Brazil passes 650,000 COVID-19 deaths as ruling class adopts “endemic” narrative

Eduardo Parati

Last week, Brazil reached the terrible milestone of 650,000 recorded COVID-19 deaths, even as the administration of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro is officially adopting the narrative that the deadly virus has reached an “endemic” stage.

In February, the country recorded 22,000 deaths, an average of nearly 800 deaths per day. In an interview with the daily Estadão, Fiocruz epidemiologist Jesem Orellana pointed to the seriousness of the pandemic in Brazil: “The number of about 650,000 known deaths in Brazil is tragically high (the second highest on the planet) and, in practice, is at least 15 percent higher due to underreporting.” Orellana added: “It is not impossible to reach 700,000 or even 800,000 known deaths from COVID-19, because if we continue to put the economic agenda above life, we will continue to have more and more preventable deaths… .”

In an interview with SOS Brasil Soberano, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis gave the scale of the underreporting scenario in Brazil, which prevents determining the real development of the pandemic in the country. He pointed to estimates by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington of the real number of infections in Brazil during the spread of Omicron: “If the underreporting was already 10 to 20 times in the weeks before Carnaval, now we wouldn’t even be able to calculate... Some models suggest that we passed 2 million cases per day at the peak [of the Omicron variant in January-February].”

Countering the narrative promoted since November by the government and corporate media that Omicron is “mild,” Nicolelis explained, “If you add up all causes of death in the last two months, we had more deaths in those two months in 2022 than in the same two months in 2021.” In January and February of last year, Brazil was experiencing the wave of deaths provoked by the Gamma variant, which would reach its peak in March and April, driven by the reopening of schools.

Today, one month after the start of compulsory in-person learning and with only 45 percent of children between 5 and 11 having taken the first shot of the vaccine, there is a new outbreak of cases among children in this age group in Brazil. A recent Fiocruz bulletin showed that the number of daily cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in children aged 5 to 11 is already equal to its peak in the last week of 2021, with 400 cases per day. Fiocruz warns that “preliminary laboratory data suggest a halt in the drop in positive results for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).”

On March 4, Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, registered an increase in COVID-19 ICU bed occupancy from 40.1 percent to 43.7 percent in 24 hours. Today, the occupancy of pediatric ICU beds is 100 percent in Salvador, capital of Bahia, and the Federal District.

The increase in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations contrasts with the response of the government and the media, with news about the pandemic having disappeared from the front pages of major newspapers even before the start of the war in Ukraine. Faced with the current situation, Bolsonaro, following the actions of governments and ruling classes around the world, tweeted on Thursday that his Health Ministry is “studying the downgrading the current situation of COVID-19 in Brazil to endemic,” with a decision expected in the coming days.

At almost the same time, São Paulo state Governor João Doria announced that mask mandates in open places will be dropped starting on March 9. In Rio de Janeiro state, mask mandates in any establishment are now to be decided by each city hall, and the Federal District and Belo Horizonte have completely dropped their mandates.

Public transportation after lifting of mask mandate in Rio de Janeiro. (credits: Agência Brasil)

Last week, São Paulo state Health Secretary Rossieli Soares declared that a decision will be made in the next two weeks on the wearing of masks inside school classrooms. Before being barred by the court this Saturday, mask mandates for children under 12 had already been dropped in the state of Rio Grande do Sul since February 26.

The statements by Bolsonaro and the governors criminally ignore the experience with the pandemic over the past two years. The continuous transmission of SARS-CoV-2 allowed the emergence of more transmissible mutations and the re-infection of people already infected by the virus. Although it has not yet become significant in Brazil, the more transmissible Omicron subvariant BA.2 is already the dominant strain in several countries.

On CNN Brasil, the vice-president of the Brazilian Society of Infectology, Alexandre Naime Barbosa, said about the subvariant: “We can say that in the next two months, the tendency is that there will be a drop in the number of cases, a drop in the number of hospitalizations. This if no variant arises. Now, if BA.2 starts to predominate, we may have problems within six, eight, or 12 weeks.”

After months of Omicron being declared “mild” by governments and the corporate media around the world, the pandemic is said to be reaching a supposed “endemic” stage, where large-scale death becomes acceptable.

Vaccination has been promoted as the only measure to control the virus, which should be treated like the flu. The misleading use of the concept of endemic by the Bolsonaro administration, following in the footsteps of Joe Biden’s administration in the US, is intended to justify the acceptance of a “new normal” of mass death and millions of people suffering the effects of long COVID.

Among the scientists denouncing the adoption of “endemic” COVID-19, Australian epidemiologist, Dr. Raina MacIntyre, explained:

“Denial of the science of epidemiology is widespread, even among ‘experts.’ We are told repeatedly that SARS-CoV-2 will become ‘endemic.’ But it will never be endemic because it is an epidemic disease and always will be. The key difference is spread. As an epidemic disease, SARS-CoV-2 will always find the unvaccinated, under-vaccinated, or people with waning immunity and spread rapidly in those groups. Typically, true epidemic infections are spread from person to person, the worst being airborne transmission, and display a waxing and waning pattern such as we have already seen with multiple waves of SARS-CoV-2. Cases rise rapidly over days or weeks, as we have seen Alpha, Delta and Omicron. No truly endemic disease—malaria, for example—does this.”

Moreover, in conjunction with the “endemic” narrative, the campaign for the end of protective measures against COVID-19 creates the conditions for the rampant exploitation of the working class, with ever-increasing pressure for workers with symptoms to return to workplaces, and children to remain in schools regardless of the risk of outbreaks to ensure that their parents go into crowded factories, warehouses and other workplaces to ensure the profits of big corporations.

