Marriage is no child’s play

Shobha Shukla

According to a report by UNICEF, India is home to the largest number of child brides in the world, accounting for more than one third of the global total of 650 million women and girls who were married as children. Of the country’s current total of 223 million child brides, 102 million were married before turning 15. Despite a legal ban on marriage of girls below 18 years of age, 27% of the girls in India are married before their 18th birthday and 7% are married before the age of 15. Girls living in rural areas are at greater risk. Structural inequalities, local culture and tradition, lack of education, poverty and insecurity, are some of the factors that are cited for this social evil that plagues our society.

Efforts, largely spearheaded by civil society organisations, have been able to reduce India’s annual rate of child marriage to 5.5%, but a lot more remains to be done.

During tenth virtual session of the 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSHR), Dr Pramesh Chandra Bhatnagar, Senior Director (Programme) at Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI), shared how peer-led approaches under the aegis of More Than Brides Alliance are helping to change socio-cultural norms to reduce child marriage and promote youth friendly sexual and reproductive health services in 40 districts of India.

Dr Bhatnagar presented the details of one such comprehensive strategy being implemented by VHAI that has succeeded in not only making 44 villages child marriage free in Khalikote block of Ganjam district in Odisha, but has also brought about meaningful socio-economic changes in the lives of adolescent girls and boys through their active participation.

A baseline survey done in 177 villages of this block found that knowledge about sexual and reproductive health in adolescents was very low at 7%. Only 10-11% girls had any knowledge about menstruation, even among those who had started menarche. Only 2-3% youth knew about any HIV/AIDS related information. And yet, surprisingly there was a high prevalence of premarital sex, with more than 40% of the girls being in such relationships. Thus brewed a lethal potion comprising low knowledge of sexual and reproductive health and higher level of sexual activity among adolescents. The baseline survey also helped to identify barriers for adolescents’ access to sexual and reproductive health services and reasons for high prevalence of child marriages.

The next step was mapping the adolescent population in the project area. This was followed by workshops to facilitate formation and capacity building of more than 500 adolescent groups comprising over 11000 adolescent boys and girls. Group members themselves chose their peer educators. These peer educators were then trained in sexual and reproductive health and life-skills education. Capacity building of the existing community groups and community leaders of the villages was also done to engage diverse groups of actors in promoting adolescent sexual health and prevention of child marriage.

Adolescent girls were motivated to develop their Charter of Demand, focussed particularly on child marriage. The women’s community groups developed a community-based monitoring tool with indicators on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and child marriage. This proved to be a very empowering tool that has helped the local community to monitor outreach activities in the villages for not only addressing youth’s sexual and reproductive health issues but also looking into other developmental projects taking place in the community.

The community groups have monthly meetings wherein the villagers come up with a village health improvement plan, which the workers are supposed to fulfil and report in the next meeting. If they have any problem the village women and adolescent girls make the required intervention, especially by visiting the local staff.

This comprehensive model has used a multi-pronged approach that goes beyond preventing child marriages and improving sexual and reproductive health of adolescents. It has also resulted in economic and social empowerment of the girls, which includes giving them vocational training and supporting them to start small initiatives. The two major fields which the girls of these villages preferred, and where they excelled most, were computer training and mobile phone repairing. Providing the girls with bicycles proved to be a game changer as it empowered them to commute easily to school and training venues, even if they were far away from their homes.

Adolescent leadership was enhanced through capacity building, promoting their education and social skills, helping them in getting vocational training and providing them with job opportunities. Alongside, engaging other stakeholders, like village health workers, school teachers, local panchayat members and district government officials has helped in influencing the socio-cultural norms around child marriage and youth sexual and reproductive health.

These efforts have helped in averting 128 proposed child marriage cases, in which the girls, peer educators and their groups played a major role, by negotiating and advocating directly with the families involved. Also, as of date, no child marriage has taken place in 44 villages since the past two years.

The project has also helped in increasing institutional deliveries and birth registrations to 95%, uptake of contraceptives, and community monitoring of adolescent friendly sexual and reproductive health services.

70 information dissemination centres were formed for adolescents’ vocational and recreational activities as well as for dissemination of information on sexual and reproductive health, including demonstration of use of contraceptive products by government health staff. These centres are managed by the adolescent peer educators themselves. 11 government health centres have been converted into adolescent friendly health centres. They are open in the afternoon only for the youngsters, who can visit them after school hours to discuss sexual and reproductive health related issues with an auxiliary nurse, midwife or a medical doctor.

Dr Bhatnagar informed that even during the COVID-19 lockdown, regular interaction with the peer leaders and adolescent group members has continued through social media applications (like WhatsApp) and online sessions on themes such as menstrual hygiene, sexual and reproductive health and safety precautions for COVID-19. A local phone HelpLine has also been created on which queries on COVID-19, sexual and reproductive health issues, reporting of child marriage cases are answered (7 am to 9 pm, six days a week). Some girls were trained to stitch masks and this helped them earn an extra income.

However, the pandemic has given a setback to many global efforts to put an end to child marriage. According to a recent report published in the Lancet, up to 2·5 million more girls around the world are at risk of marriage in the next 5 years because of the pandemic. An estimated 500,000 more girls are likely to be forced into child marriage and 1 million more are expected to become pregnant in 2020 itself due to its economic impact.

The situation in India is no better. According to the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development, during the pandemic lockdown period of March to June, its nodal agency Childline intervened to prevent 5584 such underage marriages across India. Many more must have gone unreported. When the lockdown eased in June and July, child marriages spiked, marking a 17% increase over the previous year.

We are getting pushed back further in our efforts to implement Agenda 2030 whose sustainable development Goals (SDGs) target 5.3 envisages to eliminate all harmful practices (such as child, early and forced marriages), and one of its indicators is the proportion of women aged 20 to 24 years who were married before age 18, which still remains considerably high with an annual increment of 12 million child brides.

