Armenian civilians flee Nagorno-Karabakh after new offensive by Azerbaijan

Alex Lantier

At least 28,000 Armenians have fled the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region since September 20, when Azeri forces attacked Armenian forces and Russian peacekeepers in the enclave and forced Armenian troops to surrender. A considerable portion of Nagorno-Karabakh’s 120,000 population has been turned into refugees.

Coming amid NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine, the fratricidal war between the two former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan is yet another disastrous consequence of the nationalist Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A first Azeri-Armenian war over Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1989 and lasted until 1994, resulting in an Armenian conquest of the region. Amid the NATO-Russia war in nearby Ukraine, this war is re-erupting again.

Already in 2020, Azeri forces armed with drones and backed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dealt a defeat to Armenian forces who controlled the Nagorno-Karabakh. Since June, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh, closing off its land transport routes and cutting off its access to food and medicine imports. Last week, Azeri forces rapidly struck Armenian forces and, after one day of fighting, compelled a rapid surrender.

Tens of thousands of Armenian civilians are fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh, amid unconfirmed reports that Azeri troops are bombarding villages and control part of the capital, Stepanakert (Khankendi in Azeri). On Monday, in a further tragedy, a fuel depot in Stepanakert exploded, surrounded by civilian cars trying to get fuel to flee to Armenia. At least 68 people were killed and 290 injured in the blast, many of them with serious burns, which cannot be treated in the blockaded enclave.

Azeri officials have denied that they are attacking civilian areas, but civilians fleeing to Armenia told international media they faced horrific conditions. Petya Grigoryan, a 69-year-old driver who has fled to Armenia, told Reuters that Azeri forces bombarded his village, Kochogot, and that there were “truckloads” lying dead in the street. “There was nowhere to bury them,” Grigoryan said. “We took what we could and left. We don’t know where we’re going. We have nowhere to go.”

Nairy, a builder, fled the village of Shosh with his family after it was shelled by Azeri troops. “The kids were injured. We sat in the basements until the peacekeepers came in and took the people out,” he told Reuters. He and his family fled to the Stepanakert airport, where thousands were sleeping outside. “We are extremely grateful to the lads for sharing their rations with the kids,” he said. “The Russian peacekeepers went hungry to give the kids their rations.”

Narine Shakaryan said she and her family had fled in her son-in-law’s car, taking 24 hours to make the a 77-kilometer (48-mile) drive to Armenia, without food. “The whole way, the children were crying, they were hungry,” she said. “We left so we would stay alive.”

Azeri troops also fired on Russian forces who were stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh as peacekeepers after the 2020 war. According to Russian military sources, five men, including Captain First Rank Ivan Kovgan of the Russian North Fleet, were killed. Azeri officials have stated that this was a mistake, and have pledged a joint investigation of the killings with Russian prosecutors.

The disaster unfolding in Nagorno-Karabakh is inseparable from the broader plunge of the former Soviet Union into fratricidal war like the current war between Russia and Ukraine. It is the poisoned product of both the nationalism of the Soviet bureaucracy and its false, Stalinist theory of building “socialism in one country,” and the imperialist powers’ decades-long waging of wars in the Middle East and Central Asia in the post-Soviet era.

The major capitalist governments are focused not on preventing massacres or keeping civilians from being expelled from their homes, but on using the crisis to improve their strategic position in the war. This begins first of all with US imperialism, which aims to detach Armenia, under pro-NATO President Nikol Pashinyan, from its traditionally close ties to Russia and Iran.

Pashinyan has responded to the Armenian military debacle by denouncing Russia. “As a result of the events in Ukraine, the capabilities of Russia have changed,” he said, adding, “All of this … was supposed to be in the sphere of responsibility of Russian peacekeepers and as far as these issues exist, the Russian peacekeepers have failed in their mission.”

On Tuesday, Pashinyan greeted US Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, where she issued an appeal to the conscience of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. She called on Aliyev to “maintain the ceasefire and take concrete steps to protect the rights of civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh.” She also proposed an “international monitoring mission” to the region.

Power’s cynical rhetoric is not aimed at helping civilians or swaying Aliyev, whose regime aims to conquer Nagorno-Karabakh and boasts that Aliyev is building an “iron fist” to control it. Rather, Power aims to establish a broader NATO influence on Russia’s borders, near key war theaters in Ukraine. 

Indeed, the Caucasus is not only rich in valuable natural resources, but also strategically located near the areas of Russia bordering Crimea and Ukraine. A NATO strategic and military presence in the Caucasus would strengthen NATO in preparation for launching a war directly with Russia.

On Monday, Erdogan traveled to meet Aliyev in Nakhchivan, an autonomous land-locked enclave of Azerbaijan bordering Turkey, Armenia and Iran. Erdogan hailed the victory of Azeri troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, in what Aliyev claimed was an “anti-terrorist operation.” Erdogan cynically declared: “It’s a matter of pride that the operation was successfully completed in a short period of time, with utmost sensitivity to the rights of civilians.”

Erdogan and Aliyev also signed a deal for a joint gas pipeline to bring Azeri gas to Turkey through the areas contested by Armenia and Azerbaijan. In the weeks preceding Azerbaijan’s latest offensive, the Turkish and Azeri governments had raised the opening of the “Zanzegur corridor.” This is a plan, opposed by Armenia, to connect Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan and Turkey by taking control of a road passing through Armenian territory.

Erdogan said, “We will do our best to open this corridor as soon as possible. The realization of this corridor, which is very important for Turkey and Azerbaijan, is a strategic issue and must be completed.”

