160 killed in massacre at Solhan in northern Burkina Faso

Kumaran Ira

In the night on Friday and early Saturday morning, the West African nation of Burkina Faso saw one of the bloodiest massacres of the entire French-led war in the Sahel. A raid killed at least 160 people, including 20 children, and wounded over 40, in the village of Solhan in northern Burkina Faso’s Yagha province, bordering Niger. As of this writing, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hamadi Boubacar, the mayor of the neighboring town of Sebba said, “Many assailants arrived on about 20 motorcycles around 2:00 a.m. They principally attacked the mining site next to the village of Solhan.” The attackers were “pitiless and killed all those they found in their path,” Boubacar added.

A gold rush in the area, near both Niger and Mali, has turned Solhan into a crossroads were people of many different ethnicities and tribes meet and live together. Boubacar explained: “Solhan is a big village, many people live there because of gold, more than 30,000 people. The people who were attacked came from all over the province. There are even people from Bouri, the regional capital, from Sebba, and from nearby villages. There are people of many ethnicities.”

French soldiers of the 126th Infantry Regiment and Malian soldiers, March 17, 2016. (Wikimedia Commons)

A local source in Solhan told AFP that the assailants attacked homes and carried out “executions” after striking a position of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Motherland (VDP) militia, which backs the Burkinabè national army.

The VDP was created in December 2019 to assist Burkina Faso’s army as ethnic militias and other armed groups have spread across the area amid the war in Mali and across the Sahel. VDP volunteers receive only two weeks of military training before deploying to work alongside the security forces, carrying out surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties. The VDP have suffered more than 200 fatalities, according to an AFP tally.

An anonymous local told the Associated Press that as he visited relatives in a medical clinic in Sebba, near Solhan, he saw many wounded arrive at the clinic. “I saw 12 people in one room and about 10 in another. There were many relatives caring for the wounded. There were also many people running from Solhan to enter Sebba … People are very afraid and worried,” he said.

The Burkinabè government has declared 72 hours of national mourning, from June 5 to 7. President Roch Marc Christian Kabore condemned the attack as “barbaric” and “despicable,” adding: “We must remain united and solid against these obscurantist forces.”

The European powers made token statements of sympathy. The European Union (EU) condemned “barbaric and cowardly attacks.” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced on Twitter a trip “this week” to Burkina Faso and that he would express “the solidarity of France during my trip this week to Burkina Faso.”

In fact, the escalating bloodshed in this region, which includes many of the poorest countries in the world, is the product of France’s eight-year, neo-colonial war in the Sahel. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have all seen a resurgence of violence. As it sought to pursue a policy of divide-and-rule to maintain its control over the area, France and its NATO allies have stoked ethnic conflicts and backed various rival militias, resulting in a resurgence of bloody massacres across the region.

Saturday’s attack occurred in the so-called “three borders zone” between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which has been regularly targeted by Islamist armed groups tied to Al Qaeda, state security forces, and ethnic violence perpetrated by rival militias. In March, assailants killed 137 people in coordinated raids on villages in the southwestern Tahoua region of Niger after another attack killed at least 58 villagers in the nearby region of Tillabery.

Attacks have been on the rise ever since March 2019, when gunmen killed 160 people in the largely Fulani village of Ogossagou in the Malian region of Bankass, bordering Burkina Faso. There was widespread suspicion that French and Malian officials tacitly backed the massacre: it targeted an ethnic group in which Islamist militias have recruited more forces, and Malian officials apprehended but did not prosecute members of the militia that had carried out the massacre.

Burkina Faso

The so-called G5 Sahel force set up by France—comprising troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger—is participating in military operations alongside French and Malian forces.

Recently, human rights organizations have accused Burkinabè security forces of carrying out atrocities against the population in the name of counter-terrorism. According to a Human Rights Watch report last July, based on local residents’ accounts, the security forces unlawful killed several hundred men on suspicion of supporting armed Islamist groups linked to Al Qaeda.

The atrocities in Solhan came just weeks after Defence Minister Cheriff Sy and other top brass visited Sebba to assure people that life had returned to normal, after several military operations in the area. Significantly, although security forces were deployed near the village, they did not arrive on the scene after the massacre began. This has again raised widespread questions over potential complicity of the security forces with the assailants in the recent massacre.

Al Jazeera reporter Nicolas Haque said, “There was also a military barracks not far away from where the attack took place. But they did not react. They never arrived on the scene. It’s a feeling that people across the Sahel now share in—that they cannot rely on their security forces to protect them.”

Over 2.2 million people are internally displaced in the Sahel by the fighting, according to UN figures. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) stated, “almost 7,000 people were killed during 2020, making it the deadliest year in the Central Sahel since the conflict began.” At least 2,400 civilians were killed in attacks in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in 2020. GCR2P noted, “In Burkina Faso and Mali, more civilians were killed by local militias and national security forces than by attacks by Islamist armed groups.”

Alex Vines, director of the Africa Programme at the British think-tank, Chatham House, told Al Jazeera, “I’m afraid we are going to have to expect more similar types of reports.” Remaining silent on European imperialist powers’ role in the region, he blamed the massacre on African governments: “The governments are increasingly weak and ineffective. And they are not providing the security that populations need. And so armed groups … are filling those gaps.”

Vines blandly predicted that the bloodshed spreading from Mali would engulf virtually all of West Africa. “It’s all very serious and it is spreading regionally. This isn’t just about the Sahel,” he said, adding, “there are overspill security incidents now, in countries along the Gulf of Guinea coast. So, think Benin, think Togo. The Ghanaians are particularly worried about what’s happening along their border with Burkina Faso. Ivory Coast, also. This is becoming increasingly an international issue.”

These horrific massacres are in fact the toxic product of years of war and neo-colonial intrigue, that can only be stopped by unifying workers across West Africa and Europe in a movement against imperialist oppression and military-police rule.

