The spread of H5N1 bird flu among animals and the growing possibility of a pandemic

Frank Gaglioti

Bar-headed goose wing flapping in Hadinaru lake, Mysore [Photo by Vinay bhat / CC BY 4.0]

The panzootic—a pandemic in animal species—of the highly pathogenic strain of the H5N1 of avian influenza is cutting a swathe through wild and domestic bird populations internationally, and has now jumped into numerous mammalian species, including humans, several times.

The virus has spread to every continent except Australia, where scientists estimate it may arrive in the southern hemisphere by spring via migratory birds from Antarctica. Scientists have warned that bird flu poses an enormous danger of a human pandemic, which could easily dwarf the devastation wrought by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 903 people have become infected with H5N1 since 2003. Of these, 463 died, a lethality rate of 51 percent. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with a much lower infection fatality rate, has killed over 27 million people. If a bird flu pandemic does develop, it would likely have a catastrophic impact globally.

Most strains of avian influenza found in wild bird populations have a low pathogenicity (LPAI) with no ill effect on the infected animals. There are two highly pathogenic strains (HPAI), H5 and H7 that are extremely lethal. The virus that has reached panzootic levels and is of most concern is H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b. A clade consists of viruses that have a common ancestor. 

Dr. Michelle Wille [Photo: Doherty Institute]

In a comment titled, “Chickens, ducks, seals and cows: a dangerous bird flu strain is knocking on Australia’s door,” senior research fellow at the Doherty Institute Dr. Michelle Wille maps the development of the panzootic from its first detection in a goose in China in 1996. The virus became established in wild bird populations and poultry, where it killed most of the birds it infected. It is spread through the migration of wild birds.

By 2003, the virus had become endemic in poultry in Southeast Asia. In an important communication by H. Chen et al., from the Joint Influenza Research Center at Shantou University in China and published in Nature in July 2005, “H5N1 virus outbreak in migratory waterfowl,” presciently warned that the virus “constitutes a major pandemic threat to humans.”

The communication described a mass-death event that occurred on 30 April 2005 of mostly bar-headed geese (Anser indicus) at Qinghai Lake in western China. By May 4, bird mortality was more than 100 per day. By May 20, approximately 1,500 birds were dead. The authors warned that the virus had the potential to migrate over the Himalayas. 

Chen et al. stated, “There is a danger that it might be carried along the birds’ winter migration routes to densely populated areas in the south Asian subcontinent, a region that seems free of this virus, and spread along migratory flyways linked to Europe. This would vastly expand the geographical distribution of H5N1.”

In fact, this is what occurred, with the virus spreading to Europe and Africa in 2005. In 2014, the virus again entered Europe and then spread to North America, and in 2016 it re-entered Africa.

In 2020, a major shift occurred when outbreaks in wild birds and poultry increased dramatically. 

Dr. Wille stated, “In 2021, reports streamed in of mass mortality events in Europe and the virus rapidly travelled the world. The world was in the grip of a ‘panzootic’ – a global pandemic in animals.”

By October 2021, the virus crossed the Atlantic and reached North America. A year later the virus travelled the length of South America. In October 2023, the virus was detected in brown skuas, scavenging birds in sub-Antarctic islands. In February this year, it was detected in Antarctica.

The avian influenza virus is made up of a single strand of ribonucleic acid (RNA) with a genome consisting of eight gene segments. The virus can evolve very rapidly as it has a huge propensity to mutate. When one virus is in a host cell also occupied by another type of virus, it can acquire genes from the other virus in a process known as reassortment, giving the virus the potential to make great evolutionary leaps.

Although the avian influenza virus is mostly restricted to birds, the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b has infected numerous mammal species including humans. This has usually occurred in scavenger species when it eats a dead infected bird. When the virus crosses over into non-avian species, which is known as a spillover event, this increases its chances of evolving to enable infection within the species. The more times this occurs, the greater the probability.

The H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b is known to be very lethal, with the panzootic killing a huge number of wild birds, poultry and mammals. Some bird species may have been driven to the edge of extinction. 

An assessment by Ashley Banyard and his team at the Influenza and Newcastle disease work group, Animal and Plant Health Agency, Weybridge, United Kingdom, published in an OFFLU bulletin in December 2023, “Continued expansion of high pathogenicity avian influenza H5 in wildlife in South America and incursion into the Antarctic region,” outlined the devastating impact in South America.

Although the virus only arrived in South America in October 2022, within one year it had killed 597,832 birds of at least 82 species and 50,785 mammals of at least 10 species, with most of the deaths occurring in Peru and Chile. Most of the mammals killed were South American sea lions (Otaria byronia), with approximately 32,000 deaths, and southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina), with approximately 17,000 deaths. This gives a glimpse of the horrific slaughter of wildlife internationally, most likely in the millions.

The next step was the sub-Antarctic islands where the virus was detected in October 2023 in the South Georgia part of the Scotia Arc among several bird species. The first bird found with the virus was the brown skua (Stercorarius antarcticus) although numerous other infected species have been found since.

A microscopic photo of H5N1 Bird Flu virus (gold). [Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

A groundbreaking paper published in Nature in April 2022, “Climate change increases cross-species viral transmission risk,” shows that climate change increases the probability of spillover events in which dangerous viruses come into contact with human populations, thereby increasing the risk of pandemics. This occurs when animals that naturally harbour viruses are driven from their natural habitats due to the ravages of climate change.

Importantly, scientists have determined that the genetic changes in the bird flu’s genome, that have accelerated the development of the panzootic, have been driven by climate change. A comment by wildlife ecologist Diann Prosser at the Eastern Ecological Science Center located in Maryland Laurel US and her team, published in Nature Microbiology in November 2023, titled, “Climate change impacts on bird migration and highly pathogenic avian influenza,” stated that “Climate change patterns appear to parallel an unprecedented global spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).”

They note that “Three HPAI expansion events demarcating spread from a source region to a new, previously uninfected continent have coincided with EWEs (extreme weather events) and an increased amount of virus in the source region.”