The vaccine is a critical component in fighting the pandemic, but the campaign by the media and governments for acceptance of the pandemic are showing their catastrophic effect in the lowering of vaccination rates. Only 40.37 percent of people over 18 took the booster shot throughout Brazil, and in the state of São Paulo the number of booster shots given dropped from 1,734,966 in the second week of January to 443,662 last week.

In opposition to the capitalist governments’ campaign, forcing the population to accept the “new normal” of mass COVID-19 infections and death, the working class must fight to build a massive movement to end the pandemic.

Only seriously applied public health measures like temporary lockdowns, massive testing and contact tracing, vaccination of the entire world population and mask mandates are capable of ending large-scale infection and death.

Understanding the need for collective protective measures is decisive for the implementation of an elimination-eradication program. On the Facebook page of the Rank-and-File Committee for Safe Education in Brazil (CBES-BR), workers spoke favorably to this demand, denouncing the removal of restrictions against COVID-19.

Karla, a mother in the Federal District, denounced the campaign for the end of mask mandates and the covering up of the situation of COVID-19 in the schools: “Here in the FD, the governor has again dropped mask mandates in open environments. There is no news about the situation in schools, it has always been covered up and packed with lies, they will never expose any negative situation that there may be.”

She pointed to the possibility of new outbreaks after the Carnaval holiday, which took place last week, denounced the “endemic” narrative and advocated protective measures: “Let’s wait for the post-Carnaval period, where there were many crowds without any care and protection. I haven’t heard anything about the drop of mask mandates in schools. What I have heard today is that the crazy so-called health minister wants to change pandemic to endemic. The only absolute certainty I have is that I will continue wearing masks, keeping my social distance and taking 70 percent alcohol disinfectant with me; I have no difficulty or inconvenience in continuing to protect myself.”

Esmeralda, a teacher in the state of Ceará, criticized the end of mandatory masking in schools: “It seems to me that Rio Grande do Sul is going to dispense with the use of masks. I wouldn’t like the same thing to happen here. Wearing a mask is hard, but very necessary still.”

Academic boycott of Russia: Science in the service of German war policy

Gregor Link

Following the reactionary invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military, the highest levels of German academia are taking measures against Russia that are unprecedented in post-war history. In agreement with the German government, leading research institutions and universities have severed all relations with Russian partner organisations and announced that all ongoing research projects will be put on hold.

Only hours after the intervention began, the Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) announced that “all current and planned” cooperation, “scientific exchange” and all “previous, long-standing cooperation in science and research as well as in vocational training” would be frozen immediately and that there would be “ongoing coordination with the Foreign Ministry and the Chancellery.”

Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Liberal Democrats, FDP) justified the step by saying that the country had “taken its own leave of the international community” and would have to bear “serious consequences.” The Russian intervention was “a blatant breach of international law and cannot be justified by anything.” However, she made it clear to broadcaster Bayrischer Rundfunk that her ministry’s actions were part of a “systemic confrontation” that required the “Bundeswehr [armed forces] to be strengthened” and to “think differently in geopolitical terms” in the future.

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) main building in Bonn, Germany (Credit: Mkill/Wikimedia)

Almost at the same time, the “Alliance of German Science Organisations” published a statement “strongly supporting” the “consistent action of the Federal Government” against the Russian government. The Alliance includes the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Fraunhofer and Max Planck Societies (MPG), the Helmholtz and Leibniz Associations, the German Rectors’ Conference, the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the government-affiliated Science Council.

The joint statement urges all member institutions “to freeze scientific cooperation with state institutions and business enterprises in Russia with immediate effect until further notice, to ensure that German research funds no longer benefit Russia and that no joint scientific and research policy events take place.”

According to the statement, “no new cooperation projects are to be initiated at present.” Further steps would be discussed “in close consultation with the federal government and other political decision-makers.” The measures are tantamount to breaking off all official academic relations with Russian institutions.

In the days since publishing the declaration, the academic organisations have outdone each other with anti-Russian boycott measures, which despite protestations to the contrary, are no longer directed solely against Vladimir Putin’s regime. The scientific and cultural damage caused by these steps is immeasurable and deeply reactionary.

On Wednesday, for example, the DFG confirmed that with “immediate effect, it is suspending all research projects” between German and Russian scientists that it funds, that it will not accept any German-Russian cooperation or continuation proposals, and that it will not review proposals that have been submitted. In existing cooperation projects, moreover, “no data, samples and equipment as well as other scientific material are to be exchanged” and “no joint events are to be held.”

The presidium of the Max Planck Society, which has not uttered a word of criticism of Western-led wars in the past 30 years, reacted with a one-sided appeal to Russia to immediately cease hostilities in Ukraine. MPG President Martin Stratmann called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “dictator” who “blatantly threatens the peoples of Europe with a nuclear strike” and announced that he would not tolerate any staff who publicly supported the Russian president.

On the same day, the DAAD decided to halt “application opportunities for Russia scholarships” and to cancel “selections for DAAD scholarships to Russia.” German scholarship holders who have already been selected will also be unable to receive financial support for a stay in Russia at present. There are approximately 750 cooperation projects and 100 DAAD scholarship holders in Russia.

The service, which is close to and funded by the Foreign Ministry, also expects German universities to immediately “suspend all DAAD-funded project activities with partner institutions in Russia and Belarus.” This threatens to bring university exchanges between Germany and the two countries to an almost complete standstill.