Spain’s Anticapitalistas back anti-migrant press campaign targeting Morocco

Alejandro López

Spain’s petty-bourgeois Anticapitalistas party is inciting pro-imperialist hysteria against Morocco. It is falling in line with the campaign unleashed by the liberal press against Morocco after Rabat opened its side of the border, allowing migrants to cross into Spain’s enclave in northern Morocco, Ceuta, in makeshift boats and dinghies. An estimated 10,000 entered, many of them families or children.

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government responded by implementing the savage policy advocated for months by the fascist Vox party, militarising the border. It deployed the army, special forces and thousands of police to Ceuta, summarily rounding up and illegally deporting thousands of migrants, many of them children.

Last week, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez reacted furiously after a communiqué from Rabat declared it opened its side of the border to pressure Madrid to recognise Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Rabat in 1975, as part of Morocco. Additional concerns of Morocco’s monarchy no doubt included deflecting mass anger from official mismanagement of the pandemic and Israel’s attack on Gaza. Rabat opened its border with Spain after mass protests on Israel’s bloody bombing campaign targeting the Gaza Strip.

View of the border fence that separates Spain, left, and Morocco, right, as seen from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, June 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Sánchez focused only on his conflict with Morocco over Madrid’s former colonial possession, saying last week that “they have used immigration, that is, the assault on the Spanish borders by more than 10,000 Moroccans in 48 hours, due to disagreements in foreign policy, this seems unacceptable.” He claimed it was “inadmissible,” describing Morocco’s actions as akin to “attacking borders.”

The PSOE-Podemos government’s campaign against Morocco has the de facto support of the Anticapitalistas. This party, which left Podemos last year to better serve the government from the outside, aligned itself on the anti-immigrant campaign of the PSOE and Podemos. It seized on the entry of migrants to accuse Rabat of “blackmail” and “human rights violations” while peddling illusions that the PSOE-Podemos government defends democratic rights.

Anticapitalistas leader Teresa Rodríguez said: “What is happening in Ceuta is the result of externalizing the borders to countries where Human Rights are systematically violated, such as Morocco, in exchange for permanent blackmail.” She proposed that “the Government should show courage” to “manage its own borders without depending on Morocco.”

Rodríguez’s “solution” is in fact what the PSOE-Podemos has done by deploying the army and police, and brutally expelling thousands of migrants. Madrid has also refused the support of Frontex in Brussels, stating they can manage the Ceuta crisis without the EU’s anti-migrant task force.

In Brussels, European Member of Parliament (EMP) Miguel Urbán, who was elected in a Podemos slate but has remained as EMP even after his tendency broke with Podemos, intervened in a plenary session in the European Parliament. He denounced “The umpteenth exercise of blackmail by Morocco.” He said externalising borders “gives unscrupulous dictatorships a blackmail weapon. If we want to end this blackmail and protect migrants’ human rights, there is only one way: to dismantle the policies of Fortress Europe.”

Urbán’s claim that the EU can dismantle Fortress Europe to defend a more humane migrant policy is ludicrous. The entire ruling class in Europe is rapidly shifting to the right, aware that anger is rising among workers against social inequality and the criminal “herd immunity” policy it has pursued on the pandemic. While Europe is in its deepest economic crisis since the 1930s, it has seen more than a million coronavirus deaths. On the other hand, its billionaires became €1 trillion richer in a year.

To defend this ill-gotten wealth, and with inequality at unsustainable levels, the ruling class is preparing for repression. In France and Spain, factions of the military are openly plotting coups and avowedly preparing for civil war against the working class. In Germany, all parties are pressing ahead with militarism and are implementing in practice the programme of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The army, police and intelligence agencies are riddled with far-right terrorist networks.

The Pabloites are also agitating for Spain to more aggressively to intervene in Western Sahara, its former colony annexed by Morocco in 1975, to organise a referendum on self-determination. Anticapitalistas has doubled down on these calls since war erupted between Morocco and the Algerian-backed bourgeois-nationalist Polisario Front last November.

At that time, Anticapitalistas posted a neo-colonial statement calling for the re-establishment of Spanish rule over its former colony. It demanded Spain “assume its role as formally administering the territory and guarantee respect for the human, social and economic rights of the Saharawi people as a step prior to ensuring a just, peaceful, democratic and lasting solution to this conflict, which inevitably requires respect for the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people.”

If Madrid adopted such a hawkish position, trying to physically seize its former colony now controlled by Morocco to organise an independence referendum, it could easily lead to war.

Spain’s historical record in the region is brutal. During intermittent wars with Moroccan tribes between 1909 and 1927, Madrid’s punitive “pacification” campaigns massacred civilians, bombed markets and settlements, and used incendiary bombs to set fire to defenceless villages and cultivated fields. Madrid also used rape and poison gas attacks as weapons of war targeting civilian populations.

These wars bred a generation of fascist military officers like General Francisco Franco who used similar methods against the working class at home—culminating in the July 1936 fascist coup, the Spanish Civil War and a four-decade Francoite regime in Spain, between 1939 and 1978.

The position of Anticapitalistas on Morocco reflects the longstanding support for imperialism of this petty-bourgeois, pro-capitalist party. It endorsed the US-NATO war against oil-rich Libya in 2011. In the name of “democracy, social justice, and the improvement of the situation of women,” two leaders of Anticapitalistas, Esther Vivas and Josep Maria Antentas, condemned the “anti-imperialism of some sectors of the left” and advocated “the political and economic international isolation of the [Libyan] regime and the unconditional supply of weapons to the rebels.”

The European powers and the US then employed precisely this strategy to wage a war for regime change in Libya. It cost over 30,000 deaths, leaving Libya in ruins. The country still is mired in a civil war between competing Islamist factions that NATO had supported, which has killed thousands and displaced over 100,000 people.

