US-backed Boluarte regime continues repression as protests spread across north of Peru

Andrea Lobo

For the 10th consecutive week, the wave of mass demonstrations and roadblocks across Peru has continued defying the brutal repression by the US-backed coup regime headed by Dina Boluarte.

Protest in Lima, banner reads "Stop the Massacre! Dina Murderer Resign" [Photo by Candy Sotomayor / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The “paros,” or “strikes,” consisting of roadblocks on key highways, sporadic marches in town centers and partial stoppages by small business owners, service and agricultural workers, remain concentrated in the impoverished and predominantly indigenous southern departments of Cuzco and Puno. There have also been smaller, daily demonstrations in the capital Lima and other cities.

Outside of frequent roadblocks in La Libertad, the north of the country had remained largely absent from the protests until this week. On Monday, peasant rondas (autonomous peasant patrols) set up major roadblocks across the northern department of Piura, which is country’s main oil producer and has many important mines.

This was followed by the launching on Friday of four days of paros demanding Boluarte’s resignation, which was announced by leaders of rondas and local “defense committees” from across the coastal, Andean and Amazonia “macro northern region,” including in Piura, La Libertad, Tumbes, Lambayeque, Áncash, Cajamarca, San Martín and Amazonas.

The highways connecting the capital Lima with northern Peru as well as those connecting the ports with the mining and agricultural regions in the north witnessed numerous roadblocks on Friday, which are already being attacked by the police and military.

Even before these latest developments, the Financial Times stressed last Sunday that a third of Peru’s copper output, 11 percent of the world’s total, is at risk, which could become “another driver of higher copper prices as China reopens its economy.” Credit ratings and growth forecasts have also been impacted.

On Tuesday, acting on behalf of the mining corporations and the Peruvian oligarchy, the Boluarte regime renewed for another month the national state of emergency, which has provided the framework to massacre nearly 60 demonstrators, terrorize the population, suspend democratic rights and deploy the military.

The regime has justified the repression with the claim that the demonstrations are being organized and financed by criminal groups and “terrorists.” General José Zavala, the head of the police anti-terrorism unit DIRCOTE, has become the face of this propaganda. Seeking to portray all opposition to social inequality as the work of “terrorists,” he stated in a recent interview: “Exactly in those places that work as hotbeds, they come and begin pointing to social differences and giving their message of hate, where they work on people’s minds.”

The renewed onslaught follows the visit by Boluarte’s Foreign Minister, Ana Cecilia Gervasi, to Washington, where the Biden administration explicitly reaffirmed support for the regime’s efforts to restore “stability.”

Having received a blank check from US imperialism, Gervasi felt emboldened enough to tell The New York Times in an interview published February 2 that “we don’t have any evidence” that the protests are backed by criminal groups. “I am sure that we will have that evidence very soon,” she added.

The regime’s widespread violations of democratic and human rights are sanctioned and aided by both US and European imperialism. Boluarte herself was installed in a parliamentary coup on December 7 involving the impeachment and arrest of President Pedro Castillo that was backed by Washington and the European Union.

The United States has continued providing security aid—about $40 million yearly, according to the Washington Office on Latin America— and Amnesty International documented this week that Spanish anti-riot gear exported with the approval of the PSOE-Podemos government is being employed in the repression.

Moreover, official documents of the Peruvian Police were leaked showing that Brazil’s Workers Party government of President Lula da Silva, who quickly endorsed the coup last year, authorized the sale of 28,960 tear gas canisters by the Brazilian company Condor to the Boluarte regime and the arrival on January 14 of a Peruvian Air Force plane to pick up the munitions.

The support to Boluarte from US and European imperialism, as well as the Brazilian government, explodes their claims of defending democratic and human rights.

Congress and the Boluarte regime are defended as the legitimate institutions in Peru. But about three-fourths of the population want the resignation of both Congress and Boluarte and the holding of new elections, according to several polls. In response, Boluarte has refused to resign, which would legally compel the congressional president to call elections, and Congress has repeatedly voted against new elections.

After a visit to Peru, the Argentine Mission for International Solidarity and Human Rights concluded that the “systematic and widespread” character of the extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, sexual abuse, torture, judicial harassment, and threats by the regime fall within the definition of “crimes against humanity” according to international law.

In a press conference, Marianela Navarro of the mission described her visit to Juliaca, where the security forces killed 19 demonstrators and left at least 60 more injured from live rounds on January 9. “We can indicate that there was an existing plan and intention to kill,” she said. “Many victims had gunshot wounds in the back. The state has massacred impoverished peoples. Indigenous women and peasants cried as they told us: ‘500 years of discrimination and oppression and they butcher us like animals.’”

The mission also visited Ayacucho, where the military marched in formation and employed their rifles to mow down protesters on December 15. While officials claim that the massacre was meant merely to drive protesters out of the local airport, investigative journalists of IDL-Reporteros and prosecutors found that demonstrators were followed after leaving the airport and killed in a systematic manner. They confirmed that nine out of the ten demonstrators killed had been shot with munitions from rifles used by the military.