Several state rectors’ conferences, as well as countless individual universities and colleges, have already put most or all their academic relations with Russian institutions on ice. A survey by Forschung & Lehre names, among others, the three universities in Berlin, the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, the Bauhaus University in Weimar as well as the universities of Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

The University of Erfurt even went so far as to suggest that for the next two semesters, Russian students should not come to Germany. As the state rectors’ conferences explained in public statements, the measures were taken in each case “in consultation with the Ministry of Science.”

The comprehensive boycott of Russian science by Germany’s academic establishment is unique in Europe and of hardly foreseeable consequence. As reported by Die Zeit, the German action threatens projects such as the €3 billion construction of the particle accelerator FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe), polar and climate research, the international nuclear fusion reactor ITER—and even the Geneva-based particle physics research centre CERN, where almost 900 scientists from Russia are currently working.

Helmut Dosch, head of the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, was particularly aggressive. He compared the Russian invasion to “September 11” in Die Zeit and declared: “When the free world is attacked by a neo-imperialist kleptocrat, we hit back with full force.”

He said that to prevent technology transfers to Russia “at all costs,” he had already halted all collaborative projects, had withdrawn papers submitted to journals such as Nature and Science, and had arranged for visiting Russian scientists at the institution to leave Germany by the end of last week.

Punishing Russian academics and students for a government policy that is rejected by a large proportion of them has no progressive content whatsoever. On the contrary, it is an aggressive act, accompanied by a furious anti-Russia campaign in culture and public life, designed to demonise everything Russian and to put science at the service of foreign and war policy.

DAAD President Joybrato Mukherjee, for example, stressed to journalists that his service’s actions were part of an “overall strategy of the German government and the European Union to isolate Russia.” In the face of a “huge foreign, defence and security policy challenge” the likes of which “have not been seen in Europe since the Second World War,” he said, “investing in our defence readiness and investing in foreign cultural and educational policy are not opposites.”

Referring to a DAAD key issues paper from October last year, which had called for the development of a strategy to “manage unavoidable refugee movements” in “fragile contexts,” Mukherjee demanded a “gigantically large support programme” from the federal government on Tuesday. It should “strengthen the anti-government forces” in Russia, bring Ukrainian scientists to Germany and set up “leadership programmes for future leaders” who “will take on leadership tasks in Ukraine after the situation stabilises later on.”

The fact that the top echelons of the German academic establishment are so willing to go along with Berlin’s war policy against Russia brings back memories of the darkest chapters of German history and, at the same time, confirms the struggle of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) against the transformation of universities into compliant cadres of German militarism.

As early as the Weimar Republic, the DFG, in particular, had supported anti-Slavic propaganda on which the Nazis’ war of extermination was based. After the Nazis were brought to power in 1933, key DFG scientists welcomed Hitler’s regime and joined in its aims of their own free will. The Nazi’s Volksforschung (“people research”) and research into “racial hygiene” funded by the DFG to the tune of billions, culminated in the drafting of the “General Plan East,” which envisaged the extermination of the Slavic population in Eastern Europe and was put into practice in the Nazis’ war of extermination.

After Hitler came to power, the professors of the Weimar Republic swung behind him, practised self-imposed conformity, expelled Jewish academics from their ranks and enthusiastically participated in the mobilisation against the Soviet Union. Even today, it is professors like Herfried Münkler and Jörg Baberowski who are whitewashing the historical crimes of German imperialism to promote a third German grab for world power.

The DFG database lists no fewer than nine funding projects in support of Baberowski—a professor who portrays the Nazis’ war of extermination as the result of the Red Army’s conduct of the war. As for Münkler, he recently called in Die Welt for European nuclear warheads for “a new order of great power rivalry.”

European Union employs double standards on refugees from Ukraine, discriminates against non-Ukrainians

Martin Kreickenbaum

More than 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the war on 24 February. The UN Refugee Aid Organization (UNHCR) has described it as the “fastest growing refugee crisis since the Second World War” and expects up to four million refugees. However, while the European Union is granting protection to Ukrainian citizens for an initial year, refugees from other countries are being singled out and excluded.

Last Friday, for the first time, the European Union enacted the directive on the “mass influx” of refugees, which must be implemented by all Member States. The directive grants refugees the right to reside for an initial period of one year without going through a complex asylum procedure, with the option of extending it by a further two years. Refugees are also immediately entitled to social benefits, accommodation and access to education for children of school age.

A woman feeds her daughter after arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Poland has so far welcomed a total of almost one million refugees, half of whom are children. Last weekend alone, around 250,000 refugees arrived in Ukraine’s western neighbour via the Medyka and Korczowa border crossings. By Sunday, around 227,000 refugees had been registered in Romania, 163,000 in Hungary and 114,000 in Slovakia. In Moldova, which is not part of the EU, more than 250,000 people have already been admitted from Ukraine.

Aid for the refugees has mainly been organised thanks to an overwhelming willingness of the population to help. Government agencies are very cautious and hardly able to coordinate volunteers offering aid. In Poland, thousands of volunteers are working to sort and distribute donations, organise ridesharing or provide accommodation. The majority of the refugees are accommodated directly with relatives, acquaintances or former neighbours. Already before the outbreak of the war, almost one million immigrants from Ukraine lived and worked in Poland.

According to official data, around 37,500 refugees from Ukraine have been registered so far in Germany. Most of them are arriving to Berlin by train, where volunteers are also primarily involved in providing shelter, clothing and food for people seeking protection.

The German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democrats) told the Bild am Sonntag that “we want to save lives, it doesn’t matter about the passport,” and claimed that all refugees from Ukraine would be admitted regardless of their nationality. But the reality is quite different.

