Brazilian teachers oppose back-to-school drive

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/braz-a05.html





By our correspondents
5 August 2020

As Brazilian local governments are pushing for a general reopening of schools, following the sociopathic demands of the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, widespread opposition to these measures is emerging among parents and educators.

A survey by Instituto Datafolha in April revealed that three in every four people in Brazil believed that it is more important to “stay home to avoid the coronavirus spread, even if this jeopardizes the economy and provokes unemployment.” In June, another survey from the same institution revealed that 76 per cent of Brazilians are against the schools reopening in the next two months, and that only 21 percent are in favor of going back to schools in the short term.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to teachers from different parts of Brazil about the political reasons behind the back-to-school campaign and the dangers it poses to the lives of the school staff, students, and their families.

Francisca, a public school kindergarten teacher in São Paulo, explained that a series of safety protocols being approved by state and municipal governments are an active part of the back-to-school campaign. “The protocols that are being presented seem to me like a listing of general procedures that do not guarantee the safety and well-being of workers, children or families and do not consider the specifics of each age group or the structure conditions of each education unit.”

Arguing that adequate infrastructure is a pre-requisite for protecting people from contagion, Francisca said, “The school where I work has an inadequate infrastructure ... and one which, in this moment, determines the impossibility of implementing the [protocol] measures: reduced spaces, making social distancing difficult; the absence of reserved spaces for isolating symptomatic children; and poor airing and cooling systems, compromising the air healthiness. These are only three basic preventive measures that our school, as many others of the school network, are under no condition to implement.”

Fabiano, a Portuguese middle school teacher in São Paulo’s public system, made reference to the cuts that were already occurring before the pandemic. “These protocols are very subjective, and we know that the municipal government under this administration [of Bruno Covas of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB)] has already reduced the cleaning staff. The hygiene aspect is fundamental for these protocols to work and I don’t believe, especially due to this administration’s record, that there would be personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, soap, what they call ‘safety protocols’.”

Job cuts in the municipal school system of São Paulo have been occurring under successive administrations, including that of Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT), who was the PT candidate in the 2018 presidential elections.

Geraldo, a Sociology teacher in a public state school in Amazonas, warned about a potential new upsurge in infections resulting from a return of classes. “The Department [of Education] will leave us to fend for ourselves and there will be no following of safety protocols ... One person can transmit to another five or ten. I read that, at the same time as kids have a lower probability of contagion, they are less symptomatic. And how are people going to interact in schools without human contact? And by that I don’t mean touching other people—they are going to touch things; they are going to walk to different places.”

Pedro, a primary school History teacher also working in the Amazonian public school system, described the “safety protocols” being planned for the return to schools. “One hundred percent of the students would come back under a hybrid, rotation scheme. They claim that there will be testing for teachers, but only once, when they get back to school. This testing is not being planned for students, who will, at most, have their temperatures measured.”

Pointing out the herd immunity policies being de factoimplemented by governments throughout the world, Geraldo warned: “The professionals are being prepared to return as guinea pigs, with all of the existing surveys about chronic diseases among teachers.”

There is an understanding among educators that the back-to-school campaign is based on financial interests. Igor, a private school teacher in São Paulo, stated that “The immediate return certainly cannot solve even the teaching issues for students. The interests are economic ones.”

He also exposed the movement in private schools to decrease teachers’ wages. “From one side, there are demands from parents, who want to pay less for not getting the same services. From the other, there is pressure from the companies, which indeed can suffer from decreases in enrollment and default, but which may use the moment to worsen labor relations. A sign of that is that a big company in education where I work reduced wages by 25 percent for three months, but considers that it can be a good moment to make new company acquisitions.”

Expressing the educator’s distrust of the ability of a return to school to solve the educational issues existing in distance learning, Francisca denounced the new issues that would arise. She highlighted the utter lack of preparation and indifference towards the education of small children.

