Worker sets himself on fire in Gaza amid strike against mass layoffs

Bill Van Auken

A laid-off worker set himself on fire Wednesday amid a general strike and protests against the destruction of hundreds of jobs by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency tasked with assisting impoverished Palestinian refugees in the Israeli-occupied Gaza and West Bank, as well as Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

In addition to 125 workers who saw their contracts terminated outright, another 800 were reduced from full-time to part-time positions, or transferred to other programs.

UNRWA claimed that the layoffs were made inevitable by Washington’s recent massive cut to US funding for the agency. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ordered the suspension of more than half of the annual funding provided by the US to the refugee agency—$65 million out of $125 million.

The action was taken, however, after UNRWA announced that the agency’s budget deficit had been reduced from $466 to $217 million and as the World Bank signaled that it will increase its annual funding for Gaza’s and the West Bank’s economies from $55 to $90 million.

For the workers protesting the layoffs, the destruction of jobs by UNRWA is seen as an arbitrary and reactionary decision that condemns hundreds more families to joblessness and hunger.

The cuts have been ordered under conditions in which the official unemployment rate in the blockaded coastal enclave stands at 56 percent, and destruction of infrastructure by successive Israeli wars and bombings have led to 18 hours of power blackouts on most days during the intense heat of summer.

Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said in a statement Wednesday that Gaza “is on the verge of a total economic and social collapse.”

Security forces used stun grenades Monday against protesting Palestinian workers who had surrounded the office of UNRWA’s Gaza operations director, Matthias Shamali, blocking him from leaving.

Workers have charged that, while the layoffs will barely make a dent in UNRWA’s deficit—saving barely $4 million—it will have a wide impact on extended families who depend upon the jobs that are being eliminated and cut back.

The UNRWA cutbacks are also taking a severe toll in the West Bank, where the refugee agency said that it will terminate its employment program in the Israeli-occupied territory by the end of this month, while the distribution of food coupons will be halted by the end of the year. The agency is also shutting down its psychological assistance program at the end of August and its mobile clinics by the end of October.

The attacks on jobs and social conditions in Gaza are unfolding under conditions of escalating Israeli aggression and collective punishment of the people of Gaza. On Wednesday, three Gazans were killed by Israeli shelling east of Gaza City. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that the attack was in retaliation for shots fired at its troops along the security fence separating Gaza from Israel.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman convened a special security meeting Wednesday night in Tel Aviv to discuss operations against Gaza with senior IDF officers. There is mounting speculation that Israel is on the brink of launching yet another major war against the besieged territory.

Earlier this month, Israel shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing, the only commercial conduit between Israel and Gaza, allowing in only basic food and medical supplies. It cut off all fuel supplies to Gaza for one week. While the blockade has been slightly eased, it can be retightened at any moment.

The slashing of US funding to Gaza and the West Bank is part of a deliberate US strategy, elaborated in close collaboration with Tel Aviv, to starve the Palestinians into submission.

The Trump administration, with the backing of the Democratic Party, has given unconditional support to the Israeli state as it has carried out the massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza, where at least 142 have been gunned down by IDF snipers and thousands more have been wounded.

The latest death from the March of Return protests, in which tens of thousands marched to the border fence, demanding their right to return to the lands from which Palestinians were driven out 70 years ago, came on Tuesday, when Majd Suhail Akil, 26, died from gunshot wounds inflicted by the IDF on May 14. More than 60 Palestinian protesters were killed outright that day, which was when the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem, in defiance of international law.

The Trump administration has also given a green light to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with a nearly three-fold increase in the number of new settlements since it took office.

Behind the unconditional US backing for Israeli aggression against the Palestinians lies the drive by Washington to forge an anti-Iranian axis with Israel and Saudi Arabia, along with the other reactionary Persian Gulf oil monarchies. President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal in May from the Iran nuclear accord signed in July 2015 by the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China has set the stage for a military confrontation, even as Israeli warplanes are carrying out airstrikes against Iranian assets in Syria.

The Trump administration assembled what amounted to a war council against Iran on Thursday, with National Security Adviser John Bolton summoning top Pentagon and intelligence officials to the White House to discuss strategy, just days after Trump tweeted that if Iran dared to threaten the US, it would “ SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”

Citing senior government officials Thursday, the Australian media reported that the US is preparing to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities as early as next month, and that Australia’s top-secret Pine Gap spy base would be used to help select targets.

The head of Iran’s Quds Forces, Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, made a speech on Thursday, warning that the US may “start this war but we will be the ones to impose its end,” and stating that Iran is prepared to wage an “asymmetric war” against US forces.

Right-wing Islamic populist Imran Khan claims victory in Pakistan elections

Sampath Perera 

The former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) are claiming victory in Wednesday’s general election in Pakistan. Unofficial tallies show the PTI well ahead in the race, but likely to fall short of a parliamentary majority.

Meanwhile, the two other main contenders, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which led the outgoing government, and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), as well as numerous smaller parties are claiming there were serious irregularities in the vote.

Even prior to Wednesday’s polling, there were mounting accusations that the military—which has directly ruled Pakistan for much of its history and continues to wield effective control over the country’s foreign and security policies—was intervening in all aspects of the election process, and doing so to secure a PTI victory.

In an article published Wednesday as the initial accusations of irregularities were surfacing, the widely-read English-language daily Dawn commented, “Rigging has been alleged in many elections but, this time, the sheer scale of it is what casts a shadow on these elections.”

While the PML-N and PPP were suggesting that they may not accept the legitimacy of the election results, Khan went on television Thursday to claim victory. He called the ballot “the fairest” in Pakistan’s history and delivered a series of vacuous, demagogic promises of more jobs and relief for the poor. Khan promised to create an “Islamic welfare state,” while vowing to “decrease all of our expenses” and to “safeguard” taxpayers’ money.

Khan also promised “peace” and spoke of the need for a solution to the Afghan war and “mutually beneficial” relations with the US. Historically, Islamabad was Washington’s principal ally in South Asia. But over the past two decades the US has lavished strategic favours on Pakistan’s arch-rival India, so as to build it up as a military-strategic counterweight to China. Last year US President Donald Trump threatened Pakistan with a massive downgrade of relations unless it implemented US war objectives in Afghanistan to the letter.

Khan called for improved relations with India, but added the caveat, “if their leadership also wants it.”