The Tageszeitung reported on the systematic sorting out of refugees at the German-Polish border. Border guards of the Federal Police then go through the fully occupied trains and prevent people with dark skin from continuing. A police spokesman confirmed that the number of refugees who had to leave the trains to establish their identity in Frankfurt (Oder) was already in the three-digit range on Thursday, commenting, “And yes, most of them are from Africa.” The federal police, however, do not stop people based on their appearance, the spokesman insisted.

This claim lacks all credibility. According to official information, the border guards are looking for so-called “free riders,” as the Federal Police puts it. This refers to people who would “exploit” the situation in order to get to Germany. They are then accused of “unauthorised border crossing,” which the police say must be prosecuted. This inhumane criminalisation of refugees who are not in a position to legally acquire a visa almost inevitably leads to illegal “racial profiling” by the police.

This discrimination on the basis of the skin colour and ethnic origin of refugees demonstrates the hypocrisy of the EU’s refugee policy. According to official information, the temporary one-year right to reside is also granted to people who do not have a Ukrainian passport and who were living in Ukraine to work or study. However, evidence is required to prove permanent residency in Ukraine. Anyone who cannot provide this evidence is excluded. In addition, Ukraine has been a transit country for thousands of refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Chechnya, Somalia and Iraq, who are now also not covered by the EU’s reception regime.

The division of refugees into those who are welcome and those who are unwelcome already takes place in Ukraine. Last week, the French television station France24 reported on students from Africa who had been rejected at the border with Poland.

Moustapha Bagui Sylla from Guinea, who fled from the city of Kharkiv, reported: “They stopped us at the border and declared ‘blacks are not allowed.’”

Michael from Nigeria added: “They don’t let Africans in. People with dark skin and without a European passport are not allowed to cross the border. They’re pushing us back just because we’re black. And yet we are all human beings. They should not discriminate against us because of our skin colour.”

Bagui Sylla went on to say that the Ukrainian soldiers had told him that they were rejecting non-Europeans on the orders of the Polish border guards.

News site InfoMigrants contacted refugees from Bangladesh who were to be deported by the Ukrainian authorities and were stuck in a deportation prison near the city of Mykolaiv in the middle of a combat zone.

Further refugees are being detained near the city of Kivertsi in a deportation complex whose grounds have recently been converted into a base for the Ukrainian military. “Russia has mainly attacked military facilities. That’s why we’re afraid of being bombed. They still locked us up here with hundreds of migrants from India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Arab countries, including women and children,” Riadh Malik reported.

Confronted with the unequal treatment of refugees from Ukraine, Antonio Vitorino, Director General of the International Organisation for Migration, expressed concern about the violence and xenophobia against refugees from third countries who wish to leave Ukraine: “To put it plainly, discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnic origin, nationality or residence status is unacceptable.”

However, Vitorino did not mention the crying unequal treatment of Ukrainian refugees vis-à-vis the people who were prevented from entering the EU last autumn and winter by more than ten thousand Polish border guards using tear gas and pepper spray on the Belarusian-Polish border. Neither journalists nor aid organisations were granted access to the border area. At least 15 refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan froze or starved to death in the forests, including women and children, due to the relentless determination to repel refugees at all costs at the EU’s external borders.

The EU member states continue to sort out the “unwelcome refugees” after their arrival. For example, last Wednesday at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijarto stated that although third-country nationals are allowed to enter Hungary, the Hungarian government only “organises transport to the nearest airport so that they can return to their countries of origin.” In other words, they are deported in cold blood.

The Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov most clearly expressed the inhuman distinction between welcome and unwelcome refugees. The refugees from Ukraine are “not the refugees we are used to,” he told the press. “They are Europeans, smart and educated people, some of whom are even IT specialists. No European country is afraid of them.”

The same racist tropes were employed by many journalists who reported on the refugees. CBS and BBC correspondents stressed that the refugees are different because Ukraine is “not a third-world country,” such as “Afghanistan or Iraq,” but “European and civilized.”

The main reason for the unequal treatment of refugees is obvious. The refugees from Ukraine are fleeing the Russian intervention. Although NATO has provoked the invasion by its aggressive war drive against Russia, the refugees are shown exclusively as victims of “Russian aggression.” They are used to incite hostility against everything Russian and to justify NATO’s arms deliveries to Ukraine and plans for rearmament and war.

This does not change the EU’s thoroughly reactionary refugee policy. Even if the borders are currently open to refugees from Ukraine and they are spared the humiliating and oppressive asylum procedure, the walls of Fortress Europe remain insurmountable for all other refugees. More than 1,500 people fleeing the wars waged by the imperialist powers in Africa and the Middle East lose their lives every year in the Mediterranean alone.

In Libya, at least one hundred thousand refugees are being held in detention camps under appalling conditions. If they manage to escape from the camps, a life-threatening crossing in tiny inflatable boats across the Mediterranean and the associated risk of drowning or being brutally pushed back by the European border guards awaits them.

Sri Lankan government tables sham amendments to draconian anti-terrorism law

Sanjaya Jayasekera

Early last month, the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G. L. Peiris tabled an amendment bill in parliament to the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) with debate to begin on March 8. Two petitions filed in the Supreme Court challenging the unconstitutionality of the amendments are yet to be heard.

The amendments, which introduce various cosmetic changes while maintaining its extra-judicial procedures, are a tactical manoeuvre to try and deflect domestic and international criticism of the government’s grave and ongoing abuses of human rights.

The PTA was enacted in 1979 by the United National Party (UNP) government of President J. R. Jayawardene under the pretext of combating “terrorism”—i.e., militant Tamil groups.

