The Relevance of Aslam Farooqui’s Arrest

Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy

On 4 April, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) announced that Aslam Farooqui, the chief of the Islamic State ‘Khorasan Province’ (ISKP) had been arrested in Kandahar, Afghanistan, along with 19 others, including two key commanders. Given Farooqui’s background, i.e. his connection to the ISKP, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), etc, the context and timing of his arrest (and its announcement) are significant.

The Arrest

Although further details are awaited and several theories have begun to float, basic facts vis-à-vis the arrest are: ISKP Chief Farooqui, a Pakistani national, was arrested in Kandahar, and his arrest was announced on 4 April. The precise date of arrest is unclear. The NDS stated that he had been arrested in a ‘targeted’ and ‘complex’ operation, and that he had, during initial interrogations, “confessed of strong relationship between Islamic State-Khurasan and regional intelligence agencies.” This is essentially a hint at Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI), whose links with various regional terror groups is well documented.

Timing and Relevance

Developments relevant to the announcement suggest that Farooqui was probably arrested sometime before 4 April.

The ISKP had cited ‘revenge for the Muslims of Kashmir’ as their rationale while claiming responsibility for the 25 March Kabul Gurdwara attack in which several Afghans and one Indian national were killed. Perpetrators of the attack equated Afghan nationals as their Indian target in Afghanistan. A suicide bomber involved in this attack was an Indian national who, along with some others, had been involved with the Islamic State’s Kasargod module and relocated to Afghanistan to join the ISKP some years ago.

On 2 April, Afghanistan’s President, Dr Ashraf Ghani, and Pakistan’s Army Chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, held a phone conversation. The same day, Pakistan’s Sindh High Court commuted Omar Sheikh’s death sentence and acquitted three others who were serving time for the 2002 kidnap and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. Although they were re-arrested and detained pending appeal on 3 April (conceivably due to US backlash), the judgement itself holds relevance for both India and Afghanistan. He was one of the three terrorists New Delhi had released in exchange for safe passage of around 149 Indian hostages during the 1999 Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814. The other two were Jaish-e-Muhammad’s (JeM) Masood Azhar and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front’s (JKLF) Mushtaq Zargar. The hostages were kept captive in Kandahar in the then Taliban-run Afghanistan, with the Taliban assisting the hijackers till the exchange concluded. In 2002, in the aftermath of the Daniel Pearl killing, Sheikh had ‘surrendered’ to former ISI officer, Ijaz Shah, who is Pakistan’s incumbent interior minister.

On 2 April, the Taliban’s Doha-based spokesperson, Suhail Shaheen, gave an interview to an Indian media outlet. Some of his remarks, such as “[t]here is no externally sponsored terrorism…” (an assertion which was probably intended to project compliance with the US-Taliban agreement), and those on minority rights, such as “We are committed to minorities’ rights and have strongly condemned the recent attack by Daesh (IS) on a Sikh minority temple. We also urge India to protect the rights of its Muslim minority. They are Indian citizens and your people”—seem to have additional undertones.

While the Taliban has denied involvement in the Kabul Gurudwara attack, a Haqqani Network (HN) role in the attack cannot be ruled out. The relevance of a HN role lies in the nature of the Taliban-HN relationship, the HN’s complex equation with the ISKP, and the history of HN attacks targeting Indian personnel and projects, etc, in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, around two hours after Farooqui’s arrest was announced, Ehsanullah Ehsan, a former TTP spokesperson associated with several jihadi groups (and whose 2017 ‘voluntary surrender’ and 2020 ‘escape’ from Pakistani custody is another curious case) claimed that Farooqui had been deposed some time ago, and that a man from Afghanistan’s Kunar province was now the ISKP chief. However, this does not explain how such a major claim emerged only after Farooqui’s arrest was announced.

Looking Ahead

On 1 April, India’s National Investigative Agency (NIA) filed a case to investigate the 25 March attack on a Kabul Gurudwara—making it the first case pertaining to a terror attack on foreign soil the NIA would investigate since the National Investigation Agency (Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed last July. An unnamed Indian official was quoted as saying “[w]e will first seek all the documents from Afghanistan authorities through official channels to see what kind of evidence they have collected so far. A team will later visit Kabul.”

Would Afghanistan grant India access to interrogate Farooqui? Was the judgement on Sheikh’s case in Pakistan precipitated by the prospect of Kabul granting New Delhi access to Farooqui? What explains Farooqui’s arrest in Kandahar, traditionally a Taliban stronghold?

Farooqui’s arrest and answers to the above questions would undoubtedly shed more light on the ISKP’s current structures, linkages, and strategies. As such, the arrest itself could have some bearing on the Kabul-Taliban talks. Additionally, deeper examination is needed on the potential ways in which this arrest might influence the ISKP’s organisational dynamics and operational agendas in Afghanistan and India.

Nepal: Masses confront enormous hardships from coronavirus pandemic

Rohantha De Silva

Nepal’s ongoing COVID-19 lockdown is creating serious problems for the country’s population. After much hesitation and concern about its impact on the tourist industry, the Stalinist Communist Party (NCP) government on March 25 imposed a national lockdown.

Prime Minister Sharma Oli’s government, however, has made no serious effort to ensure that the country’s overwhelmingly poor population will be provided with daily essentials, medicine and health safety equipment.

Last Saturday, nep123.com reported that many impoverished people and daily wage earners, including those in the quarrying and construction industries, are trapped in their homes and starving in Tanahun, one of 77 districts in the country.

Thousands of daily wage workers, street vendors and poor people from different parts of Nepal are also stranded in Kathmandu, the country’s capital, because transport services have been halted.

Concerned about rising social discontent, senior establishment figures, including former chief justices Kalyan Shrestha and Sushila Karki, on March 26 publicly called on the government to provide special relief for its most needy citizens.