Venezuela: Maduro’s anti-blockade law deepens debate over revolution’s future

Federico Fuentes

Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly (ANC) passed a controversial anti-blockade law on October 8.

Elected in July 2017, the ANC was an initiative taken by President Nicolas Maduro to counter months of violent right-wing opposition protests. Its official mandate is to promote a national dialogue on reforms to the constitution as a way out of the country’s deep economic and political crisis.

But three years on — and with few, if any, initiatives emanating from the ANC — the economic crisis has only deepened.

This has been largely due to the United States ramping up sanctions on Venezuela since 2017. These sanctions have worked to cripple Venezuela’s oil industry, blocked its access to international financial markets and scared off potential investors under threat of financial punishment. It is estimated that the economic sanctions have cost Venezuela’s economy upwards of US$116 billion, and contributed to the deaths of more than 40,000 Venezuelans.

Faced with this dire situation, Maduro proposed the new anti-blockade law, arguing it is essential to helping circumvent the sanctions. But some sectors believe it represents an important departure from the socialist policies of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

Under Chávez, the Venezuelan state nationalised key natural resources and industries for the purposes of redistributing wealth towards fighting poverty and rapidly expanding access to education, healthcare and basic services.

Based on the premise that the only way to get rid of poverty was to give power to the poor, the government targeted funds at initiatives that encouraged the self-organisation of the people. This included experiments in community-run social missions focused on education and health, attempts at democratising workplaces through cooperatives and worker-run enterprises, and initiatives in local grassroots democracy such as community councils and communes. These elements of peoples’ power became the backbone of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution.

But due to the brutal sanctions regime and hyperinflation, which has pulverised workers’ wages, Venezuelans have seen many of these social and democratic gains reversed. Survival, not self-organisation, has become the main focus of daily life for many.

Shift in economic policy

Speaking to Green Left, revolutionary activist and sociologist Reinaldo Iturriza said the anti-blockade law should be viewed as part of a broader shift in the government’s economic orientation, which dates back to the Bolivarian Economic Agenda launched in 2016.

Back then, amid a severe drop in oil revenue and defeat in the December 2015 parliamentary elections, the government found itself at a crossroads. Through the Bolivarian Economic Agenda initiative, Iturriza explained, the government opted for the path of building “alliances with certain sectors of the capitalist class”.

“This was, without doubt, a point of inflection in the Bolivarian process; not necessarily because the government decided to ‘negotiate’ with a section of the capitalist class,” something it had done previously, including under Chávez. Instead, the key difference was it was now negotiating from “a position of weakness.”

A former minister in Maduro’s government, Iturriza acknowledges that in the situation faced by the government, retreating in order to “reorganise your forces” made sense. “However, what has happened since then has resembled more a disorderly retreat than anything else.”

With popular mobilisation at an ebb, moderate forces within Chavismo “felt their time had come”. Increasingly, certain party leaders and state officials began to publicly speak out against further expropriations and in support of re-privatising certain activities in the oil sector, views that “until then had been inconceivable” within the revolution.

In the absence of any national debate promoted by the government over the need to re-orientate government policy, these voices at the time appeared to be “isolated opinions”. But, with hindsight it is clear they represented a “sign of the new times”, said Iturriza.

“Mismanagement of certain public companies and corruption, along with deliberate disinvestment and a profound lack of confidence in the organised people … contributed to positioning the idea that it was indispensable to establish ‘strategic alliances’ with sections of the capitalist class in order to get out of the quagmire.”

Doing so, it was argued, required opening up new areas for investment, including through the reversal of nationalisations that had occurred during the Bolivarian Revolution.

“The problem, I insist, was not the ‘strategic alliances’ that, in certain cases, were undoubtedly necessary or convenient. This is not a question of principles,” said Iturriza.

“The real problem was that in many cases, the choice was made to disinvest: to abandon public companies with the aim of privatising them.

“Disinvesting is a political decision, and not the inevitable consequence of mismanagement. In fact, in many of these cases (we still don’t know the full story, because the process has been very opaque) undoubtedly the opposite was true: public mismanagement was the inevitable consequence of disinvestment, as well as corruption.

“In any case, the key here is that the decision could have been made to correct errors in management and guarantee public ownership.”

Concession or re-orientation

The Bolívar and Zamora Revolutionary Current (CRBZ) is a left-wing grassroots current inside the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

While acknowledging that “constructive criticisms” have been made of the law, CRBZ activist Jonatan Vargas told GL that, when judging its content, we have to “take into account the reality of what Venezuela is living through”.

For Vargas, the new law is a “political weapon” that could help “stabilise the economy and promote foreign investment, all of which is needed to produce and develop the country”.

Moreover, he adds, the law “strengthens the state” by “unifying all existing public powers behind the central objective of defending the economy”, as it attempts to maneuver around the criminal sanctions.

“What we need to do now is continue the debate around the anti-blockade law among all Venezuelans, so that everyone can comprehend its objectives, functions, capacities, reach, limitations and the controls it is subject to.

“Now, the fundamental subject of the revolution, the people, must guarantee its application through revolutionary vigilance, to push forward and avoid distortions.”

The Unitary League of Chavista Socialists (LUCHAS), which is also active within the PSUV, has taken a very different view.

LUCHAS spokesperson Stalin Perez Borges told GL that, while understanding the need for “an anti-blockade law, an emergency economic law”, the reality is that “this is not what they have presented to us.”

“Rather than confiscating the property of those who have sabotaged the economy, the law will grant them greater powers for investment. Moreover, it could lead to the violation of important laws, and even the constitution, all of which were approved under Chávez and were the result of big, societal-wide debates.”

Similar concerns have been raised by, among many others, high-profile left intellectuals such as Luis Britto Garcia and Pascualina Curcio, constituent assembly members María Alejandra Díaz and Telémaco Figueroa, pro-revolution parties such as the Communist Party of Venezuela and Homeland for All, and popular movements including those involved in For All Our Struggles.

