Martial law imposed in Myanmar cities as death toll rises

Owen Howell

Only days after the deadliest crackdown since the February 1 coup, tens of thousands of protesters across Myanmar have continued to demonstrate against military rule, even as authorities are stepping up their use of repression to defeat the anti-coup movement.

Martial law was imposed on several parts of the country’s two largest cities, Yangon and Mandalay, along with a day-long shutdown of mobile internet. The districts being targeted by the military are working-class suburbs which have proven to be strongholds of the nationwide movement of strikes and work stoppages.

Protesters shout slogans during a protest against the military coup in Mandalay, Myanmar, Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021. Police fired tear gas and water cannons and there were reports of gunfire Sunday in Myanmar's largest city Yangon where another anti-coup protest was underway with scores of students and other demonstrators hauled away in police trucks. (AP Photo)

State broadcaster MRTV declared that military commanders in Yangon would take over administration of districts, including the courts. The courts martial have the authority to issue the death sentence or long prison terms for a range of offences, while those sentenced to death can only appeal to the Yangon regional commander or the junta leader, General Min Aung Hlaing.

The offences include treason and sedition, obstructing the military or civil service, spreading false information, and ties to “unlawful associations”—all of which the junta and its media outlets have accused protesters of doing since the anti-coup movement began.

Reports that many critically wounded victims of Sunday’s violence have succumbed to their injuries in hospital, along with further killings on Monday and Tuesday at the hands of state security forces, have brought the death toll soaring to at least 216, with many more feared dead.

Protests across the nation on Monday—in Mandalay, Yangon, and the towns of Aunglan, Gyobingauk, Bago, Monywa, Thabeikkyin, and Myingyan—were brutally attacked by police and soldiers, who fired live ammunition on crowds of protesters, killing an estimated 23 people.

“One girl got shot in the head and a boy got shot in the face,” an 18-year-old protester in Myingyan told Reuters journalists over the phone after police ended protests there by killing three and injuring dozens more. “I’m now hiding,” the protester said.

Smaller villages on the outskirts of Mandalay were also scenes of military violence. At least five people were killed in Singu Township. A 16-year-old girl, Ma Thida Aye, was shot twice by a sniper while in her house in Chaunggyi Village, her father told the Irrawaddy.

Protesters have gathered daily near Chaunggyi, at a junction leading to Mogok, Thabeikkyin, and Mandalay. On Monday, soldiers used gunfire to break up demonstrations, firing at passers-by from a military truck. Some villagers managed to pull over the truck and detain two soldiers, but three others escaped and later fired shots from a nearby hill with a sniper rifle, killing the girl and wounding her friend.

In Yangon’s Dawbon Township, security forces attacked a night-time rally. A video showed soldiers shooting a man, removing his clothes and dragging him away, while firing shots at the neighbourhood. Late night assaults also happened in South Dagon Township, where one was killed and three wounded when shots were fired after 11 p.m.

The violence continued on Tuesday, claiming the lives of at least two protesters. One was shot dead in the central town of Kawlin, where hundreds of protesters returning home were set upon by riot police. That night, a demonstration gathered outside a police station demanding the release of three detainees, according to media in Sagaing Region. Police and soldiers opened fire on the crowd, wounding two.

Families of dozens of the 74 protesters killed on Sunday attended funerals Tuesday. Some mourners told media that security forces had seized the bodies of victims, but they would still hold a funeral. Hundreds of young people in Yangon attended the funeral of medical student Khant Nyar Hein, 19, with many fellow medical students in white lab coats chanting: “Our revolution must prevail!”

Tensions continue to escalate in Hlaingthaya Township, one of the Yangon industrial districts under martial law, where 40 people were killed on Sunday in a ruthless military onslaught provoked by fires breaking out at two garment factories. Hlaingthaya is mostly inhabited by poor migrant workers who fled their rural hometowns around the Irrawaddy Delta after Cyclone Nargis struck in 2008.

The military is clamping down hard on Yangon, the protest movement’s centre. Barricades built to protect protesters in Hlaingthaya were set alight Tuesday and volleys of gunfire sounded across the neighbourhood. Downtown areas previously flooded with mass protests are now all but deserted, under heavy patrol by military vehicles.

Security forces have threatened residents in Yangon and Mandalay under martial law, saying they will shoot into every house if residents do not remove roadblocks which have been put in place to prevent access by soldiers.

The UN Human Rights office has drawn attention to disturbing new developments. While some 37 journalists have been arrested, with five major news outlets having their licences withdrawn, five people have died in detention and “deeply distressing” reports of torture in custody have emerged. Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani also mentioned signs of “enforced disappearances,” saying “hundreds of people who have been unlawfully detained remain unaccounted for and have not been acknowledged by the military authorities.”

Attacks on workers associated with the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) of strikes and work stoppages have significantly increased.

Over 200 employees of the Central Bank of Myanmar, ranging from assistant directors to cleaners, were suspended for refusing to work under the military regime. Meanwhile, ten civil servants were sentenced Monday to prison terms for joining the CDM, including two young police officers and eight staff from the Cooperative Department in the capital city Naypyidaw.

Around 1,000 workers and their families living at Myanmar Railways staff quarters in Yangon fled their homes last week after security forces raided their neighbourhood. Similarly, healthcare workers at the Sao San Htun Hospital in Shan State’s capital Taunggyi who have joined the CDM were threatened with eviction from staff housing unless they returned to work immediately. About 70 doctors and health workers from the hospital moved out rather than return to work, as several went into hiding to avoid arrest.

Doctors, engineers, teachers, railway workers, and civil servants are chief among the more than 2,100 protesters who have thus far been detained by the authorities, as well as people who provided food or shelter to protesters. On Wednesday evening, eleven young workers at a Yangon tea shop were detained by a large police contingent. Their whereabouts are still unknown.

The junta is desperate to intimidate workers from joining the growing movement, which has stifled economic operations for over a month. This was demonstrated in an incident Tuesday morning, when four customers at a Yangon private bank were detained by police for allegedly inciting bank employees to join the CDM. The dramatic arrest was broadcast on all the military-run television channels. Video footage, however, appears to show they were simply withdrawing money.