The goals of Spain’s participation in the Libyan war, defended by Anticapitalistas, are not hard to see. Last week, a decade after Anticapitalistas backed the Libyan war, Sánchez travelled to Libya with several businessmen, including Josu Jon Imaz, the head of Spain’s major oil company, Repsol. Libya is among the 10 countries with the most oil reserves in the world, and the daily El País, commented on Sánchez’s trip by citing anonymous state officials who said: “This country is sitting on a treasure.”

Defending democratic rights in northern Africa, including on the Moroccan-Sahrawi conflict, requires first of all rejecting the vicious imperialist campaign against migrants. Madrid’s attempts to endow its policy of plunder with a “democratic” veneer by citing the Moroccan monarchy’s crimes are saturated with imperialist hypocrisy. The defence of democratic and social rights cannot be left to either the blood-soaked representatives of the former colonial powers, or any of the bourgeois-nationalist factions, but requires the international unification of the working class in a revolutionary, socialist struggle against imperialism.

Amid surging pandemic, Sri Lankan government criminalizes strikes by public sector workers

Keith Jones

Critical developments are taking place in the South Asian island-state of Sri Lanka that workers throughout the world must be aware of and actively oppose.

Over the past two weeks, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse has issued two decrees that arbitrarily rewrite the country’s laws to strip nearly one million public sector workers of the legal right to strike.

These workers now face draconian punishments, including mass firings and lengthy jail terms, if they strike against the government’s homicidal response to the pandemic and its drive to intensify the exploitation of the working class and slash public services. The decrees also criminalize any individual or organization that advocates for strike action.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse, center. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The immediate target of the first decree, issued on May 27, was a threatened strike by 12,000 village government officers, who were demanding COVID-19 vaccinations, but it stripped hundreds of thousands of other public sector workers of their basic rights. The union representing village workers immediately called off the impending job action.

Five days later, on June 2, Rajapakse issued a second decree on the eve of a threatened walkout by workers at many major hospitals. It extended the ban on strikes to health care and other government workers.

The two decrees cover port, railway, bus transport, petroleum, gas, state bank and insurance workers; nurses, doctors and other health care workers; government administration workers, workers at state-owned food distribution companies; and employees of Sri Lanka’s nine provincial councils.

Workers who defy the strike ban can be fired. They also face fines of between 2,000 and 5,000 rupees, “rigorous imprisonment” of two to five years, the seizure of their “movable and immoveable property” and the removal of their professional credentials.

Any individual who seeks to “incite, induce or encourage” someone subject to the strike ban to not attend work, whether through a “physical act or by any speech or writing,” is likewise liable to fines, property seizures and jail terms of up to five years.

Without warning, let alone any public debate, basic democratic rights, including the rights to free speech and to strike that are guaranteed in Sri Lanka’s constitution, have been abrogated with the stroke of a pen.

The first decree makes a brief mention of the pandemic, claiming that the government services and departments under the strike ban are “essential” in the “face of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In reality, it is the government and the Sri Lankan ruling class that have sabotaged any science-based response to the pandemic by systemically prioritizing profit interests over saving lives.

Since April, the pandemic has surged across the island. The official death toll has more than doubled in just the past five weeks to 1,656. New infections, according to the government’s figures, are currently averaging more than 3,000 per day, a gross undercount. Yet the Rajapakse government, with the full support of the opposition parties, has insisted that the “economy” and especially major export industries, like the garment sector, tea and rubber plantations, must keep running.

Demands for personal protective equipment (PPE) and the vaccination of frontline workers have figured large in a growing wave of public sector workers struggles, which the government fears will intersect with mounting unrest among plantation and other private sector workers.

The Rajapakse government is also looking nervously across the Palk Strait at the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where there have been numerous strikes and protests by Hyundai, Renault-Nissan and other autoworkers against the lack of COVID-19 protections amidst a catastrophic surge in the pandemic.

The Rajapakse government’s herd immunity policy is the cutting edge of its drive to increase profit extraction from the working class, including through a further round of brutal IMF austerity measures.

It is all the more necessary to alert the international working class about these developments because the “opposition” parties, corporate media, trade unions and pseudo-left groups have all maintained a complicit silence on the decrees. Apart from a statement last Thursday from an alliance of postal, teacher and health care unions that expressed “regret” over the decrees, the arbitrary abrogation by presidential fiat of basic democratic rights has been completely ignored.

The government has not, as of yet, sought to deploy its new draconian powers against public sector workers. Fearful of sparking mass working class unrest, it has not initiated sanctions against more than 20,000 nurses, doctors, lab technicians and other health care workers who went ahead with a previously scheduled five-hour walkout last Thursday.

But a headlong confrontation between the Sri Lankan ruling class and its state apparatus, on the one hand, and the working class and oppressed rural toilers, on the other, is on the order of the day.

In preparation for a confrontation with the working class, Rajapakse has stacked the government apparatus with military officers who cut their teeth in the 30-year war against the island’s Tamil minority; cultivated extreme right Sinhala-Buddhist organizations; and plotted to change the constitution to enhance the president’s arbitrary powers. Recently, one of Rajapakse’s ministers mused that the president should “become” more “like Hitler.”

The developments in Sri Lanka are of vital importance to workers around the world. The dictatorial methods employed against Sri Lankan workers will be used against workers everywhere.

Everywhere, the ruling elites are determined to make workers pay for the crisis of global capitalism, enormously exacerbated by the pandemic. The catastrophic impact of the pandemic—more than 3.5 million dead worldwide—is the direct consequence of the decision of governments to prioritize corporate profits over lives. The bailout of the rich, moreover, is to be followed by the destruction of public services and increased exploitation.