Khan presents himself as a born-again Muslim and anti-corruption campaigner. He has long courted the Islamist right, including by championing the country’s draconian blasphemy laws and supporting the disenfranchisement of the several-million-strong Ahmadi religious minority.

Until the 2013 elections, Khan’s PTI was an also-ran in Pakistani politics. He was able to gain popular traction by posing as an opponent of the US drone war in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and by exploiting popular opposition to the nominally “left” PPP-government, which imposed brutal International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity and acted as a satrap for Washington in the Afghan war.

Sections of the Pakistani press are trying to claim that the elections, only the second under a civilian government, attest to the strengthening of democracy in Pakistan.

In reality, voters confronted the intimidating presence of 370,000 soldiers deployed to ensure the “integrity” of the polls, compared to just 70,000 in the 2013 elections. Altogether about 800,000 security personnel were deployed to 85,000 polling stations. This comes on top of the already widespread military occupation of Karachi, Balochistan and areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that were formerly part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Despite this mobilization, a suicide bomber killed at least 31 people in Quetta, Balochistan, on Wednesday. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility. Initial reports of electoral violence elsewhere included firing and grenade attacks on polling stations in Balochistan and Sindh. A man died in a shoot-out between supporters of rival parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Serious allegations of election rigging were raised just hours after counting began. The PML-N president and its candidate for prime minister, Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of jailed ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, “rejected” the preliminary results. He said polling agents sent by his party to ensure proper ballot counting under the provisions of the election law were “expelled from the polling stations.”

“The first step was pre-poll rigging, then the polling was slowed down and no extension was given. And when the time for counting arrived, our polling agents were thrown out,” Sharif complained.

The co-leader and prime ministerial candidate of the PPP, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, tweeted: “My candidates complaining polling agents have been thrown out of polling stations across the country. Inexcusable & outrageous.”

Both the PPP and PML-N have raised suspicions over the delay in announcing results. The Election Commission has denied any irregularities, blaming the delay in the vote-count on a “technical glitch.”

Virtually all parties, other than the PTI, have complained that security forces impeded their campaigns.

Nawaz Sharif began his political career as a protégé of the Islamisizing dictator General Zia ul-Haq and was long seen as a close ally of the military-intelligence apparatus. However, they had a falling out in the late 1990s, and in 1999 Sharif was ousted by a military coup, ending his second term as prime minister.

The military successfully pushed back when, on Sharif’s return to power in 2013, he tried to assert civilian control over foreign and security policy.

In the twelve months preceding the election, Sharif’s enemies within an establishment that is notorious for its rampant corruption used evidence against him arising from the Panama Papers to exclude him from Pakistani political life. In July 2017, the Supreme Court removed him from the prime ministership and stripped him of his National Assembly seat. Subsequently, Sharif was barred from public office for life and in early July, as the election campaign was entering full gear, jailed.

Sharif sought to turn the tables on his opponents by casting himself as a victim of the manipulations of the military and a martyr for democracy. But this has had little impact, given Sharif’s own record of collaborating with the military and imposing brutal IMF measures.

Everything indicates that Pakistan is entering a new period of political crisis.

Should Khan become prime minister, the legitimacy of his government will likely be under attack from the traditional governing parties from the day it takes office. The PML-N will no doubt see this as payback for Khan’s refusal to accept the results of the 2013 elections.

More importantly, the new government will be immediately confronted with a major economic crisis. The rupee has lost some 20 percent of its value, in US dollar terms, since the beginning of the year and the central bank has reserves equal to little more than two months’ worth of imports.

It is widely expected the new government will have to turn to the IMF for a bailout and will be tasked by it with imposing a new round of savage austerity measures.

In his Thursday “victory” speech, Khan said Pakistan’s “economy has never been so abysmal.”

Qualcomm deal scuttled: China hits back at US in trade war

Nick Beams 

China has hit back at the US in its ongoing and deepening trade war, with Beijing effectively scuttling a $44 billion takeover by the American technology giant Qualcomm of a Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors.

Qualcomm announced late Wednesday that it was pulling out of the deal after it became clear that the Chinese government was not going to sign off on the takeover. China was the last of nine national jurisdictions whose approval was needed under anti-monopoly provisions for the deal to go ahead.

At $132 billion last year, China is the world’s largest semiconductor market with most of the revenue going to companies based in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the US.

According to widespread reports, Chinese regulators responsible for vetting takeover deals had signed off on it earlier this year and it was only waiting for the final go-ahead from the Beijing government. But the approval never came and just hours before the deadline was due to expire Qualcomm announced it was pulling out.

The official Chinese government position is that the lack of approval had nothing to do with the China-US trade conflict. “As far as I know, the case is a matter of antitrust law enforcement,” a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said.

But as one source told the Financial Times, echoing reports in other media, “all the technical issues had been resolved” and that from Qualcomm’s perspective “everything that was needed to be done was done.”

The deal had been two years in the making, starting under the Obama administration. The turning point came in May with the announcement by the Trump administration that it was going ahead with tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese products, especially those connected to Beijing’s “made in China 2025” plan. The White House invoked Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act on the grounds that China was engaging in intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.

The decision came just three days after a high-level meeting in Washington with members of the Trump administration and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He. Following that meeting, in which China had agreed to increase its imports from the US by as much as $100 billion, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the trade war had been put on “hold.”

So Washington’s about-face and imposition of tariffs was in essence a public slap in the face for China’s chief trade negotiator. The mood in Beijing changed and, while there was no official statement, it was clear that final takeover approval was going nowhere.

“We obviously got caught up in something that was above us,” said Steve Mollenkop, Qualcomm chief executive.

The company will now have to pay a $2 billion breakup fee to NXP and has announced a $30 billion share buyback program in order to meet the demands of financial investors.

The collapse of the takeover has far-reaching implications for chipmakers and other high-tech companies that had been waiting for the outcome of the Qualcomm-NXP deal before going ahead with their own merger and acquisition (M&A) moves.

“It certainly raises concerns about future M&A,” analyst Michael Walkley told Bloomberg. “There’s increasing uncertainty in how long the issues with China will last and if they’ll continue to block deals.”

In its report on the collapsed deal, the Financial Times cited one industry analyst who said it had put a “big red light on any big M&A in the semiconductor industry in the short term. The stakes in technology are obviously very, very high, particularly given that semiconductors are a huge strategic priority for China.”

