US prisons begin release of inmates after COVID-19 pandemic engulfs system

Sam Dalton

On Monday the official total of positive COVID-19 cases in New York City prisons rose to 167 prisoners, 114 staff and 23 prison healthcare workers. The infamous Rikers Island, with a population of 4,740, now has the highest infection rate of any defined population globally, at almost 3 percent. Rikers’ infection rate is almost 10 times more than New York City as a whole, which has an infection rate of 0.357 percent, according to the Legal Aid Society.

Given the scarcity of testing, the true case numbers are undoubtedly much higher. At least two prison workers have died in New York.

COVID-19 has spread throughout the prisons nationally. Cook County Jail in Illinois, as of March 29, had 101 cases among inmates and 12 among staff. March 29 also saw the first confirmed death of a federal prisoner from the disease, a 49-year-old inmate in Louisiana.

The spread of the virus and the first deaths within the prison system have prompted the release of prisoners across the United States. According to Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City has released over 1,000 prisoners, lowering the number of incarcerated people in the city to fewer than 5,000 for the first time since 1949. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose state has 78 COVID-19 positive inmates at the time of this writing, signed an executive order calling for the immediate release of nonviolent prisoners.

The Los Angeles County sheriff’s office has ordered similar measures and California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered a stop to new prison admissions. New Jersey has also released over 1,000 inmates. Prisoners who are being released are not being tested for the virus.

These measures are haphazard and, in most cases, too little, too late. An acute outbreak of COVID-19 across US prisons is already taking place. Hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners and prison staff will die as the result of the incompetence and negligence of the ruling class. Kelsey Kauffman, the director of education at Indiana Women’s Prison, stated that the failure to release inmates earlier “may be considered one of the great public health tragedies of our time.”

Although the New York City prison system is the epicenter of the crisis, the highly infectious nature of the disease and its uncontrolled spread through the national prison system, with its population of over 2 million people, mean this will become a national catastrophe.

Since the beginning of the outbreak in the US in January, countless warnings from prison and medical professionals about the dangers of inaction have been ignored. On March 6, the Prison Policy Initiative called for wide-ranging releases throughout the US. On March 15, the World Health Organization wrote, “Efforts to control COVID-19 in the community are likely to fail if strong infection prevention and control measures, adequate testing, treatment and care are not carried out.” New York only began releasing prisoners in very small numbers on March 20, and most remain behind bars. The continuing failure to expand these measures will result in many more deaths.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the vulnerability of the prison population to infectious diseases had shown that a catastrophe was possible without strong corrective measures. Numerous outbreaks of meningitis, syphilis and tuberculosis have occurred in many US prisons since 2000. A 2011 paper, “The Rise of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) in U.S. Correctional Populations,” stated, “Strategies that focused on increased awareness, early detection and appropriate management, enhanced hygiene, and maintenance of a clean environment have proven successful in containing clusters and outbreaks.”

The crowded and unsanitary conditions of prisons allow infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, to spread rapidly. Jimmy, a recently released inmate from Rikers Prison, told the New York Times: “You’re on top of one another no matter what you do. There’s no ventilation. If anything is floating, everybody gets it.” He went on to say he had seen dormitories and holding pens with feces smeared across the walls. Official guidance instructing prisoners to keep at least 3 feet apart is impossible to follow. Fifty inmates typically share the same toilet, only three telephones and continue to eat together on cramped tables. In most US jailhouses, beds are typically less than 24 inches apart.

Prisoners have more underlying health conditions than the overall population, meaning that infection is more likely to be deadly. State and federal prisoners are 12 times more likely to have suffered from tuberculosis than the general population and three times more like to suffer from HIV/AIDS. Prison populations also suffer from increased rates of diabetes, hypertension and asthma.

The rapid spread of infection among a less healthy population means that the majority of cases requiring hospitalization and ventilators will come in a short period, putting additional strain on already under-resourced hospitals and healthcare workers. Again, this will increase the number of deaths.

Prison staff are also at increased risk of infection. Contrary to reports from New York City authorities, prison workers have not received promised personal protective equipment. A public health practitioner who works at Rikers Island told the World Socialist Web Site: “When I came to administer tests there were no masks and no gloves although I was told they would be provided. All the correctional officers that come in are in one line and not socially distanced. People are desperate to work as they need the money, so they do not want to admit if they do have symptoms nor take sick time. We are just having these tests to say they are testing; they aren’t doing anything to stop the spread.” These unprotected workers are at heightened risk of not only infecting themselves, but also their families when they return home.

Amy, a nurse whose son is currently in a New York state prison for a parole violation, told the WSWS: “My son has asthma and is a smoker. He got 18 months for missing curfew. In the prison he is regularly in a crowded cafeteria and has no access to hand sanitizer. He told me it is spreading like wildfire in there. We are waiting to see if he gets released, but there are so many vulnerable and sick people with him. I am really concerned about them; their lives could end in five minutes.”

Compounding the health crisis in the prisons, all New York City facilities will have various services curtailed due to the pandemic, including creative art therapy, access to caseworkers, age-based screenings for sexually transmitted infections, a program to combat intimate partner violence and new methadone treatments.

The rapid influx and outflow of prisoners through the national system mean prisons act as launching points for the disease’s spread through the wider population. Last year an estimated 10.6 million people cycled through American prisons.

The release of prisoners has incited a barrage of “law-and-order” demagogy from sections of the political establishment. In response to releases, US Attorney General William Barr stated, “Many inmates will be safer in Bureau of Prisons facilities where population is controlled and there is ready access to doctors and medical care.” These words, which ignore the mass privatization of prison healthcare in the past two decades and chronic shortages this has entailed, are facilitating potentially thousands of preventable deaths.

The entire political establishment, Republican and Democrat alike, is culpable in this disaster. Their shocking incompetence and callousness are not accidental or the product of ignorance. The delay in the release of prisoners, despite calls from the medical and prison community weeks ago, is an expression of their subservience to Wall Street, and particularly the corporations who benefit from the plentiful supply of hyper-exploited prison labor across the US. Indeed, it is the case that hundreds of thousands of innocent and nonviolent inmates are still behind bars under conditions where prisons are deadly breeding grounds for the pandemic.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, played a leading role in enacting multiple “crime bills” that have dramatically expanded the number of people imprisoned in the US.

