Modi orders raids on BBC offices after documentary points to his role in 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom

Kranti Kumara

Four weeks after the BBC aired a documentary that examined the role Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi played in instigating and enabling the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government ordered tax officials to mount a massive raid on the BBC’s offices in Mumbai and the nation’s capital, New Delhi.

Beginning on Tuesday, February 14, and continuing for three days, scores of Income Tax (IT) Department officials harassed and intimidated BBC journalists, technical staff and other employees while searching the BBC premises. The tax officials confined the journalists and other staff to their offices for hours on end and seized numerous documents, laptops and cell-phones, including those belonging to BBC staff. Several employees, including journalists, were reported to have undergone “questioning” for 60 hours.

Private security guards close the gate of a building housing BBC office in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. [AP Photo/Altaf Qadri]

The BBC tweeted on Thursday that “some of [the staff] have faced lengthy questioning or been required to stay overnight.”

Indian authorities claimed that the tax officials were investigating the BBC’s “diversion of profits, tax evasion and non-compliance with Indian laws.” Unsurprisingly, last Saturday the IT Department released a statement claiming to have “uncovered irregularities,” adding that the income and profits of the corporation are “not commensurate with the scale of (its) operations in India.”

In justifying the attack on the British state-owned BBC, the Hindu-supremacist BJP government and its supporters tried to frame it as a blow against “western” bullying and even “colonialism.” None of this could hide the twin raids’ true aim. Nor was it truly meant to, for that would have run counter to their sinister purpose.

The raids were intended to intimidate the press or anyone who dares shed light on the crimes perpetrated by Modi and his Hindu-supremacist BJP by demonstrating that they are prepared to use all the resources at their command to target and silence their critics. Not even the state broadcaster of a major ally and one of the world’s largest media conglomerates is off limits.

The BBC documentary, India: The Modi Question, did not add much to the vast body of evidence that proves Modi, who in 2002 was Gujarat’s chief minister, helped instigate mass anti-Muslim violence, then ordered police to allow it to unfold. This resulted in the deaths of at least 2,000 people, the vast majority of them Muslims, and rendered hundreds of thousands of others homeless. But the first part of the two-part BBC documentary did bring to light that the British government, based on an on-the-spot investigation in the days immediately following the February–March 2002 pogrom, had concluded that the violence had been well-orchestrated, bore “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing” and “Narendra Modi is directly responsible.”

Modi government and BJP spokespersons responded to the BBC’s airing of the documentary in Britain with venom and have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to block its dissemination. In a tweet, Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, boasted that “Videos sharing @BBCWorld hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage, disguised as ‘documentary’ on @YouTube, and tweets sharing links to the BBC documentary have been blocked under India’s sovereign laws and rules.”

When students at several Delhi universities tried to organize showings of the documentary, the authorities intervened. At Jamia Millia Islamia University, large numbers of riot police were deployed in advance of a planned screening and a dozen or so students arrested. Power and internet service were cut to prevent the film from being shown at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Government spokespersons cynically described last week’s raids of the BBC as “survey operations.”

The Press Club of India called the raids “a clear cut case of vendetta.” A handful of major English-language Indian publications, like the Hindu, issued editorials, which with varying degrees of forthrightness, dispensed with the government’s lies and called the raids a frontal attack on freedom of the press. Several opposition parties, including the Congress Party, which itself has a long history of trampling on democratic rights, issued pro forma statements condemning the raids. But by and large, the corporate media, which like Indian big business as a whole is strongly pro-BJP, treated the raids as a sideshow or breathlessly regurgitated the government’s claims about their aim.

The Modi government has by now a long record of using the state machine, including trumped-up tax investigations, to lash out at those it perceives as getting in its way. This is part of a much larger reactionary modus operandi in which the BJP’s promotion of rabid communalism goes hand-in-hand with its use of authoritarian measures to suppress working class opposition and even marginalize and silence its rivals in the bourgeois political establishment.

In July 2021 the tax authorities raided the Hindi-language daily Dainik Bhaskar. This occurred after the Dainik Bhaskar carried critical reports showing the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and criticized the Modi government for its ruinous mishandling of the pandemic.

Amnesty International—which had operated in India since 1966 and documented numerous gross human rights violations by the BJP government and its predecessors, including in Kashmir—was completely driven out of the county in 2020 after the Modi government froze all of its bank accounts. The previous year the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Indian equivalent of the FBI, had raided its offices claiming it was receiving money from foreign sources without government authorization. In February 2021, the Directorate of Enforcement, a government intelligence agency focusing on financial crimes, seized Amnesty International’s property worth $2.5 million.

Critical journalists have been a frequent target since Modi and his BJP came to power in May 2014. Dozens have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which is supposed to target terrorism, or colonial-era “sedition” laws and imprisoned for months, even years, without a court hearing.

One of the most prominent examples of this was the imprisonment of the Indian journalist Siddique Kappan, who had traveled to Uttar Pradesh to report on the gang rape of a Dalit woman by upper-caste men close to the BJP. He was subsequently charged with numerous criminal offenses and imprisoned by the BJP government in the state whose Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, is a close Modi ally and notorious fomenter of communal violence. Entirely innocent, Kappan only walked out of prison in early February having spent about two-and-a-half years under horrid conditions.

