up” to reinforce Australian imperialism’s dominance in the South West Pacific and cut across Chinese investment and aid in the region’s island states.

There has been overwhelming support within Australia’s corporate, political and media elite for the alignment with India and the US, despite qualms over the impact on the many billions of dollars at stake annually in revenues from China.

The opposition Labor Party spearheaded this orientation when it was last in office. The Gillard Labor government signed up to the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” in 2011 and agreed to station US marines in Darwin. This was in line with the conclusions drawn by American strategists that US imperialism could halt the emergence of China as a rival power only through military might and, when necessary, war.

To further seek to isolate China, Trump has invited Modi and Morrison to join this year’s G7 summit, due to be held in the US, probably in September, just two months before the US presidential election. South Korea, another US ally against China, has been invited too, along with Russia. Trump is proposing to include them all in a revamped G11, to the exclusion of China, the world’s second biggest economy.

“Indian defence sources” told the Hindu India was now open to including Australia in the trilateral Malabar military exercises involving the US and Japan. This would shift the “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue” (the Quad) from being a high-level ministerial dialogue in 2019 further towards a military alliance. Japan and the US first proposed the Quad in 2007 but it was stalled by a decade by concerns in Indian and Australian ruling circles at being too openly aligned against China and with US imperialism.

As part of the US drive, the Australian ruling class is trying also to open up new markets in India to offset its reliance on commodity exports to China. Modi and Morrison agreed to “recommence” talks over an India-Australia trade agreement, suspended since 2015, after nine inconclusive rounds of negotiations.

Trump confers with Modi over explosive India-China border dispute

Shuvu Batta & Keith Jones

Washington continues to intrude in the tense weeks-long border standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at four points along their contested 3,488 kilometre (2,167 mile) border.

Although Beijing and India publicly insist the standoff will be resolved peacefully, they have both rushed troops, planes and war materiels to the border region, which is comprised of remote, inhospitable Himalayan terrain.

US President Donald Trump conferred with Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi about the border crisis during a 25-minute phone call last Tuesday. No details of Modi and Trump’s exchange on the border standoff have been released. However, Washington has publicly accused China of “aggression” and has linked the dispute to the South China Sea, where the US and allied navies routinely carry out provocative “freedom of navigation” exercises to assert Washington’s right to maintain an armada menacingly off China’s shores.

The India-China border disputed

The ostensible purpose of the Trump-initiated June 2 call was to invite Modi to participate in the next G-7 leaders’ summit, which is to be hosted by the US president at an undetermined date, and to discuss the president’s proposal to make India a permanent member of an expanded G-7. According to the readout from New Delhi, they also spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to “reform” the World Health Organization (WHO), and the “situation on the India-China border.”

Trump has sought to cripple the WHO by withdrawing all US funding from the UN body, thereby jeopardizing its support to impoverished countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America in fighting the pandemic, as well as a host of other deadly diseases. Now he is looking to India to assist Washington in using the WHO as a platform to attack China based on the lie Beijing failed to inform the world about the emergence of the novel coronavirus and is therefore “responsible” for the more than 100,000 American COVID-19 deaths.

Last month, Dr. Harsh Vardan, the Health Minister in Modi’s ultra-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, began a three-year stint as chairman of the WHO’s executive board, giving New Delhi a major role in determining the agenda of WHO meetings.

In comments following their Tuesday call, Modi hailed his “good friend” Trump and commended his “creative and far-sighted approach.” An Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement exuded, “The exceptional warmth and candour of the conversation reflected the special nature of the Indo-US ties, as well as the friendship and mutual esteem between both leaders.”

Modi has repeatedly genuflected before Trump. But his lavish praise of the fascist billionaire takes on new significance under conditions where Trump is inciting military-police violence, has threatened to deploy the US military across the country to suppress mass protests, and is attempting to overthrow the US Constitution and establish a presidential dictatorship.

Modi is not just “returning the favour” to Trump—who on a visit to India in February lauded the Hindu supremacist prime minister’s leadership and commitment to amity among all people even as deadly anti-Muslim riots, incited and organized by the BJP and its RSS allies, were convulsing India’s capital. For Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, Trump’s actions lend legitimacy and encouragement to their own far-advanced plans to break with democratic-constitutional rule.