Also on Monday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller echoed Pashinyan’s remarks, stating that the war shows Russia is too weak to defend Armenia. “I do think that Russia has shown that it is not a security partner that can be relied on,” Miller said, calling for an “international mission” to the Caucasus.

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov replied by accusing Miller of aiming to “inflict strategic damage on Russia” and “push us out of the region.”

The influential Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington D.C. declares that the Armenian-Azeri conflict gives NATO the chance to replace Russia as the strongest military power in the Caucasus. It writes:

“Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has weakened its ability to effectively control and interfere in the decades-long conflict … This has created opportunities for other external actors—including Turkey, Israel, and Iran—to promote their own interests and agendas in the region. The renewed Azerbaijani offensive against Karabakh Armenians reflects these changing power dynamics, providing Western policymakers with an opportunity to step up as potential guarantors of longer-term peace and stability in the Caucasus—a title famously claimed by Russia.”

Rising Islamophobia and Communal Discord: An Alarming Trend in BJP-Ruled States

Mohd Ziyauallah Khan

In recent years, India has witnessed a concerning surge in hate speech and Islamophobia, particularly within states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This unsettling trend, highlighted  In a report by Hindutva Watch based in Washington, sheds light on the distressing reality that a staggering 80% of recorded hate speech incidents in the country occurred in BJP-ruled states. The report attributes many of these incidents to groups affiliated with the ruling BJP, such as the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and Sakal Hindu Samaj, all of which have ties to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a prominent right-wing Hindu nationalist organization.

The Hindutva Watch Report 

A report by Hindutva Watch, a Washington-based group monitoring attacks on minorities, has unveiled a disturbing trend of escalating anti-Muslim hate speech incidents in India during the first half of 2023. The report, which documented 255 instances of hate speech gatherings targeting Muslims, revealed an average of more than one incident per day during this period. Regrettably, there was no comparative data available for previous years. The report employed the United Nations’ definition of hate speech, characterizing it as “any form of communication… that employs prejudiced or discriminatory language towards an individual or group based on attributes such as religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender, or other identity factors.”

Notably, around 70% of these hate speech incidents occurred in states slated to conduct elections in 2023 and 2024, underscoring a disturbing correlation between political events and the rise of hate speech targeting the Muslim community. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat were identified as the states with the highest number of hate speech gatherings, with Maharashtra alone accounting for 29% of the incidents. These hate speech events predominantly featured conspiracy theories, calls for violence, and socio-economic boycotts against Muslims.

Alarmingly, approximately 80% of these events transpired in areas governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is widely anticipated to secure victory in the general elections of 2024. This concerning trend necessitates immediate attention and action to curb the propagation of hate speech and foster a more inclusive and harmonious society.

Hindutva Watch monitored online engagements of Hindu nationalist organizations, authenticated hate speech videos circulated on social media, and collated data on individual incidents as reported by various media outlets. However, the Indian government, under Prime Minister Modi’s leadership, refutes allegations of minority abuse. Requests for comments from the Indian embassy in Washington remain unanswered

Beyond the The Hindutva Watch Report

Rather than relying on official data, the Hindutva Watch report sourced information from verifiable social media and news outlets, revealing a deeply concerning pattern of orchestrated hate speech and bigotry against minority communities, particularly Muslims. Senior political figures associated with the BJP have openly expressed prejudiced views, further fueling this divisive narrative.

The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for instance, once singled out individuals protesting against the government based on their attire, specifically targeting those wearing traditional Muslim clothing. Prior to the 2019 general election, Amit Shah, the BJP President at the time, derogatorily referred to Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants as “termites” and pledged to forcibly expel them. Islamophobic sentiment is further propagated through social media, often within BJP-curated WhatsApp groups, where the past actions of Muslim rulers are wrongly blamed on the entire Muslim community.

This trend marks a stark departure from previous governments, which aimed to foster communal harmony, support India’s pluralism and diversity, and temper communal passions. The BJP, on the other hand, openly aligns itself with an intolerant majoritarian Hindutva ideology. Leaders within the party and close to the ruling establishment regularly denounce the Muslim minority, branding them a threat to India’s Hindu identity and accusing past governments of appeasement.

Under BJP rule, campaigns have been initiated against interfaith relationships, accusing Muslim men of pursuing “love jihad” to allegedly entrap Hindu women. Additionally, restrictions have been imposed on religious conversions, Muslim marriage practices, and family planning efforts. Discrimination against Muslims is evident in the controversial citizenship law, offering fast-track citizenship to refugees from neighboring Muslim-majority countries, excluding Muslims.

The Damage 

These developments dismay liberals and individuals advocating for secularism in India, revealing the erosion of the country’s constitutional secularism. In just nine years of BJP rule, the cultural pluralism and Hindu-Muslim amity that India once proudly touted have been severely compromised. Muslims, who once held prominent positions as a symbol of India’s unity, now find themselves marginalized in various sectors. Moreover, the rise of Islamophobia has deeply infiltrated north Indian society, while the south has managed to resist to a certain extent. The free press, once a beacon of democracy and inclusivity, has also played a role in erasing the syncretic cultural traditions that India has celebrated for decades.

