Sri Lankan president anti-democratically shuts down local government elections

Wasantha Rupasinghe

In violation of the country’s constitution, Sri Lanka’s unelected president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has blocked local government elections due to be held before March 19.

The legal authority of the country’s existing 340 local government bodies—29 municipalities, 36 urban councils and 275 local councils—has now expired with these entities now operating under the supervision of unelected special commissioners. The special commissioners are controlled by a senior state bureaucrat, working directly under the government until the local elections are held at some later date.

Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe with airforce commander Air Marshal Sudarshana Pathirana, background left, and police chief Chandana Wickremeratne, right, watch during the 75th Independence Day ceremony in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023. [AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]

This blatant anti-democratic repudiation of basic voting rights is a sharp warning to the working class and another indication of the Wickremesinghe regime’s determination to suppress all opposition to International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures.

While the four-year local elections were due to be held on March 19, 2022, they were postponed for 12 months by former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

Amid the rising anger of workers and the poor to his rule, Rajapakse postponed the election, fearing the defeat of his ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). In April, the popular opposition erupted in mass protests demanding resignation of the president and his government. Ongoing demonstrations and strikes in July forced Rajapakse to flee the country and resign.

Although the Election Commission (EC) announced that local elections would be held on March 9, President Wickremesinghe, who was also the finance minister, blocked all funding. With cabinet approval, he instructed Treasury Secretary Mahinda Siriwardana to only release funds for essential services, but did not include local elections. Without these funds, the EC was unable to pay for the printing of ballot papers, hiring of police and other essential requirements.

Contrary to Wickremesinghe’s directives, 10 billion rupees had already been allocated for the local government election in the national budget announced in November and passed by parliament in December. Wickremesinghe attempted to justify his decision not to release the money, declaring that his priority was “economic recovery” from Sri Lanka’s unprecedented economic crisis.

Like his predecessor, Wickremesinghe feared that the local elections would result in a disastrous defeat for his SLPP-dominated government. More importantly, Wickremesinghe and a major section of the ruling elite, feared that this would increase the political instability of the government and derail its imposition of the IMF’s social attacks.

On March 3, the Supreme Court, in response to a fundamental rights petition filed by the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), issued an interim order preventing the treasury secretary and the attorney general from withholding allocated funds for the local government elections.

Opposition parliamentary parties and various human rights formations immediately hailed the Supreme Court ruling as a victory for democracy.

Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa declared in a tweet: “The historic order of the Supreme Court… confirms the fact that democracy in Sri Lanka is very much alive and the independence of our noble judiciary is further reaffirmed.” Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran declared: “Hope the EC fixes the date before [the] legally mandated [March] 19th.”

The working class should have no illusion that the Supreme Court is an instrument for defending democratic rights. Notwithstanding its current differences with the government’s refusal to release local government election funding, the Supreme Court is another wing of the capitalist state and defends the interests of the Sri Lankan ruling elite.

Following the Supreme Court’s interim order, the EC scheduled April 25 as the new date for the elections, hoping the funds could be obtained. The finance ministry, however, has not released any money and the treasury secretary has refused to meet with the EC to discuss the issue. Siriwardana’s decision not to follow a Supreme Court interim order could only have been made under the directive of Wickremesinghe and his government.

In what appears to be a crude attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court, some government MPs have made various allegations against the court. Addressing parliament, MP Premnath Dolawatte declared that the Supreme Court’s interim order was a violation of privileges and it had no right to rule on financial matters.

This was echoed by State Minister of Finance Sheehan Semasinghe, who told parliament on March 10 that it would be a “serious offence” to proceed with the Supreme Court’s interim order and that the matter had been referred to the Committee on Parliamentary Ethics and Privileges.

On Tuesday, the SJB, and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) filed a petition with Supreme Court alleging that Siriwardana was in contempt of court over his failure to provide the local election funds. JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has repeatedly declared that all issues related to the local government elections should be “resolved in a court of law.”

While the SJB and the JVP have made limited criticisms of the government’s attacks on social rights, they have no fundamental differences with the IMF’s austerity agenda. Their fear is that President Wickremesinghe is so politically discredited that he will not be able to contain and suppress the rising tide of class struggle throughout the country.

The SJB and the JVP are now competing with each other in their denunciations of the government’s shutdown of local government elections. This is not because they defend the right to vote but because they hope a local election defeat for the government would pave the way for a general election, and their own rise to power.

The working class is now coming into struggle across the island as opposition increases to the PAYE income tax and rampant inflation, which is running at more than 50 percent, pensions cuts, as well as privatisation of the state-owned sector. Over half a million workers walked out on strike and held various protests on March 8 and again on March 15, to denounce the government’s social attacks.

The trade unions, with the backing of the fake-left Frontline Socialist Party and the United Socialist Party, are furiously working to limit and divide these struggles, while sowing the illusion that Wickremesinghe can be pressured to change course. Wickremesinghe and the Sri Lankan ruling elite, however, face an unprecedented economic crisis—intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine—and will step up their attacks.