In 2005, the avian influenza spread out of Asia and was followed by increased outbreaks in Asia that were associated with extremely low temperatures in Europe and earlier frosts that altered the migration of wild birds. In December 2014, the H5N8 virus spread from Asia to North America, with a large expansion of outbreaks preceding Super Typhoon Nuri that moved up the coast of Asia and across the Bering Strait to the North American Pacific Flyway. The expansion of H5N1 to the Americas, following the 2021–2022 winter transatlantic introduction of H5N1 from Europe to North America, was associated with cyclone storms in this period.

Prosser et al. continued, writing:

Phylogenetic analyses have shown high virus sequence identity between source and introduction regions, supporting the hypothesis of wild bird dispersal of HPAI, whether from natural migration patterns where species from cross-continent wintering grounds share breeding locations (for example, Iceland or Bering Strait region), or from rapid EWE-induced vagrant bird movements.

The current outbreak in US dairy cows poses an enormous threat to human populations. This threat is being expanded by the US ruling elites’ program of trashing basic public health measures in the interests of big business with the continuing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. “Forever COVID” is being expanded to avian influenza, but with even more lethal consequences if it becomes a pandemic.

The US dairy cattle outbreak was first detected in March and has now extended to 15 states across 650 dairy cattle herds. The inexorable spread of the virus is shown in California, the largest dairy producer in the US, where 248 cattle herds have been affected just in the last month.

The recent detection in Oregon of the H5N1 strain among pigs this October raises very serious concerns, as pigs are known to harbour numerous viruses and, as well, present the virus with a rich environment for reassortment.

Over 40 humans have been infected so far in the US, mostly people who were in close contact with cows. In Canada, a previously healthy teenager has now been hospitalized for over a week with H5N1, requiring a ventilator in order to breathe.

Principled scientists are raising the alarm. The editorial of the npj viruses journal published in May stated:

Further adaptation of HPAIV H5N1 to cattle must be prevented. Stringent measures such as testing regimes (e.g. via bulk milk diagnostics), strict transport controls, quarantine measures and optimized milking hygiene must be implemented. In addition, much more basic epidemiological data is needed …. It should also be considered that the most efficient virus shedding cows should be isolated or even euthanized.

A Science journal editorial published in July, titled, “Stop H5N1 influenza in US cattle now,” raised the alarm and warned, “Although the H5 2.3.4.4b virus seems poorly optimized for infection or spread in humans, with fewer than 20 cases since 2016, influenza leaves no room for complacency.”

However, these appeals are falling on deaf ears. Official “complacency” is a vast understatement. Indifference and even a eugenicist-style welcoming of the consequences of a devastating pandemic are more apt descriptions of the sentiments dominating in ruling circles. Even such basic requirements of testing and sequencing of viruses infecting affected animals is not being done in anywhere near a timely or rigorous manner, meaning scientists are flying blind to the scope of the virus.

The developing avian influenza panzootic and the growing possibility of a pandemic bring to the fore the existential questions for humanity of climate change and the destruction of public health, both of which must be stopped in order to control the growing threats.

German steelmaker Thyssenkrupp to cut 11,000 jobs

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Thyssenkrupp aims to cut 11,000 jobs in its steel division, which is 40 percent of the current total of 27,000 jobs. Germany’s largest steel company announced this on Monday, leaving steelworkers on the Rhine and Ruhr, in the Siegerland and Sauerland shocked. Meanwhile, the IG Metall trade union has made clear that it will support these attacks—provided, as with the cutbacks of recent decades, plant closures and compulsory redundancies are ruled out.

Steelworkers demonstrate in Duisburg on June 9, 2022 in front of the Thyssenkrupp Steel headquarters

On Monday, the management board of the company’s steel division presented the long-announced “comprehensive industrial future concept” to the strategy committee of the supervisory board. It is an austerity plan designed to secure profits in the escalating global trade and economic war at the expense of the workforce.

By 2030, 5,000 jobs are to be cut at steelworks and factories at all sites, and this also includes “a significant streamlining of the administrative functions.” The processing plant in Kreuztal-Eichen in the Siegerland region, which employs almost 600 people, is to be closed. The largest steelworks in Germany, in the north of Duisburg, is also likely to be particularly affected. Almost 13,000 people currently work there.

Another 6,000 jobs are to be shed through outsourcing to external service providers or through sales. This particularly affects the 3,000 steelworkers at Hüttenwerke Krupp Mannesmann (HKM) in the south of Duisburg.

Thyssenkrupp is the largest shareholder there with 50 percent, Salzgitter Stahl holds 30 percent, the French group Vallourec 20 percent. If the current purchase negotiations with the Hamburg-based financial investor CE Capital Partners (CEC) fail, “Thyssenkrupp Steel will hold talks with the other shareholders about mutually agreed closure scenarios,” the group explained.

The remaining 16,000 employees face wage cuts of 10 percent in order to bring personnel costs “to a competitive level,” according to the company. This is to be achieved, among other things, by cutting special payments and bonuses. Newly hired employees are to receive lower wages.

On the day the cuts were announced, Oliver Burkhard, the parent company’s chief human resources officer, announced that he would be resigning from this job on January 31, 2025. Burkhard, who was the North Rhine-Westphalia district leader of IG Metall before joining the group’s executive board, wants to devote himself entirely to his second job as CEO of the shipyard division Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS).

The arms manufacturer, which produces submarines and warships and employs 6,500 people, is almost drowning in orders because of escalating wars. It is currently working hard to go public, and Burkhard says he wants to concentrate fully on this task.

It is not yet known who will succeed him as head of HR at ThyssenKrupp. Within IG Metall, knives are already being sharpened. Tekin Nasikkol, the chairman of the general works council, will compete with other “distinguished” union officials for the job, which promises a salary of €400,000—per month.

Knut Giesler is likely to be among the applicants. The successor to Oliver Burkhard at IG Metall immediately declared his willingness to support the cutbacks in the steel division. Yesterday morning, he told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that the union’s “red lines” were layoffs and plant closures. As soon as a commitment not to do so was secured, he said, negotiations could begin.

Jürgen Kerner, deputy chairman of IG Metall and deputy chairman of the Thyssenkrupp supervisory board, took the same line, demanding, “We expect clear statements on the exclusion of redundancies and the preservation of all locations.”