But this class war program is encountering growing resistance, including from Volvo Truck workers in the US, Vale Inco miners in Canada, teachers and bus drivers in Brazil, autoworkers in India, and BHP copper miners in Chile. Resistance is increasingly breaking through the decades-long suppression of working class struggle by the corporatist trade unions and the establishment “left” parties.

In response, the ruling class is turning to authoritarian methods of rule, criminalizing social opposition and cultivating far-right forces. In Colombia, the US-backed Duque regime has unleashed murderous police violence against mass protests over tax increases, crushing poverty and ever-mounting social inequality. In Spain and France, there have been public coup threats from military officers.

In the US, the center of global capitalism, Trump, with the support of the Republican Party leadership and important sections of the military-security apparatus, attempted a coup in plain sight, culminating in the storming of the Capitol on January 6.

The Sri Lankan bourgeoisie is mired in debt, faces an increasingly rebellious working class, and is bitterly divided over its geopolitical orientation as South Asia has emerged as a central arena in the US offensive against China. Moreover, none of the issues that led to Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war have been resolved.

Changing what needs to be changed, every capitalist ruling elite faces similar intractable problems for which its response is intensified worker exploitation, reaction, militarism and war.

Tragic death of young Sri Lankan woman exposes horrific conditions in Japanese detention centres

Dehin Wasantha

Wishma Sandamali Ratnayake, a young Sri Lankan migrant worker, died on March 6 at Nagoya Local Emigrant Service Bureau in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. She was just 33 years old.

Sandamali, a former resident of Imbulgoda in Kadawatha, a Colombo suburb, had passed her Advanced Level exam in Sri Lanka and entered Japan in 2017 on a student visa.

Wishma Sandamali Ratnayake

Rather than continue on to higher education in Japan, she hoped to find a well-paid job. Those on student visas in Japan, however, are only able to work 28 hours a week, and so she found it difficult to secure permanent employment.

Sandamali began learning Japanese at an education institute but dropped out, unable to pay the tuition fees, and then confronted a range of difficulties.

Last August she attempted to lodge a complaint with police, because she was being harassed by a young man she was living with. Police ignored Sandamali’s complaint and, instead, arrested and then jailed her at the Nagoya detention camp for overstaying her visa.

Unable to pay for her return to Sri Lanka, she was treated like a criminal and held in brutal conditions for seven months, including being confined to a tiny room.

Sandamali expected immigration authorities to provide her with the necessary security but she received no assistance. According to START official, Yasunori Matsui, she became ill in December and was vomiting blood and unable to walk by January. START is a support group that provides aid to foreign labourers and refugees.

Sandamali, who lost about 20 kilograms, became so weakened that she could only be moved by wheelchair and was too unwell to be returned to Sri Lanka. Immigration authorities rejected her application for refugee status and ignored requests by Japanese aid providers that she be given temporary freedom in order to secure medical treatment.

Ridma Ratnayake, Sandamali’s younger sister, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site from Tokyo last week.

Some of the partipants at Sandamali's funeral (Source: Facebook)

Ridma said that more than 200 Japanese nationals paid their last respects to her sister, when she was cremated on May 16, and about 400 people attended a memorial ceremony in Tokyo on May 29.

“I have no faith in the Japanese government,” Ridma said. “When my sister was dying, an attempt was made to put some food into her mouth. She had been given high-dose painkillers and sleeping tablets and was unable to swallow. She didn’t have any vitamins during the last few days of her life, and was not even given saline.”

Speaking through Ridma, Sandamali’s mother said: “My daughter was treated like an animal. Even animals should get better care than this.”

Sandamali’s relatives have called on the Japanese Minister of Justice Yoko Kamikawa to explain the circumstances leading to the young woman’s death and to release video footage of her in detention. The request has been refused on the absurd and cynical grounds that it would undermine state security and compromise the “dignity” of the young woman. Ridma told the WSWS her sister’s body looked like that of an elderly person.

Brief notes in Sandamali’s diary make clear that her death was caused by the cruel and unlawful way in which she was treated. She wrote: “I cannot eat. They say it is because of tension. They don’t take me to a hospital, as I am in their custody. Please help me recover.”

Sandamali is the 18th migrant to die in custody in Japan since 2007, and the fourth person to perish in a detention centre there in the past 13 months. Official statistics show that less than one percent of applicants are granted refugee- or asylum-status in Japan. Of the 10,375 refugee applications made in Japan in 2019, only 44 were approved.

Sandamali on the left with her sisters

While the current number of migrants held in Japanese detention centres is 300, prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 there were an estimated 20,000 migrant workers incarcerated in 16 centres, including in Osaka, Nagasaki and Ibaraki prefecture. They were released—without being granted residency or the right to work—by Japanese authorities, following the onset of the pandemic and in order to avoid any medical responsibility for the detainees.

Poverty, low wages and unemployment force millions of young people from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America to migrate to the Middle East and the advanced capitalist economies in Europe, the US, Australia and Japan, in search of work. Thousands of people tragically lose their lives in dangerous sea-crossings and other risky travel methods each year, trying to enter these countries.

According to Sri Lanka’s Census and Statistics Department, the official unemployment rate among young people was 9.6 percent in 2020. The jobless rate for those aged between 15 and 24 years was 26.4 percent and as high as 36.3 percent for women in that cohort. Unemployment for women, in the 25 to 29 age group, was 18.9 percent and 7.1 per for men.

As in other countries, the Japanese ruling elite has responded to COVID-19 and the associated economic crisis by further tightening its immigration laws. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s government recently moved to amend the country’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act and allow authorities to repatriate asylum seekers whose applications are under appeal.

Under current laws, those seeking asylum are permitted to submit an unlimited number of applications for asylum status. The Suga government wants to limit the number to three, making it easier to deport those incarcerated in detention centres.

On May 18, the Suga government, in the face of widespread opposition, including mass demonstrations in several cities with many participants carrying placards referring to Sandamali’s tragic death, was forced to withdraw its anti-democratic amendments. The government indicated, however, that it would not shelve the bill altogether, but attempt to push it through the Japanese parliament in the near future.