Young people listening to SEP campaigner in Maskeliya township. [Photo: WSWS]

The working class cannot defend its democratic rights by appealing to the capitalist judiciary or by pressuring the Wickremesinghe regime. While the SJB and the JVP, with the backing of trade unions and pseudo-left groups, tie the working class to parliamentary and the capitalist system, Wickremesinghe is preparing dictatorial forms of rule. The government is employing the same methods as Rajapakse, stepping up its strike bans, and using the Prevention of Terrorism Act to mobilise the police and military against workers and students protests.

The Turkish-Syrian earthquake and the impending danger to Istanbul

Ozan Özgür

The official death toll of the two February 6 earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş, which devastated both Turkey and Syria, has now passed 58,000. There are 50,096 confirmed fatalities in Turkey and 8,476 in Syria. On March 20, Vice President Fuat Oktay announced that 6,807 of those who died in Turkey were foreign nationals. The vast majority of these were Syrians who fled to Turkey to escape the war in their country.

Istanbul, Turkey, viewed from Çamlıca Hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus strait, November 2013. [Photo by Alexxx Malev / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0]

The impact of the Kahramanmaraş earthquake was enormous. After the first quake, nearly 14,000 aftershocks with magnitudes up to 6.7 occurred in the region. These earthquakes, centered in Kahramanmaraş, affected 13.5 million people in Turkey over an area of 1,000 square kilometers. They were felt as far away as Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Iran and Egypt, sending people into the streets to escape the threat of collapsing buildings.

The devastation took on horrific proportions in 11 provinces in Turkey. Environment Minister Murat Kurum said that in cities affected by the quake, 279,000 buildings, with 821,302 independent sections, had collapsed or were moderately or heavily damaged or slated for demolition. In these regions, over 500,000 tents have been set up and more than 2 million people are still staying in tents. While over 40,000 people are trying to shelter in containers in the region, millions affected by the quake have had to leave the region to find shelter. 

Moreover, there are still problems in the earthquake zone in terms of access to tents, containers and basic necessities such as water, food, showers and toilets.

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on the other hand, is addressing the people’s housing problems in its campaigning for the May 14 elections as a servant of the profit interests of the ruling class.

After saying that they had started building 27,253 apartments in 11 provinces affected by the earthquakes since February 21, Kurum said, “We are planning the construction of 15,000 village houses together with our General Directorate of Construction Works in March. Again, together with the TOKİ [Housing Development Administration], our General Directorate of Construction Works and Emlak Konut [Real Estate Investment Company], we will start the construction of 309,000 houses in the next 2 months.” 

The ministry is awarding housing construction tenders to construction companies close to the government without regard for basic scientific criteria.

Scientists are warning the government against starting construction of permanent housing while aftershocks continue in the earthquake zone. Without detailed ground surveys and a scientific study and urban planning, this simply creates conditions for new catastrophes.

Moreover, concerns among the public and scientists about the Marmara earthquake, which could occur at any moment according to scientific data in Turkey, continue to increase.

Scientific studies indicate that the Central Marmara Fault, which runs through the Sea of Marmara south of the metropolis of Istanbul, generates major earthquakes approximately every 250 years. The last major earthquake on this fault occurred in 1766. Moreover, since movements on the North Anatolian Fault in 1999, scientists have raised ever more urgent warnings that enormous stress has accumulated on the Central Marmara Fault.

Dr. Doğan Kalafat, Director of the National Earthquake Monitoring Center (UDIM) at Boğaziçi University’s Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, stated that the probability that a magnitude-7 earthquake will hit Istanbul before 2030 is 64 percent. It has a 75 percent chance of occurring in the next 50 years. Kalafat added that “the probability of a major earthquake in Istanbul happening by 2090 is 95 percent.”

The catastrophic damage and loss of life caused by the earthquake in Kahramanmaraş is a warning of what such a quake would do to Turkey’s most populous and most industrially-developed region. In Istanbul (15,907,951), Kocaeli (2,079,072), Tekirdağ (1,142,451), Bursa (3,194,720), Balıkesir (1,257,590), Çanakkale (559,383) and Yalova (296,333), a total of 24,437,500 people would be affected by an earthquake centered under the Marmara Sea.

The provinces around the Marmara Sea contribute the most to Turkey's Gross National Product. Istanbul alone has a share of over 30 percent. The Marmara Region overall has the highest population density in Turkey. The results of an earthquake in such a region, whose building stock is not very different in terms of quality and resistance to earthquake damage from that in the Kahramanmaraş region, would be especially devastating.

On this issue, eyes turn to Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Republican People's Party’s (CHP) mayor of Istanbul, with this question: “What has been done about Istanbul's earthquake preparedness?”

In an interview with journalist Uğur Dündar on TV100 last month, he spoke on preparations being made for an expected earthquake. When Dündar asked “Is Istanbul ready for an earthquake,” he replied: “If we move at the past 20-year pace, we will need 100 years to solve Istanbul’s problems.”

Imamoğlu’s remarks blaming his predecessor, the AKP municipal administrations for decades, made clear that the government's grossly inadequate policies have led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the affected region. However, what İmamoğlu has done on earthquake preparedness since his election in 2019 is also completely inadequate.

On March 1, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) published its “mobilization plan” to turn Istanbul into an earthquake-resistant city. At the meeting, however, İmamoğlu delivered an opening speech whose content was almost a confession of having done nothing since he took office in 2019. After the Turkish-Syrian quakes, he announced, “the municipality's earthquake budget will be revised,” in an admission that the previous levels of funding were inadequate.