A joint “Duisburg Declaration” by all Thyssenkrupp works council representatives is even clearer. “We do not close our eyes to the reality of the weak economy and the weak sales market in the automotive industry,” it says. They were also aware “that the European framework conditions for the steel industry are challenging.”

The works council reps are also calling for no compulsory redundancies and site closures. With this meaningless formula, IG Metall has already agreed to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the past—it also has other methods of pushing workers out of the company—and has ultimately accepted the closure of most threatened steelworks in the past.

The Thyssenkrupp board is familiar with this game. It has already made assurances that it remains its “declared goal” to “avoid compulsory redundancies.”

It is therefore already clear that IG Metall and its works council reps will follow the line of the group’s management. “We know that restructuring is necessary,” Giesler confirmed on Deutschlandfunk. “We have never opposed that.” But the break-up must “make sense.”

He and the IG Metall are demanding a financing commitment for the steel division of more than two years, as the parent company under CEO Miguel López had already given. The parent company is currently trying to transfer the steel division to a joint venture with Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. He already has a 20 percent stake in the steel division through his EP Corporate Group (EPCG). It is unclear whether he will end up with the desired 50 percent.

The disputes over the amount of the financing commitment led to the departure of several members of the management and supervisory boards of the steel division at the beginning of August. CEO Bernhard Osburg, Chief Human Resources Officer Markus Grolms (IG Metall), Chief Production Officer Heike Denecke-Arnold, Supervisory Board Chairman Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrat, SPD) and his deputy, former IG Metall leader Detlef Wetzel, subsequently resigned.

At the time, the chairman of the steel works council, Ali Güzel, announced in the presence of Gabriel and Wetzel: “We will fight from tomorrow on. Someone has to stop this madness.” Almost four months later, nothing of the sort has happened. IG Metall has, like the proverbial deer in the headlights, waited spellbound for the announcement of the jobs massacre that has now been presented. It exceeds even the horror scenarios of the union, which had warned of the loss of 10,000 jobs.

Nevertheless, Giesler is jubilant that the capacity reduction in steel production will be less harsh than feared. Thyssenkrupp Steel wants to reduce its production capacity from the current 11.5 tonnes to 8.7–9 million tonnes per year.

Giesler expressed his satisfaction: “This would mean that both steelworks in the north of Duisburg would be retained.” The commitment to the DRI (direct reduction) plant was also “the right signal,” according to the IG Metall district manager. With the help of the direct reduction plant, the steel is to be smelted with “green hydrogen,” and thus CO2-free. The first blast furnace is under construction, with Thyssenkrupp receiving €2 billion in taxpayers’ money from the federal government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

However, the construction of a second DRI plant is still in the air. Nevertheless, the management board plans to shut down blast furnaces 8 and 9 permanently after the first direct reduction plant goes into operation and to decommission blast furnace 1 (nicknamed the “Black Giant”) in 2031.

The works council complains that this would make the company dependent on steel suppliers. Furthermore, operating the Black Giant for another seven years would require investments of €300–400 million. Nobody believes that this will be made available for the old, CO2-spewing steel mill technology.

The steelworkers of Thyssenkrupp and HKM cannot defend their jobs without breaking with IG Metall and their works council reps. They must ally with their colleagues in the auto, chemical and other industries, where tens of thousands of jobs are also being destroyed. And they must join forces with workers in other countries and wage the struggle internationally.

The jobs massacre in the steel industry is not a natural disaster, but a consequence of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system, which subordinates the needs of society to the profit hunger of billionaire oligarchs. A ruthless struggle for raw materials, energy and markets is being waged at the expense of the workers, which is now escalating into a third world war, as in the NATO war against Russia and in the Middle East.

The steel industry is particularly affected by the consequences—by the economic crisis in general, the slump in sales in the automotive industry, which is one of the main consumers of steel, and the price war on the world market. Now US President-elect Donald Trump has announced he will further raise tariffs on steel, which will particularly affect European steel producers.

The union bosses, with their high five-, six- and seven-figure incomes, are reacting by making the workforce pay for the pro-war policy and maintaining the shareholders’ profit interests.

Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) has announced that domestic industry will be protected against international competition for security reasons—as a supplier to the arms industry. In other words, he is further tightening the screws of trade war and war.

In a joint statement with the Südwestmetall employers’ federation issued after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Baden-Württemberg association of the IG Metall supported NATO’s proxy war against Russia and announced: “These measures will demand sacrifices from all of us.”

Philippine political crisis: Threats of assassination, military coup, and impeachment

John Malvar

An immense crisis grips the Philippines—a political war between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Vice President Sara Duterte, complete with threats of assassinations, military coups, and impeachment. Driving the crisis are Washington’s preparations for war with China, far advanced, that have riven the Philippine ruling class.

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, left, in Quezon City, Philippines, Nov. 13, 2024, and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Vientiane, Laos, Oct. 9, 2024. [AP Photo/Aaron Favila, Sakchai Lalit]

Vice President Duterte held a midnight press conference on November 24, saying there were threats against her life from the president and his political allies. Duterte announced that she had issued orders for the assassination of the President, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the first lady, Liza Araneta-Marcos, and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, first cousin of the President, in the event that she herself was killed. Her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, issued an appeal to the military in a speech live-streamed on Facebook, to turn on Marcos and Romualdez, an obvious call for a military coup.

The Vice Presidency of the Philippines is not a lame-duck of merely symbolic office. The Vice President oversees a tremendous network of government offices and aides, constituting a sort of shadow presidency, a rival to the seated president waiting in the wings.

Sara Duterte is inclined to the same vulgar, unhinged political tirades as her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte. “We made a mistake with that f**** Marcos…” she declared to the nation. The Dutertes brought the thuggish culture of provincial warlordism, a culture of private armies and gangster families that has plagued much of the Philippines for over half a century, to the national and international stage.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte became political allies in the 2022 presidential election, forming a slate they called the “Uniteam.” It brought together the Marcos control of the Ilocano-speaking North, and Duterte’s control of the southern island of Mindanao. During the campaign period, Marcos pledged that he would continue outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte’s approach to international relations, orienting Philippine politics more closely to China and away from the United States. More than any other politician, Sara Duterte was associated with this orientation to China. She often concludes her speeches in Mandarin, an attempt to appeal not to Chinese Filipinos who are overwhelmingly Hokkien speakers, but to Beijing.