The repression has been so brutal that the Prosecutor’s Office felt compelled to approve an investigation against Boluarte and her prime minister Alberto Otárola over “genocide.” In response, Otárola absurdly claimed on Friday that “the one politically responsible for the uprising and deaths” was ex-president Castillo. Similarly, Congress voted to recommend the prosecution of Castillo for disturbing “public tranquility” and leading a criminal organization, while the Avanza País party of congressional president José Williams asked Boluarte to approve an amnesty for the police and military.

Malaysian workers face intensifying economic and social crisis

Kurt Brown

Like the rest of the world, Malaysia’s workers and poor are confronting record levels of inflation. In the political establishment and media, concerns are being raised about the “B40”—the bottom 40 percent of households in terms of income—and the potential for social unrest.

For working people, inflation, food inflation in particular, has compounded longstanding social problems such as poor wages and unaffordable housing.

Demonstrators in Kuala Lumpur demand Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin resign, July 31, 2021. [AP Photo/FL Wong]

In its January 19 policy statement, Malaysia’s central bank, Bank Negara, noted that inflation for the period January to November 2022 has hit 3.4 percent and would continue at approximately 3.0 percent throughout 2023. This is substantially higher than the annual pre-pandemic inflation rate of about 1.5 percent.

The poorest sections of the population have been hard hit by food inflation. At the beginning of 2022, food inflation in Malaysia was under 4 percent but rose sharply over the year to reach 7 percent in November. Some food items increased as much as 40 percent.

The largest contributor to food inflation has been the US/NATO war in Ukraine against Russia. Food inflation spiked with the commencement of the war due to huge increases in the prices of fertiliser, grain and other foods sourced from Ukraine and Russia.

A Malaysian sub-reddit entitled “Serious inflation is happening” has numerous recent comments on the matter of inflation and especially food prices.

The comments reflect a growing desperation. “If I earn RM2,200 per month [$US510] and spend a total of RM800 in rent and utilities, I am left with RM1400, divide that by 30 and I can only spend a maximum of ~RM46 per day if I want to survive. I can still save, but if an emergency happens or if I get sick then I’m done for.…”

In May 2022, the monthly minimum wage was raised from RM1,200 to RM1,500. This is still very far removed from the living wage of RM2,600 recommended by Bank Negara in 2018, before prices soared.

Another reddit comment declared: “Cutting down things that are not a necessity might be a way to go but not a long term solution. Sooner or later we will arrive at a point where nothing can be cut down anymore but the wages is not enough to sustain a basic lifestyle and that’s gonna be a big trouble.”

Soaring food prices have already hit school canteens nationally. In early January, a substantial number of school canteen operators, who sell school lunches at a fixed rate as specified in their contract, are shutting their operations due to the high cost of raw ingredients.

Siti Normah Mohd Desa of the Malaysian School Canteen Operators Association noted that more than 40 percent of the association’s 10,200 nationwide operators had been forced to close. Siti Normah noted that “a kilo of chicken was RM8.50 last week, and now it has increased by another RM2.80 to RM11.30,” an increase of 33 percent. The price hike is substantially due to the increased cost of chicken feed.

Siti Normah stated: “We are serving schoolchildren who mostly can’t afford expensive meals,” adding that “pocket money of RM4 is [only] enough for fried rice with a fried egg and a glass of water.”

Academy of Sciences Malaysia fellow Dr Madeline Berma pointed out that low income B40 families spend more than 40 percent of their income on food. By contrast, households in the top 20 percent spend only about 15 percent on food.

In mid-2022, Forbes noted that Malaysia’s wealthiest 50 people suffered a 10 percent decline in their assets. But this wealth, derived from the exploitation of Malaysian workers and the environment in areas such as petroleum, palm oil, manufacturing, property, banking and minerals, still stood at more than $US80.5 billion.

Households in the B40 category earn less than approximately RM4,800 ($US 1,100) per month and, aside from food, spend a large part of their income on rent, utilities, transport, child care and schooling. Most families in this group, along with large numbers of the middle class, face hardship in various forms.

A 28-year-old street food vendor identified as Marlia said she is helping her husband, a truck driver, pay off money he borrowed from a loan shark in 2020. “I don’t blame my husband for taking out a loan to cover our five months’ unpaid rent after he was laid off because if he hadn’t done so, we would have been homeless,” said the mother of two.

A private sector employee, Afiq, remarked “if the government can provide special childcare centres and pre-schools for the low- and middle-income groups, it will really help reduce their financial burden.”

There are only a limited number of subsidised and government run childcare centres that are more affordable when compared with private centres. With three children, Muhammad noted that more than RM1,000 per month per child was required for kindergarten fees, nanny wages and school supplies.

The workers and the poor are also being hit by the rapid increase in Bank Negara’s official cash rate between May and November 2022. The cash rate increased from a record low of 1.75 percent to 2.75 percent over this period, prompting increases in bank lending rates.

The bank, however, is under pressure to increase interest rates even further in step with US Federal Reserve rates, in order to attract investment, minimise capital outflows and prevent a fall in Malaysia’s currency, the ringgit.