Three days later, on March 29, the Oli government announced various relief measures, including a 25 percent discount on electricity for consumers who use up to 150 units every month and a 10 percent discount on rice, flour, dhal, salt and sugar for daily wage workers who are not being paid. Daily wage workers who are not receiving any income, however, are unable to pay even these discounted prices.

The Kathmandu Metropolitan City has announced 100 million rupees ($US830,000) for prevention and control for COVID-19 but for the 6.5 million people living in the national capital and its metro area this is a pittance. It will do nothing to overcome the country’s seriously understaffed and under-equipped health infrastructure.

The Nepali masses have been told to wear face masks, regularly wash their hands with soap, use sanitisers, avoid crowds and observe social-distancing. The poorest sections of society, however, cannot afford such products, let alone live in areas where social-distancing is possible.

As veteran physician Mani Dixit explained to the Kathmandu Post on March 22: “Sanitisers are becoming a privilege that even those from the middle class are finding hard to access. These protective resources are becoming more expensive and scarce by the day.”

According to the International Labour Organisation, about 62.2 percent of Nepal’s workforce is employed in the informal sector, including street vendors, garbage collectors, cleaners, rickshaw pullers and domestic helpers. These workers are not able to get access to basic virus protection materials, let alone increasingly expensive daily essentials.

According to media reports, the price of vegetables tripled in the first week of the lockdown and they are now becoming scarce. Although the government has allowed vehicles to transport vegetables during the lockdown, the drivers and their work assistants are not provided with face masks or sanitisers. Confronted with these unsafe conditions, farmers and traders are reluctant to exchange their products.

On March 27, Federation of Fruits and Vegetable Entrepreneurs president Khom Prasad Ghimire said: “Demand for fruit, vegetables and milk has declined because they are perishable items and people cannot store such food items for more than two or three days.”

Transportation of milk from villages to the cities is being restricted and in remote areas milk collection has been halted. Poultry farmers have also been hit by the lack of animal feed and their businesses are now at risk. Among the worst affected are daily wage agricultural workers, particularly in Tarai, Nepal’s main agricultural region.

While only five COVID-19 cases have been officially confirmed in Nepal so far, the real figure is no doubt higher because mass testing is not being carried out.

“The impacts are already visible,” Jeevan Baniya, assistant director of the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility at Social Science Baha told the Kathmandu Post on March 21.

“Some employers have already started laying off employees whereas others have asked them to stay on unpaid leave for some time. The effects are likely to worsen in the coming days, as often happens during times of shocks and disasters,” he said.

More than one million foreign visitors travel to Nepal each year, including mountaineers, trekkers and others drawn to its spectacular mountain scenery, including Mount Everest and seven of the other 10 highest mountains in the world. The land-locked country’s cool weather and ancient Hindu and Buddhist historic sites and cultural heritage are strong attractions.

Tourism is Nepal’s largest source of foreign exchange, generating up to $US500 million annually. The industry provides jobs for an estimated 1.5 million workers in the hotel, airline, transportation, accommodation, restaurant and leisure industry sectors. In 2017, the travel and tourism sector comprised 7.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The national lockdown and fear of the virus has thrown the tourism industry into free fall. Around 20,000 workers in tour, trekking and mounting guide employment are predicted to lose their jobs. The estimated one million residents living in the country’s mountain belt, who depend on the spending of foreign trekkers and mountaineers, are being severely impacted.

The hardest-hit is the Mount Everest tourist sector, which relies completely on the spring mountaineering season to provide jobs for climbing guides, porters and hotel and lodge workers, has collapsed.

All this is drastically worsening Nepal’s already high levels of poverty. Nepal is amongst the world’s poorest countries, ranking 148 out of 189, with around 25 percent of the population below the official poverty line and living on less than 35 rupees per day.

Around five million people are undernourished with the country recording some of the highest child mortality and disease rates on the planet. Forty-eight percent of pregnant women in Nepal are anaemic.

Canadian government’s bailout increases banks’ control over economy and state

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal government is funneling hundreds of billions of dollars in financial support to the country’s big banks and major corporations so as to guarantee the wealth and investments of the country’s billionaires and multi-millionaires amid the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, the millions of workers who have or will soon lose their jobs are receiving utterly inadequate assistance through makeshift temporary programs.

Heath care—the global pandemic notwithstanding—is also being given short shift. On Wednesday, federal Health Minister Patty Hadju admitted that years of austerity have left the country’s hospitals, which are overstretched at the best of times, without crucial equipment to fight the pandemic. Yet the Liberal government is injecting no more than a pittance in emergency funding into Canada’s beleaguered health-care system,

The corporate-controlled media, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government, the New Democrats, and the trade unions have created a public perception that with parliament’s adoption of Bill C-13 on March 24 generous support, totaling $107 billion, has been secured for working people adversely impacted by the pandemic. This is all lies. The lion’s share of this oft-repeated sum is eaten up by tax deferrals that will overwhelmingly benefit big business and the rich.

By contrast, the government is giving laid-off workers a taxable $2,000 Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and this for a maximum of four months. Workers eligible for Employment Insurance, who would have been entitled to a maximum of $2,292 per month, can no longer obtain the additional $292 per month because the government has transferred all EI claims made after March 15 to the CERB system.

To date, federal funding for Canada’s resource-starved healthcare sector has been restricted to a mere $3 billion. Only on March 10 did the federal Liberal government even write the provinces, which are responsible for running the healthcare system, to determine their supply needs, even though the threat of a pandemic had been clear since January.

In contrast, the sums being made available to the corporate elite are literally unlimited. They include:

• A $150 billion program to buy up bank mortgages.

• A Bank of Canada asset-purchasing program under which it will buy at least $5 billion of financial assets each week, with no upper limit. Conservative estimates say the initiative, commonly referred to as “quantitative easing,” will add $200 billion to the central bank’s balance sheet by the end of the year.

• A decision by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to cut the capital buffer requirements for the big banks from 2.25 percent to 1 percent, thereby providing Canada’s principal financial institutions with a $300 billion liquidity injection.