Among the articles of concern are those that remove democratic controls or protections by, among other things: allowing for the creation of a separate budget for the purpose of promoting the Bolivarian Economic Agenda, but that lacks any legislative oversight (Article 18); the removal of the National Assembly’s competency to ratify international agreements and contracts (Article 10); and infringements on the right to free speech of those who make information public regarding certain contracts, potentially, even if this is done to expose acts of corruption (Article 37).

Critics have also warned of the pro-privatisation logic of articles that allow the executive to modify “the constitution, management, administration, functioning and participation of the state in certain public or mixed companies” (Article 26), as well as “stimulate or benefit the partial or complete participation, management and operation of the national and international private sector in the development of the national economy” (Article 29).

Britto Garcia writes that “rather than expanding state ownership or social administration, as a socialist government should do, the law tends toward broadening and strengthening private property, above all that owned by international interests.”

Perez Borges said: “It’s clear that the intent is to privilege private investment. The government is under the illusion that this law will help the country get around the blockade and get out of the crisis.

“But this is highly unlikely, given the current state of affairs in Venezuela and the global economic situation. Even if this was a possibility, nothing can be done at the expense of our sovereignty and our constitution.”

Summing up the project, Perez Borges said: “This law is very concerning, because it represents a profound shift away from the political project of 21st century socialism.

“The government should present its proposal again, but this time to the country, so that everyone can debate it instead of trying to hide its new pro-imperialist and anti-democratic orientation.”

Debate is critical

Yet, rather than promote discussion, some figures within the PSUV simply denounced critics as “aiding the right”. Controversially, the bill was approved by the ANC without any formal discussion, and with some delegates stating they were denied access to the assembly after voicing criticisms.

Others within the governing party, however, believe a debate on the government’s economic orientation is critical to the future of the revolution.

Responding to the debate, former vice-president and PSUV leader Elias Jaua wrote: “It has been a long time since I have seen such important factors within Chavismo challenge and demand explanations with such courage and passion, in support of the principles that sustain the Bolivarian and Chavista project…”

“This debate, forced upon us by public opinion, has allowed us to see that broad sections of Chavismo are willing to defend the foundational values of the Bolivarian Revolution.”

While stopping short of casting judgement on the new law, Jaua wrote: “We will have to wait and see what the [government’s] concrete plans are in order to evaluate if this [new law] signifies, as it appears it might, a shift away from one of the fundamentals of Chavismo: the safeguarding national property in the hands of the state.”

In the meantime, we need “to open up authentic spaces for internal debate, where any changes being made to the model constructed by Chavez as a result of the current circumstances, are properly outlined…”

“In politics, tactical manoeuvres have to be explained in a transparent manner; it is necessary to convince others,” because frank discussion is crucial to revolutionary unity, Jaua wrote.

“Humility, correct methods of leadership, and the willingness to convince rather than impose are key to maintaining unity and lifting the spirits of a force confronting the gravest foreign aggression of modern times.”

“Beyond the anti-blockade law”, said Iturriza, “I believe there are few more important things that could be done than to carry out a critical balance sheet of the Bolivarian Economic Agenda”.

A good starting point, argues Iturriza, would be for the revolution’s leadership “to understand that the opacity that has characterised the government’s actions in the area of economic policies has been a crass error”.

“Given the results, there is more than enough evidence that, in attempting to find a way out of this mess, we have ended up deeper within the labyrinth,” he said.

“If what occurred was a disorderly retreat, then what we need to do is reorganise our forces so that at some point we can be in a position to go on the offensive.

“It would be good if we acknowledged that we chose one among many possible paths, and that, given the results have not been favourable to the popular majorities, we can and should choose a new one. Within the revolution, always.”

Déjà Vu In France: Change Attitudes

Chandra Muzaffar

As events unfold in France centering around Islamophobia, there is a feeling of déjà vu. We have witnessed a few times before this sequence of events.  There is some provocation or other targeting the Prophet Muhammad initiated by a non-Muslim group or institution. Predictably, Muslims react.  In the midst of demonstrations and rallies, an act of violence occurs perpetrated by an offended Muslim and/or his co-religionists. The violent act leads to further demonization of Muslims in the media which by this time is in a frenzy.  Feeling targeted, some Muslim groups escalate their emotional response, sometimes causing more deaths to occur of both Muslims and non-Muslims even in countries far away from the place where the provocation first occurred. One also hears of calls to boycott goods produced in the country where it all started.

On this occasion too it was French president Emmanuel Macron’s vigorous assertion that cartoons of the Prophet produced by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo , in January 2015 and republished since  represented freedom of speech that angered a lot of Muslims in France and elsewhere, though some other remarks he had made recently about ‘Islam being in crisis’ and ‘Islamic separatism’ had also annoyed some people. However, it was the beheading of a French schoolteacher who had shown the cartoons in a class discussion on freedom of speech by a Muslim youth of Chechen origin that provoked not only Macron but also other leaders and a huge segment of French society to react with hostility towards Muslims and even Islam. It should be emphasised that almost all major Muslim leaders and organisations in France also condemned the beheading.  So did many Muslims in other parts of the world.

It is not enough just to denounce an ugly, insane murder of this sort. Not many Muslim theologians have argued publicly that resorting to mindless violence to express one’s anger over a caricature of the Prophet is an affront to the blessed memory of God’s Messenger. For even when he was physically abused in both Mecca and Medina, Prophet Muhammad did not retaliate with violence against his adversaries. He continued with his mission of preaching justice and mercy with kindness and dignity. It is such an attitude that should be nurtured and nourished in the Muslim world today especially by those who command religious authority and political influence among the masses.