“It will be, at best, an uncertain, if not worrisome outcome, as the return does not completely solve the problems posed and, actually, creates other ones: Which kids and families will ‘earn’ the right to be part of the first 35 percent [of students allowed in classrooms in the first phase of the plan]? They will be guaranteed meals, ‘safe’ school day time and it will relieve the workers responsible for them, but at what cost? Are the protocol measures really sufficient or possible? In the specific case of small children, how to guarantee significant school experiences in the face of physical distancing, restricted spaces and the prohibition of sharing?”

Pointing to the worsening of the work conditions that came with the widening of digital service platforms, Geraldo made a connection between the inadequate conditions and poor wages of app delivery workers, who have recently engaged in strikes in Brazil, and the attacks faced by education workers over the last years. “If you look at people who work in tourism sector, in hotels, or submitted to companies as Airbnb, I think that situation has also arrived in education, in the sense that the teacher will also start to share content without any labor obligations.”

The pandemic was seen by education government officials, NGOs and companies as an opportunity to accelerate the introduction of distance learning digital platforms in school curricula. Already, hundreds of millions of dollars in digital equipment were promised to supposedly ameliorate working conditions for teachers.

However, Pedro denounced the precarious experience that actually is being provided. “Not even half of the students own a cell phone … many families are poor. We have many Venezuelan students, who have just arrived in Brazil and don’t speak Portuguese.”

“Participation is minimal, with three or four students attending classes where there are almost 50 students enrolled.” Those that do participate are doing so by overcoming precarious conditions. “A colleague of mine told me that a parent works as a night guard. His son finishes the activities, then his father takes pictures on his cell phone and sends it when he arrives at work, where there is wireless internet connection.”

He went on to explain the inadequate meal distribution to the families. “They have created a program called ‘Meals at Home’, distributing one food basket to the family of each student during these four months. However, there are many parents complaining that they still haven’t received it. In the countryside, families are just now receiving their first food basket.”

Geraldo denounced the criminal response of the trade union in São Paulo joining the government in implementing the return to school plans. “In some schools, the attacks were so intense that many teachers were fired, and some lost their contracts. And the response of the trade unions is limited to assistance, sending food and aid. The trade union is unable to get close to the rank-and-file. It is already supporting the Plano SP [the return-to-work plan of the state government], limiting their demand to a ‘drastic decrease’ [in cases before reopening schools], which doesn’t mean anything.”

“The trade union doesn’t create an official Facebook, or Instagram account and doesn’t show their number of followers because they are afraid to be among the rank-and-file, exposing their own contradictions and problems, which teachers would expose.”

On Wednesday, São Paulo state teachers organized a motorcade, planned to finish outside of Governor João Doria’s house. Doria ordered the police to block the motorcade, preventing it from reaching his house. Then, the São Paulo Teachers Union (APEOESP) president, Maria Izabel Azevedo Noronha, known as Bebel, walked towards the police blockade and feigned opposition to the governor’s plans.

In the beginning of July, Noronha met with the state’s education secretary to supposedly oppose the back-to-school drive, on the grounds that a “drastic reduction of the pandemic” is needed before that. Such formulation leaves open the possibility that teachers and students are forced into schools as cases and deaths reach an “acceptable” level.

In Rio de Janeiro, where the Mayor Marcelo Crivella of the Republicans party is promoting the reopening of private schools starting this Monday, trade unions are blocking a unified opposition of the educators. The unions officially representing state, municipal, and private school teachers, who are all threatened by the same policies, held separate meetings in different dates.

Teachers, school staff and workers in Brazil and internationally must form rank-and-file committees independent of both the trade unions and “left” parties such as the PT, PSOL and PCdoB. They will allow workers to unify themselves to fight against the murderous back-to-school campaign, and for the modernization of schools and high-quality infrastructure for distance learning, both financed by the expropriation of the capitalist oligarchy.