• A myriad of new buy-back initiatives, such as the Banker’s Acceptance Purchase Facility, under which various arms of the Canadian state will purchase arcane financial instruments used by financial institutions and businesses to provide credit and spread risk, but whose value has crashed along with the financial markets.

Taken together, these measures amount to more than $650 billion in public funds being poured into the coffers of the corporate and financial elite.

The mechanisms being put in place to facilitate this vast transfer of wealth are designed to ensure not only that that banks can make good their losses, but that they can further enrich themselves by acting as the conduits and middlemen for much of the emergency loans and aid the government is extending to business, big and small alike, and to homeowners.

Take the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s $150 billion Insured Mortgage Purchasing Program. In so far as the politicians and media talk about it, they present this scheme as a means of injecting funds into the banks that they will in turn use to “aid” troubled clients, including working people, who can’t pay their mortgages.

But, as has already been exposed in a number of media reports, the banks are adding any mortgage-payment deferrals to the total money owed, meaning homeowners end up owing them still more money. Moreover, the banks have balked at “passing through” the Bank of Canada’s recent cuts to its prime lending rate by reducing the cost of new mortgages.

The banks will also rake in millions in interest payments and other fees from any loans or other investments extended by the government to corporations. These include $12.5 billion of government guarantees for banks to provide loans to exporters, and a program for $40,000 loans to small and medium-sized businesses. Planned but not yet publicly announced multi-billion-dollar bailouts for specific industries, like oil and air travel, will also likely be funnelled through the banks.

The scale of potential government support for the private sector knows no bounds. A Globe and Mail article reported that Part 8 of Bill C-13 permits Finance Minister Bill Morneau to create a corporation or entity to purchase assets from financial institutions or private companies, including material assets. Morneau “would be permitted to hold all of the shares of this holding company on behalf of the [government]. The minister would have the power to set rules for running the corporation, give direction to it, and merge, sell, wind up or dissolve it, including selling any or all shares of the corporation,” the newspaper noted.

Morneau, the former proprietor and chief executive at one of Canada’s largest private pension funds, also has the power until September 30 to loan any amount of money to any company, provide it with a line of credit or loan insurance, or guarantee its debt. After that date, these steps can still be taken following consultation with cabinet.

Significantly, the Globe cited as an example of the measures being considered the $13.7 billion 2009 bailout of the Canadian operations of Chrysler and General Motors. This bailout, implemented amid the global financial crisis, secured the profitability of the automakers through massive wage cuts, the entrenchment of a multi-tier pay structure, the gutting of workplace benefits, and the destruction of thousands of auto jobs. Paul Booth, a senior civil servant involved in the auto bailout, remarked to the Globe that government support to companies should be provided on condition that they can “rebuild after the crisis.” In other words, companies receiving government support should be restructured at workers’ expense to guarantee the continued flow of multi-billion-dollar payouts to executives and shareholders.

While workers’ living standards will be further undermined, the government’s various bailout schemes make no demands, even of the most limited character, on the banks, such as reducing executive pay and bonuses or rolling back their usurious credit-card interest rates. On the contrary, a Globe article yesterday reported that Canada’s big banks are boasting that unlike their international competitors, they will continue to pay out dividends to shareholders at pre-crisis rates.

The unprecedented scope of the wealth being transferred from public into private hands by means of the socialization of private corporate debt is producing a qualitative change in the relationship between the state and the financial elite. The government is not merely transferring resources into the hands of the super-rich, but hiring financial firms to assist the work being carried out by nominally public agencies and institutions.

This is underscored by the news that the Bank of Canada has hired BlackRock, the world’s largest manager of private equity wealth, to help run its asset purchasing programs. While the Bank will continue to manage its purchases of government and municipal debt, BlackRock will advise it on the buying up of corporate debt under the its new Commercial Paper Purchase Program.

As the right-wing National Post approvingly noted, in opting to work with BlackRock, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz “put urgency ahead of dithering over potential traps such as conflict of interest, a rushed tendering process and bad optics.” The business-friendly daily was even compelled to note that Black Rock has “become a symbol of the revolving door between government and finance,” and pointed to the example of Jean Boivin, a former deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, who currently is the head of research at BlackRock and widely seen as a potential successor to Poloz.

Leading Canadian banks will also be directly involved in managing the Bank of Canada’s newly acquired assets. TD Asset Management will oversee its portfolio, while CIBC Mellon will act as the custodian—services for which they will no doubt be handsomely compensated.

The direct and open integration of the financial elite into the institutions of the capitalist state on an unprecedented scale is incompatible with the retention of democratic forms of rule. Under conditions in which working people face the double-threat of an unprecedented economic collapse and the growing likelihood the country’s chronically underfunded healthcare system will buckle under a surge of COVID-19 patients, the capitalist ruling elite is orchestrating the greatest public heist in the country’s history.

In this regard, the news that over 24,000 military personnel are being readied to deploy across the country assumes a new and disturbing significance. While presented in the media as a necessary step to support overwhelmed civilian authorities with medical care and logistics, like transport, the reality is that the ruling elite is readying police state and military repression to defend its vast wealth from the eruption of social anger it knows will inevitably come. While hundreds of billions of dollars are being showered on the financial elite with virtually no strings attached, millions of Canadians are on the verge of economic ruin. As a survey carried out by accountancy firm MMP prior to the announcement of sweeping lockdowns by governments across Canada noted, 47 percent of the population is just $200 away from insolvency.

Turkish workers strike as bosses keep them at work despite COVID-19

Ulas Atesci

With over 1 million coronavirus cases detected worldwide, Turkey is emerging as an epicenter of the pandemic in the Middle East after Iran, which has reached more than 50,000 cases and at least 3,300 dead as its health care system is devastated by punishing US and European sanctions.

As of Friday night, Turkey had passed 20,000 cases and 400 deaths. Amid the rapid spread of the disease, opposition is rapidly growing in the working class to the government’s policy of keeping them at work despite a growing number of COVID-19 cases in the factories. There is deep anger at the Turkish ruling elite’s willingness to sacrifice thousands of workers to boost profits during the pandemic.