Shortly after taking office, however, under tremendous pressure from the Biden administration, Marcos began to reintegrate the Philippines into the camp of Washington. He opened up basing facilities under the auspices of the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), resumed massive war games, and began aggressively prosecuting Manila’s claim to disputed islands in the South China Sea. The Biden White House quietly buried outstanding warrants issued by US courts for human rights violations and theft against the Marcos family.

The open conflict between Marcos and Duterte erupted over investigations in the Philippine legislature. The House of Representatives, despite its representatives being split along numerous different party lines, is aligned in a supermajority behind Marcos. Under the leadership of Romualdez, it organised a four-committee investigation (Quad-Comm) panel to identify links between Philippine offshore gaming operators, known as POGOs, the illegal drug trade, extrajudicial killings, and the Chinese. At the centre of all of the allegations raised by the so-called Quad-Comm investigation are connections between the Dutertes and claims of Chinese subversion and infiltration of Philippine society.

POGOs are online gambling businesses catering largely to an international Chinese clientele. They began operating in the Philippines in 2003 under the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration. They were immensely profitable and received official sanction and government regulation in 2016 when Duterte took office. Like call centres and other forms of offshore globalised labour, POGOs sprang up in many semi-rural parts of the Philippines. The Chinese government issued repeated appeals to the Duterte administration to end the POGOs, which they saw as circumventing China’s ban on gambling.

After a bevy of wild accusations raised in the press of kidnapping and criminal syndicates through the POGOs, an investigation was launched in the Senate, headed by Sen Risa Hontiveros. An ugly anti-Chinese atmosphere gripped Philippine politics. Hontiveros alleged that the POGOs were a plot of the Chinese government to infiltrate Philippine society. She attempted to expose individuals as having been born in China, and stripped them of their Philippine citizenship. She has alleged mass infiltration of the country by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), stores of Chinese military uniforms housed in POGOs, and denounced multiple people as Chinese spies. Two days ago, Hontiveros claimed that one of former President Duterte’s key economic advisers, Michael Yang, was an agent of Chinese intelligence.

In July, the Marcos administration banned POGOs. The Quad Comm investigation followed. The centre of its efforts, like those in the Senate, is the attempt to associate the Dutertes with alleged Chinese espionage by way of the POGOs and to strip them of their political power.

The House quad-comm investigation summoned the Vice President for interrogation in mid-November, claiming that she had misused her allocated budget of confidential and intelligence funds for personal benefit, bribery, and to oversee red-tagging and extrajudicial killings. The budget of the Office of the Vice President for 2025 was slashed from P2 billion to P733 million. Duterte declared that she would need to close ten satellite offices, and lay off 200 staff members as a result.

The hypocrisy of the House and Senate investigations is staggering. Both branches of the Philippine legislature, most of the representatives of which are still seated, overwhelmingly supported Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency and his war on drugs. Duterte had the largest supermajority support in the legislature in Philippine history.

Marcos has reoriented Philippine geopolitical ties back into the camp of Washington, however, and this has brought the Philippines to the brink of armed conflict with China. US medium-range missiles have been deployed to the northern Philippines targeting China. A joint US-Philippine military task force has been created to oversee confrontations with China in the South China Sea.

The investigations and accusations that have brought the Philippines to the current sharp political crisis originate in the consolidation of power around Marcos on the basis of this geopolitical reorientation. The lurid, racist accusations of Chinese espionage, all baseless, that run throughout the investigations express the political essence of the matter. The Marcos administration is isolating and cutting off the power of the Dutertes because they represent factions of the Philippine elite who are looking to secure better political and economic relations with China. Such improved relations can only come about if the Philippines distances itself from Washington’s aggression.

During quad-comm proceedings, Zuleika Lopez, Sara Duterte’s Chief of Staff, was charged with contempt. Arrest orders have been issued for other senior aides to the Vice President as well. Lopez was hospitalised for a panic attack. When the House ordered her transferred from the hospital to a detention centre, the Vice President and her head of security allegedly physically assaulted the police officer involved. The Quezon City Police District filed charges of direct assault against Duterte and the head of her security group on Wednesday. It was after these events that Duterte launched her midnight tirade threatening the assassination of President Marcos.

The charges were the pretext for Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner to order the replacement of the entire Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group by a new contingent appointed by the AFP. Duterte, maintaining that there were threats against her life, refused the new contingent of twenty-five officers and said that she would rely on a private team she would put together herself.

The security teams of the President and Vice President, while they are special military and police detachments, function to a large extent as a private army. It is a form of warlordism. Seventy-five police officers on Duterte’s team have already been removed. The military personnel will likely be removed today.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) served a subpoena to Duterte for her declaration that she had hired a hit-man to kill the President, should an attempt on her life succeed. The NBI stated that it was considering filing charges against Duterte for violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.

The Anti-Terrorism Act was enacted by Rodrigo Duterte in 2020 as a means of suppressing dissent. It authorised arrest without warrant, warrantless wiretaps and surveillance, and was the mandate for the creation of the murderous National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) that oversaw the suppression of left-wing organisations.

Rumours of military coup are circulating widely, as they always do during an intense political crisis in the Philippines. General Brawner told the press he was confident of the loyalty of the whole Armed Forces of the Philippines to the constitution. History has repeatedly proven that the loyalty of the generals and ranking officers of the Philippine military is not to the constitution but to individual members of the political elite. It is these personal loyalties that have shaped the many coup attempts that have rocked the country over decades.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte on November 25 issued an appeal to the military. “Nobody can correct Marcos. Nobody can correct [House Speaker] Romualdez. There is no urgent remedy. It is only the military who can correct it.” The Department of Justice said Duterte’s remarks “bordered on sedition,” and the Office of the Executive Secretary said it was treating them as “a blatant call for the military to launch a coup.”