His proposals included establishing an earthquake council, identifying and preparing temporary shelter, laying foundations for the construction of affordable social housing, and increasing rapid inspections of buildings. He did not say why he waited for four years to begin such policies.

There are, however, 1.17 million houses in Istanbul (255,000 built before 1980, 538,800 from 1980-2000, and 376,000 from 2000-2019). According to IBB rapid inspections, it is known that the concrete, iron and construction standards of houses built before 2000 cannot withstand a major earthquake. Thus, 793,800 houses need to be reinforced, or demolished and rebuilt.

The most difficult question raised by İmamoğlu's statements was about “non-profit building reinforcement.” This is a proposal for state authorities to help private citizens finance the reinforcement of their own homes, by ensuring that construction companies do the work at cost and do not make any profit on the reinforcement operations. However, it leaves private citizens to foot the entire bill for the earthquake reinforcement of their own homes.

This sinister “Non-profit building reinforcement” scheme means the wealthy can reinforce their homes against earthquakes, while workers, who cannot afford to pay to rebuild their homes, are left to be wounded or killed if their houses collapse in the next earthquake.

Workers and the urban poor do not know how they will cover the next day’s basic food expenditures, let alone pay to retrofit or renovate housing they live in. Taking out a loan for this would mean for most working people in Turkey being condemned to crippling debt for a lifetime. 

While Kurum has raised the state credit limit for urban transformation from 600,000 TL to 1.250.000 TL, this is not comforting news for workers. Indeed, if a minimum wage worker devotes his entire wage to loan repayment, he would repay a loan of 1,250,000 TL in 147 months.

Georgia's PM warns of World War III, as political tensions grip country

Andrea Peters

Political tensions continue to roil the country of Georgia, where the government was recently forced to withdraw a law that would have required organizations and media outlets receiving 20 percent or more of their financing from abroad to declare themselves “foreign agents.”

The bill provoked mass protests in the nation’s capital city, Tbilisi, where demonstrators carrying Ukrainian and EU flags demanded the legislation be withdrawn. They denounced the administration of Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili for being pro-Russian and aping the government of Vladimir Putin, which has imposed similar laws.

Georgian Prime Minsiter Irakli Garibashvili [Photo by U.S. Secretary of Defense / CC BY 2.0]

On Tuesday, Garibashvili warned that the war in nearby Ukraine is on the verge of becoming a global conflagration and raised questions about his government’s ability to “maintain peace, stability.”

“Today the world is facing the threat of World War III. This estimate is not exaggerated, it is not speculation. We are witnessing further confrontation, tension and escalation every day,” said Garibashvili. His “main concern,” he added, is to “save the country.”

Georgia, a tiny nation with a population of just 10.8 million located in the south Caucasus, has long been the object of imperialist meddling, with the US and the EU today seeing it as critical to destabilizing Russia. Moscow, which waged brutal wars in the 1990s and 2000s to reassert federal control over the Russian region of Chechnya just to Georgia’s north, is well aware of the dangers posed to it by the ongoing efforts of Washington and Brussels to bring Tbilisi firmly under their domination.

The current Georgian government, while maintaining close ties with NATO and seeking EU membership, refused to completely sever relations with Russia after the latter’s invasion of Ukraine. It also has not signed onto the full raft of international sanctions imposed on its giant neighbor to the north and east.

Georgia continues to allow Russians visa-free entry into the country. The government in Tbilisi recently floated the possibility of resuming direct flights to major Russian cities. The proposition provoked sharp condemnations from Washington, which has managed to almost entirely seal off Russia’s western border.

While there is widespread hostility to the deeply antidemocratic character of the “foreign agents” law that Garibashvili’s government sought to impose, the demonstrations that took place in Georgia in early March were not simply a spontaneous expression of popular outrage, but a politically orchestrated challenge led by the pro-US, right-wing United National Movement (UNM) to Tbilisi’s somewhat more moderated approach to Russia.

The UNM has called for another antigovernment demonstration on April 9. The choice of date is carefully timed, as it is the 34-year anniversary of the Soviet government’s use of force to crush pro-independence demonstrations in Georgia. Twenty-one people died and dozens more were injured on that date.

The more decisively pro-Western wing within the Georgian ruling elite is clearly trying to use the commemoration of the event, which is now observed as a national holiday, to stoke anti-Russian sentiment.

Yesterday, speaking at a press conference held with his Armenian counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of trying to alienate Russia from its neighbors and foment another “color revolution” in Georgia with the aid of “nongovernmental organizations.”

In 2003, the so-called “Rose Revolution” saw the ouster of a Russian-allied government in Georgia in favor of one led by Mikheil Saakashvili, who can only be described as an American stooge. He was himself later driven from power due to corruption, brutality, and the imposition of policies that led to the impoverishment of the population.

While Lavrov’s denunciations of Western meddling are not driven by the slightest concern for the rights of ordinary people in Georgia, the US has indeed been funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to various “civil society organizations” in the small Black Sea nation.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), just one of dozens of governmental and nongovernment agencies that orchestrate American policy overseas, proudly declares on its website: “USAID began operating in Georgia in 1992. For 27 years, the American people have provided over $1.8 billion in assistance to Georgia through USAID. Building on this successful partnership, the U.S. Government dedicates approximately $40 million annually to 50 wide-reaching programs that support Georgia’s democratic, free-market, Western orientation.”