After wildcat strikes erupted across America and Italy to demand the idling of plants during the pandemic, workers in Turkey in non-critical industries like metal or construction, are increasingly looking to wage a militant struggle against the pandemic.

Among others, in a metal factory, more than 600 workers walked out on Wednesday in Gebze, an industrial town close to Istanbul, after they had been forced to work despite some positive coronavirus cases among workers. Fearing a potential spread of wildcat strikes after this walkout, the governorship of Kocaeli declared that it had banned work stoppages and other protests for 15 days. It comes after wildcat strikes by Istanbul construction workers at some sites and a work stoppage in a filter factory in the southern border city of Hatay.

Workers’ determination to work in safe conditions and to fight to stop the spread of the disease is bringing them into direct collision with the Turkish government.

Yesterday, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the government would impose a curfew for citizens under age 20. Last month, it imposed a curfew for people over age 65. Vehicles are barred from entering and exiting 31 provinces, including Turkey’s larger cities, but workers still have to work in non-critical sectors.

On Wednesday, during a press conference, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca declared, “We did not know that the virus spread so quickly.” In fact, the Turkish government confirmed its first case on March 11 and had an opportunity to monitor the response of other countries such as China, Italy and the United States. However, instead of taking extensive measures, it wasted critical time, focusing on the needs of big business.

The health minister only unveiled the case figures by provinces on Wednesday, after the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) had begun to publish its own data. According to the official figures, Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and economic capital with more than 16 million, has 60 percent of all cases. However, hospitals in Istanbul had only 7,280 intensive care beds, according to the official 2018 report of the Health Ministry.

While Turkey has 25,466 adult beds—almost half in private hospitals—it has just 187 doctors per 100,000 people in its intensive care units. Ebru Kıraner, the head of the Intensive Care Nurses Association, warned that there are about 15,000 intensive care nurses. Koca admitted that there is already a 63 percent occupancy rate in intensive care units. For weeks, TTB and health care workers have also complained about the lack of necessary medical equipment.

He also stated that 601 health care workers already contracted coronavirus in Turkey, after Prof. Dr. Cemil Taşçıoğlu, a well-loved doctor among his patients and students, who had decades of experience, died on Wednesday of coronavirus.

While the government refuses to take necessary measures such as stopping production and providing all workers with full income during the pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus across the country, other measures only serve to spread the disease. Masses of people gathered in front of post offices across the country to take 1,000 Turkish liras of financial aid given by the government to 2 million poor families. This insufficient amount is part of a package for business totaling 100 billion Turkish liras.

While making clear that maintaining production and exports has top priority, the Erdoğan government aims to suppress growing opposition among workers to its response to the coronavirus crisis.

After a truck driver named Malik Baran Yılmaz was detained last week for his social media post attacking the class character of the government response to the coronavirus crisis, officials were forced to release him due to growing protests on social media. His video, in which he said, “But if this virus does not kill me, your system will kill us,” was watched millions of times.

Fearing this growing sentiment among workers, Erdoğan launched a “National Solidarity Campaign” on Monday, calling on big business to make donations to “provide additional support to low-income people.” This campaign’s main purpose is to promote nationalism and the lies that capitalists and workers are waging a common fight against the pandemic.

Indeed, Fahrettin Altun, Erdoğan’s communications director, called on the Turkish people to support each other “without separation based on class, ideology and politics.”

While the Erdoğan government claims that “there is no money” to provide full income to all workers idled during the pandemic, in fact, the main obstacles to a struggle against the disease are the privileges of the corporate and financial elite. In Turkey, there were 27 dollar-billionaires in 2019, owning more than $US50 billion in total. Net profits in the Turkish banking sector in 2019 were about 50 billion liras (approximately $US7.43 billion). Moreover, the Turkish government has spent $US19 billion on its military.

As COVID-19 spreads in the factories, the trade union confederations are collaborating with the state’s efforts to suppress working class opposition so as to protect the profits of big business and their collaboration with it.

After waiting three weeks, the pro-opposition Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DİSK) declared on Monday that in 48 hours it would begin to invoke the constitutional right to not to work in unsafe conditions, if the government failed to take necessary measures. It did not, however, ultimately call on workers to strike.

To channel growing opposition among workers and limit the danger of wildcat strikes, the DİSK and Türk-İş union confederations issued a joint statement on Tuesday, demanding a halt to all production for at least 15 days and banning all layoffs during the pandemic.

Against this reactionary collaboration between the government, big business and trade unions at the expense of workers’ health and lives, the working class must build its own, independent rank-and-file committees in workplaces and neighborhoods. It faces a political fight to protect the lives and health of millions of people.

All non-essential workplaces must be shut down immediately, with full pay for all workers, and necessary measures must be taken to protect refugees, prisoners, and others in the most vulnerable sections of society. Refugees must be able to get testing and free health care equal in quality to that enjoyed by Turkish citizens. Political prisoners and imprisoned journalists should be granted a planned release of prisoners to prevent the pandemic from spreading in the prisons.

This global crisis has clearly exposed that there is no other way to fight for such critical demands without transferring political power to the working class all over the world and expropriating the wealth of the super-rich to protect billions of people.

Russian doctors, nurses protest against horrifying conditions in hospitals

Clara Weiss

Nurses and doctors across Russia have walked out of their jobs and issued desperate appeals to the public, pleading for medical and personal protective equipment, and renovations of dilapidated hospital buildings.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia has now climbed to 4,149, and 34 have died. Cases have been registered in 78 out of 85 regions. A nation-wide lockdown with regional modifications that was imposed in the last week of March has been prolonged until April 30. So far, Moscow and its surrounding area has been the center of the outbreak with 448 confirmed cases in the capital as of Friday evening.