Most fundamentally, the loyalty of the Philippine military brass is to the United States. Many of the leading officers received training at American military institutions, where they were trained in the geopolitical interests of Washington, the politics of violent anti-communism, and the art of torture and repression. Both this training and the history of martial law incline them to a personal loyalty to Marcos. Former Senator Antonio Trillanes, his career based on being a military officer who attempted to stage a coup, called for the immediate impeachment of Sara Duterte.

The Philippine National Police (PNP), on the other hand, are not the instrument of coup attempts and power grabs, but of day-to-day repression, of dead bodies in the streets and disappearances. The loyalty of the police in the Philippines, fed by the impunity of mass murder under Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called war on drugs, inclines to Duterte. Their perspective was articulated by Senator Ronald dela Rosa, former PNP chief, who told the press he agreed with Duterte’s appeal to the military. The police are not a force to overthrow Marcos, but disgruntled they can create immense instability.

The political allies of the Dutertes are scurrying for cover. Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo—immensely politically influential, a longtime ally of the Dutertes, and herself closely associated with the sections of the Philippine elite oriented toward China—seems to be moving to the Marcos camp. She posed for pictures in the legislature with Speaker Martin Romualdez two days ago, both of them giving the cameras a thumbs-up sign.

UK Labour government sets asylum seeker deportations record

Robert Stevens

The anti-immigration offensive of Britain’s Labour government has seen a record number of deportations of asylum seekers since it came to power in July.

Home Office data reveals that 9,400 people have been deported to their home countries since then. The Daily Mirror reported last week, “Altogether, more than 25 bespoke returns flights have taken place since July 5th, returning individuals to a range of countries including Albania, Poland, Romania and Vietnam, plus the first ever charter to Timor-Leste, and the biggest ever returns flight to Nigeria and Ghana.”

Including the mass deportations to Nigeria and Ghana, the Labour government has organised what the right-wing press are hailing as the “three biggest returns flights in UK history.” A significant proportion of these are “forced deportations”—almost 2,600, an increase of 19 percent compared to 2023 when the Conservatives were in office.

Labour campaigned for election pledged to deport thousands more asylum seekers. Taking office it immediately scrapped the Conservatives’ Rwanda policy, denouncing the Tories for spending hundreds of millions of pounds on failed attempts to deport asylum seekers to the African country. No flights to Rwanda were able to leave Britain due to legal challenges against a policy flouting international law.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer declared the Rwanda policy “dead and buried”, with Labour shifting all existing funds allocated to it over to its new beefed-up Border Security Command (BSC) and Returns and Enforcement Unit.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper visiting Dover in May 2024 with Tory-turned-Labour MP Natalie Elphicke (left) [Photo by Keir Starmer / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Three weeks after Labour took power, on July 25, the Home Office announced that 46 migrants had been deported by plane to Timor-Leste and Vietnam. The flight to Vietnam was the first for deportations since 2022. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper crowed, “We have immediately replaced the flight planning for Rwanda with actual flights to return people who have no right to stay to their home countries instead.”

In August, Cooper promised to deport at least 14,385 “illegal migrants” by the end of the year, the highest rate since 2018. The government continually briefs the media on its anti-immigrant agenda to ensure front-page coverage and in the words of the Mirror, “it’s understood more flights are planned before the end of the year—to new countries the UK hasn’t previously charted flights to,” meaning Labour may well exceed its target.

Throughout the summer, the media have kept up a morbid running commentary on how many asylum seekers have been successfully kicked out of the country by Labour, documenting any “progress” made while keeping a score on how many asylum seekers are still arriving by boat. By August 31, the Daily Mail, a frothing anti-immigrant hate sheet, was splashing a headline lauding “The biggest deportation flight in history and how Labour have drawn first blood in battle against the small boat crossings”. This was a reference to asylum seekers whose only means to enter the UK is via the hazardous crossing of the Channel.

The article by right-winger Dan Hodges, who describes himself as a “tribal neo-Blairite”, is a paean to Cooper. Hodges backed her for the Labour leadership in the 2015 election in which she and another Blairite, Liz Kendall—now Starmer’s Work and Pensions minister—were routed by Jeremy Corbyn.

Hodges was crestfallen that boats were still able to make it to the UK’s shores: “Our new Prime Minister hit the dubious milestone of 6,000 new arrivals on August 27, the 54th day of his premiership”. But this was a Labour success as the Tories’ “Liz Truss reached it after just 29 days, Rishi Sunak after 38.”

Starmer was keeping asylum seekers out, enthused Hodges, because since the election “the rate of new arrivals has actually fallen—it is currently 25 percent lower than the 25,000 who had arrived by this stage in 2022. And that’s despite the warm weather and calm seas of the past month.”

This was down to the “decision to redeploy… huge resources” away from the Rwanda policy. Hodges cited a Home Office official who said, “One of Yvette’s first acts was to move 300 officials off Rwanda, and on to ordinary deportations”.

Hodges pointed to the “immediate results. Although it was done with little fanfare, on August 23 a flight left the UK with 220 illegal migrants on board. Though ministers won’t reveal the destination for reasons of diplomatic protocol, it represented the biggest single-day deportation in British history, and was processed without the last-minute lawyerly wrangling and recrimination associated with previous removal efforts.”

Hodges noted the close relationship between Cooper and Director General of Immigration Enforcement, Bas Javid—brother of the former Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid. This has centred on deporting migrants from countries with “low grant rates”, as “there is virtually no chance of an asylum request being approved and options for a successful legal challenge are much more limited.” To fill deportation planes the government was “prioritising raids” on “car-washes, nail bars and some specific areas of the hospitality sector”.

Labour is doing everything to escalate its deportation regime, with Starmer telling reporters of the 9,400 already deported, “We have had the biggest single plane loads of returns going off, I think we have had the three biggest now that have ever gone off, so that is really good on returns.”

Starmer said he was working closely with the French, German and Italian governments—who have created a Fortress Europe with barbed wire fences sealing off the continent to asylum seekers, backed by vicious “pushback” operations, to ensure that known migrant routes are cut-off—and was “pressing hard” on law enforcement.