Despite Bank Negara’s actions, the ringgit fell by 5 percent in 2022 and is expected to fall by a further 4 percent at the start of 2023. These falls further fuel inflation by raising the price of imported goods.

The newly installed government of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has maintained some price subsidies. Food, fuel, electricity and other subsidies totaled RM77.7 billion in 2022 or about 27 percent of projected federal government revenue.

However, there is significant nervousness within ruling circles about the sustainability of these subsidies, not least by Anwar himself who is also finance minister. On January 17, Anwar warned that government debt and liabilities had reached RM1.5 trillion ($US346 billion) and repeated his call for these to be reduced.

Malaysia’s former second finance minister, Johari Ghani, referenced the high level of government debt and warned about the parallels with Sri Lanka. In 2022 the Sri Lankan government defaulted on its debt obligations, with workers and the poor now suffering crushing austerity demanded by international finance capital.

In December 2022, shortly after becoming prime minister, Anwar indicated that electricity price subsidies would continue. Pointedly, however, Anwar noted that this would “impact the country’s finances by some RM30 billion,” suggesting that at some future point the subsidies will be unaffordable and have to abolished.

Those in the poorest 40 percent of society are being squeezed economically on all sides—a situation that will fuel social unrest in Malaysia, as it is doing internationally.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs forms far-right “stormtrooper” brigades

Jason Melanovski

The Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs has announced plans to form “offensive guard” assault brigades, or what it is calling “stormtroopers,” that will be tasked with the “liberation of Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea” in a planned offensive this coming spring.

The brigades, which were initiated by the former Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrskyi prior to his death in a helicopter crash in January, will be organized on an “ideological” basis, according to an adviser within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rostyslav Smirnov. The infamous neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has undergone several reorganizations within the Ukrainian military already, will be among the brigade’s volunteers who can be chosen from. 

According to Smirnov, the brigades will be organized as follows:

• “Steel Border” (brigade of the State Border Service of Ukraine);
• “Kara-Dag” (“punishment for Crimea” is meant to play a central role in an offensive aimed at “retaking” Crimea);
• “Red viburnum” (the brigade includes fighters who already participated in the battles in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, and the defense of Kiev);
• “Liut” (a brigade of the National Police of Ukraine);
• “Rubizh” (frontier will consist of soldiers who defended the Hostomel airport near Kiev at the beginning of the war);
• “Spartan” (an assault brigade which was involved in the defense of Kharkiv);
• “Bureviy” (described as a “disposal brigade of the Russian military” by Smirnov);
• “Azov” (the notorious neo-fascist battalion, which is described on the webpage of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry as a “legendary unit” that “heroically” defended Azovstal’ in Mariupol )

In addition to incorporating the remnants of Azov, an openly neo-Nazi paramilitary organization, into the newly created brigades, the right-wing Ukrainian government has designated the newly created brigades as “stormtroopers” or “storm brigades,” terms that were first used by the German army in World War I. Later, the term was associated with the Nazi Party’s own paramilitary formation, the Sturmabteilung (storm detachment), or SA.

The webpage of the “stormtroopers,” where people can click on the separate brigades and submit forms to volunteer. (Screenshot) [Photo: WSWS]

The use of the term “stormtrooper” is by no means accidental, as both the Azov Regiment and the Ukrainian military leadership have made no secret about their fascination with Nazi Germany and their Ukrainian collaborators in the Holocaust. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, is regularly photographed with OUN memorabilia and portraits of the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Andriy Biletsky, the founder and former head of Azov, stated in 2010 that he believed the “national purpose” was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”

Azov Battalion soldiers with Nazi flag. [Photo by Heltsumani / CC BY-SA 4.0]

As Smirnov’s post makes clear, the Ukrainian government is in dire need of such “ideological” volunteers, who are prepared to die in the NATO-backed effort by Ukraine to retake Russian-held territories. In exchange, these “volunteers,” the majority of whom will inevitably be drawn from far-right and lumpen elements, will be given significant social privileges and the opportunity to serve in a “unit that corresponds to your values and ideology” rather than the regular army.

This past Saturday, the National Guard of Ukraine announced it has received more than 20,000 applications by people who want to become part of the assault brigades.

Earlier in February, the Ukrainian press had reported that Azov, which as a paramilitary had always fallen under the jurisdiction of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, was moving to become a formal part of the Army under the Defense Ministry. This was later corrected with Azov itself declaring that the organization remains part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and becomes part of the new “storm brigades.”

It is unclear exactly why the Ukrainian media reported that Azov was moving to the Defense Ministry. However, the announcement of the formation of these new “stormtroopers” under the Ministry of Internal Affairs is clearly bound up with the war’s escalation by NATO which has been accompanied by corruption scandals and a political crisis of the Ukrainian government.

In January, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov was implicated in a procurement scandal, after reports emerged that the Defense Ministry signed a contract to purchase food for the military at inflated prices two to three times higher than store prices.

