UK education system breaking apart after decade of cuts

Tom Pearce

Many UK schools returning after the Easter break face an unprecedented crisis. A decade of cuts to education funding are having such an impact that some teachers and pupils are cleaning classrooms, while others are taking pay cuts to save ancillary staff jobs.

Shortfalls in funding across the education sector have led to huge budget deficits, with head teachers being forced to make desperate decisions about how to keep their schools running.

So dire is the situation that last term five teachers at Furzedown primary school in Wandsworth, south London, volunteered to up to a £7,000-a-year pay cut in order to save the jobs of two of their teaching assistant colleagues.

Headteacher Monica Kitchlew-Wilson was forced to ask older pupils to clean classrooms after one of the school’s cleaners moved jobs and there was not enough money to replace her. The head even drafted in her husband, a trained plumber, to help. The school is buying fewer books and reducing investment in IT, as well as on services for children with behavioural and learning difficulties.

Schools are relying on teachers and parents to finance state education and plug deficits. One in six state schools sent letters to the families of around 1.4 million pupils asking for contributions of £20 a month or more. Some schools have requested the setting up of direct debit payments or for families to make one-off contributions—in some cases up to £600. More than 1,000 schools across England have turned to crowd funding on the internet.

Fundraising by school communities has been used to pay for new technology and revamp school playgrounds, none of which would have otherwise been possible. Donations of equipment, such as crayons, paper and glue sticks, are commonplace, with head teachers seeking the support of local communities.

A survey published last week by the NASUWT education union found that 20 percent of teachers were spending their own money on basic classroom supplies and nearly half surveyed were paying for food, clothes and basic toiletries for poor pupils. One teacher said she had paid out £5,000 on classroom supplies in recent years.

Cuts have hit the most vulnerable children. Disabled children at Kings Heath, a school in Birmingham, were forced to leave after the school considered scrapping provision for them due to budget cuts. Chair of Governors Penny Colbourne said: “We are being asked to make impossible choices and impossible decisions.” School head Shirley Hanson said she was “distressingly” having to consider closing the specialist resource base for children with physical disabilities.

Funding per pupil in England continues to fall, with a further 3 percent drop to come in the next period, a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) revealed. This would lead to a £130 cut for every pupil in primary school and a £170 cut for each secondary school pupil. Most schools will not be able to cope with this further funding reduction. The effect on the standard of education on offer will be devastating.

Analysis of official figures by campaign group, the School Cuts Coalition, showed that the shortfall in funding reached £5.4 billion across England’s schools between 2015 and 2018. To put this in perspective, in the county of Yorkshire the sum amounts to more than £481 million—with 90 percent of schools affected—and a £66 million shortfall in the city of Leeds alone.

Most secondary schools, and almost 30 percent of primary schools, are run as Academies—publicly funded by central government though privately controlled. Academies were an initiative of the Blair Labour government in 2000.

Many Academies are run as chains, whereby one Academy trust runs more than one school. To offset the cuts, many Academy trusts are considering changing the terms and conditions of their workers to save money.

One academy chain in Yorkshire, the Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust (BDAT), which runs 13 schools, launched a consultation on changes to terms and conditions last autumn.

The Trust aims to add an extra month on the notice period that teachers can give when leaving the trust. Currently, conditions state that there are only three dates throughout the school year that staff can give notice to leave. This change would “give the trust the power to give staff notice in mid-April, forcing them to leave at the end of the summer term.” As a result, teachers would not be paid over the summer months, saving the trust thousands of pounds. If this is passed, other academies will follow suit and use the cuts to force through other changes to working conditions.

At the same time, some chains have been accused of squandering hundreds, even thousands of taxpayers’ money, both legally and illegally.

While slashing the overall education budget successive Tory-led governments have found millions of pounds for academies to take over schools and set up multi-academy trusts.

According to a Schools Week investigation, since 2013 the Department for Education allocated more than “£126 million in sponsor capacity funding.” However, Schools Week found that during the 2016–17 academic year, after £5 million was handed out, “six trusts paid a combined £195,334 have not taken on any new schools.”

The report notes that “four trusts that received funding in 2015–16 are yet to expand. Southmoor Academy Trust, Brighter Futures, the Keys Federation and Zest Academy Trust received £293,045 between them.” This is taxpayer’s money that could be the difference between a school staying open or closing.

This revelation follows a previous Schools Week investigation in 2017 which exposed that millions of pounds were wasted in the creation of “northern hubs” but nothing actually materialised.

Other high profile cases, such as Bright Tribe and Wakefield City Academy Trusts, which received almost £1.5 million between them, have collapsed.

A BBC1 Panorama documentary shown last month, “The Academy Schools Scandal,” exposed financial corruption on a criminal scale in some Academy chains—but the perpetrators have not faced any criminal investigation.

That educators are placed in this intolerable situation is an indictment of the teaching trade unions, who have done nothing to mobilise their membership in opposition to the tide of cuts to education. The National Education Union (NEU), the biggest teachers’ union, correctly declares that schools are facing a “national emergency.” Teachers are only too aware of this, with NEU members repeatedly returning strike ballots to fight back. In opposition, the NEU and others are suppressing this willingness to fight. Instead the unions call on their members to note school cuts on a website as “Politicians care what voters think, but we’ve got to make sure they continue to make them feel the pressure from around the country.”

The last national strike action by UK teachers was to defend their pensions, alongside other public sector workers. These were eventually wound down in 2011 by the unions, so that today teachers and others in the public sector have to pay more and work longer for a smaller pension.

The unions are insisting teachers wait for the election of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. But Corbyn has made it clear that a Labour government led by him would be fully committed to “fiscal responsibility,” with Labour councils everywhere carrying out millions in budget cuts as they set balanced budgets as instructed by the Labour leader.

Across the country, communities are setting up their own organisations to fight back. This month, parents and their children who attend St Matthew’s Primary School marched through Cambridge to demand action on school funding. Following the march, a rally heard the school will face a £60,000 cut to the school budget in September. The parents have formed the Fund Our Schools campaign group.

The Socialist Equality Party urges all teachers and workers in education to unite with other public sector workers alongside workers in the private sector, both in the UK and internationally. Ongoing strikes by teachers in Poland, who are taking action in defiance of their unions, show the way forward. Central to this fight is the formation of rank-and-file committees in workplaces and local communities independent from and in rebellion against the trade unions, who have collaborated for a decade with the Tory-led Conservative governments as they dismantle public education.

Germany’s IT Security Act 2.0: Another step towards a police state

Wolfgang Weber 

Just a few days after the publication of a draft for an “Intelligence Enabling Act,” the German interior minister Horst Seehofer has submitted proposals to the cabinet for a comprehensive extension and tightening up of the 2015 IT Security Act.