Mounting tensions

Washington maintained a public posture of neutrality in 2017 when Indian and Chinese troops confronted each other for 73-days on the Doklam Plateau, a Himalayan ridge claimed by both China and Bhutan, a tiny kingdom that New Delhi treats almost like a vassal state.

Today, in a development that both expresses and intensifies the escalating US strategic offensive against China, the Trump administration has publicly sided with India, and is manifestly goading New Delhi on in its confrontation with Beijing. Trump has himself issued a series of provocative tweets and comments. This includes telling a reporter in late May that Modi had told him in a phone call that “he’s not in a good mood about what’s going on with China.” New Delhi has denied any call ever took place.

Underscoring the bipartisan character of US imperialism’s incendiary campaign of diplomatic, economic and military pressure on China, the Democratic Party’s positon on the India-China border standoff is one and the same as that of the White House and State Department.

The chairman of the US House committee on foreign affairs, Democrat Eliot Engel of New York, said in a statement last week, “I am extremely concerned by the ongoing Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control. China is demonstrating once again that it is willing to bully its neighbors rather than resolve conflicts according to international law"

The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the largely un-demarcated boundary that India and China, who fought a brief border war in 1962, have agreed to accept as their common border, pending final resolution of their overlapping territorial claims.

The current border tensions can be traced back to an incident on May 5, when Indian and Chinese troops scuffled with each other at an altitude of 4,200 meters (14,000 feet) on the shores of Pangong Tso Lake where Indian-held Ladakh meets Chinese-held Aksai Chin in the western portion of their border.

Over the next several days there with three other encounters between Indian and Chinese troops, two in other areas along the border between Ladakh and Aksai China and another more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) to the east in the border lands of the northeast Indian state Sikkim and China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

Beijing and New Delhi have each accused the other of provoking the standoff by violating the LAC.

In recent years, both China and India have dramatically increased their military spending. In 2019, they had the world’s second and third largest defence expenditures, spending respectively $261 billion and $71 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In both cases this is only a small fraction of US military spending, which totaled $732 billion in 2019.

New Delhi, which has justified its development of ballistic nuclear missiles with a range of more than 11,000 kilometers (7,000 miles) with the claim that it must have the ability to obliterate any part of China, has been engaged in a major push to expand its military capacities along its northern border with China since at least 2010.

This has included the development of an extensive network of roads and railways, the reactivation and rebuilding of airfields, the creation of two new Mountain Divisions, each with 15,000 troops, and the formation of a mountain strike corps to conduct “quick reaction ground offensive” operations against Chinese forces.

India says these moves are only aimed at restoring rough military equivalence along the border, in response to previous steps by China to increase its own capabilities.

The incendiary role of US imperialism

Whatever the truth both about the immediate accusations of incursions across the LAC and the longer-term military build-up along the border, certain things are manifestly evident.

First, the key factor driving the heightened tensions between China and India is American imperialism’s push to harness India to its predatory strategic agenda and to transform South Asia and the Indian Ocean—the conduit for much of Beijing’s oil imports and of its exports to the Middle East, Africa and Europe—into a central arena in its drive to thwart’s China’s “rise.” Toward this end, Washington under Democratic and Republican administrations alike has lavished strategic “favours” on New Delhi. This has included giving it access to advanced weapons and “normalizing” India’s status as a nuclear-armed state, while drawing India into a network of security-dialogues and joint military exercises with the Pentagon and Washington’s most important Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

Second, in response to the global economic collapse and social crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Modi government and India’s ruling elite are doubling down on their reactionary “global-strategic alliance” with US imperialism. Central to Modi’s “economic recovery” plan is to take advantage of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s offer to help India exploit its abundant cheap labour to become an alternate production-chain hub for American companies under pressure from Washington to relocate manufacturing from China.

On Thursday, India and Australia announced they have signed a military basing agreement— patterned after one in force between India and the US since 2016—that allows each country to use the other’s naval and air force bases for routine resupply and maintenance. A similar agreement is currently being negotiated between India and Japan.

Third, India and China’s remote border regions have suddenly acquired great geo-political significance. One of the US strategies for weakening China is to exploit grievances among its ethnic minorities. India borders China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Even more critically, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (COEC)—a $60 billion program of infrastructure projects, of which the development of pipeline, road, and rail links between western China and the Pakistan Arabian seaport of Gwadar is the centerpiece—passes through Aksai Chin and Pakistan held Gilgit-Baltistan.