Italy’s government is led by the fascist Giorgia Meloni with whom Starmer has sought the closest relations since taking office, holding extensive talks at what he described as a “fantastic meeting” in Rome in September, and at leaders’ summits. The November 17 Sunday Times noted that the “pair discussed how her right-wing government had succeeded in reducing the number of migrants reaching Italy’s shores by boat, with the interior ministry reporting a 62 percent fall in arrivals over the first seven months of 2024. Frontex, the EU’s border force, has calculated a 64 per cent fall in the number of people arriving from north Africa and Malta.”

Flaunting his relations with Meloni, Starmer spoke on November 4 to the General Assembly of INTERPOL—the intergovernmental organization that co-ordinates police forces around the world.

Labour’s anti-immigration agenda is shrouded in Starmer’s oft-made statement about the need to “smash the gangs” who organise the boats making the Channel crossings. He declared, “People-smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism. We’ve got to combine resources, share intelligence and tactics, and tackle the problem upstream, working together to shut down the smuggling routes.” As “illegal migration is, without question, a massive driver of global insecurity,” the prime minister declared, “I will work with anyone serious who can offer solutions on this—anyone.”

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as he hosts the European Political Community (EPC) Summit [Photo by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

“Anyone” refers to the growing number of far-right governments in Europe, specifically Meloni’s of whom Starmer said, “We’re also working with Italy to dismantle the supply chains of maritime equipment, combat illicit financial flows, and strengthen our investigative capacities and our data sharing. And as part of the UK’s wider reset with the European Union, we are seeking a new security pact, including restoring access to real-time intelligence sharing networks.”

In the two weeks since, Starmer has centred praise on Italy’s “upstream work” in north Africa, in Tunisia and Libya, with which Rome has signed deals that intensify border security and train up the coastguard to prevent migrants escaping.

The Sunday Times reported that Cooper is working on a “series of Italy-style deals with several countries to help them stop thousands of illegal migrants setting off on the perilous journey to Britain. Named in the report were Kurdistan, Iraq, Turkey and Vietnam, with “‘co-operation and security’ agreements expected to be concluded before the end of the year.”

Labour have no differences with the Tories on “offshoring” asylum processing. It pulled the plug on the Rwanda scheme only because it was “unworkable”. Last month, Labour announced it had reached an agreement to deport any migrants arriving in the Chagos Islands in the British Indian Ocean territories to St Helena, an island in the South Atlantic 5,000 miles from the UK.

Hodges’ Mail piece cites a Downing Street source who said, “We’re not going back to the Rwanda scheme… It was a costly shambles. But we might have to look at some sort of offshore processing model to send a firm signal.”

The model is provided by Meloni, with Starmer “very interested” in Italy’s new five-year asylum seeker deal with Albania. The terms stipulate that the Balkan country hold 3,000 asylum seekers picked up by the Italian coastguard at any one time—roughly 36,000 across a year—in two camps while their claims are processed.

Australian Labor government trying to push through bill for mass deportations

Mike Head

Evidence came to light last week showing that more than 80,000 people could be removed from Australia to as-yet-unnamed third countries, which would be paid to take them under the Labor government’s latest immigration deportation bill.

Mass deportations on such a scale would rival in their size and brutality those being proposed by US President-elect Donald Trump, given the difference in population size between the US and Australia. 

Trump confirmed last week that he intends to declare a national emergency and use the US military and national guard forces to deport millions of migrants as soon as he takes office next January 20. 

Asylum seekers protesting in Punchbowl, Sydney, Australia

Like capitalist governments internationally, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s administration is heading down the same path. It is once again seeking to outbid the Liberal National Coalition in its anti-immigrant measures. These are designed to demonise refugees, international students and other “foreigners” and make them scapegoats for the worsening cost-of-living and housing crisis that is hitting millions of working-class households.

With bipartisan support by the Coalition, Labor’s deportation bill passed the House of Representatives last Wednesday. It was supposed to be examined in a rushed one-week inquiry by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which held a hearing last Thursday evening. 

At that hearing, Home Affairs Department officials conceded that the bill could affect far more people than the 246 released from immigration detention prisons last November. Those releases came after the High Court finally ruled, after two decades, that the indefinite detention of people who could not be deported constituted unconstitutional punishment without a court order.

The bill would authorise the Australian government to pay third countries to accept non-citizens on a “removal pathway,” regardless of whether those countries were signatories to the international Refugee Convention barring removal to face death or persecution.

Michael Thomas, the Home Affairs Department’s group manager of immigration compliance, revealed that those on a removal pathway included:

• An estimated 75,400 people with no valid visa in the Australian community.

• 4,452 people on bridging visa E, so they can make “acceptable arrangements to depart Australia”.

• 986 people in immigration detention.

• 193 in community detention.

• 246 on bridging visa R (BVR), released as a result of the High Court’s NZYQ ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful.

• A further 96 people on BVRs that predated that supreme court decision.

Officials claimed that most of the 80,000 could return to their home country, and thousands did so voluntarily. However, legal and human rights groups testified that if passed, the Migration Amendment Bill 2024 would allow governments to dump refugees and migrants in countries where they could be warehoused indefinitely, potentially in inhumane conditions. 

The bill would permit Australian governments to make “third country reception arrangements” by paying foreign governments to detain deported people. The Albanese government already does this on the remote Pacific island of Nauru, where it reopened the detention camp last year.

The bill would immunise Australian governments from any liability for harm, injury or death caused by such overseas detention, which has led to numerous deaths, some by suicide, over the past two decades. 

In the past, some civil liability claims have succeeded. In 2017, an agreement was reached between detainees imprisoned on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and the then Coalition government, following a claim of unlawful detention and negligence. Other refugees secured court orders to be brought to Australia to access urgent, lifesaving treatment unavailable in Nauru or Manus Island. Some cases are ongoing.

The bill would give governments extraordinary powers to effectively reverse refugee protection findings made by tribunals or courts and continue imposing punitive visa conditions on asylum seekers who remain in Australia.

The bill would further allow the Albanese government to quickly re-detain, either domestically or in Nauru, people released as the result of the High Court’s NZYQ ruling. It could claim that they could now be re-incarcerated for the purpose of likely deportation.

Currently, asylum seekers who reach Australia by boat can be sent to Nauru. The new provisions extend this power to “bridging visa R” (BVR) holders.

