Pandemic fuels class struggle across Africa

Jean Shaoul

The COVID-19 pandemic has created devastating conditions for the whole of Africa. By October 14, the continent had recorded 38,633 deaths and surpassed 1.6 million infections.

According to the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the countries most affected by the disease in terms of the number of positive cases include South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Ethiopia, and Nigeria.

South Africa has been the hardest hit country, with both the highest number of cases (694,537) and deaths (18,028), followed by Egypt with 104,787 cases and 6,071 deaths, Morocco with 156,946 cases and 2,685 deaths, Algeria with 53,399 cases and 1,818 deaths, Ethiopia with 85,718 cases and 1,305 deaths, Nigeria with 60,655 cases and 1,116 deaths, Sudan with 13,691 cases and 836 deaths, and Kenya with 41,937 cases and 787 deaths. These eight countries collectively account for more than 80 percent of Africa’s reported deaths from COVID-19.

Protesters from the country's main four labour federations take part in a nationwide strike and protest in Cape Town, South Africa, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Nardus Engelbrecht)

Despite having 17 percent of the global population, Africa has accounted for just 3.4 percent of global cases and 2.6 percent of global deaths, although these figures may be an underestimate given the generally low level of testing. This lower death rate is believed to be the result of the much younger median age in African countries and the widespread BCG vaccination at birth against tuberculosis, which may offer some protection. Another factor is the early implementation of disease control measures, including isolation, quarantining and contact tracing, and lockdown measures, including the closure of schools and workplaces and travel bans.

The very limited nature of Africa’s healthcare systems, with doctors and nurses working without proper personal protective equipment (PPE), has resulted in a high number of health worker infections, with 43,868 infections reported in 43 countries since the beginning of the outbreak. South Africa has been the most affected, with over 27,360 health workers infected, followed by Algeria (2,300), Nigeria (2,175), Ghana (2,065), Ethiopia (1,506), and Kenya (1,029). At the beginning of September, Amnesty International reported that 240 healthcare professionals had died of the disease in South Africa, 159 in Egypt and 84 in Algeria.

The lack of hospitals and the paucity of their infrastructure, especially the number of ventilators for treating the disease, has been exacerbated by the criminal diversion of funds allocated to fight the pandemic. In South Africa, several top officials in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) were implicated in inflating prices of PPE and giving government contracts to combat the pandemic to relatives and close family members. The Ugandan ambassador and her deputy to Denmark were recalled after being recorded in a Zoom call plotting to steal funds directed towards fighting COVID-19. In Somalia, several officials were given heavy sentences for misappropriating funds related to the pandemic, while in Kenya at least 15 top government officials and businesspeople are to be prosecuted over the alleged misuse of millions of dollars meant for buying medical supplies.

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where about half the population lack access to electricity and only 10 percent of households have access to a computer, school closures meant that at least 120 million pupils—about half the 250 million in the region—were unable to access remote learning even if such facilities were available. Only the elite schools were able to provide distance learning for their pupils, exacerbating existing educational inequalities. According to the World Bank, even before the pandemic, 53 percent of children in low and middle-income countries were unable to read and understand a simple piece of text by the age of 10.

A World Health Organisation survey of 39 SSA countries found that the disruption to education resulted in poor nutrition, stress, increased exposure to violence and exploitation, childhood pregnancies, and an adverse impact on children’s mental development. UNICEF found that in Eastern and Southern Africa, where 10 million children were missing out on school meals, nutrition rates had decreased, with girls—particularly those displaced or from low-income households—most at risk.

As many as 10 percent of school children could drop out as their families have been pushed further into poverty due to the economic impact of the pandemic. The International Labour Organization (ILO) said that there might be an increase in child labour for the first time in 20 years, while the World Bank has highlighted the potential long-term social and economic impact of school closures that could result in lifetime earnings losses of $4,500 per child.

Under conditions where only a quarter of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have basic hygiene services and less than half have basic sanitation, the reopening of schools means the unlimited transmission of the disease.

The economic impact of the virus has produced a social catastrophe for the overwhelming majority of Africans who work as day labourers in the informal economy or on the land, are without unemployment benefits, and face poverty, eviction and hunger. The World Bank is predicting that growth in sub-Saharan Africa will shrink by up to 5 percent in 2020, compared to 2.4 percent growth in 2019, pushing the region into its first recession in 25 years and driving up to 40 million people into extreme poverty, making Africa the epicentre of extreme poverty.

Nigeria’s GDP fell by 6.1 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020, while South Africa saw its real GDP contract by 17.1 percent. Angola, SSA’s second largest oil producer after Nigeria, saw its economy contract by 1.8 percent. The contraction has been greatest among metals exporters where real GDP is expected to contract by 6 percent, while oil exporters are expected to see a contraction of 4 percent. This will cost the region at least $115 billion in output losses in 2020, while GDP per capita will shrink by 6 percent as the loss of income from tourism and remittances takes its toll.

The gap between rich and poor, already greater than in any other region apart from Latin America, will widen amid the already pervasive conditions of immense poverty and grotesque and rising inequality. According to Oxfam, the richest 0.0001 percent own 40 percent of the wealth of the entire continent, while Africa’s three richest billionaire men have more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Africa’s 1.2 billion population.

The global recession has fueled SSA’s debt crisis, with a growing number of poor countries, some already in humanitarian crisis, having to channel an ever-growing proportion of their revenues to the banks and commercial creditors. As low-income countries are due to pay at least $40 billion to banks and bondholders this year, some—like Zambia—are planning to freeze their interest payments. Meanwhile, the UN's flagship $10.19 billion appeal to raise emergency funds to help the poorest countries’ response to the pandemic has raised just $2.8 billion.