As mounting economic pressure tightens on the junta, food and fuel prices have spiked due to the freezing of business activity, and could provoke further unrest as larger sections of the population sink into poverty amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN World Food Programme said the price of rice had risen as much as 35 percent in the country’s north, while the cost of fuel had increased by 15 percent since February 1.

The economic and social crisis is also fuelling the strikes and protests against the seizure of power by the military on February 1. While protesters undoubtedly recall the previous junta that severely restricted workers’ rights, they should also recall that the current oppressive social conditions are also the responsibility of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) which governed in tandem with the military.

The NLD represents sections of Myanmar’s capitalist class hostile to the military’s domination of the economy, but which are just as fearful that any mass movement of the working class will undermine bourgeois rule. The political subordination of the oppositional movement to the NLD is paving the way for its betrayal, as was the case in 1988 when Suu Kyi sought to rein it in on the basis of a phony promise of elections, opening the door for a bloody military crackdown.

Top US officials in South Korea again denounce China

Peter Symonds

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, currently in South Korea after visiting Japan, continued to push their anti-China agenda in talks with their South Korean counterparts. The fact that two of President Biden’s top officials are making their first overseas trip to US imperialism’s two military allies in North East Asia underscores the determination of the new administration to ratchet up the confrontation with China begun under Obama and escalated under Trump.

Blinken and Austin outlined the purpose of their trip in an op-ed entitled “America’s partnerships are ‘force multipliers’ in the world” published in the Washington Post on Monday. After reiterating Biden’s declarations that his administration would reengage with the world and “revitalize” alliances, their deliberate use of military language makes clear that partnerships are being strengthened in preparation for war.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong, right, pose for the media before their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 17, 2021. After Tokyo, President Joe Biden’s top diplomat and defense chief are traveling to South Korea after North Korea made sure it had their attention by warning the United States to refrain from causing trouble amid deadlocked nuclear negotiations. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool)

“Our alliances are what our military calls ‘force multipliers,” the comment stated. “We’re able to achieve far more with them than we could without them. No country on Earth has a network of alliances and partnerships like ours. It would be a huge strategic error to neglect these relationships.”

After once more accusing China of challenging the international rules-based order—that is, where the US sets the rules—the two officials declared: “Here again, we see how working with our allies is critical. Our combined power makes us stronger when we must push back against China’s aggression and threats.”

Yesterday in a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong, Blinken again lashed out at Beijing for “using coercion and aggression to systematically erode the economy in Hong Kong, undercut democracy in Taiwan, abuse human rights in Tibet and assert claims in the South China Sea.” Washington has hypocritically used denunciations of “human rights” for decades to vilify its opponents and justify coups and criminal wars of aggression, while turning a blind eye to the abuses and atrocities of its allies and partners.

Also under discussion was the highly unstable situation on the Korean Peninsula. President Trump touted his diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a success, but talks broke down in 2019, resulting in a tense stand-off that resolved none of the underlying issues. North Korea stopped its nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests but gained little in return—a halt to major US-South Korean war games—and is still subject to crippling UN and unilateral US economic sanctions.

Blinken also chose to play the human rights card in relation to North Korea—a step that can only heighten regional tensions. He denounced the North Korean regime for its “systematic and widespread abuses against its own people” and declared that its nuclear and missile programs posed “a threat to the region and to the world.” His comments, which followed a warning by Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, to the US on Tuesday to “refrain from causing a stink at its first step,” were a calculated slap in the face to Pyongyang.

Blinken affirmed that the US alliance with South Korea was “unwavering” and “iron clad.” While in Tokyo, he said Washington had reached out to North Korea through various diplomatic channels since mid-February, but had received no response. He said the Biden administration was engaged in a review of policy toward North Korea that would be finalised in coming weeks, adding that the US was examining both “additional pressure measures” and “diplomatic paths.”

Like Blinken, Austin restated the US commitment to the defence of South Korea. Prior to talks with South Korean Defence Secretary Suh Wook, Austin said: “You and I can both agree that military readiness is a top priority, and that our combined readiness must ensure that we are ready to fight tonight, if needed.”

Austin touted a recent agreement under which Seoul will pay an extra 13.9 percent toward the upkeep of 28,500 US military personnel and bases in South Korea. The deal was aimed at mending relations strained by Trump’s demands that South Korea pay as much as 400 percent more.

No deal, however, has been reached to finalise arrangements for the handover of wartime operational control (OPCON) to South Korea. If a war broke out today, South Korea’s large military forces would be under the overall command of the Pentagon, not the country’s government and generals. In comments on the OPCON handover cited in the South China Morning Post, Professor Yang Moo-Jin at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said: “The US now appears to be hesitating to do so as it apparently wants to use the US troops in the South as part of its deterrence against China.”

The trip by Blinken and Austin takes place against the background of the first ever leaders’ meeting last Friday of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad—a grouping of the US, Australia, India and Japan directed against China. While the US has not formally asked its military ally, South Korea, to join the grouping, Seoul has been reluctant to do so out of concern over relations with China, its largest trading partner, and the potential for further heightening tensions with North Korea—China’s only formal military ally.

South Korea’s hesitation underscores the fact that the Quad is a quasi-military alliance that is part of the US war preparations against China. Last week’s summit was a significant step in further consolidating this bloc, which already includes two formal US allies—Japan and Australia—as well as India, which has a strong strategic partnership with the US, including basing arrangements, technological collaboration and arms sales.

In their comment in the Washington Post, Blinken and Austin referred to the central point of Biden’s foreign policy speech last month, writing: “As the president has said the world is at an inflection point. A fundamental debate is underway about the future—and whether democracy or autocracy offers the best path forward.”

Washington’s war drive against Beijing has nothing to do with democracy in China or anywhere else in the world, including in the US where a fascist coup attempt was made on January 6. Rather, the decade-long US build-up to war against China is aimed at subordinating what Washington regards as the chief threat to its continued global domination.