Reznikov attributed those prices to a “technical mistake” and remained in his position. His deputy, Viacheslav Shapovalov, however, did not escape the scandal and supposedly tendered his resignation. Later in early February it was widely reported that Reznikov would finally be replaced with Kyrylo Budanov, who was named Ukraine’s Head of Defense Intelligence by President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2020.

However, last week, France24 reported that Reznikov would remain in his position as there was not enough support within Zelensky’s Servant of the People political party to replace him. Reznikov’s close ties with Western governments undoubtedly played a role in him holding onto his position as Ukraine prepares its spring offensive with newly acquired missiles and tanks sent from the United States and NATO.

By forming its own “stormtroopers,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs is positioning itself to influence the war’s conduct separate from the sometimes rival Defense Ministry, as well as to get its hands on billions of military aid from NATO.

So far, it appears that the new “stormtroopers” will consist of inexperienced new recruits who will have to be trained quickly. That such recruits and adherents of fascist ideology rather than regularly trained army soldiers will be tasked with playing a central role in the planned counter-offensive this spring is a tacit admission by Kiev that the war is not going as well as it is portrayed in the war propaganda on the pages of the Western press.

With over 100,000 military casualties reported for both Russia and Ukraine back in November and evermore drastic measures by the government to crack down on “deserters,” it is obvious that much is being hidden from the public both in Ukraine and around the world regarding the real state of the war. As reporter Seymour Hersh recently stated in an interview following his exposure of the United States’ destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, “The war I know about is not the war you’re reading about.”

Moderna’s $130 Vaccine and the Path to Cheap Drugs

Dean Baker

Photo by Ian Hutchinson

According to news reports, Moderna is considering a price in the range of $110 to $130 for shots of its Covid booster. People may recall that we paid Moderna close to $450 million to develop its Covid vaccine. We then paid another $450 million for the clinical trials that were needed to determine its effectiveness.

Moderna has already made a good return on our tax dollars, selling the initial set of shots at around $20 a piece. According to Forbes, the company’s soaring stock price had already produced five billionaires by the summer of 2021.

Who knows how many Moderna billionaires we will have if the company gets away with charging $110-$130 for its new booster. Of course, this money will come out of the pockets of the rest of us, or at least those of us who are not prevented from getting boosters by these high prices.

Fortunately, there is an alternative if the Biden administration is prepared to challenge Moderna and drug companies more generally on their monopoly pricing.  Peter Hotez and Elena Bottazzi, two highly respected researchers at Baylor University and Texas Children’s Hospital, developed a simple to produce, 100 percent open-source Covid vaccine. It uses well-established technologies that are not complicated (unlike mRNA). Their vaccine has been widely used in India and Indonesia, with over 100 million people getting the vaccine to date.

If we want to see the vaccine used here it would need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In principle, the FDA could rely on the clinical trials used to gain approval in India, but it indicated that they want U.S. trials. (In fairness, India’s trials are probably lower quality.)

However, the government could fund a trial of Hotez-Bottazzi vaccine (Corbevax) with pots of money left over from Operation Warp Speed, or alternatively from the budgets of National Institutes of Health or other agencies like Biomedical ​Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). With tens of billions of dollars of government money going to support biomedical research each year, the ten million or so needed for a clinical trial of Corbevax would be a drop in the bucket.

The arithmetic on this is incredible. Shots of Corbevax cost less than $2 a piece in India. If it costs two and a half times as much in the U.S., that still puts it a $5 a shot. That implies savings of more than $100 a shot. That means that if we get 100,000 people to take the Corbevax booster, rather than the Modern-Pfizer ones (Pfizer is planning to also charge over $100 for its booster), we’ve covered the cost of the trials. If we get 1 million to take Corbevax, we’ve covered the cost ten times over, and if 10 million people get the Corbevax booster, we will have saved one hundred times the cost of the clinical trial.

There is also the advantage that, since at least some of the reason for vacine hesitancy is fears of mRNA vaccines. We may get some vaccine hesitant people to take Corbevax, who wouldn’t take the mRNA vaccines.

It is understandable that the pharmaceutical industry would be very unhappy if the Biden administration were to put up the money for a clinical trial of Corbevax. Not only would FDA approval seriously cut into the gold mine they were anticipating from selling boosters at more than $100 a shot, it would also be a dangerous example for the industry.

It would show that it is possible to develop effective vaccines without relying on government-granted patent monopolies. (Hotez and Bottazzi supported their research on small grants from the government and private foundations.) And, it would be a great reminder that vaccines (and drugs) are cheap. It is rare that it is actually expensive to manufacture and distribute a drug or vaccine. Drugs are expensive because we give companies patent monopolies, or other forms of protection.

If we pay for the research up front, we don’t have to gouge patients to recover development costs. And, we don’t give drug companies an enormous incentive to lie, cheat, and steal to maximize the value of their patent monopolies.

The Biden administration has a great opportunity to hugely advance public health, and set an incredibly important example, by putting up the money for a clinical trial of Corbevax. Bernie Sanders, as chair of the Senate Health Committee, can also get on the case. He has been critical of Moderna for charging outrageous prices for a vaccine developed with taxpayer money.