Sri Lanka’s external affairs ministry and its embassy in Tokyo did nothing to save Sandamali’s life, let alone raise a protest about her brutal treatment or demand that the Japanese government explain how and why she died.

Colombo’s silence is no accident. Like the ruling elites in other underdeveloped countries, the Sri Lankan capitalist class does not want to do anything to undermine the exploitation of its citizens working abroad, and hence disrupt the millions of dollars in foreign remittances flowing back into Sri Lanka.

Likewise, the Rajapakse government is totally indifferent to the plight of thousands of Sri Lankan workers still trapped in other countries, infected with COVID-19 or unemployed, and desperately trying to return home to their families.

Peace in Colombia Should Mean Land Reform and an End to Hunger

Vijay Prashad & Zoe Alexandra

Since the end of April, Colombia’s streets have smelled of tear gas. The government of Colombian President Iván Duque imposed policies that put the costs of the pandemic on the working class and the peasantry and tried to suffocate any advancement of the Havana peace accords of 2016. Discontent led to street protests, which were repressed harshly by the government. These protests, Rodrigo Granda of Colombia’s Comunes party told us in an interview, “are defined by the wide participation of youth, women, artists, religious people, the Indigenous, Afro-Colombians, unions and organizations from neighborhoods of the poor and the working class. Practically the whole of Colombia is part of the struggle.” A range of concrete demands defines the protest: running water and schools, the disbandment of the riot police (ESMAD), and the expansion of democratic possibilities.

The Comunes party was formed in 2017 by members of the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army). Granda, who is known internationally for his former role as the foreign minister of the FARC, is now in the national board of the Comunes party. As a legal political party, Comunes is a direct product of the 2016 Havana peace accords signed by the Colombian government and the FARC. Over the past two years, members of the Comunes have been on the streets alongside their fellow Colombians who are fighting to bring democracy to the country’s economy and politics. Granda spoke to us about the ongoing protests and helped to put these protests in the context of the long history of struggle in Colombia.

Colombia’s Violent Oligarchy

The current protests remind Granda of the 1977 national civic strike that he participated in, with one difference: then, he says, there was “no international solidarity,” while now the global media attention to Colombia’s struggle allows the people in his country “not to lose heart” during a difficult fight. The 1977 strike emerged out of a long struggle against the country’s oligarchy.

Years before the strike, Granda looked forward to the Colombian elections of April 1970. He hoped that the former president and general Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) would win. Rojas Pinilla was not a leftist, but he offered the country a way out of the grip of Colombia’s oligarchy. Young people like Granda hoped that an ANAPO victory in Colombia and then, later in the year, the victory of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity in Chile would help change the character of South America’s politics. But Rojas Pinilla’s victory was embroiled in fraud, and while Allende won the election, he was ejected from power in 1973 in a coup. Looking back over these 50 years, Granda told us that he feels an “internal frustration” with the theft of that election in 1970 and the tortuous path his country has had to take since then.

The fight has been difficult because the ruling bloc of Colombia, including Duque, is unwilling to honestly participate in a democratic agenda. None of the major political parties that have controlled the state since 1948 have been eager for any kind of change. Suffocation of politics since then and the routine assassination of political leaders moved the left—through the FARC and other groups—into armed struggle in 1964. The FARC regularly called upon the ruling bloc to open negotiations, but with little success. However, talks with President Belisario Betancur in 1982 opened the way to the 1984 La Uribe Agreement, which resulted in a ceasefire from 1984 to 1987. Members of the FARC joined with others on the left to create Union Patriótica (UP) as a legal political party. Attempts to move a reform agenda by the UP came alongside a policy of assassinations by the state against the left. No genuine liberal sentiment pervades the Colombian ruling bloc, which refuses to share even a modicum of power with other groups.

The situation deteriorated under President Andrés Pastrana—who was in power from 1998 to 2002—and U.S. President Bill Clinton, who both signed Plan Colombia, which proved to be the beginning of a policy to define the FARC as “narco-terrorists” and conduct a war of extermination against the rebels. Incidentally, it was Pastrana’s father who stole the election of 1970 from Rojas Pinilla. Brutality characterized the Colombian state’s approach toward the FARC and toward anyone else who questioned its policies. Gradually, the ruling bloc was led by more and more ruthless men, none more so than President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). Uribe, Granda told us, “promised to exterminate us [the FARC] in four years, but he could not.”

Peace Accords

Granda understands why peace had to define the agenda a decade ago. “After the failure of Plan Colombia and a stalemate in the war,” he told us, “we could not defeat the Colombian army in a short time, and the Colombian army could not defeat the guerrillas in a short time either. Therefore, a political solution through dialogue was necessary.” President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) wrote a letter to the FARC saying that he recognized the internal problems in Colombia and also recognized that the FARC was a political organization and not a narco-terrorist organization. This set in motion the negotiation in Havana that resulted in the accords.

The accords put in place a plan for integrated agrarian reform and democracy, as well as restitution for the victims of the long war. “We put down our arms,” Granda said, “but we did not disarm ourselves from an ideological point of view.” The signing of the accords is only one part of the FARC’s plan toward peace, since their implementation is key before other kinds of meaningful change can be made. But the Colombian oligarchy, Granda said, has an entirely different view of what peace would mean. For the oligarchy, peace means that the guns of the FARC are silent. “For us,” he says, “peace means an attack on the factors that generate the violence in the first place.” These include factors like hunger, dispossession and the frustration with the oligarchy and the harsh violence by the state against which the people of Colombia continue to protest.

Naftali Bennett to head Israeli “government of change” to oust Netanyahu

Jean Shaoul

Far-right leader and settler advocate Naftali Bennett of the Yamina Party is set to become prime minister, replacing Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who has led the country since 2009.