Austin and Blinken are engaged in consolidating Washington’s “force multipliers” in the region—in the first place Japan and South Korea. The two top officials are due to sit down today with their South Korean counterparts in their first formal 2+2 talks for five years. Blinken will then fly to Alaska where, having set the stage for a fiery confrontation, he and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will hold their first talks with their Chinese counterparts.

The EU’s Vaccination Lag

Kenneth Surin

The advanced industrial countries are now inoculating their populations with the Covid-19 vaccines. A Vaccine Tracker provided by Bloomberg indicates that of the following three countries, the UK’s rollout has been the most effective (36.03 doses per 100 people), followed by the US at 28.83 doses per 100 people (as one would expect, the US’s individual state variation is considerable—extending from North Dakota (36.84) to Georgia at 13.4), while the EU is far behind at 10.64 doses per 100 people.

The EU’s figure seems surprising. For example, Chile (32.92), Morocco (15.6), and Turkey (13.07) have done better.

The EU’s poor performance has been most visible on 2 fronts: (production and acquisition); and (2) distribution and roll-out.

Achieving co-ordination between the 27 EU member countries was going to be somewhat cumbersome from the start, despite a huge €1.8tn/$2.15tn pandemic recovery budget. The European Commission had to devise a bureaucratic framework for 27 countries, which resulted in a more unwieldy authorization-process before the vaccines could be administered. In addition, some countries had their own demanding regulations and paperwork to negotiate, while poor planning in others added to the delay.

While the UK signed its purchasing contracts with vaccine manufacturers quickly, for example, the EU’s slower-paced movement towards the authorizations required at member-nation and European Commission levels meant it was always going to acquire vaccines at a slower rate— it stood to reason that profit-minded manufacturers would begin working on the orders of those non-EU countries (not just the UK but also the US and others) which signed their purchasing contracts ahead of the EU.

Hence AstraZeneca told the EU that of its initial contracted batch of 80 million vaccines, only 31 million would materialize immediately. This was in addition to a glitch in the deliveries of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine– after Pfizer announced a temporary supply reduction, Italy reduced its daily administering of about 80,000 doses to fewer than 30,000.

Both AstraZeneca and Pfizer said at that time that operational issues at their plants were delaying production.

While Pfizer-BioNTech had initial operating problems, its vaccine had the most successful roll-out. The European Commission, under pressure from France which was desperate to succeed with its own vaccine prototype (it turned out to be a dud), “played safe” bureaucratically and divided its bets between several companies: Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson (as of last week). Johnson and Johnson’s first shipments will start in the second half of April, and the company has committed to delivering at least 200 million doses to the EU in 2021.

Dividing bets in this way then had to confront the problem that there are differing storage requirements for different vaccines– the AstraZeneca vaccine is less complicated in this regard, while the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine requires more complex ultracold storage.

In the end, however, those countries which went with Pfizer-BioNTech from the beginning were better served in launching their respective vaccination programmes.

The EU roll-out was also hampered because the European Medicines Agency (EMA) was slower than the US or UK regulators to authorize use of its first vaccine.

The primary consideration here for the EMA was the need for the 27 EU member-nations to avoid liability in case problems arose, and in order to give people in very disparate national cultures greater confidence that the deployed vaccines were safe.

Faced with these difficulties and impediments, several EU countries used a clause in the EMA rule book that permitted EU countries to purchase vaccines from manufacturers outside the EMA’s remit, such as Russia and China.

Countries on the EU’s periphery, from the former Soviet bloc, believe they have been left behind by Brussels.

Serbia has received 1 million doses of Chinese vaccines. Hungary is already doing so by ordering the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, and Italy has just signed a deal with Russia to produce 10 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine in Italy this year.

Perceptions of vaccine production and distribution in the EU are blurred by its contribution to the United Nations-sponsored COVAX roll-out. Intended, laudably, to provide vaccines for poorer countries, the EU exported 34 million doses last month under the auspices of the UN’s COVAX programme.

However, while subscribing to the COVAX programme can be seen as a gesture of international solidarity, the EU has also exported vaccines to rich countries, such as the UK and US, that have been much more successful than the EU in providing vaccines for their citizens.

The following countries have so far received vaccine shipments from the EU:

Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Macao, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Oman, Panama, Peru, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay.

As “vaccine nationalism” takes root, critics argue that while exporting vaccines to relatively impoverished Ecuador and Colombia (say) can be justified, exporting them to Australia and the UK while the EU has lagged in providing vaccines for its own citizens is harder to explain.

The vaccine manufacturers with production facilities in the EU argue that they were under contract to produce vaccines for countries outside the EU (e.g., AstraZeneca for the UK), and that any attempt by Brussels to curb such exports would place them in breach of contract.

The EU has no alternative but to find other ways to get more vaccines for its members— this coming at a time when a third wave of the pandemic, associated with the spread of new variants of the Covid virus, is proceeding across much of Europe.

The infection rate in the EU is now at its highest level since the beginning of last month, with Italy, France, Germany and Poland seeing a surge in infection rates, and with Hungary and the Czech Republic also reporting high infection rates and fatalities from the virus (health authorities in these two countries are warning the current figures are likely to get worse in the next few weeks).

The story of the pandemic is clearly not over for the EU.

End of UK lockdown releases suppressed wave of class struggle

Thomas Scripps

Ending the UK’s lockdown is lifting the lid on industrial disputes long suppressed by the trade union bureaucracy.

Employers have used the pandemic crisis as a pretext for ramped-up exploitation. This agenda will escalate as Prime Minister Boris Johnson oversees a return to “normality” centred on a reopening of the economy.

Fearful of the social consequences, Chancellor Rishi Sunak used the Spring Budget to extend the furlough scheme to the end of September, but the contribution made by the government to paying wages will fall from 80 to 70 percent in July and 60 percent in August and September. This manoeuvre staggers the unemployment fallout of the pandemic, with the aim of forestalling an eruption of working-class struggles giving the corporations time to carry out attacks on individual workforces and the state to prepare new repressive measures.