If a change in approach is necessary among some Muslims, French society as a whole should also re-appraise its understanding of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech should never ever glorify the freedom to insult, to mock, to humiliate another person or community or civilisation. Respect for the feelings and sentiments of the religious other should be integral to one’s belief system, whether it is secular or not. Just because the French State and much of French society have marginalised religion, it does not follow that it should also show utter contempt for a Muslim’s love and reverence for his/her Prophet especially when 6 million French citizens profess the Islamic faith.

Indeed, respecting and understanding the sentiments and values that constitute faith and belief has become crucial in a globalised world where at least 80 % of its inhabitants are linked in one way or another to some religion or other.  We cannot claim to be champions of democracy and yet ignore, or worse, denigrate what is precious to the majority of the human family. This does not mean that we should slavishly accept mass attitudes towards a particular faith. Reforms should continue to be pursued within each religious tradition but it should not undermine respect for the foundations of that faith.

French leaders and elites who regard freedom of speech or expression as the defining attribute of their national identity, should also concede that there have been a lot of inconsistencies in their stances.  A French comedian, Dieudenne, has been convicted in Court eight times for allegedly upsetting “Jewish sentiment” and is prohibited from performing in many venues. A cartoonist with Charlie Hebdo was fired for alleged “ anti-Semitism.”  There is also the case of a writer, Robert Faurisson in the sixties who was fined in Court and lost his job for questioning the conventional holocaust narrative. Many years later, the French intellectual Roger Garaudy was also convicted for attempting to re-interpret certain aspects  of the holocaust.

The hypocrisy of the French State goes beyond convictions in Court. While officials are rightfully aghast at the violence committed by individuals, France has a long history of perpetrating brutal massacres and genocides against Muslims and others. The millions of Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans who died in the course of the French colonisation of these countries bear tragic testimony to this truth. Vietnam and the rest of Indo-China reinforce this cruel and callous record.  Even in contemporary times, the French State has had no qualms about embarking upon military operations from Afghanistan and Cote d’ Ivore  to Libya and North  Mali  which serve its own interests of dominance and control rather than the needs of the people in these lands.

Honest reflections upon its own misdeeds past and present are what we expect of the French state and society in 2020. There is no need to pontificate to others. This is what we would like to see all colonial powers of yesteryear do —- partly because neo-colonialism is very much alive today.

Migrant Lives Matter: Crisis of Migrant Workers in the Era of Pandemic

Nupur Pattanaik

The ordeal encountered by the migrant workers globally is very reflected due to the epidemic. According to the World Economic Forum, there is an estimated amount of 139 million migrants in the country. The International labour organisation has estimated that the pandemic will leave around 400 million people poverty-stricken. The mass exodus and reverse exodus has endangered the lives of migrants irrespective of caste, class, faith, gender and other construed identities. As the country is witnessing unlock in different phases and we are in the unlock 6 phase, where there are multiple brutality beyond covid has been encountered by the migrant workers, it raises several questions as about the plight and predicaments of migrants. Economist Jean Dreze has mentioned that the lockdown has been a death sentence for the underprivileged in our country so far as the lives of the migrants are perturbed. The brink of crisis looms large on them as the problem is far from being over, as they are not only labourers, but domestic care workers, heath care and many confined in unorganised sectors like small factories, etc. The vulnerability and challenges are numerous as they have to survive the stigma of the pandemic and many more prejudices which makes their lives miserable in the post-covid times.

Migration Matters

The pandemic has brought to the spotlight that how migration is important and human mobilities matters, Migration is linked to human development, people migrate in search of livelihood, may be forced or voluntary, Women migrated traditionally to join their spouses abroad but today female migrate independently as the concept of breadwinners has changed, earlier it was a man who was a bread winner but today women have become breadwinners too. The pandemic has exposed them to various prejudices not only during the lockdown, and has also posed several questions that whether they need to work or not, as poverty will be more dangerous than pandemic so migrating for work is the only measure left for them. These workers are most affected by the catastrophe with no residual means. Lack of safety nets, destitution, social crisis unconditional circumstance for working has left them marginalised and has significantly affected. The importance of Migrants is quite apparent because of the pandemic, it has made them gained prominence that they are a part of wider community and their existence is vital and needs to be addressed. Historically, signification of migration is essential for global growth, remittances have been an important feature in human development which fosters social and economic development.

Stigmas and Shame

As they are the frontline workers, existing inequalities has been exacerbating xenophobia, discrimination and inequalities, hate speech are rampant online harassment of labourers, everyday prejudices and crime. Women, children are in a state of being endangered as trafficking and child marriage among the vulnerable migrants is on rise. Exploitation of women migrants and their children due to the catastrophic conditions has increased violence against women and children. Termination of work due to the disease has also overblown the workers harder which has affected their subsistence levels. Even the elderly migrants agonized due to the terror of pandemic as well as the associated detriments and biases. Unable to find work, and inability to send remittances home due to the covid calamity, it has affected their families too. Migrant smuggling, bonded labour and trafficking have been some of the issues that have been doubled due to the pandemic as the universal pandemic has put them at risk. Due to necessity and survival, migrants are becoming victims of these social menaces.

Migration Governance

Addressing the vulnerabilities and providing a counter framework to eradicate all forms of discrimination against them is needed at this time. Stigma related sensitisation and awareness among the masses should be the priority. Migrant volunteering and awareness is the need of the hour, role of NGOs and Civil Society, Media is equally important to empower the migrants, and adopting better strategies and legislative measures to curb different forms of violence against them is what the requirement is. Enhancing, monitoring and proactively addressing the needs of the migrant workers is a vital necessity, ensuring better communication strategies, safe , orderly and regular migration, for prospering the society and  preparing them for a better post-covid world will  promote and cultivate  a better world for them.

Months of unpaid wages spark strikes by delivery drivers across China

Lily Zhao

Express delivery workers in many cities across China have been engaged in work stoppages to protest their unpaid wages. The wave of strikes involves workers from at least five major express delivery companies in China, including: ZTO Express, Yunda Express, STO Express Co, YTO Express Group Co, and Baishi. Delivery workers’ protests are a response to the restructuring carried out by the delivery companies, which have cut their operating costs to boost profits and have led to non-payment of labor. The owners have slashed payments to local delivery stations, where delivery workers are actually employed.