The “IT Security Act 2.0” would allow the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) to carry out intelligence tasks, expand the powers of the police and extend criminal law by introducing new criminal offences. The platform www.netzpolitik.org published the draft on March 27.

Until now the main work of the BSI was to ward off attacks on the IT system, such as to inform the public about viruses and trojans, draw attention to security gaps in well-known programs such as Windows, Office and Adobe Flash and close such security gaps. Now, on the pretext of protecting the public interest, the BSI is to be upgraded into an offensive agency capable of cracking, hacking and manipulating IT systems, private databases and networks.

In the future the BSI will be able to use systematic scanning of identifiable portals (device access) to search for insecure, i.e., vulnerable devices. In the so-called Internet of Things such devices include internet-connected refrigerators, washing machines, cameras, automobiles, even children’s computers or baby monitors, through which an attacker could penetrate the WLAN of a business or individual.

The BSI will be allowed to log onto such devices to detect passwords and then spy on, and also change data. Actions that up to now are punishable are thus legalised in the case of the BSI. In addition, telecommunication providers are required to submit to the BSI the personal data corresponding to an IP address.

The Federal Office may inform affected owners of insecure IT systems or systems that have been broken into, but need not do so. In addition, it can alter devices, networks and IT systems that it has classified as “insecure.” To this end the BSI can oblige telecommunications providers to install software patches developed by the BSI on a system registered under a specific IP address to delete or change “malware.”

The ability to secretly infiltrate and manipulate IT systems allows the security forces to act against, and even manipulate evidence against individuals and organisations deemed to be “suspicious” or “anti-constitutional.” This constitutes a radical breach of basic democratic rights such as the inviolability of the home, telecommunications security, the right of self-determination and the privacy of those affected and, depending on the target, a possible violation of the freedom of the press or the confidentiality rights of doctors and lawyers.

The Interior Ministry has justified IT Security Act 2.0 by claiming it allows security agencies to protect “insecure systems” from attackers and take control of groups of remote-controlled devices—so-called botnets—to prevent them undertaking attacks or sending spam. The ministry is deliberately concealing the fact that protection against botnets is also possible in other, defensive ways to secure, for example, critical infrastructure such as the energy or water supplies, or railway networks.

Paragraph 163g, located at the very end of the draft, makes clear the dictatorial aims hidden behind the mask of “IT security.” It allows prosecutors and the police the right “to access the user accounts or functions” of a suspect, against his or her will, and “contact third parties using this virtual identity.” The draft continues: “The suspect is required to provide the access data required to employ the virtual identity.”

A general, and not a concrete suspicion that someone has committed a crime, plans to commit one, or is participating in a crime with the help of an internet service, is sufficient to force that person to hand over their account details. Should he or she refuse, they can be detained for up to six months under Section 70 of the Criminal Code.

Among the crimes that are supposed to provide the pretext for state intervention are a long list of offences, ranging from “abduction to falsifying an asylum claim” (i.e., helping a refugee) and murder, but also minor everyday offences such as abuse via email or Ebay fraud. The list provides ample opportunity for arbitrary searches and raids, along with “covert investigations” on the internet.

The draft also states that, “Accounts ... can be taken over and used even if the government agency obtains the access data in other ways, for example by means of covert investigations or as part of an online search,” e.g., through the deliberate use of trojans.

Finally, the IT Security Act 2.0 stipulates a number of new offences, while other criminal law provisions are tightened up considerably. For a whole range of existing crimes, such as spying, intercepting or manipulating data, the maximum penalty is increased from two to five years imprisonment. This does not apply, of course, when the perpetrators are the BSI, the intelligence services or the police.

These same offences are now upgraded to the level of serious offences, permitting the authorities to not only listen into telephones during an investigation, but also deploy so-called state trojans, i.e., spyware and malicious software developed by the BSI or other state agencies.

A new offence has been created of providing “Internet-based services” that make it possible or easier to commit crimes via internet services. This is directed against trading platforms in the so-called Darknet, but also against services offering anonymity or private communication spaces such as the TOR browser. This is another assault on basic democratic rights, such as the right to the self-determination of information and freedom of expression, of which the right to anonymity is crucial.

In future, it will also be a criminal offence to publish or plan to publish private data, with a penalty of up to 10 years. A particularly serious case of such a crime exists if the act “threatens serious disadvantage for the Federal Republic of Germany.” This could undoubtedly include such acts as publicising leaked data revealing, for example, the involvement of the German army in war crimes in Afghanistan or Mali.

The draft also makes “digital trespassing” or, as it is called in the bill, the “unauthorised use of IT systems,” a criminal offence. This would include infiltrating a government database for the purpose of disclosing state crimes, as Chelsea Manning did in 2010 when she transmitted to the world, via WikiLeaks, American military documents exposing US Army war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The last two clauses in particular clearly show that the IT Security Act 2.0 must be seen in connection with the arrest of Julian Assange and his imminent extradition to the US. Anyone who, like Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, stands up for democratic rights and exposes imperialist crimes is to be intimidated, punished and silenced.

A host of lawyers in the various ministries are now working feverishly, and often in grotesque detail, to concretise the future laws governing the activities of the police and intelligence agencies. They seek to neatly sew up the “legal” abolition of democratic rights in order to preserve the appearance of a “rule of law” as long as possible. The German judiciary has considerable experience in this sort of planning for dictatorship, and not just from the monarchy before 1918 and the Weimar Republic. Without the active collaboration of leading judicial figures, the dictatorship of Hitler, the persecution of the Jews and their extermination would not have been possible.

The speed with which similar work is now being undertaken is breath-taking. It corresponds to the global intensification of the class struggle against social inequality, militarism and dictatorial regimes. These class struggles are the main reason why the ruling classes in Germany, Europe, and also the US, are increasingly turning towards dictatorship and fascism.

Landslide victory for Zelensky over Poroshenko in Ukrainian presidential election

Jason Melanovski

In the second round of Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday, comedian Volodomyr Zelensky won a landslide victory over the incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko, who was brought to power in an imperialist-backed far-right coup in February 2014.

Exit polls showed Zelensky winning 73.06 percent of the vote (almost 10 million votes), compared to just 24.61 percent for Poroshenko (less than 3.4 million votes). In the face of the overwhelming vote for Zelensky, Poroshenko quickly conceded defeat, stating that while he was “leaving office,” he was not “leaving politics.” With the exception of a small province in western Ukraine, the entire country voted overwhelmingly for Zelensky.

The victor will officially be sworn into office in June. In the wake of Zelensky’s victory on Sunday, his campaign staff reported that he had already received congratulatory phone calls from French Preisdent Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump.