More than $200 billion worth of M&A deals were reported in 2015 and 2016, including the Qualcomm-NXP agreement. Smaller companies were seeking to improve their position in the face of a slowdown in the PC and smartphone sectors and to best prepare for the 5G wireless technology which is now about to be rolled out.

That activity slowed down in the past year and has now “pretty much come to a screeching halt,” according to another industry analyst cited in the Financial Times .

Qualcomm has been at the centre of the shifts in the industry and the conflict between the US and China over high-tech development. In March, US President Donald Trump directly intervened to prevent a $142 billion takeover of Qualcomm by the US company Broadcom on “national security” grounds.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) intervened in the process, at the invitation of Qualcomm. It found that Broadcom’s practices after takeovers, based on cutting costs in order to finance them—a very common practice on Wall Street—would mean that Qualcomm’s spending on research and development would be reduced.

This would open the way for Chinese companies such as Huawei to expand their influence in setting standards for 5G development.

“While the United States remains dominant in the standards-setting space currently, China would likely compete robustly to fill any void left by Qualcomm as a result of this hostile takeover,” CFIUS said.

But having “saved” Qualcomm four months ago on the grounds of ensuring “national security” against China, the actions of the Trump administration on tariffs, invoking the same grounds, have now dealt it a significant blow.

It is likely not to be the last of such measures. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on up to $500 billion worth of Chinese products, covering its entire exports. Chinese imports of US products are some $350 billion less and so it does not have scope for retaliatory tariff measures.

This means that it will increasingly seek other ways to hit back. The scuttling of the Qualcomm deal may be the first of such measures and signals the escalation of the trade war into other areas.

Future Africa Early Career Research Leader Fellowship Programme 2018

Application Deadline: 12th August 2018

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): University of Pretoria, South Africa

About the Award: The Early Career Research Leader Fellowship is an initiative of the University of Pretoria’s Future Africa Institute, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York. It serves early career research leaders in basic and applied sciences, engineering, social sciences, the humanities and the arts. It aims to grow African academics in their thought leadership, team development, stakeholder engagement, and collaboration with an intention to stimulate the emergence of centers of research excellence to solve complex problems that face Africa and the world.
Researchers working within an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to developing a deeper understanding of the African bioeconomy are encouraged to apply.  The program will select fellows from the following eligible CCNY supported programs:

1. African Humanities Program
2. Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA)
3. University of Cape Town (Corporation-supported postdoctoral fellows)
4. University of Ghana (Corporation-supported postdoctoral fellows)
5. Makerere University (Corporation-supported postdoctoral fellows & MISR doctoral graduates)
6. Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship Program
7. Networks comprising the Regional Initiative in Science and Education (RISE):
   • AFNNET
   • AMSEN
   • SABINA
   • SSAWRN
   • WIO-RISE
8. Regional Universities Forum for Capacity-Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM)
9. University of the Witwatersrand (Corporation-supported postdoctoral fellows)

Field of Study: Applications are welcome for such topic areas as:

• Technological and non-technological exploitation of natural resources such as animals, plant biodiversity, micro-organisms and minerals to improve human health, address food security, and subsequently to contribute to economic growth and improved quality of life.
• Ecological issues and climate change as influencers, promoters, and inhibitors of bioeconomic advancement.
• The politics of the bioeconomy, including tensions around land and food security, biodiversity and indigenous knowledge, and economic growth and growing income insecurity and inequality.
• Cultural perspectives and practices that influence, assist, or impair human interactions with the natural environment.

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: The Early Career Research Leader Fellowship Program seeks candidates who are committed to developing a new generation of scholars and research leadership in Africa.

Selection Criteria: The following criteria will be used for the nomination and selection of fellows:

• A PhD degree or equivalent qualification;
• A faculty or a continuing research position at a research institution;
• Active in research and teaching at an African institution of higher education or research;
• A sustained record of outstanding scientific or scholarly outputs;
• Interest in translating and communicating the results of their work for impact in society;
• Demonstrated leadership ability in research and beyond.

Other criteria which will guide selection include:

• An interest in the role of research in addressing complex issues affecting society;
• An interest in collaborations across disciplines and sectors (e.g. industry, civil society, government, etc.);
• A commitment to participate in all the activities of the fellowship; and
• The intent to share what is learned in the program with their broader networks.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• The program itself will require that at least 70% (8-9 months) of the academic year is spent at the Future Africa Campus of the University of Pretoria. Furthermore, fellows will be expected to develop their research leadership projects and engage with other fellows for peer support.
• Training and development components of the program will require onsite engagement with a number of different audiences for the duration of the stay at Future Africa. These will be integrated into an overall schedule to allow for participation in the advanced workshops and other skills transfer mechanisms envisaged to ensure the efficacy of the fellowship.
• The Fellowship will carry the bulk of the costs associated with the program,including accommodation, meals, and allowances for attending one conference as well as traveling to the home institution once per annum. Costs for visas, vaccinations, travel and medical insurance, and travel not related to the academic content of the program will not be not covered by the program.

How to Apply: All applicants have to provide two support letters by academic referees (details are provided in the application form). One of the two referees has to commit to be involved in future communications and mentorship in case of selection of the applicant into the program. This referee will be informed about the progress of the fellow and should be willing to support the fellow if he or she requires it.

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Future Africa

Reporters Without Borders Berlin Scholarship Programme for Bloggers, Professional and Citizen Journalists (Fully-funded to Berlin, Germany) 2018

Application Deadline: 9th August 2018

Eligible Countries: See Eligibility below

To Be Taken At (Country): Berlin, Germany

About the Award: In a journalistic work, the aim of the study is to provide students with a practical knowledge of how to protect themselves against digital threats. In addition, they want to receive training on how to teach others in their home region about digital security issues.
Four scholarships will be awarded for the period from 1.10.2018 to 31.12.2018.In 2019, three further rounds of four scholarships will be awarded in separate calls for applications.

Type: Short course

Eligibility: Professional journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists who

• are exposed to digital threats due to their work in their home regions,
• want to learn and work extensively with digital security
• in their own home regions and, ideally, already have some experience in teaching (including in other areas).

Selection Criteria: Scholarship holders want to have good command of English, as the working language of the scholarship program wants to be English. They should also have adequate experience working as a journalist. In addition, applicants have every intention of returning to their home region after three to four months of residence in Germany.