The working class is manifesting its discontent with the situation in a resurgent wave of political radicalisation that had briefly abated after the onset of the pandemic. In recent months, there have been protests and strikes across the continent, including in Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Tunisia, Kenya and most recently in Nigeria, where week-long mass protests against police brutality forced the government to announce the immediate abolition of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the notorious unit long accused of grotesque abuses, including murders.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which has monitored shifts in protest patterns around the globe through the COVID-19 Disorder Tracker (CDT), state repression has increased by 30 percent, with close to 1,800 incidents where state forces targeted civilians, much of it across East and West Africa.

The escalation of state violence against workers is the desperate response to the growth of social conflicts that manifest themselves ever more openly as a confrontation between two social classes with irreconcilable interests. On one side is a billionaire elite and its corrupt and violent states, and on the other, the urban and rural working masses, increasingly impoverished and railing against the prevailing social order.

All these venal governments are united in their struggle against the working class, spreading lies and disorganising the fight against the pandemic, while forcing workers into contaminated workplaces to generate profits and guarantee the privileges of the capitalist kleptocracy. But the strength of the working class united as an independent political force is far greater. The fundamental question posed for African workers is the construction of a revolutionary leadership that unifies them with their class brothers and sisters internationally and leads them in struggle to overthrow the capitalist system and reorganise society based on socialist policies.

French, Spanish hospital workers protest as COVID-19 spreads across Europe

Will Morrow

Anger is growing among healthcare workers across Europe, with demonstrations and strike actions organized by nurses and doctors in France and Spain this week. The protests are driven by demands for desperately-needed resources for hospital workers to fight against the coronavirus pandemic, and against the “herd immunity” policy that underlie the European states’ response to the virus.

The protests take place as Europe is once again emerging as a global hot spot of the pandemic, with France, the UK and Spain leading the continent in total number of cases.

Today, French nurses will protest outside hospitals and in local city centers, with the largest demonstration to be held in Paris, to call for wage rises, more hospital beds, and more staff.

People walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Statements by nurses to the media and on social media have denounced the conditions in the hospitals, including a shortage of personal protective equipment and staff as Europe is threatened again with overflowing emergency rooms. “I did not sign for this,” Sophie, a nurse in Val-de-Marne told the Le Parisien. “We cannot accept anymore the pressure, the extra unpaid hours.”

“Among ourselves, we call each other the invisibles,” Christina, 46, told the newspaper. “The epidemic was the last straw,” she said, “we were applauded and then nothing.”

On Twitter, Arthur, a 33-year-old nurse, said, “Our healthcare system is collapsing. Real action is needed now.”

A poll of 60,000 nurses organized by the Order of Nurses, and whose results were published by Le Parisien on October 10, revealed that 33 percent of nurses said they were in burnout before the crisis. This figure had almost doubled to 57 percent today.

The day of action was called by a group of trade unions, including the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), the Sud union, and the General Confederation of Management, as well as the Inter-Urgences collective of emergency room workers.

The role of the CGT and the other major unions is particularly cynical. Only four months ago, on July 10, the unions announced an agreement with the Macron administration for a healthcare funding bill that worsened conditions in hospitals, the same bill that is being now widely denounced by health workers. It provided an inadequate pay increase of 180 euros per month to nurses, included no pledge to reopen beds, of which more than 17,000 have been closed in just the last six years, and loosened 35-hour week guarantees for nurses.

The CGT did not sign the agreement, because the deal could already pass with the signatures of the French Democratic Labor Confederation (CFDT), National Union of Autonomous Unions (UNSA), and Workers Force (FO). But it sought to prevent any mobilization of health workers against the deal, publishing an announcement declaring, “Even if the agreement may be disappointing, we have to acknowledge all the same that it’s thanks to the mobilisation of staff over recent years, and thanks to the unions, that we’ve been able to [obtain] … this wage increase.”

In Spain, protests have been organized over several weeks by doctors and other health workers. On Tuesday, hundreds of doctors went on strike in Catalonia to demand better working conditions.

Natalia Ross, a doctor who participated in a protest in Barcelona on Tuesday, told Swiss Info, “We are asking for help, because we cannot give people the resources they need to be treated during this coronavirus pandemic.” The protest action reportedly involves 5,900 doctors across Catalonia.

The growing anger of health workers comes as the virus accelerates rapidly in France, Spain and across Europe, and as hospital workers are once again threatened with an overflow of emergency rooms. The spread of the virus is the predictable and predicted outcome of the policies of the European governments, which have reopened their economies, returning millions to their workplaces and schools, allowing the virus to spread in order to resume the flow of profits to private corporations.

On Monday, Aurélien Rousseau of the Regional Health Agency reported that 17 percent of tests in the Ile-de-France region around Paris were positive, the highest level ever reached. There are 474 people with coronavirus in reanimation beds in hospital, making up 42 percent of all the reanimation patients.

Rousseau reported that in Paris alone on Monday, “among 20-30 year-olds there was an estimated 800 positive cases per 100,000 people in the population. And above all, for the past three days … these figures have increased rapidly among the elderly.”

“We know what will happen in the next 15 days,” he said, “and especially that we are going to have more grave cases,” noting that all hospitals had been placed in “crisis mode.”

There have been 362,000 coronavirus cases in France in the month from September 15 to October 13. In Europe, France is followed by Spain and the UK, with 295,000 and 249,000 cases over the same period, respectively. In terms of number of cases per 100,000 people, however, the Czech Republic is first, with 800 cases per 100,000, followed by Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

Tripling of new coronavirus infections in Germany in only one month

Marianne Arens

On Sunday, the youngest COVID-19 victim in the city of Offenbach died age 51. Offenbach is currently the coronavirus hotspot in the federal state of Hesse. The sad death of a woman who could have lived for several more decades is a further indictment of a government policy whose unanimous credo is: the economy cannot tolerate a new lockdown.

According to this credo, everything is currently being done at the federal, state and local level to keep the economy running even as infections of the deadly coronavirus rapidly rise. This exposes not only production, care, and transport workers, but also students, teachers, educators and their families, as well as all public transport workers, to mortal danger.