The American prison system was in a deep crisis before the rapid spread of COVID-19. No society in human history has incarcerated as many of its own citizens as the United States. The COVID-19 outbreak—and the threat it poses to millions of lives in the prison system—is not just an act of nature, but the product of decades of the conscious subordination of correctional facilities to the profits of major corporations, leading to mass incarceration under atrocious prison conditions.

The profit system is sabotaging the struggle against the coronavirus

Patrick Martin

The profit drive of big American corporations is a major factor in impeding the efforts of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in the struggle against the coronavirus. This is the reality of American capitalism, as opposed to Trump’s hosannas about how “great companies” are playing an “incredible” role in this crisis.

The New York Times detailed Sunday how financial operations in the medical equipment market blocked an initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to build a stockpile of ventilators, which are now in short supply throughout the United States.

The CDC initiative, which began in 2007 in response to the SARS epidemic and continued for seven years, was aimed at addressing a shortage of the ventilators that would be needed in the event of a runaway influenza-type virus, similar to this year’s coronavirus. “The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or another crisis,” the Times reported.

The devices would not only be cheaper, but simpler to operate, thus requiring less training for the workers, usually respiratory therapists, responsible for their use. In the current COVID-19 crisis, the lack of staff is at least as important as the scarcity of ventilators.

The CDC selected a small California company to design the new machines, which would cost only $3,000 apiece, much below the price of $10,000 for the bulky machines then in use in hospitals throughout the country. Newport Medical Instruments, a subsidiary of a Japanese firm, won the bid for the federal contract and delivered three prototypes of the new device in 2011. CDC officials were enthusiastic, and told Congress that the device would be on the market by September 2013.

But then a much larger US medical device manufacturer, Covidien, acquired Newport Medical Instruments, as part of an effort to buy up smaller competitors and prevent them from cutting into Covidien’s profits. In particular, Covidien already manufactured and marketed a much more expensive ventilator that would be undercut by the Newport effort. According to the Times, “Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business.”

After Covidien, valued at $12 billion, swallowed up Newport Medical for $100 million, its executives asked the CDC in 2014 to allow it to withdraw from the contract for the proposed low-cost ventilator on the grounds that it was not sufficiently profitable. The Obama administration agreed to the request. CDC started over, with a new contract to a new company, the giant Dutch multinational Philips. Covidien was itself acquired a year later by Medtronic for $50 billion. Executives of the giant merged firm told the Times they knew nothing about the low-cost ventilator project.

Medtronic Operational Headquarters in Fridley, Minnesota, USA. (Photo: Wikipedia)

The Times report concluded: “That failure delayed the development of an affordable ventilator by at least half a decade, depriving hospitals, states and the federal government of the ability to stock up. The federal government started over with another company in 2014, whose ventilator was approved only last year and whose products have not yet been delivered.”

There are similar factors behind the shortage of N95 masks, now felt by medical workers at hospitals throughout the country. One of the largest US manufacturers of N95 masks is 3M Corporation, the giant Minneapolis-based conglomerate perhaps best known as the maker of Post-Its and Scotch tape. There has been mounting criticism of 3M and other providers of N95 masks for withholding supplies of materials and finished masks from the market, and for permitting price-gouging by their distributors.

3M in particular has been attacked for its policy of delivering all its supplies through commercial distributors, rather than sending them directly to health care facilities or state agencies seeking to purchase large quantities of the masks, which are used by the millions each day of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week the company announced stepped-up production of N95 masks, and it was featured in a flattering cover story in Bloomberg Businessweek, headlined, “How 3M Plans to Make More Than a Billion Masks By End of Year,” which hailed the company for “a remarkably large contribution” to the fight against coronavirus.

Sports and media billionaire Mark Cuban, an occasional critic of the Trump administration, denounced 3M by name. “I’m excited that 3M has increased capacity. But supply hasn’t been matched with demand,” he told Bloomberg News. “Why is 3M not telling distributors, pick up the phone, sell your inventory to the hospitals, or we’ll never let you buy more product?”

Citing reports of price-gouging, Cuban continued, “these distributors are making as much money as they possibly can … It’s wrong, it’s criminal.”

President Trump was asked Saturday about Cuban’s remarks, and he defended 3M, claiming one of his own billionaire cronies, Ken Langone, CEO of Home Depot, had vouched for the company.

“I think 3M has done an incredible job,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a photo op in Norfolk, Virginia, as a US Navy hospital ship set sail for New York City. “I just spoke to Ken Langone. I think he’s on the board of 3M. He called up and he said what a great job they’ve done. I think 3M, from what everybody said, they’ve done an incredible job.”

Another attack on profiteering at the expense of N95 production came from an unlikely source, a fervent right-winger, former Army Special Forces helicopter pilot Tyler Merritt, whose apparel company based in Savannah, Georgia, specializes in marketing t-shirts to Trump supporters with provocative slogans—attacking NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, upholding gun rights and other flagwaving motifs.

Merritt has taken to the airwaves, first on Fox News and then Sunday on MSNBC, declaring that several major corporations are blocking efforts to convert factories like his to producing surgical masks, N95 masks and other needed supplies. Holding up a piece of the fabric that is cut and molded to make N95 respirators, Merritt told MSNBC the fabric “is being hoarded by certain companies. This material is being traded as a commodity. This used to cost $6,000 a ton, now it’s costing upwards of $600,000 a ton… It’s despicable what some companies are doing.”

Merritt did not name any names, and his MSNBC interviewer—working for a network owned by Comcast Corporation—did not seek to identify exactly which corporate criminals he was referring to. But there is no doubt of the truth of what Merritt was charging: giant corporations and various middlemen are raking in profits while endangering the lives of millions in the face of the coronavirus threat.

Two other critical components needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic—mass testing and the development of a vaccine—have also been constrained by the profit motive and the division of the world into competing nation-states. As the WSWS has previously reported, plans to develop a coronavirus vaccine following the 2002 SARS epidemic floundered when no companies invested in the research. Had such a vaccine been developed, it could have been tested during the initial outbreak in Wuhan to see whether it could prevent COVID-19. The incredibly long delays in mass testing in the US and many countries has been a combined product of governmental mismanagement and the subordination of this vital social need to the profit interests of the pharmaceutical giants.