The Go North West picket line at the Queen’s Road depot on the first day of the strike (credit: WSWS Media)

The trade unions are central to this strategy, bound even more closely to the government and the employers over the course of the pandemic. They have suppressed industrial action throughout the last year in the name of “national unity”, allowing big business and the Conservative government to launch an assault on workers’ jobs, wages and conditions.

Workers are seeking to resist these attacks and have battled through months of trade union delaying and demobilisation tactics to force a growing wave of strikes.

Last week, members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) offices in Swansea voted to strike over COVID-19 safety fears by 71.6 percent on a 50.3 percent turnout. Over 500 workers at the DVLA have been infected since September and one has died.

This would be the first major industrial action taken over coronavirus safety in the UK. After a series of wildcat walkouts early last year at workplaces across the country to protest the threat of COVID-19 and the lack of workplace safety measures, the unions intervened to prevent further action over the virus.

The DVLA headquarters in Swansea (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The PCS allowed the DVLA to begin bringing large numbers of staff back into the workplace last autumn. After the offices were forced to close in December due to the huge number of infections, the union allowed them to reopen on January 4. Another surge of infections in January and rising anger among workers forced the PCS to organise a ballot for strike action, delayed until February 19-March 11. Now that the PCS has a strike mandate, it has announced it will meet with management before deciding next steps.

Other sections of workers are in dispute over jobs, pay and conditions. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) announced at the weekend it would ballot its 45,000 members at British Telecom (BT). A consultative ballot in December recorded 97.9 percent for industrial action on a 74 percent turnout. The dispute is over restructuring plans including job losses and up to 50 percent cuts in redundancy payments. It would be the first national strike faced by the company since 1987.

Andy Kerr, the CWU’s deputy general secretary, said, “This is a decision we did not want to take… My message to BT Group is that our door is still open”. The CWU used the pandemic as a pretext to call off a strike of 110,000 Royal Mail workers in early 2020 and do a deal with Royal Mail Group.

Last week, the ASLEF union’s 2,400 London Underground tube drivers voted 95 percent in favour of strike action on a turnout of 70 percent “to achieve a fair deal on pay and conditions”. No strike date has been announced. The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union is balloting its 10,000 London Underground staff in the same dispute, with results due at the end of the month.

At ScotRail, several hundred RMT conductors have voted for strike action over getting paid less for overtime work than drivers. They will strike on March 28 and April 4, 11, 18 and 25 and work to contract from March 26.

Around 2,000 bus workers represented by Unite have been striking at three subsidiaries of RATP Dev in London—Quality Line, London Sovereign and London United—against a derisory pay offer and attempts to slash conditions.

Action was due to go ahead today and on March 24 and 31 but has been suspended at Quality Line and London Sovereign while members are balloted on an insulting new offer of a 1 percent pay “rise” plus a £425 lump sum. The strike at London United is going ahead.

The union has consistently divided the disputes across the different subsidiary companies, not even advancing a demand for pay parity. An original programme of multiple-day strikes has been scaled back to one-day actions. RATP is meanwhile introducing a Remote Sign-On practice (another attack on pay and condition) and zero-hours contracts by the back door.

More than 4,000 bus drivers at London bus company Metroline are currently being balloted over Remote Sign-On—the vote runs between March 3 and April 9. Unite vetoed a 97 percent vote for strike action over RSO in October after the company threatened legal action. It did the same with a 90 percent vote for action over driver fatigue in February 2020.

Many struggles involve opposition to the use of “fire and rehire” schemes to force workers onto inferior contracts.

Around 200 Unite members at aircraft parts manufacturer SPS Technologies, based in Leicester, are due to strike on March 12, 19, 22 and 26 against fire and rehire plans that will mean a loss of between £2,500 and £3,000 a year if transferred to the new contracts.

SPS technologies were able to make 200 workers redundant last summer. Unite organised a strike ballot over fire and rehire threats between December 1 and 14 but has only now called a strike, three months later, with the promise to SPS that “Unite’s door is always open”.

JDE coffee in Banbury is using a fire and rehire scheme to impose 12-hour shift patterns and downgrade the pension scheme for new hires. Plans were first announced in March 2020, but negotiations were halted for a year after the first lockdown was implemented. Unite has only now organised a consultative strike ballot of its near 300 members at the site, providing a 96 percent vote in favour. No date has been announced for a real ballot. It once again stressed, “Unite’s door is open 24/7 for constructive talks with the management on the plant’s future.”

Close to 500 workers at Go North West are in the third week of an indefinite strike against attacks on conditions and a pay cut of 10 percent, or £2,500 a year, pushed through by fire and rehire. The company has waged a massive strikebreaking operation, using other companies to run overcrowded services at reduced prices during a pandemic.

Unite have kept strikers isolated from other bus companies where it has representation. Earlier in the dispute, the union offered the company a deal worth more than £1 million in savings, including a one-year pay freeze.

The treacherous role played by the unions is summed up by the recent actions of the GMB union in the British Gas strikes, now in their third month. Around 7,000 engineers are fighting fire and rehire changes that would lead to an effective pay cut of 20 percent. The next strikes are scheduled to be held from March 19 to 22 and March 26 to 29.

British Gas, owned by Centrica, intend to sack workers and rehire them on March 31. Workers are being approached by management to sign the new contract on an individual basis.

In response, the GMB has sent an email to its members which reads, “If you plan to stay with British Gas after March 31 and intend to ultimately sign a new contract, our lawyers [sic] advice is to do so by noon on March 25 if you want to avoid the loss of protected terms and changes you have fought for.”

As with the 2008-9 financial crash, the corporations, backed by the government, are paying for the capitalist crisis out of the lives and livelihoods of the working class. The trade unions impose these attacks on their members, without strikes if possible or, where workers’ resistance is too strong, by sabotaging and selling-out action that takes place.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias steps down as Spanish deputy prime minister

Alejandro López

In an eight-minute video posted to Twitter on Monday, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias announced he will resign as deputy prime minister from the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government to run an “anti-fascist” campaign in the snap regional elections in Madrid. He also announced that Podemos Minister of Labor Yolanda Díaz would take over as deputy prime minister and would be the party’s lead candidate in the next general elections.

