UK’s new military policy: More nuclear missiles, more wars, targeting China and Russia

Chris Marsden

Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented the UK’s Integrated Review of foreign and defence policy this week, pledging stepped up military aggression against Russia, China and other rivals, crowned with a pledge to increase Britain’s stock of nuclear warheads by a massive 40 percent.

The Integrated Review (IR) is a nakedly warmongering document. Amid the social devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, with the government insisting that there is no money to fund nurses’ and doctors’ pay, slashing vital social services and ramping up workplace exploitation, Johnson pledges billions for weapons of mass destruction.

Not satisfied with the horrific death toll and human suffering resulting from their “herd immunity” agenda, the Tories openly plan for wars all over the globe, even nuclear conflicts, that would produce a mountain of human corpses and threaten the survival humanity itself.

Global Britain in a competitive age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

The IR commits to an increase in the UK’s stockpile of nuclear warheads from “no more than 225” to “no more than 260,” breaking a 2010 commitment to get to “no more than 180 by the mid-2020s” and marking the first increase since the end of the Cold War.

The government is replacing the existing warheads used on Trident nuclear submarines and is committed to building four new Dreadnought Class submarines to replace current Vanguard class vessels by the early 2030s. Reductions were declared “no longer possible” because the UK must meet “the full range of state nuclear threats”, a euphemism for targeting China and Russia. The IR even threatens the use of nuclear weapons if the UK is faced with an attack using cyber or other “emerging technologies”, breaking with past commitments to reserve nuclear weapons for retaliation against another nuclear power, or in response to extreme chemical or biological threats.

Britain will also deploy “more of our Armed Forces overseas more often and for longer periods of time.”

The document pledges an increase in defence spending of over £24 billion over four years, exceeding the 2 percent GDP commitment of NATO powers, with the boast that this makes the UK “the largest European spender on defence in NATO and the second largest in the Alliance”. There are commitments to maintain troop levels above 100,000 (a response to criticisms from within the military of declining personnel levels), develop the next generation of naval vessels, and progress aircraft carrier strike group capabilities, with at least 48 F-35 combat jets ready by 2025.

There will be a shift in focus towards the Indo-Pacific region, involving military and commercial alliances, to establish UK interests in what is “increasingly the geopolitical centre of the world” and its “growth engine.”

Becoming “the European partner with the broadest and most integrated presence in the Indo-Pacific” is framed as a response to “China’s increasing power and international assertiveness… by far the most significant geopolitical factor in the world today.”

To meet China’s “systemic challenge”, the UK will deploy the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier and supporting carrier strike group into the Indo-Pacific later this year—“the UK’s most ambitious global deployment in two decades.” This will be matched with plans to “forward base” personnel and assets, including warships, in the Middle East and Pacific regions, in Japan, Australia and Singapore, as well as confirmed plans to triple the size of the Royal Navy’s presence on the coast of Oman.

Moves against China are made in direct collaboration with the Biden administration in the United States, which is ramping up its military forces in the Asia Pacific, including stationing missile systems in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines at a cost of $4.7 billion. The US is described as “our most important bilateral relationship… trading partner and inward investor.”

The thinking behind this orientation was spelled out by defence analyst Con Coughlin, who wrote in the Telegraph that the UK was now “free of the EU’s restrictive shackles… Another significant advantage the Government has is that the more dysfunctional the EU becomes, the more the new Biden administration will be inclined to ally itself with London, rather than Berlin, Paris or Brussels.”

There was, nevertheless, significant Tory disquiet at the government’s attempt to square this aggressive shift with a continued commitment to lucrative trade with Beijing, with the IR noting, “Open, trading economies like the UK will need to engage with China and remain open to Chinese trade and investment”.

Intelligence Committee Chair Julian Lewis complained of “grasping naivety” regarding Beijing, while Defence Select Committee head Tobias Ellwood said that Johnson should have called out China for the “geo-strategic threat it is”.

As a counterweight to such criticism, the UK pledges to lead diplomatic and military aggression against Russia, described as the “most acute threat to our security.” Militarily this means the UK placing itself “at the forefront of implementing NATO’s new Deterrence and Defence Concept” across the Euro-Atlantic region and supporting “others in the Eastern European neighbourhood and beyond to build their resilience to state threats. This includes Ukraine, where we will continue to build the capacity of its armed forces.”

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, the arms commitments outlined Tuesday are only a down-payment. A Defence Command Paper will be published March 22 detailing a modernisation plan “to get the Armed Forces ready for the wars of the future.” The Telegraph describes this as an “£80 billion upgrade… over the next four years. The total over the next decade could amount to close to £200 billion.”

Global military aggression will be accompanied by domestic political and social repression. The IR couples references to “the intensification of competition between states” with “non-state actors” (including “large tech companies”), used as “proxies in conflict” by hostile states targeting “the vulnerabilities within democratic systems… and the testing of the boundary between war and peace.”

Claims of foreign state interference in domestic political and social life frame proposals to create new spying and propaganda institutions, including a National Cyber Force to “detect, disrupt and deter our adversaries” and develop cyber weapons; a Counter-Terrorism Operations Centre; and a Situation Centre in the Cabinet Office.

This repressive apparatus goes far beyond measures to supposedly combat foreign interference. The document refers obliquely to the decline of “democracy and pluralism, accelerated by Covid-19” and to an increase in “social and political dissatisfaction,” before warning, “Governments may struggle to satisfy popular demands for security and prosperity…”

The response is a further assault on democratic rights. The threat from “terrorism” domestically is described as coming not only from Islamist and Northern Irish groups, but also “far-right, far-left, anarchist and single-issue terrorism.” This catch-all definition provides for state repression of all forms of political and social dissent, above all from the newly designated threat from “the left.”

It is a measure of the poisonous political atmosphere generated by the crisis of British and world imperialism that there is not a shred of genuine opposition to the Tory war criminals. The mealy-mouthed criticisms of the opposition Labour Party focus on complaints that anti-China measures do not go far enough, and that military spending must be ramped up still further.

The Labour Party’s few criticisms of the IR were largely indistinguishable from the Tory right. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer questioned the rationale for increasing nuclear weapons, but only after stressing that Labour’s “ support for nuclear deterrence is non-negotiable .”

When Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab urged against adopting a “Cold-War mentality” towards China, Starmer replied that the Conservatives had turned “a blind eye to human rights abuses while inviting China to help build our infrastructure.” He also accused the Conservatives of overseeing an “era of retreat,” with armed forces cuts 'every year for the last decade”.

The declaration that nuclear war is not only an option but is actively being planned as the pinnacle of “defence” and foreign policy is a warning to workers of the fundamental dangers they now face.

