Earthquake-ravaged Syria abandoned as Washington continues to pursue its goal of regime change

Bill Van Auken

The official death toll in Syria from last week’s catastrophic earthquake has risen to nearly 6,000, with many more dead lying in the rubble, still to be counted. The United Nations estimates that as many as 5.3 million Syrians have been left homeless by the quake. Many of them were already internally displaced by the 11-year, US-orchestrated war for regime change that devastated the country and cost the lives of over 300,000 civilians.

UN officials have acknowledged that while the lion’s share of international aid has gone to Turkey, Syria has been starved of assistance. The Syrian people, “rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Martin Griffiths, the under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator at the United Nations recently stated.

Even before the earthquake, nearly 90 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. Around 14.6 million people—nearly 70 percent of the population—were in need of humanitarian assistance, with some 12 million facing food insecurity as prices soared and supplies fell.

The population had also been left without access to electricity for more than two hours a day, while the vast majority of homes remained unheated.

These conditions are due in large measure to a crippling unilateral US sanctions regime, which under the so-called Cesar Act imposes severe punishments on any country or overseas financial institution or other entity that dares to engage with Syria.

This deliberate starvation of the Syrian population has been supplemented by the US military occupation of the country’s northeastern oil and gas fields, which has denied the country access to its principal sources of energy needed for reconstruction.

Behind these policies lies the unstated and thus far failed aim of precipitating the downfall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. What Washington failed to achieve through the arming and funding of Al Qaeda-linked militias, it now seeks to accomplish through deliberately inflicting mass misery upon the people of Syria in the hope that they will be forced to rise up against the government.

This tactic, likewise employed against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, has thus far failed, while inflicting immense suffering.

Last Friday, in the face of growing international outrage and pressure, Washington was compelled to announce a temporary and partial suspension of US sanctions to allow earthquake relief into Syria. The suspension is supposed to last for 180 days, and then the full sanctions regime will snap back into place.

In announcing the suspension, formally known as Syria General License 23, the US Treasury Department stated that it authorizes “all transactions related to earthquake relief that would otherwise be prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations.”

The announcement exposes the boundless hypocrisy of the US government, which had long claimed that the draconian and deadly sanctions regulations posed no impediment to humanitarian relief. It only confirms what everyone in Syria already knew: that this was a barefaced lie.

The supposed partial suspension of sanctions only came four days after the earthquake, too late for thousands who died in the rubble, without sufficient heavy machinery and other aid to pull them out, or for the thousands more unable to access medical care or secure shelter in the quake’s immediate aftermath.

Even now, Syrian immigrants in the US are unable to send remittances to their families in the earthquake zone as companies like Western Union, Ria and MoneyGram still don’t allow transfers from the US to Syria. Platforms like Paypal, GoFundMe and Patreon have taken down pages soliciting relief for Syria and blocked attempts to route aid to the devastated country.

People remove their furniture and household appliances out of a collapsed building following a devastating earthquake in the town of Jinderis, Aleppo province, Syria, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. [AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed]

The sanctions regime continues to block any aid going through the Syrian government, which serves to prevent the importation of heavy equipment and fuel, cripple air traffic and ban the use of Syrian ports.

Meanwhile, companies and even aid organizations that have over-complied with US sanctions in the past for fear of US retaliation continue to remain wary of any dealings with Syria.

For its part, the Biden administration has offered a paltry $85 million in aid to both Turkey and Syria, a tiny fraction of the billions in arms and aid poured into the proxy jihadist forces that ravaged Syria in Washington’s regime change war.

What little aid is being provided by the US and the UK is politically directed at undermining the Syrian government. It is being funneled exclusively into the area of Idlib in northwestern Syria controlled by the remnants of the Al Qaeda and ISIS-affiliated jihadist militias previously armed and funded by the CIA in the regime-change war to topple Assad.

This has been combined with a concerted effort to promote the White Helmets, a so-called rescue organization that was organized by British intelligence. It had been widely discredited for its involvement in the staging of fake chemical weapons attacks, as in Douma in 2018, meant to serve as a pretext for direct US-NATO intervention in the regime-change war.

The jihadist forces in Idlib have a filthy record of stealing international relief supplies and then selling them at drastically marked-up prices to the starving refugees trapped in the area under their control. There have been recent reports of rival armed factions fighting each other for earthquake relief supplies that have trickled across the Turkish border.

Washington and its allies have also mounted a new propaganda campaign blaming the Assad government as the culprit for blocking relief aid, something for which they themselves are responsible.

The reality is that Syria controls virtually none of its northern border, which is in the hands of jihadist organizations in Idlib, Turkish-backed militias and the US-backed Kurdish militia, the YPG in the east, where some 900 US troops are illegally deployed, in violation of Syrian sovereignty and without any mandate from the United Nations or even approval from the US Congress.

Washington has attempted to blame the Syrian government for the failure of aid to reach the jihadist-controlled areas of Idlib province. Only one route into the area from Turkey had been allowed before the earthquake by agreement between Damascus, the Turkish government and the United Nations, out of concern over the flow of weapons and foreign fighters. When Syria reached an agreement with the UN to open two more, the head of the White Helmets group, Raed al-Saleh, denounced the agreement, saying it had given the Assad government a “free political gain.”