Thirty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and after decades of cuts in the health care system, Russian hospitals are in no position to deal with the rapidly rising number of cases. While Russia has a relatively large number of hospital beds per capita compared to countries like the US, the hospitals barely have modern equipment or even sanitary conditions. Most medical workers are also grossly underpaid, with doctors and nurses often earning just a few hundred dollars a month.

In Kamensk-Shakhtinsk in the Rostov region in southern Russia, 11 doctors and nurses have publicly stepped down from their work in a desperate attempt to draw attention to the catastrophic conditions prevailing in their hospital.

One of the nurses told the newspaper Argumenty i fakty: “We have taken this step because we fear for our health and for the health of the patients of the unit.” She said that the infectious disease unit of her hospital was “not prepared to take in patients that have been infected with COVID-19.” Another medical worker said: “In the division where patients do the COVID-19 test we don’t even have surgical masks. They pay only 70 rubles (90 cents) for the night shift, we insist that the pay be increased.”

The workers also demand setting up a special department or building to process people that have been infected under sanitary conditions and a renovation of the entire building. One described the horrifying conditions in the hospital: “There is linoleum all over the rooms, the ceilings are stripped, the pipes are leaking, the flush in the toilets is not working.”

Another nurse told the newspaper: “We entered the room with isolated patients in anti-plague suits which had been lying for 40 years in our cellar. We used the same suits a few years ago to treat patients amid a cholera outbreak in the village Chistoozernyi.”

The situation in Kamensk-Shachtinsk is not unique. Across the country, hundreds of hospitals are in dire need of renovation, there is a dramatic shortage of personnel and basic medical equipment.

In St. Petersburg, the second largest city in the country, doctors of the Pokrovskaya hospital issued a video appeal on Friday, pleading for personal protective equipment. They said: “We don’t have any protective equipment. What we are wearing now is not equipment that is designed to protect from viral infections. We don’t refuse to work. We love our patients and want them all to recover. But we find it impossible to conceive of working under conditions where we are completely unprotected… We want to return to work healthy, and we want that our families and those close to us remain healthy.”

So far, three hospitals in St. Petersburg that have treated COVID-19 patients have been closed down entirely since the risk of infection has been deemed too high. The entire medical personnel have been sent home and asked to self-isolate.

The conditions facing medical workers are a direct result of the restoration of capitalism. While shortages are very acute in Russia, medical workers internationally are confronting a dramatic shortfall of PPE and medical equipment such as ventilators. They are forced to put their own lives and those of their families at risk when no adequate measures are taken to protect them. In the US, the richest capitalist country, hospital workers are forced to wear bandannas and other do-it-yourself masks to protect themselves, while there are already not enough ventilators to treat all patients who need them. Last Saturday, nurses at the Jacobi Medical Center in New York City protested against the lack of medical staff and PPE. Similar protests are taking place across the US.

The mounting anger and social opposition among medical workers in Russia comes as the surge of coronavirus cases is expected to escalate significantly in April. Amid a global disruption of supply chains which the head of the Russian Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina called “unprecedented,” the economy is widely expected to enter a recession.

Russia relies for almost half of its budget revenues on the export of oil and gas and is hard hit by the massive decline in oil prices. Experts now calculate that Russia will have to reckon with a global oil price of just $20 per barrel for the rest of the year—a historic low.

The Kremlin has ordered a closure of non-essential businesses across the country but gave regions significant freedom of maneuver. Some like Moscow are considering even stricter restrictions, including the introduction of access permits and the closure of some essential businesses.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised that all workers must receive their full income through the quarantine period. However, it is unclear whether all businesses will be willing or in a position to actually grant that.

The Russian government has allocated only the equivalent of about 2 percent of GDP for economic relief measures. By contrast, during the crisis of 2008–2009, the government spent about 10 percent of the GDP, much of which was directed toward bailing out oligarchs that faced bankruptcy.

In a recent poll, 60 percent said that they did not have enough money to make it until the next monthly salary payment. Of the 33.3 percent who said that they could make it, most have savings that will last for only 2 to 6 months. In some regions, less than 10 percent had enough savings to make it for more than a month. About 20 million people in Russia, almost 20 percent of the population, count officially as “extremely” poor and have to live on less than $165 a month.

Through the destruction of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the rise of a criminal oligarchy, Russia has become one of the most unequal countries in the world. Half of the population own less than five percent of the country’s net wealth. Meanwhile, the top ten percent of the country controls 65 percent of the wealth, and the top 1 percent controls more than a third of total wealth. The top 100 billionaires control a staggering 6–10 percent of all wealth. The combined wealth of the ten richest Russians in 2019 was about $178.5 billion.

The personal wealth of these oligarchs would be more than enough to pay for the building of new hospitals and renovation of all existing hospitals, to buy all new equipment that is necessary in the hospitals and to pay for decent wages for all health care workers and other sections of the working class.

Ecuadorians protest bodies of COVID-19 victims being left in the streets

Andrea Lobo

The COVID-19 pandemic’s overwhelming of hospitals and morgues in Ecuador has left dozens of those stricken with the disease to die in their homes, while desperate families and neighbors have flooded social media with videos and reports of corpses rotting in their living rooms, on sidewalks and in parks for days.

In the latest count on Friday morning, the Health Ministry reported 3,368 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 145 deaths, registering 25 new deaths in 24 hours. Seventy-one percent of cases are found in the Guayas province, which includes the country’s largest city of Guayaquil, with 2.7 million people. Guayaquil is also where the first confirmed case arrived in Ecuador on February 14.

The hundreds of bodies that are left lying in homes and on the streets are evidence of the vast underestimation of the real toll that the deadly virus is inflicting upon Ecuador

The government of Lenín Moreno initially sought to cover up the total collapse of the health care system and emergency services, and police were even filmed dumping bodies in working class neighborhoods.

Blanca Moncada Pesantes, a journalist at Expreso, created a Twitter thread on Monday to report on bodies that have not been picked up. Out of dozens of reports, some corpses have been left as many as six days indoors. In some cases, police arrived and told the family members that the body would be picked up in several days.