By ministerial decree, via regulations, the Labor government also has begun re-imposing police-state curfews and ankle bracelet monitoring on ex-detainees, defying yet another High Court ruling this November 6 that these measures too amounted to unconstitutional punishment.

In another bill, the Albanese government is proposing to give immigration ministers powers to ban mobile phones in migration detention facilities, cutting off detainees from communications, including family contact and support.

In the UK, the Starmer Labour government is similarly executing plans to deport at least 14,500 people deemed to be “illegal” migrants, exceeding the two previous six-month records set during Conservative government rule of 13,410 in 2018 and 14,389 last year. Sir Keir Starmer’s government has signed “returns agreements” with countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Serbia and Georgia.

This is part of a wider poisonous agenda to divide working-class people and pit them against each other along national and ethnic lines under conditions of declining living standards, a deepening economic and social crisis and a plunge into war. Right across Europe, governments are outdoing each other with reactionary moves against refugees and democratic rights. 

Labor’s bill is not an aberration. Like the Keating Labor government, which became the first in the world to impose mandatory detention on asylum seekers in 1992, this Albanese government is spearheading an assault on one of the most defenceless sections of the international working class.

This bill is reminiscent of the last Labor government’s “Malaysian solution,” which sought to dump refugees in a country that had not signed the Refugee Convention. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s legislation was struck down by the High Court in 2011 for breaching the requirements of the Migration Act at the time, not to remove asylum seekers to countries where there was no protection against removal to face harm.

In response, that Labor government went further. In July 2013, then led again by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, it declared that no asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australian waters would ever be permitted to settle in the country. That set a global precedent for a blanket ban on refugees. Asylum seekers were transported to primitive detention camps in Papua New Guinea—one of the world’s most impoverished countries. 

Such measures violate one of the most fundamental legal and democratic rights—the right to flee repression and seek asylum from persecution, without punishment or discrimination. The Refugee Convention formally enshrines these rights, together with core rights to freedom from arbitrary detention and other human rights abuses, the provision of essential health and education facilities, and access to the courts by refugees to challenge their treatment.

Legal and human rights groups’ representatives denounced the latest bill at Thursday’s Senate committee hearing. Josephine Langbien, associate legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, for example, testified that the bill allowed people removed to be separated from their families “sending them to permanent exile in third countries against their will.”

In an earlier media statement, Langbien pointed out: “This will expand Australia’s disastrous offshore detention regime, under which people have died and suffered conditions amounting to torture.” She added: “Despite multiple High Court rulings, the government is intent on further punishing this small group of people—and potentially impacting thousands of others in the process.”

Despite such objections and widespread opposition throughout working-class immigrant communities, the Albanese government is escalating its nationalistic offensive, including by vowing to keep slashing the number of international students in the country.

This is being accompanied by a filthy propaganda campaign throughout the corporate media depicting formerly detained refugees as murderers and rapists, and blaming students and immigrant workers for the worsening affordable housing crisis.

Vulnerable members of society, including those brutalised by years in detention, are being vilified to impose authoritarian measures. This is setting precedents for use throughout the working class as a whole, as social conditions keep deteriorating and billions of dollars are poured into military spending amid the US-backed Gaza genocide and the lurch into wider war against Russia and China.

Haiti’s unelected prime minister ousted amid surging gang and state violence, increasing social misery

Félix Gauthier

Haiti’s interim prime minister was ousted last week by the Transitional Council—the government “oversight mechanism” that the US, Canada and various factions of the country’s bourgeois elite put together earlier this year to provide a fig leaf of “popular” legitimacy for the latest imperialist-sponsored military intervention in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

The Council’s sacking of Garry Conille came amid rampant gang and state violence and ever widening social misery.

Conille was sworn in as head of Haiti’s government last June just weeks before the international police-military “stabilization” force organized, financed and, to a large degree armed, by Washington, Ottawa and their allies began to deploy in Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital.

Six months on, the Kenyan-led “stabilization force” has failed to make any discernible progress in disarming the gangs that have overrun some 60 percent of Port-au-Prince and much of the country over the past year.

In a clear sign that the situation on the ground is spiraling out of control, the US Federal Aviation Administration has instituted a temporary ban on flights to Haiti, after gangs opened fire on commercial airlines on Monday, November 11. At least three planes were targeted by gunfire from below, including a Spirit Airlines plane that was about to land in Port-au-Prince, and departing JetBlue and American Airlines jets. A Spirit flight attendant was injured in the attack.

Police officers near the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, November 12, 2024. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

The FAA decision also temporarily grounded United Nations humanitarian flights, restricting much needed supplies. UN flights were only permitted to resume on Wednesday, November 20.

The same day as the attack on Spirit Airlines also saw a widely reported attack by law enforcement officers and aligned vigilantes on Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) operations in Port-au-Prince. Citing this incident, as well as a “series of threats” by local police, MSF announced the suspension of its activities in Haiti on Tuesday, further compounding Haiti’s isolation and privation from urgently needed humanitarian assistance.

According to the MSF, members of a vigilante group and law enforcement officers stopped their ambulance, which was transporting three young people with gunshot wounds. Police attempted to arrest the patients and when MSF personnel objected they escorted the ambulance to a public hospital, where law enforcement officers and vigilantes surrounded the vehicle, slashed its tires, and tear-gassed MSF staff. At least two of the wounded patients were then summarily executed.

The gruesome attack on defenceless patients and MSF ambulance personnel by the Haitian police highlights once more that the very forces supposed to fight the gangs are themselves the source of like violence and criminality.

Haiti’s government and state are mired in corruption and violence, widely unpopular, and have been operating outside constitutional bounds, without an elected parliament and president, since 2020. The Transitional Council is entirely subordinated to the interests of the North American and European imperialist powers and torn by bitter factional conflicts between the political representatives of rival capitalist cliques. The gangs have been able to flourish and wield effective control over much of the Haitian-half of the island of Hispaniola because they enjoy the patronage of, and are tied to leading elements within Haiti’s ruling class and its state.