Similarly, the dominant jihadist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Syria, denounced the attempt of the Syrian government to deliver a convoy of aid trucks organized by the Red Crescent to the area of via a crossing at Saraqeb. An HTS spokesman told Reuters, “We won’t allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping.” According to some reports, the HTS had demanded payment of $10,000 for every truck allowed to enter.

The carving up of Syria, with rival US-backed and Turkish-backed militias controlling the country’s northern border, has proven a major obstacle to the provision of earthquake relief.

Al Jazeera reported that more common than aid crossing the border have been the bodies of Syrian refugees pulled from the rubble of southern Turkey. “1,413 Syrians have returned to their home country in body bags as of Wednesday morning,” it reported. Even in this regard, the carve-up of Syria makes itself felt, with the bodies of earthquake victims who fled areas controlled by the Syrian government denied return to their home villages and instead buried among the thousands of dead in Turkey.

The horrors of the earthquake and the supposed unity of the world in support of its victims notwithstanding, acts of war continue in Syria unabated.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported Wednesday that its forces shot down an Iranian drone that it claimed was conducting surveillance of American troops at Mission Support Site Conoco, a US base that sits atop Syria’s oil fields and is named after the American energy corporation that once exploited them.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said a Turkish drone hit a military vehicle which it said belonged to the US-backed YPG militia in the Syrian city of Kobane, apparently killing one militiaman and wounding others.

ISIS-linked forces unleashed an armed attack south of the Syrian city of Palmyra, killing four people, including one woman, and wounding ten others.

And in the jihadist-occupied area of Idlib, HTS “rebels” claimed that government forces launched an unprovoked artillery attack. Damascus countered that its troops had responded to a drone attack by the Al Qaeda-linked militias.

One thing is certain, Washington has not given up on its aim of toppling the bourgeois national government of Assad and installing a puppet government subservient to US imperialist interests. It will continue to employ violence and coercion to that end.

The Biden administration views Syria not as a country urgently requiring humanitarian assistance after nearly a dozen years of war and a massive earthquake. Rather it is seen by Washington’s military and state apparatus as another battlefield in the war being waged in Ukraine against Russia, which backs Assad and operates its sole overseas naval base at the Syria’s Mediterranean port of Tartus.

After three decades of uninterrupted war in which it has reduced entire societies from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya and Syria to rubble, American imperialism is prepared to kill hundreds of thousands more, either through hunger and cold or renewed military conflict to further its drive to control the strategic energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia.

New Zealand government slashes funding for COVID response

Tom Peters

Even as thousands of people have been made homeless and at least five have died in New Zealand’s worst storm in decades, the country continues to experience a simultaneous disaster caused by the removal of all COVID-19 public health measures.

Medical staff test shoppers who volunteered at a pop-up community COVID-19 testing station at a supermarket carpark in Christchurch, New Zealand, 2022. [AP Photo/Mark Baker]

With little media coverage, the Ministry of Health reported another 32 deaths from COVID-19 last week, including two people aged in their 20s. There were 171 people in hospital with COVID on Sunday night. According to the ministry, since the pandemic began 2,513 people are confirmed to have died as a result of COVID and a further 477 are not confirmed but had COVID when they died—a total of nearly 3,000 deaths. 

Officials make the extraordinary claim that another 938 people died with COVID but the virus did not contribute to their death. If they were added to the pandemic toll, it would be 3,928.

New Zealand has recorded nearly 2.2 million COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic and 26,022 hospitalisations for the virus. The government refuses to keep track of Long COVID, but a study by Victoria University of Wellington researchers published last month concluded that 300,000 people may be suffering from the severe condition.

The vast majority of cases and all but 59 deaths from COVID occurred in 2022–2023, after the Labour Party-led government scrapped the previous elimination policy and reopened schools and businesses, with then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern echoing false claims that the Omicron variant was “mild.” Mask and vaccine mandates and social distancing measures are now all gone.

Since Ardern’s resignation in January, in response to plummeting support for Labour, the government has taken further steps to dismantle the official response to the pandemic. 

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced a cabinet reshuffle on January 31, supposedly to refocus on what he called “bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing.” One of the most significant changes was the disestablishment of the COVID-19 Response ministerial portfolio, previously held by Ayesha Verrall, who has been promoted to health minister.

This has been accompanied by drastic funding cuts. National Public Health Service director Nick Chamberlain told Newsroom on February 8 that the overall funding to support the COVID-19 response “through until 30 June 2023 will be about $540 million. This is less than a quarter of the equivalent cost in the first half of 2022, and less than half of the cost for the second half of 2022.”

The cuts include staffing reductions and the closure of vaccination centres and call centres where patients can get information. In addition, COVID-related funding for doctors’ practices has been slashed by about 70 percent. 

As of February 13, most people need to pay to visit a general practitioner within six weeks of their infection—something that was previously free. There are exemptions for high-risk groups: Māori, Pacific islanders, people with a disability or a high-risk medical condition, and people aged over 65.

The New Zealand Herald reported that “chart reviews for all cases, post-hospital discharge follow-ups and patient-initiated follow-ups within six weeks of diagnosis would no longer be funded following consultation from the primary care sector.”

The changes will have a major impact on working-class patients who are struggling with soaring costs for food, fuel and housing. Inevitably, many will be forced to choose between paying for medical care and paying their bills or feeding their families. It will become even harder for someone to be properly diagnosed with Long COVID and receive treatment.