The outright barbarism displayed by abundant reports on social media and in the press forced President Moreno to acknowledge that the reality was worse than reported. The government then began a police-military joint operation on Monday to pick up the bodies from homes and the streets, implemented curfew exceptions to accelerate burials—with the Health Ministry now claiming that cremations are not necessary—and set up refrigerated containers as temporary morgues, and will open a public cemetery in Guayaquil with 2,000 graves next Monday.

The government had closed all entry points into the country and domestic flights in mid-March and established a nationwide curfew from 2 p.m. to 5 a.m. Schools are shut down through April, while all on-site work has been suspended until April 12. Starting on April 13, a “semaphore” system will be implemented for the level of restrictions in each province, which will facilitate a mandatory return to work when the virus will be even more widespread.

The army, which is effectively governing the Guayas province, promised that all corpses would be buried by April 2. However, only 150 bodies were up picked between Monday and Wednesday, and reports of waiting days for pickups continued to be published on social media throughout Friday. As bodies continue piling up in homes, 3,000 soldiers remain deployed in working class neighborhoods to prevent people from going outside during 15 hours each day.

While certainly not all deaths were directly due to COVID-19, many others could have been avoided with timely care by paramedics and hospital attention. Many condemning pieces of evidence, however, do indicate a massive under-reporting in deaths due to the pandemic:

• The news outlet Expreso found that on March 30 and 31, the Guayas Province Civil Registry filed 722 death certificates for Zone 8, which includes the cities of Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón. This was more than the 609 deaths registered in all of March 2019.

• The ambulance services reported on March 31 that they were being overwhelmed by calls to pick up bodies in Guayaquil, 40 that day compared to an average of 14.

• El Universo reported that police had a waiting list of 450 bodies for pickup in Guayaquil.

• Each new report on the Ministry’s Facebook page is accompanied by a storm of dissenting comments about under-reporting. For instance, a medical student in Guayaquil writes, “Many people are not being tested due to lack of tests and there are many more dead than what appear in the outlets. In one 24-hour shift in the emergency room [of each hospital], more than 100 people die.”

The deliberate cover-up of the number of dead due to the COVID-19 crisis is meant to justify the criminal negligence of the ruling class and of the Moreno government, which has faithfully implemented International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures, brutally slashing funds for health care.

The COVID-19 crisis is laying bare the irrationality of the continuation of capitalism globally and the urgent need for socialism. In Ecuador and other semi-colonial and backward economies, this means the subordination of economic life to the wealth and profit interests of a tiny elite and its access to foreign markets and credit.

As the uproar over the Guayaquil corpses spread worldwide, the World Bank “granted” the country a $20 million loan to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. This is a plain insult. The data published by the World Bank itself shows that the amount the country spends on servicing its debt has tripled in the last decade to $6.32 billion this year. At the same time, after a massive drop in oil prices, severely harming public finances, the Moreno government still decided Monday to disburse $325 million to bondholders.

Economist Jonathan Báez of the Universidad Central de Ecuador found last year that “there are 971 people who are investing partners in [Ecuador’s] Economic Groups. In total, in 2017, they represented 0.006 percent of the Ecuadorian population and control the asset equivalent to 1.64 times the GDP with $115.725 billion.” By comparison, the yearly health care budget for 2020 is $3.8 billion.

Even though a quarter of these multimillionaires didn’t even report an income in 2017, their average monthly income was nearly $80,000 or 213 times the minimum salary, found Báez.

It’s precisely these levels of inequality that the Moreno government sought to defend by using deadly military force to repress the mass upheavals and general strike against social inequality last October, which forced Moreno to temporarily move the seat of the government from Quito to Guayaquil. The betrayal carried out by the trade union bureaucracy and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) to protect their own political and economic privileges set the stage for the ongoing criminal response of the government to the pandemic.

Expreso interviewed the daughter of a deceased COVID-19 patient who had to wait six days to get the corpse from the hospital. The family then had to manage getting a burial against Health Ministry protocol. “They were charging us $1,500 for the cremation,” she said. A young man waiting days to bury his father denounced the situation on social media, stating that “they are asking $1,800 for a box, with funeral homes profiting off our pain.”

In Ecuador, informal and precarious labor comprises 62 percent of the population, which largely explains the fact that the average monthly income is $324, about $70 less than the minimum salary. Under these conditions, aggravated by the curfew and furloughs, buying a casket is a prohibitive expenditure. Over 200,000 in Guayaquil depend on informal street sales. Even those with the means to transport the bodies in caskets and pay funeral homes have to wait hours and even days in their vehicles in long lines to reach the cemetery entrances.

Amid enormous wealth, poverty is inflicting untold suffering. A young man at the hospital in Ceibos had to plead that “my father is also a person” to demand care. Doctors and nurses lack protective equipment and are also left without care if they get sick. Dr. Esteban Ortiz told the AP that he estimates that there are only about 173 respirators available for COVID-19 patients across Guayas.

The health care crisis is compounded by the fact that vast sectors of the population are going hungry from a lack of income, price gouging and mile-long lines into supermarkets.

Street corners in at least three instances have been turned into pyres for bodies as families fall into despair and anger. “The humiliation you are making families go through, demanding that their loved ones go for three days without eating, without sleeping, because we’ve been following those arrogant soldiers that provide no solution. … Even though my cousin gave his life working in a public company, he’s lying in some container,” commented Anita on the Health Ministry Facebook page.

Both AFP and Reuters spoke to Rosa Romero. The corpse of her husband, Bolivar Reyes, who died with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, remained at their home for more than a day and then went missing a week after supposedly being taken to a hospital. A video from a morgue reportedly in Ecuador shows piles of “unclaimed” bodybags and caskets stored without refrigeration. The harrowing and unforgettable stories and images are countless.

Africa’s confirmed cases rise to 7,600, as 314 die from the coronavirus

Stephan McCoy

The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 now stands at over 7,600 in Africa, with 314 fatalities. At least 50 countries, according to AfricaNews, have recorded infections, and just four are virus free.