COVID-19 and Left Wing Extremism in India: Emerging Concerns

Rajat Kumar Kujur


Left wing extremism (LWE) is known to be India’s biggest internal security threat. LWE conflict zones are home to a variety of actors such as the local civilian population, security and administrative personnel, the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres etc. At present, with the Government of India’s country-wide efforts to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative that innovative security relevant impetus be added to handle this issue in the LWE affected regions.

The recent CPI-Maoist attack on security forces in Chhattisgarh highlights the urgency of doing so. The attack came at a time when people in India, irrespective of political, social, and religious differences, have come together to deal with COVID-19 risks. Although specific information indicating active plotting is not yet available, it is plausible that the CPI-Maoist would be seeking to exploit public fears associated with the spread of COVID-19 to incite violence, eliminate targets and promote their ideology. Additionally, at present, due to the countrywide lockdown, the Maoist rank and file in the dense forests are facing acute shortage of food and other daily use goods. There are reports that in desperation, they are now pressurising innocent villagers and village chiefs to provide them with food and other materials. This is a serious situation as it has the potential to introduce new dynamics to the ongoing Maoist insurgency.

According to official data, 60 districts across eight states are affected by the CPI-Maoist led LWE. Locals living in those areas have almost no proper access to hospitals or healthcare facilities and are often treated like third-class citizens. Consequently, they have turned to dubious ‘faith healers’, which stands to complicate an already difficult public health situation. Given the adverse conditions, it is a major challenge for the government to provide necessary healthcare facilities to some of its most neglected populations at a time when they need it most. The task entails both ensuring availability of the facilities to those populations as well as creating an atmosphere of safety in the Maoist affected areas so that people can avail of those facilities.

Furthermore, since 2005, approximately 30,000 people (mostly from the tribal populace) have reportedly fled Chhattisgarh due to LWE violence, and are living in 248 settlements in the forests of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra. They currently live in deplorable conditions without proper access to clean drinking water and electricity. They receive lower wages, and most do not possess ration cards or voter IDs and cannot prove their citizenship. This poses a impediments to respective state governments vis-à-vis ensuring their well-being. Those among them without proper identification are vulnerable to being deprived of special provisions instituted by the government to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, thousands of people belonging to the Maoist infested regions of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Maharashtra work as daily wage labourers in Delhi, Mumbai, Goa etc, many of whom are now returning to their villages in large groups. In the Maoist infested areas, checking by police personnel is limited to roads only. Given how those returning are doing so through forest areas, the risk of transmission of the virus from carriers is extremely high.

The LWE affected areas also house large numbers of security personnel who are deployed there. For example, at present, in Chhattisgarh alone, approximately 70,000 security personnel comprising state forces and paramilitary forces like the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal etc are deployed in seven of its worst Maoist hit districts. These personnel are more vulnerable to being affected by COVID-19 in comparison to their counterparts deployed in other places. Findings of various studies suggest that forces deployed away from home for extended periods of time do tend to have higher rates of infection than those able to live with, or near, their families. Additionally, the fact that most of these forces travel from place to place as per the need of the hour makes them more exposed to the risk of contracting the virus.

New Delhi (as well as state governments) must keep their strategy simple without allowing the situation to become advantageous for the CPI-Maoist. Security forces operating in the area must be made aware of their new role in this war against COVID-19. Combing operations might have to continue, but health camps, mobile hospitals etc must be urgently incorporated into the counter-Maoist strategy. Free medicines, soaps, masks and sanitary napkins must be distributed along with government sponsored rations. Local police personnel familiar with local languages as well as surrendered Maoists could be enlisted to aid in spreading public service information to the innocent tribal populations pertaining to safety, sanitation and self-isolation. Overcoming the COVID-19 threat in regions affected by India’s biggest internal security threat would require strict vigilance against Maoist activities as well as comprehensive protection of the local populations.

The New World of Coronavirus

Cesar Chelala

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, and the coronavirus pandemic have one thing in common: both caused a seismic change in the world. And that change, in general, is for the worse. The present pandemic has, and will have, negative effects on how people work, live, and use their free time. This huge public health crisis will affect each and every one of the 7.8 billion inhabitants of the planet.

As a consequence of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, the world became a gigantic apparatus of security and control that severely curtailed individual liberties. Although that has been necessary to guarantee the lives of citizens, at the same time it allowed an intrusion of government controls on people, particularly in the United States.

However, even though the attack on the towers had great effects on citizens’ rights, they pale in the face of the consequences of the present pandemic, which not only affects the survival of millions of people but also has great economic and social effects. And although some analysts think that these effects may be short-lived, they will most likely affect the world’s population for a long time.

Economic effects

As usually happens in times of crisis, those most affected are generally those with the least economic resources. Millions of employees worldwide have been left without work given the widespread cessation of all kinds of activities, except the essential ones. As a result, those workers who depend exclusively on their wages and savings are unable to meet their needs and those of their families.

Although some governments have promised financial aid to those most in need – as is the case in the United States – that aid is insufficient or takes time to arrive, making it less effective. In the United States, an estimated 40 percent of workers depend entirely on their bi-weekly or monthly wages. And if that happens in the most powerful country in the world, it is easy to imagine what happens in developing countries.

Interestingly, although thousands of businesses have had to suspend their activities, large companies that sell their products through the Internet have considerably increased their workforce. Such is the case of Amazon, which added 100,000 new jobs to existing ones. However, it is estimated that the pandemic will significantly reduce the productive capacity of the economy globally, and its effects will be greater than those of the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

Social effects of the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic led to major changes in people’s behavior. Although the majority act with a great sense of responsibility, limiting the occasions for personal contact as much as possible, irresponsible groups put at risk those most susceptible to contracting the infection, such as people over 60 years of age or those with serious pre-existing diseases.

This also highlights the enormous generosity of health personnel, from the humblest to the most capable, to offer their services at the risk of their lives. Government leaders may take responsibility for setting an example with their behavior, and imposing draconian measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic. The behavior of a few who do not comply with the isolation directives must be prevented from risking the lives of others.

Effect on the global balance of power

Public opinion is that neither President Donald Trump nor the leaders of some European countries such as Italy and Spain responded adequately to the challenge of this world crisis. If the European Union cannot adequately protect its 500 million people, it should come as no surprise if some countries decide to leave Brussels and regain control of their affairs at the national level.