Iglesias said he made the decision “to prevent the far right from taking over the institutions” in Madrid. This was a reference to projections showing that a coalition between the right-wing Popular Party (PP) and the fascistic Vox party would win the Madrid regional elections, set for May 4.

Pablo Iglesias (Wikimedia Commons)

Fascistic forces pose a very real, mortal threat to the working class, as Donald Trump showed on January 6 by leading a fascist mob to try to overturn the results of the US elections. The working class cannot entrust the struggle against this danger, however, to Iglesias and Podemos, a pseudo-left party of the affluent middle class. Indeed, Podemos has become the principal instrument through which Spain’s increasingly fascistic ruling establishment implements policy.

Referring to Vox, Iglesias cynically said: “we must prevent these criminals, these criminals who support the [fascist Francisco Franco] dictatorship; who apologize for state terrorism; who promote violence against migrants, against homosexuals and against feminists; who, when some military men speak of shooting 26 million reds, say it’s their people. These forces may attain power in Madrid, with all that that this implies for the rest of the country.”

It was the PSOE-Podemos government itself, however, that implemented a fascistic herd immunity policy, opposing lockdowns and letting the COVID-19 virus spread in order to save profits. This has led to over 100,000 deaths and 3.2 million infections in Spain. Social opposition has been met with police crackdowns and threats to deploy the military onto the streets of Madrid.

The individual Iglesias leaves behind as deputy prime minister, Podemos and Communist Party (PCE) member Yolanda Díaz, bears direct responsibility for these infections and deaths. Working closely with the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and social-democratic General Union of Labor (UGT) trade unions, she imposed a return to non-essential work, accelerating the virus’ spread.

The PSOE-Podemos government is now busy lifting social distancing measures to boost the tourism industry’s summer profits and pay for its €140 billion bank and corporate bailout package. As a result, a “fourth wave” is widely expected that would lead to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

The PSOE-Podemos government in fact relied on Vox’s support in parliament to get its bailouts passed. Podemos has increasingly adopted Vox’s programme, whipping up the fascistic anti-Catalan campaign, incarcerating Catalan politicians under fraudulent charges and seeking the extradition of former regional Catalan premier Carles Pugidemont. It also relentlessly intensified the persecution of migrants and denounced youth protests against its jailing of Stalinist rapper Pablo Hasél.

As for the WhatsApp chats where senior military officers said they were “good fascists” and called to “start shooting 26 million sons of b*tches” to “extirpate the cancer” of left-wing sentiment, Iglesias reacted by covering up this danger. In prime-time television, amid mass anger on social media, Iglesias brazenly insisted that nothing of any importance had been revealed: “What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat.”

In fact, it is nearly a year since Vox, reacting against mass strikes demanding a shut-down of non-essential production across Spain and Europe amid the pandemic, began to conspire with sections of the army to prepare a coup. One of its principal aims, the officers’ comments made clear, was to ensure that the government continued to implement a herd immunity policy.

Iglesias’ sudden discovery of the threat of fascism is a contemptible manoeuvre, arising from the factional intrigues of the major Spanish bourgeois parties and growing working class anger.

Madrid regional premier Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) called snap elections in Madrid fearing an attempt by the PSOE to cut a deal with her current coalition partner, the right-wing Citizens party. A similar attempt by the PSOE had just failed in Murcia. Ayuso set elections for May 4, announcing plans for an alliance with Vox.

This comes only a few months after youth protests broke out in working class districts of Madrid against herd immunity policies dictated by both Ayuso and the PSOE-Podemos government.

A conservative daily ABC’s poll shows the PP with nearly 40 percent of the votes and 57-59 deputies, and Vox getting 14 to 16 deputies. The PP-Vox coalition would have an absolute majority in the 136-member regional assembly. Vox leader in Madrid Rocío Monasterio told the far-right daily OkDiario that “Vox is going to an election to rule and to lead the [regional] government,” adding that PP “will have to reach an understanding with Vox, and I will have to do the same.”

Vox’s entry into government would be the first time a far-right party ruled in Spain since the 1978 fall of the fascist dictatorship set up by Francisco Franco. It would help rule Spain’s richest and third-most populous region (6.6 million inhabitants), comprising nearly 15 percent of Spain’s population.

Far-right rule in Madrid—which withstood a Francoite siege for three years during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), suffering tens of thousands of deaths, and was then a centre of fascist repression for four decades during the Francoite dictatorship—would have explosive consequences. The mass working class opposition to Vox and its policies would inevitably be directed as well against the PSOE-Podemos government.

In 2019, the entry of Vox in the Andalusian parliament, the first time in its history that it gained electoral representation, provoked mass protests across Spain. In recent weeks, mass youth protests erupted after the PSOE-Podemos government incarcerated rapper Pablo Hasél for over two years, on trumped-up charges.

Terrified at growing social opposition, Iglesias is trying to lull it to sleep by nominally remaining outside and organising an impotent “anti-fascist” campaign based on identity politics. His move has been designed at the top levels of the state, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s seal of approval. As Iglesias stated on the programme El Intermedio, Sánchez “is clear that we have to win Madrid, and we have to do that together.”

So far, More Madrid, the right-wing split off led by Podemos co-founder Iñigo Errejón, has rejected such an “anti-fascist” alliance. Its candidate, Mónica García, railed against Iglesias for being a man, saying: “We women know how to stop the extreme right without being protected by anyone, we cannot add more spectacle and more testosterone to [PP leader of Madrid, Isabel] Ayuso’s frivolity.”

Many workers and youth—including among Podemos, More Madrid and PSOE voters—hate everything Vox stands for and despises the PSOE-Podemos’ reactionary policies. They are looking for a way forward. It is critical that they not be railroaded by Iglesias and his political allies into the blind alley of a vote for a “left unity candidate.”