Wrapping up 

In this climate, the segregation and disempowerment of Muslims are becoming normalized, with Indian society increasingly divided into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Anti-Muslim bigotry is now publicly expressed and practiced with alarming frequency, desensitizing the populace to this alarming trend. Those who decry these actions are met with derogatory responses, further polarizing the nation. In the face of these challenges, it is vital to address this growing discord and work towards promoting a more inclusive and harmonious society.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman seeks license to kill for UK police

Chris Marsden

Writing in support of Metropolitan Police officers who had handed in their guns in protest at the announced murder trial of the killer of Chris Kaba, Home Secretary Suella Braverman insisted on X/Twitter that armed officers should not “fear ending up in the dock for carrying out their duties”.

Braverman wrote Sunday, “We depend on our brave firearms officers to protect us from the most dangerous and violent in society… They mustn’t fear ending up in the dock for carrying out their duties.”

She added, “That’s why I have launched a review to ensure they have the confidence to do their jobs while protecting us all.”

Armed Metropolitan Police officers on patrol ahead of the Coronation of Britain's King Charles III, in London, Saturday, May 6, 2023. [AP Photo/Richard Heathcote, Pool via AP]

Kaba was killed by a Metropolitan Police firearms officer in London with a shot to the head on September 5, 2022. He was unarmed. Braverman’s intervention came after the officer who shot Kaba was finally formally charged with murder by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on Thursday. He has only been identified as NX121, after being granted anonymity.

Braverman was widely accused of contempt of court and potentially endangering the outcome of the murder trial by flouting restrictions on comments about ongoing legal proceedings. Writing in the Independent, Nazir Afzal OBE, the former chief crown prosecutor, stated, “Every lawyer I’ve spoken to thinks Suella Braverman has overstepped the mark … At the time of writing she hasn’t even deleted it. What does that mean for the integrity of our judicial process? What does that mean for justice itself?”

The Conservative Party government immediately supported Braverman, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak backing her proposed review during a visit to a community centre in Hertfordshire, telling broadcasters, “Our firearms officers do an incredibly difficult job. They are making life-or-death decisions in a split second to keep us safe and they deserve our gratitude for their bravery.”

His official spokesman said the Home Office review was expected to be finalised by the end of the year.

Criticism of Braverman for prejudicing a future trial barely scratches the surface of what is represented by her intervention. The aim of her proposed review is to provide armed police with de facto immunity from future prosecutions—effectively a license to kill.

Braverman’s post cited a report in the Telegraph newspaper of between 100 and 300 armed Metropolitan Police officers handing in their guns in protest against the charging of NX121. If the figure of 300 is accurate this represents a tenth of the Met’s 3,000 armed officers.

Their action was backed by the Met, as well as the government. A spokesman for the force said, “We are in ongoing discussions with those officers to support them and to fully understand the genuinely held concerns that they have.”

Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley sent an open letter to Braverman calling for reform of the way police officers are held to account, particularly when they use force. Welcoming the announcement of a review, he demanded raising the threshold for an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) or Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) investigation, and changing the test used for self-defence.

Maximising the atmosphere of crisis surrounding the police protest, the Met requested and the Home Office sent an appeal to the Ministry of Defence Sunday to “provide routine counter-terrorism contingency support to the Metropolitan Police, should it be needed”.

On Monday, the MoD agreed soldiers could fill the roles of firearms officers, with reports that the Met had specifically asked for elite SAS officers to take on anti-terror responsibilities. However, on Monday afternoon, Scotland Yard said that enough officers had returned to armed duty for the force to be able to meet its counter-terrorism responsibilities without military help.

Encouraged by the government’s stance, “Firearms officers in the Metropolitan Police are planning a mass downing of guns if the identity of the officer accused of Chris Kaba’s murder is made public by a judge”, reported Sky News on Tuesday evening. It noted, “The Met officer is known only as NX121 after a district judge granted an interim anonymity order. But the order could be lifted at a hearing at the Old Bailey on 4 October, which would lead to the officer being named publicly.” Sky News cited a “serving firearms officer” who said, “The anonymity hearing will determine what happens. If he loses his anonymity, then serious questions will be asked. I haven't handed my firearm in yet, but I would if that happens—and there are many others that would do the same.”

Leading legal and civil rights organisations pointed to the dangerous implications of the proposed Home Office review. Deborah Coles, the executive director of INQUEST, an independent charity working with families bereaved by state-related deaths, said, “The suggestion that there is something in the law or legal process that is biased against serving police officers does not bear scrutiny. Police firearms officers must remain accountable to the rule of law.”

Solicitor Harriet Wistrich, who represented the family of Jean Charles De Menezes—killed in hail of bullets at Stockwell Tube station in 2005 by police who mistook him for a terror suspect—told BBC Radio’s Today, “No one is above the law and neither should these officers be above the law… Many people have lost their lives at the hands of police and there is virtually never a prosecution.”

The reality is that the police are already virtually unaccountable for killings. According to INQUEST, 80 people have died as a result of police shootings since 1990. There have been 1,871 deaths in or following police custody or contact over the same period. But there has only been one successful prosecution of an officer for manslaughter, in the case of former footballer Dalian Atkinson, and no successful prosecution of any officer for murder. Ten murder/manslaughter charges following deaths have been brought without a successful prosecution.

The glorification of the Met’s armed officers as heroes by the government and the media is grotesque. They are members of easily the UK’s most corrupt and discredited police force, filled with criminals and psychopaths.

This month the Met reported that more than 1,000 of its officers are currently suspended or on restricted duties, as the result of a crackdown necessitated by widespread outrage following the convictions of former officers David Carrick, a serial rapist, and murderer Wayne Couzens. Couzens was given a whole-life sentence for the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021, while Carrick was handed 30 years this year for attacks carried out against a dozen women over two decades.