Colombo systematically employed it in its anti-Tamil provocations that preceded the nearly 30-year brutal war, which erupted in 1983 against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The conflict ended with the military defeat in May 2009 of the separatist organisation and the death of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians. The war was used as a communal weapon to divide the working class along Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim ethnic lines.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The hated PTA allows arrests without warrant for supposed “unlawful activities” and the detention of people for up to 18 months in places decided by the defence minister. Police have the power to use confessions by “suspects,” usually extracted under torture, as evidence in prosecutions against them.

It has been used by every successive government over the past 43 years for arbitrary arrests, detentions and torture. The UNP government also used it to suppress widespread rural unrest in 1988–1990 in the island’s south, in which tens of thousands of majority Sinhala youth were brutally murdered.

The Rajapakse government’s main amendments, which do not in any way change the repressive character of the PTA, include:

* Reducing the period of detention from 18 months to 12 months.

* Enabling magistrates to visit the place of detention, allowing detainees access to lawyers and relatives, allowing them to challenge their detention in higher courts, and enabling the appeals court or the high court to grant bail, pending trial. These measures are already legally available but rarely exercised.

* Removal of the clause prohibiting the publication of matters relating to offences under this law, or the incitement of violence or that which may cause violence, religious, racial or communal disharmony or ill-will. There are already other security laws that include these sweeping prohibitions.

Preisdent Gotabaya Rajapakse came to power in November 2019 on the basis of a reactionary “national security first” campaign following the Easter Sunday terrorist bombings of Catholic churches and big hotels by an ISIS-backed Islamic fundamentalist group in April that year. In the wake of the attacks, which killed 270 and injured more than 500 people, racist groups, encouraged by all the main parties, including the SLPP, launched violent attacks on Muslim communities.

In January 2020, the Rajapakse cabinet decided to abandon the Counter Terrorism Act (CTA) that had been drawn up by the previous Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, and declared that it would continue with the PTA. Like the current amendments the proposed CTA supposedly protected democratic rights, but contained the central police-state provisions of the PTA.

Announcing the Rajapakse government’s decision to abandon the CTA, Cabinet member Bandula Gunawardena declared: “The PTA is back in the statute book, empowering the police and armed forces to face any threat posed to national security from any quarter.”

Along with its anti-Tamil propaganda, the Rajapakse government intensified its anti-Muslim provocations, arresting a series of Muslims on frame up charges under the PTA. These included the detention of human rights lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah, poet and teacher Ahnaf Jazeem, Azath Sally, a former Western Province governor, and member of parliament Rishad Bathiudeen.

Jazeem, who was arrested on false allegations of advocating Muslim extremism, was detained for one year and then remanded for another seven months. He detailed in the court and to the media, including the World Socialist Web Site, how he was subjected to continuous physical and mental torture, forcing him to make self-incriminating admissions until he was released in December.

In March last year, the Rajapakse announced the Prevention of Terrorism (De-radicalization from holding violent extremist religious ideology) Regulations under the PTA. In the name of “rehabilitation” and “reintegration” of detainees into society, the measure prolonged the pre-trial detention for another two years.

Along with the PTA, Sri Lankan governments have also used the Public Security Ordinance and related emergency regulations, the Essential Public Services Act, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Act and Computer Crimes Act, among other legislation, to intimidate journalists, writers and political opponents. Hundreds of Muslims and Tamils have been arrested under the PTA and remain in jail while some so-called LTTE suspects have been imprisoned for years.

At the end of this month, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is scheduled to review a resolution passed last year on Sri Lanka. The US-backed resolution presented by a UNHRC Core Group, including Britain, Canada, Germany and France, called for an investigation into war crimes and human right violations under the PTA and other laws.

The US and other major powers sponsoring the resolution previously backed Colombo’s communalist war and are guilty of war crimes and the suppression of democratic rights elsewhere in the world.

The real purpose of the UNHRC resolution is to pressure the Sri Lankan government to end its relations with Beijing and unconditionally support Washington’s aggressive military preparations against China.

For its part, the EU has threatened to withdraw economic concessions under the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+). Last June, an EU parliamentary resolution called for the repeal of the PTA and other laws violating human rights. It also called on the EU Commission to consider temporarily ending Sri Lanka’s GSP facility. This would be a major blow to the cash-strapped Sri Lankan government which is desperately trying to increase export incomes.

The US and EU are the largest export destinations for Sri Lanka. Colombo’s sham amendments to the PTA are a desperate and transparent attempt to deflect this international pressure.

Several civil rights organisations and a number of political parties, including Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the main parliamentary opposition party, have cynically demanded reform of the PTA or its replacement with a new “anti-terror law.”

The SJB is a breakaway party from the UNP, which originally enacted the PTA. SJB leaders, moreover, were members of previous regimes, including in the previous Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, that suppressed basic democratic rights.

The pro-US Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the main parliamentary party of the Tamil elite, is currently involved in a public petition campaign for repeal of the PTA.

The campaign is utterly hypocritical. The TNA backed the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government’s planned Counter Terrorism Act (CTA) and proposed amendments. Its leaders, including R. Sambandan from Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), boycotted parliament in 1979, allowing passage of the PTA.

The TNA petition campaign has nothing to do with fighting for the democratic rights of Tamil masses but part of the organisation’s support for a US-led UNHRC rights campaign which it hopes will help secure a better deal for the Tamil elites in the north and east of the country.