The working class is making enormous political experiences regarding the bitter costs of opportunism and the rejection of revolutionary principles. One must recall how in the 1930s, Stalinist politicians—the forbears of Podemos—told workers they had to sacrifice their interests for an alliance with “progressive” sections of the ruling class against fascism during the 1930s. This led to historic defeats in Spain and across Europe. These lessons must be assimilated.

Mexican government joins Biden administration in renewed crackdown on refugees and migrants

Andrea Lobo

The inhumane conditions facing asylum seekers and migrants on the US-Mexico border have been accompanied by collaboration between the Biden administration and the Mexican government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a brutal campaign to suppress migration.

After ending the reactionary agreements with Guatemala and Mexico to force those seeking asylum in the United States to wait in those third countries, the Biden administration is working with these same governments to revoke the right to request asylum at all, from anywhere.

Mexican National Guard troops (Wikimedia Commons)

Mexico and the United States have turned to summarily deporting migrants under the pretext of “health security” over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tens of thousands of migrants were encouraged by Biden’s promise to end Trump’s fascistic policies and turned themselves in at the US border, only to be deported. These included many of the 25,000 asylum seekers under “Remain in Mexico,” who had waited for months to present their case at US immigration court hearings.

At the same time, Mexican migration authorities and police have moved to forcibly disband the growing makeshift camps and harass asylum seekers along the border.

“They are treating us like animals,” a Guatemalan migrant told Excélsior on Friday, after his camp of about 100 asylum seekers was dispersed in the border city of Reynosa. He added in tears: “If we return [to the US border], they will jail us for six months, so we will return to our country. Sadly, I have a lot of debt. I have nothing now in Guatemala, I’m out in the streets.”

The group had been deported by the Biden administration and told that they would not be transported to their countries of origin for five months, which constitutes yet another cruel “dissuasive” policy.

In other words, they were returned to Mexico even after the supposed ending of the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Effectively, this is an escalation of the policy pursued under the Trump administration, which summarily deported over 400,000 migrants after March 2020, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext. About 71,000 asylum seekers sent back to Mexico registered under the “Remain in Mexico” program, but the vast majority of their requests were rejected.

The number of unaccompanied migrant minors in US custody has risen to over 4,200, while the Mexican government has reported that it “attended” over 1,000 unaccompanied minors between January and February.

When asked by Jornada about how many minors it currently has in custody, the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) claimed that it has no record of these numbers. Since November 2020, the custody of migrant children shifted to the System for Integral Family Development (DIF), which runs shelters for children in partnership with UNICEF.

Most minors seeking asylum who remain in Mexico, however, continue to wait in makeshift, unsanitary camps with their parents or other adults. Last weekend, over 50 minors had to be treated by doctors for respiratory illnesses at a tent camp in Tijuana, where migrants have faced hailstorms and near-freezing temperatures at night.

After an investigation of legal documents and interviews, Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded in a report published last week that “migrants in Mexico are exposed to rape, kidnappings, extortion, assault and psychological trauma.”

The agency adds that “the Biden administration continues to expel asylum seekers arriving at the border on misleading public health grounds, and has made no provision for the 30,000 whose asylum cases were unfairly terminated after they were sent to Mexico.”

While Republican and Democratic officials and media spokespeople have insisted that smuggling by cartels is a key driver of the migration, the report makes clear that the Mexican security forces supported and financed by Washington are an integral part of these criminal structures abusing migrants. Uniformed police have constantly threatened to turn migrants over to the cartels or kill them if they fail to pay bribes of hundreds of dollars, with one victim saying, “I don’t understand who is a criminal and who is law enforcement.”

On the other hand, while López Obrador had decreed that asylum seekers waiting in Mexico can access an identification card known as the CURP to work legally and access health care and education services, migrants speaking with HRW said that, even with the CURP, the denial of jobs, education and health care for migrants was generalized.

Moreover, as favored targets for kidnappings and extortion, migrants told HRW that the police refuse to even file their complaints when they are victimized.

Washington and Mexico, meanwhile, are collaborating in a renewed, militarized campaign to cut off migration routes.

On January 22, shortly after officials from the Biden transition team and the Mexican government encouraged the Guatemalan military and police to violently break up a caravan of 8,000 Honduran migrants, Biden and López Obrador held an initial call and agreed to “work closely to stem the flow of irregular migration.”

The Trump-appointed ambassador to Guatemala, William Popp, then announced at a meeting with his Mexican counterpart and the Guatemalan foreign minister that they had agreed on a “renewed effort to keep the border safe during the COVID-19 emergency.”

In Guatemala, far-right President Alejandro Giammattei promised Friday, in a ceremony with the families of 16 migrants massacred presumably by drug cartels in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, that he would halt migration through “walls of prosperity and development.”

However, Giammattei’s response to popular demonstrations against cuts to education and health care and the lack of aid for hurricane victims last November was the same as that meted out to the migrant caravans in January: “walls” of violent repression meted out by the US-trained and financed police and military.

Meanwhile, the López Obrador government continues to deploy National Guard troops to round up migrants after Trump repeatedly praised his “friend,” López Obrador, for mobilizing the Mexican military as an extension of the US border patrol.

Throughout February, the Mexican media reported that the National Guard “rescued” 108 Central American migrants in Nuevo León, 235 in Oaxaca and Veracruz, and 156 and then another 116 in Chiapas, only to add that the federal forces “intercepted” the trucks in which the migrants were traveling.

This is the result of dozens of chokepoints set up by the National Guard and the INM across roads and train tracks. As reported Sunday by the New York Times, those intercepted or caught in increased raids are being deported, with a Foreign Ministry official telling the Times that they “have a right to deport undocumented migrants.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials of the López Obrador administration told Reuters that they were working toward developing the infrastructure along the border with Guatemala to prevent migrants from coming in at all. “Mexico spends more on every new wave of migrants than that would cost,” one said.