Another notable attack on the press occurred on March 6, 2020, when a Malayalam language TV station, The Media One, headquartered in the southwestern state of Kerala, was forced off the air for 48 hours by the order of the Modi government. Media One was targeted because it correctly reported on the murderous attack upon Muslims in Delhi in February 2020 by goons belonging to the BJP’s parent organization, the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In response to widespread protests against the BJP government’s discriminatory Citizens Amendment Act (CAA), local BJP politicians and RSS activists incited communal riots in which 53 people, most of them Muslims, were killed, and mosques and numerous Muslim properties set ablaze.

The Modi government did not hide the fact that it was using the Indian state apparatus to impose the BJP’s brand of Hindu supremacy. The order shutting down the station claimed it had aired “attacks on religions or communities, promoting communal attitudes.” In other words, it had exposed the violent attacks by goons and terrorists sponsored by the BJP and its Hindu right allies against innocent Muslims. The order then shamelessly went on to state that the “Channel’s reporting on Delhi violence ... seems to be biased as it is deliberately focusing on the vandalism of CAA supporters. It also questions RSS and alleges Delhi Police inaction. Channel seems to be critical towards Delhi Police and RSS.”

Subsequently in 2022, the Home Ministry headed by Modi’s chief henchman, Amit Shah, intervened and got the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to refuse the renewal of Media One’s license to operate. This egregious attack was later stayed by India’s Supreme Court

The western imperialist powers routinely tout India under Modi as the “world’s most populous democracy,” and turn a blind eye to an ever-expanding list of communal atrocities and authoritarian actions. This is because India as seen as a vital strategic counterweight to China. For its part, the BJP government, with the quasi-unanimous support of the political establishment and big business, has integrated India ever more completely into the US war drive against China, developing an ever-expanding web of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral military-security ties with the US and its chief Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

The White House and State Department have studiously avoided comment on the both the initial controversy over the BBC documentary’s exposure of Modi as culpable in what was undoubtedly a crime against humanity and last week’s raids on BBC India. However, they have made sure to emphasize their confidence in Indian “democracy.”

As for the BBC, its reaction to the Modi government’s allegations and the mistreatment of its own staff has been muted, largely consisting of pleas that it is ready to cooperate with Indian authorities. No doubt this reflects the attitude of the British government, which rushed to distance itself from India: The Modi Question almost as soon as the first of its two parts was broadcast.

Intriguing discovery of ancient tools, butchery, and hominin teeth in Kenya

Frank Gaglioti

Stone tools, 2.6 million to 3 million years old, discovered recently in Kenya, along with teeth belonging to the hominin Paranthropus and signs of the butchering of an ancient hippopotamus, pose important questions for evolutionary science.

The tools, consisting of hammerstones and sharp stone flakes, may be the oldest Oldowan tools discovered so far, pushing back the known use of Oldowan tools by at least 600,000 years. These were simple tools that were made by one or a few flakes chipped off with another stone. Oldowan tools were named after the Olduvai Gorge where they were first discovered by the famed paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s. Most finds date to the late Palaeolithic period about 2.6 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago. 

The current discovery was made on the Homa Peninsula on the western shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. A local man, Peter Onyango, who was working with the fossil hunters, suggested that they investigate fossils and stone tools eroding out of a valley on the shores of the lake. This new site was named Nyayanga after the nearby beach, situated on a donkey track leading to the lake. 

(Back) Nyayanga site in July 2014 prior to excavation. Tan and reddish-brown sediments are late Pliocene deposits where Oldowan tools and fossils were later excavated. (Front, lower-right inset) Index map showing location of Nyayanga Oldowan site on the Homa Peninsula in southwestern Kenya. [Photo: (Back) T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project (Front, lower-right inset) J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project]

The first discoveries were made in 2015, including 330 artefacts and 1,776 animal bone fragments from several species typical of open savannah and open woodland environments. Forty-two Oldowan tools were discovered in total.

Analysis of the tools shows signs they were used to pound plant material such as tubers and seeds.

“Early hominins would have been limited by what they could tear with their hands and teeth. ... Stone tools “allowed them to work food outside of their mouths,” Thomas Plummer, a paleoanthropologist at Queens College, City University of New York, in Flushing, Queens, told Nature.

Along with the tools, a hippopotamus skeleton and two teeth, an intact molar and a partial tooth, were found. The teeth have been classified as belonging to the Paranthropus genus. Scientists also found samples of the extinct megafauna such as Eurygnathohippus, a horse species, Pelorvis, the giant buffalo, and Megantereon, the sabre-toothed cat.

Clockwise from top left: 1.) Paranthropus molars recovered from Nyayanga site. Left upper molar (top) was found on the surface at the site, and the left lower molar (bottom) was excavated: 2.) Saber-tooth cat (Megantereon) jaw and teeth fossil found at the Nyayanga site: 3.) Fossil monkey (Paracolobus) jaw and teeth found at the Nyayanga site; 4.) Fossil horse (Eurygnathohippus) upper molar found eroding from the Nyayanga site. [Photo: 1: S.E. Bailey, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project:2,3,4: J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project]

“When we found the molar, it got really, really exciting,” Emma Finestone of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History told Science.