Obviously, USAID has not been handing over boatloads of money to various “partners” in Georgia for nearly thirty years out of selfless magnanimity.

In the aftermath of the withdrawal of the “foreign agents” law by the Georgian government on March 10, the EU and the US have simultaneously sought to increase pressure on Tbilisi and shore up relations with it. For its part, the Georgian government is clearly flailing about trying to, on the one hand, appease Western powers and, on the other, avoid being crushed by the US-NATO war drive against Russia.

On March 17, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly held a press conference with his Georgian counterpart in which he insisted that relations between the two countries were vital to security, firm and steadfast. In an obvious reference to Russian influence in Georgia, Britain, he claimed, seeks to strengthen Georgian democracy against “those who seek to undermine it.”

Just a few days later, Georgia held meetings with representatives from Brussels about the south Caucasian country’s ongoing bid to become a member of the EU, which it formally initiated last year. The EU recently issued a series of conditions that Georgia must meet in order to gain admittance. All of them, on the alleged basis of “ending corruption,” “promoting democracy,” and “deoligarchizing,” involve imposing one or another right-wing economic reform, bringing Georgia’s political and legal system more firmly under the control of Brussels, or pushing out Russian-allied oligarchs in Georgia in favor of European-allied ones.

Parallel to these negotiations are ongoing discussions regarding military and security ties between the EU and Georgia, which sits along a portion of the Black Sea’s eastern coast.  

Washington, which cheered the antigovernment demonstrations in Georgia in early March, is playing the “human rights” card in its effort to exert pressure on the Garibashvili administration. On March 20, the US Department of State released a report identifying “serious problems” with Georgia’s judiciary and approach towards freedom of the press.

Prime Minister Garibashvili dismissed the allegations as “speculations and conclusions and reports based on false, fabricated information provided by politically engaged, biased individuals.”

In recent weeks, other politicians from the ruling Georgian Dream party have raised the prospect of the overthrow of the sitting government. On March 17, the mayor of Tbilisi and a leading figure in the organization, Kakha Kaladze, accused the former United National Movement Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili and UNM Chair Levan Khabeishvili of seeking to stage “a confrontation, a revolution, a coup.”

The People’s Power party, which is made up of former members of the Georgian Dream party, also released a statement last week describing the protests in early March as being “in the interests of other countries” and intended to drag Georgia “onto the path of war.”

UK Home Secretary Braverman pushes forward policy of mass deportations of asylum seekers

Robert Stevens

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman visited Rwanda over the weekend in a propaganda exercise boosting her Illegal Migration Bill.

The Bill, which will deny the right to asylum to virtually anyone deemed to have entered Britain “illegally”, passed its second reading in Parliament on March 20 and is expected to be on the statute books by summer/autumn, depending on the success of legal challenges. It targets desperate migrants who reach the UK on small boats via the hazardous English Channel.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman shaking hands with with Rwandan Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Dr. Vincent Biruta after signing an expansion of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership. [Photo by UK Home Office/Flickr / CC BY 2.0]

As Braverman introduced the Bill last week, she invoked the fascistic imagery of hordes of migrants laying siege to the UK, “There are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let’s be clear. They are coming here.” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed the policy from a Downing Street podium with a sign reading, “Stop the Boats”.

A duty will be placed on ministers to remove refugees “as soon as reasonably practicable” to a third country. Introducing the Bill, Braverman said that one of the countries where they would be deported is Rwanda. Britain has already handed its government more than £140 million since last April under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership, to fund the building of camps for deportees.

Braverman and her sadistic, sociopathic policy are proof of the social scum which has risen to the top of bourgeois politics.

Last October, she told the Conservative Party conference it was her “dream” and “obsession” to see asylum seekers put on deportation flights to Rwanda. She described Channel crossings by migrants fleeing war, poverty and persecution in their homelands—the result of imperialist wars and intrigues backed by Britain over decades—as “an invasion of our southern coast”.

In Rwanda, Braverman visited the hovels being built by the Rwandan regime, at a cost as low as £14,000 each, proclaiming these hellholes ideal lifetime accommodation for migrants deported from Britain. Shown around a block being built in a war-torn, hunger-stricken country, she told her guide, “I really like your interior designer. I need some advice for myself.”

Pointing at an architect’s plan she said of migrants being deported with nothing but the clothes they stood up in, “And if people have a car, they can park their car here?”

While she was there, the Rwanda deportation policy was widened to affect almost any migrant entering Britain, with the Home Office announcing a “memorandum of understanding, expanding the partnership further to all categories of people who pass through safe countries and make illegal and dangerous journeys to the UK.”

Braverman’s predecessor, Priti Patel, who began the Rwanda deportation policy, went as far as to organise flights, but last-minute legal challenges stopped the plane on the runway.

While Britain’s High Court ruled in December that asylum deportations to Rwanda were legal, they are being prevented by a previous ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) via Rule 39 of its Rules of Court. Despite its exit from the European Union, the UK is still a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. Under Rule 39, the Court may intervene and “indicate interim measures to any State” in cases “when the applicants [in this case the asylum seekers being deported] would otherwise face a real risk of irreversible harm.”