“Africa can learn from the experiences of other countries, which have seen a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases through rapidly scaling up testing, isolating cases and meticulously tracking contacts,” stated Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

The response of African governments, however, has been to ramp up the powers of the state and impose brutal lockdowns with virtually no mass testing, contact tracing or isolation taking place.

The official count of cases and deaths is believed to be a severe underestimate. There have been warnings that if the pandemic is not adequately combated, millions of the continent’s impoverished masses will die.

In South Africa, there are 1,505 confirmed cases—the highest on the continent. South Africa has only reported nine deaths compared to Algeria’s high of 105. Alexandra and Khayelitsha, two of the country’s biggest townships have already recorded positive cases. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize warned that this is the “calm before a heavy and devastating storm.”

Most hospitals lack adequate personal protective equipment and ventilators and there is a shortage of ICU beds. Anneline Hansraj, a paramedic for 15 years and an intermediate life support paramedic at Kwa-Zulu Natal VIP Medical and Rescue, spoke to Independent Online (IOL) to describe the life-threatening conditions facing health care workers:

“Being a paramedic is risky, because I am exposed to people who might have the virus” she said. “If I contract the virus, I would have to self-isolate, away from my husband and daughter, for weeks. This could lead to emotional and psychological trauma. I am preparing for the worst. I recently met with a financial adviser to get my policies in order in the event of my death. This is a scary time for healthcare workers as many of us are putting our lives on the line to help others.”

Describing the underfunded and dilapidated state of the South African health system and complete lack of guidance being given to healthcare workers, she told IOL:

“We are basically implementing the guidelines provided by the Department of Health. This includes sanitising our vehicles, equipment, or hands before and after a call-out and those of our patients. We wear masks and gloves as well to stop the spread of germs. In Phoenix, there are only four government ambulances available to the community. We have written to the Department of Health telling them we will work hand in hand with them to fight the virus.”

Adding to the woes of the already strained health care system, the City of Ekurhuleni recently reported that it had closed the Duduza Clinic in Nigel in Gauteng indefinitely, after a nurse tested positive for COVID-19, according to News24. This comes after reports that two doctors at the Mmametlhake Hospital in Mpumalanga had tested positive for the virus. There are already more than 12 health care workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus. The Free State has seen as many as three doctors, a nurse and a neuro-physicist contracting the disease. In Gauteng another six doctors have contracted the coronavirus.

In Libya, they are 11 confirmed cases and one reported death, but there is deep unease among experts that this is not an accurate picture. Liam Kelly, Country Director for Libya at the Danish Refugee Council, speaking when the first case was confirmed, said, “Libya’s capacity to test the population and diagnose coronavirus is extremely limited... The probability that there is just one case in Libya is thus very small. There are surely other cases, but they are going undetected.”

Elizabeth Hoff, head of mission for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Tripoli said, “This is a health system that was close to collapse before you get the coronavirus.”

In a 2018 report, the WHO noted that there is simply no “specific organisation or institution responsible for public health emergencies” in Libya. The war-torn country has been in chaos since the onset of a bloody war just under a decade ago, instigated by the major imperialist powers—aided and abetted by pseudo-left groups like the now defunct International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA)—that ended in the toppling and brutal murder of Muammar Gaddafi. Arguing that the repression of CIA-backed protestors posed more of a threat to Libya than a war of aggression by the Western powers, the pseudo left justified sociocide—the destruction of an entire society.

More than 300,000 people have been displaced since the civil war began. Many are now forced to live in cramped housing and refugee camps with inadequate water and no proper sanitation. While according to the Financial Times, militias backed by the major imperialist powers and the various warring factions in the civil war receive “$1,000 a month to protect facilities, rising to $1,500 a month for ‘missions’,” Reuters reported in March that a “doctor in a medical centre in Tripoli said she had not been paid since last year.”

These conditions have created a situation where many young and promising doctors who left the country simply do not want to return. There has been a huge loss of medical staff not only from emigration, but from the daily violence of the civil war. According to Al Jazeera, in July of 2019, five doctors were killed when forces led by the warlord Khalifa Hafter, backed by French Imperialism, attacked a field hospital in Tripoli.

Recently, the Libya Observer reported that Dr. Mohamed Ajram, an ophthalmologist in Benghazi, disappeared after criticizing the pro-Hafter forces in the eastern region over their handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He said in an interview, “People who come to the hospital with COVID-19 symptoms walk from ward to ward to have their tests and check-ups and this risks passing on the virus to other negative patients... Doctors and health care providers risk their lives every day as they deal with patients without any protective clothing and equipment.”

Soon after, Ajram posted to his Facebook page that he had been summoned by security forces in the region.

In the Central African Republic, there are eight confirmed cases with no recorded deaths.

Despite significant natural resources, the country is one of the poorest in the world, with 70 percent of its nearly 5 million people living below the international poverty line ($1.90 per day). With nearly 2.9 million in need of humanitarian assistance, the Human Development Index (HDI) ranks the country as having the second lowest level of human development, 188th out of 189 countries.

Decades of sectarian violence and a humanitarian crisis, brought on predominantly as the result of French Imperialism’s pursuit of its predatory interests in its former colony, have left the country without a functioning health system or viable social infrastructure. In a report, Global Humanitarian Response Plan to COVID-19, the United Nations’ coordinated appeal states that the Central African Republic is “one of the least prepared countries to face a COVID-19 outbreak.”

Elise Ponson, Concern’s Country Director in the Central African Republic, told RTE News, “The entire country of five million people has three ventilators only so we can say the level of preparation is basically non-existent at the moment.” She concluded, “70 percent of health centres in CAR are reliant on charities to even function. There is “absolutely no capacity in terms of intensive care units outside of the capital.”