The  genus is made up of three species that lived in Africa from 2.7 million to 1 million years ago. They are usually referred to as robustines. The first species, P. robustus, was found in South Africa in 1938. They are not thought to be a direct ancestor of modern humans. 

Clockwise from top left: 1.) Nyayanga site being excavated in July 2016. 2.) Members of the excavation team plotting and recording the position of fossils and artifacts in July 2017 at the Nyayanga site, including the Paranthropus molar and fossils from a hippo skeleton. 3.) A member of the research team, Blasto Onyango, preparing a hippo skeleton fossil at the Nyayanga site in July 2016 for transport to the National Museums of Kenya. 4.) Oldowan flake lying directly on a hippo shoulder-blade fossil at the Nyayanga site. 5.) Fossil hippo skeleton and associated Oldowan artifacts at the Nyayanga site in July 2016. [Photo: 1. J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project; 2,3,4,5: T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project]

They were distinguished by their robust heads with extremely large jaws and molar teeth. Paranthropus’ skull had a crest along the midline of its skull similar to gorillas. They walked on two feet and were about 130cm tall. They coexisted with Australopithecus africanus, Homo habilis and H. erectus.

The discovery of Oldowan tools with Paranthropus raises the question as to whether they were the species that used the tools. The researchers have not attributed the tools to the Paranthropus, as Oldowan tools are usually associated with H. habilis. 

“I have been skeptical of Paranthropus using stone tools. … But maybe we do have multiple hominins using the Oldowan,” Finestone says.

“I personally do not believe that Paranthropus made Oldowan tools … the hominin’s anatomy suggests that it was well adapted to eating coarse foods and might not have needed to master tool use,” Mohamed Sahnouni, a palaeolithic archaeologist at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, said to Nature.

Along with the Oldowan tools, the researchers found ancient hippopotamuses and antelopes that showed signs of being butchered. The bones had signs of being cut and scraped with stone tools. This is a considerable period before humans mastered the use of fire, indicating the meat was eaten raw.

“It predates the use of fire by two million years ... Our best guess is they were probably pounding it into a sort of hippo mash, to be able to eat it,” palaeontologist Julien Louys, an associate at Griffith University, told The Age.

The assumption that Oldowan tools are the work of the Homo species came under close scrutiny with the discovery in 2011 in northern Kenya of 3.3-million-year-old primitive flakes. This is well before true humans appeared and they may have been manufactured by a species such as Australopithecus afarensis.

Top left: Oldowan flake at the Nyayanga site in 2017; Bottom left: Oldowan core exposed from erosion at Nyayanga site in 2015; Right side: Examples of an Oldowan percussive tool, core and flakes from the Nyayanga site. (Top row) Percussive tool found in 2016. (Second row from top) Oldowan core found in 2017. (Bottom rows) Oldowan flakes found in 2016 and 2017. [Photo: 1,3: T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project; 2: T.W. Plummer, J.S. Oliver, and E. M. Finestone, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project]

Sonia Harmand, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York, said, “The artifacts were clearly knapped and not the result of accidental fracture of rock.”

Knapping is the technology used by primitive humans using a rock to flake off pieces of another rock in order to shape it into tools such as axes and sharp blades. 

Harmond and her team discovered numerous tools, consisting of nearly 20 well-preserved flakes, cores, and anvils at the site Lomekwi 3, just west of Lake Turkana in Kenya, about 1,000 kilometers from Olduvai Gorge. The tools have been classified as Lomekwian technology to distinguish them from the more sophisticated Oldowan tools.

The finds are “very exciting,” says an anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington D.C. Alison Brooks told Science, “They could not have been created by natural forces … [and] the dating evidence is fairly solid.” She agrees that the tools are too early to have been made by Homo, suggesting that “technology played a major role in the emergence of our genus.”

A paleoanthropologist at Spain’s National Research Center for Human Evolution, Sileshi Semaw, explained the importance of the new discovery: “We know very little about the beginnings of stone tools and the emergence of early Homo.“ The scientist added, this is “why the Nyayanga discovery is important.”

Marx’s co-thinker Friedrich Engels, in his pamphlet “The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man,” written in 1876, explained the significance of the invention of tools for human evolution.

Friedrich Engels

Labour begins with the making of tools. And what are the most ancient tools that we find—the most ancient judging by the heirlooms of prehistoric man that have been discovered, and by the mode of life of the earliest historical peoples and of the rawest of contemporary savages? They are hunting and fishing implements, the former at the same time serving as weapons. But hunting and fishing presuppose the transition from an exclusively vegetable diet to the concomitant use of meat, and this is another important step in the process of transition from ape to man. A meat diet contained in an almost ready state the most essential ingredients required by the organism for its metabolism. By shortening the time required for digestion, it also shortened the other vegetative bodily processes that correspond to those of plant life, and thus gained further time, material and desire for the active manifestation of animal life proper. And the farther man in the making moved from the vegetable kingdom the higher he rose above the animal.

In a comment published in The Conversation on February 10, Louys and Plummer wrote, “There’s no evidence Paranthropus was actively hunting megafauna. But it would have been competing with sabre-toothed cats, hyenas and crocodiles for access to carcasses, at the very least.