Zelensky, whose recently created Servant of the People Party has no parliamentary representation, has announced that he will seek quickly to dissolve parliament prior to the parliamentary elections currently scheduled for October. In that case, new parliamentary elections will be held in July.

The election results reflect, above all, the enormous popular hostility toward the right-wing nationalist and militarist policies of the Poroshenko regime, which was installed in 2014 by the imperialist powers as a puppet regime to spearhead their war preparations against Russia.

Since then, Poroshenko has subjected the Ukrainian working class to far-reaching austerity measures, the continuation of the war in the east of the country and extreme nationalism and xenophobia. His presidency has relied heavily on the promotion of far-right forces. His government banned references to communism and the victory of the Red Army aganst Nazism in World War II, and made the glorification of the Nazi collaborators of Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B (OUN-B) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) official state policy.

Poroshenko’s entire presidential campaign was based on whipping up militarism and anti-Russian xenophobia. It followed a major military provocation in the Azov Sea against Russia and the declaration of martial law in several regions of the country where Ukrainian workers had joined strikes and protests against poverty wages and austerity.

In the weeks prior to the election, Poroshenko attempted to portray Zelensky as an agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming that a vote for Zelenskiy would lead to Ukraine’s return to the “Russian empire.”

Poroshenko will leave office as one of the most despised incumbent presidents in modern European political history, with close to 60 percent of the population holding a negative view of him, according to one recent poll.

Zelensky, despite his appeals to anti-war sentiment and to popular hostility to austerity measures, is a representative of the Ukrainian oligarchy and will act on its behalf and on behalf of Western imperialism. In all essentials, his agenda will continue the hated policies of Poroshenko.

He is a close associate of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, the owner of Ukraine’s 1+1 Media Group, who has been living in exile in Israel in recent years and is now planning to return to Ukraine.

Zelensky’s most important meeting during the campaign took place not in Ukraine, but rather in France, where he met with French President Macron. In a sign that Western imperialism was orienting itself towards working with a Zelensky presidency, Macron met with Zelensky in mid-April, prior to a separate meeting with Poroshenko.

Little is known about what was discussed between Macron and Zelensky, with the latter stating simply, “We discussed life and essentials. Ending the war in Donbass.” Zelensky had previously expressed his admiration for Macron, who has been mobilizing the French army to crush protests against social inequality by the “yellow vests.”

Zelensky has reportedly hired a public relations firm in Washington to set up meetings with representatives of the Trump administration and various US think tanks.

He won much of his support by criticizing the blatant corruption of the Poroshenko regime and by making fraudulent promises to end the war in Donbass, negotiate directly with Putin and work to prevent a full-scale war with Russia. However, in an interview with RBK Ukraine given shortly before Sunday’s election, Zelenskiy called Russia an “aggressor” in Donbass and Putin an “enemy.” He expressed his support for the banning of Russian-language press and artists, and called World War II Ukrainian war criminal Stepan Bandera, who worked with the Nazis to persecute the Jews, a “hero,” who “defended the freedom of Ukraine.”

He proclaimed that he did not plan to deviate from the proposed entry of Ukraine into NATO and promised to hold a referendum on the issue, pledging to “win over” skeptical Ukrainians in the east of the country. Zelensky is also a long-standing supporter of Ukrainian membership in the European Union. The entry of Ukraine into both the EU and NATO would signify a major provocation and escalation of tensions with Russia.

Throughout the campaign, Zelensky was careful to not reveal anything concrete about his economic agenda, but in his interview with RBK Ukraine, he admitted to being a supporter of all types of “deregulation”—in other words, the elimination of what remains of Ukraine’s social services.

He has won the support of several prominent free market “reformers” within Ukraine, including ex-Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk and former Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius. Abromavicius is notorious for his attempts to push through the wide scale privatization and sale of Ukraine’s remaining state-owned industries.

Both Zelensky and Abromavicius are dedicated to carrying out the orders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and have stated that Ukraine will remain in the IMF loan program for as long as necessary. Zelensky has also proposed to end a moratorium on the selling of farmland, per IMF order, and has equivocated on the IMF-ordered hiking of natural gas prices, which plunged many Ukrainians into the cold the past winter.

Regarding education, one of Zelensky’s advisors, Serhiy Babak, suggested that a massive privatization of public education was in the cards, stating, “We will open the market for educational services for private initiatives and for foreign educational institutions, and we will develop a state partnership [with private educational organizations].”

At least 290 killed in terrorist bomb attacks in Sri Lanka

K. Ratnayake

At least 290 people have been killed and around 500 injured in a series of powerful bomb blasts yesterday in Sri Lanka. In a co-ordinated attack between 8.45 a.m. and 9 a.m., unidentified terrorists struck three Christian churches and three luxury hotels frequented by tourists. Among the dead are some 35 foreigners, including from the US, European countries, China and Japan.

The three churches—St. Anthony in Colombo, St. Sebastian in Negombo to the north of the capital and the Zion Church in Batticaloa on the east coast of the island—were packed for Easter Sunday services. The blasts ripped off the roofs and left body parts strewn among the rubble. The hospitals, particularly in Negombo where the death toll was the highest, were overwhelmed by the large number of injured, many of whom are in a serious condition.

People recovering bodies in Katuwapitiya Church

The three luxury hotels—the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury—are all in Colombo. Two further blasts in the capital several hours later claimed more lives—one in the suburb of Dehiwela killed two people and the second in Dematagoda killed seven, including three police officers.

The Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) unequivocally condemns this barbaric murder of innocent people, including children and women. Whoever is responsible for this heinous crime and whatever their motives, it will be exploited by the political establishment to strengthen the state apparatus and further attack basic democratic rights.

The government immediately imposed a nationwide block on social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Viber, claiming that they had been used to circulate “false news reports.” While saying the shutdown would be temporary, it is part and parcel of moves by governments internationally to censor the internet so that only government-approved news is readily available.

No organisation or individual has so far claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks. State minister for defence affairs and media, Ruwan Wijewardena, said the government knew the “identity of the culprits” but would not elaborate. The police have arrested 13 people but have not revealed their identity. Even the nature of the bombings is not clear, although there is some evidence that suicide bombers were involved.

Agence France Presse has reported that the Sri Lankan government and police had received a warning, 10 days before, that suicide bombers planned to attack prominent churches. The intelligence alert to top police officers declared: “A foreign intelligence agency has informed that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jamma’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian High Commission in Colombo.”