Dr Bryan Betty, medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners expressed alarm, telling One News: “Especially for patients that have been in hospital with COVID, it is critically important that there is integration back into their general practice and GP to manage their condition and we felt quite strongly that that should be a free visit after a hospital admission.”

Due to reduced funding for rapid antigen tests (RATs), Auckland doctor Sapna Samant said she was concerned that many COVID cases could go undetected at general practices, posing greater risks for patients.

Brushing aside such concerns, Health Service spokesperson Matt Hannant told One News now was the right time for the cutbacks because “we’re in summer, we’ve got low case numbers about under 1,000 a day.”

The daily case numbers are completely unreliable. The government chose not to encourage testing for asymptomatic cases, in order to keep people at work even if they have COVID.

Hospitalisations are currently down from a peak of nearly 600 before Christmas, but the end of the school holidays earlier this month will inevitably be followed by increased transmission, hospitalisations and deaths. Masks are not required in schools and nor are air filters or other mitigation measures. The increased homelessness and overcrowding caused by Cyclone Gabrielle could also facilitate the spread of COVID. 

The dismantling of all measures to stop the spread of COVID, and ongoing cuts to related healthcare services, should give pause to anyone who believes that the government will provide ongoing assistance to people affected by the historic flooding. 

The priority of the Labour-Greens government is to slash spending and maintain ultra-low taxes for the rich and corporations. In New Zealand, as is the case in every country, the ruling class is forcing working people to pay for the worsening economic crisis through austerity measures, along with inflation, increased unemployment and by driving down wages.

Meanwhile, due to the neglect and underfunding of the public health system, the population remains vulnerable not only to COVID but to other serious diseases as well. In an alarming development, on February 13 the Health Service confirmed a case of measles, for the first time since a disastrous outbreak in 2019. 

The infected person, who had arrived from overseas, spent several days—from February 5 to 11—travelling around Auckland, Tauranga and Mount Maunganui. Measles is far more infectious than COVID-19. 

Doctors warned that in the four years since the last measles outbreak, vaccination rates have fallen to even more dangerous levels. The New Zealand Herald reported: “As of December, 82 percent of 2-year-olds were up to date with their immunisations, down from 91 per cent before the pandemic. For Māori children, the rate is just 66 per cent. Coverage of 90 to 95 per cent is needed for herd immunity.”

The 2019 measles outbreak caused 2,200 infections mostly in Auckland and Northland and spread to the impoverished Pacific country of Samoa, where the disease killed 83 children and put 1,868 in hospital.

Japan plans to downgrade COVID-19 classification

Misa Boisseau

Amid the most recent COVID-19 surge and Japan’s greatest daily number of deaths to date, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced at the end of January that the virus would be reclassified on May 8, from a Category II disease (like tuberculosis) to a Category V disease (like the seasonal flu).

Shoppers wearing face masks in Tokyo, just before New Year holidays on Friday, Dec. 30, 2022. [AP Photo/Hiro Komae]

Along with normalizing the explosive spread of a dangerous infectious disease, the reclassification of COVID-19 gives the government a legal basis for reducing services and cutting corners. “We’ll consider shifting various policies and measures in stages to bring Japan back to normalcy,” Kishida told reporters, expressing a determination to fully reopen the economy and boost production.

The policy will scrap mitigation measures for close contacts when cases surge. The same government that recently announced plans to double their military budget to 43 trillion yen ($US316 billion) will also use the reclassification to end financial assistance for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

The change also means that any hospital will now be able to accept COVID-19 patients, not just those with a special government designation. This particular mechanism is especially underhanded, as non-designated facilities do not share COVID data with the government, thereby artificially suppressing case numbers.

Ken Kobayashi, the former head of Mitsubishi Corporation and the current chairman of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), praised Kishida and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) after their announcement. Kobayashi claimed “the best economic policy” was to increase commercial activity by accepting coronavirus infection as just a part of daily life.

On February 10, the LDP leadership announced that the government will ease mask-wearing measures on March 13. The policy represents an official shift to what has long been an unofficial policy—to normalize mass infection. Japan has never mandated masks, but the existing advisories for masking in public schools and transportation will be reduced.

Despite the government’s stance, mask-wearing is heavily adhered to in Japan. On the trains during rush hour, in the grocery store, or even walking outdoors in the summer heat, residents are seldom seen without a face mask. Even after restaurants and businesses were fully reopened in 2022, Japanese residents continued to wear masks in public spaces.

However, the fact that even the most basic preventative measures like mask-wearing are now left to personal choices is indicative of that the government prioritizes profits over human lives.

In January, Japan suffered its highest number of daily COVID-related deaths since the start of the pandemic. Deaths peaked at 503 deaths on January 14, and maintained a 7-day moving average of 300 COVID-related deaths per day last month. In just over 30 days, 10,558 more people have died due to COVID-19. These grim figures were even higher than Japan’s massive surge during the summer, when 7,504 people died of COVID-related complications last August.

Japan has seen an unparalleled explosion of COVID cases due to the government’s decision to end even the most basic mitigation measures such as testing requirements and travel advisories. Two years into the pandemic, Japan had reached 2.7 million cases in February 2022. Over the course of a single year, by February 2023, Japan suffered almost 33 million confirmed cases—an increased infection rate of more than 1,000 percent.