The Sunak government is intent on ploughing ahead with a plan of mass deportations that a modern-day Hitler would warm to, declaring its intention to resume deportation flights to Rwanda before the summer. It will do this with the backing of a faithful right-wing media, who fill their daily pages and broadcast time with stories on Britain’s “invasion” by foreigners. They made sure to note that as Braverman arrived in Rwanda, 209 people were confirmed to have made the journey across the Channel the same day.

Nothing was left to chance by the government in ensuring the right-wing narrative prevailed, as it seeks to pass legislation that Braverman herself admitted in a letter to MPs has “more than a 50% chance” of being found unlawful.

Only the most enthusiastic supporters of the Rwanda deportation plan were invited to accompany Braverman on her trip to the country, including Sun political correspondent Jack Elsom, Express senior political correspondent Steph Spyro, Times home affairs editor Matt Dathan, Telegraph home affairs editor Charles Hymas, Daily Mail home affairs editor David Barrett and GB News home and security editor Mark White.

Any media which does not fully endorse the policy was banned. The Guardian, Independent, Daily Mirror and i newspapers were denied access, as was, extraordinarily, the British Broadcasting Corporation—the state broadcaster. The BBC was only able to report on the trip and attend on the ground after it requested and was given accreditation for a crew from the regional BBC bureau.

The government is heavily managing all reporting of its draconian plan because it is aware that the population, despite being drenched in a torrent of anti-immigration filth from the Daily Mail, Express et al., is opposed to the policy and supports the democratic rights of asylum seekers and refugees.

Migrants disembark from a British Border Force patrol boat after being picked up from a dingy in the English Channel in Dover harbour, England, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Lashing out against scrutiny is part of a pattern. Braverman’s trip took place one week after senior Tory party supporters on the board of the BBC removed sports presenter Gary Lineker from the air after he criticised the Illegal Migration Bill and compared Braverman’s language to that of the Nazis in early 1930s Germany. He was restored to his position in a matter of days after receiving widespread public support.

The Tories are so widely despised and politically weak that they cannot bear the criticisms of a sports presenter, yet are only months away from being able to deport migrants more than 4,000 miles away to Rwanda and other remote countries. This can only be explained by the fact that they face no opposition from the Labour Party, which acts as a straitjacket on popular sentiment.

Labour’s only gripe with the Illegal Migration Bill is that it is “the latest in a long line of unworkable gimmicks,” in the words of Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who propose that “the hundreds of millions of pounds… wasted on the Rwanda scheme” be put “into the National Crime Agency so that we can start rounding up and arresting the criminal gangs that are trafficking people.”

As Braverman introduced the Bill to Parliament, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper boasted of how the removal of asylum seekers was so much more effectively carried out by the last Labour government. Tory policies to crack down on migration “did not work” and “didn’t deter anyone,” while Labour had “put forward plans for a cross-border police unit, for fast-tracked decisions and returns, to clear the backlog and end hotel use,” she said.

The fight against attacks on migrants and the right to asylum enshrined in international law cannot be left to such venal forces, or to the courts—whatever temporary rulings are applied.

On Sunday, Britain’s media was filled with celebrations after Braverman confirmed “constructive” discussions with the European Court of Human Rights aimed at possible reforms to the Rule 39 injunction that “would remove a key barrier to getting flights off the ground.” Sky News reported, “As part of the talks with the Strasbourg court, the government has requested a higher legal threshold for any Rule 39 injunction that may be imposed on future deportation flights.”

African protests met with savage repression

Kipchumba Ochieng

Protests called in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Tunisia against high costs of living, corruption, authoritarianism, fraudulent elections and unemployment have been met with savage repression.

The regimes in four geopolitical and economic nodal points of the continent, with a combined population of 343 million, have launched mass arrests, teargassed protestors, arrested major opposition leaders, and killed at least two protestors.

Members of the Economic Freedom Fighters protest in Cape Town, South Africa, Monday March 20, 2023. The party has called for a nation-wide shutdown and mass demonstrations to press President Cyril Ramaphosa to resign. [AP Photo/Nardus Engelbrecht]

The scale of the savage repression demonstrates that more is at stake than curbing the activities of capitalist opposition parties. The ruling elites are intent on suppressing massive opposition within the working class to deplorable living conditions across the continent, intensified by the ruling classes response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the soaring of prices due to the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine.

Kenya

In Kenya, the government of President William Ruto turned his electoral “bottom-up” economic model supposedly geared towards bringing down the cost of living, eradicating hunger, creating jobs into a top-down savage police crackdown.

He outlawed the first mass protest under his rule called by billionaire opposition leader and former prime minister Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja–One Kenya Coalition Party, ludicrously arguing that the demonstrations were filed too late for authorization. 5,000 heavily armed police offices and the notorious paramilitary, the General Service Unit (GSU) were deployed.

Nairobi was converted into a fortress. The city woke up to a mass police presence. Roads leading to key government buildings in the capital had been blocked and the president's official residence, State House, sealed off.

Police teargassed hundreds of protestors that had been able to bypass police cordons in Nairobi’s Central Business District, from where Odinga had called for a march towards the president’s residence. At least four members of parliament and dozens of protestors were arrested, including National Assembly Minority Leader Opiyo Wandayi, Senator Stewart Madzayo and MPs Amina Mnyazi and Richard Chonga. Other lawmakers were teargassed.