Following Carrick’s conviction, reviews were conducted of some 1,600 cases from the last decade in which officers faced allegations of domestic or sexual violence but no action was taken. Investigations into 450 cases are ongoing. Carrick and Couzens both worked in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, where only one in three staff under investigation have been cleared of wrongdoing.

The Met’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said the number of affected officers was almost the size of a small police force, with one in 34 suspended or restricted for cases sometimes described as “abhorrent”. He warned that removing all corrupt officers could take years, even with plans to hold around 30 misconduct hearings and 30 gross incompetence hearings each month.

Former Met Commissioner Cressida Dick, who came to prominence as leader of the operation that led to the assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes, was forced to resign in February 2022. A review of the Met by Baroness Louise Casey of Blackstock in March found that the organisation was institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, warning that it could even be broken up if changes were not made speedily.

Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was drafted in to manage the fallout, setting up a London Policing Board to “oversee and scrutinise” the review while insisting, “Sir Mark himself has had the humility and candour to say, look, he needs around two or three years to turn things around. I think he’s right, by the way.”

More is at stake than rehabilitating a crisis-ridden police force.

Sunak and Braverman are leading a campaign to shift the government sharply to the right, especially on law and order and immigration. In part this has an electoral dimension, aimed at shoring up the party’s support in the upper middle class against a Labour Party led by Starmer that has adopted its right-wing economic and social agenda wholesale.

More fundamentally, however, the Tories are strengthening the repressive apparatus of the state in preparation for explosive class struggles.

Requests to the armed forces like that made by the Met were used last year to mobilise soldiers in strikebreaking operations against border staff and paramedics during a strike wave involving millions of workers.

The more widespread use of state repression was not needed because the trade union bureaucracy successfully policed and betrayed numerous strikes. However, this has gravely undermined the unions’ standing among workers, threatening the eruption of a more consciously insurgent moment of workers battered by a cost of living crisis at a time when ever greater sacrifices are being demanded so that British imperialism can take full part in the ongoing NATO-led war against Russia in Ukraine—and stake its place in US-led plans to confront China.

Allowing the police to kill with impunity is of a piece with a battery of anti-democratic legislation directed against the working class—including the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act criminalising industrial action in essential services and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and Public Order Act 2023 severely curtailing the right to protest.

Australia: Horrific abuse of children at Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home

Sue Phillips

Stolen Generations children raising their hands at Kinchela. [Photo by Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation]

The Guardian recently published a distressing account of the maltreatment suffered by hundreds of children at the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home. The revelations, which included the possibility of secret graves on site, are just one of the many hidden crimes of the dark and violent history of Australian capitalism against Aboriginal people.

The Kinchela boys’ home in the state of New South Wales (NSW) was a government-controlled body, just one of numerous institutions established during the Stolen Generations era, when assimilation policies forcibly separated Aboriginal children from their families. Thousands of girls and boys, including infants, were placed in government-institutions, some managed by churches and other welfare agencies. The children were to be trained and exploited as a source of cheap labour, employed as domestic servants and farm labourers. Additionally, other children were adopted into non-Aboriginal families.

From 1924 to 1970, it is estimated that nearly 600 Aboriginal boys, some as young as five years old, were removed from their families and incarcerated at Kinchela. Many of them suffered horrific physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at the hands of those in authority.

Presently, only 56 survivors of the home are still alive. Although precise government records were not maintained, it is believed that throughout Australia, as many as 100,000 Aboriginal children were separated from their families, during the period spanning from 1910 to 1969. Many were never re-united with their families suffering life-long trauma.

Kinchela boys in vegetable garden outside manager's house in the early to mid-1950s. [Photo by Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation]

The Kinchela boys’ home was located on the site of an Aboriginal reserve used for crops, a dairy herd, horses, chickens and pigs. The boys worked long hours on the farm, housed in large tin shed dormitories. Education was minimal. Some children were told their parents no longer wanted them, others that their parents had died.

In the Guardian interviews, the Aboriginal survivors describe the shocking conditions in the boys’ home as like living in a “concentration camp,” a “hell hole” with continuous and harsh punishments meted out.

When children arrived at the home their clothes and shoes were incinerated, their bodies covered with flea powder and all their hair shaved off. Shoes were only worn if government authorities visited. Each child was given a number to dehumanise and destroy their individual identity. If a child used a given name instead of the mandated number, they were punished. The practice was so deeply ingrained, that survivors still recall each other’s numbers to this day.

Uncle Bobby Young explained: “We had animals in there and they had priority over us. They all had names. One horse we used to call Sue and they had three German shepherd dogs. One was called Prince and if you didn’t call him by the name, they would cane you. It was a concentration camp…”

Punishments happened daily, were violent and inflicted for the most minor issue. Many of the staff were ex-military and implemented some of its most sadistic practices.

In 1937, complaints of cruelty and abuse were filed against the manager, A.J. McQuiggin, who was accused of sadistic behaviour, whipping boys with hosepipes and a stock whip, and withholding food. He was reprimanded and transferred to another mission, where his cruelty led to a walk-out by Aboriginal residents.

The survivors are still haunted by the shocking punishments. One involved being chained to a tree at the rear of the property overnight, sometimes for longer periods. The penalty was imposed for the most minor “transgressions,” such as bedwetting.

Uncle Roger Jarrett recounted the experience. “There was a fig tree with a six-foot chain. If a boy did something trivial, they would cut the sleeves and neck out of an old sugar bag, make him wear it, soak it in water, and then be taken out to the tree, where they would chain you up, padlock the restraints, and leave you exposed.” Throughout the night, a bucket of water would be tossed over the child, even during the coldest winter nights. Traces of the chains can still be seen on the tree.