Wildfires rage along South Korea’s east coast

Ben McGrath

Wildfires along South Korea’s east coast and other parts of the country have caused massive destruction in recent days as firefighters struggle to bring the blazes under control. As of Tuesday morning, the main fire located in Uljin County and neighbouring areas had burned approximately 21,765 hectares of land, making them the most destructive wildfires in 22 years. Thousands have been forced to evacuate.

The fire in Uljin, located in North Gyeongsang Province 330 kilometres southeast of Seoul, began the morning of March 4 and quickly spread north to the neighbouring city of Samcheok in Gangwon Province. Approximately 18,000 firefighters, 95 helicopters, and 781 vehicles on the ground have been deployed to fight the blaze. Only about 50 percent of the fire has been extinguished, with little progress made from Monday. The fires have been fuelled by strong winds and dry conditions. Dry weather warnings are in place for the east coast while much of the remaining parts of the country are under dry weather advisories.

Other fires on the east coast have been reported in recent days in Gangneung City, which spread south to Donghae City, both of which are just north of the Uljin blaze. About 90 percent of this fire has been extinguished. Wildfires also continue to burn in Yeongwol County, Gangwon Province and Dalseong County in Daegu, with 60 and 40 percent of each being extinguished respectively. According to the Ministry of Interior and Safety, there have been 245 wildfires during the period from January 1 to March 5, an increase of 110 over the average for the same period for the last three years.

Smoke from wildfires on the coast of South Korea on March 5, 2022 (Photo: NASA)

The Korea Forest Service and police do not yet know what caused the Uljin fire, but the authorities suggest it started from a cigarette butt thrown from a car. Based on surveillance footage, they are currently looking for the owners of three vehicles that passed through the area where the fire originated. A court has, however, issued an arrest warrant for a 60-year-old suspect accused of starting the Gangneung fire. The man supposedly told police he started the fire after being “disrespected” by other residents for many years.

The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters reported that at least 7,355 people have been evacuated. Approximately 1,000 of the evacuees have been forced to stay in cramped, temporary shelters in public facilities and schools. At least 512 buildings have been damaged, including 343 homes.

No direct casualties have been reported yet, though an 86-year-old woman reportedly died while evacuating from Gangneung. No cause of death has been released. In addition, a 51-year-old firefighter was discovered dead on March 6. His family explained that he had been overworked and on the job for five days straight before passing away. They also stated that he had worked more than 50 hours per week for the past three months. This underscores a lack of government resources to deal with wildfires, which are common occurrences.

Many victims, already facing poverty, have lost everything. An evacuee in his 60s told the Yonhap News Agency, “My house was burnt down and I have no hope. All I have now is my body and the clothes I'm wearing.” Poverty among the elderly in South Korea is the highest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with 43.4 percent of people over 65 living under the poverty line.

On Sunday, the Moon Jae-in administration declared the area around the Uljin fire a special disaster zone. “The fastest way for the government to support the residents is to declare a special disaster zone and to take part in recovery efforts,” Moon stated after meeting with victims on Sunday. On Tuesday, the government added Gangneung and Donghae as special disaster zones.

The declaration supposedly means that the government will share the costs of rebuilding homes and other buildings. For private buildings, the government will cover 70 percent of the cost and 50 percent for public facilities. Residents will also receive a grace period on their bills and taxes while receiving an additional income the government claims will be enough to provide a stable living.

The two major candidates in today’s presidential election also stopped in the Uljin area for photo ops with evacuees. Neither Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea nor Yoon Seok-youl of the main opposition People Power Party had anything to offer victims outside of empty phrases and vague promises to rebuild. Yoon, for example, told a distressed evacuee who had lost his home, “When the wildfire is over, all the homes will be rebuilt. Don’t worry.” Then adding, “The country will rebuild everything.”

Compounding the disaster is the current explosion in COVID-19 cases. Evacuees in shelters are packed closely together and unable to properly social distance. The past week has averaged more than 210,000 new cases each day with a record high of 266,850 cases recorded on March 4.

The government’s response to disasters like wildfires and a deadly pandemic exposes the class realities in South Korea. For the working class and poor, the government provides the bare minimum it believes is required to prevent a political backlash. Meager government assistance while recovering from a devastating fire or a few hundred thousand won (100,00 won equals $US 81) for people who have lost their jobs in the pandemic is considered generous.

In contrast, when the pandemic struck, Seoul quickly moved to assure the banks and big business that no demand for government handouts was too big. In March 2020, then Bank of Korea Deputy Governor Yun Myeon-sik stated, “It is hard to estimate how much liquidity will actually be supplied (to financial firms). But the plan is to supply the entire amount requested and without a limit.”

While the exact moment of an outbreak of a disaster like a wildfire cannot be predicted, the response can be carefully prepared, including the establishment of properly response prevention planning, warning systems and emergency services. Instead, the capitalist class in South Korea, as in all capitalist countries, is driven by its own financial interests, not the needs of the vast majority of the population.

Omicron BA.2 subvariant fuels new global surge of the pandemic

Evan Blake

As the deepening war in Ukraine threatens to escalate into a direct confrontation between the US-NATO powers and Russia, there has been a parallel but almost entirely unreported escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic. These two interconnected global crises are hurling mankind into catastrophe.

The most significant hotspot of the pandemic is now Hong Kong, where per capita rates of infections and deaths have dwarfed all previous surges in every country in the world. Soon after infections spiraled out of control in mid-February, hospitals and then morgues exceeded capacity, with the relatively less vaccinated elderly population most severely affected.