In a continuation of the rapid succession of corrupt and unelected leaders installed at the behest of Washington and Ottawa, the Transitional Council fired interim Prime Minister Garry Conille, whose family had close ties to the US-backed three-decade long “Papa and Baby Doc” Duvalier dictatorship, on Nov 10. In his place it his named Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, a businessman and former president of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who ran for the Senate in 2015. Not unlike the numerous pretenders to Haiti’s leadership before him, Fils-Aime has promised to work towards the holding of elections, which have not taken place in Haiti since 2016. At that time, the Obama administration and the Trudeau government intervened and manipulated the process to ensure the election of Jovenel Moïse, the protégé of the outgoing right-wing president, Michel Martelly.

Ex-Haiti Prime Minister Garry Conille, speaks during a joint press conference with Kenya's President William Ruto at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, Friday, October 11, 2024. [AP Photo/Brian Inganga]

The Transitional Council’s ouster of Conille came after it had attempted to change the heads of several ministries in defiance of his advice. The governmental reshuffling is occurring only six months after Conille replaced his disgraced predecessor, Ariel Henry, whom the US coerced into stepping down, without even the pretense of legal or democratic processes, by preventing his return to Haiti. Conille, for his part, has denounced his own dismissal as “tainted by illegality.”

The Council, established in April to restore “democratic order,” is constantly facing internecine conflicts and corruption accusations, as competing sections of Haiti’s bourgeoisie vie for the relatively little wealth and power accorded to them by their imperialist sponsors.

The social and political crisis roiling Haiti is among the most severe anywhere, and the direct consequence of brutal imperialist oppression, including more than a century of US military interventions and regime change operations dating back to the 1915-34 occupation of the country by US Marines.

The country has never recovered from the IMF restructuring programs imposed over the last three decades and a devastating 2010 earthquake.

Despite a crying need for humanitarian aid, international “assistance” over the past year has been primarily focused on providing troops and equipment to establish “order” and buttress the ability of the barely functioning state to exercise a monopoly on organized violence.

Much of the population—and especially the more than 700,000 people who have been internally displaced—lack access to sufficient food and other necessities.

None of this concerns the ruling classes of the United States, France, or Canada.

In a rare display of honesty caught on video, French President Emmanuel Macron summed up what imperialist leaders really think about the Haitian people. Recorded on the margins of the G20 this week, the video shows Macron arguing with a bystander in public, as he denounces the Transitional Council’s move to replace Conille. After underlining that he had supported Conille, Macron describes the latter’s Haitian opponents as “total morons,” and goes on to blame the Haitian population itself for the crisis in which their country is mired: “Quite frankly, it was the Haitians who killed Haiti.”

Macron’s remarks are an outrageous and brazen lie coming from the president of the state which is one of the prime culprits in the plunder and oppression of the Haitian people. Apart from the arrogance, condescension, and contempt for its subjects typically exhibited by imperialist leaders, Macron’s unhinged remarks reveal something else: A growing impatience and anxiety, bound up with the potential consequences of continued and worsening political instability in Haiti, and the Caribbean region more broadly.

The past few months have already seen mass unrest over the cost of living in the French territories of Guadeloupe and the nearby island of Martinique. In Guadeloupe, striking workers who seized control of the territory’s power station caused days of power outages. This has been met with repressive measures by French authorities, including days-long curfews. The instability within Haiti, as well as the mass exodus of its population, is seen as potential fuel to the fire of rapidly developing class struggles, not just in the Caribbean, but also in North America.

In September this year, the UN Security Council reauthorized the present “international security force” deployment to Haiti. Currently it is led by a few hundred Kenyan Special Forces police, who are notorious for the brutality they have employed in repressing protests in Nairobi. While they have been deployed since this summer, they have completely failed to curb the gang violence, or for that matter the terroristic violence carried out by the Haitian police, whose operations they are mandated to assist.

According to a UN report published last month, there was a surge in killings and police executions in Haiti between July and September 2024. During that period, more than 1,740 people were killed or injured, a nearly 30% increase from the previous trimester. This included at least 106 extrajudicial killings that were carried out by law enforcement officials. Among those summarily executed were six children as young as 10 years old accused of collaborating with gangs.

Residents flee their homes to escape gang and police violence in the Nazon neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, November 14, 2024. [AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph]

The decision of the North American imperialist powers to delegate the task of imposing “order” in Haiti to Kenya and other African and CARICOM nations, rather than deploying their own forces, partly reflects the fact that the United States and Canada have prioritized their military resources for arming Ukraine and preparing for direct military confrontation with Russia and China.

They are also acutely aware of the deep-seated hostility of the Haitian population toward imperialism and fear the impact at home of both having to suppress anti-imperialist protests, as well as being caught in a costly military conflict with well-armed gangs.

In regard to the crisis now consuming Haiti, the principal concern of US and Canadian imperialism is to prevent it further destabilizing the Caribbean region, which they view as their “backyard,” and provoking an exodus of impoverished refugees.

Those Haitians attempting to flee what increasingly resembles a nightmarish open air prison are met with political persecution and social hardship wherever they attempt to seek refuge, from the Dominican Republic to overseas in Canada or the United States.

In the United States, President-elect Donald Trump placed incitement against immigrants, and Haitian refugees in particular, at the centre of his campaign. Fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia, Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, assisted among others by the fascist billionaire Elon Musk and his ownership of Twitter, scurrilously denounced Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio, for hunting and eating Americans’ pet cats and dogs.

Tens of thousands of Haitians are currently allowed to live and work in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status program. Many were granted this status in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, which killed hundreds of thousands, and displaced millions.

Trump is expected to revoke this temporary legal status and implement measures and deport all these Haitian refugees from the very first days of his presidency, as part of his plans to mount a police-military witch hunt against so-called “illegal” immigrants.

The Democratic Party not only hasn’t done anything to counter this anti-immigrant campaign, the Biden-Harris administration has implemented its own anti-immigrant policies, including increased deportations and border closures. The same goes for the Canadian Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. It recently announced a drastic tightening of immigration restrictions, entirely adapting and lending credibility to the Canadian version of the same anti-immigrant discourse promoted south of the border. Moreover, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has vowed that Canada will not provide an “open door” to those under threat of expulsion by Trump from the US and will work closely with his administration to provide border “security.”