Capitalism has transformed the entire world into a tinderbox, while its politicians seek by the constant whipping up of chauvinism and xenophobia to condition the world’s people to the necessity for unchecked militarism and wars of conquest.

The lessons of history must be learned. The drive of the imperialist powers towards a third global conflagration must be answered with the unification of workers the world over against imperialism and war and for socialist revolution.

Jeanine Áñez arrested over coup in Bolivia

Tomas Castanheira

In the early hours of last Saturday, the ex-president of Bolivia’s coup regime, Jeanine Áñez, was arrested. She is charged with “sedition, terrorism and conspiracy.” Her government’s ministers and military commanders, who played central roles in the US-backed coup that toppled elected President Evo Morales of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in 2019, have been similarly charged.

Áñez arrives at womens prison in La Pa March, 15. (Credit: Ricardo Carvallo Terán - ABI)

After spending the weekend in a police station, Áñez was transferred on Monday to a women’s prison in La Paz where she will await trial for the next four months. Two other former ministers, Álvaro Coimbra (Ministry of Justice) and Rodrigo Guzmán (Ministry of Energy), have already been arrested. The former ministers Arturo Murillo (Government Ministry), Yerko Núñez (Presidency Ministry), and Luis Fernando López (Defense Ministry), whose arrests have also been ordered by the Public Ministry, are at large.

The same arrest order targets former chief commander of the Armed Forces Williams Kalimán, who on November 10, 2019 made a televised statement “suggesting” that “the president resign his presidential mandate,” thereby consummating the coup. Also charged are the military chiefs who accompanied Kalimán in the broadcast: Palmiro Gonzalo Jarjury Rada (former Navy commander), Jorge Gonzalo Terceros Lara (former commander of the Bolivian Air Force - FAB), Jorge Mendieta Ferrufino (former Army commander), Elmer Fernández Toranzo (FAB general), and former police commander Yuri Calderón.

The “Coup d’Etat” case, through which the investigations are taking place, stems from a criminal complaint filed with the Public Ministry of La Paz by former MAS deputy Lidia Patty in late November, after the election of Bolivia’s current President Luis Arce of the MAS.

In her complaint, Patty also accused political leaders such as the ultra-rightist Luis Fernando Camacho, newly elected governor of Santa Cruz, who led the so-called “civic stoppages,” for Morales’ downfall. Justice Minister Iván Lima said, however, that Camacho should be given “differentiated treatment” and that the case “cannot be the reason for a conflagration in the country.”

Other individuals are being prosecuted for the violent actions they committed during and after the coup. The leader of the fascist “shock group” Cochala Youth Resistance (RJC), Yassir Molina, was arrested over the weekend, but released afterwards by a court in Sucre. The government has stated that it will charge the judge who released him.

In addition to the charges under the “Coup d’État” case, Áñez and her ministers have had five other charges brought against them by the government over the week. On Monday, charges were filed for the “irregular and onerous loan” taken by Áñez’s government from the International Monetary Fund (IMF); the “illegal extension of concession to Fundempresa [a commercial activities regulator];” the “violation of human rights of Bolivians living in Chile [who were prevented for weeks from entering their country];” and for a decree of “restrictions during the pandemic” that allegedly undermined “freedom of expression.”

On Tuesday, the government issued its fifth indictment of Áñez for the Sacaba and Senkata massacres, in which 36 people were killed and more than 500 wounded by regime forces in protests following the coup. Minister Lima told La Razón that this latter case is “the most important for us” because of demands for justice by victims and survivors.

Relatives of the Senkata massacre victims demand justice, March, 14. (Credit: Ricardo Carvallo Terán - ABI)

Lima told Bolivian state television that “what we are seeking is not a four-month detention, but a 30-year sentence,” paraphrasing the declaration of Arturo Murillo when the coup regime brought charges against Evo Morales: “This is terrorism and this is sedition… We have asked for the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.”

The arrest of Áñez and her collaborators was repudiated by the imperialist-aligned forces that supported the 2019 coup. The Organization of American States (OAS), responsible for fabricating findings of an electoral fraud, the pretext for the overthrow of Morales, is now attacking Bolivia’s right to prosecute the coup plotters.

In a statement issued Monday, the OAS expressed its “concern about the abuse of judicial mechanisms that have once again become repressive instruments of the governing party.” The imperialist organization demands that no trials be held in Bolivian courts, that all accused be immediately released, and that the entire judicial system be “reformed” under international supervision!

Along the same lines, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—who represents the largest and most influential country in the region, and openly defends Washington’s geopolitical interests—has also spoken out in defense of his fascistic Bolivian ally. In an extraordinary meeting of PROSUL, an alliance of right-wing South American regimes, Bolsonaro described Áñez’s arrest for a “coup d’état” as “nonsensical” and demanded that the “rule of law” be maintained in Bolivia.

Over the week, under the slogan “It was a fraud, not a coup!,” Bolivian far-right forces staged demonstrations against the arrests, defending the coup carried out against Morales and renewing their threats to overthrow the newly elected MAS government. The largest of these protests took place Monday night in Santa Cruz, the center of the country’s right-wing opposition.

Santa Cruz Governor Luis Camacho told the crowd gathered at the foot of the city’s Christ the Redeemer statue, “The next time we go to La Paz will be to defeat a tyrannical government.” Rómulo Calvo, his successor in the leadership of the reactionary Santa Cruz Civic Committee, spoke at the same event stating that his supporters are willing to go to the streets as “we did in the 21 days [preceding the coup],” and that they already have the “recipe for removing a coward from office and hunting him down.”

Camacho announced that Santa Cruz will be converted into a “center for the reception of politically persecuted people.” According to one representative, the Santa Cruz Civic Committee is sheltering about 30 people wanted by the police who are supposedly “scared... about what happened to the Cochala Resistance [leader],” and that number will reach hundreds.

On Tuesday, the Cochabamba branch of the National Association of Non-Commissioned Officers, Sergeants, Corporals, Police Officers and Administrative Personnel issued a public statement to its national leadership declaring itself in a “state of emergency in support of all comrades who are being summoned by the relevant authorities.”

The next day, representatives of the different Civic Committees in the country met in Santa Cruz to plan their actions. They threatened to carry out a “national strike” if the arrests do not cease and Áñez and her ministers are not released.

The decision of the Bolivian judiciary and the MAS government to proceed with the prosecution of the coup perpetrators undoubtedly took place under strong popular pressure.