Aboriginal boys lined up outside the manager's home in 1958. [Photo by Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation]

Other punishments included the degrading and cruel practice known as being “sent down the line.” This aimed to desensitise the children by forcing them to inflict pain on others, even upon their own siblings.

Survivors vividly remember, being arranged in line, often with 30 or more on each side. The boy singled out for punishment was then “sent down the line” and punched by everyone. If the punches were deemed insufficiently forceful, a staff member struck with a cane to administer further punishment. The punishment for not striking hard enough was to be sent down the line as well.

One survivor explained, they “made us hate each other and hate ourselves. When I left the home, I was in such a state…. What they taught us, these ex-army people, was how to hurt a person. We thought it was a natural thing to do because an adult taught us.”

In 1995, Kinchela survivors raised their concerns as part of a submission to the Bringing Them Home inquiry, the first national investigation into the Stolen Generations. The Kinchela submission recommended that an area at the home be investigated because of strong suspicions that some children “may have met foul play.”

Survivors wondered about the sudden disappearance of children. Had they been adopted out, thrown into the river or buried somewhere? All knew that male staff had sexually abused many boys, raising the horrific possibility that boys had died at the hands of the abusers. No-one dared ask out of fear. No investigation was carried out.

Reunion of surviving former members of the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home in 2002. [Photo by Sarah Barker/Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation Portrait Project]

In 2008, after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s cynical apology to the Stolen Generations, the son of a Kinchela survivor reported that his father had been traumatised for life after being forced to bury other boys who had been bashed to death by drunken supervisors. Again, nothing was done.

It was not until 2016 that the NSW government agreed to work with survivor organisations to “locate the remains of any Aboriginal children.” A further six years elapsed before a ground-penetrating radar survey took place. Its report to the state government earlier this year highlighted “high priority anomalies” in the ground showing “signal patterns that in other contexts has to be human burials.”

In 2022, the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation released a two-part video retelling the history of the home titled, We Were Just Little Boys.

The video powerfully explains the terrifying moment when the boys were taken from their families, the crimes perpetrated at Kinchela and the ongoing trauma once they were released. Some boys unsuccessfully attempted to rejoin their families, others turned to alcohol and drank themselves to an early death, others ended up in prison. In many cases, their trauma impacted their families, contributing to family violence, self-harm, and suicides.

In response to the report, the NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns has agreed to further investigations and evacuation of the Kinchela site. Linda Burney, the federal Labor government’s Indigenous Affairs minister endorsed the call for an investigation, declaring that the claims of secret burials were “deeply disturbing.”

Such comments from state and federal Labor politicians are utterly hollow and contemptible. Why is Burney suddenly “deeply disturbed” when the information in the Bringing Them Home report was available 28 years ago. Why has no government acted on the survivors’ requests or implemented other recommendations from that inquiry?

The very belated expressions of concern take place amid the federal Labor government’s campaign of a Yes vote in the October 14 referendum to insert a Voice, an indigenous advisory body to government and parliament, in the constitution.

The Voice is being presented as the means for redressing past crimes as well as the appalling conditions that continue to face most Aboriginal people. In reality, the federal Labor government is using the campaign for the Voice as a means of putting a progressive face on its regressive program of war and austerity.

Those who are justifiably shocked by the revelations about the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys training home and are considering voting Yes should recall the long history of similarly disingenuous exercises that have done nothing to improve the lot of indigenous people—one of the most oppressed layers of the working class.

Over many decades there have been multiple government inquests, Royal Commissions, public apologies, promises and lists of recommendations to supposedly address the crimes against the Aboriginal population. Yet the conditions facing most Aboriginal workers and youth—along with the working class as a whole—have only worsened as governments, including the current Labor government, have imposed their austerity agenda.

The only beneficiaries have been a privileged Aboriginal elite of businesspeople, academics, media personalities and self-appointed representatives who are promoting the Voice as a means of further advancing their privileges and wealth.

The official opposition to the Voice—the No campaign—led by the federal Liberal-National Coalition offers no progressive alternative and is as responsible as the Labor Party for the continuing oppression of Aboriginal people.

That is why the Socialist Equity Party is campaigning for an active boycott of the Voice referendum. It is the only vehicle for workers, indigenous or non-indigenous, to take an independent stand and build a unified movement to abolish the capitalist system which is responsible for the crimes against the indigenous population.

The horrific treatment of children at Kinchela is not an aberration. The Guardian has published similar stories from Western Australia where it is thought hundreds of Aboriginal children may be secretly buried in unmarked graves at former religious and government institutions.

Nor are the crimes against indigenous populations as capitalism expanded globally limited to Australia. Similar policies were implemented in Canada where it is estimated that as many as one in three children in the first half of the 20th century were captives of the government enforced church-run residential system. Indigenous children suffered severe neglect and abuse and thousands died from disease.

OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully returns asteroid sample to Earth

Bryan Dyne

A sample of the asteroid 101955 Bennu was returned to Earth on Sunday by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. It marks the latest in a series of ambitious “sample return” missions conducted by a number of countries, which have as their goal to collect material from asteroids and other bodies in our Solar System and return them to Earth for careful study.

The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. [Photo: NASA/Keegan Barber]

OSIRIS-REx was launched on September 8, 2016, five years after the project was selected by NASA to be the agency’s third mission of its New Frontiers program, beating out a sample return mission to the far side of the moon and a Venus lander. It spent two years cruising to Bennu, including two weeks in February 2017 during which the team used the spacecraft’s MapCam instrument to search for near-Earth asteroids.