The real figures are much higher than those reported by the Japanese Ministry of Health, as their COVID-19 data only reflect cases reported at designated medical facilities, and do not count the cases of individuals recovering at home. Those most at risk including individuals with chronic illnesses and the elderly are often not even counted in the official totals as their “preexisting conditions,” prevent their deaths from being marked as COVID-related. Deaths are also not counted if they occurred in non-designated hospitals.

According to Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), the medical care system was severely overloaded this winter. Patients in need experienced severe difficulty in sourcing emergency transportation for both COVID-related illnesses and other medical emergencies. Still recovering from previous surges, the health care system and medical workers in Japan are severely understaffed and undersupplied as hospitals struggle once again with high bed occupancy rates in prefectures such as Kanagawa (78 percent), Shiga (80 percent), Fukuoka (77 percent), and Kagoshima (78 percent).

The spread of COVID-19 is highest in the medical services industry, and among the elderly. During the mid-January peak, 828 outbreaks were reported by the government over the course of one week; 615 of these occurred at elderly welfare facilities, according to data from the Ministry of Health. In Japan, 50,997 of the total death toll of 70,923 dead over three years were 70 years-of-age or older. Under present conditions, those in the most vulnerable state of health, and those tasked with caring for them, are being effectively sacrificed to ensure profit margins.

Dr Hitoshi Oshitani, former regional advisor for the World Health Organization, observed, “In smaller prefectures and rural areas, the proportion of the elderly population is even higher than the national average. This changing geographic pattern may also contribute to the increasing trend of deaths.”

Dr Oshitani warned that the public must prepare for an even greater surge in deaths in the months ahead, especially considering the dwindling supply of affordable antiviral treatments at hospitals. This makes clear that the pandemic, contrary to official propaganda, is far from over.

As with the cessation of travel restrictions in fall 2022, increasing production and profit accumulation is the main logic in officially downgrading COVID-19’s classification. The government has accepted demands from industry leaders to end COVID-19 measures. It is a class decision to remove all protections and condemn workers and their families to severe illness in order to maximize the profits of the corporate elite.

European Union decides on massive intensification of assault on refugees

Ela Maartens

On February 9, the 27 heads of state and government of the European Union (EU) met in Brussels to decide on a massive tightening up of the common asylum and immigration policies. Another key topic was the escalation of the Ukraine war against Russia.

In contrast, the devastating earthquake disaster that had devastated the Turkey-Syria border region just two days earlier was not a topic of discussion. The EU, ostensibly founded on freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, human rights and human dignity, has no response to the devastation occurring on its periphery, which has affected some 23 million people. Hundreds of thousands have lost their loved ones, their homes and everything in the Turkish-Syrian border region. But European governments stubbornly stick to their murderous deportation routine.

Refugees at the Greek-North Macedonian border (2016) [Photo by Tim Lüddemann / flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

The following points were decided at the EU refugee summit:

• A further enhancement of the EU border agency Frontex to seal off “Fortress Europe” even more
• Mass deportations of refugees without a permanent right to remain
• Close cooperation with authoritarian regimes in the countries of origin

At the press conference after the special summit, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen clarified the plans for the EU’s asylum and immigration policy. She explained that the EU’s external borders must be strengthened, and irregular migration prevented through “border management.” An “integrated package of mobile and stationary infrastructures” is to be provided for this purpose. Its content, which is to range “from vehicles to cameras, from watchtowers to electronic surveillance,” would impress any fascist ruler.

The summit’s conclusions on immigration say the EU will strengthen its measures “to prevent irregular departures and loss of life, reduce pressure on EU borders and reception capacities, combat smugglers and ensure more returns.” With countries of origin and transit, the EU wants to strengthen “mutually beneficial partnerships.”

Behind the EU’s Orwellian terminology are dirty deals with authoritarian regimes and smuggling gangs to prevent people from leaving their home countries, rather than dying first in European waters. To prevent people from entering the Schengen area, Frontex checks are to be tightened and illegal pushbacks expanded. The EU also wants to expand mass deportations from its countries and make them even more brutal.

“Adequate resources” are to cover “all migration routes” and thus block any escape route from hunger, war and suffering. To this end, financial resources had already been pooled in 2021 through the EU’s Neighbourhood, Development Cooperation and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI–Global Europe). A total of €79.5 billion is available through the NDICI until 2027.

To ensure the “improvement” of mass deportations from the EU to third countries, the European Council emphasizes the use of “diplomacy, development, trade and visas.” Behind this are measures to put political pressure and economic blackmail on the governing powers in the countries of origin to make them compliant to the dictates of the EU. Those who suffer are the workers and poor of their respective countries.

The concept of so-called safe countries of origin is also to be used more intensively so as to be able to “legally” reject and deport even more asylum applications.

EU leaders want to control their external land and sea borders even more comprehensively. To this end, they are planning “full support for the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex).” The latter is to receive massive financial support from member states to ensure the “development of border management capacity and infrastructure, means for surveillance, including air surveillance, and equipment.” In other words, Frontex is to be armed to the teeth to seal off Fortress Europe.

In addition, there are apparently plans to give Frontex mandates that extend beyond the EU and its external borders. The summit announced negotiations on “new and revised status agreements between the European Union and third countries on the deployment of Frontex.”