“We came here peacefully but they tear gassed us,” Nairobi protestor Charles Odour told French news agency AFP. “They lie to us every day. Where is the cheap maize flour they promised? Where are the jobs for the youth they promised? All they do is hire their friends.”

Some of the fiercest clashes took place in Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa, and one of Odinga’s strongholds. Police officers in full-riot gear fired teargas and used water cannon against hundreds of protesters, as they set tyres ablaze, blocked roads and chanted “Ruto must go,” some of whom were throwing rocks. One protestor was seriously injured after being shot by police. Some reports state he has died.

The chants were reminiscent of the demands of working people and rural masses in Sri Lanka in July last year: “Gota [Prime Minister Rajapaksa] has got to go!”

When Odinga emerged in midday from a Nairobi hotel to lead the march and to hold a press conference, his motorcade was fired on with tear gas and water cannon. Azimio spokesperson Makau Mutua said Odinga’s vehicle had been hit by a bullet. In a tweet, Mutua shared a photo of a shattered windscreen online.

Demonstrators were dispersed in other parts of the country, including Kisumu in western Kenya, the third-largest city and an Odinga stronghold. A third-year university student was shot dead.

Kenyans are struggling as prices for basic necessities soar and the value of the shilling has dropped sharply over the past year against the US dollar—3.5 million face starvation due to a prolonged drought in the north. Latest data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics shows that households spent 13.3 percent more on food compared to a year earlier. Food accounts for nearly a third of the shopping basket for Kenyan families.

South Africa

In South Africa, the African National Congress government deployed 18,000 police and 3,500 soldiers to supress a threatened “national shutdown” by the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) against the electricity crisis, to call for President Cyril Ramaphosa to resign and for the high level of unemployment to be addressed.

“This is an attempt to overthrow the government. This is not a shutdown, but it’s anarchy,” KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, said on Friday.

The day before the protest, in a 12-hour period that stretched over Sunday night and Monday morning, police arrested 87 people across the country.

Protests broke out in Braamfontein on Sunday night. Police used stun grenades to disperse the demonstration. In Cape Town during early hours of Monday morning, a group of around 100 people were dispersed when police fired gas canisters.

During the day, EFF organised protests in Sandton, Cape Town, Pretoria and across provinces. Under a heavy escort and with a police helicopter overhead, 2,000 protesters marched in the capital Pretoria to Ramaphosa's official residence, passing the seat of government, the Union Buildings. In Sandton, over 30 protesters were arrested after they tried to block clothes retailer Woolworths. Groups varying in size from dozens to hundreds gathered in other parts of the country.

EEF leader Julius Malema recognised that the turnout was less than expected, blaming ANC Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga for sabotaging the party's plans to ferry protesters by bus to Pretoria. He told protesters that over 1 million rand (55,000 dollars) had been spent to hire buses to ferry EFF supporters to Tshwane, but bus contractors had withdrawn their services at the last minute.

With an unemployment rate of 33 percent, many have lost their income. Youth (aged 15-34 years) have an unemployment rate of 45.3 percent. Adding to workers’ fury, the regulatory authorities have allowed Eskom, the state-owned electricity company that generates that 90 percent of South Africa’s power, to raise its prices by up to one third over the next two years as it faces insolvency. This comes as South Africa’s annual inflation rate is running at 6.9 percent in January, while food price inflation hit a 14-year high at 13.4 percent.

Nigeria

In Nigeria, protests are ongoing citing fraud during elections held in 28 states. Some states, like Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi, Ondo, and Osun are conducting governorship elections off-cycle.

In Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, protestors clashed with the police with one person allegedly killed while several others were injured. In Enugu State, protestors marched onto the streets of Independence Layout, Enugu, protesting the delayed announcement of the governorship election and stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The Kano State government has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew. State Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs Malam Muhammad Garba, threatened people to remain indoors as police “would not spare anyone or group bent on causing trouble”.

Tunisia

In Tunis, the capital, thousands of Tunisians rallied to protest President Kaïs Saïed’s rule, nearly a year after he dissolved parliament and assumed dictatorial rule last July. Over the past months, Saïed has arrested opposition politicians, trade union members, judges, a prominent businessman and the head of an independent radio station.

In a speech Saturday to commemorate the departure of French troops and Tunisia’s 1956 independence, he threatened to expel “all who want to undermine independence”.

Over the past weeks, the regime has instigated pogrom-like attacks against Black African migrants across Tunisia which started in early February and accelerated following Saïed’s racist speech February 21. The aim is to divert attention from the devastating effects of rising inflation and food shortages on living standards. In February, inflation reached 10.4 percent, up from 8.3 percent in 2022. Youth unemployment stands at 40 percent.

Saïed had said that “hordes of irregular migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa” had come to Tunisia, “with all the violence, crime, and unacceptable practices that entails”. This was part of a criminal plan designed to “change the demographic make-up” and turn Tunisia into “just another African country that doesn’t belong to the Arab and Islamic nations anymore”.

Police raid German real estate giant Vonovia

Markus Salzmann

Investigators searched the headquarters of Germany’s largest housing group Vonovia at the beginning of last week. The Bochum public prosecutor’s office and North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Office are investigating employees of the group and others on suspicion of bribery and corruption, breach of trust and fraud.