India claims sovereignty over both Aksai Chin and Pakistan-held Gilgit-Baltistan, and pointedly reiterated these claims last August when the BJP government illegally stripped Jammu and Kashmir, hitherto India’s only Muslim-majority state, of its semi-autonomous status. This was part of a powerplay directed at strengthening central government control over the contested Kashmir region and taking a more aggressive diplomatic and strategic stance against both Pakistan and China.

India objects to the $60 billion CPEC because it strengthens economic and strategic ties between China and Pakistan, its arch-rival since the 1947 communal partition of South Asia. Washington is no less adamantly opposed to the CPEC, because a major purpose of it and Beijing’s One Belt Initiative, of which it is a part, is to lessen China’s dependence on Indian Ocean trade, and the ability of the US to cripple China economically by seizing Indian Ocean and South China Sea chokepoints like the Straits of Malacca.

Fourth, China’s Communist Party regime, which restored capitalism three decades ago and now serves as the political instrument of a new capitalist oligarchy, has no progressive answer to the military-strategic pressure that is being placed on China by the US and other imperialist powers with the support of their Indian bourgeois satraps. Incapable of making an appeal to the international working class, the Beijing regime oscillates between building up its military, while whipping up nationalism and making its own bellicose threats, and seeking a deal with the US and other imperialist powers.

Under conditions of an economic collapse without precedent since the Great Depression, surging global geopolitical tensions, and an impending confrontation between a US president intent on establishing a dictatorial regime and the working class, the border confrontation between India and China could yet spin out of control. But whatever its immediate outcome, it is yet another sign that unless stopped through the revolutionary intervention of the international working class, crisis-ridden imperialism is dragging humanity toward a catastrophic global conflagration.

Bolsonaro government attempted to censor Brazil’s coronavirus case count and death toll

Bryan Dyne

The government of fascistic Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro removed public access to months of data on the coronavirus pandemic in the country on Saturday. The Health Ministry’s official COVID-19 website did not have cases and deaths over time and by state and city, but only deaths, cases and recoveries from the past 24 hours until a mass public outcry forced the government to restore the original site.

Bolsonaro defended on Twitter the initial decision to remove the coronavirus records, claiming that “The cumulative data … does not reflect the moment the country is in.” He continued, “Other actions are underway to improve the reporting of cases and confirmation of diagnoses.” The Brazilian president also mocked the country’s media, which has used the data to report on the sharp rise in cases and deaths, commenting, “There goes the story for [well known news program] Jornal Nacional.”

There were just under 675,000 officially confirmed coronavirus cases in the country when the changes to case reporting were made, the most in the world except for the United States, and nearly 36,000 deaths, now past Italy and now only behind the US and United Kingdom. It is not clear whether or not these trends, based on the objective spread of the pandemic, will continue to be reflected in the new version of the site.

The new section of the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, was opened last month to cope with a surge in deaths. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Brazil also leads the world in daily new cases and new deaths, a consequence of the pandemic accelerating in the country. At the current rate of exponential increase, there will be one million known cases in the country in two weeks. And as multiple reports have shown, the number of actual cases in the country, which ranks 130th in the world for per capita testing, is likely an order of magnitude higher than currently known.

The growth of infections in Brazil is mirrored by the soaring case numbers in other parts of the world. Globally, there are now more than 7 million cases, an increase of one million cases in nine days, and more than 400,000 dead. Hotspots have emerged in Mexico, Russia, Chile, Peru and Pakistan, alongside the already existing epicenters in Brazil, Western Europe and the United States.

The censorship of Brazil’s coronavirus data is a logical continuation of Bolsonaro’s pandemic policy since it first emerged in the region. He at first dismissed the pandemic as the “little flu” and has replaced medical experts that have disagreed with him with members of Brazil’s military. Once the coronavirus gained a foothold in the country, he argued against any lockdowns to stem the tide of the virus and has launched into tirades against governors and mayors that are not reopening their economies as fast as he has demanded.