The conclusions also speak of the “specificities of maritime borders” in terms of “the protection of human lives,” indirectly confirming that countless people have already drowned miserably off its borders as they flee to a supposedly better future. According to the International Organization for Migration (IMO), more than 25,000 refugees have drowned or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014—the number of unreported cases is likely far higher.

A look back at the 2022 refugee numbers in the EU

One pretext for the special summit was the increased number of asylum seekers in 2022 in the EU, reportedly up by a dramatic 46 percent compared to the previous year. In total, according to figures presented by von der Leyen at the summit, 924,000 people had applied for asylum. Compared to the population of the European Union (447 million), that’s just 0.2 percent. This does not include the more than 4 million Ukrainian war refugees who have come since the Ukraine war.

The EU is using the figures for a targeted propaganda campaign. According to Mediendienst Integration, an information platform of the Council for Migration e.V., the number of refugees in Europe in 2022 has indeed increased compared to the previous year. However, these are predominantly people who have fled the war in Ukraine. Since February 2022, some 8.05 million Ukrainian refugees have been registered (as of February 2023).

Based on the EU’s so-called mass influx directive, 4.8 million Ukrainians received temporary protection status. Ukrainian war refugees are largely not included in official EU statistics under this measure. Ukrainian nationals are also automatically granted humanitarian residence permits in EU member states, giving them access to education, employment, social benefits and medical care.

At the same time, according to Mediendienst Integration, in the period from February to October 2022, around 111,000 refugees arrived in Europe via the main Mediterranean escape routes. It goes on to say that in the first half of 2022, a total of just over 400,000 people applied for asylum in the EU (excluding refugees from Ukraine). This is about 63 percent more than in the same period in 2021.

The reason for this is that due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated travel restrictions, the number of asylum applications had fallen sharply in the previous two years, 2020 and 2021. Especially in comparison with the figures for 2015, when numerous refugees from war-torn countries poured into Europe, the absolute numbers are still comparatively low.

The European ruling class is running its propaganda machine at full speed in this regard: Allegedly, the number of irregular border crossings has reached an all-time high since 2016. Frontex reports that there were around 230,000 such border crossings in the first nine months of 2022 alone. However, in the fine print, Frontex notes that all “attempted border crossings” are counted, resulting in multiple counts.

The pitiless measures against refugees that the EU heads want to push through with their special summit in Brussels are an expression of a sharp turn to the right by all European governments.

Sweden holds the presidency of the European Council until June 2023. The country is dominated by a coalition of three right-wing parties: the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. The Sweden Democrats, a far-right party with neo-fascist roots, are currently the second-largest faction in the Swedish parliament; it was only with their help that Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (Moderate) was elected to office in September 2022. Since then, the Swedish government’s policies have been characterized by harsh attacks on refugees. For example, there are calls for “asylum transit zones,” or reception centres for asylum seekers.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni from the openly far-right Fratelli d’Italia governs in Rome together with the right-wing parties Lega and Forza Italia. One of the Meloni government’s first decisions was to make sea rescues in the Mediterranean more difficult. This involves, for example, forcing ships belonging to non-governmental organizations with refugees on board to divert to ports in the north such as Ancona or Ravenna, Ravenna being closer to Germany than to Sicily. Ahead of the special summit, Meloni had called for the EU to “intervene in the defence of the external borders.”

In Austria, Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) had called for an EU “rejection directive” shortly before the special summit. According to this, people with no prospect of asylum should be able to be deported while still at the border. Nehammer’s idea means legitimizing illegal pushbacks. In Vienna, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said the demand was a “blatant violation of refugee law.”

Nehammer also spoke out in favour of expanding border fences and called for additional border guards, saying any fence was only as good “as it is monitored.” Hungary, Poland and Greece also spoke out in favour of border fences financed by European funds. In the meantime, 2,000 kilometres of border fencing has been built at the EU’s external borders. Ten years ago, the figure was 300 kilometres.

Other EU member states are also increasingly implementing far-right policies. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democrat, SPD) rolled out the red carpet for fascist Meloni in early February and is implementing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) refugee policy in his coalition with the Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens. At the EU summit, Scholz explained that on the one hand, immigration was necessary to combat the shortage of skilled workers, but on the other hand, it was necessary to ensure that people without the right to stay were deported. His government was working on this, he said.

The European Council summit ended with the typical EU “agreement to disagree” on the implementation of the measures decided. But at least on one point, the 27 EU heads did agree: they will drastically tighten measures against refugees—whether in combination or at the national level. The only exception will be if they can exploit the victims of hunger, suffering and war for their own economic and war policies.

Turkey-Syria earthquake death toll tops 41,000: A colossal social crime

Ulaş Ateşçi

The devastating consequences of the 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes that struck on the Turkey-Syria border on Monday, February 6 continues to worsen. Yesterday, the official death toll in Turkey rose by nearly 4,000 to 35,418, while the death toll in Syria exceeded 5,800. More than 8,000 people have so far been rescued in Turkey, but it is still unknown how many people remain under the rubble in both countries.

Six days after an earthquake, people line up for water in Kahramanmaras, Turkey on February 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Emrah Gurel]

Thousands of those who died were children. UNICEF estimates that more than 7 million children were affected. In its report yesterday, UNICEF said: “While the total number of children affected remains unclear, 4.6 million children live in the 10 provinces of Turkey hit by the earthquakes, and more than 2.5 million children are affected in Syria.”