Sanders’ anger is quite justified. But rather than just haranguing the company into lowering its price, we can take away its ability to get away with charging $130 a shot by giving them some competition. Competition is great for capitalism, even if it may not be good for individual capitalists.

A preventable disaster: Antioch, Turkey once again razed by earthquake

Hakan Özal

Hatay’s Antakya district, which includes the historic city of Antioch, was among the worst hit last week by the two earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6, which affected 10 provinces in Turkey and demolished northern Syria.

Life came to a standstill after the earthquake. Electricity, natural gas and water were cut off, while almost all buildings collapsed or were damaged. Telephone networks went offline. The city was cut off from the world. Tens of thousands were trapped under the rubble. Those who managed to leave the buildings got out of bed at dawn and spent dozens of hours outside in cold weather with their children, elderly and sick relatives, desperately waiting for help to arrive. According to official reports, over 7,000 people lost their lives in Hatay.

A badly damaged building in Antioch surrounded by rubble after the Turkish-Syrian earthquake. [Photo: WSWS]

A major earthquake was not unexpected. Scientists have long warned of the danger to the city, which has repeatedly suffered great destruction in history. Indeed, Antakya is located on three fault lines: these are the Dead Sea Transform fault extending from the Red Sea to the Amik basin; the East Anatolian Fault; and the Cyprus fault.

Some of the earthquakes with the highest loss of life in history have occurred in Antakya. In February 2021, the 9.Köy news website pointed to the history of documented earthquake disasters in the region, which stretches back to the Roman empire: An estimated 260,000 people lost their lives in a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in December 115; On May 29, 526, a magnitude 7 earthquake killed around 250,000 people in the city; 80,000 people died in the earthquake in September 458; 60,000 on October 31, 588; 20,000 in 847; 80,000 on June 30, 1170; and 20,000 on December 7, 1759.

In the August 13, 1822 Aleppo Earthquake, Gaziantep, Antakya and İslahiye, as well as Latakia and Aleppo, which are today in Syria, were destroyed and tens of thousands of people lost their lives. On April 3, 1872, the whole of Antakya and Samandağ were destroyed in the earthquake. On April 8, 1951, 13 buildings collapsed in İskenderun and 6 people died.

Though it was well-known that Antakya is an earthquake zone, and experts have warned of a major earthquake for years, this has been ignored by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been in power for 20 years, and by local authorities.

Unlike in Roman or medieval times, science and technology today allow humanity to construct buildings that withstand even massive earthquakes without any loss of life. However, life-saving measures were not taken before or after the earthquake. Despite the enormous scientific advances made over the span of millenia, tens of thousands died preventable deaths.

On December 18, 2022, after an earthquake hit Antakya with no loss of life, Rasim Can, Hatay Provincial Representative of the Chamber of Geological Engineers, said: “Earthquakes are not a natural disaster, they are a fact of nature, and we are the ones who turn them into a disaster. As long as we live in this geography, we need to accept the reality of earthquakes and take strict precautions.” He listed the measures as follows:

1) A fault law must be enacted urgently [in the parliament].

2) Gathering places should be created.

3) Buildings built on weak soils and unsafe buildings built with sea sand should be demolished and earthquake-resistant buildings should be built instead.

4) The buildings to be constructed should be in accordance with the Earthquake Code, under strict supervision.

5) Urban transformation should be done regionally, not on a building-by-building basis.

6) Educate the public about earthquakes.

In February 2021, Can told 9.Köythat many buildings in Hatay are built on problematic ground, saying:“High-rise buildings were built on unstable ground. Moreover, sea sand was used. The high-rise buildings in Hatay, especially the old ones, were built by transporting sea sand from Samandağ.”

He added: “The sea sand has rotted the iron in the buildings and the old buildings have no strength left. High-rise buildings built with sea sand need to be reviewed.”

Buildings shattered by the earthquake in Antioch. [Photo: WSWS]

In the same interview, Hatay Chamber of Architects Branch Chair Mustafa Özçelik stated that in light of the Earthquake Code issued after the 1999 Marmara earthquake that killed over 17,000 people, “Buildings before 2000 are considered unsafe. There are too many old and unsafe buildings in Antakya and İskenderun. These buildings should be identified quickly and urban transformation should be done not as buildings but as neighborhoods. These buildings are too unsafe for an earthquake zone. This problem can be solved with mobilization.”

However, some buildings built after 2000 were also destroyed in the February 6 earthquake. Indeed, in some cases the Earthquake Code was not implemented by the authorities. Construction amnesties enacted by the parliament granted legal status to buildings that do not comply with safety regulations. Moreover, there was almost no open area left for people to gather after a major earthquake hit the city.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to earthquake victims in Antakya. Volkan, who works as a music teacher, said that their building did not collapse during the earthquake, and that he went outside with his wife and children aged 5 and 7 immediately. However, they could not find a safe, open area: “It was like doomsday outside. There was no open area where we could take shelter. It was cold and raining heavily. Hundreds of people were pushing each other, looking for a place to escape from the buildings that kept shaking with aftershocks.”