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Fascist networks in German police and military issue new death threats

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/netz-a05.html





By Jan Ritter and Max Linhof
5 August 2020

Far-right-wing extremist chat groups involving members of the German military and security apparatus have been publicly exposed over recent days. At the same time, a growing number of threatening e-mails and faxes, almost all signed NSU 2.0, have been sent to left-wing artists, immigrants, politicians, journalists and lawyers. Social Democrat leader Saskia Esken recently received a death threat signed NSU 2.0. Many of the threats contain personal information about those targeted that is not publicly available. In at least three cases, the data was accessed from police computers.

The best-known case is of the lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz, whose secret address was accessed on a police computer in Frankfurt. The lawyer, who represented some of the victims of the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group, received a death threat several days later signed NSU 2.0.

Der Spiegel reported on July 29 that the police officer whose computer was used to access the data had not been seriously investigated, because another officer could have logged on to her computer with a password displayed nearby. On this basis, she was not initially considered a suspect. However, after officers found out that she was an active participant in a right-wing extremist chat group, they were finally compelled to launch an investigation against her.

The far-right group “Itiotentreff” was almost exclusively made up of police officers in the state of Hesse. A total of 102 pictures, caricatures and messages were shared, of which 40 were deemed to be relevant to the investigation by the state prosecutor. Group members made fun of disabled people, survivors of concentration camps, black people and Jews. The messages showing Alan Kurdi, the Syrian refugee child who drowned in 2015, were especially inhumane. “Whoever finds it can keep it” was written beneath the picture of his lifeless body on a Turkish beach.

The chat group had an openly fascistic character and aimed to serve as a platform for sharing right-wing extremist material and possibly planning acts of violence, apparently all under the protection of the security agencies and local politicians from the government parties.

One of the group’s members lived in 2018 in Kirtorf, a stronghold of the far-right that has played host to several right-wing extremist major events since the turn of the century. In addition, a search of the home of another police officer in Kirtorf in late 2018 uncovered a collection of Nazi memorabilia that investigators described as a “Nazi museum.” The mayor of Kirtorf at the time, Ulrich Künz (Christian Democrats), justified the find by saying that it is normal for people to collect historical material. He described the Nazi memorabilia collector and his brother, who was also a police officer in Hesse, as “nice guys, friendly, very integrated into clubs and associations.”

This is just one example of the building up of far-right structures within the state apparatus. Across Germany, new far-right networks are continually being exposed, from “Revolution Chemnitz” in Saxony, to the chat group led by the special forces soldier Andre S., better known as “Hannibal,” and the nationwide far-right Telegram chat group #WIR.

On July 23, Die Zeit published extracts from these chats in an article headlined “Soldiers who are planning a revolt.” The author and right-wing extremist expert Christian Fuchs wrote that among #WIR’s members, which at times totalled around 240, were “several soldiers, reservists and army veterans.”

According to his research, several right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi members of the army are active in the #WIR chat group. One member was Hartmut T., who holds at least the rank of sergeant in the military. In the Telegram group, he has been presented a series of awards for parachuting and individual bravery during his 12-year career as a soldier, is stationed at an army air base in the Lüneburg region and is now a member of the rapid response division. This unit is part of the same division as the special forces (KSK), which was so heavily infiltrated by right-wing extremists that Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer felt compelled to restructure the force last month.

Like the network organised by Hannibal in the KSK, the #WIR network also planned to murder left-wing figures and establish a fascist regime in Germany on “Day X.”

Hartmut T. wrote in the #WIR chat, among other things, “Can you add me to the group Antifa Reconnaissance? I want to know who my enemies are...so I can take action against these terrorists.” Another contribution cited by Die Zeit underscores just how concrete the plans for a far-right revolt were. “Patriots” must now “keep themselves safe” so that “when the first wave is over with, we can rebuild our country,” wrote T. in November 2019.

The author of the article in Die Zeit adds, “These statements were made in November 2019, so the ‘wave’ has nothing to do with the coronavirus; it probably refers to the initial phase after a putsch.”