“We are witnessing the worst natural disaster in the WHO [World Health Organization] European region for a century, and we are still learning about its magnitude,” Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said yesterday. He added, “The needs are huge and increasing by the hour. Some 26 million people across both countries need humanitarian assistance.”

Scientists and experts agree that the February 6 earthquakes, which caused devastation across hundreds of kilometres, were historic. However, this does not mean that the devastating consequences of the earthquakes were not foreseen or could not have been prevented. On the contrary, for years, geologists and other scientists, both in Turkey and internationally, have been drawing attention to the danger of earthquakes in the region and calling for the necessary safety measures to be taken quickly.

However, no safety measures were taken by the state. Moreover, in 2018, the government, with the complicity of the opposition parties in parliament, granted a “construction amnesty” to around 75,000 buildings in the earthquake zone that did not comply with building codes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government is working deliberately to cover up its obvious responsibility for this social catastrophe. Erdoğan, who spoke of “fate” immediately after the earthquake, claiming that “it is not possible to be prepared for such a major catastrophe,” now speaks of the “disaster of the century,” calling it an “exceptional natural event” in every speech.

But Erdogan’s own statement yesterday after his cabinet meeting points to the criminality of his government. He tried to create a “success story” out of a disaster that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and devastated millions, stating: “The fact that 98 percent of all buildings collapsed in the recent disaster were built before 1999 shows the progress we have made in building standards and inspections, but also reminds us that we need to tighten our grip.”

In the region, where scientists warned that a major earthquake was imminent, especially after the nearby Elazığ earthquake in 2020, many cities were built on fault lines, and many buildings were found to be unsafe by Turkish officials. Despite experts’ warnings, city plans were not changed, nor were buildings made earthquake-resistant. Millions of people were instead left to their fate. The main reason for this was that such a long-term investment, requiring extensive state expenditure, was not considered profitable.

The extent of the destruction in Turkey’s 10 provinces was evident even in the incomplete report Erdoğan released yesterday. Analyzing 369,000 buildings in the region, it found that 47,000 were collapsed, in urgent need of demolition, or heavily damaged.

“We will relieve the pain, heal the wounds and compensate the losses of this disaster together, without ever falling into frustration, weariness, fatigue or despair,” Erdoğan said, as if the loss of 35,000 lives could be compensated. He announced that new buildings would be built for earthquake victims “away from the fault lines within a few months.” Had this step been taken in 2020 or before, based on the warnings and guidance of scientists, tens of thousands of people would still be alive.

Erdoğan’s statements yesterday were marked by staggering indifference to those who died in the quake, as well as by announcements of social expenditures to appease social anger. He said that 100,000 Turkish liras (TL), or US$5,310, of “cash aid” would go to those who lost relatives in the earthquake. He claimed that Turkish banks would transfer 50 billion TL (US$2.65 billion) of their 2022 profits to earthquake relief efforts. The sector’s total net profit in 2022 was 433 billion TL (US$23 billion).

Erdoğan also announced that members of his cabinet had donated a total of 136 million TL (US$7.22 million) to earthquake victims. That such a sum can be collected from a 19-person cabinet reveals the huge social inequality in Turkey, where the monthly minimum wage is only 8,500 TL (US$450).

However, if the Erdoğan government and financial oligarchy felt obliged to make a social concession, however small, it is because they fear the massive social anger they face. At the same time, they are whipping up fascistic campaigns to try to divert this social anger against Syrian refugees.

But millions of people who have lost loved ones due to the lack of public health measures in the COVID-19 pandemic, and who are struggling with the surging cost of living, are outraged at those responsible for an entirely preventable disaster. People are furious both that millions of people had to live in buildings fated to collapse in a big quake, and that those under the rubble after the quake were abandoned to their fate.

In Adıyaman, where thousands lost their lives in the earthquake, a health worker went on the Habertürk TV live broadcast yesterday. Expressing the anger of millions, she said: “Adıyaman was left alone for three days. We had to close our ears to people’s screams [under the rubble] because there was no help [to rescue them]. People died of hunger and cold. Let the President come to Adıyaman, does he have a face to come here? … Children died. Is this a disaster management?” And at the end, she made a call: “Wake up Turkey!”

Amid the massive destruction and loss of life, the political establishment has begun to focus on the presidential and parliamentary elections, previously scheduled for May this year. Some in Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) have called to postpone the elections because of the earthquake. According to the constitution, however, elections can only be postponed in a “state of war.”

The bourgeois opposition parties rapidly rejected the proposal to postpone the elections. Even before the quake, Erdoğan had suffered a significant loss of support amid the deepening economic and social crisis.

Although it is unclear when the elections will be held, one thing is certain: Neither the People’s Alliance led by Erdoğan nor the Nation Alliance of the bourgeois opposition parties can safeguard the lives and safety of the people against earthquakes. Both alliances are defenders of the capitalist system that is the main source of this social slaughter.

South Korean opposition leader under investigation

Ben McGrath

The leader of South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DP) is under investigation on corruption-related charges as well as claims that he is connected to the transfer of a large sum of money to North Korea in 2019. These charges are not simply about corruption but point to the growing social tensions in South Korea as the government targets opposition political figures.