The one-year interval between the overthrow of Morales and the election of Arce witnessed a series of rebellious protests by the Bolivian working class and peasants, demanding the immediate overthrow of the coup regime, justice for the massacres committed by the state, and for income for the population. This opposition movement was contained—with difficulty—by the MAS, the trade unions, and social movements, and channeled into a bankrupt bourgeois electoral outcome.

Protest by Senkata Association of Wounded, Political Prisoners and Victims, March, 16. (Credit: Ricardo Carvallo Terán - Agencia Boliviana de Información)

The “national unity” program advocated by Arce once elected did not reflect the aspirations of the Bolivian masses. This was expressed in the apathy registered in the ongoing Bolivian local elections, which will have their second round on April 11. The MAS performed significantly worse than in the November elections, being defeated in eight of Bolivia’s ten main cities, including in traditional electoral strongholds of the party such as El Alto. The party was elected to head three of the nine state governments and is in the second round in four of them.

Since the arrests in the “Coup d’État” case, Arce’s name has only appeared in the Bolivian press in the form of denunciations of his deathly silence about the recent events. Right-wing figures like Iván Arias, Áñez’s former minister and now mayor of La Paz, sought to separate the president from a “radical wing” of the MAS that he accused of causing “confrontation in the country, with the objective of anticipating elections and heading for a recall.” When asked which political forces in the MAS he was referring to, he pointed to Evo Morales.

Despite the apparent political contradiction within the MAS, which feigns to be swinging between the interests of the Bolivian working masses and the ruling elite, only the latter are beneficiaries of its double game. The MAS’ greatest concern is that the unstoppable growth of social opposition in Bolivia not bring down the country’s bourgeois regime. This was openly expressed by Justice Minister Iván Lima, who congratulated the “good decision” of Lidia Patty and the Public Ministry to “lower the intensity of criminal prosecution” during 2020, while an electoral solution to the Bolivian political crisis was being drawn up within the ruling class.

Meanwhile, former President Evo Morales, often portrayed in comparison to Arce as a “radical” figure, defined on Wednesday the urgent political tasks confronting the country as follows: “Instead of political confrontation, the post-pandemic agenda should have an economic character, through a national agreement between the state, social movements and businessmen to prioritize investment and generate sources of employment.”

Bolivian workers face a critical moment. The dictatorial threats of the ruling class persist. They are, moreover, being fueled by the terrible growth of social inequality, with at least a million Bolivians thrown into poverty over the last year, and the protracted COVID-19 crisis, which has already left 12,000 dead in the country and will reach a catastrophic level, following its neighbor Brazil, if immediate measures are not taken.

The condition for confronting these risks is the establishment of the political independence of the working class from the MAS, the trade unions and all the political forces of the bourgeoisie.

Canada’s ruling elite paving way for third, even deadlier wave of COVID-19

Frédéric Charlebois

As is the case in many countries, new variants of the coronavirus are rapidly spreading in Canada. While all three of the more contagious variants first observed in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil are present in the country, the B.1.1.7 variant responsible for a dramatic surge in cases in the United Kingdom appears to be emerging as the dominant COVID-19 variant.

Among the most affected provinces are Alberta with over 700 new variant cases identified as of last week, and British Columbia with more than 575 cases. It needs to be emphasized that only a fraction of the more than 130,000 COVID-19 cases identified nationwide over the past 6 weeks have been tested for the new variants.

In Ontario, which leads the way with more than 1,000 identified new variant cases, they were estimated last week to be responsible for more than 40 percent of all new infections, and as of Monday 49 percent of all new infections.

The same trend is happening in Quebec. While the province has so far identified only 343 cases of the variant, nearly 1,850 suspected cases are under investigation. With B.1.1.7 accounting for 15 to 20 percent of new infections, an increase in cases is expected in the coming weeks. According to new projections from Quebec’s health institute (INSPQ), if further measures to restrict COVID-19 spread are not taken, the province could see its daily number of new cases rise to 4,000 by next month.

The outlook in Ontario is just as bad. The province’s COVID-19 Science Table projects that daily cases will reach 5,800 in early April, driven by the new variants. In a worst-case scenario, the projection sees infections rising to 8,000 per day. “We’re most definitely in a third wave,” commented Dr. Peter Juni, a medical professor and head of the Science Table, last Thursday. “We have two pandemics going on. We have the pandemic with the old variants, old-fashioned and slow on the control, and then unfortunately we have the new variants.”

At the beginning of this week, the Ontario Hospitals Association tweeted that a “third wave” has begun and that “strong adherence to public health measures is urgently needed to prevent overwhelming hospitals.”

Like the US last summer, Canada’s second wave is likely to extend into a third wave as the country’s health care systems have yet to recover from January’s near-deployment of the triage protocol—used to determine who will and will not have access to life-saving treatment when hospitals are overwhelmed.

Despite the new variants being known to be more contagious and, in all likelihood, more lethal, governments across the country have rolled back the limited measures deployed at the peak of the second wave in late December and early January, thus allowing the virus to circulate freely in the population.

In Alberta, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government announced last week the reopening of gyms and libraries, while its counterpart in Manitoba announced relaxations regarding maximum capacity in stores and businesses.

Ontario had to impose new lockdowns last week in Sudbury, Thunder Bay and the Simcoe-Muskoka district due to outbreaks related to the B.1.1.7 variant. Yet the rapid advance of this “second pandemic,” to use Dr. Juni’s words, did not prevent the Ford government from relaxing measures in seven other regions.

In Quebec, the CAQ government of Premier François Legault has rolled back lockdown measures across the province, with only the Greater Montreal area and its environs remaining in the “red zone.” Yesterday, Montreal’s public health director, Dr. Mylène Drouin, reported that the B.1.1.7 variant has taken root in several Montreal neighbourhoods. Significantly, she also reported that there are currently 35 COVID-19 outbreaks in schools and 43 in daycares.

While the Quebec government, like its counterparts across the country, has justified its insistence schools remain open amid the pandemic with the claim schools do not represent a major transmission risk, Dr. Drouin said they are serving as a crucial link in the spread of the new variants. Summarizing her remarks, the Montreal Gazette reported, “Public health authorities believe variants are mainly spreading from young children who are getting infected in schools or daycares and then passing the virus on to their parents.”

Whatever measures remain in place in Quebec and across Canada are grossly inadequate. As the authorities’ projections point out, governments are doing exactly the opposite of what should be done to staunch a third wave.

As it has done throughout the pandemic, the Canadian ruling class is adamantly refusing to put in place any measures that might affect the profits of big business, hence their criminal insistence on keeping open schools and workplaces—the main vectors of transmission. An especially devastating consequence of this policy was shown at Amazon’s Brampton Heritage Road Fulfilment Centre, where over 250 low-paid and highly exploited workers got infected before the local health authority ordered the warehouse to temporarily close, over management objections, last Friday.