While no new asteroids were found, the techniques developed were used to avoid potential hazards when OSIRIS-REx arrived at Bennu in December 2018. Throughout the month, the spacecraft was used for a detailed survey of Bennu, which has a diameter of only half a kilometer. The spacecraft then descended from an orbit of 19 kilometers to an orbit of 1 kilometer, beating the previous record set by the Rosetta spacecraft, which orbited comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 7 kilometers.

A year later, NASA announced it had selected its primary and backup landing sites from which to retrieve a sample of the asteroid. Then in April and August of 2020, amid the first and second wave of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, OSIRIS-REx was used in two rehearsal landings, which took the spacecraft to 65 meters and 40 meters, respectively, above the surface of the asteroid.

The rehearsals were critical. At the time, Bennu was more than 320 million kilometers from Earth, more than the average distance between Earth and Mars, and two-way communication between OSIRIS-REx and its operators took more than 35 minutes. Given that gap, the entire landing and sample retrieval had to be pre-programmed and executed without direct human intervention. The rehearsals paid off and OSIRIS-REx collected an estimated 250 grams (about 8.8 ounces) of the asteroid as it “tagged” Bennu’s surface for five seconds before springing off, using essentially a highly sophisticated pogo stick.

That material is now safely back on Earth and remains ensconced in a capsule containing only nitrogen, to prevent contamination with material from Earth. The samples will ultimately be curated by NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science directorate (ARES) and at Japan’s Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center.

Moreover, the spacecraft’s mission is ongoing. Rather than wastefully end its life in a crash landing into Earth or other body, OSIRIS-REx is now on a trajectory to rendezvous the asteroid 99942 Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid that will make a close pass to Earth on April 13, 2029. It will spend 18 months orbiting the asteroid and is slated to use its thrusters to kick up material from Apophis’ surface to study what lies beneath.

Bennu was selected as the target of OSIRIS-REx because it has undergone almost no geological evolution since the formation of the Solar System. It is made up primarily of compounds containing carbon, one of the key elements of organic life, and thought to have existed before the formation of Earth. It is possible that complex carbon-based molecules were collected, including amino acids, which are the building blocks of all known life.

Asteroids and comets are carefully studied largely for these reasons. Unlike Earth, the other planets and even several moons, asteroids are largely unchanged over hundreds of millions and even billions of years. Comets are similarly preserved when they are not close enough to the Sun to have their tails. Each is a definite piece in the puzzle of the Solar System’s formation and provides further insight into how the entire complex of star, planets and lesser bodies, and its living inhabitants, developed.

One of the many other reasons that spacecraft are sent to study asteroids is to compare the in situ data to that collected from the Earth. While there are numerous observations of asteroids from telescopes, the distance and atmosphere makes the light reflected far more difficult to interpret. By studying Bennu up close, measurements from OSIRIS-REx can be compared with those from ground-based telescopes and used to better understand similar observations of other asteroids.

Data from OSIRIS-REx was also used to study the Yarkovsky effect, which is a force that acts on small asteroids as a result of uneven thermal emissions from the body. While the effect is very small, it has a definite impact on the orbit of bodies around Bennu’s size. This is especially important for asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit; the gravitational influence of other bodies on these relatively small objects is well known, but the influence of forces like the Yarkovsky effect is far less so. Understanding this mechanism helps track objects that might be on a collision course with Earth and, if need be, deflect them.

There have been several other sample return missions. The most famous are of course the manned Apollo landings, which brought back several hundred kilograms of rocks and lunar regolith (the Moon’s “soil”). Those samples have been intensely studied since they were first brought back in the late 1960s. A renewed effort was launched in 2019 when lunar samples from that era that had been sealed away were opened for study, allowing the more advanced scientific instruments of the modern era to undertake investigations that technology from 50 years ago simply couldn’t.

The first robotic sample return mission was in 1970 when the Soviet mission Luna 16 returned 101 grams of lunar soil. The achievement was followed up in 1974 by Luna 20, which returned 55 grams, and in 1976 by Luna 24, which returned 170 grams. While they returned far less lunar material than the Apollo program, the Luna missions paved the way for further robotic sample return missions.

Despite their scientific value, there were no sample return missions in the 1980s. Only one was conducted in the 1990s, when the Soviet-launched Mir space station used an aerogel to capture interplanetary dust in low Earth orbit. In 2004, the Genesis spacecraft returned particles from the solar wind and in 2006, the Stardust spacecraft returned dust samples from the tails of the comet 81P/Wild.

The modern sample return missions began when the Hayabusa probe from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) brought back a small number of particles from asteroid 25143 Itokawa, despite the failure of the sampling device. Hayabusa was followed by Hayabusa2, which deployed two small rovers on the surface of asteroid 162173 Ryugu and returned a sample of Ryugu to Earth in December 2020. Both missions were the first successful sample returns from an asteroid.

Several future sample return missions are planned. JAXA is slated to launch its MMX mission to Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars, in 2024 and return a sample from Phobos that will reach Earth in 2029. China has sample return missions planned for the Moon, Mars and the asteroid Ceres throughout the 2020s and 2030s. Russia has a new Luna-Glob mission which will bring back new samples from the Moon in 2027. And NASA and the European Space Agency are planning on retrieving the samples collected by the Perseverance Mars rover in the late 2020s.