“The Nyayanga deposits provide a glimpse into an ancestral world that’s possibly radically different from any we had pictured. In doing so, they’ve raised even more questions about hominin evolution.”

Thousands still isolated one week after devastating floods in New Zealand

Tom Peters

One week after much of New Zealand’s North Island was devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, it is clear that the storm was the country’s most destructive event since the 2010–2011 Christchurch earthquakes, and the worst weather-related disaster this century.

Yesterday the Labour Party government extended its state of emergency for flood-affected areas for another week. There were still 15,000 properties without power, mostly in Napier and Hastings. This morning police reported that 1,700 people are still unaccounted for. Many communities remain cut off due to impassable roads in the Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne, East Cape, Northland and Coromandel regions.

The remains of a vehicle after flooding in Eskdale [Photo: Hastings District Council]

The death toll stands at 11, with the government warning that this is likely to increase further.

Questions have been raised about why places that are prone to flooding like the Esk Valley in the Hawke’s Bay, where many properties were destroyed and a two-year-old girl drowned, were not evacuated before the storm.

On Monday at 8.33 p.m., the Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence and Emergency Management issued a notice saying: “If evacuation is required overnight, teams will be deployed to advise residents.” People could also self-evacuate, “if you feel concerned.” According to Stuff, “evacuations were under way at 3.19 a.m.,” but by then the Esk Valley was already inundated.

In nearby Puketapu, a family with several children, including a nine-month-old baby, climbed onto the roof at 5.00 a.m., watching as the water swept away vehicles below. The mother repeatedly called emergency services who told her help was on the way, but it never arrived. The group were rescued by neighbours more than six hours later.

The mother told Radio NZ (RNZ): “I was really disappointed… you hear on the news that, you know, they’re congratulating themselves for rescuing everybody and it’s like, ‘No, I could’ve died.’”

The fact that so many people remain isolated and have not been contacted since the February 13–14 storm raises serious concerns about their welfare.

Many are on the East Cape, where the only highway connecting dozens of villages has been severely damaged. This was entirely predictable: the road is poorly maintained and notoriously vulnerable to flooding and slips. Despite several days’ warning about the approaching cyclone, preparations were not made to support communities that would be cut off for a week or longer.

Midwife Corrina Parata​ told Stuff she had to walk for hours on Sunday to take supplies to a pregnant woman in the isolated Mangahauini​ Valley on the East Cape. “The stress levels and anxiety levels can pose problems for expectant mothers,” Parata said. “It’s been quite concerning not being able to see women with high-risk pregnancies on a normal, regular basis.”

The region’s small Te Puia Springs Hospital, which accommodates dementia patients, remained in a severe crisis on Sunday. Hospital services coordinator Ra Campbell told Stuff it still had “no running water, no toilets, nowhere to wash. Everyone’s starting to get diarrhoea, vomiting, everything like that is starting now.” The water supply has since been restored after a generator was flown to the hospital by helicopter.

In Tokomaru Bay, another cut-off town, some supplies have been delivered by the military, but residents told Stuff they were not being distributed fairly. “I haven’t seen a loaf of bread in four days… nobody knows where it’s going,” one person said.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Hamish, a service station worker in Napier, where tens of thousands of people are still without power after a substation was flooded. Hamish, who worked as a relief worker for the Red Cross during previous flooding in 2020, said his house has avoided significant damage, but Eskdale and surrounding areas (population 2,673 according to the most recent census) is largely uninhabitable, with homes and businesses buried in silt. He said he was planning to volunteer to help with the clean-up operation.

“I think we all could have had a lot more notice” to evacuate, he said. At his workplace, two staff members were manning the night shift when the storm hit and power and internet went out around 11.15 p.m. “They weren’t getting any contact from anybody to say whether they should stay or go, so they stayed working until 5.00 a.m., when my manager came in” and told them to leave. “They started to lock everything up and they got the alert on their phones from Civil Defence saying the banks had broken.”

Empty supermarket shelves in Napier, which spent most of last week cut off and with supply shortages. [Photo by Supplied]

Damage to roads and bridges means supply chains will remain disrupted for some time, Hamish said. “Supermarkets are always going to be left bare because they can’t keep up with demand. You’re going to have workers wanting to fix roads but they’ve got nothing to fix them with” because of equipment being used elsewhere.

Hamish is convinced that a large amount of the damage could have been avoided. Across the Hawke’s Bay and East Coast, debris known as slash from the multi-billion dollar logging industry was washed down rivers, forming dams and diverting the flow of water so “it got pushed out sideways and it flooded townships.” Videos posted on social media show road bridges collapsing during the storm under the weight of accumulated slash.

“It’s ridiculous how much has come down,” Hamish said. “I went to the beach just across the road from my work after everything happened. A week ago it had a few stones and maybe one or two logs you could sit on. It’s now absolutely littered with slash, it’s horrendous.”

Forestry consultant Allan Laurie told RNZ this morning that it was a “huge challenge” to solve the problem of slash while ensuring that the logging industry remains profitable. It could not be done without “major investment from [the] government,” he said.

Journalist Mike Smith said the problem stemmed from 1987, when the Labour Party-led government split what was then the state-owned Forest Service into two entities: the Forestry Corporation, which was run as a business, and the Conservation Department. The country’s forests were subsequently privatised and deregulated, and the industry is now one of the most dangerous, with frequent reports of worker deaths and serious injuries.