As scientific data and studies show, the role of schools in community transmission is no longer in question and this is even more true with the arrival of the new variants. Schools account for some 30 percent of COVID-19 cases, and there are dozens of schools with at least one case of the new variant. In Quebec, more than 20 schools had to close after the discovery of the B.1.1.7 variant, and in Ontario, just in the City of Toronto alone, more than a dozen schools have had to close.

While hypocritically citing concerns about the mental health of young people to justify keeping them in school, governments claim that the disease does not represent any physical danger to them. What a lie! Many young people have been hospitalized and there have been deaths among those under 19. Moreover, as is the case with adults, the long-term consequences of COVID-19 infection on children and young people is unknown.

The “open school” policy is part of a broader “herd immunity” policy, based on abandoning efforts to halt the virus’ spread and allowing much of the population to get infected with the purported aim of achieving long-term natural immunity. In addition to being anti-scientific and decried by health agencies such as the WHO (World Health Organization), this policy, adopted publicly or behind the scenes by the capitalist ruling elite, has caused the death of more than 2.6 million people around the world, including more than 22,000 in Canada.

As evidenced by official projections, if nothing is done, Canada will in all likelihood be engulfed by a third wave, larger and potentially more lethal than the two that preceded it. This perspective is supported by scientific experts such as Raywat Deonandan, a global health epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa. According to Deonandan, a third wave is “mathematically inevitable” because of three factors: the history of epidemics, the arrival of variants and the nature of the measures put in place. If the first two factors underline the need to act to prevent a new deadly wave on a national scale, the third one directly implicates the authorities. Their decisions over the past few weeks demonstrate that they are acting with criminal intent to prevent the implementation of the necessary measures to curb the pandemic.

Unlike the corporate elite and their political hirelings, workers want to prevent a third wave and its potential consequences. According to an Ipsos poll of 3,000 people commissioned by Radio Canada, 76 percent of respondents would be willing to go through a new lockdown to limit the impact of the variants.

On the vaccination front, despite the approval of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines by Health Canada in the last two weeks, provinces are running out of time to vaccinate enough people to prevent a third wave. Even though vaccination began almost three months ago, only 7 percent of Canada’s population has received a first dose, and just 1.6 percent have received both doses.

This vaccination fiasco is the result of the policies pursued by the Canadian establishment over decades. While Canada was among the countries with the most advanced pharmaceutical industry in the 1970s, the federal government in the 1980s privatized Connaught Laboratories in Toronto and then in the 1990s cut the budget of the Ministry of Industry by two-thirds, thereby cutting off most public investment in research and development. Companies followed the government’s lead during these decades and moved their facilities elsewhere, leaving the government and the public at the mercy of the markets.

More broadly, the vaccination fiasco only underscores the inability of the capitalist system to prepare for and manage major crises. Once again, millions of people are at risk not because of a lack of knowledge or scientific advances, but because of the capitalist system where everything is subordinated to private profit.

Moreover, access to the vaccine has become a source of great-power competition and conflict. The major powers, led by the United States, are using their control over vaccine production to advance their geopolitical and economic interests. Canada is one of the imperialist powers blocking the temporary lifting of COVID-related patents so as to allow the production of generic vaccines in lesser developed countries, thereby placing tens of millions of lives at risk.

Although time is running out, a third wave can be avoided. This requires the complete closure of schools, as well as non-essential industries and businesses, with full financial compensation for affected workers and small businesses. Billions must be invested in testing, tracing and sequencing cases, vaccinating the Canadian population and providing vaccines to people around the world. Additional billions must be invested in hospitals, which have been ravaged by decades of austerity, so they can build up surge capacity and the infrastructure to treat those who develop severe forms of COVID-19.

This strategy, the only one capable of stopping the pandemic, requires the independent political mobilization of the working class. Rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the pro-capitalist unions, must be formed in education, health care and industry to demand the immediate closure of non-essential businesses and schools.

These committees can appeal to and win support from working people across the country and internationally, as evidenced by the many work stoppages mounted by workers around the world to preserve human life and public health. This program of struggle must be guided by a socialist perspective, that is, the fight for a workers’ government which will reorganize economic life to meet the social needs of the majority, not produce profits for the few.

As Mediterranean drownings continue, European Human Rights Commissioner condemns EU refugee policy

Will Morrow

A report published this week by the European Human Rights Commissioner confirms the criminal and murderous character of the European Union’s refugee policy, which consists in deliberately allowing refugees to drown in the Mediterranean Sea as a means of blocking them from claiming asylum on the continent.

The report comes as the incidence of mass drownings between Africa and Europe has continued unabated in the opening months of 2021. The events reported in the media include:

· Last week, on March 9, the Tunisian defence ministry announced that at least 39 people drowned when two boats travelling to Europe capsized. The death count was based only on the number of bodies that rescuers retrieved before they were forced to suspend rescue operations. The dead included at least nine women and four children. Another 165 people were rescued.

· Three weeks earlier, on February 24, 41 people drowned in the central Mediterranean, according to a joint statement by the UN and International Organization of Migration. At least 120 people had left Libya on a small dinghy on February 18, which began to take on water after 15 hours at sea. The missing, presumed dead, included three children and four women, one of whom leaves behind a newborn child that has since been taken to Lampedusa, Italy.

· On February 12, the Tunisian navy confirmed that it had rescued 25 people from a small capsized boat that had set off from the Tunisian port of Sfax that day. All of the passengers were thrown into the water when the boat sank. The survivors reported that 48 people had been aboard when the boat departed. Of the 23 missing, only one body was recovered.

· On January 19, a dinghy carrying more than 50 people capsized after leaving the Libyan port city of Zawiyah, in the west of Tripoli. At least 43 people drowned. The survivors said that everyone on the boat had come from West Africa. The survivors were then transported back to detention camps in Libya.

The Missing Migrants Project, which tracks refugee deaths internationally, has counted 291 deaths since the beginning of this year in the Mediterranean alone. The count of the people who drowned in the Mediterranean since 2014 is more than 20,000. But these horrific totals are themselves no doubt significant underestimates, as they do not include those who drowned without their journey being reported or their bodies ever being recovered.

To the extent that these deaths are reported in the media or acknowledged by European governments, they are treated as unfortunate tragedies, as though they had nothing to do with the policies that these same governments have implemented.

Yet every one of them is the direct outcome of the policies of the European Union. The EU has closed off safer routes for claiming asylum, closed down its naval rescue operations in the Mediterranean, sabotaged the operation of NGO rescue ships in the region, and financed and collaborated with Libyan coastguards to catch refugees and return them to prison, where they are forced to labor, beaten and assaulted, and in some cases literally sold into slavery to militias which hold them ransom to their families.