On Monday, the 7-day average of daily new deaths per 1 million people in Hong Kong reached 29.18. This is over 50 percent higher than the peak of 18.31 reached in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2021, nearly triple the United States’ peak of 10.22 on January 13, 2021, and higher than the previous world record of 26.2 set in Peru on April 23, 2021. COVID-19 deaths in Hong Kong continue to rise exponentially and could surpass 50 per 1 million people in the coming days.

Significantly, the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, with an I1221T mutation on the spike protein, accounts for 100 percent of all sequenced infections in Hong Kong. The city is a canary in the coal mine for the next stage of the pandemic, in which the BA.2 subvariant is forecast to become dominant worldwide.

As with the global spread of the BA.1 Omicron subvariant last December, the total reopening of the world economy is causing BA.2 to rapidly spread internationally. Contrary to the narrative spun by the corporate media that COVID-19 is now “endemic” and a stable “new normal” has been reached, reality has come crashing down once again in the third year of this unprecedented crisis.

Only 37 days after official global infections reached a peak of 3.44 million on January 24, 2022, the decline abruptly stopped at 1.48 million on March 2 and is once again rising steadily, marking the start of the latest global surge of the pandemic.

BA.2 accounts for over a third of all sequenced infections globally and is driving the new wave of the pandemic. It is now the dominant variant in 34 of 75 countries being monitored by covariants.org. And it accounts for at least 40 percent of infections in 7 of the top 10 countries with the most daily new cases: Vietnam (42 percent), Germany (63), Russia (41), the Netherlands (53), the UK (57), Austria (40) and Malaysia (73).

After weeks of decline, hospitalizations in England rose sharply by 15.6 percent last week across all age groups, with a staggering 26 percent rise among children ages 6-17. In the United States, BA.2 is rising exponentially, with the Northeast region experiencing the most rapid growth.

Scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam, a co-founder of the World Health Network (WHN), a global coalition of scientists and community groups that advocates for a policy of eliminating COVID-19 worldwide, recently spoke with the World Socialist Web Site. Summarizing the results of a major study on BA.2 from the University of Tokyo, he noted that “BA.2 transmits 40 percent faster than BA.1” and is “more vaccine-evading than BA.1.” He added that BA.2 “is much more severe” than BA.1 and “infection by BA.2 is resistant to previous infection by BA.1.”

Dr. Bar-Yam concluded, “BA.2 is different enough from BA.1 that it should be given its own designation—its own Greek letter—according to the current numbering scheme. But that’s politically not very comfortable, because people are declaring this to be over and having a new Greek letter would raise questions that require us to reevaluate what’s going on.”

Patients in hospital beds wait in a holding area outside the overloaded Caritas Medical Centre in Hong Kong on March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Indeed, the rapid spread of the more infectious, virulent and immune-evading BA.2 subvariant takes place under conditions in which almost every country except China has scrapped all remaining mitigation measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. The shortsightedness and stupidity of these efforts now stands fully exposed.

In the US, this process has been spearheaded by the Biden administration and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients, a multimillionaire who amassed between $10.4 million and $28 million in 2020 alone after the CARES Act bailout of Wall Street.

Working closely with the White House is Ezekiel Emanuel, former advisor to Biden and Barack Obama, who co-authored a paper published January 6, 2022, titled “A National Strategy for the ‘New Normal’ of Life With COVID.” On Sunday, a 136-page elaboration of this paper was published under the title “Getting to and Sustaining the Next Normal: A Roadmap for Living With Covid.”

Emanuel, a longtime advocate of lowering life expectancy and cutting health care spending, has been described as “eugenicist” by disability rights advocates. His plan, more aptly titled a “Roadmap for Disaster,” accepts unending waves of infections, deaths and long-term debilitation from this preventable virus, which he argues should be a permanent feature of society.

Providing pseudo-scientific justification for ending all COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, Emanuel’s “Roadmap” is the antithesis of the “dynamic zero” strategy pursued in China which has stamped out repeated outbreaks and reduced deaths to only 2 people since May 2020 in a country of 1.4 billion.

The very evolution of Omicron and its BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants is the product of the capitalist response to the pandemic, which has subordinated public health to the profit interests of the ruling elite. By refusing to implement the measures necessary to contain and ultimately eliminate the virus in each country, the ruling class has spawned the Frankenstein’s monsters of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and now Omicron, with each one worse than its predecessor.

The long-term consequences of these socially criminal policies are incalculable. Every study on Long COVID reaffirms the horrific character of this disease and the necessity for its elimination worldwide. The most recent and perhaps most alarming is a UK Biobank imaging study recently published in Nature, which found that participants with mild infection sustained brain tissue injury five months after their infections, with damage consistent with a decade of aging. Researchers speculate that dementia and memory loss may be long-term ramifications of a percentage of COVID-19 infections.

It is now abundantly clear that the current vaccines limit the likelihood of death but do not stop infections, severe disease or death, rendering the “vaccine-only” approach unscientific and unviable. So long as the virus is allowed to circulate and infect millions of hosts around the world, new variants will continue to emerge that are potentially more vaccine-resistant, contagious and virulent due to the relentless character of viral evolution.

The emergence of BA.2 fundamentally refutes all claims that COVID-19 will evolve into a kinder and gentler virus akin to the flu or common cold. Such claims have always been soporifics meant to disarm an increasingly militant working class that has been traumatized by the devastation of the pandemic.

This coming Friday, March 11, will mark two years since the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. In just two years, approximately 20 million people have died directly or indirectly from COVID-19, according to a tracker of “excess deaths” published by The Economist. This includes estimated real death tolls of 1.2 million in the US, 1.2 million in Russia, 220,000 in Ukraine, 150,000 in the UK and 120,000 in Germany.