Hamish told the WSWS that Napier remains extremely vulnerable if it is hit by more severe weather in coming weeks. This happened in Auckland, which experienced unprecedented rainfall and flooding on January 27 and again with Cyclone Gabrielle. 

“If that happens, we’re not ready. That power station in Redclyffe, they’re still trying to clear the mud out of the machines to see the extent of the damage. What power the city is getting is hanging on a fine wire.”

The MetService website is currently warning of a possible “extended period of rain for the east coast of the North Island, including Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay,” starting on Thursday.

Commonwealth Distance-Learning Scholarships 2023/2024

Application Deadline: 28th March 2023

Eligible Countries: Bangladesh, Cameroon, Eswatini, Ghana, Guyana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, The Gambia, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia

To be taken at: UK Universities

About the Award: Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarships are offered for citizens of certain developing Commonwealth countries. These scholarships are funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), to contribute to the UK’s international development aims and wider overseas interests, supporting excellence in UK higher education, and sustaining the principles of the Commonwealth.

These scholarships are offered under six themes:

1. Science and technology for development
2. Strengthening health systems and capacity
3. Promoting global prosperity
4. Strengthening global peace, security and governance
5. Strengthening resilience and response to crises
6. Access, inclusion and opportunity

Find out more about the CSC Development themes.

Information for universities is now available.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: To apply for these scholarships, you must:

• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) standard; a lower qualification and sufficient relevant experience may be considered in certain cases
• Be unable to afford to study your chosen course without this scholarship.

The CSC aims to identify talented individuals who have the potential to make change. We are committed to a policy of equal opportunity and non-discrimination, and encourage applications from a diverse range of candidates.

Selection Criteria: Selection criteria include:

• Academic merit of the candidate
• Potential impact of the work on the development of the candidate’s home country

How to apply: The CSC’s online application form is now open.

• You should apply to study an eligible Master’s course at a UK university that is participating in the Distance Learning scheme. Click here for a list of participating universities and eligible courses.
• You must also secure admission to your course in addition to applying for a Distance Learning Scholarship. You must check with your chosen university for their specific advice on when to apply, admission requirements, and rules for applying. You must make your application using the CSC’s online application system, in addition to any other application that you are required to complete by your chosen university. The CSC will not accept any applications that are not submitted via the online application system.
• You can apply for more than one course and/or to more than one university, but you may only accept one offer of a Distance Learning Scholarship.
• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for Details

Fiji’s ex-PM Bainimarama suspended from parliament for sedition

John Braddock

Amid an escalating political crisis in Fiji, the South Pacific country’s former coup leader, ex-prime minister and now opposition leader, Frank Bainimarama, has been suspended from parliament for three years for sedition and insulting the president.

Fiji prime minister and FijiFirst leader Frank Bainimarama addressing climate conference in 2017. [Photo by Flickr/James Dowson / CC BY-NC-SA 2.5]

A parliamentary vote on Friday authorised Bainimarama’s suspension after he had launched a verbal attack on the president, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere. The suspension motion, which provides for a standard two-year stand-down for even minor breaches of privilege, was based on a measure previously enacted by Bainimarama’s own authoritarian government.

In a belligerent speech on the opening day of parliament on February 13, Bainimarama criticised Katonivere—who is also the former president of Bainimarama’s party, FijiFirst—for supporting the new government, saying he had “failed the Fijian people.” “He will go down in history as the person who aided and abetted the most incompetent and divisive government,” Bainimarama declared.

Bainimarama also accused recently installed Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his coalition government of “setting out to destroy constitutional democracy.” “In all of this,” he said, “the President who we looked up to because we believed that he genuinely believed in the values and principles of the Constitution has done an about turn.”

The narrow vote, which followed a recommendation by the Privileges Committee, saw 27 MPs in favour, 24 opposed while four abstained. Bainimarama was not present. According to the sanctions, Bainimarama is barred from entering the parliamentary precincts and is required to apologise to both the public and Katonivere.

The FijiFirst opposition made it clear that Bainimarama will not apologise, declaring he had done “nothing wrong.” The party flatly denied that their leader had incited rebellion and pointed to his base of support, which drew 29 percent of all votes in the December election.

The election itself was another sham contest between two parties led by former military strongmen, carried out under conditions of tight media censorship, heavy political restrictions and accusations of government intimidation. With Fiji’s ruling elite sharply divided, Bainimarama will not simply disappear and indeed, will continue plotting.

The election resulted in a hung parliament and the removal of Bainimarama who had ruled the country with a population of 930,000 since his 2006 coup. Rabuka, another former military coup leader and ex-prime minister, took office as head of a fragile three-party coalition including his People’s Alliance Party (PAP), the National Federation Party (NFP) and the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA)—a minority party holding the balance of power with just three MPs.

The installation of the new government has resulted in an ongoing power struggle between the two former coup leaders and the contesting factions of the ruling elite that back them. The possibility of yet another coup remains acute. In January, the head of the military, Major General Jone Kalouniwai, released an extraordinary media statement warning Rabuka not to proceed too quickly with “sweeping changes.”