At the same time, the rising number of cases—the inevitable result of this policy—is now being used to deploy the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) at home. At the crisis summit in the Chancellor’s Office, Chancellor Angela Merkel decisively spoke out in favour of deploying the Bundeswehr in large cities to relieve the burden on health authorities. The self-created crisis thus serves as a pretext to accustom the population to the deployment of the military on Germany’s streets.

Defective protective film in a Berlin bus

The health authorities are being overloaded with cases. This, too, is a result of the policy of reopening the economy. During the lockdown, they had the aid of additional personnel from offices that had been shut down. Now, in many places, contact tracing can no longer be reliably carried out to identify and notify those who may have been exposed to the virus.

Last week, for example, the Mayor of Offenbach, Felix Schwenke (Social Democratic Party, SPD), asked the Bundeswehr for administrative assistance. On Tuesday, soldiers from a reconnaissance battalion took up work in the Offenbach health department. On Sunday, a representative of the Bundeswehr had already participated in the municipal coronavirus planning staff. Similarly, the mayor of Stuttgart, Fritz Kuhn (Greens), has called for soldiers, and Bundeswehr soldiers are already working in several Berlin districts.

The grand coalition’s barely concealed herd immunity strategy has brought the virus back with force. For days now, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has reported well over 4,000 new infections. On Wednesday morning, the RKI reported 5,132 new infections in only 24 hours, and 43 deaths. A total of 9,682 COVID-19 patients have died since March.

The R (reproduction) value of 1.4 is clearly in the range of an exponential increase. Especially since the beginning of the new school year, the numbers are rapidly increasing. In just one month, from September 9 to October 9, the daily number of new coronavirus infections tripled from about 1,500 to 4,516. During this time, another 300 COVID-19 patients have died.

Not only Offenbach is affected; the city has a current seven-day incidence of almost 80 per 100,000 inhabitants. Also, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Bremen, Stuttgart, Munich, Düsseldorf, Duisburg and other cities currently exceed the much-cited limit of 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants. As reported by the RKI, about one in four people in North Rhine-Westphalia now live in a so-called coronavirus risk area.

The second wave is also affecting all those who cannot escape the virus, such as bus drivers and geriatric carers, nurses, teachers and educators, etc. They are now realizing with growing anger that they are being forced to bear the loss of their life and health as a result of the government’s policy.

“Restarting schools for regular operations and opening day care centres is an economic rescue programme to enable parents to go to work,” writes Conny F, a Facebook user. “In addition, it apparently must not cost anything,” she adds, referring to the refusal of state politicians to provide schools with more staff and modern ventilation systems.

In the TV show “hart aber fair” (“hard but fair”), nurse Nina Böhmer, author of a book on the nursing emergency in Germany, confirmed on Monday that “actually nothing” had changed in hospital wards and old people’s homes since April. “The personnel situation is still the same, the material situation is the same. Even before the pandemic, incredible cuts were made in equipment and personnel. We are still working at the limits of our capacity.”

In spring, Böhmer had posted on Facebook: “You can stick your clapping somewhere else ... if you want to help or want to show how much we are worth, then help us to fight for better conditions!”

The growing willingness to fight is already expressed internationally in youth protests. In Poland, students have been striking in some schools since last Monday for fear of infecting their families, while other students come dressed in black as they are forced to attend classes.

In Greece, students occupied over 700 schools at the end of September. For their demands for smaller classes, more teachers and safe, free transportation, they are willing to defy the state authorities, who blackmail and violently attack them. They stress, “We are not costs—we are the future!”

The World Socialist Web Site and the sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International are fighting for workers and youth to unite in independent action committees, network nationally and internationally, and prepare a general strike to jointly stop the second wave in Europe.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the trade unions are in the same camp as the ruling class and big business. Verdi and IG Metall belong to those who downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus and the politicians who advocate a herd immunity policy. Although Verdi is currently organizing nationwide protest strikes in the public sector and public transport, it has not put forward a single demand for greater safety in the pandemic. The union will not lift a finger against the untenable situation in schools. The token strikes only serve to provide an outlet for the growing anger and to try and keep the situation under control.

As a result, more and more workers are seeing where the unions really stand. As Kaya, a Berlin bus driver, remarked in an interview with the WSWS: “One reason why they are not working to protect their colleagues from coronavirus infection is that the contracts are certainly already signed. We already know that from the past.”

Her colleague, who drives for Berlin Transport GmbH, reported: “They don’t even fight to protect the drivers in private companies, who often have to drive around with only warning tape. They follow the motto: ‘I don’t bite the hand which feeds me.’”

“An important 10 months were not used,” he continued. There should have been regulations in the depots imposing the wearing of masks and keeping safe distances in January. “Everything should have been shut down. We have seen that many people have died in China. Now—after 10 months—to announce the compulsory wearing of masks is a joke. The firms just want an alibi so they can say they did something. An enclosed driver’s cab could have been installed by that time.”

The rising coronavirus figures are all the more alarming because they do not reflect the current infection rate, but what it was seven to 10 days ago. This means that even in the unlikely event of an effective countermeasure, the figures would continue to rise for at least 10 days. With the current policy, a level of 10,000 and more new infections per day is firmly pre-programmed. As a result, several hundred people will be hospitalized every day with severe illness and dozens to hundreds will die every day.

On Friday, Charité director Heyo Kroemer pointed to the figures in France at the federal press conference with Christian Drosten. “In France, they are always two to three weeks ahead of us,” Kroemer said, and that was already the case in the spring. On Friday, the number of new coronavirus infections in France had exceeded the threshold of 20,000 per day for the first time, and on Saturday, it was almost 27,000 in 24 hours. Over 32,600 people have died in France from the virus since the spring. Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, Portugal and practically all of Europe are also reporting rising coronavirus numbers again.

Reports of outbreaks in nursing homes and refugee shelters are already increasing again.