Brazil is not the only country taking such measures. In the United States, the operator of Florida’s coronavirus dashboard was fired for refusing to manipulate data in support of the governor’s reopening plan. Similarly, in Arizona, the researchers involved with modeling the projections for state coronavirus cases were ordered to “pause” their work by state officials after their data suggested that the state’s lockdown orders should be extended by three weeks.

In Georgia, which was one of the first states to reopen, the Public Health Department published multiple charts which showed a downward trend in cases by rearranging dates in its data. In fact, the number of reported daily new cases in the state has remained relatively constant since the state’s reopening, while the new cases in Arizona and Florida are rising. The country as a whole now has more than two million cases, included more than 1.1 million active cases, and at least 112,000 deaths.

Despite attempts by countries to suppress their coronavirus case numbers, however, even the official counts indicate that the disease is rising significantly across the world. Saudi Arabia yesterday joined the ranks of the countries that have more than 100,000 cases, and Pakistan will follow it today and Canada in little more than a week.

Other countries with high rates of new cases include Bangladesh, South Africa, Qatar, Egypt, Colombia, Ecuador and Iraq. Iran also has consistently had more than 2,000 cases in recent days, after being very hard hit by the pandemic early on and then suppressing it for several weeks. Peru and Chile also rank as some of the most infected countries in South America and the world, ranking high in total cases and new cases, while Peru in particular has seen and continues to have a high death rate.

The explosion of cases in South America caused World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to comment on Wednesday that, “We are especially worried about Central and South America, where many countries are witnessing accelerating epidemics.” According to analyses from WHO scientists, the continent has not reached its peak number of cases and may not for months.

The two countries that have emerged in recent weeks with high rates of the coronavirus are Mexico and India. In Mexico, Deputy Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell has asked residents to stay home in order to halt the rising number of infections in the country. At the same time, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has ordered significant sections of the economy, including auto and parts manufacturers, to open.

These orders have played a large part in Mexico’s current public health crisis. The country has 113,000 confirmed cases and more than 13,000 deaths, and health officials have noted that because of the lack of testing in the country, the actual number of cases is likely in the millions.

India faces a similar problem. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered workers back into factories, fields and offices even as the number of cases in the country exponentially rises. The virus has gained a beachhead in the crowded neighborhoods of India’s many megacities and has spread like wildfire. The known cases have doubled in just two weeks to 257,000 and are on track to reach one million by the end of this month. And while the death toll is still well below the highs that have been reached by Brazil and the United States, health officials are worried that the number of dead will skyrocket in the days to come.

Tens of thousands continue UK protests against racism and police brutality

Robert Stevens

Over the weekend, more than 100,000 people across the UK continued to protest the death of George Floyd who was killed by police in the US city of Minneapolis on May 25.

Protests went ahead despite Boris Johnson’s Conservative government warning they could become a vector for further spreading coronavirus. The government’s warnings were hypocritical in the extreme, with the “phased” ending of the lockdown announced on May 10, including the re-opening of primary schools last Monday, in defiance of warnings from leading scientists.

A protester in Manchester with placards referring to the police killing of US African-American woman Breonna Taylor and the preventable death of coronavirus of UK rail worker Belly Mujinga

Protesters, many wearing facemasks, turned out in large numbers, rejecting statements Friday by senior ministers including Home Secretary Priti Patel that they stay at home.

As with last week’s protests against Floyd’s death, they were multi-racial and youthful in composition, with few demonstrators over 30 years of age.

In London on Saturday, around 40,000 protested in Parliament Square and Whitehall, marching to the US embassy across the River Thames in Battersea.

Many chanted George Floyd’s name and brought home-made placards with messages including, “Black Lives Matter,” “No Justice, No Peace,” “No Freedom till we’re equal,” “None of us are equal until all of us are equal,” “Fight racism, fight exploitation, with solidarity,” “Am I Next?” and “Imagine what ISN’T caught on camera”. In reference to the decades-long experience with police brutality in the UK, many placards read “The UK is not innocent.”

People hold placards during a Black Lives Matter rally in Parliament Square in London, Saturday, June 6, 2020, as people protest against the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, USA. Floyd, a black man, died after he was restrained by Minneapolis police while in custody on May 25 in Minnesota. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Speaking to the BBC at the London protest, Sarah Law, a 27-year-old train manager, said: “I don’t want my future children to experience what I have. It’s time for us all to unite together regardless of our race and stand up for what is right.”