Bainimarama made his own pitch to the military, which he once commanded, in his parliamentary speech. Directly addressing the “rank and file” of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), he demagogically declared that “all the philosophical commitment and years of hard work of the RFMF is now being undermined and disregarded by this government.” 

Bainimarama called on the RFMF to “maintain their credibility and their calling and not forsake their constitutional role,” which he said was “being bashed on a daily basis” by the Rabuka government. He absurdly claimed that Fijians who want “socio-economic stability,” all “look up to the RFMF to guarantee these if and when it is under threat.”

Kalouniwai’s media release had prompted widespread alarm, with the Fiji Times reporting that a “wave of concern and emotions swept through the nation.” Section 131 of the 2013 Constitution, drawn up under Bainimarama, gives the RFMF commander unrestrained powers to ensure the “safety and security of the country.” While Kalouniwai promised during the elections that he would “respect” the process and outcome, his statement was a blunt assertion that the RFMF is still in charge.

Prior to the parliamentary session, Bainimarama and his former Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum were called in for police questioning over allegations of abuse of office. According to police, the pair were interrogated for several hours “with regards to a separate report lodged earlier.” This appeared to relate to a complaint against Sayed-Khaiyum in December for allegedly inciting racial hatred and violence at a media conference before the coalition government had been formed.

The election and its aftermath have seen a sharp revival and promotion of communalist racial politics. The government is already cementing the position of the ethnic Fijian iTaukei elite at the expense of Indo-Fijians. Rabuka has re-established the privileged Great Council of Chiefs. That body was shut down in 2012 by Bainimarama, who accused it of exacerbating racial divisions “to the detriment of Fiji’s pursuit of a common and equal citizenry.”

The government is also moving to repeal as many as 32 laws deemed “discriminatory” to traditional Fijian landowners. High on the list is the “surfing decree.” This 2010 measure sought to boost the tourism industry by allowing public admission to world-class surfing areas previously only accessible through the patronage of private resorts controlled by foreign owners.

Rabuka has also quickly moved to replace key personnel in the civil service seen as Bainimarama’s political appointees. Police commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho and corrections services boss Francis Kean have been suspended. Former elections supervisor Mohammed Saneem has resigned and is under investigation by the anti-corruption agency while the Broadcasting Corporation board has sacked CEO Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, who is also under a corruption cloud.

Successive regimes, including Rabuka’s term as prime minister from 1992-1999, have all rested on the military and have been authoritarian and anti-working class. Harsh austerity measures that have heightened social inequality and misery have been accompanied by repressive laws and violence by the police and military. Struggles by workers, including strikes, have been harshly suppressed. The renewed turn to racialist politics will be used as a battering ram against any emerging struggles of the working class.

Like governments around the world, the government will impose the dictates of international finance capital, with even greater austerity measures against workers and the rural poor. A national Economic Summit is to be held in April, ostensibly to “rebuild the country’s economic fortunes through consultation and collaboration.” In every country where such events have been held, they have heralded sweeping attacks on the working class.

Fiji’s workers are still suffering a skyrocketing cost of living and thousands of lost jobs. The social catastrophe has been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The poverty rate was nearly 30 percent in 2020, but half the population is struggling to put food on the table. After three years of economic decline, total debt is 88.6 percent of GDP.

Governments in Australia, New Zealand and the US are closely watching developments. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken promptly declared that Washington “looks forward to deepening our relationship for the benefit of the people of Fiji, the US, and the broader Indo-Pacific.”

The imperialist powers, who regard the Pacific as their own “backyard,” are chiefly concerned with their geostrategic interests against Beijing. After the 2006 coup, Canberra and Wellington initially imposed trade and diplomatic sanctions. These backfired with Bainimarama’s “Look North” policy toward China prompting Washington to demand a new strategy aimed at bringing the dictator into the fold.

As chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, Bainimarama has since played a key role orienting Pacific Island leaders towards Washington. Fiji’s new government is also falling into line. Rabuka recently cancelled a police training and exchange agreement with China before tweeting: “Australia and NZ remain key strategic partners. We will continue to strengthen our relationship with the @USEmbassySuva, while continuing cooperation with China.”

Health care workers’ protests and strikes mount across Spain

Alejandro López

Spanish health workers are continuing to protest and strike against the capitalist offensive against health care. Strikes and protests have continued for over a year, and doctors, nurses and other health staff have taken separate action in regions across the country. Strikes were called in Cantabria in November, Catalonia in January, Navarra in February, and Valencia in March and April.

In Madrid, the epicentre of this struggle, strikes have proceeded intermittently since the end of last year. They culminated in a protest by half a million people in Madrid in mid-November in defence of the public health care system and against its dismantling and privatization under the right-wing Popular Party (PP) regional government of Isabel Ayuso. Organizers say 670,000 people took to the streets, one of the largest protests in Spain’s capital in decades.

Last week, hundreds of thousands joined a new rally in support of doctors and in defence of public health. According to the organisers, 1 million people were present, while the government claimed 250,000 joined. A petition with 50,000 signatures was delivered to the ministry of health. Meanwhile, 50,000 protested in Galicia’s capital, Santiago de Compostela, and 11,000 in Burgos.