In the Vitalis residential facility in Bad Essen (Lower Saxony), 27 residents and 13 employees tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, while an 85-year-old resident died. Elsewhere, 24 of 29 residents and seven employees in a nursing home for dementia patients in Freudental (Baden-Württemberg) had been confirmed infected with the virus.

One week ago, a coronavirus outbreak became known in a residential home for people with disabilities in Schleiz, Thuringia. More than 20 people, including staff, had become infected there. In the Esslingen district, at least 26 schools, five day-care centres and several refugee hostels are affected. One source of infection is a DHL freight centre in Köngen, where refugees work and live in shared accommodation nearby.

Schools are also severely affected, and school closures have soared, not only in Baden-Württemberg. There have been 531 confirmed cases of coronavirus at schools, day care centres and after-school centres since the beginning of the school year, and 23 teachers have fallen ill. As the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung reports, all classes were open in mid-September, on September 24, there were already 172 class closures and on October 6 the number rose to 444.

Also, the challenges of the cold season are now being added, while regular school operations are to be maintained at all costs. The German Philologists’ Association advises teachers and students to “dress warm” in the classroom so that ventilation can continue.

Comments on the internet are also increasing. “This is the ultimate testimony of the poverty of our unions,” comments Lanayah. And a teacher, Gustav, writes, “They should rather advise school administrators to close the school when the minimum temperature according to the Occupational Health and Safety Directive is not reached. Why [must we] always bend? Shut schools for two weeks, everyone would put pressure on the KMs [ministries of education] and no one would have to freeze because suddenly there would be money.”

But leading politicians of all stripes, from the Christian Democrats (CDU) to the Left Party, stick mercilessly to the back-to-work policies. While they insult people for “unreasonably partying,” impose useless bans on alcohol and curfews and mobilize the Bundeswehr, they see no reason to restrict the actual super-spreader events—the full schools and day care centres and overcrowded buses and trains—and make them pandemic-proof.

Macron hails herd immunity, rejects lockdown as COVID-19 surges in Europe

Alex Lantier

In a television interview yesterday amid the European-wide resurgence of COVID-19, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew in several French cities, while insisting there would be no lockdown to halt the virus. However, a curfew will not stop the virus, which is now infecting 20,000 people daily in France and over 130,000 across Europe.

An even greater disaster is looming. The number of cases is growing exponentially, and in France emergency rooms are already overflowing with serious cases in Paris, Marseille and other cities. In late September, the president of the Doctors Association, Patrick Brouet, warned: “If nothing changes, in 3-4 weeks, France will have to face in long autumn and winter months a full-fledged epidemic across its entire territory, with no less-affected regions whose health staff can help worst-hit regions, and with a health system that will be overrun.”

Macron, who infamously said that “we must learn to live with the virus,” said, however, that nothing would change and that “we have not lost control.” He added that he is “not in panic mode.” He announced a curfew beginning on the night of Friday to Saturday in the Paris area, Aix-Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Saint-Étienne, Rouen, Grenoble and Montpellier. “It would be premature to lock down the country at this stage,” he said.

He insisted that all workers would return to work, and students to school, despite the curfew. The goal, he explained, is to “limit our more festive relations,” but to keep the economy going and, according to him, “continue having a social life,” but only at work and at school. He also declared that current precautions against the virus are doing a satisfactory job in limiting transmission in workplaces and in schools and universities.

Macron, a banker and shameless representative of the financial aristocracy, is planning to sacrifice large numbers of lives to keep workers at work, even at non-essential jobs, to guarantee profits keep flowing to the banks. Macron’s policy, closely coordinated with the European Union (EU), London and Washington, is based entirely on lies and reactionary evasions that are directly contradicted by the data of his own ministries.

A curfew that simply aims to limit French people’s social lives after work will not halt the pandemic. According to the latest French Public Health Agency report, the percentage of clusters due to public or private gatherings has fallen sharply as workers limit their social contacts, to only 7.9 percent of the total. Schools, companies, precarious jobs, and mass transit count for 61 percent of COVID-19 clusters, the rest being concentrated mainly in hospitals and social services facilities.

Schools and universities alone account for over 35 percent of clusters, underscoring the significance of the politically-criminal decision to restart in-person learning this autumn.

Not only is Macron’s statement that existing safety measures are stopping contagion at work and at school false, but the curfew will do little or nothing to halt most of the transmission of COVID-19. His claim that it is “premature” to lock down the country reflects above all the utter contempt of the financial aristocracy for the lives of working people.

Macron said he aimed to bring the number of daily new cases in France down from 20,000 to between 3,000 and 5,000. The journalists carrying out this entirely scripted interview, news anchormen Gilles Bouleau of TF1 and Anne-Sophie Lapix of France2, asked no questions that could have revealed that Macron’s curfew is not likely to reach this goal.

But above all, Macron’s statement that the goal of his policy is to let between 90,000 and 150,000 people contract a potentially deadly virus each month is irresponsible and politically criminal.

Macron admitted that even when those who are sick do not die, they suffer consequences “that we do not understand,” they have “lost the sense of smell and taste” or “have lesions in their lungs, sometimes consequences on their cardiac, gastrointestinal or nervous systems.” He also admitted that half of the sick on life-support are under 65. Nonetheless, he accepted that for the indefinite future, people in France could be infected at a rate of millions of cases each year.

Fighting this policy requires the independent political mobilization of the working class. Macron’s policy is a conscious, cold-blooded policy, deliberately aiming to pump profits into the banks at the expense of millions of people across France, Europe and the world. While Berlin, Paris and the EU have agreed on multi-trillion-euro bailouts to fund the banks and major corporations and boost the stock portfolios of the super-rich, they are working closely with the unions to return workers to work and guarantee a flow of profits to the ruling class.

Significantly, in his speech, Macron hailed the pandemic policy of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, the most open defender together with Donald Trump of a herd immunity policy. This strategy for immunizing livestock entails vaccinating a certain percentage of a herd in order to ensure that a disease will not spread far among the livestock. Now, treating workers and youth as worth less than cattle, Macron, Johnson, Trump and other NATO heads of state are proposing to let millions contract a deadly disease.