Berlin tenants demonstrate for the expropriation of housing corporations in September 2021 [Photo: WSWS]

More than 40 private and business premises were searched in North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Saxony. Four arrest warrants were executed against Vonovia employees, former employees and business partners of the company. Details were not disclosed by the public prosecutor’s office, which referred to the ongoing investigations.

One of the suspects is also alleged to have manipulated contract tenders at the Stuttgart-based GWG Group after leaving Vonovia. The housing company, which belongs to R+V Versicherungen, owns around 15,000 apartments and is significantly smaller than the listed industry giant Vonovia.

Vonovia owns 565,000 apartments in Germany, Austria and Sweden, but mostly in Germany. In Berlin and Brandenburg alone, the company has around 150,000 apartments after the takeover of Deutsche Wohnen in 2021. Its stock market value is currently almost €18 billion.

According to research by broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Süddeutsche Zeitung, at least two Vonovia employees are alleged to have received bribes of around half a million euros over a 10-year period. In return, they are said to have awarded construction and trade companies contracts worth millions of euros, which in turn charged inflated prices or failed to provide services at all.

The investigation began in 2021, based on an anonymous letter. “The more the investigators found out, the more the picture of a suspected system of bribery emerged, which is said to have operated in the midst of the DAX-listed company for years,” news programme Tagesschau reported. Since then, at least 20 people have been under investigation, but according to investigating authorities that number could rise further as they pursue numerous leads.

Vonovia responded to the searches by portraying itself as a victim that was doing everything it could to clear up what had happened. CEO Rolf Buch stated, “We are shocked. It appears that individual employees at our subsidiaries have taken bribes to Vonovia’s detriment.” He added that this was “unacceptable.” The real estate group has since commissioned Deloitte to conduct an internal audit.

The claim that Vonovia was unaware of the incidents for over 10 years and was itself the victim is absurd. Like other large real estate companies, the Bochum-based group is notorious for its excessive greed for profit and its opaque methods of fleecing tenants.

Back in the 1990s, there were similar accusations against the Veba-Immobilien Group, which became Vonovia after several takeovers.

Last year, in an interview with finance daily Handelsblatt, Vonovia CEO Rolf Buch announced that rents would rise significantly due to inflation. Tenants’ associations indignantly pointed out that inflation was not a legal reason to raise rents.

Even when Berlin’s Social Democrat (SPD)-Left Party-Greens Senate (state executive) organized the “Round Table” with representatives of the real estate industry in Berlin during the last legislative period, Vonovia flatly rejected calls for rent increases to be stopped or even limited.

In Berlin and other major cities, housing is now in such short supply that astronomical rents are being demanded. In this situation, Vonovia declared this year that it would no longer begin new construction in Berlin, Potsdam and Dresden. In Berlin alone, the company stopped the construction of 1,500 planned apartments. A company spokesman justified this with the high level of inflation and increased interest rates. At the same time, the company increased its operating profit by 35 percent to just under €1.6 billion in 2022.

But Vonovia is not only cashing in simply on rental costs. For years, it has been using the ancillary costs it charges to rake in rich profits. A 2018 investigation by news magazine Der Spiegel found that the company had set up numerous subsidiaries for this purpose to operate services such as the cleaning of residential complexes and winter services at greatly inflated prices.

As an example, Der Spiegel cited a Hamburg residential complex where the costs for winter services (ice and snow clearance, etc.) increased by a whopping 1,900 percent. At the same time, tenants were no longer able to see exactly which services were being provided and which were not. The article reports “erroneous” and “dubious” service charge statements.

Even if Vonovia did not know about the openly criminal machinations of individual employees, it is par for the course in such a company.

The German Tenants’ Association has already warned that tenants are the ones who suffer because of the bribes. A large part of the damage would be paid directly or indirectly by tenants. It will be passed on to tenants via the service charges.

In addition, the company is apparently preparing massive cost-cutting measures. According to reports, the Executive Board is to be reduced in size. It can be assumed that further savings will also be made in personnel and services for tenants. After the raid became known last week, Vonovia’s share price fell by up to 5 percent, and has not recovered since.

The Vonovia case makes it clear once again that there is an urgent need to expropriate the rent sharks without compensation and to transfer their housing stock into public ownership. Housing must not remain a luxury commodity which profit-oriented corporations exploit to massively enrich themselves.

In a referendum in Berlin in 2021, a clear majority voted in favour of expropriating large real estate companies such as Vonovia. Despite this popular vote, the governing coalition of the SPD, Greens and Left Party refused to implement the albeit limited decision. Instead, they set up a “round table” with the real estate lobby to continue safeguarding its profits.

All three of Berlin’s governing parties, which recently suffered heavy losses in elections to the House of Representatives (state legislature), had explicitly supported the merger of Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen. They were well aware that this would further aggravate the situation facing thousands of households.

To circumvent the outcome of the referendum, the SPD, Greens and Left Party had convened a commission of experts, which has been consulting for months about whether expropriation is legally and financially permissible or even violates the constitution. For their part, the Christian Democrats (CDU), who are expected to provide the next Berlin mayor, have announced they will take legal action against any laws introducing the state takeover of such companies.