Instead, the early and accurate attitude of the leaders of various Asian countries such as China, South Korea and Singapore is widely praised at the moment. It is important to emphasize this, particularly when a second wave of infections is feared in some Southeast Asian countries. In 2009, Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization had stated in this regard, “All countries should immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans and must remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.”

Meanwhile, the dissatisfaction of the American public with the delay of President Donald Trump’s administration to take the necessary measures to combat the pandemic continues to grow. Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College recently wrote for Politico, “The colossal failure of the Trump administration both to keep Americans healthy and to slow the pandemic-driven implosion of the economy might shock the public enough back to insisting on something from government other than emotional satisfaction.”

Outlook

Bill Gates had already warned in 2015 of the possibility of a pandemic like the one the world is currently experiencing. And his tips to avoid it were the following, which are still valid: Develop an excellent health system; create a medical emergency corps; join forces between medical and military resources; do simulation exercises with germs and, finally, increase funds for research and development, particularly for vaccines and diagnostic tests. Gates already warned that if the adoption of these measures did not start immediately, it would be impossible to stop the next pandemic. His words were prophetic.

Confronting the crisis of internally displaced Indians

Swapna Gopinath

India is currently facing a crisis which can escalate into a bigger catastrophe than COVID-19 and the consequences can be heart wrenching as we are already witnessing across the country. The exodus of the migrant population is of an unprecedented kind, triggered by the reckless and callous decisions taken by a senseless government at the Centre. Prime Minister Modi’s 8 p.m. address to the nation has emerged to be one of the dreaded moments in the history of the nation. Every time he begins his speech, Indians sit holding their breath, expecting the worst to befall on them. The memory of the demonetization is, no doubt, fresh in the minds of the people. COVID-19 resulted in a similar situation, and the lockdown for 21 days has opened up  pandora’s box for this nation.

While our prime minister shares animated videos on his exercise schedule titled ‘yoga with Modi’ for his middle-class and upper-class admirers, the rest of India, the poor, the migrant laborers from urban India die on the roads. They are compelled to walk hundreds of miles, with no food or job in the cities, post the lockdown for 21 days. With a population of more than a billion and millions of them being migrant laborers, the decision to lockdown the country is turning to be a brutal and inhuman act on the part of the government. The lockdown was, no doubt a hastily implemented decision, without proper planning or even a passing thought about the far-reaching consequences or the possibility of an immediate disaster as we are witnessing right now.

The extreme callousness with which these laborers and their families are treated is being reported from several parts of the country. The Central government has instructed the state governments to close their borders or to prevent them from leaving their homes. The instruction will further worsen the case of the migrants already on the road. We hear leaders suggesting closing up the borders of the states, we read about these people being subjected to sanitization processes where they are publicly bathed in sanitizers, we read about chief ministers who plan to isolate them in stadiums once they reach their states after an arduous journey by foot.  In this state of exception, they are treated as mere biological beings, their bodies totally under the control of the government machinery.

The pandemic has exposed the worst that governments are capable of and India leads by example in subjecting its own citizens to cruelty of an unprecedented kind. It is the poorest of the poor who are being subjected to this brutality and 22 of them have been reported killed, on their way home. Even as the central government remains responsible for this unplanned lockdown, without coordinating with the states or envisioning the problems it could trigger off in a vast and diverse country like India, Modi has refused to take responsibility and preferred to apologize for the difficulties caused to a large section of the population. For the prime minister, it is affective politics all the way!

Dehumanising the multitudes who are on a desperate journey to their native villages is what we witness in India now. The millions who have been subjected to this traumatic journey, which includes children as young as one year old, may survive it and live on with their lives of deprivation. Several of them might not have the strength and will to endure this long and excruciating travel by foot. Many of them might already have contracted the highly contagious virus and the close interactions with fellow travelers will result in a leap in the number of infected people in India. Above all, India will have displayed to the world, that our people, especially the poor, don’t matter to us and that a brutally insensitive and impulsive leadership can wreak havoc on any nation.

Hungary’s Orbán government seizes on coronavirus pandemic to establish dictatorship

Markus Salzmann

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is using the COVID-19 epidemic to establish dictatorial rule. Following the declaration of a state of emergency on March 11, the country’s parliament is to be effectively abolished with the introduction of an “Emergency Ordinance Act.” The act will allow Orbán to take sole control of all spheres of power.

The act allows the government to suspend parliament indefinitely. Decrees from the prime minister must then merely be communicated to the president of parliament. The government can “suspend the application of individual laws, deviate from legal provisions and take other extraordinary measures.” It is given the right to “suspend the application of certain laws by decree” and “introduce other exceptional measures to guarantee the stability of life, health, the personal and material security of citizens and the economy,” the act reads.

On March 23 parliament refused to discuss the draft law when it was first introduced as an urgent motion. The rejection was possible because passing the act required a four-fifths majority. The government, however, will submit the bill a second time on March 31. This time the act requires a two-thirds majority of deputies, i.e., the majority which Orbán’s party, Fidesz, already possesses in parliament.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Photo Credit: Annika Haas (EU2017EE))

The government plans to introduce criminal offences which would directly eliminate democratic rights. Anyone who publishes reports or messages that could hinder the “successful protection” of the public against the coronavirus can be punished with up to five years in prison. This means in plain language: Any criticism of official government propaganda is a punishable offense. Persons who violate quarantine regulations can also be imprisoned for between five and eight years.

Orbán is using the coronavirus epidemic as a pretext. From the start his government has ignored and downplayed the crisis. Despite the onset of the virus only around 6,000 people have been tested and the Hungarian health care system has already been stretched to its limits by a still relatively small number of cases.

In addition, Orbán’s Fidesz party is using the coronavirus pandemic to conduct a vile racist and anti-Semitic campaign. The government has already expelled 13 Iranian students from the country for allegedly violating quarantine rules. The Iranians later said that the hygienic conditions they were subjected to were catastrophic and they had received no information with whom they had to share rooms.

Orbán has publicly stated that immigration is to blame for the spread of the infectious disease. At the same time, numerous journalists and scientists complain that the government has failed to release and/or falsified key data.

The government has said it will only deploy the new emergency laws until the end of the year, but its announcement should be given no credibility.

Since taking power in 2010, Orbán has persistently built up authoritarian structures. He has effectively abolished freedom of the press, filled important offices in the judiciary and administration with party loyalists, and waged a brutal campaign against refugees and those supporting them. Fidesz maintains close ties to far-right circles and glorifies leading figures in the fascist dictatorship which ruled Hungary in the 1930s and 1940s.