The central issue in fighting COVID-19 is allocating the necessary financial and industrial resources to fund workers and small businesses during a lockdown to halt the spread of the virus, while investing massively in testing and treatment facilities. However, the American and European financial aristocracies obstinately refuse any such policy.

As criticisms of Macron grow in the medical community, several reports have emerged contrasting the policy of China’s Stalinist police state to that of the EU, which was both less effective and less humane. Lockdowns have largely halted the spread of COVID-19 inside China. When a 12-case cluster was detected in Qingdao this month, around a hospital treating foreign COVID-19 patients, authorities rapidly moved to test the city’s 9 million inhabitants in order to identify the infected, let them shelter at home, and prevent a wider outbreak.

In France and other wealthy EU countries, however, the state accepts a mass spread of the virus, and even with only a few hundreds of thousands of tests being carried out, workers still have to wait several days or even over a week to obtain the test results.

The Clermont-Ferrand daily La Montagne interviewed Dr Philippe Klein, a French doctor now practicing in China, who stressed that there is an imminent danger of a catastrophic collapse of the European health system in the winter, when lung diseases are most deadly. He said, “A time will come where our emergency rooms and life-support systems will be saturated, and we will again have to pick and choose which of the ill will be treated. There will have to be a lockdown.”

Klein bitterly criticized Macron’s handling of the pandemic in the interests of the super-rich: “A lockdown is easy. Stop everything, stop the mixing of the population and stop the spread. But in France we botched the end of the lockdown.” Klein said he spoke to Macron and suggested more rigorous shelter-at-home orders as in China. However, Klein said, “Macron listened, it was just that economic interests won out. Those who wanted to slow [the pandemic] down, not stop it, made the wrong choice.”

The central question now is organizing workers and youth in independent safety committees in their workplaces and schools, independently of the unions, and laying the political basis for systematic mass strikes and opposition to the policy of Macron, the EU and the capitalist class. This includes the fight to implement a shelter-at-home policy for youth and non-essential workers to prevent an avoidable but truly horrific loss of life in Europe and internationally in the coming months.

North and East of Sri Lanka paralysed by mass anti-government protest

Subash Somachandran

The entire North and East of Sri Lanka was paralysed by a mass protest campaign (hartal) on September 28, against the right-wing government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

This was triggered by banning of a commemoration of a former LTTE leader, Thileepan, who died on hunger strike in September 1987, after the Indian military occupation of the North and East of Sri Lanka.

Tamil groups organised commemorations of Thileepan from September 15 to 26—from the day he started fasting until the day he died. However, police obtained a court order on September 14 prohibiting all protests, declaring that Thileepan was a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which has been banned as a terrorist group. The order added that “remembering a banned organization.... is an offence punishable by arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.” The court order allowed police to detain protesters under the draconian anti-terror law.

Police then arrested former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian M.K. Sivajilingam on September 15 for violating the court order, releasing him 24 hours later on bail. They removed photos of Thileepan at his memorial site in Nallur, Jaffna. Police also threatened a group of Jaffna University students who were protesting in front of the university.

The hartal was called by United Tamil Nationalist Parties, a hurriedly-formed front of Tamil bourgeois nationalist parties including the TNA, the Tamil People’s National Alliance, the Tamil National People’s Front and several other groups. These discredited parties called the protest not out of concern for democratic rights, but to control rising popular opposition and shore up their fast-dwindling support.

Mass participation in the protest, however, reflected broader opposition to police-state measures and determination to defend the democratic right to conduct commemorations and legitimate struggles.

Tamil and Muslim people in the north-east participated together in the hartal, shutting down all public affairs and business. Schools were open, but students did not attend. Lawyers did not appear in court. Public transport came to a halt, as there were no passengers to travel. Only government offices and banks were open.

Teachers and state employees attended work only because authorities indicated that otherwise they would be penalised. Police and the military were patrolling the streets, threatening traders to force them to open their shops.

In Vavuniya district, military forces visited schools to compile lists of teachers who did not attend school. Military intelligence units were deployed to gather information, according to local reports.

Small groups of government supporters held “protests” against the hartal, but the hartal continued throughout the day. People in the east also held similar protests.

Mass participation in the hartal despite police-military threats in the north and east reflects growing opposition among workers and the poor in the entire country against mounting attacks on living conditions and democratic rights under President Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

In recent years, joint strikes and protests of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim workers erupted despite the Colombo political establishment’s communalist propaganda, while Tamil parties tried to rouse nationalism to divide the working class.

People across the North and East are still suffering from the devastation of the thirty-year communal war waged by successive governments in Colombo against the LTTE. Over 100,000 people died during the war, and thousands are missing.

Thousands still live in houses without basic facilities. There are about 90,000 war widows and many disabled persons in the North and East without proper means of living.

Furthermore, the North and East have been under military occupation for about four decades, facing continuous surveillance and harassment. The Rajapakse government’s repression and continuous anti-Tamil provocations are part of its drive towards a dictatorship based on military.

Two days earlier, on September 26, a hunger strike was held at Chavakachcheri Sivan temple, south of Jaffna city, in commemoration of Thileepan, while dozens of police were watching. At the end of the action, Mavai Senadhirajah, the leader of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK or Federal Party, the leading party in the TNA), thanked police for their “support.”

The ITAK leader’s remarks reflected the close allegiance and support of Tamil nationalist groups for the repressive state forces occupying the North and East. Significantly, Senadhirajah made those remarks while the police and military forces were roaming Jaffna, threatening people and arresting his fellow TNA member, Sivajilingam. However, Senadhirajah did not condemn the actions of the security forces or the Colombo government which is directing them.