In a rational world, these missions would be universally celebrated. Under capitalism, however, they are seen by the ruling elite as further instances of geopolitical rivalry. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson focused on the fact that the mission was “the first American asteroid sample return in history,” as if space exploration does not build on itself in an inherently international process.

Nor was any mention made of the paltry sums spent on the project, about $1 billion so far, compared to the nearly $1,000 billion squandered at the Department of Defense every year, including $30 billion to the Space Force. One can only imagine what will be achieved and discovered when such vast sums are spent for exploration instead of destruction, a future well worth fighting for.

Macron announces pull-out of French troops from Niger

Athiyan Silva

Amid massive protests in Niger against French imperialism, French President Macron announced the withdrawal of the French ambassador to Niamey on Sunday. The withdrawal of French troops from Niger is to occur by the end of the year. After leaving Mali and then Burkina Faso, the French military is now slated to leave a third country in the Sahel.

French soldiers disembark from a U.S. Air Force C130 cargo plane at Niamey, Niger base, on June 9, 2021. [AP Photo]

After a decade of devastating counterterrorism military operations in the Sahel since it launched a war in Mali, France now has only 1,000 troops stationed in the region. They are concentrated in Chad, on Niger’s eastern border.

After coming to power via a coup on July 26, the Nigerien junta led by General Abdurahmane Tiani canceled security cooperation agreements between Paris and Niamey. It also ordered the withdrawal of French troops from Niger by the end of August.

Macron initially refused to evacuate French troops or to recognize the Nigerien junta. He accused them of ruling Niger “illegally.” At the same time, France encouraged ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) countries to prepare military action against Niger. Niger’s military regime accused France of deploying troops and military equipment for a war of aggression against it in alliance with the ECOWAS countries of Nigeria, Benin, Ivory Coast and Senegal.

French imperialism’s war plans in Africa are now inseparably bound up with the escalating NATO war with Russia in Ukraine. Niger has signed a military self-defense alliance with Mali and Burkina Faso, which has sought out ties with the Russian military. This creates conditions for the war in Ukraine to rapidly escalate to a war involving large swathes of West Africa.

On Sunday, as he announced the withdrawal of French troops, Macron nonetheless hailed the French war in Mali, praising the “success of the Barkhane military operation … Without it, most of these countries would have already been taken by territorial caliphates and jihadists.”

Macron’s attempt to justify France’s wars in the Sahel as an “anti-terrorist” struggle is a cynical fraud. France and NATO countries waged a war of aggression against Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, arming jihadists linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist network as their principal proxy forces in Libya. The fighting then spread across the Sahara into Mali, which provided a pretext for France’s military intervention in Mali.

Last year, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop sent a letter to the UN Security Council accusing France of aiding the jihadists. Diop alleged that Mali’s “airspace has been breached more than 50 times this year, mostly by French forces using drones, military helicopters, and fighter jets. These flagrant violations of Malian airspace were used by France to collect information for terrorist groups operating in the Sahel and to drop arms and ammunition to them.”

Macron tried to rewrite history, alleging that the African military juntas, not French imperialism, were to blame for the fighting across the Sahel. He said, “We are not here to be hostages of the putschists. ... The putschists are the friends of disorder.”

Due to growing social anger and mass protests against French troop deployments in the Sahel and West Africa, however, Macron has been forced to agree to the putschists’ demands that he withdraw his troops. It marks a setback for French imperialism’s strategy of plundering resources from its former colonial empire in Africa.

The junta in Niger has banned all French aircraft from flying over its airspace since Saturday evening. It announced that the airspace would be open to all national and international commercial flights except those chartered by France, including French Airlines and Air France.

Macron made clear, however, that French imperialism is leaving Niger only as part of a plan to buy time and reestablish its political domination over the region. He stressed that France will continue to work with West African governments. This shows that even with the withdrawal of French troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, France is not ready to give up its economic and strategic positions in the geographical heart of West Africa.

The French withdrawal from Niger has also highlighted growing tensions between Paris and Washington in the region. While France was pressuring ECOWAS to intervene militarily to restore Nigerien President Mohamed Bassum, who was ousted by the currently ruling military junta, Washington made efforts to pacify the ECOWAS countries.

RFI reported: “At the UN, the Americans try in vain to change the position of ECOWAS countries on Niger. In New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the United States tried to convince the countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to soften their position on respect for the putschists in Niger. It was this Friday morning during a meeting organized by American Secretary of State Antony Blinken. But clearly, the maneuver was not successful.”

RFI added that Blinken hosted several West African leaders, such as Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu and Senegal’s Macky Sall.

As French troops withdraw from Niger, the US will “review all actions” regarding its military presence, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austen announced Monday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. “While giving diplomacy a chance, we will also continue to consider any future measures that will prioritize both our diplomatic and security objectives,” he told journalists at a news conference in Nairobi.

While worker and youth struggles against imperialism mount across West Africa, the Nigerien junta does not oppose imperialism or the NATO alliance. It is ready to work with US imperialism, which is now waging a devastating war against Russia in Ukraine, while taking measures to expel French troops—for now, at least. The dubious maneuvers of the Nigerian junta with Washington expose its anti-imperialist fraud.

Two weeks ago, the junta authorized US forces to operate from Air Base 201 in Agadez, Niger. Currently, 1,100 US troops are stationed in Niger and the US has resumed drone and warplane operations from this airbase against the jihadists. Also, the US has stationed troops near Niger’s strategic uranium mines.

Relations between France and the United States have undoubtedly been strained by the coup in Niger. As such, Niger’s ruling circles and the Nigerien military seek to maximize the political advantages they can gain by pitting the great powers against each other.