Orbán regards the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to establish a dictatorial regime that will abolish any parliamentary limits and maximize his personal power. The government has already placed 140 key companies under military supervision. In addition, the army is being extensively deployed for domestic control purposes. with military units patrolling the streets of the capital. At an event organized by the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MKIK), Orbán said that preparations had to be made for “brutal changes.”

According to defence minister Tibor Benkö, the aim of the military operation is to monitor and secure operations during the coronavirus epidemic. The sequestered companies include both state and private companies, including the Paks nuclear power plant, the MOL oil and gas group, electricity, water and gas suppliers, the stock exchange, several banks, transport companies, the post office, the MTVA media company and pharmaceutical companies. Defence ministry control teams consist of representatives of both the military and police.

The new measures are aimed directly at workers who refuse to work in dangerous conditions during the pandemic. In mid-March Orbán declared he saw no reason to close schools, and if he did, teachers would not be paid. He only changed his stance following a massive public outcry.

Audi, Opel, Mercedes and Suzuki have all stopped auto production in Hungary. Finance minister Mihály Varga has already spoken of a massive slump in economic performance due to the ongoing restrictions linked to the COVID-19 virus. For this eventuality the government has announced extensive corporate tax breaks.

At the same time opposition to the government dictatorship is growing across the country. Hungarian-born journalist Paul Lendvai has warned of a “transition to dictatorship” and a group of lawyers, including former constitutional judges, have launched an online petition against the new act. It received over 40,000 signatures within a few hours.

For its part there has been hardly any criticism of the new measures from the leadership of the European Union or individual European countries. Orbán is the European leader who is most advanced with his policy of using the current crisis to brutally attack the working class, but ruling elites across Europe are moving in the same direction.

In Poland, the right-wing governing party PiS has refused to postpone the presidential election in view of the dramatic development because it expects benefits for incumbent Andrezj Duda. In Germany, Handelsblatt published an interview with the financial investor Alexander Dibelius, who bluntly said that the deaths of millions of people should be preferred to an economic crash that endangers his assets and the wealth of his customers. For this reason, no further measures should be taken to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

In the United States, Donald Trump said at a press conference that he wanted American operations to reopen in a few “weeks, not months.” The ruling class is well aware that forcing workers back to their jobs under conditions of a deadly pandemic requires the use of dictatorial means and is incompatible with democracy.

Sri Lankan president grants clemency to war criminal

Vimukthi Vidarshana

On March 26, Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse released Sunil Ratnayake, a former Sri Lanka army sergeant convicted of the brutal murder of eight Tamil civilians, including three children. The crime was committed in Mirusivil village, 26 kilometres from Jaffna in the country’s north, during Colombo’s almost three-decade communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Under the constitution, Sri Lanka’s executive president has the arbitrary power to release convicted criminals.

Rajapakse’s “presidential pardon” occurs as he is exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to further increase the militarisation of his administration. During last year’s presidential election campaign, Rajapakse, who relies on political support from the military, pledged to release from custody all officers being held on human right violations.

Sunil Ratnayake

President Rajapakse and his party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, falsely claim no war crimes occurred in Sri Lanka during its nearly 30-year war. This is the position of every faction of Sri Lankan’s ruling elite.

Five people, including Lance Corporal R.M. Sunil Ratnayake and Private Mahinda Kumarasinghe, from the army’s Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol—a group that conducted covert operations. They were charged in the Colombo High Court in November 2002 on 19 counts of murder.

While four of the five were exonerated “due to lack of evidence” after a 13-year trial, a three-judge High Court panel unanimously found that Ratnayake was guilty of the murder of the eight civilians, and sentenced him to death.

In 2017, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court heard an appeal against Ratnayake’s death sentence and confirmed the High Court verdict. It was one of the rare cases in which a Sri Lankan soldier has been convicted of war crimes. Overwhelming evidence against Ratnayake, as well as mass outrage over the cold-blooded killings, prevented his legal appeal from succeeding.

The Mirusivil village massacre took place on December 19, 2000, as military clashes between the LTTE and government forces intensified in the North. Confronting Sri Lankan army shelling, the villagers fled to a safer location, However, when the attacks subsided, the villagers used to visit their original homes to collect whatever fruits or vegetables they could, then return to their temporary dwellings.

Ravivarman, Thivakulasingam, Vilvarasa and his 5- and 13-year-old children— Jeyachandran and Gnanachandran—and his 15-year-old son and brother-in-law, Maheshwaran, visited Mirusivil village on December 19 and were returning on pushbikes. Maheshwaran, the only survivor, provided an eyewitness account of the crime.

The Tamil villagers were stopped by two heavily armed soldiers who forced them to kneel down and interrogated them. Four other soldiers joined in and the villagers were blindfolded and assaulted.

Maheshwaran, who was knocked unconscious, was being dragged by the soldiers near a cesspit when he became conscious and his blindfold became loose. He noticed patches of blood near the cess pit and movements inside it. Realising the danger, he pushed away two soldiers and was able escape, running for his life into the thicket.

During the police investigation, Maheshwaran identified Ratnayake and Kumarasinghe. While only goat and reptile carcasses were discovered in the cesspit, the bodies of the eight villagers were later found buried among the bushes near the place where they were attacked. The post-mortem found that all of the victims, including the toddler, had been beaten, tortured, and their throats had been slit.

Having released Ratnayake, the Sri Lankan president has once again asserted that the security forces and police can act with impunity and commit any crime against the people. It also shows Rajapakse will not allow the rule of law or the judiciary to block his autocratic moves.

As he declared in this year’s Independence Day speech: “I do not envisage public officials, lawmakers or the judiciary, impeding my implementation of this commitment [to the people].”

While numerous war crimes were committed by Sri Lanka’s security forces during the war, only a handful have been exposed. When cases were filed, those accused were ultimately released.

Much international attention has been paid to the killing of five students in eastern Trincomalee and the massacre in 2006 of 17 members of the “Action Against Hunger,” an organisation that assisted war-affected people in Muttur. Both these cases were suppressed during the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration.

Since becoming president last year, Rajapakse has increasingly exalted the military and elevated former senior military officers into leading positions in civilian institutions, laying the foundations for dictatorial forms of rule.