A Chinese delivery driver (Credit: Meituan, Weibo)

Package delivery is a huge and rapidly developing industry in China, connected to the fast expansion of the e-commerce market. There is a dense national network that covers 97 percent of the towns and villages across the country. In 2019 alone, more than 60 billion packages were delivered.

At one end of this lucrative industry stand the big delivery companies, investors and their connections in the state apparatus. Among the five companies, the most profitable one, ZTO Express, had a net profit of 5.2 billion RMB (about $743 million) in 2019, while the other four also had net profits on the same order of magnitude. Behind them, Alibaba, which is based on e-commerce and is heavily dependent on the courier industry, is a major shareholder in all five companies and made a hundred times more profit than them last year. The founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, is the second wealthiest man in China, as well as a member of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2018, he received a medal of “a pioneer of reform” from the Communist Party for “making outstanding contributions to the market reform.”

At the other end, stand millions of workers who are employed in this industry, largely as contractors. They ride on bikes or electric bikes and are estimated to handle several hundred packages a day. Their working conditions were dreadful even before the pandemic. According to a survey published by the State Post Bureau in 2019, 75 percent of delivery workers earned less than 5000 RMB (about $700) per month; at least 60 percent of them have less than 2 days off every month; 53 percent work for longer than 10 hours a day. As a result of the pandemic, the average wage has dropped by about a third. Some workers said they now earn as little as 0.25 RMB ($0.04) per package. Not being paid one or more months wages greatly exacerbates their precarious conditions.

On October 12, at a local courier station of Yunda in Changsha, in central Hunan Province, delivery workers first initiated a protest and refused to keep working, demanding payment of wages in arrears for months. A delivery worker said that he has only received a total salary of 5,000 RMB since April. He estimated that for all employees at this local station, the total amount of unpaid wages was more than 300,000 RMB (~$42,860). The local station had not received any money from the area branch for months, and could not pay its delivery workers. Hundreds of packages were piled up in the warehouse, including some containing produce that was already rotting.

On October 19, in Fuzhou, in south-eastern Fujian Province, at least 10 workers at a local courier station refused to work because they had not received their salaries for one or two months. The manager only “conceded” that he could pay anyone who came back to work 3,000 RMB (~$430), or about two-thirds of a monthly wage. For those who did not return to work, he refused to pay them anything.

These strikes started to attract public attention. As the hashtag “#express delivery workers on strike” trended, more reports emerged on social media of similar work stoppages across multiple provinces, including Shanghai, Jiangsu (southeast China), Henan (east-central China), Xinjiang (northwest China), Shanxi (north China), Shaanxi (northwestern China). Many courier stations that employed these striking delivery workers were bankrupt, and their owners had disappeared. Workers were left in the dark as to where to direct their demands for unpaid wages.

Strikes of express delivery workers have been taking place since the beginning of this year. According to the strike map of Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, there have been at least 25 strike actions this year, involving workers from all the major express delivery companies. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. According to Service Worker Notes, a keyword search for “express delivery workers on strike” on Baidu Tieba (a Reddit-type platform) returned more than 100 separate threads in the past month and over a 1,000 more from the past year.

Chief responsibility for the wage arrears does not lie with the local courier station owners. All the major express delivery companies have been engaged in a “price war” for years, seeking to gain an advantage over their rivals by cutting their prices for package delivery.

For example, in 2013, Baishi first significantly lowered its delivery price in order to insert itself into the already highly competitive express delivery market in Yiwu, a city of southeastern Zhejiang Province. It is home to one of the largest small-commodity wholesale markets, where billions of packages are shipped out each year. All the other major express delivery companies have followed in the steps of Baishi since 2013, lowering their prices to gain market share. From 2015 to 2019, the average price to mail a package from Yiwu dropped by half. Many smaller companies in Yiwu went into bankruptcy because they could not compete with their larger rivals.

The pandemic has only intensified the “price war.” Most major express delivery companies have suffered a sharp dip in profits, due to the lockdown measures imposed across China in early January and most of February. According to a study by China Merchants Bank, the total number of transactions across the industry in February was only half that in May, June, or July. Every company responded to these losses by significantly lowering their prices. The study found that the average delivery price per package across China, during the first half of 2020, was 11.3 RMB, a fall of 7.8 percent compared to the same period last year. In Yiwu, the average price dropped by 32.8 percent, from February to May this year.

At the same time, to maintain or boost profits, these big express delivery companies shifted the burden of lower prices to local courier stations and exploited delivery workers more harshly. Most major delivery companies operate on a franchise model, with a network of courier stations around the country. Local courier stations are responsible for their own profits and losses. They are paid by the company for each package, then hire their own delivery workers to deliver packages to customers in their area.

After the lockdown, many express delivery companies unilaterally announced that they would reduce the per-package payment to local stations. In some cases, this payment was reduced to as low as 0.5 RMB (~$0.07) per package. Since a delivery worker was usually paid about 1 RMB (~$0.14) per package, at least before the pandemic, local stations did not even earn enough to hire delivery staff, let alone cover for rent and other expenses.

Companies also implemented other measures to further extract profits from their local franchise stations. Since May, local courier stations have been required to meet a drastically increased monthly quota on the number of packages they deliver, and are punished 3 RMB per package if they fall short.

Under such huge pressures, many local courier stations have gone bankrupt, leaving months of wages in arrears for their delivery workers. Even those stations still struggling to operate are forced to slash wages. Some workers reported that their wage had dropped from 1 RMB per package to 0.8 RMB, or even lower.