Number of Awards: 4

Value of Award: We cover the travel costs, take care of all visa-related matters, provide a pleasant apartment in Berlin for the duration of the scholarship, pocket money of around € 1000 per month, free use of public transportation in Berlin and a fully equipped computer, in a field of digital security and didactics. Furthermore, during their stay in Berlin scholarship holders will be given insights into the activities of a globally active journalist and human rights organization.

Duration of Programme: 1st October – 31st December 2018.

How to Apply: Please send a completed and signed application form (see in Programme Webpage), the completed questionnaire, your CV and your identity documents (scanned copies) to separate PDF documents as email attachments (in total 4 PDFs) by email to digitalfreedom@reporter-ohne-grenzen.de ( GnuPG / GPG key ). If you are using Proton Mail, please send your application to rog.digitalfreedom@protonmail.com .

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Provider: RSF

The Environmental Suicide!

Mohammad Ashraf

(The way we have been deliberately and knowingly destroying various components of Nature in Kashmir makes it look like an Environmental “Suicide”!)

Recently there has been news about some dredging scam in the Wular Lake area where the contract given to a firm has been cancelled. The need for dredging of the second largest sweet water lake in Asia is a tragedy in itself! Kashmir has witnessed some of the worst episodes in its long history both in terms of human suffering and material destruction. However, the wanton destruction of its Environment during last few decades has no parallel in its entire 5,000 year old history. The destruction has been deliberate and intentional purely for material greed which has surpassed all limits. One does not know where to begin this tragic story as every facet of nature has suffered from this inhuman onslaught. Let us start from the water bodies as these have come into sharp focus due to the intervention of the State High Court. Dal Lake is virtually at the point of extinction. A massive water body has been reduced to a wide river but without any flow! If the flow had been there, one could have waited to get the original size of the lake back by removing encroachments by various means. Unfortunately the first action of our brilliant modern engineers was to stop the flow of water by filling up the centuries old canals which has transformed the lake into an oversized pond of stagnant water. The inflow of tons of raw sewage and untreated waste from over 2,000 house-boats and dozens of hotels on its banks has converted it into an oversized septic tank.

While taking care of the pollution of water bodies we must not forget the Wular, Manasbal, and the River Jehlum. All are threatened and are facing worst kind of pollution, most of it manmade. During the time of Maharaja the River Jehlum used to be dredged periodically and the silt was taken out of it. Dredging was done downstream to ensure good flow of water. In fact, one dredger was permanently stationed in Baramulla. No such operation has been undertaken for decades now. On the contrary we are dumping the entire muck from the City and other habitations on its banks straight into it without any treatment whatsoever. Vyeth or Vitasta as it was known in ancient Kashmir deserved a better treatment.

After water bodies, let us study the condition of our Mountains. The fate of these is starkly evident right from the first entry into Srinagar. The stone quarries of Pandh Chok show the great love and regard we have for our Mountains. These have been virtually “raped”. There is no other stronger word in English language which can depict the state to which these lovely and beautiful Mountains at the entrance of Srinagar have been brutally subjected to. It is like a lustful savage assaulting a beautiful lady by forcibly lifting her dress right from her feet!Right from this spot to Dara along the Zabarwan Range there are many quarry sites where the same story is being repeated. In addition, a road has been taken up the Mountain at the back of the cantonment and a number of buildings constructed on the ridge. It has completely disfigured this beautiful Mountain which gives a back drop to the city of Srinagar. It is not known whether the Forest and Environment Departments had cleared the construction of this road? The people who have done it should have at least had the decency of covering up these scars with fast growing shrubs and trees as was done in the case of the road going up the Shankaracharya hill for TV transmitter. Similar degradation has been done to karewas (sedimentary clay formations) by taking clay for constructing railway track and filling some water bodies for constructing colonies!

All our Mountains used to be covered with lush green and dense forests. In the earlier times these forests were so dense and near to the city that wild animals would be seen roaming in the lanes of old town especially in winter. Hundreds of migratory birds would fall into the backyards of the people during a heavy snowfall. Gone are those days! We have massacred our forests in a joint venture. During the peak of militancy the security forces and timber smugglers had joined hands for a very profitable enterprise. Truckloads of furniture were sent to different parts of the country. The felling in the forests especially next to the road heads was so indiscriminate that even very young trees were not spared. Some of the top forest lessees enjoyed official patronage and some are even now holding important offices in the Government of the day.

Kashmir used to be famous for wild life. The Dachigam National Park boasted of over 800 Hangul or Kashmir Stag. During the turmoil most of these got butchered by the conflicting parties as well as by the people living in villages at the periphery of the sanctuary. According to some reports the number had gone down to 150 or so. Hopefully, it may have started going up again in last couple of years or so? On the contrary, the vermin like Black bear have considerably increased in number and are a menace to the people living at the edges of the forests. The wetlands which provided home to hundreds of thousands of migratory birds seem to have gone out of focus and dried up!

The drastic climatic changes in Kashmir cannot be solely blamed on global warming. About 30 years back one could not even think of ceiling fans in Kashmir. Now some people have started using coolers and air conditioners. The famous short story writer Krishan Chander in one of his stories had shown Kashmiri farmers growing dates and coconuts! With the present climate change, it may soon come true!

Is there a solution to this problem? Can we stem this rot? Yes, we can. But it would need a multi-pronged approach. We have to begin with our children. Most important is the elementary level. Children have to be given lessons in Environment both theoretical as well as practical during their formative years. In addition, the leaders of all shades and hues have to unite to ensure mass support. All political “streams” have to join together to save the Environment. Surely they can at least unite on this important issue if they claim to be true leaders of the people?Finally, all efforts to safeguard and conserve our Environment can only be a real success if the Media, both electronic and print take it as a challenge and rising above commercial considerations, starts a dedicated and concerted campaign to make people aware about it and continuously laud efforts to save it.

Evidence of liquid water lakes under polar ice caps on Mars

Bryan Dyne

A team of astronomers using data collected from the Mars Express spacecraft have published 29 low-frequency radar images collected between May 2012 and December 2015. Taken together, they reveal a change in the structure and the composition of the material beneath the surface of Mars’ south pole that so far has only one explanation: the presence of liquid water under the surface of the red planet. This is a milestone in the 54 years of Mars space exploration.

This discovery also comes after 15 years of intellectual labor by the hundreds of researchers, engineers and technicians who operate Mars Express and analyze the data it sends back, as well as the thousands more that operate the other five Martian orbiters and two rovers. Each mission has both learned from previous missions and informed those that came after. It was only through the work of the past 17 years of a constant robotic presence making scientific discoveries—including many previous hints of underground water—that a stable body of liquid water on Mars could have been found.