Those attempting to exercise their democratic and legal right to claim asylum in Europe are fleeing conditions of poverty and social breakdown that are the outcome of neo-colonial interventions and economic exploitation by the European powers and the United States.

This week’s report by the European Commissioner for Human Rights confirms the responsibility of the EU for this social crime. Entitled “A widening gap in migrant protection in the Mediterranean,” it is a follow-up to a report the agency produced in 2019, calling for a series of actions by the EU to protect refugees attempting to reach Europe. In the two years since, the authors write, the restriction of rescue operations in the Mediterranean has only been tightened.

“Already since August 2018, no military ship has carried out any rescue operation in the Central Mediterranean under [Operation Sophia], whereas between January 2016 and July 2018 the operation rescued over 35,000 refugees and migrants,” the authors state.

In another passage, they note that the successor to Operation Sophia, Operation EUNAVFOR MED IRINI, was established in April 2020. Yet its focus was shifted to the eastern Mediterranean “between Greece and Egypt, reducing the likelihood of encountering refugees and migrants in distress at sea and of being obliged to carry out rescues and disembarkations in a place of safety.” Explaining this shift, they point to a clause inserted into the operation’s mission statement that its interventions should not cause a “pull effect on migration.”

In other words, nothing should be done that would lead migrants to believe they might be rescued if their boat sinks, as this would encourage them to attempt the crossing to Europe.

Meanwhile, the authors state, “NGO-run search and rescue activities have continued to be hindered, either through administrative or criminal proceedings, or simply by preventing disembarkation, so that a number of NGO ships have not been able to resume rescue operations.”

In March and May, for example, not a single NGO rescue vessel was reported to be present at sea. “In April 2020, just two NGO-operated vessels were present at sea, for a total of only five days. Since June 2020, a few vessels have resumed their rescue activities. However, at least ten NGO vessels had been confined to ports for specific periods, and some continue to be held at the time of writing.”

Search operations have instead been transferred to Libyan coastguards, with the aim of returning refugees back to Libya. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has called for an end to the practice of returning refugees to Libya, in the wake of widely-reported revelations of torture, murder and selling of refugees into slavery. Yet since then, the EU’s use of the Libyan coastguard as a border force has intensified. In 2019, the authors note, 9,225 people were involuntarily returned to Libya. In 2020, this rose by 34 percent to 11,891.

Even as the report was handed down, the EU was meeting to decide how to intensify its anti-refugee policies. The EU interior ministers held an online meeting on March 12, where they agreed to a proposal to threaten third countries with reduced access to visas if they refuse to accept the return of refugees whose claims are rejected in Europe. “If countries do not cooperate on repatriation, there must be consequences,” said German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. “Those who do not take back their own citizens cannot expect any visa facilitation.”

EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson complained that of around 500,000 rejected asylum seekers, only 140,000 to 150,000 were deported in 2019. “We really have to speed it up,”

The Commissioner for Human Rights is an arm of the Council of Europe, which was established in 1949 in the wake of World War II. Yet its latest report has received virtually no coverage in the major media publications and has been met with total silence among EU governments.

If an equivalent report were published showing that the Russian or Chinese governments were deliberately allowing refugees to die on their borders, it would be the subject of wall-to-wall media coverage, frontpage cover photos, and the shedding of crocodile tears in EU circles—in order to justify a diplomatic and military build-up against those countries.

The EU’s anti-refugee policies are a political mechanism through which the far-right and neo-fascist forces are being systematically rehabilitated by the EU. The defense of immigrants and the right of all people to live and work in any country of their choosing, with full citizenship rights, is an elemental task of the European working class.

US SOUTHCOM chief calls Latin America “front line” in clash with China

Bill Van Auken

Latin America has become the “front line” in a struggle against China’s challenge to US global hegemony, the commander of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which oversees US military operations in the region, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.

SOUTHCOM chief, Adm. Craig Faller, told the committee that there was a “sense of urgency” in confronting the challenge posed by China’s growing economic influence in the region, which he repeatedly referred to as “our neighborhood,” a somewhat sanitized version of the old Yankee imperialist phrase, “our own backyard.”

Chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces’ Joint Staff, Air Force General Raul Botelho, and U.S. Southern Command’s Commander, Navy Adm. Craig Faller, with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in Miami last year. (Photo by Juan Chiari, U.S. Army Garrison-Miami)

“Our influence is eroding,” Faller warned, pointing out that China has already supplanted the US as the number one trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and comes in a close second throughout the region. China-Latin America trade has soared from $17 billion a decade ago to over $315 billion today and is projected to reach $500 billion by 2025.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] is rapidly advancing toward their goal of economic dominance of the region within the next ten years,” Faller said, though, by his own admission this may come sooner.

Repeatedly describing China’s relations with the region as “insidious,” the admiral charged that Chinese investment in the construction of ports and other infrastructure constituted an “abuse” of economic relations designed to “obfuscate the true purpose” of these projects, which he claimed is “to project and sustain military power at greater distances.”

Faller’s unsubstantiated accusations came as US officials are traveling throughout the Indo-Pacific region aggressively promoting an anti-Beijing military alliance. US imperialism is reportedly preparing to deploy offensive intermediate range ballistic missiles, previously banned under a now-defunct treaty between Washington and Moscow, in a ring of countries surrounding China, including Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

The strongest evidence that Faller could provide of Chinese military intervention in Latin America was its giving away military gear to several countries and its invitation to Latin American personnel to attend military training programs which he alleged are “modeled after U.S. professional military education.” In other words, Beijing is engaged, on a limited scale, in activities that are supposed to be Washington’s exclusive prerogative in “its own backyard.”

Faller’s call for a “sense of urgency” was grounded in large measure by developments since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He accused both Beijing and Moscow of “taking advantage of the pandemic”—by providing vaccines to countries that are among the hardest hit by the deadly virus.

“In order to gain more access, presence, and influence in the region, the PRC and Russia are taking advantage of the pandemic, deploying medical diplomacy and disinformation campaigns—often overpromising and underdelivering,” he said. By “medical diplomacy,” he means the shipment of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines, and by “disinformation,” he is referring to the fact that these shipments have been carried out as US imperialism refuses to provide a single dose to its “neighbors.”

China, he charged, is offering $1 billion in loans to finance purchases of the Sinovac vaccine with the alleged “insidious” aims of further indebting the region to Beijing and “exploiting the pandemic to advance its One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative in trade, technology, and infrastructure.” He also accused Beijing of donating Huawei contact tracing technology in an attempt to win the company bids for the development of 5G networks in the region.

Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, who had slavishly followed Washington’s anti-China policy, previously rejected use of China’s Sinovac vaccine in Brazil and had excluded the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from bidding on the most lucrative 5G deal in the hemisphere. Now, facing close to 3,000 deaths a day and a pandemic spiraling out of control, Brasilia is importing the Sinovac vaccine and Huawei is being admitted to the country’s 5G auction.

Faller did not mention Mexico, which is overseen by US NORTHCOM, whose commander also testified at the hearing. On Tuesday, it signed a contract for 20 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, barely two weeks after the White House stated categorically that it would supply no vaccines to its southern neighbor.

Faller attempted to smear Beijing by lumping China together with “transnational criminal organizations,” or TCOs, claiming that the latter “share the goal of PRC, Russia and other malign actors to advance their self-interests at the expense of our partners.” The activities of the drug cartels, the admiral claimed, are underwritten by “Chinese money laundering.”

Such charges are in line with the “Wuhan virus” claims that the coronavirus was produced in Chinese laboratory and the accusation that Beijing is engaged in “genocide” against its Muslim minority, i.e., part of a propaganda campaign aimed at paving the way to war.

For Washington to indict Beijing for laundering the cartels’ cash is rich, given the multiple investigations and criminal indictments involving bankers from Wells Fargo, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Bank of New York Mellon and other major US and Western financial institutions for laundering trillions in cash for the drug cartels and other criminal enterprises.

As for the supposedly injured interests of Washington’s “partners,” the foremost among them are the biggest drug traffickers in the hemisphere. While Faller celebrated the US military presence at a “cooperative security location” in Colombia and at a “Forward Operating Site in Honduras, home of Joint Task Force Bravo,” he made no mention of the fact that the two countries are the principal conduits for drugs from South America to the US border. Just last week, US prosecutors in the Southern District of New York declared Honduras a “narco state” and presented testimony that the country’s President Juan Orlando Hernández had told a top drug dealer that he wanted to shove drugs “right up the noses of the gringos” as he accepted lucrative bribes in return for military protection for the cartels.

Posing the question as to what the Pentagon must do to counter China’s rising influence in Latin America, Admiral Faller declared, “To put it simply, we out compete bad guys by being good guys.”

He cited Pentagon “human rights training and Women, Peace, and Security programs” in Latin America, laughable window dressing for a US military apparatus that has carried out more than a century of invasions, coup plots and bloody counterinsurgency campaigns, whose victims number at least in the hundreds of thousands.

In warning the Senate committee about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Faller pointed not only to China’s influence, but also to the region’s intractable social crisis. He noted that Latin America, with roughly 8 percent of the world’s population, had suffered more than one fifth of COVID cases and deaths, and that “there will also be a significant socioeconomic impact on our neighbors for years to come.”

“Coming on the heels of widespread public protests against governments throughout the region at the end of 2019, these COVID-19 losses coupled with longstanding socioeconomic grievances and corruption have created the conditions for even greater instability and unrest among our partner nations,” he said, adding, “Even some of our strongest partners are at risk of instability due to this confluence of factors.”

In other words, even as US imperialism prepares to confront China’s rising economic influence by military means, it faces the greater threat of social revolution throughout the hemisphere. The Pentagon’s answer to this threat today will be the same as it was in the last century, support for counterrevolutionary violence and dictatorship. The Latin American working class must prepare its struggles accordingly.

Hospitals and intensive care units again overflowing in Brazil

Bryan Dyne

The recent surge in confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Brazil has driven the country’s health care system to the brink of collapse. Over the past four weeks, the daily number of new confirmed cases has jumped from an average of 45,000 to 70,000, making Brazil the world epicenter of the pandemic. Alongside the rise in new cases, Brazil has seen a record rise in deaths, from an average of more than 1,000 a day in mid-February to nearly 2,000 today.

According to Brazil’s Fiocruz public health research institution, the current surge equates to a growth rate in the case count of 1.5 percent per day, and a growth rate in the death count of 2.6 percent per day. These values are “high compared to the first phase of the pandemic in Brazil,” Fiocruz reports.

Virus Outbreak Utah Air Travel

Such extreme rates of transmission and death, currently the highest in the world, have driven Brazil’s health care system to the brink of collapse. As of Monday, the intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy rate is above 80 percent in every state except Roraima (73 percent) and Rio de Janeiro (79 percent). Fifteen states have a hospital occupancy rate of at least 90 percent, including Rondônia (98 percent), Santa Catarina (99 percent) and Rio Grande do Sul (100 percent).

The situation in particular in hospitals is even more dire. According to a statement given to CNN, hospital management at Porto Alegre Hospital das Clinicas, the largest public hospital in Rio Grande do Sul’s capital city, noted that “The hospital’s ICU Covid ward already serves at 132 percent occupancy.” As a result, the hospital has been forced to close its doors to new patients.

In Rondônia, the state is facing an “imminent shortage of oxygen,” according to a letter from the office of its attorney general, which warned that hospitals in the region will run out of medical oxygen in two weeks. Oxygen is one of the primary treatments for severe cases of COVID-19, and mortality rates have been shown to sharply spike if it is unavailable.

Fiocruz gave a harrowing depiction of the situation across the country in the most recent edition of its “COVID-19 Extraordinary Bulletin,” noting that “Although some governors and mayors have been carrying out efforts to open ICU beds to care for patients with Covid-19,” this strategy is limited by the high growth rate of cases in every state. “In general terms,” the report continues, “the high numbers denote the collapse of the health system for the care of patients requiring complex care for COVID-19, in addition to immeasurable losses in the care of patients who demand care due to other health problems.”

The recent surge in cases has been largely attributed to the emerging dominance of the P.1 variant of the coronavirus, which is up to three times as transmissible as the original version of the virus. Further studies have shown that the P.1 variant is able to dodge acquired immunity, infecting up to 61 percent of those who have already been infected.

That such a dangerous variant of the coronavirus was allowed to spread, however, is directly attributable to the policies of Brazil’s fascistic president, Jair Bolsonaro. When the virus first emerged, he derided the deadly disease as a “little flu,” and he continues to regularly make public appearances without a mask. He has also spearheaded various reopening campaigns in Brazil, including among schools, where the virus is able to spread very easily.

As a result of such reckless and homicidal “herd immunity” policies, Brazil has the second highest total cases and deaths in the world, more than 11,600,000 and 282,000 respectively, second only to the United States (over 30 million cases and at least 550,000 deaths).