Both in China and internationally, the ruling elites are using the Covid-19 pandemic to implement further pro-company restructuring measures. The plight of delivery workers and small franchise owners in China is not unique. Massive wage cuts and the cancellation of social benefits, including insurance and pensions, have been reported in both private and public sectors. Large sections of food delivery workers, manufacturing workers, bus drivers, public school teachers, nurses, and base level civil servants are impacted by this restructuring.

Right-wing propagandists in Germany promote “herd immunity”

Gregor Link

In the past several days, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI)—the German federal government agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention—has reported unprecedented numbers of new infections in Germany: 14,964 on Wednesday, 16,774 on Thursday, 18,681 on Friday and finally 19,059 new infections on Saturday. In other words, more than one in seven of the 500,000 or so people who have been diagnosed as infected in Germany so far were infected last week.

Restaurants will be closed but not schools

As the World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly pointed out, the governments of Europe are pursuing a policy of systematic infestation that endangers the lives of millions of people. On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) announced a “package of measures” due to come into force Monday.

The package is fully geared to guaranteeing the profits and interests of the super-rich and big business. It rules out a life-saving shutdown of industry. Workers will continue to be sent to work and students to school in the midst of the pandemic.

This murderous and politically criminal policy is accompanied by a reactionary propaganda campaign in politics and the media.

This was most clearly summed up on Thursday by the leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) parliamentary group, Alexander Gauland, whose extreme right-wing party is once again being brought into position, as it was at the time of the “refugee crisis,” to pave the way for a common right-wing policy agreed to by all parties. In his speech before the German Bundestag (federal parliament), Gauland warned against “a second lockdown of the economy” and declared: “This price is too high... We must weigh up the costs, also at the price of people dying.”

Business daily Handelsblatt published a similar comment. Under the headline, “The virus is manageable without the lockdown—Lockdown 2.0 is a mistake,” author Thomas Tuma rages against the “hysteria,” the “panic mongering,” the “doomsday scenario” and the “deafening cacophony” of media coverage in regard to the coronavirus. Tuma is a jury member of the Axel Springer Journalism Prize and deputy editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt, where he also oversees the publication of a supplement on “fashion and lifestyle topics.”

Tuma pleads for medical experts, media and “parts of the government” to “engage in a kind of voluntary coronavirus silence” in the interest of German business—in other words, to practice self-censorship and cover-ups under the conditions of an exponential spread of the pandemic throughout Europe. Such a disinformation campaign, which would undoubtedly be at the expense of countless additional lives, would be “comparatively harmless” and would “not even cost much,” according to Tuma.

News about the “new infections and cumulative sickness figures published by the Robert Koch Institute, which, as is long known, say nothing,” the author calls “half-truths” and “fake news.” Politicians who raised any warnings were “horsemen of the apocalypse” who should be sent on “vacation.” After all, there were already warnings “not to exaggerate things with our fight against the pandemic.”

In his thundering “commentary,” the Handelsblatt editor explicitly refers to the so-called “Great Barrington Declaration”—a document that underpins the strategy of the Trump government and has been described by the WSWS as a “manifesto of death.”

In addition, Tuma cites a joint position paper by the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) and professor of virology Hendrik Streeck (University of Bonn) and Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit (University of Hamburg), which demands that a renewed “lockdown” should not be the “reflex consequence” to the growth in infection rates. The current strategy of “containment through contact tracing” should have less priority in the future.

In words that could come from AfD party headquarters, the paper says, “The decline in case numbers is an urgent political task, but not at any price.” The virus “will accompany us in the coming years.” What is needed is a coexistence “in the greatest possible freedom,” which is based on “personal responsibility instead of paternalism,” since the latter “does not correspond to our understanding of a free democratic basic order.”

By “freedom,” these gentlemen understand a kind of Social Darwinism, i.e., the sacrifice of innumerable human lives in order to slow down “the decline of entire branches of the economy.”

Streeck, Schmidt-Chanasit and KBV chairman Andreas Gassen have long been the “medical” spokesmen for a brutal policy of loosening all safety measures, which amounts to the systematic infection of the population. Gassen told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that “a blanket lockdown” would “reduce the number of infections in the short term,” but that it would “be neither target-oriented nor proportionate.” He recommended that members of the so-called “risk group” should “reconsider” their “contact behaviour” individually—everyone should “decide for themselves what risk they want to take.”

HIV virologist Streeck is systematically promoted and built up by large parts of the media and political establishment. In addition to appearing on talk shows and in various tabloid papers, news weekly Der Spiegel recently devoted a comprehensive and “personal” cover story to him under the title, “The Anti-Hero.” It makes it clear, once again, that the former US Army immunologist is well networked with politics and the media—including Free Democratic Party (FDP) leader Christian Lindner, PR strategist Michael Mronz, North Rhine-Westphalia state Premier Armin Laschet and the billion-dollar slaughterhouse operator Clemens-Tönnies.

Streeck had already hit the headlines in April because he had the unfinished “Heinsberg Study,” which trivialized the dangers of the pandemic, published by an exclusive PR agency. At that time, according to Der Spiegel, he had been advised “from quite high up in the federal government to withdraw from the public coronavirus debate.”

Streeck quite openly advocates the pseudo-scientific policy of so-called “herd immunity,” which is rejected by leading virologists and epidemiologists. He told the Frankfurter Rundschau on Wednesday, “I think it is possible that by the end of next year we will be at a point where the pandemic will be ended by the virus itself... That so many people will have become infected that the chains of infection will break off again and again by themselves in many places.”

In the same interview, Streeck made clear that life-saving investments in public health and care systems running into billions were not an option for him, nor for the German government. “We have limited resources.”

The same line is taken by the Hamburg virologist Schmidt-Chanasit. Due to the allegedly unalterable fact that “capacity is simply lacking,” “it is necessary to refrain from making any contact with young people,” he told NDR radio on Monday. At the same time, the Hamburg-based tropical medicine specialist called on politicians to create “free space” for larger parties—although a recent YouGov youth study showed that the overwhelming majority of young people consider the protective measures currently in force to be “appropriate” or “insufficient.”