Neither the police nor the government took any action to warn the public of an impending attack. Nor is there any evidence that the police took any measures to prevent the bombings. Yet the alert was quite specific and Easter is an obvious time for churches to be full.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday acknowledged that there had been a warning from an unnamed foreign intelligence agency. He claimed, however, that he and his ministers did not know about the alert. He indicated that there would be an inquiry as “there had not been adequate attention [paid] to the information.”

National Thowheeth Jamma’ath is an Islamist organisation based in Sri Lanka that is suspected of having links to Islamic extremists internationally. At this stage, however, one cannot rule out other possibilities.

The Colombo political establishment, which waged a brutal three-decade-long war to defeat the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has close connections to Sinhala Buddhist supremacist groups, which have a history of attacks on Christians and Christian churches, as well as the island’s Tamil and Muslim minorities. In many cases, the police have simply turned a blind eye to such attacks.

The government is desperate to deflect rising anger over the bombings. In his comments, Wickremesinghe hinted that President Maithripala Sirisena was responsible for taking no action to prevent the attack. Sirisena took over the law and order ministry, which includes the police, last December as part of the bitter rivalry between himself and the prime minister. The president, as defence minister, already has control of the country’s three armed forces.

The opposition, led by former President Mahinda Rajapakse, yesterday condemned the attack but sheeted home the blame to the government. The Rajapakse government was responsible for the brutal end to the war against the LTTE, which involved the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in the final military operations, as well as hundreds of “disappearances” by military-connected death squads.

Rajapakse has defended the “war heroes” against any charges of war crimes and is looking for the military’s support in his bid to return to power. Yesterday, he declared that the attack was a “dire consequence that innocent people have to face because the government has paralysed the intelligence officers and officers of the three armed forces.”

Both the governing and opposition parties, however, were responsible for prosecuting the communal war against the island’s Tamil minority and for vastly expanding the military and state apparatus, as well as its police state powers. The government will undoubtedly exploit yesterday’s bombings to ram through its Counter Terrorism (CT) Bill, which replaces the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act and retains the bulk of its sweeping, anti-democratic powers.

In separate statements, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe urged people to be “calm” as the security measures were put into force—after the bombings. As well as the block on social media, police special task force officers were deployed to guard Colombo railway station, Katunayake International Airport among other places. Several hundred soldiers have been deployed onto the streets of Colombo and a curfew has been imposed.

Police prepared with water cannon near the National Hospital

World leaders yesterday rushed to denounce the terrorist attack. US President Donald Trump condemned the “horrible terrorist attacks,” offered “heartfelt condolences” and declared that the US stood “ready to help.” British Prime Minister Theresa May also decried the attacks saying the “violence was truly appalling.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that “there is no place for such barbarism in our region.”

Hypocrisy knows no bounds! The US and its allies are responsible for criminal wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa that fueled the Islamic extremists, if they were, indeed, responsible for yesterday’s bombings. Washington backed successive Colombo governments that waged the island’s brutal war, which created communal tensions and hatreds that Sri Lanka's elites continue to stir up and manipulate.

Amid a rising tide of working-class struggles, the ruling classes internationally are whipping up anti-immigrant xenophobia and deliberately nurturing fascist parties and organisations. Last month, the Australian fascist Brenton Tarrant shot dead 50 people, including women and children, in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Despite Tarrant’s connections in far-right circles internationally, the police and intelligence services claim that they had no forewarning. The response of the government in Wellington has been to blame the internet and censor websites.

The government in Sri Lanka will use yesterday’s bombings for the same purpose. Over the past year, there has been a wave of strikes by workers and protests by students, farmers and the poor against the government’s austerity measures. The police-state measures put in place, on the pretext of fighting terrorism, will inevitably be used against the working class.

Conflict continues over Peruvian copper mine as peasant blockade is lifted

Cesar Uco & Armando Cruz

After five hours of deliberations, on Thursday April 10, representatives of 27 peasant communities, whose lands are used to transport copper concentrate from the Las Bambas mine reached an agreement with the government to end a 66-day road blockade that interrupted the export of the mineral to China.

The government represented by the prime minister Salvador del Solar plus four other ministers and a representative of the Chinese transnational MMG Ltd., owner of Las Bambas, agreed to all terms presented by the president of Fuerabamba—the peasant community that maintained a road blockade.

The deal will allow the resumption of the daily passage of 250 heavy load trucks transporting the copper concentrate to the seaport of Matarani in the department of Arequipa, a 500-kilometer trip. It was emphasized, though, that the measure was temporary, pending the success of negotiations.

In exchange, the government agreed to withdraw its police from the area and lift a “state of emergency” declared last October after violent confrontations between the peasant community members—in Spanish known as “comuneros”—and the police.

The government’s giving in to the comuneros’ demands expresses how desperate it is to ensuring the uninterrupted export of what amounts to 400,000 tons of copper concentrate to China. It saw the continuation of the Las Bambas conflict as casting Peru as unstable and unsafe for foreign capital to invest in mining. Peru is the second largest exporter of the metal worldwide.

However, the Fuerabamba comuneros’ president, Gregorio Rojas, warned that the underlying problem was not fully solved.

Fuerabamba is asking to be paid for the use of the road that crosses its “communal” lands and those of 38 other peasant communities, with whom they share the road from Las Bambas to the Hacienda Yavi Yavi. The conflict occurred when last year the central government unilaterally reclassified the road owned by the local communities from “communal” to “national,” so that the owners of the Las Bambas mine wouldn’t have to pay for its use.

In 2014, MMG Ltd, the Melbourne-based unit of Chinese state-owned Minmetals Corp, bought Las Bambas from the Swiss mining company Glencore for US$ 7 billion, with a total estimated investment of US$ 10 billion. Las Bambas, an open-pit mine, is expected to become the sixth largest copper mine in the world, producing 400,000 tons per year, responsible for 2 percent of the global market.

At the time, an important agreement reached by the comuneros and Glencore was to build an underground “pipeline” through which the copper would be transported instead of using the dirt road that would end up ruining the communally owned land. When Las Bambas was purchased by MMG Limited, this proposal was rejected and the decision made to use the road that leads to Yavi Yavi, crossing the land of 39 communities, with the new owner promising to pave the road.

Faced with the breach of what was agreed to by MMG, the community members, gathered in an assembly, decided on February 4 to block the road demanding its asphalting and that it be paid for its use, because they were not consulted as required by the ILO conventions. For the comuneros, the road is still “communal” and their property.

In the first 50 days—until mid-March—the road blockade had no impact on production at the mine and its concentrator plant, with the mineral being kept in storage located on the mine’s own land.