Volkan continued: “Although it was very risky, I had no choice but to take my car out of the garage on the lower floor of the building where we live. The only way out of the area was by car. Meanwhile, the screams of people trapped under the rubble were mingling with the shouts of people fleeing around the buildings. We took our neighbors who didn't have cars in my small car. There were 8 of us in total.”

In apocalyptic conditions, he said, people tried to save their families as buildings collapsed: “We tried to drive through the street where buildings continued to collapse due to aftershocks. But traffic was blocked. Some people had heart attacks in front of our eyes. No one could help anyone. We finally reached the garden of the school where I worked, which was also very crowded. There were no toilets. Cars were running because it was cold, so it was very difficult to breathe. But it was the only place nearby where there was no risk of buildings collapsing on us.'

Volkan said that people who were rescued from their homes or from the rubble did not have basic necessities such as water, food, and clothing: “One day later, our car’s battery died. Many cars had no fuel. We were waiting for help from the first moments of the earthquake. Forty-eight hours passed, but no help came from anywhere. We were afraid that our children would freeze. On the morning of the third day of the earthquake, we survived because people from other cities voluntarily came to help us.”

Antioch, Turkey [Photo: WSWS]

The WSWS also spoke to Burcu, who ran a flower shop and lived on the third floor of an apartment building in Antakya before the earthquake.

She said: “As soon as the earthquake hit, my husband and I went to the room of our children, aged 8 and 5, and embraced them. It was like we were in an elevator. We were going down [with the building]. We bent down to the ground. There was a one-meter gap between the ceiling and the ground. The wind was blowing from an exploded wall. We crawled towards it and suddenly we found ourselves outside.”

She continued: “We ran barefoot in the rainy and cold weather to our car on the side of the street. But our car was buried under the cave-in. Then we followed people moving in a certain direction. We gathered in a school yard with people from the neighborhood. Our children were shivering from cold and fear. A family took our children in their car. My husband and I waited outside in the rain, barefoot, for help to arrive.'

Burcu, her family and others in the schoolyard also survived with the help of volunteers after a long wait: “After 60 hours, a volunteer from another city gave us blankets, water and biscuits. We saw the first state officials only three days after the earthquake. We lost our workplace, our home and our city, and we were the only family to survive in our building. Our only consolation is that our children are alive.”

Earthquake victims in Antakya, like many other people in the affected region, say that the state came to help too late. The fact that volunteers started search-and-rescue operations and delivered vital necessities like blankets, water and food to earthquake victims before state officials did, exposes the government’s horrific lack of preparedness for the earthquake.

This indifference of the government, and the ruling class as a whole, to the safety of the people led to the collapse of tens of thousands of buildings and the deaths of thousands of people who could have been pulled out alive from under the rubble.

Delhi’s air most polluted of any capital city for fourth year in a row

Mary Martina

Air pollution in Delhi, India’s capital and with upwards of 30 million people its largest urban agglomeration, continues to worsen. Each year it causes and aggravates debilitating, often fatal, conditions and illnesses among tens of thousands of people.

Despite a brief respite from last July to September, Delhi’s air was found to be the foulest and most toxin-laced of any national capital in 2022 for the fourth year running.

A measuring of Delhi’s air quality around 11 AM on February 7 of this year showed that Delhi’s Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 concentration was 171 micro grams per cubic meter, and the air quality index (AQI) was 223. Both figures are over five times above World Health Organization (WHO) recommended safe levels.

PM 2.5 is used by scientists as the primary indicator of air pollution. It is a measure of the atmospheric concentration of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns or micrometres. AQI is composed of the particulate levels of eight pollutants of up to 10 microns, including sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and lead.

An Indian para-military force soldier stands guard amidst morning smog at the Raisina hills, the government seat of power, in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, January 31, 2023. [AP Photo/Manish Swarup]

Small solid airborne particles of less than 2.5 microns can travel deep into the respiratory system, causing severe respiratory and cardio-vascular problems. Exposure to Delhi’s poor quality air for even a short period of time can trigger heart attacks in people with cardiac problems, and wheezing, fatigue and other complications even among healthy people.

PM 2.5 air pollution has caused an estimated 25,000 deaths in Delhi since the beginning of 2021.

Poor air quality reportedly killed 6.67 million people around the world in 2019. 1.67 million people were killed in India alone, a grim figure surpassed only by China where 1.85 million people died due to air pollution, according to the “State of Global Air 2020” report released in October 2020.

Despite the fact that on November 7, 2022, nearly all of Delhi's monitoring stations recorded air quality indexes of between 300 and 400, falling into the 'very poor' category at which “prolonged exposure” “may cause respiratory illnesses,” the authorities lifted all pollution controls. According to a recent report released by the University of Chicago in June 2022, individuals residing in Delhi could lose up to 10 years of life expectancy due to foul air.

The World Air Quality Report released by Swiss organization IQAir in March 2022 found that 35 of the 50 cities in the world with the worst air quality are in India. No Indian city met the WHO’s safety air quality standards. Coal-fired power plants, factories and vehicles are among the major sources of India’s air pollution.