Gotabhaya Rajapakse previously served as defence secretary when his older brother Mahinda Rajapakse was president during the last period of the war that ended in 2009. He is determined to protect and defend their political leadership and the military who are implicated in war crimes, which, according to the UN, saw the deaths of 40,000 civilians and LTTE members who surrendered during the final phase of the war.

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his administration recently withdrew from the 2015 October UN Human Rights Council resolution, co-sponsored by the US and the then Siri sena-Wickremesinghe government. This resolution, which was fully backed by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), proposed a “domestic mechanism” to investigate human right violation s which was simply window-dressing to cover up war crimes.

This year Rajapakse publicly admitted that 20,000 people who went “missing” during the war were “actually dead,” and that the government would issue death certificates after verifying relatives’ claims on the disappearances. The disappeared include many hundreds of people who were rounded up, tortured and killed by death squads linked to the military.

Early this year, Rajapakse established a presidential commission to investigate so-called political reprisals by the previous government. The commission is the means to block judicial inquiries into the crimes of military officials, such as former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda who has been accused of abducting and murdering eleven Tamil youths. Karannagoda has defied four court orders demanding that he appear in court.

Amid growing international opposition to the release of the killer, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHRC) issued a statement on March 27 condemning Sunil Ratnayake’s release and declaring that it was “troubled” by it.

The UNHRC statement declared that the “pardon” was “yet another example of the failure of Sri Lanka to fulfil its international human rights obligations to provide meaningful accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other gross violations of human rights.” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also condemned Ratnayake’s release.

Sri Lanka’s parliamentary opposition parties, including the United National Party, Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, have said nothing about this legal travesty. Their silence is political consent.

For its part the TNA has shown little concern. It issued a brief comment describing the “pardon” as an “opportunistic act” by President Rajapakse who was taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, to deflect attention from Ratnayake’s release.

All of the establishment parties, including the Tamil parties and the pseudo-left, attended an all-party meeting called by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse in the name of “national unity” to fight the coronavirus pandemic. They all endorsed the moves by the Rajapakse administration towards authoritarian rule. All fear the explosive struggles of the working class and the poor that will inevitably erupt.

Rajapakse has not just released a convicted war criminal but is making clear how far he is prepared to go in suppressing the democratic rights of the masses. This is a serious warning to the working class.

Japanese government planning attacks on democratic rights on pretext of pandemic

Ben McGrath

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday gave his third news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic, warning that if the number of infections continues to grow, hospitals could be overwhelmed. Like his counterparts around the world, Abe’s primary concern was to reassure big business that a massive bailout package would be coming.

Tokyo, the metropolitan area of which is home to more than 38 million people, had 430 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Sunday. There were 68 new cases that day, a single-day record for the city. There were 168 new cases throughout the country, bringing the total to 1,880, including 53 deaths. Japan’s Minister of Health Katsunobu Kato informed Abe on Thursday that Japan is now at a high risk of rampant infection. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike suggested last week that a lockdown in the capital could be coming.

Japan’s Minister of Health Katsunobu Kato informed Abe on Thursday that Japan is now at a high risk of rampant infection.

Abe said on Saturday that Japan was at a “critical stage,” stating, “We’re going to compile an unprecedented level of economic measures that exceed those taken when the Lehman Brothers crisis occurred [in 2008].”

At that time, Tokyo supplied a handout worth 57 trillion yen ($US528 billion). Details on the latest package have not been finalized, but Abe stated it would “include a full range of fiscal, monetary and tax measures.” Tokyo already approved a 1 trillion yen ($US9.3 billion) bailout package earlier this month as Japan’s economy is predicted to contract by 2.9 percent in the first quarter of this year.

Despite the growing health crisis around the world, Tokyo has done next to nothing to prepare, carelessly relying on the fact that infections had not grown at the same rate as in other countries such as South Korea, China, Italy and the United States. While Japan has the capacity to test approximately 7,500 people a day, the average is 1,200 to 1,300. Only approximately 25,000 people have been tested. By contrast, South Korea has tested more than 394,000.

Kentaro Iwata, a professor of infectious diseases at Kobe University, said last week: “It is hard to comprehensively explain (testing capacity in Japan as a whole) as it varies across the country. But not enough is being done around me (at least).” He also stated: “Japan has not contained (the virus), or perhaps I should say we cannot even judge whether we have contained it without conducting a sufficient number of tests.”

Masaya Yamato, director of the Infectious Diseases Center at Osaka’s Rinku General Medical Center, stressed the seriousness of the situation, stating: “The economic impact should not be a top priority. Tokyo should lock down for two to three weeks. Otherwise, Tokyo’s medical system could collapse.”

Other health experts have warned that companies and local governments have not taken effective measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Hospitals have denied testing to people, even those showing symptoms, who do not meet specific requirements set by the Health Ministry: close contact with a confirmed patient or travel to an outbreak centre, along with coronavirus symptoms. Some people have been rejected for not having symptoms for longer than four days.

The Japanese ruling class has wasted weeks in not preparing for a COVID-19 outbreak. Whether or not Japan emerges as a centre of a serious outbreak does not alter the criminality of the lack of government preparation. As has been seen in crisis after crisis, like the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, the government has proven unwilling to put even basic measures forward to protect the lives of Japanese workers, farmers, and youth.

According to a Health Ministry report, Osaka could have as many 3,400 COVID-19 infections by early April. “It’s possible that provision of medical treatment to seriously ill patients may become difficult,” the report stated.

Last week, Osaka’s government was preparing an additional 600 hospital beds for patients. Tokyo only had 100 hospital beds for patients with serious infectious diseases, with the local government stating it would secure 600 more.

The concerns of the Japanese ruling elite however have focused on exploiting the crisis to justify attacks on democratic rights as well as to protect their economic interests.

On March 13, the government led by Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) revised a 2013 law that will allow the prime minister to declare a state of emergency, without parliamentary approval, for up to two years. The bill received support from the two main opposition parties, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and the Democratic Party for the People.

Abe admitted before the changes were passed that: “Given that individual rights would be suppressed, I would thoroughly examine its potential impact before making a decision.” The government would be able to instruct residents to stay indoors, close schools and cancel events while allowing it to take over land and facilities for the government’s use. The cancellation of events could easily be used to suppress political gatherings the government disagrees with.