The data were collected by a team from the Italian Space Agency led by Roberto Orosei, using the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument. They focused on a region below the surface of Mars’ southern polar ice cap, an area suspected for the past 31 years to have an underground lake. The team used techniques like those of satellites orbiting Earth that have detected liquid water underneath ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Through their three-and-a-half-year effort and 29 passes over the targeted area, they discovered a 20-kilometer-wide lake located 1.5 kilometers below the surface.

Ice above a cavern full of liquid water at Mars' south pole (Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/CC BY-SA)

One of the telling aspects of the data collected is that in every image, the radio waves produce an echo, indicating a pocket of material with a different density than the surrounding region. When the researchers looked more closely at the pattern of the echo, they realized that the shape of the newly discovered material had a rough bottom and a smooth top. Further data indicated that the pocket of material is most likely a cavern, one with the right temperature and pressure to hold liquid water.

To confirm this hypothesis, Orosei and his team generated a variety of physical models that could explain the radio wave signals being detected. They looked at the composition of the material of the Martian polar ice caps, the temperatures and pressures below the surface, possible layers of carbon dioxide ice and different shapes of the cavern. In the process of this systematic analysis, not only did the researchers confirm their original idea, they also showed that the water is partially saturated with sediments from the surrounding materials.

The research also determined that the specific region studied is not particularly unique. The conditions that allow for liquid water to exist under this 20-kilometer region should exist elsewhere on the planet, meaning that there are likely many pools of subsurface water on Mars. Follow-up studies are already underway. Nathaniel Putzig, an astronomer who works on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, has already planned out an analysis similar to Orosei to confirm the data and to deepen the study of the Martian ice caps.

The search for water on Mars goes back to an 1877 observation by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, in which he noted a series of canali on Mars. While these were later shown to be optical illusions, they were mistranslated and popularized as canals. This was taken up by Percival Lowell, who used the idea of canals to promote the idea in his book Mars and its Canals(1906) that there was a vast and lush ecosystem on Mars, complete with life intelligent enough to make planet-spanning canals to take water from the poles to irrigate canals.

mars-viking.jpg Caption: The first color image transmitted to Earth from the surface of Mars, taken by Viking 1 (Credit: NASA/JPL)

Subsequent observations soon showed his ideas to be false, and they were conclusively put to rest in 1964 when Mariner 4 completed the first fly-by of Mars, with the first images of another planet sent back to Earth from deep space. They revealed an arid world, with no geological activity, marked by craters and encased in a thin shell of carbon dioxide. While it was not the Mars anyone imagined, in many ways this increased the planet’s allure. For the first time, there were images of an alien world, one that the inhabitants of Earth knew basically nothing about. Proposals for follow-up missions were almost immediately submitted to NASA.

Among the most famous missions were Viking 1 and 2, which landed on Mars in 1975 and were tasked primarily with looking for life on Mars. They were not the first successful landing—that credit belongs to the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 lander—but they were the first landers to complete their task, which was to directly sample the surrounding soil, rocks and air while looking for signs of life. Though they did not find signs of even microorganisms, the images and data they transmitted back to Earth shaped both the scientific understanding and popular conception of the red planet.

A CGI rendition of Mars Express orbiting Mars (Credit: NASA/JPL/Corby Waste)

While many subsequent missions were being planned, it took nearly two decades before spacecraft again visited Mars. The end of the Apollo Program in 1973 signaled the end of the momentum given to space exploration generated by the US-Soviet space race. At that point, the intellectual energy used for basic science was largely directed back into militaristic pursuits, starving the space program of both countries of funds and labor. Twenty-one years passed before another space probe would successfully enter Martian orbit, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor in 1996.

Twenty-two years later, as with every discovery of liquid water on another world, one inevitably asks: Is there life? Has matter evolved enough elsewhere in our Solar System to become as complex as it is on Earth? It’s worth finding out.

Pursuit of rapper Valtònyc reveals widespread censorship in Spain

Alejandro López 

A Belgian court provisionally released rapper Josep Miquel Beltrán (stage name Valtònyc) pending its decision on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by Spain. The rapper fled Spain in May to avoid a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence after being convicted of glorifying terrorism, insulting the monarchy, and issuing threats in songs posted on YouTube and other internet platforms.

Valtònyc’s offending lyrics included “Let them be as frightened as a police officer in the Basque country,” “The king has a rendezvous at the village square, with a noose around his neck” and “We want death for these pigs,” referring to corrupt politicians and the monarchy.

Valtònyc has defended his songs saying, “Calling me a terrorist is nonsense…My songs don’t hurt anyone, I haven’t killed anyone. I rap about things that happen, but I’m not a participant.” He invoked freedom of expression in his defense, describing the very nature of rap lyrics as “extreme, provocative, allegorical and symbolic.”

Valtònyc is widely supported among Spanish youth. In April, a group of Spanish rap artists recorded a video in support of free speech and the rapper, and opposed to the royal Bourbon dynasty under the title “Los Borbones son unos Ladrones” (The Bourbons are Thieves).

The unrelenting pursuit of Valtònyc is further evidence of the growing assault on free speech and democratic rights in Spain and throughout Europe.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the most high-profile victim of the EAW. He was first arrested in London in December 2010 under its anti-democratic provisions to answer trumped up “questions” of sexual misconduct in Sweden. In 2017, an EAW was issued by Spain against ousted Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont. It has subsequently been dropped.

Esteban Beltrán, the director of Amnesty International Spain has stated, “Sending rappers to jail for song lyrics and outlawing political satire demonstrates how narrow the boundaries of acceptable online speech have become in Spain.”

“People should not face criminal prosecution simply for saying, tweeting or singing something that might be distasteful or shocking. Spain’s broad and vaguely-worded law is resulting in the silencing of free speech and the crushing of artistic expression.”

“Spain is emblematic of a disturbing trend which has seen states across Europe unduly restricting expression on the pretext of national security and stripping away rights under the guise of defending them.”

Following Valtònyc’s sentencing and before it was installed in government in June, the Socialist Party (PSOE) together with the pseudo-left Podemos both used it to attack the Popular Party (PP). PSOE Secretary General Pedro Sanchez, now Prime Minister, called for “freedom in artistic expression” and tweeted, “Bad taste cannot be punished with jail…That a rapper enters prison is a very bad symptom on the state of our democracy.”