Lee Jae-Myung on 28 April, 2021 [Photo by Gyeonggi-do Provincial Office]

DP leader Lee Jae-myung was questioned by prosecutors for more than eleven hours last Friday. It was the third time he has been questioned this year in connection to corruption allegations.. The allegations stem from his time as mayor of Seongnam (2010-2018), a city in Gyeonggi Province just south of Seoul, and during his tenure as Gyeonggi Province governor (2018-2021). Lee was elected to the National Assembly last June and became DP leader in August, following his failed presidential bid.

Lee is accused of receiving bribes while Seongnam mayor from six major companies including Doosan Engineering and Construction. As much as 16 billion won ($US12.6 million) was funneled to Lee through the city’s municipal soccer team between 2016 and 2018.

Lee is also accused of involvement in a major land development scandal centering around Hwacheon Daeyu, a small asset management company. According to prosecutors, the company and other property developers were able to rake in 809 billion won ($US635 million) in profits for apartment complexes in Seongnam’s Wirye New Town and Daejang-dong districts, projects which began in 2013 and 2015 respectively.

Lee has claimed innocence regarding all the allegations, saying on Friday that the administration of right-wing President Yoon Suk-yeol was attempting to “kill a political enemy by fully mobilizing political prosecutors.” He continued, “As a pawn of the regime, the prosecution is making up a nonexistent case.”

Members of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) have called for Lee’s arrest, which would have to be approved by the National Assembly, as sitting lawmakers cannot be arrested while the legislature is in session. The Democrats still control 167 seats out of 300, making Lee’s arrest unlikely.

However, the most serious allegations against Lee include claims that he was involved in the transfer of $US8 million to North Korea in 2019. At the end of January, anonymous prosecution sources leaked to the media that Kim Seong-tae, the former chairman of textile company Ssangbangwool Group, had transferred the money on Lee’s behalf.

Kim was arrested on January 10 in Thailand after eight months on the loose in connection to sending the funds to the North and other corruption allegations. Supposedly, $US5 million dollars was to be spent on North Korea’s smart farm project and an additional $US3 million to help pave the way for a potential trip to the North by Lee Jae-myung.

Prosecutors are also planning today to question Lee Hwa-yeong, former vice-governor of Gyeonggi Province under Lee. He is suspected of involvement in Kim’s alleged transfer of money to the North.

The allegations against Lee Jae-myung reportedly include a phone call in which he thanked Kim for transferring the funds. Kim claims the phone call took place in January 2019 while he was in China attending a dinner whose guests included Lee Hwa-yeong and a North Korean official at the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee. The organization handles inter-Korean affairs for Pyongyang. Lee Jae-myung has stated that the phone call did not occur and that he was in a court at the time it supposedly took place.

Whether or not true, there is far more to this case than just the allegations against Lee Jae-myung. Like sex scandals in the West, corruption cases in South Korea are used to settle political scores. Backroom deals, preferential treatment and illegal payoffs have been part of doing business in South Korea for decades.

The Democratic Party has served as a safety valve for the opposition of the working class. In the past, it postured as an alternative to South Korea’s three-decade-long military dictatorship. Today, it claims to be a more worker-friendly party in contrast to the right-wing PPP, which still maintains close ties to the military.

Under conditions of economic and social crisis, however, the ruling class is turning back to its old autocratic methods of rule, making clear that the framework of the police state still exists despite so-called “democratization” in the 1980s and 1990s.

South Korea’s economy has been hard hit by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the United States-instigated war against Russia in Ukraine. The economy is expected to grow only 1.6 percent this year compared to 2.6 percent growth in 2022. The government also predicts a 4.5 percent on-year drop in exports while inflation grew to 5.1 percent last year.

At the same time, Seoul, with the support of the PPP and the Democrats, is actively preparing for war with China, in alliance with US and Japanese imperialism. This includes poisoning public opinion towards the world’s second largest economy while whipping up fear over the supposed North Korean “threat.”

Workers, however, have not passively accepted the attacks on their economic and social conditions, striking or threatening to go on strike last year in numerous industries. The sixteen-day strike by truck drivers in November and December demonstrated the power that workers have and the fear the bourgeoisie has of the working class. The unions, however, orchestrated a sellout of the truck drivers’ strike in December, which has only emboldened the Yoon administration.

When President Yoon came to office in May, he openly pledged to suppress the working class. Yoon took over for the previous administration of Democrat Moon Jae-in, who was elected in 2017 to put forward a phony progressive alternative following mass protests against the right-wing Park Geun-hye government.

While targeting Lee, the government is making clear that any opposition to the policies of austerity and big business, demanded by the looming economic crisis and war drive, will be met with police repression.

Widespread destruction from New Zealand’s worst storm in decades

Tom Peters

The New Zealand government declared a national state of emergency yesterday morning after the top of the North Island, the most populated part of the country, was hit by devastating wind and rain from ex-Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle on Monday.

Migrant workers from Tonga, forced onto the roofs of their flooded accommodation in Hastings [Photo: Lie Tu'imoala]

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins told a press conference yesterday it was “the most significant weather event New Zealand has seen in this century. The severity and the damage that we are seeing has not been experienced in a generation.”

At least 10,500 people have been forced to flee their homes, with 3,000 sheltering in evacuation centres. About 144,000 properties remain without power, down from 225,000 yesterday, after lines were damaged on a scale not seen since Cyclone Bola in 1988.