In February, LDP members argued that a state of emergency law should be included in the country’s constitution. The LDP has pushed for such a clause for years, including it in their 2012 draft constitution, which contains other attacks on democratic rights. These included allowing the military to put down domestic unrest, allowing the Cabinet to enact laws independent of the National Diet during a state of emergency and requiring the population to obey all orders from the state in the event that an emergency is declared.

There is no reason to believe that the government will stop short of pushing these measures through in the future after the groundwork has already been laid with the latest revisions to the current state of emergency law. It is the same method Tokyo has used to pursue remilitarization and circumvent the constitution’s Article 9, banning Japan from going to war or maintaining a military.

Tokyo’s actions make clear that it is the working class in Japan that must oversee and coordinate the response to social and health crises, including the coronavirus pandemic.

Coronavirus cases surge in Turkey as anger grows among workers at government response

Baris Demir

According to the Ministry of Health, Turkey’s death toll from the coronavirus increased by 23 to 131 yesterday, as the number of confirmed cases rose 1,815 to 9,217. Anonymous health care professionals told the press media that the number of deaths and cases is much higher than the official figures due to insufficient testing. The government still refuses to give details about cases and deaths, such as their age and location. As a result, suspicion of official government statements is growing among workers.

The government had to take new measures recently but it maintains its class-based response to pandemic, in line with other governments around the world: a policy of malign neglect, forcing the working class to stay at work to produce profit despite the surge of infections and deaths.

On the evening of March 27, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced additional measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak. Travel between cities is now possible only with authorization from local authorities. Flights to foreign countries, already reduced, are to be suspended. There are also new restrictions on public transport, as passengers are to be seated separately in public service vehicles.

However, workers continue to be exempted from these measures in the interests of big business. According to an Interior Ministry statement, shuttles carrying factory workers to work are exempted from restrictions on inter-city travel.

In the name of halting the pandemic, the government spuriously calls for “stay at home” or “self-isolation.” While the big companies hypocritically praise workers’ sacrifices, celebrities share the government’s official “stay at home” postings on social media. Many companies in banking, insurance, technology, and R&D have switched to working from home, and many small businesses like cafés, restaurants, restaurants, gyms, hairdressers are temporarily suspended. Layoffs are mounting.

In many key sectors such as metal, textile, construction, however, millions of workers who cannot work from home are still forced to go work. Supporters of the government’s “stay at home” policy maintain a two-faced silence on the fact that such workers are forced to risk illness and death in non-essential jobs.

For his part, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said, “Everyone can declare their own state of emergency, the state does not necessarily have to declare it.” That is, workers are forced to make an individual choice between endangering the lives of themselves and their families and staying at home in poverty.

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) did not criticize this ultra-reactionary policy, but instead asked for “limited” measures to slow the spread in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and economic capital. Noting that Istanbul’s public transport system still had around 1 million daily users last week, he said, “if it is not possible throughout Turkey, at least in İstanbul we urgently need to a limited and controlled curfew.”

Journalist Murat Yetkin in an article last week reported that Erdoğan opposed a confinement policy recommended by the Coronavirus Scientific Committee and the Ministry of Health.

Yetkin wrote, “Here are the things we can deduce by reading between the lines of what has been said, also considering the experiences of other countries and the information we’ve gathered thus far: The Coronavirus Scientific Committee and the Ministry of Health were both unable to convince President Tayyip Erdoğan that the best way to slow the spread of Covid-19 could be through a policy of generalized isolation, not only for those over 65.”

He ends his article by asking “Why be so timid in taking the necessary steps? This is the biggest unknown.”

In fact, the answer is clear: throughout the world, the ruling class focuses on measures not to contain the pandemic, but to bolster business against any fallout in a crisis-ridden economy by ensuring workers keep producing billions in profits for the super-rich. Capitalism is at war with the most urgent health needs of working people.

In his latest statement, Erdoğan again underscored that “continuing production and exports are our top priorities.” Last week, President Erdoğan had declared an “Economic Stability Shield” package for business totaling 100 billion Turkish liras (US$15 billion). The 19 measures include just two miserly offerings for working people.

In addition, while many people cannot get COVID-19 tests, a video showing pro-government businessmen getting tested in their private homes angered many workers. The daily Cumhuriyet has revealed that COVID-19 care in private hospitals is not free, though all private hospitals were declared by the ministry as “pandemic hospitals” to support public hospitals against the pandemic. Three patients had to pay about 4,000 Turkish liras.

Meanwhile, the anger among workers is erupting. While wildcat strikes erupted across Europe and America to demand the idling of plants during the pandemic, demands are growing in Turkey for paid leave for all workers, rejecting employers’ demands that workers continue to work despite the risk to their health and their lives. Against the official “stay at home” campaign, many artists and intellectuals are posting videos on their social media accounts to demand state-funded paid leave for all workers.

After some wildcat strikes by Istanbul construction workers, workers stopped production for three hours in a filter factory in the southern border city of Hatay against management’s offer of unpaid leave. After this work stoppage, the firm had to accept workers’ demand for paid leave until April 30.

The main trade union confederations are collaborating with the government, isolating such strikes and playing a criminal role to keep workers on the job.

Fearing that strikes and protests will spread among workers, the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Services reported that contract negotiations and strikes were temporarily halted across the country in a circular sent to address coronavirus measures.

The government has also launched a witch hunt against critics of its response to the pandemic. Hundreds of people have been detained since March 11 on charges of sharing “provocative posts” about coronavirus on social media.

As a clear sign of fear in the government about growing anger among workers, a truck driver named Malik Baran Yılmaz was detained yesterday for his social media post exposing the class character of the government response to coronavirus crisis.

In a video that was widely shared and watched tens of thousands of times, he said: “You say stay at home Turkey! But how can we stay? I am not retired, public officer or rich. I am a worker. I’m a truck driver. If I do not work, there is no bread. I can’t pay my electricity, water, rent... I will either starve to death by staying at home or die from the virus. But if this virus does not kill me, your system will kill us.”

Duterte reacts to COVID-19 with military repression

Joseph Santolan

As of Sunday evening, 1,418 people in the Philippines had been official recorded as infected with COVID-19, a number which includes 343 new cases reported that day. Of the confirmed cases, 71 people have died thus far. Twelve of them were doctors who contracted the virus while courageously caring for patients despite not having received adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

The 71 reported deaths are only those who have been officially tested for COVID-19. Given the very limited testing thus far, the actual death toll is almost certainly an order of magnitude larger.