Podemos general secretary Pablo Iglesias declared that a clear “regression in regards to civil liberties” was taking place adding, “It seems that criminal law is applied to persecute dissidents while the corrupt ones are let off scot-free.”

However, since coming to power with the help of Podemos, the PSOE has remained completely silent. So too has the Attorney General’s office, which was used by the previous PP government to intervene in all manner of right-wing political operations, most recently in the Catalan independence campaign firing off criminal complaints to the courts within hours of actions by the separatists.

Instead, both Podemos and the PSOE have directed their attention to “reform” of the Citizens Security Law, also known as the Gag Law, which was used against Valtònyc. The law, passed by the PP in 2015 under the all-encompassing pretext of “fighting against terrorism”, limits freedom of speech, prohibits mass gatherings and imposes fines for protesting and making comments on social media.

Since it was passed three years ago, there have been a huge number of prosecutions. Some 48,000 fines have been imposed solely on the basis of article 37.4—“disrespect and lack of due consideration to the State Security Forces”.

Where once Podemos called for the Gag Law to be abolished, it now pleads with the PSOE to “remove the most negative aspects.” Podemos could have conditioned its support for the new minority PSOE government on the repeal of the Gag Law, but instead declared the PSOE would be installed with their help with “no preconditions.”

Valtònyc was also found guilty of defaming the monarchy under articles 490 and 491 of the Penal Code dealing with “Crimes against the Crown,” which includes the whole Royal Family, past and present and can result in sentences of up to two years. Some 29 people have been charged between 2007 and 2016.

It was the PSOE which re-inserted the articles into the Penal code in 1995 and it has resisted all attempts to amend or remove them. Last March, it opposed attempts by the Catalan separatist party ERC to revoke them in the Spanish parliament, declaring they “go far beyond the freedom of expression and enter the field of institutional respect.”

The PSOE also supported the “praising of terrorism” law, which was introduced into the Penal Code by the PP government in 2000 and strengthened in 2015. It was passed under the pretext of fighting the terrorism of the Basque petty-bourgeois armed group ETA [Euskadi Ta Askatasuna—Basque Homeland and Freedom]. However, whilst there were 33 sentences between 2004 and 2011 under this law, after ETA announced it was ceasing its armed struggle in 2011 the number of sentences has multiplied by four. From 2011 to 2017, there have been 121 cases.

The most notorious case under “praising of terrorism” was against two puppeteers for a performance in Madrid denouncing the Gag Law. César Strawberry, lead singer of the group Def Con Dos, was sentenced to a year in prison last year for tweeting jokes about ETA and giving the king “a cake-bomb” for his birthday.

Cassandra Vera, a 22-year old student, also received a one-year suspended jail sentence last year for “humiliating” the victims of terrorism by making jokes on Twitter about the killing of general Luis Carrero Blanco, the right-hand man of Spanish dictator and mass murderer Francisco Franco. Referring to his assassination over 40 years ago by an ETA bomb, which blew his car 20 metres into the air, Vera joked, “Not only did ETA have a policy about official cars, they also had a space programme.” The sentence resulted in the loss of her university scholarship and disqualified her from employment in the public sector for seven years.

Since the start of the year, other censorship and attacks on free speech include:

•  In January, the High Court sentenced a man to a 900-euro fine for insults to the monarchy.
  
•  In February, Arco contemporary art fair in Madrid removed artist Santiago Sierra’s piece, “Political Prisoners in Contemporary Spain,” which included photographs of jailed Catalan independence leaders, claiming it was hurting the “visibility” of the other art on show.
  
•  In March, rapper Pablo Rivadulla, known as Pablo Hasél, was sentenced to two years in jail for praising terrorism, slandering the Spanish state and insults to the monarchy. “A generation of rappers has emerged with combative lyrics,” Hasél declared, adding “[The state is] afraid because these lyrics reach a lot of young people, and they don’t want those people to get involved in the struggle for the rights that are denied us.”
  
•  Also in March, actor Willy Toledo appeared in court because he had defended three women charged with blasphemy after they paraded in the southern city of Seville with a giant vagina, simulating a religious procession.
  
•  Two weeks ago, the mayor of La Línea de la Concepción ordered the removal of a photograph at an exhibition by the photographer Marta Castellano, in which a woman dressed as a priest is seen marrying two men, saying it “could offend Catholics”.

In numerous articles, the WSWS has warned that the Spanish ruling class has been organising the forces of the state to be used, not in “a war against terror,” but for domestic repression under conditions of growing inequality.

We have explained how the Gag Law heralded a new stage in the development of sweeping police-state powers aimed at prevent mass opposition organised through social networks outside of the control of the main parties and union bureaucracies.

Podemos is playing a vital role in the development of this framework. The party is the chief architect and main prop of the new government, which is committed to austerity, militarism and attacks on democratic rights.

More than 20 killed and hundreds missing from dam disaster in Laos

John Harris

At least 26 people have been killed and 170 are missing after a major hydropower dam construction site collapsed on Monday night in Attapeu province in southern Laos. Seven villages were devastated and more than 6,600 people rendered homeless after a 30-foot wall of water hit the area.

The Xe-pian Xe-Namnoy project consists of two major dams and five smaller auxiliary earth-filled dams. “Saddle Dam D,” one of the auxiliary dams, failed after several days of heavy monsoonal rains.

Construction inspectors reported damage to the dam on July 23. Following a letter from the Laos’s Resettlement Office, government authorities issued an evacuation order the next day, but it was too late.

The dam collapsed at 8 p.m. on July 24, sending around 5 billion cubic metres of water, equivalent to approximately 2 million Olympic swimming pools, into the valley below. Thousands of homes were destroyed in the downstream neighbouring villages of Yai Thae, Hinlad, Mai, Thasengchan, Tha Hin and Samong.

Media reports show hundreds of people stranded on the roofs of their inundated homes and villagers seeking to escape in overcrowded longboats or wading through floodwaters with children and their possessions. Makeshift disaster relief centres have been established, with hundreds of people seeking shelter in local schools and fields.

Rescue efforts have been hampered by the lack of phone signals in the flooded areas, ongoing heavy rains and strong winds, and poor roads. Survivors are in desperate need of medical assistance, adequate shelter, food and water supplies.

Ian Baird, described as an expert on Laos from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Reuters news agency: “People don’t usually go in that area during the rainy season. There are mountains nearby that villagers might be able to get up on.”

The Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy project, Baird said, had “managed the water in the reservoir very poorly, and so they are responsible.”

The International Rivers website claims that many of the dams were not appropriately “designed to be able to cope with extreme weather events.”

SK Engineering and Construction, a South Korean corporation, which has a major stake in the project, sought to deflect attention away from the broader social issues involved in the tragedy. It claimed that higher than usual rainfall was responsible for the dam collapse.

Heavy monsoon rains, however, are a regular occurrence in the impoverished, landlocked country, which is bordered by China, Vietnam, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand and Cambodia.

Laos, which has a population of about seven million people, is one the poorest countries in the world. It was subjected to massive carpet bombing by the US during the Vietnam War.

Electricity is Laos’s major export earner. The Xe-pian Xe-Namnoy project is one of many dams being built along the Mekong River. In 2017, Laos had 46 operational hydroelectric power plants and scores of others under construction.

The ruling Stalinist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party government in Vientiane, the capital, is acutely nervous about the catastrophe and its political impact on the region.

The national and provincial governments have systematically silenced opposition to village relocations, disruptions to rural agriculture and other social and economic problems caused by dam construction projects.

In an effort to assuage public anger, Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith visited the affected area, calling on local governments to assist in emergency relief efforts.

A Vientiane-based commentator told the Asian Times: “We are not good at talking about disasters here, especially if there is a possibility that someone in government may be blamed.”

The $US1.02 billion Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy project includes South Korean, Thai and Laotian investors. It began construction in 2013 and was due for completion later this year, with plans to begin commercial operations next year.

A similar disaster occurred last year when the Nam Ao River hydropower dam in northeastern Laos burst during construction, flooding a number of regional villages. There were no reported deaths. An investigation into the reservoir found that the construction was faulty because it was being built on unstable marshland.

Following last year’s dam collapse, Energy and Mining Minister Khammany Inthilath called for the cancellation of hydropower projects that did not meet technical and construction safety standards. It is not clear however, whether any real changes have been made in the past 12 months.

One analyst told the Asian Times that the resources and skills to properly oversee the large number of hydropower projects in Laos are at a bare minimum. Construction projects often bypass basic safety standards to meet deadlines and the demands from international investors. The working class and most oppressed layers bear the brunt of such profit-driven irresponsibility.

European Union reduces maritime rescue operations in the Mediterranean

Martin Kreickenbaum 

After the European Union (EU) de facto halted rescue operations in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast on Friday last week, ships from the EU Eunavfor Med Sophia mission sailed again on Monday. However, the mission has been saving fewer and fewer people from drowning for months.

In its three-year existence, the mission has saved at least 49,000 refugees from drowning and brought them to mainland Europe. Reducing official rescue operations, like the sabotage of private rescue missions, will immediately lead to a massive increase in fatalities.

Last Friday, the commander of the Sophia mission, Italian admiral Enrico Credendino, ordered all ships involved in the mission back to port. Although EU officials in Brussels had denied on Friday that the Sophia mission had been discontinued, the recall of the participating warships meant any organised sea rescues by the EU have been terminated.

On July 17, Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi, an independent, sent a letter to the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, who is officially responsible for the Sophia mission, saying that the Italian authorities would no longer accept refugees from EU vessels in the Mediterranean. The Italian government is demanding a distribution mechanism for refugees admitted into the EU.

After the Italian commander of the Sophia mission ordered the warships involved back to port, the EU’s Political and Security Committee (PSC) decided at a crisis meeting to review and revise Sophia’s operations for the next five weeks. In this way, the EU is essentially sanctioning the actions of the Italian government.

On Monday, the participants then agreed to allow the mission’s ships to continue operations for the period of this review. However, it is questionable whether the ships will even save refugees at all. The numbers of people rescued have already fallen sharply in recent months, probably because the ships avoid areas in which boats are most frequently in distress.

According to the Tagesspiegel, Brussels military circles say that the mission leadership wants any refugees to be picked up by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard and returned to Libya, in violation of international law, where they face imprisonment, torture and even slavery. Officially, the main purpose of this mission is not to conduct rescues at sea, but to fight against smugglers and train the Libyan Coast Guard.

By reducing the number of people rescued at sea, the EU has not only revealed its indifference to the fate of thousands of refugees, it is also openly breaking international refugee and maritime law and, at least through its failure to render assistance, is responsible for the mass deaths on the Mediterranean.

According to estimates by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), at least 1,490 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean this year. Although this is fewer than the 2,358 who died last year, in relation to the total number of refugees as a whole, the rate of drownings has increased significantly compared to the previous year.

With 629 refugees drowned in June, this was the deadliest ever. This is a direct consequence of the criminal policy of the Italian government and its partners in the EU, which has initially cracked down on private maritime rescuers and now virtually halted rescue operations.

Almost immediately after taking office, the government of Giuseppe Conte, comprising the right-wing extremist Lega and right-wing populist Five-Star Movement (M5S), initially refused to allow private maritime rescue ships to enter Italian ports. For days, the Aquarius and then the Lifeline had to steam back and forth across the Mediterranean before they could dock at ports in Spain or Malta to land several hundred refugees in each. In Malta, the captain of the Lifeline, Claus-Peter Reisch, was arrested and interrogated.

The Conte government went even further and did not even allow the Italian Coast Guard ship Diciotti to dock with 67 refugees on board. Although the Diciotti was finally allowed to dock, shortly afterwards the Italian government prevented a ship of the Italian Guardia di Finanza and a boat that was used by the Frontex European border agency, with more than 450 refugees on board, from docking.

Although EU officials occasionally criticise the Italian government, they actually work closely with them to wage a barbaric war on refugees. At last month’s EU summit, all the European governments agreed to build a comprehensive system of detention camps, the mass deportation of refugees and the massive expansion of border controls.

In this, the right-wing Italian government is setting the tone. The close collaboration with the Libyan Coast Guard is the best example of this. The Coast Guard apprehends refugees on the high seas and transports them under threat and use of violence back to Libya prison camps. The Italian government is deliberately violating the Convention on the Law of the Sea, which states that persons in distress must be unconditionally rescued and taken to the nearest port. The Geneva Refugee Convention also stipulates that refugees at the border must not be refused and certainly must not be returned to Libya.