The cyclone has affected Auckland, a city of 1.6 million people, and several other towns including Whangarei, Tauranga, Napier, Hastings, Gisborne and surrounding areas, including many remote towns and a large amount of farmland. The impact has been made worse by flooding in Auckland and surrounding areas in late January, which displaced about 1,800 households.

Four people have died: in the rural village of Putorino a woman died when a landslide fell on her house; in Napier, a body was found washed up on the beach; Dave van Zwanenberg, a volunteer firefighter from Muriwai, west of Auckland, died after a house collapsed. A young child was found dead in Eskdale, Hawke’s Bay, this afternoon.

Bridges have been swept away and land slips have blocked major roads across the North Island. Tens of thousands of people in Gisborne, the Coromandel Peninsula, the Hawke’s Bay and coastal communities west of Auckland including Piha, Muriwai and Karekare, were all cut off yesterday.

Thousands of people in Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne, Waikato, Coromandel, Northland and elsewhere were without power this morning. Phone and internet services have been cut off or severely disrupted. Drinking water supplies to Gisborne, Napier and Wairoa are also damaged.

Gisborne mayor Mayor Rehette Stoltz told Stuff that the city of nearly 40,000 people is “in a water crisis, and we are having real difficulty getting word out about this. It will take months to fix this.”

Cyclone Gabrielle was known to be approaching New Zealand on February 9, four days before it hit, but many communities were clearly not properly prepared. Asked what people in isolated areas should do, Hipkins told reporters yesterday: “Make sure you’re looking after each other, pool resources where you can with your friends and neighbours.”

Thousands of volunteers have been distributing supplies and helping with evacuations of flooded properties.

The Defence Force has also been mobilised under the state of emergency. For the military, such disasters serve as training exercises to prepare for war abroad and confrontations with the working class at home.

Flooding in the town of Wairoa, which was completely cut off and lost power and communications. [Photo: HB Civil Defence Emergency Management Group]

Under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act, a state of emergency empowers the government to deploy police and soldiers to enforce evacuations, coordinate supplies and medical care, enter properties, requisition equipment, materials and assistance, and restrict access to roads and public places. The government can issue any other “guidelines, codes, or technical standards” deemed necessary to address the emergency, overriding other legislation.

Hipkins falsely said it was the third national state of emergency in New Zealand’s history. In fact it is the fourth: the first, which he did not mention, was declared by prime minister Sid Holland on February 21, 1951 during the waterfront dispute. It empowered soldiers to be deployed to replace locked out and striking workers.

The government website New Zealand History notes: “Draconian emergency regulations imposed rigid censorship, gave police sweeping powers of search and arrest and made it an offence for citizens to assist strikers—even giving food to their children was outlawed.”

A state of emergency was also declared following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and in 2020 during the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Economists estimate the cost to the economy from the disaster will be in the tens of billions of dollars. There have been suggestions that it could rival the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquakes, which had a rebuild cost of about $40 billion and left tens of thousands of homes uninhabitable.

The New Zealand Herald reported yesterday that one insurance company was getting “one claim per minute.” This is in addition to what the Insurance Council estimates are 40,000 claims from the earlier Auckland floods.

Damage to food crops, farms and supply chains is expected to further push up food prices, which have already soared by 10.3 percent in the past year while fruit and vegetable prices increased by 15.7 percent—far outstripping the 4.1 percent increase in wages in 2022.

The flooding will greatly exacerbate the country’s housing crisis. Already more than 100,000 people (2 percent of the population) are either homeless or living in rundown or unsafe housing.

The disaster comes at a time when the ruling elite is ruthlessly imposing the full burden of the global economic crisis onto the working class. The Reserve Bank is increasing interest rates to push up unemployment in order to keep wages down.

The Labour Party-led government, which includes the Greens, is imposing austerity measures, starving healthcare and other essential services. Hipkins told Radio NZ earlier this month that “[government] expenditure is actually going to track downwards for the next few years.”

According to Newsroom, funding for the health system “to fight COVID-19 in the first half of 2023 is less than half of what it had been in the second half of 2022.” This is based on false claims by the government that the pandemic is over. Thanks to Labour’s removal of public health measures, dozens of people are dying and hundreds are being hospitalised every week from the coronavirus.

The floods, like the Christchurch earthquake, are already being used as a pretext for more cuts and privatisations.

Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has reversed planned cuts for storm water management and announced an additional $20 million a year for prevention and mitigation of severe weather events. In a press statement, however, Brown declared that the council still had to address an “operating budget gap of $295 million.” He also declared that the flooding “highlights the need to think very seriously about selling underperforming assets.”

It is widely acknowledged that the recent extreme weather—two so-called “one in a hundred year” storms in the space of a fortnight—is due to climate change.

In response to popular anger about the lack of action to stop global warming, minister for climate change and Green Party co-leader James Shaw told parliament he was also “angry” about “the lost decades that we spent bickering and arguing about whether climate change was real or not, whether it was caused by humans or not, whether it was bad or not, whether we should do something about it or not, because it is clearly here now, and if we do not act, it will get worse.”

The Greens, however, uphold the very capitalist system that is responsible for catastrophic climate change. During the 2021 nationwide climate strike by school students, Shaw praised the “chief executives of some of our largest companies” who he falsely claimed were acting to address climate change.