In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Schmidt-Chanasit added that adherence to hygiene rules and the use of the federal government’s coronavirus warning app were “perfectly sufficient to survive the pandemic well.”

The paper by Gassen, Schmidt-Chanasit and Streeck bears the lofty subtitle, “The Common Position of Science and the Medical Profession.” This is a deliberate deception. Although it is supported by numerous doctors’ associations, these are not scientific institutions, but professional bodies primarily concerned with the material interests of doctors.

Numerous physicians have meanwhile distanced themselves from the paper. The Professional Association of German Anaesthetists (BDA), whose name is on the list of supporters, has protested against it. They had been named as signatories without consultation. BDA President Götz Geldner told the press that he “did not support the content of the position paper” and “had no advance knowledge of the paper.”

This view is also shared by the German Society for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, with more than 15,000 members. The President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), Uwe Janssens, said he “had no sympathy for accusations of panic.” At the beginning of the week, Janssens had issued an urgent warning of an impending catastrophic overload of intensive care units in Germany.

The scientific research bodies unanimously reject the policy of herd immunity proposed by Streeck, Gassen and Schmidt-Chanasit. In a joint paper entitled, “It is serious,” they demand: “The number of cases must be reduced before bed occupancy in hospitals becomes critical.” To prevent a “sharp rise in the death rate,” contact had to be systematically reduced by three-quarters. “This is the only way to interrupt the chains of infection and contain the situation again.”

The paper goes on to say, “Every infected contact that escapes the health authorities is the origin of a new chain of infection that then escapes control... Overloading the health authorities can therefore lead to an ever increasing number of unreported cases and ultimately to an uncontrolled exponential growth in the number of cases. The health authorities are already overloaded in many circles.”

The signatories—the German Research Foundation, Helmholtz Association, Max Planck Society, Leibniz Society, Fraunhofer Society and Leopoldina—predict a daily case number of more than 100,000 new infections by the end of November if no measures are taken to restrict contact.

According to scientific studies, the original lockdown measures in the spring, which were imposed by governments under the pressure of spontaneous strikes and overwhelming public pressure, saved a total of 3.1 million lives in eleven European countries.

A week ago, Germany’s leading virologists had already vehemently opposed the policy of herd immunity: “We note with concern that the voices are once again growing louder in favour of natural herd immunity as a strategy for combating the pandemic,” warned the German Society of Virology (GfV).

It firmly rejects this strategy, which “would lead to an escalating increase in the number of fatalities.” It justified this by saying that “even with the strict isolation of pensioners, there are still other risk groups that are far too numerous, too heterogeneous and in some cases unrecognized to be actively shielded.”

Who bears responsibility for the Canadian ruling elite’s catastrophic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Roger Jordan

Canada is in the midst of a disastrous second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. New COVID-19 infections are surging in Quebec, Ontario, and the West—that is in regions that are home to more than 90 percent of the Canadian population.

Late last month, Canada’s COVID-19 death toll surpassed 10,000 and currently stands at 10,179. While the death-to-infection rate is presently significantly lower than at the crest of the first wave in late May, medical experts have issued dire warnings about the imminent prospect of hospitals being overwhelmed by an influx of patients. On Friday, the federal government admitted its epidemiological projections show that unless Canadians’ social interactions are further curbed the daily new COVID-19 case count could surpass 8,000 in December.

There is no shortage of political responsibility to go around for this horrendous state of affairs. A resurgence of the virus was made inevitable by the refusal of governments at all levels to provide adequate resources for the health care system, and by their collaboration with big business and the trade unions in enforcing a reckless, premature “reopening” of the economy aimed at ensuring corporate profits continue to pour in.

President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, joined by their delegation members, participate in a bilateral meeting at the Centre de Congrés Bellevue Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019, in Biarritz, France, site of the G7 Summit. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Even now, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, Quebec Premier Francois Legualt and Ontario’s Doug Ford, to name only the most conspicuous culprits, are adamant that a return to general lockdown measures must be avoided.

If the pandemic is to be contained and the lives of working people protected, the working class must intervene based on a clear understanding of the political forces and organizations responsible for the adoption of what is in effect a homicidal “herd immunity” policy.

That understanding will most assuredly not be obtained from the parliamentary inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic, which was voted into being last week by the opposition Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, New Democrats, and Greens. Last Monday’s vote to order the House of Commons Health Committee to examine the Liberal government’s handling of the pandemic since mid-March was motivated by factional conflicts within the ruling elite, not the desire to save lives by pursuing a scientifically-guided response to the pandemic.

The campaign for this inquiry was led by the right-wing Conservative Party. For months, the Conservatives have attacked the Liberal government for its handling of the pandemic, but not for its criminal disregard for workers’ lives in prematurely reopening the economy or its failure to ensure adequate testing, contact-tracing and a vast expansion of health-care resources.

Rather, taking their cue from Trump, the Conservatives have attacked the government for supposedly being over-reliant on World Health Organization (WHO) advice and for not criticizing China strongly enough. Like Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Conservatives and their new leader Erin O’Toole want to scapegoat China for the ruinous response of North American capitalism to the pandemic, and make it grist in the US-led, Canada-supported military-strategic offensive against Beijing.

That the Conservatives have taken center-stage in the official debate over the handling of the pandemic is due to the treacherous role played by the trade unions and the ostensibly “left” New Democratic Party. They have strengthened their anti-worker alliance with the big business minority Trudeau government during the pandemic. This includes giving full support to the federal government-led campaign to prioritize corporate profits over human lives, by “reopening” the economy, amid the pandemic and without heeding WHO guidelines.

Putting profits before human lives

From the moment the novel coronavirus was detected, the response of the Liberal government and the ruling elite as a whole was focused on protecting the interests of big business and Canadian imperialism. Although documents show that Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was briefed on the virus as early as mid-January, the government continued to downplay the risk posed by the pandemic throughout February and into March. No additional financial resources were made available for Canada’s dilapidated health care system, either by Ottawa or by the provincial governments. Only on March 10 did the federal government even bother to write the provinces to inquire about potential shortages of personal protective equipment and other critical medical gear, like ventilators.