It is part of the emerging revolutionary crisis, as the ruling class privatises, dismantles and sacks thousands of health workers, while providing trillions of euros in bank bailouts and military spending on NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine.

People gather during a protest in support of public health care at the Cibeles square in downtown Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. [AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]

Madrid’s 5,000 physicians and doctors have staged weekly walkouts since November and are currently on an indefinite strike. They say they are unable to provide adequate care under current expectations to see 60-70 patients a day. They are demanding at least 10 minutes to see each patient in general medicine, and at least 15 minutes for pediatric patients.

Madrid’s physicians have now been joined by hospital workers who are calling for a two-day strike on March 1 and 2. In the region of Aragon, the medical unions have called a strike for March 31. In Navarre, a strike by nurses and physiotherapists has been called for February 28.

Health workers are in a very powerful position. There are over 1.1 million health care workers in Spain. The country’s public health care is immensely popular among workers who depend on it for their care of their children, the elderly and themselves. Moreover, health workers were widely hailed for their enormous sacrifices in the ongoing struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic, which claimed over 160,000 lives and continues to kill dozens of people every week in Spain.

The Madrid health strike is part of an escalating conflict between the entire working class and the political establishment across Europe. However, to achieve its aims it cannot be won based upon a bankrupt and unrealistic perspective of pressuring the Ayuso government in Madrid; appeals to the PSOE-Podemos; or partial one day or indefinite strikes called by the union bureaucracies.

The Ayuso regional government has made clear that it will not respond to mass protests by changing policy. Instead, it is escalating repression. Directly attacking doctors’ freedom of speech, her government ordered random inspections to ensure doctors were not collecting signatures or putting up posters during working hours. Ayuso tried and failed to break the strike by requiring a ‘minimum services’ requirement by health workers during the strike, of 50 to 100 percent of normal workloads.

Appeals to the PSOE and Podemos, who rule at the national level and in some regions where health workers are in struggle—such as Valencia, Aragon, Castile-La Mancha—are also a dead end. A counter-offensive demands a political and organisational struggle against the PSOE-Podemos government which colludes with the PP in their attacks.

Like Ayuso, the PSOE-Podemos government tries to break strikes using minimum services laws, particularly against airline workers and is preparing other repressive measures to block strikes.

In fact, the PSOE-Podemos government and Ayuso work together on anti-worker policies. In autumn 2020, they worked together to implement a murderous Covid-19 policy, with the PSOE-Podemos threatening to deploy 7,500 soldiers against protests of Ayuso’s order limiting lockdowns to only the working class districts of Madrid. The order, worked out between the Madrid regional and the PSOE-Podemos national government, required workers and youth to continue reporting to work and school. It imposed lockdowns only in working class suburbs.

The PSOE-Podemos is handing over billions of euros in state funds from the EU ‘Next Generation’ bailouts to corporations and banks, while diverting the historic amount of €27 billion to the Spanish military. It has provided millions of euros in offensive military, including tanks and ammunition to the right-wing Kiev regime in NATO’s war against Russia in the Ukraine, while claiming there is no money for the public healthcare system.

Imperialist war abroad has gone hand in hand with class war at home. Last year, the PSOE-Podemos government deployed armoured vehicles against striking metalworkers, thousands of police to protect the NATO summit in Madrid last June and 23,000 police against the three-week nationwide truck drivers’ strike. It was the largest police deployment and scabbing operation against a strike ever in Spain.

Workers cannot rely on the union bureaucracy, which acts as the labour police of the ruling class. The systematic attacks on public health care over the past decades, have only been possible with the active collusion of the bureaucracy. Both medical and nursing unions and national union confederations like CCOO, UGT, CSIF or CGT have looked the other way for years without raising any real opposition.

Now, they are systematically sabotaging the struggle. The medical unions grouped in the State Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM) have refused to unify the different strikes carried out in various regions. They thus avoid a broader mobilization, cutting health workers off from their colleagues across Spain and Europe, and more broadly from the escalating strike movement in the European and international working class.

Even within the same union, they have called strikes on different dates. Within the same region, the unions have also worked to isolate different sections of healthcare workers in struggle. In Madrid, primary care and emergency doctors held separate strikes on different dates.

Besides maintaining this strategy of dispersing strikes on different regions and dates, wherever possible, the union bureaucracies shut them down after imposing agreements with the different regional governments that betray health workers’ demands. In Madrid, the Amyts doctors’ union watered down its demands last week, calling for a €400 pay increase instead of €479.77.

Why are 42 percent of US high school students experiencing persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness?

Kate Randall

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month released its “Youth Risk Behavior Survey [YRBS] Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011-2021.” The CDC’s findings are both shocking and disturbing.

Among US high school students in 2021:

• 42 percent experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness
• 29 percent experienced poor mental health during the previous 30 days
• 22 percent seriously considered attempting suicide
• 18 percent made a suicide plan
• 10 percent attempted suicide
• 3 percent were injured in a suicide attempt that had to be treated by a doctor or nurse

There were approximately 17 million students enrolled in private and public high schools in the US in 2021 (Statistica). Extrapolating from the CDC data, this means that more than 7 million of these students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 1.7 million attempted suicide. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds in the US.

Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data Summary & Trends Report [Photo: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

What is behind this devastating picture of the mental health of teenagers in America? While the CDC offers few answers or solutions, they can be pointed to in the life experiences of this young segment of the population in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which served to amplify the ills and mental health struggles in a society already wracked by poverty, social inequality, police violence and war.

Consider some of the conditions young people confront:

• 238,500 young people in the US have lost a primary caregiver in the pandemic—becoming COVID-19 orphans—according to Imperial College London.

Losing a parent is one of the most destabilizing and stressful events of the human experience, placing bereaved children at increased risk of mental ill-health and psychosocial problems. Orphans are at increased risk of substance abuse, dropping out of school, and almost twice as likely as non-orphans to die by suicide.

Adding to the pressure on children was the mounting incidence of mental health issues among their parents. 71 percent of parents surveyed in 2020 said they believed the pandemic had hurt their mental health.

A 2021 study found that 34 percent of parents reported elevated anxiety symptoms and 28 percent of them reported depression symptoms at the point of clinical concern, reports Lucy (Kathleen) McGoron, assistant professor of Child and Family Development at Wayne State University.

In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child mental health, citing “soaring” rates of child mental health.

The US government has committed only $300 million to a national response to the child mental health crisis, a pittance compared to the $25 billion in “security assistance” given to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration.

Breaking down the statistics

The YRBS survey found that poor mental health and suicidality were worse for certain sections of the high school population. 

Fifty-seven percent of female students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 41 percent said they experienced poor mental health during the previous 30 days. Over the previous year, 30 percent of high school girls considered attempting suicide, 24 percent made a suicide plan, 13 percent attempted suicide and 4 percent were injured in a suicide attempt.

LGBQ+ students fared the worst in all mental-health-related categories. (YRBS did not have a question assessing gender identity, so did not specifically include students who identify as transgender.) A staggering 69 percent of LGBQ+ students experienced persistent feelings of hopelessness in 2021; 52 percent experienced poor mental health during the previous 30 days, 45 seriously considered attempting suicide, 37 percent made a suicide plan, 22 percent attempted suicide, and 7 percent were injured in a suicide attempt.

In 2021, 31 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native students experienced high levels of poor mental health, 27 percent seriously considered suicide, 22 percent made a suicide plan, and 16 percent attempted suicide. Forty-nine percent of students identifying as multiracial experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 33 percent experienced poor mental health over the previous 30 days, and 24 percent seriously considered attempting suicide.

Black, Hispanic, white and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students showed similar rates of feeling persistently sad or hopeless (39–41 percent), experiences poor mental health (20–30 percent), seriously considered suicide (21–23 percent) or made a suicide plan (17–20). Asian students fared somewhat better than other demographics.

The survey considered race and sexual identity to the exclusion of questions of class or socioeconomic status. One survey question did ask whether, over the previous 30 days, students experienced unstable housing—living in a shelter or emergency housing, being homeless, doubling up with family or friends, living in a shelter or emergency housing, or in motel, car, campground or other public place—which would indicate students living in a household experiencing unemployment, poverty or abusive conditions.

The overall total of students experiencing unstable housing was 3 percent, with the highest rates among American Indian or Alaska Natives (8 percent) and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders (10 percent). The survey’s preoccupation with race and sexual identity is reflected in its inability to offer any understanding of why high school students are experiencing a mental health crisis or what can be done about it.

Results from other Focus Areas of the survey mirror the advanced stage of the social crisis in America as experienced by young people.

Substance use

The CDC’s YRBS survey found that among all US high school students in 2021:

• 23 percent drank alcohol during the previous 30 days
• 16 percent used cannabis during the previous 30 days
• 12 percent had ever misused prescription opioids

US overdose deaths rose by 15 percent to record levels in 2021, nearing 108,000, fueled mainly by fentanyl. Deaths involving synthetic opioids rose to 71,000 in 2021, up from 58,000 in 2020, the first year of the pandemic.

Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data Summary & Trends Report [Photo: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

Experiencing violence

Among all high school students in 2021:

• 7 percent were threatened or injured with a weapon at school
• 15 reported being bullied at school
• 16 percent were electronically bullied
• 11 percent of all students, 18 percent of females, and 39 percent of students who reported any same-sex sexual contacts experienced sexual violence.

So far this year, as of February 19, the Gun Violence Archive reports 5,789 gun violence deaths of all causes, including 2,489 homicides/unintentional shootings and 3,300 suicides.

Seventy-nine mass shootings resulted in the deaths of 32 children (age 0-11) and 212 teenagers (age 12-17).

There were 183 police-involved shootings, resulting in 112 deaths; murder/suicides claimed 102 lives.

Youth are witness to this non-stop slaughter at home as well as the violence of the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. The US ruling elite is hurtling now toward war with nuclear power Russia, raising the threat of millions of deaths in a Third World War.

US life expectancy in the US decreased for the second year in a row in 2021, according to the CDC, leading to a decline in life expectancy from 77 years to 76.4 years. If this trend continues, a child born in the US today is expected to live a shorter life than his or her grandparents.

The mental health emergency plaguing America’s high school students is above all a social crisis that must be confronted by workers and youth in a struggle against a wealthy elite that is prepared to drive millions into poverty as prices soar, real wages plunge and job prospects for young people dwindle.