Amazon announces 9,000 more job cuts as tech industry jobs massacre builds

Shannon Jones

Amazon announced Monday that it is laying off another 9,000 employees, bringing to 27,000 the number of staff the company has cut since the start of the year. The layoffs represent about 8 percent of the company’s global workforce. Amazon’s stock fell 1.25 percent Monday following the job cut announcement.

The latest round of cuts by Amazon signal that the jobs massacre in the tech industry is continuing unabated. On March 14, Meta said it was laying off another 10,000 workers. Four months ago Meta announced the layoff of 11,000 employees, 13 percent of its workforce.

Through March 20 more than 500 tech companies have laid off nearly 140,000 workers this year. This has been the largest contraction in the tech industry since the dot-com crash, with almost every major tech company announcing cuts. Significant job cuts so far this year have come at giants Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter and IBM, who together account for nearly half of the layoffs in tech.

The Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC) in Shakopee, Minnesota (MSP1) in the Twin Cities region. [Photo by Tony Webster / CC BY 2.0]

In a memo to employees, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the latest cuts would impact workers mainly at Amazon Web Services, PXT, which handles human resources, advertising and the Twitch livestreaming division. He said the final decision on which jobs would be eliminated would be determined by mid-April. Citing the current economic “uncertainty,” Jassy said the company had “chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.”

In typical corporate speak the letter continued, “The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole.” Needless to say this offers little comfort to workers whose lives are being upended.

The recent round of cuts will impact 2,300 Amazon workers in the Seattle, Washington, area, the company’s base of operations. This month Amazon announced the closure of eight Amazon Go convenience stores. It has also suspended construction on its highly touted HQ2 project in the Washington D.C. area. Some 8,000 workers were supposed to have started work at the complex in Arlington, Virginia, this summer. Meanwhile, Amazon issued a directive last month requiring employees to be in the office at least three days a week.

Last year, layoffs impacted workers at Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition activation division and then spread to those working on automated stores, drones and the consumer retail division as well as job recruiters. Cuts have so far not hit the company’s warehouse division.

Jassy said the company had not announced all planned layoffs in January because management had not completed its cost assessment at that time. “Rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence,” he wrote, “we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible.”

Amazon enjoyed a boom in sales and profits during the pandemic as online shopping increased. However, last year the company saw a loss due to declining online sales revenue and because of its investment in electric startup Rivian Motors. Amazon suffered a $5.4 billion loss when the share price of the vehicle company collapsed. Amazon has contracted for 100,000 delivery vehicles from Rivian.

According to website layoffs.fyi, 67 tech companies have announced 26,910 layoffs so far in March. This follows 84,714 tech layoffs in January and 36,491 in February.

March layoffs include:

• Better.com—3,000 layoffs.
• Xerox—800 layoffs in production, marketing and talent teams.
• Go to Group—600 job cuts following 1,300 announced late last year.
• Atlassian—500 jobs slashed as the business software maker is cutting 5 percent of its workforce.
• Thoughtworks—500 layoffs, the software consulting firm is laying off 4 percent of its global workforce.
• Sirius XM—475; 8 percent of its workforce.
• Informatica—450; 7 percent of its workforce.
• Pico Interactive—400; 20 percent of its workforce.
• Alerzo—400 job cuts, impacting full-time and part-time staff.
• Docusign—680; 10 percent of its workforce.

The latest layoffs take place amid continuing crisis in the world financial system with the takeover of Credit Suisse this weekend. This followed the collapse and takeover of Silicon Valley Bank, which further destabilized the tech industry.

The banking crisis and tech layoffs are the product of the relentless increase in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, which has resulted in the shutting off of the easy money that had fueled growth in the tech industry. The interest rate hikes are part of a deliberate effort by the ruling class to undermine the militancy of the working class by increasing unemployment.

The layoffs in the tech industry foreshadow broader problems in the US economy. The tech and information industry accounts for 10 percent of the US economy and 8 percent of jobs, and far more counting jobs that support tech. Writing on the tech layoffs and the aftermath of the collapse of SVB the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The same tech industry-based economic engine that fueled the global economy on the way up—turning every invested dollar into what seemed like a buck and a half—is doing the opposite on the way down.” It continued, “The unraveling of Silicon Valley Bank began when interest rates rose, the ‘free money’ spigot shut off, and investment in startups crashed. The result was investors and companies drawing down their accounts at the bank.”

The tech sector cuts at Amazon come as the company is attempting to squeeze ever more production and profit out of its workforce in its warehouses. According to a recent report in the Guardian, injuries at Amazon warehouses are twice as high as at its major competitors. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued citations against Amazon at six warehouses in January and February of this year. The citations involved unsafe working conditions, ergonomics and failure to report injuries.

On February 1, OSHA issued a statement reporting that it found multiple risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries, including high frequency of lifting, heavy weight of items, “employees awkwardly twisting, bending and extending themselves to lift items” and long hours required to complete tasks. Examination of company log books revealed that Amazon employees experienced a high incidence of musculoskeletal disorders.

However, despite the numerous irregularities, OSHA has issued minimal fines. In the case of the most recent violations, just $46,875 in total was levied against three facilities, in Aurora, Illinois; Nampa, Idaho; and Castleton, New York.