It follows March’s inconclusive election, the fourth in two years, that gave Netanyahu’s Likud Party the largest number of seats but left him unable to form a majority government. Netanyahu needed a majority to ensure his ability to evade his trial for bribery and corruption, now entering evidence sessions.

Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett, left, smiles as he speaks to Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid during a special session of the Knesset, whereby Israeli lawmakers elect a new president, at the plenum in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem on Wednesday, June 2, 2021. (Ronen Zvulun/Pool Photo via AP)

Bennett will head a deeply unstable, unprincipled coalition with a majority of one in the 120-seat Knesset. Made up of eight parties spanning almost the entire spectrum of Israeli politics, these political reactionaries have united to try and rescue the Israeli bourgeoisie from a widening social and political crisis and the threat they face from an increasingly disaffected working class—all under the vacuous “anti-corruption slogan of “Anyone but Bibi” (Netanyahu's nickname).

The fractured and febrile state of Israeli politics, along with its proportional representation system, means that no one party can win a large enough majority to rule alone, ensuring small parties wield disproportionate power. After the March elections, two parties emerged as “king-makers”: Bennett’s Yamina Party and Mansour Abbas’ conservative Islamic Movement-affiliated United Arab List, or Ra’am, with seven and four seats respectively.

The announcement by opposition leader Yair Lapid, who heads the second-largest party Yesh Atid and has long sought to depose Netanyahu, that he had cobbled together a “government of change” came just minutes before his mandate to do so expired on Wednesday night.

Lapid told President Reuven Rivlin, “I commit to you Mr President, that this government will work to serve all the citizens of Israel—including those who aren’t members of it—will respect those who oppose it and do everything in its power to unite all parts of Israeli society.”

Under the proposed arrangements, Lapid will not immediately assume the premiership. Instead, king-maker Bennett will become prime minister for the first two years. Only if the coalition survives that long will Lapid take over. In the meantime, he will serve as foreign minister.

This so-called centrist, a former journalist, TV presenter and news anchor who served as finance minister in a previous Netanyahu-led government, has handed the reins of power to far-right, pro-settler champions of the free market. This will inevitably result in a stepped-up assault on the living conditions of the Israeli working class, more than 20 percent of whom live in poverty, and a ramping up of support for settlers at the expense of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s own citizens.

Bennett, a millionaire who once served as chief of staff to Netanyahu, is opposed to a Palestinian statelet. He has called for Israel’s annexation of Area C in the West Bank which is under Israeli military control and is home to most of the settlements, Palestinian Authority control over Areas A and B only under the supervision of Israel’s military and security apparatus, and the transfer of Gaza to Egypt.

The key posts are to go to vicious right-wing nationalists. Ayelet Shaked, Bennett’s Number 2 in Yamina, is to serve as interior minister responsible for “law and order” under conditions where the authorities have encouraged settlers and far-right Jewish vigilante groups to run amok in Israel’s mixed towns and cities. She once served as Netanyahu’s office director, later becoming Justice Minister 2015-19, helping to draft a version of the infamous Nation-State Law, institutionalizing Jewish supremacy. She is bitterly hostile to the Palestinians, virulently opposed to African asylum seekers and determined to limit the role of the judiciary.

Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the secular nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, whose initial support base was immigrants from the former Soviet Union, is to become finance minister. He left Likud in 1997 after Netanyahu granted minor concessions to the Palestinians in the Wye River Memorandum, later proposing the separation of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis via a population “transfer.” In 1998, Lieberman proposed bombing Egypt’s Aswan High Dam because of Cairo’s support for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Lieberman has served under several Likud governments, including as deputy prime minister, foreign affairs minister, when he broadened the campaign against Iran, and minister of defence, resigning in 2018 because of a ceasefire in Gaza he characterized as “surrendering to terror.”

Gideon Sa’ar, who last year formed New Hope as his own political vehicle after failing to unseat Netanyahu in a Likud leadership contest, is to take the justice portfolio. Opposed to a two-state solution, he supports the annexation of the West Bank and Palestinian autonomy in a federation with Jordan.

Benny Gantz, former chief of staff of Israel’s military and leader of the Blue and White Party who fought three elections on an anti-Netanyahu ticket only to join his coalition last year, serving as defense minister, will continue in this post. He was responsible to Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza in 2014, now under investigation by the International Criminal Court, and last month’s 11-day bombardment on the besieged enclave that killed at least 253 Palestinians, injured 2,000 more and damaged or destroyed at least 17,000 homes, six hospitals, nine healthcare centres, a water desalination plant and other vital infrastructure.

These political criminals are joined by the Labour Party that signed the Oslo Accords that was supposed to bring about a mini-Palestinian state. Its legislators, Merav Michaeli and Omer Bar-Lev, will serve as transportation and public security ministers respectively, while another will head the Diaspora affairs ministry.

Meretz, which opposes Jewish settlement in the occupied territories and supports the two-state solution, has also agreed to serve under Bennett, with Nitzan Horowitz set to become health minister and Tamar Zandberg environmental protection minister. Its Arab member Esawi Freige will serve as regional development minister.

The cabinet will include for the first time the leader of the United Arab List or Ra’am, Mansour Abbas, who has agreed to support the coalition in return for an increase in economic support and a temporary freeze on home demolitions in Israel’s Arab community.

It will be the first cabinet without the ultra-religious parties that have participated in most of the coalitions since 2001.

The new government has yet to get the approval of the Knesset, which is not set to vote on the issue for at least another week. Lapid is seeking to replace the current Knesset speaker, a Likud Member, with Yesh Atid lawmaker Mickey Levy to expedite the process.

Netanyahu has insisted that he is not going away and is seeking to secure defectors from the Lapid-Bennett coalition, in addition to Amichai Chikli, one of Yamina’s legislators, who refused to join the “left-wing” government. He excoriated his former colleagues, calling the proposed coalition “illegitimate.”