Moreover, Brazil is critically short of vaccine supplies. While initial studies show that the Pfizer mRNA vaccine is effective against the P.1 variant, and is approved by the country’s health regulator, the government actually turned down an offer of 70 million doses last August. So far, less than 2 percent of Brazil’s population has been vaccinated.

Much of Europe is facing what could become a similar crisis. Countries in eastern Europe and the Baltic region—including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine—have seen daily case counts skyrocket, as the B.1.1.7 variant, thought to have originated in Great Britain, races across the continent. Hungary alone has faced a seven-fold increase in daily cases, which now stand above 7,500. In Ukraine, more than 200 people are dying each day from the virus.

Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands also face increasing case counts, though not quite as severe as other regions. In Germany, case rates remain high after the most recent surge, which began in October. They currently stand at more than 10,000 new cases recorded each day. The number of daily cases in Italy has nearly doubled to more than 22,000 each day, with more than 300 new deaths.

The Czech Republic has nearly 11,000 cases each day and more than 200 deaths, giving it the inauspicious ranking of most deaths per capita in countries with a population of more than 10 million, second only to Gibraltar and San Marino when all countries are considered.

Similar to Brazil and much of the world, the current surges are the result of reckless and poorly planned business and school reopening drives, which took on renewed vigor at the start of the fall academic year. An example is the Czech Republic, where the death rate averaged in the single digits until last September, when cases and deaths rose in the wake of school reopenings, with surges that were blunted in only a limited fashion by sporadic closings.

Sweden, where the policy of herd immunity was pioneered, faced a similar situation from October to January, when death rates rose from about five per day to more than 90, before coming down to what they were late last summer. Case numbers still remain high, however, and are climbing, an indication that further death is still to come.

A similar situation is likely brewing in the United States. While case counts across the country are generally trending downward, the declines in a number of states, including Illinois and Pennsylvania, have leveled off, while in Michigan and New Jersey, they have begun to rise. It is estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the leveling off or increase in cases is caused by the B.1.1.7 variant, which has grown to 30 percent of all new confirmed cases. There is a danger that if the variant becomes wholly dominant, the more transmissible and deadly mutation of the coronavirus will spark even greater surges of the pandemic in the US.

The continued spread of the coronavirus and its many new and more dangerous variants shows the folly of relying solely on vaccines to resolve the pandemic. World Health Organization Director General Dr. Tedros made this point forcefully in his remarks last Friday, when he warned, “The longer the virus circulates, the higher the chances that variants will emerge that make vaccines less effective. But variants don’t make physical distancing less effective. They don’t make hand hygiene, masks, ventilation and other public health measures less effective.”

Above all, public health measures must include the closure of nonessential businesses and in-person schooling, with workers subsidized by reclaiming the trillions funneled to the world’s corporate and financial elite. Data the world over has shown, throughout the pandemic, that lockdowns are the most effective and efficient way of suppressing the pandemic, which has so far taken more than 2,690,000 human lives. Such measures must be combined with an international, revolutionary socialist program to end not just the pandemic, but the economic and political system that is responsible for the incompetent and inhumane response by governments to its emergence—the capitalist system.

Biden administration continues to jail record number of immigrant children

Kevin Martinez

The number of immigrant children detained by the Biden administration continues to grow as two officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Monday plans to hold thousands of teenage boys at a convention center in downtown Dallas.

A DHS document obtained by NPR revealed that 4,276 unaccompanied migrant children were being held by the government. The average stay in a camp was 117 hours, far longer than the maximum 72 hours allowed under the law.

Migrant children at a detention camp in Homestead, Florida, Feb. 19, 2019 (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

Another temporary camp in Midland, Texas, originally for oilfield workers, will be opened to jail migrants. Even a former NASA site, Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, California, is being considered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as another immigrant detention center.

The opening of these new facilities occurs as an influx of refugees and immigrants, many of them unaccompanied children fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, arrive at the US-Mexico border. An estimated 9,400 unaccompanied minors arrived along the border in February, three times the number from last year.

Despite being elected in no small part due to the universal revulsion with the Trump administration’s inhumane and xenophobic immigration policies, President Joe Biden is continuing and in fact, expanding the war on immigrants and refugees.

The Biden administration is now pushing all adult immigrants, including those with children, back to Mexico on the grounds that they pose a health risk due to the coronavirus. Using the Title 42 provision, immigrants are being denied the right to asylum and the right to a hearing before their deportation. Some 70 percent of the 100,000 immigrants arrested at the border in February were sent back across the border this way. Thousands, including families and unaccompanied children, now languish in squalid camps in Mexico at risk of COVID-19 and other diseases as well as predatory gangs.

Children who are “lucky” enough to been penned into an American immigrant camp are now telling court-appointed lawyers that they have not been outside for days and are confined in overcrowded tents. One such camp in Donna, Texas, was only meant to temporarily house 250 people, but now has 1,000 children and teenagers, some as young as one year old.

According to lawyers who were allowed to interview just 20 children protected by court settlements, the Border Patrol is holding 40 children to a room in white tents cordoned off by clear, plastic sheets. The 1997 Flores settlement mandates that such inspections be allowed to take place.

The children told lawyers how there were not enough mats to sleep on, forcing some to sleep on the ground or a metal bench. Some were forced to stay in their crowded room for the entirety of their stay. The lawyers were not allowed by the Justice Department to go directly to the facility but instead were brought to a portable unit with the 20 children inside.

One of the lawyers, Leecia Welch, told the New York Times, “One child told me that she hadn’t showered in six days, others said two and others three.” She also had been given a list of more than 1,000 children with a “staggering” number under the age of 10. Most of the children according to her had been held for five to seven days, a violation of the Flores settlement.

Most of the children are being held in COVID-19 quarantine for 10 days in camps around the country, creating overcrowding at facilities like in Donna. In response, the Biden administration opened a new camp in Carrizo Springs, Texas for up to 700 immigrants. Another possible camp is now reportedly being constructed in Homestead, Florida at a site which used to detain over 1,700 immigrant children.

Responding to right-wing criticism that the White House’s “open-border” policies have created the inhumane conditions in the detention camps, President Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview Tuesday that his administration would continue all of the previous hated policies of Trump.

Biden told would-be migrants, “Don’t come over. Don’t leave your town or city or community.” He even boasted to Stephanopoulos that “we’re sending back people” who cross the border, adding, “The idea that Joe Biden said, ‘Come’—because I heard the other day that they’re coming because they know I’m a nice guy. Here’s the deal, they’re not.”

Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, told a House panel on Wednesday that the situation along the border was not as bad as Republican critics hypocritically made it out to be. While things have been “undoubtedly difficult,” the surge along the border was not the fault of the current administration.