The Chinese company MMG reacted by threatening to execute “force majeure” and lay off 8,000 employees—including 2,500 workers operating the mine and the concentrate plant. The conflict was thereby radicalized, and a clash on April 4 left seven civilians and five policemen injured. The news of a possible paralysis of the Las Bambas operations went global. Bloomberg warned of the impact it could have on the price of copper worldwide, which, due to its shortage, has already increased 7 percent this year.

Just as MMG was about to run out of storage capacity after more than 50 days of the blockade, late in March the central government ordered the arrest of the president of Fuerabamba, Gregorio Rojas, his two legal advisers, the Chávez Sotelo brothers, and one more leader, accused them of trying to extort MMG in exchange for lifting the road blockade.

Outraged by the arrest of its leaders, Fuerabamba immediately won the support of the other 38 communities located in the departments of Apurímac and Cusco, which decided to go on indefinite strike, and also the support of the governors of the departments of Apurímac and Cusco. In solidarity, comunerosin Arequipa occupied the transoceanic highway for three hours. Angry over not being taken seriously, when a helicopter carrying three ministers was departing from Fuerabamba after failed negotiations, comuneros stoned it. With the conflict threatening to expand, encompassing the entire regions of the Southern Andes in which several multibillion dollar transnationals operate, the central government finally decided to pay attention to Las Bambas.

The indigenous communities of Quechua and Aymara origin were brutally exploited, humiliated and ignored, first by colonial Lima and then by the descendants of Spaniards born in South America who retained ownership of the large haciendas.

These landowners had total control over their lands, including the local priests, mayors and the police. The centralized bourgeois state in Lima had virtually no jurisdiction over the haciendas, especially over those located in the remote Andes where the Quechua and Aymara communities live. To this day, the comuneros continue to practice their ancestral customs of life, with many communities not speaking Spanish.

Transnational mining companies contribute 40 percent of Peru’s export revenues, with these companies operating in the departments with the highest poverty. The poorest is Cajamarca with its large gold mines, followed by six departments, including Apurímac, with a poverty rate between 33 and 36 percent. In remote regions, poverty is even greater. This is the case of Fuerabamba, where it reaches 84 percent.

Because the mine was located just below the old town of Fuerabamba, MMG offered to build a “modern” town 25 kilometers away, known as Nueva Fuerabamba.

The business daily Gestión reported on the deterioration in the standard of living of the community members of Nueva Fuerabamba: “Three years after moving, many of the residents still struggle to adapt to the suburban environment. ... [although some received up to 400,000 soles or US $ 125,000 to relocate, a figure not confirmed by the mine] ... they miss the life of growing potatoes and raising cattle.”

“Many have squandered what they received. Idleness and isolation have blunted the spirits of [the] community ...” Gestion continues, “Their new two and three story drywall houses seem weak and cold compared to their old roofed adobe huts of straw that were heated with wood stoves ...”

The newspaper adds that “Most jobs ... are for maintenance of the town because many lack the skills to work in a modern mine.” Therefore, the residents “demand ... more jobs and title deeds of their homes” not yet delivered.

“Now they have to pay for basic needs such as water, food and fuel that they used to take from the land.” Alcoholism is increasing, it added. “During a 12-month period, four residents committed suicide by taking agricultural chemicals.”

An independent study indicates that “prior to the relocation ... the old village of Fuerabamba suffered from high rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, illiteracy, poverty and lack of access to basic public services.”

While the general manager of MMG, Troy Hey, and the bourgeois state qualify the transfer of the comuneros as “a positive change”, Camilo León, specialist in mining resettlements, said that for “subsistence peasants it is usually very difficult to leave their traditions and getting used to the ‘very urban, very organized’ environment of the planned cities...”

In Peru there are six transnational corporations that have relocated indigenous peoples. “And this month,” León said, “a US$2 billion copper project, Michiquillay, would be tendered, which would also involve relocating another community.”

German government adopts new law to expand immigrant deportations

Peter Schwarz 

Asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected are to be ruthlessly bullied, persecuted, detained and deported. In summary, this describes the content of the Orderly Return Act adopted by Germany’s federal cabinet on Wednesday. It now only has to be approved by the Bundestag and Bundesrat, the lower and upper houses of Germany’s parliament, where, with a few cosmetic changes, the law is assured of winning a majority.

The draft bill, prepared jointly by the Interior Ministry under the leadership of Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU) and the Ministry of Labour led by Hubertus Heil (Social Democratic Party, SPD), was made public several weeks ago and has already provoked widespread protest and opposition. It abrogates fundamental democratic rights and in parts violates European law. Nonetheless, all of the SPD ministers backed the new law, including Justice Minister Katarina Barley, the SPD’s lead candidate in the European elections.

With its new law, the grand coalition is in effect enforcing the far-right policies of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Although the right-wing extremist party won just 12.6 percent of the vote at the last federal election, it is dictating the government’s refugee policy.

The Orderly Return Act enforces the following changes to existing legal instruments:

* Refugees required to leave the country can be taken into custody much more easily than is currently the case. To this end, the prerequisites to deem someone a potential flight risk have been reduced.

* In order to make available a sufficient number of detention places, the European Separation Order, which stipulates that detention pending deportation and standard criminal imprisonment must be kept strictly separate, is to be suspended for three years. As a result, refugees who have committed no crime will be detained in normal prisons.

* Immigrants who, in the opinion of the authorities, fail to make the effort to provide missing paperwork will fall under a new designation: tolerated with unconfirmed identity. They will have fewer rights than tolerated refugees, who, although they have had their asylum applications rejected, are often allowed to remain in Germany for a period of time. Missing passports and failing to turn up to meetings can be used as grounds for deportation. Anyone who fails to attend an embassy appointment can be detained for 14 days, a crime which has not previously existed. In summary, anyone who refuses to voluntarily cooperate in their own deportation will be thrown in jail and deported as a punishment.

* The date and planned route of a deportation will be declared a state secret. Any public servant who provides advanced warning of a deportation thus commits a criminal offence. Although the original plan for a criminal offence for refugee aid workers and journalists who report deportation dates was formally removed from the bill, it was reintroduced through the back door. This is because the assistance in or encouragement of the circulation of state secrets is punishable as a criminal offence.

* Asylum seekers whose applications fall under the responsibility of authorities in another European country will receive virtually no support. They will be starved into leaving the country. If they are deemed to be in need of aid, they can receive a maximum of two weeks of limited financial support to cover costs until their deportation, and the support can be claimed only once within a two-year period.

* The Federal Agency for Immigration and Refugees (BAMF), which to date had three years to review the grounds for offering protection to asylum seekers, will have five years in the future. This means that refugees who have been accepted will be left living in fear for five years, since their recognition of their asylum claims could be revoked at any time.