The material presented by Fuchs leaves no doubt about the group’s fascist outlook, its close ties to the German army and other European militaries, and its plans for a violent putsch. “Anti-Semitic slogans and racist violent fantasies” were among the messages shared, as well as “free social national.”

Andreas E., another group member, was, “according to his own admission,” active for five years in the French Foreign Legion in French Guyana, Congo and Papua New Guinea.

Another member of the group was Heiko Herbert G., who according to Fuchs is a member of the military reserves, Lower Saxony group. In December 2019, he directed a threat to anti-fascists, “It’s not enough just to slap those guys in the face! I don’t want to write any more about it.”

The plans were apparently far advanced, and links had already been established with other far-right groups. “My preparations are complete. Own weapons, fighting gear, civil war,” wrote Heiko Herbert G. in the chat group. He has everything “up to calibre 38–45.” In addition, the reservist posted a picture “of a mountain of rucksacks, helmets and a sleeping bag with German army insignia.”

One of the administrators of #WIR was Marion G., who consciously wanted to bring together “patriots...and National Socialists.” She was an alleged supporter of “the right-wing extremist terrorist S Group,” whose members were arrested by the police in February. But Marion G. “remained free” and “continued to be active in the digital underground.” And this in spite of the fact that the S Group was reportedly on the brink of striking.

According to a report in Der Spiegel in February, the group had already hoarded weaponry and munitions and planned in a concerted “military” action to launch attacks on mosques across Germany and kill Muslims as they prayed. The goal was to provoke a counter-response and a “civil war.” The investigating state prosecutor summarised the group’s aim as having been the “rattling” and “overcoming” of the Federal Republic’s state structure and social order.

The fascist networks in the German security forces are now so widespread and threatening that the New York Times felt compelled for the second time in a few weeks to warn of the danger of a right-wing putsch. After an initial article on July 3, the Times wrote last weekend about the plans for “Day X” of the Northern Cross group, which emerged out of the network operated by Hannibal. “Increasingly, the German authorities consider the scenario a pretext for domestic terrorism by far-right plotters or even for a takeover of the government,” wrote the Times .

It may well be the case that sections of the state apparatus and government are troubled by the putsch plans and terrorist activities. But the fact is that there is no force within the political establishment or state, including the judiciary, investigative authorities, and political parties, capable of or willing to deal with the far-right threat. The strengthening of far-right terrorist networks in the police, military and intelligence agencies is directly linked to the German bourgeoisie’s return to militarism and war. The only way to stop the right-wing extremist terrorists is through the independent mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist programme.



The author also recommends:

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[18 July 2020]

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[10 July 2020]

Fascist network uncovered in German Army’s Special Forces unit
[18 June 2020]

The growing fascist influence in German politics: The case of Christian Democratic politician Robert Möritz
[7 January 2020]

As COVID-19 surges, infected Turkish workers forced back to work

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/turk-a05.html





By Barış Demir
5 August 2020

As coronavirus spreads again in Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government re-opened the economy on June 1, backed by bourgeois opposition parties like the Republican People’s Party (CHP), businesses are forcing even infected workers to work.

Last week, a canned fish company, Dardanel, in the western city of Çanakkale, forced all workers into its factory for 14 days after more than 40 workers tested positive for coronavirus. According to a Bianet report, “All workers of the factory, including those who were in quarantine in their homes and those on annual leave, were placed in student dormitories. Also, workers diagnosed with Covid-19 were brought to the factory with shuttles and worked.”

“Our psychology deteriorates in the workplace, we cannot breathe in the bands, even going to and from the toilets is a problem. Managers, supervisors always keep an eye on us,” one worker told the daily Evrensel, adding: “Our life is almost hostage. The final decision is already a concrete example of this. They throw us all into the fire so that the boss’s job is not interrupted.”

The company’s move came after the Çanakkale Governorate Provincial Public Hygiene Committee declared: “The personnel of enterprises that operate in a closed system shall be taken to the factory and then to the place they will be isolated.” This decision was approved not only by the office of the governor, but also by city’s CHP mayor.