Netanyahu’s fascistic ally, Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich, accused Yamina leaders Bennett and Shaked of working to “establish a left-wing government with the Arab supporters of terrorism.” Hundreds of his supporters have rallied repeatedly outside the homes of Bennett and Shaked. Such is the concern that they might become the targets of political violence, both politicians have been assigned police protection.

There have been questions raised in the media as to whether Netanyahu would mount new provocations against the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, promote acts of terrorism by Jewish fanatics against Israeli Palestinians, seek to mount a coup similar to that of former US President Donald Trump, or launch a provocative move against Iran to maintain his grip on power.

UK: One million threatened with homelessness as government ends eviction ban

Robert Stevens

Over a million people face being evicted from their rented homes in the next weeks and months, after the Conservative government ended its temporary ban on bailiff-led evictions.

Throughout the pandemic, bailiffs were asked not to carry out evictions, with notice periods being extended to six months from the pre-pandemic period of two months. From June 1, the notice period dropped to four months.

The ban on evictions was introduced at the start of the pandemic by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government as part of series of concession to placate mounting anger in the working class. It offered protection for tenants who fell into arrears, as many workers lost their jobs or were furloughed and suffered major cuts in income. The government has sought to end the ban several times over the last year but in the face of public opposition was repeatedly forced to extend it.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick at a Covid-19 press conference in 10 Downing Street. 29/03/2020 (Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street-Flickr)

Johnson’s statement in February that this would be the last lockdown and that the economy had to be “irreversibly” reopened in June finally cleared the decks for the ending of the evictions ban. Housing Minister Robert Jenrick announced on March 10 that the restriction would end May 31.

The government is ensuring that almost nothing will prevent landlords from evicting tenants, stating only, “Evictions will not be carried out if a member of the home has Covid-19 symptoms or is self-isolating.”

According to research by the London School of Economics and Political Science, at least 100,000 claims over landlords attempting to kick out tenants could be subject to a court case this year.

Those in power and in the opposition parties have a vested interest in the evictions ban being lifted. Almost one in five of Parliament’s 650 MPs are landlords. Last month, the Inside Housing website noted that Labour’s shadow housing secretary, Lucy Powell, “According to parliament’s register of financial interests… is a private landlord and has rented a room in her London flat since 2015, and has a rental income of more than £10,000 a year.” It added, “She is also a shareholder and unpaid director of New Road Management, which owns the freehold of six flats in London, in one of which she lives.”

According to research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) on Monday, based on a survey it commissioned of over 10,000 households, 400,000 people (5 percent of all renters) have already either been served an eviction notice or told they could be served one. A further 1 million households (11 percent of all renters), are concerned about possible eviction in the next three months. Half of these consist of families with children. Fully 1.7 million renting households are worried about paying their rent over the same period (20 percent of all renters).

Landlords in England are now able to evict tenants with just four weeks’ notice if they have more than four months in rent arrears. There are 450,000 households currently in rent arrears and 18 percent of these (around 81,000 households) have been in arrears for more than four months.

Throughout the pandemic renters have received very little targeted support, despite them being more likely to have faced a major drop in income. In April this year, Local Housing Allowance (housing payments for private rented tenancies) was frozen again and kept at September 2019 levels. This is in effect a cut, as rental costs have continued to rise across the country.

Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, a charity that works to end homelessness, said, “There is no doubt that protections put in place to help renters has kept people in their homes as they were hit with wage cuts, job losses and illness brought on by the pandemic. But we know that hundreds of thousands of renters will now be anxiously counting down the days until they are forced from their homes unless further action is taken.”

The eviction ban is being lifted under conditions in which millions will face the loss of all their income through unemployment and cuts in welfare payments. At the end of September, the government will withdraw a £20 per week uplift in Universal Credit put in place at the start of the pandemic. Millions of workers who have relied on the state paying 80 percent of their wages under the furlough scheme will be placed in dire straits as the scheme is ended.

The JRF noted, “Unemployment is not forecast to peak until after this period [June to end of August], and the furlough scheme and the £20 per week uplift in Universal Credit are not due to end until the autumn. It is deeply worrying that so many renters are concerned about eviction before these protections are withdrawn.”

Those already living on a low income/in poverty were most at risk of eviction, the JRF survey found. “Households with three or more children are more than twice as likely to be worried about being evicted (21%) compared to households without children (9%).” Moreover, “Households with annual incomes below £25,000 are three times more likely to be worried about paying rent (24%) compared to households with incomes of £50,000 or more, and they are also significantly more likely to be behind with household bills and rent payments compared to households on higher incomes.”

During the pandemic, many renters have become poorer in an effort to keep their homes, with nearly 1.5 million renting households cutting spending to offset lost income: “33% of renters in arrears turned to borrowing, with a quarter (24%) borrowing from friends or family, one in ten (11%) borrowing from a bank or building society and, worryingly, 7% borrowing from a payday lender.”

According to Citizens Advice, in January this year 28 percent of those on a zero-hour contract were behind with their rent, as were 27 percent of agency workers, 16 percent of students, 13 percent of furloughed workers 12 percent of disabled people.

Tenants have spoken out on social media. One said on Twitter, “This is wrong. A ban on evictions should stay whilst this pandemic continues… Government should use the time to bring in laws protecting tenants. They will not as they back greedy landlords.” A mother commented on Facebook on the threat of eviction, “That’s what will happen to my daughter and I if I don’t get another job soon. 8 months unemployed is taking its toll.”

The pandemic has exacerbated the never-ending programme of austerity which has plunged millions into poverty over the last decade. The Socialist Equality Party opposes all evictions of tenants in rent arrears and demands the restoration of the evictions ban and the cancellation of arrears accrued during the pandemic through no fault of tenants. Only on the basis of a workers’ government and a socialist programme can the social right of access to affordable, quality housing for all be secured.