* Individuals convicted of a crime can be immediately deported if they receive a six-month sentence, a reduction from the previous 12-month minimum.

In the first instance, the Orderly Repatriation Act is aimed at getting rid of the 240,000 people currently living in Germany who are required to leave the country, and in particular the 56,000 who received no tolerated status. Seehofer intends to send 18,000 people back to war-ravaged Afghanistan alone.

But the law goes even further. It is not merely anti-refugee and undemocratic, but also inhumane and barbaric. It recalls the darkest chapters of German history.

The Himmlers, Heydrichs, and others in SS uniforms were not sufficient to carry out the industrial extermination of 6 million Jews. It was also necessary to have an army of officials in every ministry who identified, rounded up and deported the Jews to concentration camps in a cold-blooded and bureaucratic manner. Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe this.

Such a layer of unscrupulous apparatchiks, who suppress any trace of empathy and bully their victims with inhumane laws, regulations that are impossible to comply with, and prison, all in the name of “law and order,” is once again being trained.

Even the law’s cynical name, Orderly Return Act, underscores this fact. Reinhard Müller summed it up in a comment for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He enthused, “Why hasn’t this long been the case?” and proposed naming the law “Return to Legality Act.”

Seehofer and the FAZ’s term “legality,” which pours scorn on all core democratic principles, is directed not only against refugees, but the working class as a whole. It takes aim at anyone viewed by the ruling class as a hostile entity or a threat, either because they are fighting mounting exploitation, poverty and social inequality, or because they oppose the witch-hunting of refugees, the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus and militarism.

The new deportation law goes hand in hand with the strengthening of the instruments of state repression, including the police, and the rise of militarism. Seehofer’s department alone has tabled the Intelligence Agencies Special Powers Act and an IT Security Act this month alone, which lay the basis for a state of all-embracing surveillance.

None of the other parties oppose this. As coalition partner of the CDU and CSU, the SPD bears direct responsibility for the new law. Justice Minister Barley, who loudly proclaimed her objections to the suspension of the separation of refugee detainees and prisoners just a few weeks ago, supported the law. SPD leader Andrea Nahles has not uttered a word of criticism of the law.

The Greens and Left Party agree with the measure in principle and have at most raised verbal objections. In the two German states with a Green or Left Party minister president, Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia, the authorities are deporting refugees just as eagerly as anywhere else. The Greens’ only concern, raised by Hamburg’s Justice Senator Till Steffen, is that the prisons are already overcrowded and are therefore unable to accommodate refugees.

UK life expectancy continues to fall

Dennis Moore 

Figures produced by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFA) show that life expectancy has fallen by around six months in England and Wales.

IFA conclude that life expectancy for men aged 65 has fallen from 87.4 years to 86.9 years, and for women from 89.7 years to 89.2 years.

The fall in longevity appears to be a trend, with last year’s analysis showing a decrease in life expectancy by two months. Compared to 2015 data projections, life expectancy is down by 13 months for men and 14 months for women.

The IFA data is produced annually on behalf of the insurance industry and is used to price insurance products that are linked to life expectancy. These include life cover, annuities, and pensions, including defined benefit schemes, used to value pension promises made to members.

Tim Gordon, chair of the Mortality Projections Committee for the Continuous Mortality Investigation, who carried out the IFA study, said, “It’s now widely accepted that mortality improvements in the general population since 2011 have been much lower than in the earlier part of this century. Average mortality improvements between 2000 and 2011 were typically over 2% per year but have since fallen to around 0.5% per year.”

Actuaries said evidence that life expectancy was slowing down started to emerge in 2010-11. Though the IFA would not commit as to why longevity is falling, some analysts suggest that there is a link between decreased life expectancy and austerity—with the then soon-to-be Tory prime minister David Cameron inaugurating the “age of austerity” in 2009—as the result of factors such as cuts to the National Health Service (NHS), increasing rates of diabetes, dementia and obesity.

The growth of life expectancy is now considered by some experts to have ground to a halt, and there is increasing evidence that prolonged austerity is a major factor.

Sir Michael Marmot, director of University College London (UCL) Institute of Health Equality, said it is “entirely possible” austerity has had an impact, while dismissing the idea that humans are reaching the limits of their natural lifespan. In 2017, Marmot’s UCL research, utilising data taken from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), showed that the rate of increase in life expectancy had dropped by 50 percent since 2010.

Last year, four senior academics, after analysing official mortality data, accused the Department of Health of ignoring concerns about a potential link between death rates and underfunding of the NHS and social care.

The Independent Review of the State Pension Age, “Smoothing the Transition,” published by the Government Actuary’s Department in 2017, examined life expectancy and the “sustainability” of the pensions system. Written by John Cridland, a former director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, no less, it predicts increases in the age when an individual is entitled to the state pension.

From this year, the state pension age will increase for both men and women, to reach 66 by October 2020. Further increases are planned, raising the state pension age from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028. This is justified by the government based on its claims that life expectancy is increasing.

Fall in life expectancy benefit pensions companies and the state, who must pay out pensions. If people die earlier, they will not receive pension payments, with those working now under the age of 45 having to wait until they are 68 before they can draw their pension. A Department for Work and Pensions document suggests that those who are now under 30 may not be able to access their pensions until they reach 70.

Aon, the professional services risk management company, estimates that the downgrading of life expectancy could potentially remove 2.5 percent of the liabilities from a defined benefits (DB) pension scheme. A DB pension is one in which a secure income is paid out for life, and which increases each year. These pensions, often linked to large organisations such as those in the public sector, are under attack and are being replaced by inferior Defined Contribution schemes.

The Cridland report complains, “If the proportion of older people—past State Pension age or more generally over 65 goes up, then other things being equal so does the burden on working age people of supporting older people not in work.”

In order to justify cutting pension rights, a general theme in ruling circles and the pro-capitalist media is the demonization of sections of the elderly who have benefited from pensions such as final salary schemes. They are traduced as part of the baby boomer generation who have “never had it so good” and that such pension rights for all are “unsustainable.”

What is sustainable for the ruling elite and their political representatives is predicated entirely by the imperatives of the profit system, that puts the continued enrichment of a super-rich few before the needs of both old and young.

Further analysis of ONS stats confirm that the worst affected by falling life expectancy are those living in the most deprived areas across all age ranges.

A study published this week by two academics, Torsten Kleinow, associate professor in actuarial mathematics and statistics at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, Andrew Cairns, a professor at the university and director of the Actuarial Research Centre, and a Herriot Watt PhD student in actuarial mathematics, Jie Wen, looked at ONS data from November 2018 that “consists of death counts and mid-year population estimates for 10 socio-economic groups, distributed by level of deprivation.”