As early as mid-November the UN International Organization for Migration warned that the back-to-back hurricanes and the pandemic crisis would spark a migration crisis, but neither the Mexican nor the US government prepared to receive and shelter these desperate refugees who had lost everything. Along with the pandemic, the migrant crisis underscores that capitalism and its nation-state system are utterly incapable of meeting the basic social needs of workers everywhere.

US imperialism puts China in its sights

Andre Damon

Behind the backs of the American and world population, the Biden administration and the US military are preparing an escalation of military tensions against China with incalculable consequences.

Earlier this month, the Japanese Nikkei news service published excerpts from the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which calls for stationing offensive missiles, previously banned by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, along a string of densely populated islands that includes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

To fund this initiative, the Pentagon requested an annual Pacific budget, in the words of Nikkei, of “$4.7 billion, which is more than double the $2.2 billion earmarked for the region in fiscal 2021.”

Against the backdrop of these plans, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Japan this week, threatening to “push back” against “aggression” by China. While Blinken and other US officials habitually speak of Chinese aggression, it has been the US under Obama, Trump and now Biden that has aggressively confronted China in the Indo-Pacific to prevent any challenge to American global hegemony.

In a brief and tightly choreographed press conference, the two US officials and their Japanese counterparts, together with the vetted press, ignored the burning question: 75 years after American bombers obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were their policies exposing the people of Japan and China to a similar fate?

Without directly addressing the question, the answer was clear. “We reconfirmed that the strong commitment of the United States regarding defense of Japan using all types of U.S. forces, including nuclear,” said Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi.

Even as more than 1,000 people die from COVID-19 every single day in the United States, and as the disease surges across the world, the US is preparing for a conflict that risks incalculable human suffering. Joining this offensive is the United Kingdom, with the highest COVID-19 death rate of the major European countries, which announced Tuesday a massive expansion of its nuclear weapons program, calling China a “major threat.”

It is not COVID-19, but China, that the US has planted firmly in its sights. As Blinken made clear, “Several countries present us with serious challenges, including Russia, Iran, North Korea … but the challenge posed by China is different. China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power” to “challenge” the United States.

On March 10, Adm. Philip Davidson, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing he believes that China is likely to invade Taiwan within the next six years. “I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years,” Davidson said.

Given that the United States has, in the words of Defense Secretary Austin, “commitments to support Taiwan’s ability to defend itself,” to predict that China will invade Taiwan within the next six years is to predict a major Sino-American war within that same time period.

To this end, Davidson stressed, “We absolutely must be prepared to fight and win should competition turn to conflict.”

What would the world look like if “competition turned to conflict?” A preview of this reality is provided by Adm. James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, who published a book entitled 2034: A Novel of the Next World War just one day before Davidson’s comments. The novel depicts a nuclear conflict between the United Sates and China, involving the total annihilation of major cities on both sides.

After an American nuclear attack on Shanghai, one of the largest cities in the world, “These many months later the city remained a charred, radioactive wasteland. The death toll had exceeded thirty million. After each of the nuclear attacks international markets plummeted. Crops failed. Infectious diseases spread. Radiation poisoning promised to contaminate generations. The devastation exceeded… capacity for comprehension.”

The American survivors of a Chinese nuclear attack on San Diego were left to live in “wretched camps,” with “cyclical outbreaks of typhus, measles, and even smallpox often sprouted from the unbilged latrines and rows of plastic tenting.”

What is most striking is the contrast between these graphic depictions of mass death and the imminent danger of what Stavridis calls a “world war” and the degree to which the public unaware that these preparations are even underway.

How many people in the US know that the United States is preparing to deploy offensive missiles in highly populated areas off the Chinese coast? And how many people in Japan? The evening news and major newspapers are silent on these war preparations, even as they relentlessly and falsely demonize China.

Leading the charge has been the Washington Post, owned by Amazon oligarch Jeff Bezos. In an editorial on March 14, the Post accused China of “genocide” against its Muslim population, echoing the declarations of the Trump and Biden administrations. The Post demanded that the United States withdraw from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, declaring that to attend “when the Xi regime is actively seeking to destroy a group of more than 12 million people would be unconscionable.”

At the same time, the Post has continued its campaign to falsely assert that COVID-19 could have been created in a Chinese laboratory. It condemns the findings of the World Health Organization, which declared that, in the words of the Post, the “laboratory hypothesis was ‘extremely unlikely’ and would not be further studied.”

In response, the Post declares that the “WHO needs to start over” and consider “both the zoonotic and laboratory hypotheses.”

These efforts to demonize China are sheer propaganda. A major aim is to divert mounting social tensions outward toward an “external” enemy.” The 20th century’s horrific wars were prepared with such propaganda, designed to obscure the real war aims of capitalist governments.

In the 21st century, these costs are greater than ever. In the 20 years of this century, despite perpetual wars and proxy conflicts, there has never been a full-scale clash between nuclear-armed states. But exactly such a war is threatened by the massive US military buildup against China.

The workers of the United States and China have nothing to gain from such a horrific conflict. It is they, not the generals and politicians, who would bear the cost.

If a relapse of the bloodshed of the 20th century is to be avoided, it is the working class that must do it. The fight against imperialism and the danger of a new world war must be developed as a revolutionary movement of workers throughout the world, in opposition to the homicidal policies of the ruling elites and the entire capitalist system.

German state elections show growing dissatisfaction with the ruling elite’s “profits before lives” pandemic response

Christoph Vandreier

The elections in the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate last Sunday revealed the growing dissatisfaction with the ruling elite’s “profits before lives” pandemic response, and the social spending cuts imposed by the federal Christian Democrat (CDU)/Social Democratic Party (SPD) grand coalition and state governments. The CDU, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, achieved its worst results in postwar history in both elections. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been built up by the ruling class in order to impose its right-wing agenda, lost close to half of its support.

In Baden-Württemberg, both the CDU with 24.1 percent of the vote (down 2.9 percent since the last election), and the social Democrats with 11 percent (down 1.7 percent), achieved their worst ever results. The two parties, which took 78 percent of the vote between them in the southwestern German state just 20 years ago, received a mere 35 percent this time.