Amid India’s calamitous lockdown, Modi seeks to censor coronavirus reports

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Keith Jones

With anger mounting across India over its calamitous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government made a brazen appeal this week for the country’s Supreme Court to empower it to censor media reports.

Acting on the government’s behalf, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta urged India’s highest court to order media outlets to get New Delhi’s approval before posting, publishing or broadcasting stories on the pandemic’s impact on India and the government’s efforts to halt its spread.

Rather than rebuking the Narendra Modi-led BJP government for seeking to muzzle and control the press, in flagrant violation of the rights to free speech and freedom of the press guaranteed in India’s constitution, the court joined with the government in inveighing against the detrimental impact of supposed “fake news.” It then proposed an alternate means for the government to compel the media to promote its narrative on the coronavirus pandemic, and, ominously, coupled this with a threat that media outlets that failed to publicize what it termed “the official version” of “developments” could be prosecuted for spreading “fake news.”

For weeks the BJP government and Modi personally boasted that India was successfully countering the coronavirus pandemic, while, for mercenary reasons, authorizing only a tiny number of COVID-19 tests, and doing next to nothing to bolster India’s ramshackle health care system.

Then on the evening of March 24, Modi abruptly changed course. With only a few hours warning, he announced that at midnight the country would by subject to a nationwide lockdown, and that India’s 1.37 billion residents, with few exceptions, would be required to confine themselves to their homes for the next 21 days.

Modi provided no explanation as to how the hundreds of millions of Indians who work in the so-called informal sector for subsistence wages and without benefits would be able to feed themselves and their families if they were unable to work for three weeks.

This hasty, ill-conceived and woefully unprepared lockdown has precipitated a social calamity, causing massive hardship to India’s workers and toilers, and, no less criminally, dashing—possibly irreversibly—efforts to halt the pandemic’s spread across India. This in a country where, because of mass poverty, the high population density, a dilapidated public health care system in urban centres and the absence of health care facilities across most of rural India, COVID-19 threatens to kill millions.

Over the past week and a half, people in India and around the would have been shocked and angered by the plight of the millions of migrant workers who, having been left without any means to support themselves, have sought to return to their native villages by walking scores and even hundreds of kilometres.

For days, the BJP government did nothing as a sea of people took to India’s roads. Then on the fifth day of the lockdown, it ordered that the migrant workers be blocked from crossing state boundaries, so as to stop their bringing the coronavirus into the depths of rural India, and ordered that they be housed in makeshift refugee camps.

With the incompetence and negligence of the government displayed in searing photos and video of the hungry and desperate migrant workers, Modi issued a cynical apology in his monthly radio address last Sunday. “I apologize for taking these harsh steps that have caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people,” said India’s prime minister, assuming a rare public pose of contrition. “I know some of you will be angry with me. But these tough measures were needed to win this battle.”

However, conspicuously absent from his address was any increase in the pittance in relief, much of it in the form of increased rations of basic foodstuffs weeks and months hence, announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 26.

It was within this context that advocates Alakh Alok Srivastava and Rashmi Bansal filed petitions with the Supreme Court asking it to order the authorities to provide adequate relief and rehabilitation for the migrant workers, adding that this was imperative to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court curtly dismissed the petitions at a hearing Tuesday. This included a pro forma call for a government that has manifestly demonstrated its indifference to the migrant workers’ fate to ensure they are treated “humanely.

“We are satisfied,” declared Bobde and fellow justice, L. Nageswara Rao. “with the steps taken by the government for preventing the spreading of coronavirus at this stage.”

The judges also endorsed the claim of Solicitor General Mehta that the mass exodus of migrant workers from Delhi and other major urban centres in Gujarat and Maharashtra was not the result of the government’s callous failure to make any provision for their welfare, but rather the dissemination of “fake news.”

The government’s aim in blaming “fake news” for the migrant workers’ plight was not just to absolve itself of responsibility. The Solicitor General used the Supreme Court hearing prompted by the Public Interest Litigation cases filed by Srivastava and Bansal to urge India’s highest court, which has repeatedly connived in the BJP government’s sweeping attacks on democratic rights and promotion of Hindu supremacism, to help it muzzle its critics.

This the Court did, issuing a ruling that represents a chilling attack on democratic rights, although not in the precise form Mehta, acting for Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, requested.

“We are informed that the labourers who are unemployed due to lockdown were apprehensive about their survival,” declared the court. Accepting as fact Mehta’s patently contrived claim that what precipitated the migrants’ flight were rumours on social media, they went on to declare, “Panic was created by some fake news that the lockdown would last for more than three months.”

The justices then cynically invoked the desperate plight of the migrant workers to justify attacking the freedom of the press. “Such panic-driven migration has caused untold suffering to those who believed and acted on such news. In fact, some have lost their lives in the process. It is therefore not possible for us to overlook this menace of fake news either by electronic, print or social media…”

While refusing the Modi government’s request for an order directly imposing censorship in the form of a requirement for media outlets to get prior government approval for all stories on the pandemic, the Supreme Court did the next best thing.

It endorsed the government’s plan to establish a website to publicize its version of developments related to the pandemic and issued an order that media outlets must disseminate this “official” information.

“We expect,” said the order issued by the two-judge Supreme Court bench, “the Media (print, electronic or social) to maintain a strong sense of responsibility and ensure that unverified news capable of causing panic is not disseminated.”

“We do not intend to interfere with the free discussion about the pandemic,” the judges claimed as they did just that, “but direct the media [to] refer to and publish the official version about the developments.”

To add teeth to their order, the judges noted that Section 54 of the Disaster Management Act, which was passed in 2005 under the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance government, provides for the criminal prosecution of those who circulate “a false alarm or warning as to a disaster or its severity or magnitude, leading to panic.”

The BJP’s censorship request and the court’s effective greenlighting of it, albeit in a modified form, must be taken as a warning: the Modi government and the Indian elite as a whole are seeking to exploit the pandemic—including necessary limits on freedom of movement to halt the spread of the coronavirus—to develop authoritarian methods of rule.