Ultimately, however, even the withdrawal of French troops from Niger cannot ultimately free the workers and youth in Niger and the Sahel from the grip of imperialism. Exploiting their control of global financial flows and military power, the imperialist countries will use the most ruthless policies to return French and NATO troops to the region. Already, France is working closely with the ECOWAS governments to strangle Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso with economic sanctions.

A sharp turn in China property market turmoil

Nick Beams

The ongoing and interlinked property development and financial crisis in China has taken a new turn with the announcement by the failed Evergrande conglomerate that one of its subsidiaries has failed to make a payment on an offshore bond.

Residents walk past a map showing Evergrande development projects in China, at an Evergrande city plaza in Beijing, Monday, Sept. 18, 2023. Andy Wong [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

Evergrande, one of China’s largest real estate and property developers, defaulted on debts in 2021. It has been the subject of a restructuring operation aimed at trying to prevent its liquidation because that would set off turbulence through the financial system with unknown consequences.

On Monday it was announced that Hengda Real Estate, one of Evergrande’s subsidiairies, had defaulted on a 4-billion-yuan ($547 million) repayment due in principal and interest on a bond issued in 2020.

In March it had missed an interest payment on the loan and said it would “actively” seek to negotiate with bondholders, but the latest development indicates that no solution has been found.

In its report on the default, Bloomberg, which closely follows Chinese real estate developments, said: “Evergrande is running out of time to get what would be one of the nation’s biggest-ever restructurings back on track after setbacks in recent days have raised the risk of a potential liquidation.”

Evergrande is trying to reach an agreement with creditors and with regulators so that it can issue new bonds to restructure around $30 billion in offshore debt. Creditors would receive new securities in place of the ones that are failing.

The issuing of “new notes” by Evergrande is essential because without it the restructuring process cannot go ahead. Troubles first surfaced on Sunday evening when Evergrande said it could not issue “new notes” because Hengda was being investigated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

This brought an incredulous response from one of the people close to the negotiations, cited by the Financial Times.

They asked: “How can a process that has run for two years … [with] a whole army of offshore and onshore advisers … suddenly be derailed at the eleventh hour?”

As the Bloomberg report noted, the clock is ticking on the Evergrande restructuring because on October 30 the company faces a court hearing in Hong Kong on a winding up petition that could force it into liquidation.

Last week, Evergrande cancelled meetings with key creditors, saying it had to reassess the proposed restructuring. Its sales had also “not been as expected.”

According to Jonathan Leitch, a Hong Kong lawyer specialising in debt restructuring, cited by Bloomberg: “A huge amount of work has gone into the planning and formulation of Evergrande’s restructuring plans, but if the sales forecasts underpinning the turnaround now appear unachievable, it is better to revisit the deal terms before scheme meetings are held.”

Creditors could expect a downward revision in terms and a further lengthening of repayment periods which would “create uncertainty” and “further test the patience of bondholders,” Leitch said.

The restructuring of Evergrande, which revealed in July that it had incurred losses of $81 billion over the two-year period of 2021-2022, is being closely watched because of implications for the debt restructuring of other property developers.

Chinese authorities have taken some measures to try to boost the property markets, including the reduction in some interest rates for home buyers, but nothing that can bring a sustained boost.

There was an immediate market response to the news of the Hengda default. A Bloomberg index of property developer shares fell by 7.1 percent on Monday taking the total loss for the year to almost $56 billion.

Evergrande shares dropped by 22 percent and shares in the China Aoyuan Group, in which trading resumed after an 18-month break, plunged by 72 percent.

There has been a stream of negative news including an announcement by Chinese regulators that they are launching an inquiry into Ping An Real Estate over a loan replacement. China Oceanwide also said it faced liquidation after a court in Bermuda issued a wind-up order.

While it managed to avoid a default on two dollar bonds earlier this month, the real estate developer Country Garden, the country’s biggest and hitherto regarded as among the safest, is by no means out of the woods. It recorded a $6.7 billion loss for the first six months of the year—its highest ever.

Having dodged a bullet, Country Garden is reported to be still trying to stave off a debt default.

The property market slump is feeding into the financial system, hitting so called shadow banks. One of these, Zhingrong, has missed debt repayments at least partly because investments it has made with property developers have gone sour.

The crisis in the property market has invited comparisons with the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis which started in the US mortgage market. Questions have been raised as to whether China might soon face a “Lehman moment”—a reference to the failure of the US investment bank which triggered the meltdown.

Such comparisons are, at least at this stage, premature. Most of the debt is held domestically and the government has mechanisms available through which it can intervene.

Nevertheless, there are serious problems. The real estate and property development sector has been a mainstay of the Chinese economy over the past decade and a half. When its connections to other industries are taken into account, it comprises about 25 percent of the Chinese economy.

Its crisis both contributes to, and is a product of, the slowing economy. The official target for economic growth this year is 5 percent—the lowest in three decades—and there are doubts among analysts it will even reach this level. The World Economic Forum, for example, predicts growth of only 2.7 percent this year and 2.9 percent in 2024.

And the debt mountain in the property sector is symptomatic of a much broader phenomenon.

It has been estimated that Local Government Financing Vehicles, the means through which local authorities fund infrastructure projects, have a total of $10 trillion in debt. Overall Chinese debt is estimated to be 300 percent of GDP and comprises 15 percent of total global debt.

So, while there may not be the immediate prospect of a financial meltdown there is certainly the potential for major disturbances which will have a global impact.