Mayorkas dismissed the influx of migrants, the highest seen in the last 20 years, as “episodic.” He also said that migrants were being tested for coronavirus during their detention, increasing their wait time.

The new facilities are being sold by the Biden administration and its political supporters as a temporary means by which to decrease the time spent by immigrant youth in the camps. The fact that these children are being held longer and longer in worsening conditions and families are being sent back to Mexico in record numbers to face their possible deaths is, of course, never mentioned.

All those who promoted the idea that a Biden White House would welcome immigrants and refugees with open arms and wind back the hated policies of Trump now bear political and moral responsibility for the death and suffering along the US-Mexico border.

Sri Lankan government policies fuel job destruction and inflation

Saman Gunadasa

Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his policy makers have enacted a series of economic nationalist measures over the past year, claiming them to be a panacea to the financial crisis exacerbated by COVID-19. Colombo’s policies, however, are aimed at imposing the burden of the catastrophe onto workers and the poor with job and wage cuts and harsh increases in the price of essentials.

Confronting falling exports, a collapse in tourist income and high debt repayments, the Rajapakse government has placed import bans on certain goods and printed money, insisting it will “stimulate the economy.” Most of the country’s major industries have slashed wages and jobs.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

In February, Brandix, one of Sri Lanka’s apparel manufacturers, which employ some 50,000 workers, axed around 1,000 jobs from its 20-year-old factory in Ratmalana on the outskirts of Colombo. Workers were offered just three months’ salary as compensation. Last year, the company retrenched hundreds of workers from its other plants.

The company blamed reduced international orders and low productivity for the job destruction. Long-term employees with relatively high salaries at Ratmalana have been offered jobs on lower pay at one of the company’s nearby factories.

Brandix workers have refused the “offer” and suspect the company is planning to transfer production to Bangladesh, where it has factories, in order to boost profits and exploit the low-wage labour in that country.

Over the past 12 months, a total of more than 3,500 jobs have been destroyed at Smart Shirt, Okaya Lanka and Star Garments in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone, and at Esquel outside the zone.

Colombo’s measures have heavily impacted on import businesses, particularly those selling vehicles, tyres, ceramics and other goods. Around 100,000 jobs have been destroyed in the vehicle industry alone. Nearly half a million jobs have also been lost in the tourist sector, which continues to be hit by the global impact of COVID-19.

Sri Lanka’s youth unemployment rate increased to around 28 percent in the second quarter of 2020, a result of ongoing job cuts and newcomers entering the employment market.

Confronting rising discontent from the youth, the Rajapakse government last year recruited 100,000 young people from low-income families to a job scheme run by a defence ministry-controlled task force. Paid a paltry 22,500 rupees ($US115) per month, the young workers are being employed in different state sectors but without any social rights, such as pensions, received by existing workers.

Import bans have pushed up inflation and seen a continuous devaluation of the rupee. In early 2020, one US dollar was worth 180 Sri Lankan rupees, today it hovers at between 192 and 198 rupees, a devaluation of about 7 to 10 percent.

Although last month’s official year-on-year food inflation rate is about 8 percent, the cost of imported food items, such as potatoes, lentils, sprats, dry chillies and sugar, has risen from 10 to 40 percent over the past 12 months. Green gram (mung beans) are now 700 rupees a kilogram, compared to 287 rupees at the beginning of last year.

The cost of spices, essential to Sri Lanka cooking, has also sharply increased because local supplies are inadequate. A kilogram of turmeric, for example, has risen five-fold in the past year and is now around 5,000 rupees.

Questioned recently about the prohibitively high food prices, Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardena cynically declared: “[D]uring the second world war our grandparents ate foods such as horse gram and millet seed. People today have to do likewise, people have to face the crisis.”

The minister’s comments were no slip of the tongue. In fact, the ruling elites everywhere are pushing workers into situations as bad as during the two world wars and the great depression last century.

On February 12, Sri Lanka Central Bank Governor W.D. Lakshman told a press conference that the government was managing the economy with “alternative” measures, a reference to import controls, restrictions on foreign currency dealings and import substitution policies and Rajapakse’s ridiculous “Vista of Prosperity” election rhetoric.

The governor’s statements, however, point to the dire measures now being prepared against workers and the poor. While admitting that similar austerity policies provoked “extreme disgust” within the Sri Lankan population during the 1970s, he stated: “I am not saying that we have to go back to that period, but some elements from that period have been adopted.”

In the 1970s, the bourgeois coalition government of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Stalinist Communist Party insisted that import controls and substitutions and other economic nationalist measures were the path to prosperity.

These policies, however, were incapable of preventing the sudden and brutal impact of oil price increases in 1973–1974 on Sri Lanka and every other country.

The coalition responded to the “oil shock” and rapid reduction in Sri Lanka’s foreign currency reserves with harsh austerity policies, including drastic restrictions on food consumption. Transport of staple foods, such as rice and chillies, was banned within the country and bread rationing introduced.

As explained in The Historical and International Foundation of the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka:

“The oil shocks and global recession of 1973–74 impacted heavily on Sri Lanka. Soaring commodity prices, particularly for oil and food imports, produced an acute foreign exchange crisis. Finance Minister N.M. Perera extended national economic regulation to include strict controls on food imports, a state monopoly of rice transport, and a wage freeze. These policies produced acute economic hardship among the working class and rural masses. In the plantations, unemployment, underemployment and soaring prices led to extreme poverty and hundreds of deaths by starvation.”

The eruption of a general strike in 1976 and ongoing rural unrest was exploited by the right-wing United National Party (UNP), which came to power in 1977. It quickly dispensed with Sri Lanka’s national economic regulatory mechanisms and implemented open-market policies, integrating the country into globalised production and transforming it into a cheap labour platform.

The UNP regime established autocratic executive presidential rule and intensified anti-Tamil communalism to divide the working class and undermine the mass opposition to its escalating attacks on workers and the poor.

Sri Lanka Central Bank Governor Lakshman’s statements are a desperate attempt to justify and condition the population to government and big business attacks now being unleashed against all working people.

This month the debt-ridden Sri Lankan government, which has to pay $4.5 billion annually to foreign lenders until 2024, obtained a $1.5 billion swap loan from China and continues pleading for additional loans from other countries. Colombo is also printing money—last year to the tune of 650 billion rupees—because commercial borrowings are becoming harder and harder to obtain.

While workers and the poor face ever-worsening social conditions, the Rajapakse regime’s policies have massively benefited big business over the past 12 months. According to Sri Lanka’s Dailyft, “nine select-listed conglomerates have posted a combined turnover of Rs. 861 billion and Rs. 80.7 billion as profit” in the first nine months of the 2021 financial year.