The problem worsens during winter, when northern cities, including the capital Delhi, are typically blanketed in choking smog. Indian authorities largely blame this health menace on the burning of crop stubble by poor farmers. This is a gross and willful exaggeration. According to a study from March 2016 by Urban Emissions Info, all bio-mass combustion, including farmers’ activities, accounted for 20-35 percent of PM 2.5, while vehicular exhaust fumes, industrial emissions and construction activities accounted for 65 percent.

There are methods to decompose paddy stubble without burning it, such as bio-decomposers or converting paddy stubble into fertilizers. Alternatively, it could be used for bio-mass energy generation and sustainable building construction. Rather than providing the necessary financing to implement such initiatives, the central and state governments spend their time blaming each other for the problem.

Industrial and thermal power plants are a major contributor to air pollution in Delhi. Though coal usage in Delhi has been banned, only the large, regulated industries have shifted to natural gas. A recent study by the Delhi-based environmental research and advocacy think tank Centre for Science and Environment, entitled “Assessment of Industrial Air Pollution in Delhi National Capital Region (NCR),” showed that coal is still the most widely used fuel in the NCR. Around 1.4 million tons of coal are used by industry in the NCR annually.

Faridabad, an industrial suburb of Delhi and part of the NCR, and neighbouring Ballabgarh reportedly house a total of 950 air polluting industrial units. If these industries were to develop or be provided with natural gas infrastructure, the use of coal could be stopped completely and air pollution, including green-house gas carbon emissions, significantly reduced. The same would be true if diesel generators, which are also a significant contributor to air pollution, were replaced by natural gas generators. However, since the provision of natural gas would require large-scale infrastructure investments, profit-oriented industries are resisting the conversion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” and Production Linked Incentive schemes are expected to catalyse a manufacturing boom across sectors from auto to consumer appliances. In the rush to attract investment, Indian authorities totally neglect the potential damage to the environment and human lives from profit-driven, unplanned and almost entirely unregulated industrialization. 

India’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party government, like its Congress Party-led predecessor, pays lip service to the need to combat climate change and has even set aside funds to develop “green industries.” But the BJP and Indian ruling class are determined for both economic and geostrategic reasons to reduce India’s dependence on imported oil and natural gas, through a massive push to develop its abundant coal reserves—said to be the fourth largest in the world.  

The profit-oriented acceleration of coal mining and other polluting activities have been taking place with the blessing of the government, enabling billionaire tycoons such as Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani to profit handsomely.

South Asia is home to the most polluted countries in the world. In addition to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan consistently rank among the five or ten countries with the foulest air, water and land worldwide.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Lancet Regional Health Southeast Asia found air pollution to be the second most important risk factor for disease in India after malnutrition. More than 116,000 infants in India died within a month of birth in 2019 due to air pollution–outdoor and indoor–according to the “State of Global Air 2020” report.

The report found that India had the highest burden of infant deaths due to air pollution, followed by Nigeria (67,900), Pakistan (56,500), Ethiopia (22,900), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1,200).

According to a WHO assessment from 2018, 1.8 billion children worldwide–93 percent of all children under the age of 15–breathe air that is so filthy that it poses a major risk to their health and development every day. Air pollution-related acute lower respiratory infections claimed the lives of 600,000 children globally in 2016.

In 2019, Bangladesh recorded the second-highest average PM 2.5 concentration in the world. A more recent study carried out between January and July 2021 found the average PM 2.5 was nearly 17 times the WHO limit and over four times Bangladesh’s permissible PM 2.5 benchmark of 65 micrograms per cubic metres of air. 

The air pollution generated by South Asia’s industries and cities spreads across the entire subcontinent, with blankets of smog simultaneously impacting Delhi, the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, and Pakistan’s Punjab province. Similarly, toxin-laden air hovers between Bangladesh and India’s West Bengal and Jharkhand. Air pollution can therefore only be dealt with on an international basis, but the rivalries between South Asia’s capitalist states makes any effective cooperation impossible.

Rather than allocating much-needed resources to implement air pollution abatement measures to save millions of lives, the ruling elites in India and the other South Asian states have dismantled even the most minimal environmental safeguards in order to compete as the cheapest location for industrial investment.

In India and South Asia as a whole, air pollution takes a much more severe toll on the health of the poorest and most vulnerable layers of the population. Wealthier people can more easily access technologies like air purifiers and can remain indoors on days with poor air quality. The impact of air pollution is therefore exacerbated by glaring levels of social inequality.

Ford slashes another 3,800 jobs across Europe, including 2,300 in Germany

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Works council head Benjamin Gruschka (left) and Ford Germany boss Martin Sander after a factory meeting in Cologne [Photo: Ford]

Behind the backs of the workforce, the general works council and management at Ford have agreed to cut 3,800 jobs across Europe over the next three years. This affects about 11 percent of the current workforce of 34,000 in Europe. In Germany, 2,300 jobs are to be cut, 1,300 in Great Britain and another 200 in other, unspecified countries.

The agreement came as a surprise to the workforce in Cologne, when the chairman of the general works council for Ford in Germany, Benjamin Gruschka, informed them of the cuts at three factory meetings on Tuesday. Just three weeks ago, Gruschka had talked about taking action against job cuts with an “escalation plan at four different locations.”