Having committed sociocide through the “herd immunity” and “vaccine-only” strategies implemented over the past two years, the ruling elites in the US and across Europe have steeled themselves for even greater crimes in a potential Third World War with nuclear-armed Russia.

The war itself, which broke out at the peak of the Omicron surge in Ukraine and Russia, will greatly exacerbate the spread of COVID-19. Over 2 million Ukrainian refugees have fled the country, packed into overcrowded trains and subways, creating a massive super-spreader event. Spending on social services will be slashed even further and funneled into the military budgets of each country.

In both the response to the pandemic and conflict with Russia over Ukraine, the ruling class has proceeded with extraordinary recklessness. But it is a recklessness rooted in class interests. Indeed, one of the central aims of the hysterical propaganda for war, above all in the US, is to distract attention from the pandemic.

The capitalist media operates under the delusion that if it does not report on the pandemic, then it does not exist. But for the vast majority of the population, the pandemic has had and is continuing to have catastrophic consequences.

US Senate passes Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act

Trévon Austin

The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act on Monday named after the black teenager whose brutal killing helped to spark the mass civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The bill criminalizes lynching and makes it punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Introduced by Representative Bobby L. Rush (Democrat, Illinois) in the House and senators Cory Booker (Democrat, New Jersey) and Tim Scott (Republican, South Carolina) in the Senate, it is now headed to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.

An estimated 4,700 lynchings took place in the United States from the last two decades of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th. Lynching was part of the system of racist terror that accompanied Jim Crow segregation. Nearly three-quarters of its victims were blacks, mostly but not entirely in the former Confederate states of the South.

Efforts to make lynching a crime go back more than 120 years. In 1900 a congressman from North Carolina, then the only black member of Congress, introduced a bill which went nowhere. Anti-lynching bills have been regularly introduced since then. In 1918, Leonidas Dyer, a white Republican from St. Louis, was able to secure passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in the House of Representatives, but it was halted by a filibuster by Southern Democrats in the Senate, who declared lynching a states’ rights issue.

Subsequent efforts were repeatedly blocked by Southern Democrats. Later, after the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the Republicans took over the task of defending “states’ rights.” The passage of the bill today is largely symbolic, given the almost complete disappearance of this form of brutal racist vigilantism.

Emmett Till

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who spent part of the summer of 1955 visiting his great-uncle Mose Wright in the Delta region of northwest Mississippi. He was brutally beaten and shot to death on August 28 of that year for the “crime” of allegedly whistling at a white woman. His murderers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were quickly tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, less than a month later.

The murder of Emmett Till drew international news coverage and outrage and exposed the brutal reality of Jim Crow, particularly after the courageous decision of Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, to show the gruesome consequences of her son’s murder in an open-casket funeral.

Why has the anti-lynching legislation finally made it through Congress? The reasons have nothing to do with the interests of the working class, including a genuine fight against all forms of racism and prejudice.

Both capitalist parties have their reasons for posturing as opponents of lynching today. For the Republicans, it’s a cheap means—especially since the mass multi-ethnic protests against police killings after the murder of George Floyd in 2020—of clothing themselves in the mantle of anti-discrimination, even as they appeal to racist elements, and Donald Trump openly welcomes the support of white supremacists.

For the Democrats, invoking the name of Emmett Till is a cynical maneuver to shore up their voting base in the midterm elections. The Biden administration and the Democrats are hemorrhaging support because millions who were told that their hatred of Donald Trump made it necessary to pull the lever for the Democrats have been bitterly disgusted by the consequences.

Rush, the co-sponsor of the legislation, issued a statement Monday evening declaring that “lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain white hierarchy. Unanimous Senate passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act sends a clear and emphatic message that our nation will no longer ignore this shameful chapter of our history and that the full force of the US federal government will always be brought to bear against those who commit this heinous act.”

Rush’s pompous words are belied by the fact that fascists, anti-Semites and white supremacists, openly encouraged and supported by one of the two major capitalist parties, are on the rampage, as evidenced by the recent killing in Portland, Oregon, and last year’s murders in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

On the other hand, the Democrats have long sought to utilize identity politics to retain their dwindling support among minority workers. At the same time, racialist politics is used to promote divisions and obscure the common class interests of all sections of the working class against all the politicians of big business, Democrat and Republican alike. Rather than taking action on the genuine grievances of workers and youth of all races and ethnicities, the proponents of identity politics defend the privileged sections of the upper middle class and, above all, the interests of the big bourgeoisie.

A flagrant example of this was Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent attempt, in a March 6 speech marking the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, to compare the brave struggle taken up by millions in the civil rights movement to the war in Ukraine. Standing on the bridge made famous by the 1965 march, Harris said, “Today, the eyes of the world are on Ukraine and the brave people who are fighting to protect their country and their democracy. … At this moment, we are faced with a choice, a choice that we have faced many times before: Do we stand or do we fight? Gathered at this bridge, reflecting on its history, yes, I know the path forward is clear.”

This outrageous attempt to draw a straight line between the suffering of the Ukrainian people and the civil rights battles of the mid-20th century ignores the fact that the war in Ukraine was instigated by the US itself. It is Harris and her superior in the White House who are primarily responsible. One must add that the US government did not provide billions in military aid to the civil rights activists who were facing beatings and death. Now Biden and Harris invoke the memory of civil rights martyrs to stoke the imperialist war drive.

The legacy of past injustice finds present-day expression in higher US poverty rates and social ills among African Americans and other minorities, as well as in a disproportionate number among those killed by police. This is a product of the capitalist system and the class oppression upon which it is based.