This tardy and disorganized response was all the more criminal because Canada had been the country outside of Asia hardest hit by the 2003 SARS epidemic, with more than 40 deaths in the Toronto area. A public inquiry was held and numerous recommendations made on how a future epidemic could be better managed, but successive governments at the federal and provincial levels refused to implement them, and even those steps that were taken soon fell victim to fresh rounds of austerity. While Ontario allowed a massive stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) to expire, the Trudeau government reoriented its Public Health Information Unit away from providing early warning assessments on emerging global diseases just months before the pandemic erupted.

The governments’ failure to prepare and their delayed response were all the more damaging since even before the pandemic Canada’s health care system was in crisis. In Ontario, for example, a large percentage of the province’s hospitals ran over capacity during 2019, with so-called “hallway medicine” a widespread problem under “normal” conditions. This was the product of decades of cuts to health care and social services implemented by all the political parties, including the NDP. After coming to power in 2015, the Trudeau Liberals picked up from where the Tories left off by limiting the annual increase in health transfers to the provinces to a mere 3 percent per year. This translates into a substantial funding cut when inflation, population growth, and the impact of an aging population are taken into account.

It was only after protests erupted at auto plants in Canada and the United States and other industrial settings that the provincial governments, in close consultation with the federal Trudeau government, felt compelled to order temporary lockdowns in mid-March. But this period was not used to strengthen the health care system.

Instead, the Trudeau government, working hand-in-hand with business lobby groups and the trade unions and NDP, rushed to funnel more than $650 billion into the banks, financial markets and corporate coffers in order to bail out the rich and ultra-rich. The unions and the New Democrats did everything in their power to distract public attention away from this unprecedented transfer of public funds to the financial oligarchy. Meanwhile, they portrayed the Liberals as a “generous,” worker-friendly government because they provided a miserly $2,000 per month to laid-off workers through the makeshift and now-terminated Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

Following the completion of the bailout of the financial elite, which helped Canada’s 20 richest billionaires experience a $37 billion increase in their wealth in the first five months of the pandemic, the government and its union lackeys turned to the task of abandoning public health restrictions and getting workers back on the job.

In one document released by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in early May, Canada’s largest union body described the task of forcing millions to return to their jobs as a “challenge we must meet.” One week later, CLC President Hassan Yussuff published a joint article with Perrin Beatty, head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, in which the pair warned about the need to manage “substantial new public and private debt” and guarantee the “competitiveness” of Canadian capitalism on the global stage. Calling for the creation of a corporatist national economic task force to subordinate the jobs and livelihoods of working people even more to the needs of corporate Canada, Yussuff and Beatty enthused that this would “stop stakeholders going off in different directions,” i.e. block working class opposition to the ruling elite’s class war agenda.

The unions’ role in enforcing the back-to-work, back-to-school drive

This policy has been put into practice by the corporatist trade unions. When workers at a Cargill meatpacking plant in Alberta were ordered by the company to return to work after a massive COVID-19 outbreak that had already caused two deaths, the United Food and Commercial Workers opposed any job action, denouncing a potential strike by workers to protect their lives and those of their loved ones as “illegal.”

When teachers in Ontario and British Columbia pressed for action against the orders issued, respectively, by the right-wing Tory Doug Ford and the John Horgan-led NDP government to reopen schools without elementary safety measures, the teachers’ unions similarly opposed any and all job action as “illegal.” Instead, they filed cases with the pro-employer labour relations boards, which have served time and again to impose the dictates of big business on striking or protesting workers. After dallying for a month, the Ontario Labour Relations Board refused to even hear the unions’ case, citing a technicality. The BC board is similarly dragging out the process, meaning teachers and students are being crowded in classrooms every day with the consent of the BC Teachers’ Federation.

The well-heeled union bureaucracies are more interested in upholding the institutions of the capitalist state and their partnership with big business than defending the health and lives of the workers they purport to represent. They bear central responsibility, alongside corporate Canada, the Trudeau Liberals and all provincial governments, for the resurgent pandemic.

This is the true not only in Canada. The same contempt for workers’ lives and focus on protecting corporate profits have characterized the response of the ruling elites in every country to the pandemic. In Europe, the trade unions explicitly endorsed the multi-trillion Euro bailout package organized by the European Union’s right-wing governments and are complicit in forcing workers back to their jobs, and teachers and students into schools. The result has been a dramatic surge in infections and deaths, with well over 2,000 Europeans now dying from COVID-19 each day.

In the United States, the “herd immunity” policy pursued by Trump and the Democrats enjoys the full backing of the unions, who work hand-in-glove with major corporate players like Fiat Chrysler and school districts to cover up infections and deaths.

If the looming catastrophe is to be averted and the virus brought under control, workers must draw and act upon the political lessons of the pandemic. First and foremost, nothing will be achieved unless the working class acts independently of the establishment parties, unions and institutions and advances its own program to resolve the crisis, based on putting the needs of working people before the profits and class interests of big business.

This should include the closure of schools for in-person teaching and all non-essential businesses until the pandemic is under control, full wages for all workers so they can shelter at home, and tens of billions of dollars for the health care system so as to expand testing and contact tracing, hire more medical staff, and purchase equipment.

All of these urgently needed measures come into direct conflict with the capitalist profit system, which subordinates everything to investor profits, and hence they will be bitterly resisted by the ruling class. That is why workers must mount an independent political struggle against the Liberal government and their allies in the trade unions and NDP, and demand the seizure of the hundreds of billions of dollars illegitimately given to the super-rich so that these resources can be invested in health care and other critical social services. This can be achieved only as part of the mass mobilization of working people in a struggle for a workers’ government committed to socialist policies.