Othman Belbeisi, who is responsible for the IOM in Libya, estimates the number of refugees there at 650,000. Nearly 10,000 are said to be in state and quasi-state prison camps. Since the NATO war against Libya and the murder of Muammar Gaddafi, all order has broken down in the country. The country is run by warlords and their militia, who act completely arbitrarily against refugees.

According to a confidential report of the EU border mission, which the broadcast programme “Monitor” quoted at the beginning of July, the officially recognised Libyan government of Fajes al-Sarradsch controls only “seven out of 32 refugee detention centres.” “Human rights violations, extortion, sexual abuse, enslavement, forced prostitution and torture” are commonplace there. Even the German foreign ministry described the Libyan prison camps as “concentration camp-like institutions.”

The German government also supports the fight of the Libyan militias against refugees. At the end of June, Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the work of the private maritime rescue services, saying they interfered with the work of the Libyan Coast Guard. “There is a commitment to let the Libyan Coast Guard do its work,” she said. “And there is no right to just do things instead of the Libyan Coast Guard. Libya also has a right to protect its shores.”

In fact, there are growing reports that the Libyan Coast Guard is acting with frightening ruthlessness and brutality. Militia leader Abd al-Rahman Milad, who rules west of Tripoli, has been accused by the UN of intentionally sinking refugee boats in order to bring the people on board back to Libya to the detention centres and enslave them.

The Spanish refugee relief organisation Open Arms, which operates off the Libyan coast with its own ship Astral, has now sued the Libyan Coast Guard for failing to provide assistance and the negligent killing of a woman and her four-year-old child. On July 16, a Libyan Coast Guard boat approached a dinghy full of refugees. The refugees made it clear that they did not want to return to Libya under any circumstances. The Libyan Coast Guard then used firearms to sink the boat and seize the desperate fugitives fighting for their lives in the sea to take them aboard and then on to a detention centre.

Two women, one with a toddler in her arms, doggedly refused to return to Libya. The Coast Guard simply left the two women and the child behind. Forty-eight hours later, in the remains of the dinghy, the Astral was only able to recover the bodies of the toddler and a woman.

Indian government backs mob lynchings targeting Muslims and minorities

Pradeep Ramayake

The Indian media is full of horrifying reports of lynch gang murders. According to police and government officials, at least eight people were killed by mobs across India in less than a week. India Today said 16 lynchings have been reported since May 10, resulting in the deaths of 22 people.

The victims were allegedly connected to child kidnapping, thievery, sexual harassment of women, or cow smuggling or slaughter. News items said the attacks were provoked by rumours spread via social media—Whatsapp in particular. In most cases, the victims were beaten or stabbed to death and sometimes their bodies were hung by mobs. At times the victims survived severe injuries, but were left unattended.

The majority of the victims have been Muslims or members of minority ethnic groups. An India Spend investigative article revealed that 86 percent of those killed in cow-related lynching were Muslims, and 8 percent low-caste Dalits. A recent outbreak of mob killings on rumours of child kidnapping targeted “strangers”—migrant workers and mentally disturbed people.

These attacks have created fear and intimidation among the targeted communities. Videos have been posted on social media, many by the attackers themselves, to arouse hatred against the victims.

Despite large sections of the public facing life-threatening conditions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) have kept almost total silence, just as they have done in past when the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP’s other Hindu supremacists allies have whipped up communal violence under the pretext of preventing cow slaughter.

While Modi has occasionally issued brief statements, claiming that horrific killings were “isolated or spontaneous” incidents, his senior ministers and parliamentary representatives have frequently openly defended the attackers, accusing the victims of provoking the attacks.

Far from these gruesome attacks being “spontaneous,” they are the result of provocations by Hindu extremist groups, backed by the BJP government. The government came to power in 2014, promoting Hindu chauvinism and right-wing groups. Their role is to aggressively suppress Muslims and other minorities on the pretext of “protecting Hindu values.”

Organisations like “Gau Raksha Dal,” which was formed to protect cows, a Hindu sacred symbol, provoked gangs to launch attacks on Muslim beef sellers and cattle traders last year. Modi who was forced to make a statement after 20 people were murdered, merely said: “Killing people in the name of Gau Bhakti (cow worship) is not acceptable.”

Last year, the Hindustan Times reported that 97 percent of the cow-related violence from 2010 to 2017 was reported after Modi’s government took office and 86 percent of the victims were Muslims.

These attacks are not isolated, but the result of systematic incitement by the government-backed communal groups, which use social media to spread communal hysteria.

The government has backed the murders by honouring convicted killers, especially when the victims are Muslims. Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha garlanded eight men convicted for lynching Alimuddin Ansari, a Muslim beef trader, last year.

Last week, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Giriraj Singh met jailed leaders of Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, two Hindu extremist organisations, who were convicted of communal violence last year. The minister claimed: “These leaders and functionaries have been arrested and jailed on the basis of false allegations. This is a very unfortunate situation.”

Although the police have made a few arrests, the police commonly give the mobs enough time to unleash their attacks, confident of protection by the BJP government.

In one typical incident on May 9, Rukmini, a 65-year-old woman, was killed by a mob of 200 in Athimoor village, Tamil Nadu. Police squads took 30 minutes to arrive from the police station that was just three kilometres away.

In another case, the police arrested two youth, Sanjay Sobor and his colleague, who belonged to a minor tribal community and worked as migrant labourers in Arunachal Pradesh. When the news of their arrest spread, a mob barged into the police station, dragged the prisoners to the main road and lynched them in the presence of police. The mob then disappeared without anyone being apprehended by the police.

The police invariably label those who are killed as cow thieves or cow smugglers, abductors of children or other criminals, echoing government representatives, even when the allegations against the victims have not been proved.

Numerous protests have erupted in major cities against this violence. Demonstrators have carried placards with slogans like “protests against holy mob lynching!” and “Not the Hindus vs. Muslims but the Brahmin (high caste Hindus) against the Indian minorities!”

Last week the Delhi Supreme Court recommended that parliament create a new penal provision to punish the offenders, but the media reported a senior BJP member stating: “There is already a law and no such requirement for a separate law.”

The government and its allies have sought to turn the popular outcry against the lynchings back on the Congress Party, which formed the previous government. Home Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament: “It’s not that lynching hasn’t happened in the past.” He recalled the 1984 mob killings of Sikhs after Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.

While justifying the brutal attacks on minorities, Modi’s BJP government is strengthening an oppressive state machine against the working people as a whole. Communalism is being heightened and lynch mobs set in motion to divide and intimidate the working class.