The authors found, “It is widely acknowledged that life expectancy in the UK and other countries is linked to socio-economic variables, with the rule of thumb being that those who are best off in life live the longest. The data for England published recently by the Office for National Statistics reinforces that rule, but also allows us to quantify this statement and investigate how large the differences in mortality rates are—and how differences are changing.”

They note “that survival probabilities to age 90 have increased for women in all socio-economic groups, but they have improved the most for the least deprived. In fact, the chances of surviving to age 90 in the most deprived areas have remained flat since 2009. The gap is widening. It is also remarkable that there is almost perfect ordering by socio-economic group.”

It summarises, “[T]here are substantial differences between mortality rates in different socio-economic groups. This is reflected in life expectancies, chances of surviving to old age, and infant mortality. There is no evidence that the mortality gap is closing, although it might have stopped widening further.”

After 10 years of austerity in the UK, the human cost is devastating. A 2017 joint report by Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the University of London concluded that savage cuts to the NHS and Social Care provision could result in nearly 200,000 “excess” deaths by the end of 2020 in England.

The savagery has reversed a trend that saw life expectancy improving in the six years prior to 2010. The ONS shows that of the 20 countries examined, it was only the United States that has potentially worse life expectancy outcomes than the UK. After all the progress made in the 20th century in improving health care, the eradication of disease, and achieving overall better living conditions, it is an indictment of capitalism that life expectancy in the UK—one of the richest countries in the world—is now falling.

Egypt stages referendum to institutionalize General Sisi’s dictatorship

Bill Van Auken

Egypt’s military-dominated dictatorship is rushing ahead with a referendum this weekend on constitutional amendments that would effectively make Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi dictator for life, while institutionalizing the bloody repression his regime has carried out against all forms of political opposition and particularly the Egyptian working class.

The plan for the three-day referendum beginning Saturday was announced on Wednesday, just one day after the country’s parliament, stacked with Sisi supporters, approved the proposed amendments to the Egyptian constitution by an overwhelming margin of 554 to 22, with one abstention. The vote was staged as a patriotic event, with legislators waving small Egyptian flags and national hymns being played in the background.

The referendum is being staged under conditions in which there has been no time for the Egyptian population to even consider the sweeping amendments to the constitution, which not only extend the presidential term to six years, but also establish a “transitional” period, allowing Sisi to override a two-term limit and run for a third term, remaining in office until at least 2030. They also provide him with complete control over the judiciary, while expanding the already overwhelming role of the military in the country’s political affairs.

One of the amendments establishes the military’s responsibility for “safeguarding the Constitution and democracy, preserving the basic foundations of the State and its civil nature, the gains of the people and the rights and freedoms of individuals.”

The constitutional “reform” institutionalizes the already widespread practice of trying civilians in military courts. Some 15,000 people, including 150 children, have faced such drumhead trials since the 2013 coup that overthrew the country’s elected president, Mohammed Morsi, and brought Sisi to power, according to the estimates of human rights organizations.

Sisi consolidated his rule with the massacre of over 1,000 people by Egyptian security forces at Cairo’s Rabaa Square in 2013. Since then, over 60,000 people have been thrown into the regime’s jails for political reasons, facing rampant torture. Since the beginning of 2019, the regime has executed 15 political prisoners who were sentenced to death on the sole basis of confessions extracted under torture.

In truly Orwellian style, the regime plastered the streets of Cairo with propaganda posters and hung giant banners in Tahrir Square, the iconic setting of the mass demonstrations in 2011 that led to the downfall of the 30-year, US-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, all calling for Egyptians to “do the right thing” and vote “yes” in a referendum whose contents had not even been made known.

Amnesty International issued a statement denouncing the constitutional amendments as designed to “strengthen impunity for human rights violations by members of the security forces,” while Human Rights Watch stated that they were written to “institutionalize authoritarianism.”

Speaking at a press conference called by human rights groups in Paris, Amr Waked, among Egypt’s best known actors, who is banned in his own country, said, “These amendments would take us back to a dictatorship fit for the Middle Ages.”

The actor denounced the major Western powers which support the Sisi government, particularly with massive arms deals.

“Why are you giving the dictatorship legitimacy? Why are you selling arms to it?” he demanded. “Have you turned into arms dealers?” He warned that those who are backing Sisi today will one day pay a price “higher than their investments in keeping him in power”.

Washington stands first and foremost among those supporting the blood-stained dictatorship, with the US Congress approving the Trump administration’s request for $3 billion in aid to the Sisi regime, with another $1.4 billion in the pipeline for 2020.

Trump welcomed Sisi to the White House last week, praising him for doing “a fantastic job in a very difficult situation” and declaring “We agree on so many things,” no doubt among them, the support for draconian methods of repression against domestic opposition, with the US president clearly wishing he could use the same measures in the US as Sisi does in Egypt.

Earlier this year, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, facing rising social protest at home, flew to Cairo to sign approximately 30 deals with the Sisi regime, with whom Paris has declared a “strategic partnership.”

Germany has likewise established close ties with the Sisi regime, while Sisi hosted heads of state who flew in from across Europe to embrace the Egyptian tyrant at a first-ever summit of the European Union (EU) and the League of Arab States (LAS) held in Sharm el-Sheikh in February.

The support of the US and European powers for Sisi is not merely a matter of mercenary considerations of the major arms corporations. They have embraced him precisely because of his leading role in suppressing the revolutionary movement of workers and young people that toppled Mubarak in 2011, which threatened to spread throughout the region and inspired millions across the globe.

The Egyptian regime has blocked more than 34,000 websites in an attempt to shut down an internet opposition campaign being waged under the title Batel, or “Void”, seeking to express rejection of the amendments and the government’s rigged referendum. Nearly 300,000 people have registered their support for the campaign, despite the government crackdown, which has disrupted a large number of websites belonging to businesses, religious organizations and others unconnected to the opposition effort.

The referendum will have no more legitimacy than the two elections Sisi has staged for the presidency. He won the last one by 97 percent after disqualifying and locking up any credible opponents.

There is, however, no one in the West suggesting that his rule is “illegitimate”, in contrast to the bellicose demands for the overthrow of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro over elections staged in 2018 that were a paragon of democracy by comparison to the sham votes in Egypt.

In addition to violently suppressing the resistance of the Egyptian working class, Sisi plays an increasingly central role in counterrevolutionary conspiracies throughout the region. On Monday, he staged a meeting with the former Libyan general and longtime CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, even as his “Libyan National Army” escalated its siege of Tripoli, where over 200 have been killed, 600 wounded, and more than 13,000 civilians have been displaced by the fighting.