Results of the state elections in Baden-Württemberg in 2021 (2016) in percent

In Rhineland-Palatinate, the parties received a somewhat larger share of the vote, with 35.7 percent for the SPD and 27.7 percent for the CDU. But here too, both parties suffered losses. The SPD’s share of the vote fell by 0.5 percentage points. Given the decline in voter participation, this translated into a 10 percent decline in total votes compared to 2016. The CDU’s share of the vote dropped by 4.1 percentage points, which was also an historic low.

The biggest losses in both states were suffered by the AfD. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the right-wing extremists lost 4.1 percentage points and 40 percent of its voters in absolute terms, finishing with a result of 8.3 percent. In Baden-Württemberg, the AfD’s share of the vote fell by 5.2 percentage points to 9.7 percent, which amounted to a loss of 42,000 votes compared to 2016.

The Green/CDU Baden-Württemberg state government led by Minister President Winfried Kretschmann suffered a major setback. The coalition lost 0.6 points in percentage terms, but due to the decrease in voter participation the governing parties’ total votes fell by over 10 percent compared to 2016. Although the Greens’ share of the vote increased by 2.3 percentage points to 32.6 percent, they lost tens of thousands of voters in absolute terms.

Absolute results of the state elections in Baden-Württemberg 2021 (2016) in millions

In Rhineland-Palatinate, the so-called “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, Greens and Free Democrats made slight gains thanks to the increase of 4 percentage points in support for the Greens. In absolute terms, however, the governing parties lost close to 40,000 votes.

The Left Party, which governs in Berlin, Bremen and Thuringia, and is also involved at the federal level in imposing social spending cuts, militarism and the mass infection of the population, saw its share of the vote stagnate well below the 5 percent hurdle for parliamentary representation in both states.

The election results are a distorted expression of the growing opposition to the governments’ coronavirus policy and the dramatic growth of social inequality. The largest growth of any group in the election was of non-voters, who are turning away from the entire political establishment. They rose by 6.6 percentage points in Baden-Württemberg and 6 percent in Rhineland-Palatinate. The share of the vote going to smaller parties without parliamentary representation increased by 4.8 percent in Baden-Württemberg and 6.1 percent in Rhineland-Palatinate. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the Free Voters (FW) even managed to gain parliamentary representation, with 5.4 percent of the vote.

The CDU’s collapse was undoubtedly worsened by the so-called “mask affair.” Several days prior to the election, it was revealed that a number of CDU and Christian Social Union deputies exploited their positions to personally cash in by arranging government contracts for the purchase of masks from private companies.

Ergebnisse der Landtagswahl in Rheinland-Pfalz 2021 (2016) in Prozent

But these revelations merely gave sharp expression to the government’s policy. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the banks and big business have been showered with hundreds of billions of euros through bailout packages and stock purchasing programmes. In order to ensure industrial companies could make record profits, workers were exposed to deadly dangers on a daily basis. All of the parties categorically excluded a full lockdown, including all nonessential businesses. As a result, over 73,000 people have already died in Germany from COVID-19.

The CDU’s lead candidate in Baden-Württemberg, Susanne Eisenmann, is an especially aggressive advocate of this policy of death, and had extremely low popularity ratings as a result. As education minister in Kretschmann’s cabinet, Eisenmann demanded the reopening of schools irrespective of incidence rates in January, at the height of the second wave. Under conditions of rapidly accelerating infection rates, she recently sent all year five and six students back into in-person classes without any steps being taken to ensure social distancing.

The AfD is the most vehement advocate of reopening the economy at any price, and backed the right-wing extremist protests organised by the coronavirus deniers. The fact that the fascist party suffered the largest losses in both states and lost almost half of its voters shows that, contrary to claims in the media, its policies do not enjoy mass popular support. The AfD is promoted above all by the ruling elite in order to enforce its reactionary agenda.

The murderous policy of mass infection is supported by all parties in parliament. Even though the “mask affair” focused particular attention on the role of the CDU, and Eisenmann strongly advocated the policy of reopenings, Green Minister President Kretschmann and his Social Democrat colleague in Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreier, are no less vehement in their endorsement of reopening the economy.

The Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate elections underscore just how interchangeable the established parties are. Both Kretschmann and Dreier’s coalitions are characterised by the mass deportations of refugees, the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus and the pursuit of an aggressive policy of “profits before lives” amid the pandemic.

Absolute results of the state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate 2021 (2016) in millions

In 2019, Kretschmann’s government deported 2,648 asylum seekers, and it continued to remove numerous refugees during the pandemic. In the crowded and unhygienic refugee centres, the virus is running rampant. Instead of closing the camps, the authorities ordered the refugees to be confined inside and monitored by the military.

The army’s intervention, under the pretext of providing official aid to the state authorities under conditions of the pandemic, is part of a comprehensive build-up of a police-state apparatus. The so-called “night of violence in Stuttgart” served as a pretext for the expansion of personal checkpoints, body cameras for police officers, widespread video surveillance and racist family tree criminal investigations.

All parties wasted no time in underscoring their readiness on election night to continue the government’s policies in a variety of right-wing coalitions. SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil and the head of parliamentary affairs for the Greens, Britta Haßelmann, declared their interest in forming a federal government coalition with the Free Democrats. The Greens are also still considering the option of a coalition with the CDU, with which the SPD is currently in a coalition at the federal level.

The Left Party is also prepared to join a federal government. Its federal affairs officer, Jörg Schindler, responding to a question on whether “the Left Party would make itself capable of governing on foreign and security policy,” answered, “Of course, there’s no question about that.” Prior to this, the new party leadership of Susanne Henning-Wellsow and Janine Wissler made similar remarks.

The elections and the responses they have generated contain an urgent lesson. Amid the pandemic and the deepest capitalist crisis since the 1930s, all parties are closing ranks to intensify their policies of social spending cuts, militarism and mass infection with the coronavirus. The mounting opposition to this can only find a progressive expression if workers and young people intervene independently into political events.