The TNA acted as a de-facto partner of the previous government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, helping its austerity program and undermining war crimes investigations. In recent months, its leaders have sought a rapprochement with President Rajapakse, who is fast moving towards entrenching presidential dictatorship. Every section of the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie fears mounting social opposition amid the crisis accelerated by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

At times, they try to stir memories of the LTTE’s past, with politically impotent and bankrupt actions aiming to confuse workers and youth.

All Tamil nationalist parties, including the defeated LTTE, based their perspective on appealing to the Indian bourgeoisie and to imperialism, particularly the United States, to achieve a power-sharing arrangement with the Colombo government. After the LTTE’s defeat, these parties have gone further to the right, supporting US geopolitical interests against China. The TNA’s backing for the regime change operation to oust President Mahinda Rajapakse in 2015, replacing him with Sirisena, was part of this shift.

Thileepan’s fasting during the Indian military occupation of the North and East of Sri Lanka for about 2 years starting in 1987 has important lessons. The Indian military had been brought in the pretext of peace-keeping in the North and East, according to the Indo-Lanka Accord signed between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene on July 29, 1987. The agreement proposed limited concessions to the Tamil elite in a devolution package for the North and East to garner their support.

The LTTE agreed with the accord dictated by New Delhi, which acted as ruthless regional policeman. The Tamil bourgeois parties, then mainly rallied under the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and other armed militant groups, fully supported the accord and the Indian military intervention.

In reality, India’s role was to suppress the Tamil insurgency and defend the Sri Lankan capitalist unitary state established amid the postwar settlement that the imperialist powers and the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy imposed in the Indian sub-continent.

The Indian military was soon consolidating its occupation of the North and East while compelling LTTE to hand over its arms. Directed by LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran—who was killed by the Sri Lankan military at the war’s end in May 2009—Thileepan, the leader of the group’s political wing, started fasting on several demands.

Those demands included the release of political prisoners held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act; disarming home guards, an auxiliary police force; and halting colonisation settlements of Sinhalese in the North and East.

These demands were forwarded to New Delhi, which contemptuously ignored them. Masses of people supported Thileepan’s fast to express their opposition to the Indian intervention. Thileepan died on September 26. As mass anger grew, after systematic provocations, the Indian military launched an assault on the LTTE in early October. Apart from LTTE cadres, thousands of Tamil civilians were killed in the Indian military assault.

Only the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), the Sri Lanka section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), opposed the Indo-Lanka Accord and the Indian invasion on the basis of the unity of Sinhala and Tamil workers. The RCL demanded the withdrawal of Indian forces and the Sri Lankan military from the north and east of Sri Lanka. It also held two well attended public meetings in Jaffna and Karainagar in August, 1987 explaining the dire consequences of the Accord.

The ICFI issued a statement on November 19, 1987 titled “The Situation in Sri Lanka and the tasks of the Revolutionary Communist League.” The ICFI condemned the Indian intervention, which marked a political turning point. In this statement, the ICFI summed up the LTTE’s role:

“Prabhakaran now claims that his decision to fly to New Delhi and agree to the terms of the Indo-Sri Lankan accord was the product of Indian tricks and deceit. This ‘excuse’ exposes not only the naiveté of the LTTE, but the political impotence of petty-bourgeois nationalism. If the LTTE leader could be tricked by Gandhi, it is because his entire policy had been built upon soliciting the assistance of the Indian bourgeoisie in securing the self-determination of Tamil Eelam. The source of catastrophic miscalculation lies in the essential class perspective and program of bourgeois nationalism.”

The ICFI developed the program of Sri Lanka and Eelam Socialist Republic as part of Union of Socialist Republics in South Asia in opposition to the Indian bourgeoisie’s intervention. This program has been vindicated over the decades since 1987.

Jerry White

With the number of workers unemployed for more than six months hitting an all-time high and millions running out of federal and state jobless benefits, the US government has made it clear that providing unemployment benefits for workers is not a priority.

After the $600-a-week federal supplement to state unemployment benefits expired on July 31, Trump approved a stopgap measure called the Lost Wage Assistance program, which cut federal assistance in half, providing six weekly payments of $300, starting retroactively on August 1. But even this meager money is now running out.

More than two million Californians are getting their last $300 check this week. Another 2.4 million New Yorkers will lose their benefits in the next two weeks, and the program has already ended in Texas, Utah, Iowa, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho, New Hampshire and Missouri.

Pedestrians wait in line to collect fresh produce and shelf-stable pantry items outside Barclays Center as Food Bank For New York City provides assistance to those in need due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Negotiations on a new stimulus bill were taking place when US President Trump tweeted last week that he was ending any further talks until after the election. Shortly afterwards, however, he called for the passage of a relief package.

Amid demands by California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, the former co-chair of the Sanders campaign, to “Make a deal, put the ball in McConnell’s court,” Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi flatly refused to make any progress on a new stimulus bill.

Asked by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer why she was not doing more to help “millions of Americans who can’t put food on the table, who can’t pay the rent,” Pelosi replied, in a shocking expression of indifference, “Have you fed them? We feed them.”

Whatever the jostling for electoral advantage, the fact is that the last thing on the minds of any of the millionaire Congressmen in Washington is the well-being of tens of millions of desperate workers and their families.

While the federal and state governments initially expanded unemployment benefits, suspended foreclosures and stopped utility shutoffs to try to prevent a social explosion as tens of millions lost their jobs due to the pandemic, all of these measures are now being eliminated.

Landlords nationwide can start eviction processes while a federal moratorium remains in place through December, according to an updated guidance released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Justice Department. At the same time, landlords will not be required to tell renters about the protections to which they are entitled.

With the pandemic worsening and the cold weather setting in, as many as 180 million people face the danger of having their light, water and other utilities shut off as state protections end. Nationwide, electric and gas debts alone threaten to reach or exceed $24.3 billion by the end of the year, according to an analysis from the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association released earlier this month.

Thousands of Louisville, Kentucky-area electric and gas customers behind on their bills face shutoffs after the Kentucky Public Service Commission voted to allow utilities to resume disconnections as soon as October 20.

Hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents also face shutoff as the state moratorium ends this week. “I saw the dollar amount first, and it was like I almost passed out,” Racquel Kooper told a CBS News affiliate after the single mother of three received a past due amount of over $2,300 and cutoff warning.

About 22 million adults in the US, or 10.1 percent of the total, reported that their households could not afford to buy enough food, according to Household Pulse Survey data by the US Census Bureau. This was nearly triple the rate before the pandemic.

Some 13 million Americans were officially unemployed in September, about seven million more than pre-pandemic levels. This included 2.4 million workers laid off for more than 27 weeks. Another 4.9 million will join the rolls of the long-term unemployed over the next few weeks.

At the same time, the number of permanent job losses grew by 345,000 to 3.8 million as temporary furloughs became permanent. Allstate, American Airlines, Chevron, Disney, Royal Dutch Shell and United Airlines all announced permanent job cuts in recent days.

According to a new study by Axios, the real unemployment rate in America—if calculated on the basis of the number of people looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage but unable to find one—is 26.1 percent, or three times higher than the official jobless rate of 7.9 percent in September. If you count anybody over 16 years old who is not earning a living wage, the unemployment rate rises to a staggering 54.6 percent overall and 59.2 for African Americans.

While tens of millions of people are confronting the worst economic and social crisis since the Great Depression, the multitrillion-dollar CARES Act bailout for Wall Street has led to booming bank profits. Goldman Sachs on Wednesday announced that its third-quarter profit nearly doubled to $3.62 billion.

The desperate situation facing the population is hardly mentioned by either Trump or his presidential challenger Joe Biden. While Trump incites right-wing violence to enforce his “herd immunity” policy, both corporate-controlled parties are using the threat of homelessness and hunger to force workers back on the job so they can produce the profits to pay for the giant corporate bailout.

Regardless of the outcome of the election, working class opposition will continue to mount against the ruling class’s murderous back-to-work and back-to-school policies and efforts to loot society’s resources.

Throughout the US and internationally, strikes and protests are continuing to grow, including the walkouts by Polish students against the spread of the deadly contagion in schools and the formation of rank-and-file safety committees at worksites and schools in the US, UK, Germany and other countries.

In every workplace and neighborhood, workers and young people should build rank-and-file committees, independent of the corrupt unions and the corporate-controlled parties, to fight the spread of the disease and to ensure the health and safety of workers.

At the same time, trillions of dollars must be diverted from the bailout of Wall Street and used instead to marshal the international scientific resources to battle the pandemic and address the massive economic and social crisis. This must include the provision of free, high-quality health care for all, full income for all those affected by the crisis, the closure of nonessential production, the ending of in-person learning until the pandemic is contained, and the provision of protective equipment for essential workers.

As the World Socialist Web Site has made clear, the fight against the pandemic is not primarily a medical, but a social and political issue. The only way the needs of the vast majority of the world’s people can be addressed is through the socialist transformation of society.

In India, Rape is only a Symptom

Cesar Chelala

It is difficult to reconcile India’s rapid economic and technological development with brutal practices that, in many cases, lead to the death of women and girls. Repeated incidents of gang rape in India are not isolated, but reflect widespread gender and caste discrimination in the country. Today, rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India.

Two recent gang rapes resulting in the deaths of Dalit women have shocked people around the world. Both women were young, one 19 and the other 22-years-old. In India, 200 million Dalits face discrimination and abuse. According to women rights’ activists, this is a situation that has increased during the coronavirus pandemic. There are no signs that crimes against women and girls are abating.

One of the earliest and most brutal manifestation of violence against women is female feticide, where female fetuses are selectively aborted after pre-natal sex determination. Researchers for The Lancet estimate that more than 500,000 girls are lost annually through sex selective abortions. Female fetuses are selectively aborted after pre-natal sex determination. Sometimes, the elimination of girls occurs after they are born, a situation of female infanticide that has existed for centuries in India.

One of the consequences of female feticide is the increase in human trafficking. According to some estimates, in 15,000 Indian women were sold as bribes in 2011 to regions such as Haryana and Punjab to compensate for the lack of women as a result of feticide. While women in the Vedic age (1500-1000 BC), and some even now, were worshipped as gods, in modern times some are negated the basic right to life.

Feticide began in the early 1990s, when ultrasound techniques became widely used in India. Many families continue to have children until a male child is born, since boys are valued more than girls. Religious practices for their parent’s afterlife can only be performed by males, which makes them an additional status symbol for their families.

The Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, passed in 1994, making selective abortion illegal, has been poorly enforced. In 2003, the PCPNDT was modified holding medical professionals legally responsible for abuse of the test. These provisions, however, have not significantly deterred their abuse.

Although gender-based discrimination against women and girls is pervasive in developing countries, India is one of the worst culprits. Female discrimination, which starts in the womb, continues throughout women’s lives. A survey by the Thomas Reuters Foundation found that India is the fourth most dangerous place in the world for women.

In India, violence against women can take several forms. Women of any class or religion can be victims of acid-throwing, a cruel form of punishment that can disfigure women for life and even kill them. According to perpetrators’ testimonies, they do it to put women in their place for defying cultural norms. The U.N. Population Fund reports that up to 70 percent of married women aged 15-49 in India are victims of beatings or coerced sex.

Dowry traditions, in which parents must often pay large sums of money to marry off their daughters is claimed as one of the reasons why parents prefer boys to girls. In 1961, the Government of India passed the Dowry Prohibition Act, which makes dowry demands in wedding arrangements illegal. Although some kinds of abuse such as “bride burning” have diminished among educated urban populations, many cases of dowry-related domestic violence, suicide and murders are still occurring.

Rape of women in India are not isolated incidents. They are actually symptoms of a discrimination that starts in the womb, in a society that persists in treating women as second-class citizens. Abuse of women in India will only be solved by changing entrenched cultural norms that continue to condone the abuse and degradation of women. Until the rights of all women and girls, regardless of caste, are accepted by Indian society, and appropriate laws are enforced, any measures to overcome this situation will only be palliative, and will not solve this most serious problem.