The Philippine government did nothing to prepare for this catastrophe. In late February, when the global impact of the virus was clear, Duterte delivered an incoherent and vile public address in which he said that he would personally “slap the f..king idiot virus,” but declared that Filipinos would not get sick because they prayed regularly. No medical supplies were stockpiled; no facilities were readied.

On March 16, long after the catastrophe was apparent, Duterte abruptly announced that he was placing significant portions of the country under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ). The response of the Duterte administration to the pandemic has been the deployment not of masks and tests and treatment, but heavily-armed military checkpoints, armored personnel carriers, and police state repression.

The entire island of Luzon, the largest and most populous region in the country, including the capital city of Manila, has now been placed on total lockdown until April 13. Over 50 million people have been confined to their homes under threat of arrest if they leave. Beyond Luzon, other provinces and regions have been placed under de facto martial law, on orders from governors and provincial officials.

One member of every household has been given a quarantine pass that authorizes them at certain limited hours to leave their home in search of groceries or medicine. Anyone found outside without a quarantine pass, or traveling to a job deemed essential, can be arrested on the spot.

Flights out of the country have effectively stopped and all public transportation has been suspended. Nurses, grocery store workers, bank employees, pharmacy workers, many of whom live great distances from their workplace, are compelled to walk for hours to get to their employment each day.

Among the industries that have not closed is the multi-billion dollar Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. Call center workers, employed by international corporations, largely American, and who work the graveyard shift in order to answer US phone calls, are still on the job.

The immensity of the looming catastrophe in the Philippines cannot be overstated. The millions who live in the densely populated shantytowns of Greater Manila have not had a single moment of “social distance” in their lives.

According to the Ibon Foundation research center, approximately 14.4 million people on Luzon are “non-regular workers and informal laborers,” about three out of five employed persons. The majority of the workers in this informal economy lives on a day-to-day basis, in which one day’s income provides the next day’s consumption.

Lockdown for these millions of people means malnutrition and possibly starvation. Anyone desperate enough to venture out of their squalid quarters seeking food or work faces the armed might of the state.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told the press: “The total lockdown in Luzon is in effect a 24-hour curfew. No one leaves the house, unless covered by the exceptions/exemptions.”

The implementation of this curfew has been brutal. The police have been given authority to arrest without warrant anyone deemed in violation of this curfew. As of Friday, 42,826 curfew violators had been arrested, over 10,000 in Manila alone. Every person arrested faces fines and a prison term.

The police have subjected the population to a reign of terror. Numerous instances of torture, humiliation and physical violence have been reported. The arrested have been crammed into dog cages, they have been made to sit in the debilitating heat of the noonday sun on basketball courts. Many of the tortured are minors.

In Bulacan, just north of Manila, a man was shot dead by the police for allegedly evading a lockdown checkpoint on his motorbike on Wednesday.

As with everything else, there is a fundamental inequality in the enforcement of the quarantine. When Senator Koko Pimental was placed under quarantine in his mansion after having been in contact with an infected person, he disregarded the instructions and went out grocery shopping in the elite business district of Bonifacio Global City.

His test came back positive. Yet upon learning that he was infected, the senator left his home to visit his wife in the maternity ward, where she was having an ultrasound, and he wandered through the delivery room complex. As a result of Pimentel’s actions, 22 nurses have been quarantined along with an undisclosed number of grocery store workers. No charges have been filed.

As public outcry mounted, Justice Secretary Guevarra—the man responsible for the 24-hour curfew—declared that the Department of Justice (DOJ) noted that “people are prone to commit mistakes,” and the DOJ would “temper the rigor of the law with human compassion.”

Most of the rich have been able to avoid this unpleasantness entirely. While there are no tests available for the population, the rich and politicians receive multiple tests, even when they are asymptomatic, with medical personnel coming to visit them in their homes.

Kris Aquino, television celebrity and daughter and sister of former presidents, took a private helicopter to the island of Boracay where she is said to be “sheltering in place” at the private beach resort of a friend.

Like their health and their immunity from prosecution, the profits of the wealthy are also guaranteed by the state. The country’s Central Bank last week injected 300 billion pesos ($US6 billion) into the financial system through quantitative easing measures to stabilize the Philippine stock market. The heads of several major banks told BusinessWorld, in a report published Sunday, that they expected a good deal more money to be forthcoming for the markets.

For the rest of the population, hospitals are turning highly symptomatic people away, untested, if they are deemed not to be priority cases, including because they are not elderly. Some of those turned away have now died.

The state has allocated all of its resources to military repression and shoring up the profit margins of the elite. Desperate to stabilize its collapsing infrastructure, the Department of Health (DOH) on March 27 issued a public appeal on Facebook for volunteer medical professionals to work at “frontline hospitals” to cope with the influx.

The DOH offered P500 a day (less than $US10) in pay to any doctor or nurse if they would commit to work eight hours a day for 14 consecutive days, which would be followed by a mandatory onsite quarantine of two weeks. The appeal was greeted with mass outrage at the conditions and abysmal pay the government offered for the defense of the public’s health

The response of the entire ruling class to the growing mass anger is repression and the preparations for dictatorship. The legislature passed a bill by an overwhelming majority giving the president emergency powers with the outrageous name, the We Heal as One Act.

The emergency powers, which have been granted to the executive branch, include imprisoning for two months anyone accused of spreading “fake news” online and subjecting them to a fine ranging from 10,000 to 1 million pesos. The target of this repressive bill is the dissent which is percolating from every section of the working population.

On Friday, a 55-year old public-school teacher and her son were arrested without warrant in their home after she posted on Facebook that her town’s mayor was stacking up relief goods in the town gymnasium and not distributing them. She wrote, “Many people will die of hunger ... I call on those who have nothing to eat to raid the Lanao Gym. The food packs meant for you are piled up there.”

She faces the charge of “inciting sedition,” which carries a prison sentence of up to six years. Her son was arrested for attempting to protect his mother from the police.

Thus far, only 2,686 people had been tested for COVID-19 in a nation of over 100 million. The true number of those infected is doubtless far greater than that officially documented. Nothing has been prepared to treat or to care for the ill, but measures are in place to keep them in their shanty towns at gunpoint.