Now Gruschka describes the wiping out of 2,300 jobs a “success” because in January there was talk about 3,200 jobs being lost.

When the Cologne works council, which Gruschka also chairs, gave the go-ahead for about 500 Ford shop stewards to protest loudly at the end of January, the WSWS wrote at the time that such theatrics had only one aim: “It is to prepare the talks between the Cologne works council led by Benjamin Gruschka and Ford management at which the job cuts will be settled.”

In response to the statement by Katharina von Hebel, chairperson of the European Ford works council, that the management at Ford was seeking to “take a constructive path” in talks with the works council, the WSWS wrote: “The Cologne workforce should be warned. The ‘constructive path’ of the works council and IG Metall was to silently cut jobs.”

This has now been confirmed. The procedure is familiar, and not only at Ford. First, the company announces massive job cuts, then IG Metall and its works councils rant about an impending “struggle” and have a few shop stewards march out blowing whistles, followed finally by a somewhat smaller job cut touted as a “success” a little later. The renunciation of compulsory redundancies by the company is praised by the union as a “negotiation success” and, in the end, the company cuts exactly as many jobs as it had planned from the beginning.

Gruschka claimed last month that at least 2,500 jobs would be cut in product development at the Cologne-Merkenich and Aachen sites and another 700 in administration. Only Gruschka himself and his closest confidants know how real these figures were. Ford did not comment on these figures.

Now Gruschka is interpreting the 1,700 jobs in development and the 600 in administration lost as a “negotiating success.” “After all, we have now been able to secure 900 good, qualified jobs and important skills for the future of our product development, jobs which would have been eliminated in the company's original plans,” Gruschka claims.

Together with the cutbacks in Great Britain, where 1,300 of the total 6,500 workforce will lose their jobs, 1,000 of them in product development, means Ford will shed about 40 percent of its previous capacity in Europe. This is “roughly in line with chief executive Jim Farley’s predictions,” wrote the Financial Times, “that the group will need 40 percent fewer staff to develop battery models.” Ford plans to phase out production of internal combustion vehicles and sell only electric cars in Europe from 2030 onwards.

This conspiratorial game between the company, IG Metall and the works council has been played for many years in order to push through mass redundancies. The works council ensures this takes place without compulsory redundancies, i.e., via “voluntary” severance programmes and part-time work for older workers.

This is the type of “social partnership” that the union favours. It wants to be involved in designing the job cuts in such a way as to avoid a revolt by the workforce. When Gruschka now declares: “The workforce knows that fewer workers are needed with the new electric models,” he is in fact talking only about himself and his IGM and works council colleagues.

The Ford plant in Saarlouis with 4,600 workers is currently being wound up in a similar manner. The IG Metall works council there, led by Markus Thal, claims that the decision on the plant closure was made by Ford. The union’s “struggle” boils down to accompanying the Saarland state government in the search for an investor who will take over the entire plant.

However, it does not seem possible to find such a partner. Recently, negotiations with the Chinese company BYD (Build Your Dreams) failed. One can be sure that the head of the works council, Thal, will do everything he can to close the plant “without compulsory redundancies”—as regulated by “social partnership”—by 2025.

In 2019, 25,000 jobs were destroyed in this way in Ford’s international workforce, including 12,000 in Europe and almost half of those in Germany. At that time, plants in Russia, France, Wales and Brazil were also closed down. In the meantime, further plants in Brazil (2021) and India (2022) have been closed. Last summer, Ford also cut around 3,000 jobs in vehicle development in the US, Canada and India.

The company, trade unions and works councils constantly claim that the never-ending cuts will increase competitiveness and that the remaining jobs will be safe. Once again, Ford Germany boss Martin Sander has justified the job cuts with this argument. If Ford in Germany is positioned to be competitive in future, this will also help to secure jobs, he claimed.

Since all auto companies and the IG Metall have this attitude, the next round of cutbacks is only a matter of time. The remaining Ford sites and plants are therefore far from secure. The site in Dunton, UK, where most of the cuts in the UK will be made, is responsible for the development of Transit vans, which will be available with hybrid drive by the middle of the next decade and are to be built in Romania and Turkey.

Even the European plants where Ford wants to produce electric vehicles are not safe from constant downsizing. Gruschka had already announced last month that pressure was also high to cut costs in production. Production jobs are also being cut in Cologne, where Ford is building the Fiesta model until June and then wants to produce two electric vehicles with new investment of €2 billion.

The same applies to the plant in Halewood (Liverpool), in which the group is investing £380 million (around €430 million) to produce electric components for battery vehicles, as well as the Spanish plant in Almussafes (Valencia), which won a bidding competition against the plant in Saarlouis and is expected to produce e-models from 2024.

This brief inventory alone shows that defending jobs cannot be done in one country or even in one plant. The corporation operates internationally, and so must the workforce. The main obstacles to a European-wide and international defence of jobs are the trade unions and their works councils, who are responsible for putting all of management’s plans for cuts into practice.