Tensions between Washington and Moscow mount in lead-up to summit

Andrea Peters

In the lead-up to the June 16 summit between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, tensions between the two countries continue to mount. Whatever emerges out of the discussion between the two heads of state later this month, it is clear that Washington is pressing ahead with war preparations against Moscow while the Kremlin searches about for military and economic means to hold onto power.

In this March 10, 2011, file photo, then Vice President Joe Biden, left, shakes hands with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

On Thursday, the Russian government declared that it is liquidating its dollar holdings in its National Welfare Fund (NWF), a financial reserve built up largely on the basis of the country’s oil wealth that is estimated to be now worth about $186 billion. After shedding $41 billion of American currency, the NWF will be made up of a combination of the euro, the yuan, and gold.

The decision is widely seen as a preemptive move intended to shield the country against the possible imposition of economic sanctions by Washington that target Russia’s ability to carry out financial transactions in the US dollar. It follows on the heels of statements by Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina that the government is exploring the creation of a digital currency, with a similar aim in mind. Already, most of the trade between Russia and China is not denominated in the US dollar.

Moscow is preparing for the prospect of being frozen out of the dollar-denominated global financial system as political and military pressure on the Kremlin intensifies.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declared Wednesday that hackers operating from Russian territory were responsible for a recent cyberattack on American meat producer JBS, which owns about one-quarter of the US beef processing plants. Despite failing to make public any evidence and acknowledging that there was no indication that the Russian government was behind the attack, the White House warned that it was “not taking any options off the table, in terms of how we respond.”

The same day, NATO-member Turkey announced that it is expelling an entire cohort of Russian specialists working in the country to help it set up a Russian-made S-400 anti-aircraft weapon system. Turkish officials said that the decision was made after discussions with the US. Sudan, where Russia was to have established its first African military base, simultaneously announced that it is reviewing its decision to allow the Russian navy to set up in its port on the Red Sea.

At the start of June, American forces began training operations with Sweden in the Arctic, a region that Moscow has identified as being of key economic and geopolitical significance. Russia’s arctic region accounts for 10 percent of the country’s GDP and 20 percent of its exports.

This is unfolding as NATO is conducting massive anti-Russian, European-wide military exercises, known as Defender-2021, over the course of the summer. They involve ground, air and naval forces along the entire stretch of Russia’s western borders, focusing on areas of key geostrategic significance for Russia.

On May 24, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reported that so far, in just this year alone, the American-led alliance has carried out seven training operations on Ukrainian territory and in the Black Sea.

On May 31, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu accused NATO of intending to use a military exercise unfolding in late June and early July in Ukraine to deploy weapons intended for use in the Donbass, where breakaway pro-Russian republics were formed after the coming to power of a far-right, anti-Russian government in a US-backed coup in 2014. Kiev said this spring that it intends to retake the region by force. With the aid of Washington, Russia’s western neighbor has massively upgraded its fighting capacities over the last several years and currently has 255,000 regular troops and another 900,000 in reserve. It spends the equivalent of 4.1 percent of its GDP on the military, up from 1.5 percent prior to the 2014 coup.

Shoigu, who declared earlier this week that “the actions of our Western colleagues are destroying the system of security in the world and forcing us to take adequate countermeasures,” has announced the creation of 20 new Russian military divisions on the country’s western front. They are being formed with the express purpose of fighting NATO.

The upcoming US-Russia summit was called after Russian ally Belarus hijacked a civilian aircraft in order to detain a government opponent on board. While Washington stopped short of accusing Moscow of green-lighting Minsk’s actions, which the Kremlin only hesitatingly defended, the sanctions unleashed against the Belarusian government damage Russia too because of the close economic ties between the two countries and their shared border.

This summer, alongside a nationwide review of the country’s fighting capacity, Russia is initiating military exercises jointly with Belarus in an operation titled Zapad-2021 (West-2021). On June 3, Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s director of foreign intelligence, accused the West of engaging in hybrid warfare aimed at undermining Russian and Belarusian sovereignty. “We will not tolerate this,” he declared.

Following the Biden administration’s confirmation that the US would withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, a unilateral step decided by the Trump administration last year, Moscow this week also formally pulled out of the international agreement. The Open Skies Treaty allowed for over-flights of each other’s territory to monitor one another’s military forces and activities. In addition, Moscow is ending the so-called “open lands” accord, a 1992 agreement with the United States that allowed diplomats from each state to travel freely within each country without special permission.

The American war drive against China, which has escalated dramatically in recent weeks with the announcement that the US is once again investigating the prospect that the coronavirus was leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, looms over the conflict between Washington and Moscow.

With the Kremlin driven into a corner, speculation abounds about the prospect of a Russian-Chinese military alliance, which some in the Russian oligarchy see as a way out. In a recent interview with Gazeta.ru, Russian Army General and former Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, Yuri Baluyevsky, declared, “In terms of a military alliance, personally I would want the conclusion of such a union between Russia and China.” He added, however, that “it was still too early” to talk about joint operations between the two countries.

But even as ties between the two countries are deepening and both face relentless threats from the United States, tensions between China and Russia remain. China, which has an economy eight times the size of Russia’s, vastly overshadows Russia in terms of its economic capacities, potential military might and population size. While China is Russia’s top trading partner, Russia, in turn, does not rank even among China’s top 13. Sections of the Russian elite are fearful of being drawn into an alliance that could come at a very high cost.

Also speaking to Gazeta.ru, General-Colonel Sergei Kizyun, former head of the Leningrad military district, observed, “It’s entirely unclear in the event of a military conflict which of Russia and China’s armed forces could act together. For example, for us there is no point in participating in an armed struggle by Beijing for the island of Taiwan, any other island in this region, or in supporting the People’s Liberation Army in a hypothetical war with India.”