This reactionary collaboration shows how workers are forced to remain at work under deadly conditions and exposes the anti-working-class character of the middle-class parties and trade unions that lined up behind the CHP as an alternative to Erdoğan. Their focus is not to contain pandemic and save lives, but to restrain growing anger and opposition within the working class and divert it into safe channels—even as the pandemic spreads and living conditions plummet.

News of forced labour in Çanakkale came just a few weeks after the CHP supported a massive attack on the working class in parliament. With CHP votes, the Erdoğan government extended the forced “unpaid leave” process until July 2021 for hundreds of thousands or millions of workers. They have been forced to take unpaid leave, receiving only 1,170 Turkish liras (about US$170) per month from the state unemployment fund. After the pandemic, the number of unemployed rose to over 17 million in Turkey, an all-time record.

The criminal practice in Çanakkale follows a stated project by the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (MÜSİAD). In May, MÜSİAD announced a project to build “isolated production bases” to avoid stopping production amid this pandemic and continue exploitation of the working class.

Coronavirus reports continue to increase from other factories. In the Vestel factory in Manisa, workers report that there are hundreds of infected employees; seven have already died. This white goods factory employs more than 16,000 workers. It is the largest factory in Turkey and one of the largest in Europe. “Workers continue to work. Everyone is very nervous. Cases are coming out, but there is no quarantine application,” one worker told daily BirGun .

At Uğur Konfeksiyon, a factory in the Istanbul İkitelli organised industrial zone, 96 workers have been reportedly infected within two weeks.

Companies are running rampant, imposing criminal policies on their employees. At the end of June, though 40 workers working in railway construction in the southeastern city of Mardin had been infected in one week, Cengiz Holding threatened workers if they refused to keep working. In May, in the same workplace, 118 workers were fired after they protested against working under unsafe conditions.

Growing reports on positive cases and factory deaths come amid an escalation in the pandemic across Turkey amid the international back-to-work campaign.

As the total number of cases in Turkey reaches 232,000, with more than 5,700 deaths, the proportion of COVID-19 patients in intensive care in Turkey rose from 2 percent on July 1 to nearly 12 percent at the end of July. In this period, the number of active cases fell from around 30,000 to less than 12,000, but the number of patients in intensive care nearly doubled.



Despite these signs of serious spread of COVID-19 disease, the Health Ministry’s official figures remained almost the same. The total daily new cases were between 900 and 1,000 since July 14, and death toll was 15-20.

On July 29, the Turkish Health Ministry stopped announcing figures on intensive care and intubated patients, amid growing suspicion and anger among workers that the government is hiding the true scope of the coronavirus crisis in Turkey so as to keep promoting tourism and extracting profits from workers. As of July 28, there were 1,280 patients in intensive care. This amounts to 11.8 percent of active cases, with 403 patients on ventilators.

There are growing warnings from scientists that the COVID-19 pandemic is spiraling out of control due to a “herd immunity” policy implemented by the government with tacit support from local governments led by so-called opposition parties.

Turkish Medical Association (TTB) official Prof. Sinan Adıyaman said, “They do not want to give the number of patients in intensive care. Because we could make inferences by looking at them. We were dividing the number of active patients into the number of patients in intensive care. We have explained that this proportion is over 10 percent in Turkey but it is around 1.5 percent in the world.”

Prof. Dr. Bengi Başer also attacked the government’s deliberate neglect in a tweet on Monday, stating: “We only use PCR tests for those who show symptoms; so we do it to only 30 percent. … The diagnostic value of the test is 60 percent. … We do not apply tests to those who come from abroad. We also no longer make a test for close contacts of positive cases.” She warned, “Focus on reality, not on numbers.”