Britain: The world’s second largest arms exporter and friend to warmongers and despots

Jean Shaoul

According to data released by the Department for International Trade (DIT), the UK government was the world’s second biggest arms exporter behind the US between 2010-2019. Britain signed £86 billion worth of contracts for military equipment and services.

Last year, Britain exported £11 billion worth of fighter jets, radar, missiles, arms, and materiel, the second highest year for UK arms sales since 1983.

While the US was by far the largest arms exporter, accounting for 47 percent of the global arms trade, the UK accounted for 16 percent, while Russia and France had 11 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Sales were down from 2018’s £14 billion due to what DIT said was “the volatile nature of the global export market for defence.” The UK won “no major platform orders in 2019” and arms exports to Saudi Arabia were halted in June last year, following the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the UK government had failed to take into account whether Saudi airstrikes in Yemen that targeted civilians broke humanitarian law.

Workers salvage oil canisters from the wreckage of a vehicle oil store hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, July 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

While the US is Britain’s largest single arms customer, most of Britain’s arms exports (60 percent) go to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia by far the largest buyer along with Oman, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Israel, Bahrain, and Egypt.

The UK government had no hesitation in greenlighting the sale of arms to countries waging war at home or abroad, including to Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Afghanistan, UAE, Nigeria, Mexico, Iraq, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and South Sudan. The list of Britain’s customers reads like a roll call of the most corrupt and blood-soaked regimes on the planet.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said, “These sales are not just numbers on a spreadsheet: for people around the world they could be a matter of life and death. UK-made weapons have played a devastating role in the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen.”

The UK has licensed more than £6.5 billion worth of arms to the Saudi-led coalition in the five years since March 26, 2015, when the bombing began. This is likely an underestimate as many of the bombs, missiles, and aircraft components are licensed via the opaque and secretive Open Licence system that is “more flexible” than a standard licence and “avoids the need to apply for a new licence for every export.”

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the Saudi-led war against Yemen—waged with the full backing of Washington and London—has killed over 100,000 people, mostly civilians.

The Saudi bombing campaign would have been impossible without UK weapons and logistical support, which has included providing targeting intelligence, training pilots, maintaining aircraft, and the deployment of elite Special Forces.

British-built aircraft, bombs, and missiles have been used to target civilians in breach of UK arms export law that bans the sale of arms or munitions to a state that is at “clear risk” of committing serious violations of international humanitarian law (IHL). The Ministry of Defence had logged a staggering 516 potential IHL violations by the Saudi-led coalition by July this year, even as it resumed arms sales to Riyadh after a one-year hiatus following the Court of Appeal’s ban, pending a review of the government’s vetting procedures.

The war has created the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet in what was already the poorest country in the Arab world. As well as the direct casualties of war, many more have died of hunger and disease, including as many as 85,000 children under the age of five, according to the Save the Children charity.

The UN says at least 24 million people—more than three-quarters of Yemen’s population—need aid and protection. It has been forced to cut critical aid at 300 health centres and reduce lifesaving food distribution across the country—one third of its humanitarian programmes—in the last six months due to a lack of funding. The UN warned of further drastic cuts “in coming weeks unless additional funding is received.”

Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said the UN had received only $1 billion of the $3.2 billion needed. “It’s an impossible situation. This is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, yet we don’t have the resources we need to save the people who are suffering and will die if we don’t help.”

Last month, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it would have to close its food aid programme to 12 million and health services to 19 million, because both the UAE and Saudi Arabia had failed to honour their combined pledges of $1.5 billion. Mark Lowcock, the UN’s under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned that the “spectre of famine” had returned to Yemen.

The arms trade with governments at war and repressive regimes is bound up with safeguarding the billions of pounds in profits from arms sales accruing to BAE Systems and other major UK weapons manufacturers that account for around 10 percent of Britain’s declining manufacturing base.

Such is the reality of Britain’s arms licencing system, which the government routinely claims is one of the most “robust” and “transparent” in the world, that a recent Sky News investigation found evidence of Russian special forces on operations in the past two years, as well as Russian-backed Syrian rebels, using British-made sniper rifles. Both countries are at the top of the UK’s political and military hit-list. The government claims it had never approved the export of these weapons to Moscow, which has been under a European Union arms embargo since the US and EU-orchestrated coup in Ukraine that toppled the pro-Russian government in 2014.

No less a consideration in the arming of the Middle East’s repressive regimes is the Conservative government’s support for the US war buildup against Iran, that is in turn bound up with its preparations for war against nuclear-armed China and Russia. Last year, the government dispatched three warships to the Persian Gulf in support of Washington’s escalating provocations against Iran.

Last weekend, Andriy Yermak, who heads Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, revealed in remarks at Chatham House—a UK foreign policy think tank focusing on Russia and Eurasia—that London would agree a large lethal weapons contract with Ukraine and a £1 billion loan to help Ukraine’s navy build new ships capable of use in the Black Sea.

His remarks followed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s signing the prevoius Thursday of a major trade, political, and defence agreement with President Zelenskiy during his visit to London. Johnson said that the agreement pledged Britain’s support for Kiev's sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's “malign influence, both in Ukraine and in the wider region.” Downing Street said that British troops had trained more than 18,000 members of Ukraine's armed forces since 2015.

Ukraine has been fighting a six-year-long civil war in eastern Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists, ever since the installation in 2014 of a far right nationalist NATO-aligned government in Kiev. The civil war has claimed more than 13,000 lives, left 30,000 injured, and displaced 1.5 million people from their homes. A 2019 UNICEF report found that nearly half a million children in eastern Ukraine “face grave risks to their physical health and psychological well-being” as they attend bullet-ridden schools and walk through fields of land mines.

The war plans of the imperialist powers can only be thwarted by the mobilization of the international working class in a struggle against war and its source, the capitalist system.