Sisi issued a statement praising Haftar’s “efforts to combat terrorism and extremist groups and militias in order to achieve security and stability …” According to news reports, the Egyptian regime also offered Haftar sophisticated military equipment, including night-vision goggles and anti-aircraft jamming devices to aid in his attack on the Libyan capital.

Meanwhile, high-level Egyptian delegations have gone to Khartoum to assist the Sudanese military in strangling the mass popular rebellion that has forced out the country’s ruler, Omar al-Bashir last Thursday.

The millions of workers and young people who have been on the streets of Algeria since February, forcing the resignation of president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, are calling attention to the bloody Egyptian events as the Algerian army headed by Gen. Ahmed Gaed Salah claims that it will oversee a “transition” and unleashes escalating repression against the protests.

The approval of Sisi’s dictatorship by Wall Street and Western finance capital found expression Wednesday with the rating agency Moody’s raising Egypt’s rating to B2 with a “stable” outlook, with assurances that “profitability will remain strong” in the subjugated country.

Under conditions in which 40 percent of the population lives in desperate poverty, subsisting on less than $2 a day and with even these meager incomes being eroded by an inflation rate that has risen to 15 percent, such stability, along with Sisi’s dreams of becoming president for life, may soon prove short-lived. The powerful movement of the working class in areas like the textile mill towns of the Nile Delta and Egypt’s ports that brought down Mubarak will inevitably erupt once again. The critical question is assimilating the lessons of the betrayal of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and building a new revolutionary leadership in the working class as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Chinese authorities arrest editors involved with workers’ protests

Navin Dewage & Peter Symonds

Chinese authorities intensified their crackdown on labour activists and leftist students last month, arresting journalists sympathetic to the plight of workers and critical of the government. This followed the detention of students and workers, 44 of whom are still in custody, for their involvement in a struggle by Jasic Technology workers last year to form an independent trade union.

On March 20, Wei Zhili and Ke Chengbing were taken into custody. They are editors of New Generation, which reported on the conditions of the millions of internal migrant workers in China. Wei’s laptop and mobile phone were confiscated. Yang Zhengjun, the publication’s editor-in-chief, had been detained already on January 8.

Amnesty International reported that a police officer had told Wei’s father, who was present when the arrest was made, that his son would be sent to a detention centre for re-education. The officer accused Wei of “not having a proper job although graduating from a good school, and being ‘brainwashed’ to engage in anti-communist and counter-revolutionary activities that disturb the social order.”

Wei’s wife, Zheng Churan, an activist for women’s rights, told the Financial Times: “My husband just wants to help workers, he hasn’t done anything wrong but still he has been detained and lost his freedom, it’s devastating.” She said she was worried the police would use “abusive methods to force him to admit that he did something wrong.”

A Guangdong-based activist told Newsgram.com that the New Generation editors were likely detained for assisting migrant workers suffering pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease, who were seeking compensation. “Seven hundred pneumoconiosis sufferers from Hunan launched a complaint last November in Shenzhen,” the activist said.

“Their treatment hadn’t worked, and they had spent a lot of money on it. If each person was awarded 100,000 yuan ($US14,840) that would be 30 million yuan in total, so that’s why the Shenzhen authorities detained [the editors] in a hurry.”

Steven Butler, Asia program coordinator for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement: “The arrest of Wei Zhili is just the latest example of how frightened China’s leadership is of journalists who expose the truth about labor conditions in China. Wei and his colleagues should be released and hailed as heroes who expose the truth about labor conditions in China.”

Authorities confirmed on March 26 that Wei was being held in detention at Guangzhou, the provincial capital. He has no access to legal support.

The China Labour Bulletin (CLB) reported that on March 27 the police barred a group of nearly 100 workers at the Sangzhi railway station who tried to travel to Shenzhen to stage a protest to express their solidarity with Wei.

Gu Fuxiang, 52, a father of two, who was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis in 2009, told CLB: “In 2017, I was stage 2 patient. Earlier this year I was found to have reached stage 3… I only have one lifetime, and even if I fear reprisals, I just simply cannot stop fighting for a fair deal.”

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) organised a small protest outside Beijing’s liaison office on March 26 and marched through the city to demand the release of all Jasic workers and detained labour activists. On the same day, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) picketed the Chinese embassy in Seoul to oppose the detentions.

On March 28, the Philippine trade union organization SENTRO demonstrated outside the Chinese embassy in Manila. SENTRO general secretary Josua Mata condemned “the steadily widening repression of Chinese workers” and demanded their immediate release.

In a separate arrest on March 21, Chai Xiaoming, a former editor of Red Reference and a former Peking University lecturer, was detained for “subversion of the state” and held under “residential surveillance at a designated location.”

According to Radio Free Asia, the reason for the arrest appears to be the publication of a recent lecture by Jin Canrong, a former lecturer in international relations at Renmin University, suggesting that China could take “a different path to modernisation”—a veiled criticism of the Chinese government.

Red Reference was forced to shut down last year, after police raided its office and the office of another labour news outlet, Epoch Pioneer. The raid was carried out simultaneously with the crack down on Jasic Solidarity Group supporters on August 24. These web sites had given media coverage of the Jasic struggle. Their documents and computers were confiscated. Seven editors of Epoch Pioneer and Shang Kai of Red Reference were arrested and detained in an unknown location. Later Shang was granted bail under condition that he not appear in public.

According to the CPJ, at least 47 journalists were in detention in China at the end of 2018. The Paris-based Reporters without Borders (RSF) stated that the figure was at least 60. The actual number could be far higher.

Amid a slowing economy and growing signs of working-class unrest, the Chinese regime is using its police-state apparatus to clamp down on any opposition. It fears that the isolated strikes and protests over wages, conditions and jobs could transform into a broader political movement against the government. As a result, its crackdown is directed particularly at left-leaning students and journalists.

At the same time, under conditions of heavy state censorship, the sources of information about the arrests are limited. The above reports are from publications and organisations that in one way or another follow the line from Washington and must be treated with caution. In the case of Radio Free Asia, it is a propaganda arm of the US State Department.

Washington has no interest in defending the rights of journalists in China, other than to provide further fuel for anti-China propaganda as it intensifies its confrontation with Beijing and prepares for war. The Trump administration is currently seeking the extradition of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, to face imprisonment and potentially the death penalty for exposing the crimes of American imperialism.

Chinese workers, students and journalists should certainly be released. However, organisations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, which describes the Chinese editors as “heroes” and calls for them to be immediately freed, do not apply the same standard to Assange. On Assange’s arrest, CPJ issued a mealy-mouthed statement declaring it was “deeply concerned,” but did not call for his immediate release and certainly did not hail him as a hero.