Rawle, a 27-year-old teacher from Leicester, said he was protesting because he was “exhausted of being treated as a second-class citizen” and “to hopefully spark some change.

Media coverage of the events was almost exclusively focused on clashes between police riot squads and some protesters at Downing Street on Saturday evening. At around 6pm, riot police were drafted in alongside mounted police, attacking protesters. The Guardian reported, “Police were reinforced, with more than 150 officers standing off with a crowd of up to 500 who chanted choruses of “Boris Johnson is a racist” and also accused police of racism as they were kettled [surrounded by police and not allowed to leave].

“Many [protesters] opposed violence and discouraged the throwing of projectiles, but numerous others were determined to oppose officers and those remaining were reportedly kettled into Sunday, with legal observers reporting protesters had to say their names if they wanted to leave.”

A section of the protest in Piiccadilly Gardens, Manchester

A protest of around 15,000 was held in Manchester on Saturday, filling one of the city’s main squares, Piccadilly Gardens, adjacent Market Street and other streets. People were still arriving on public transport and on foot nearly an hour after the protest began. The protests then marched through the city centres and other main squares. Among the banners being displayed were “The UK is not innocent”, “The UK is Guilty,” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” “No humanity in Police Brutality” and “The World is my country, the World is ours.”

Flowers and home-made placards were placed at a nearby mural that was painted in memory of George Floyd last week.

Flowers placed by the mural to George Floyd in Manchester

Several thousand attended the protests at Sheffield’s Devonshire Green. Libby, an 18 year old student, said, “I took part in Sheffield’s Black Lives Matter protest to stand in solidarity with people who have been affected by police brutality all over the world with George Floyd’s tragic death being a trigger of the anger built up over many years.”

Other cities and towns where demonstrations were held Saturday included Leicester, Newcastle, Ipswich, Luton, Watford, Milton Keynes, Bath, Gloucester, Cardiff, Swansea, Bangor, Caerphilly, Belfast and Derry. Around 2,000 protested in Belfast’s Custom House Square.

Over 3,000 protested at the US Embassy in Dublin. Other protests in Ireland were held in Limerick and Galway, with up to 800 protesting in Galway.

Among the placards at the Dublin protest were “We can’t breathe,” “Enough is Enough,” “Abolish the Police,” and No Justice, No Peace”. A number of placards denounced the Direct Provision system of asylum seeker accommodation used in the Republic of Ireland. One read “Direct Provision is a Prison”. The system was introduced in 2000, with strict access control—under it, asylum seekers have no right to work and do not receive any social welfare payments. Instead they receive an allowance of just €21.60 per week.

At all the demonstrations, protesters brought placards demanding “Justice for Belly Mujinga”. Belly, a 47-year-old rail worker, died on April 5 in hospital in Barnet, leaving behind her distraught husband, Lusamba Gode Katalay, her 11-year-old daughter and family. On March 21, Belly had pleaded with her manager at London’s Victoria Station not to be sent out to the station platform, as she was in an at-risk category and did not have personal protective equipment (PPE). Her appeal was ignored. Soon after she and her colleague were spat at by a man claiming to have COVID-19. Within days, Belly and her colleague had fallen ill with the virus. Last week, the British Transport Police stated that “no further action” would be taken in relation to what it described as an “incident” at Victoria station.

In just a few days, over 1.5 million people have signed a petition demanding justice for Belly.

Protesters hold up home-made placards at the Manchester protest

On Sunday, another large protest was held in London, with thousands gathered at the US Embassy packing the main road adjacent to the building. Among their chants were “George Floyd, George Floyd” and “Trump Out”. Thousands more demonstrated in Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square and Downing Street. Police mounted barricades on Whitehall in front of the high gates that are already in place to stop the public’s entry into Downing Street.

Outside the capital, more protests by many thousands of people were held in several cities including Bristol, Manchester, Norwich, Coventry, Derby, Colchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

In Glasgow, thousands demonstrated at the city’s Glasgow Green. In Edinburgh, thousands gathered at Holyrood Park. In Bristol, where thousands of people gathered, protesters pulled down a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston and dumped it into the harbour of the Avon river.