In an interview on Monday, Halis Yerlikaya, a TTB official, also declared that the official figures are not true: “On the day of death of 8 patients in one night in Diyarbakır, the number of deaths announced throughout the country was 17.” Warning of a serious spread in many cities, Yerlikaya claimed intensive care units in Diyarbakır, Mardin and Şanlıurfa—the Kurdish-majority cities in the southeast—are already full. The daily number of cases in Diyarbakır or Urfa alone is somewhat more than 300, though the official figure across all of Turkey is barely over 900.

As coronavirus spreads unrestrainedly in Turkey and internationally due to the ruling class’s deadly response to the pandemic, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the only way forward for the working class is to intervene independently. Autoworkers in the US, who built rank-and-file safety committees in their factories independent of pro-capitalist trade-unions, show what is can be done to save millions of lives by workers around over the world.

COVID-19 surges in Spain as government pushes reopening of schools

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/spai-a05.html





By Alejandro López
5 August 2020

The COVID-19 virus is resurgent across Spain and Europe. On Sunday the Ministry of Health confirmed 1,525 new COVID-19 cases had been detected in Spain in the last 24 hours. This was 300 more than Saturday’s record-breaking total, the first time daily new cases topped the 1,000 mark since early May, when Spaniards were confined to their homes and even daily walks and exercise were still not allowed.

There are now officially over 500 outbreaks of the virus, though the real number is likely larger. New infections are concentrated in three areas: Aragón, Catalonia and Madrid. However, the incidence of the virus this week has risen in almost all of Spain’s 17 regions. Hundreds of thousands of people in various towns and regions have been recommended to remain at home.

In this resurgence, the average age of the infected are younger than in the spring. It has fallen from 60 in March-April, to 45 for men and 41 for women. Data from the last three weeks show that figure is even lower: 36 and 38, respectively.

The political establishment and the media have blamed the youth for this rise, blaming parties and other social gatherings or nightlife that undermine social distancing for the recent surge. María Jesús Montero, the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government’s spokeswoman, sent a message last week to “people who are younger, because some of the outbreaks are linked to the behaviour in nightlife venues or places where a large number of people gather.”

However, the main reason for the spread is not risky partying, but the criminal policies of the PSOE-Podemos government.

In May and June, Spain was able to contain the virus due to a strict lockdown imposed to gain control over one of Europe’s worst outbreaks, after mass anger erupted at the slow response and a strike wave in major industries erupted in Italy and throughout Europe.

Spain halted all nonessential activity for two weeks and gradually started deescalating. Instead of using this time to rapidly invest in tracers and mass testing, however, the government started lifting measures only in order to open the economy. The aim was to “save” the tourism season, which represents 12 percent of Spain’s GDP, so the extraction of profits from the working class could continue unabated.

While the rise in infected youth highlights the need for more testing and contact tracing, especially as many seem to be asymptomatic, the government ignored the issue. According to data collected by daily El País from the regional authorities, only 3,500 contact tracers have been hired, though international health authorities recommended Spain hire at least 8,000 to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amid this resurgence, the Spanish political establishment is promoting a campaign to reopen schools across Spain in September—as are Britain, France, Germany and other countries across Europe. Most have been closed since mid-March. This threatens to further escalate the soaring levels of COVID-19 infections.

The return to school is a criminal policy exposing children, teachers, families and neighbourhoods open to serious illness and death. It has nothing to do with concern for children. Teachers and children are being sent into unsafe environments that will become breeding grounds for COVID-19. It is the other side of the coin of the back-to-work policy of the ruling class. The back-to-school entails sending children to be kept in confined spaces so millions of parents can be sent to work in nonessential industries.

A hasty reopening of schools has been singled out as a key factor behind the catastrophic resurgence in South Africa and Israel. Israel had 6,800 students of various ages and teachers in quarantine in early July, just two weeks after the centres reopened. South Africa has closed its schools for four weeks to limit the spread, but will once again reopen.

In Spain, testament to the criminality of this policy is the fact that they have yet to plan the reopening of schools. Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced in parliament that he would call a conference with all the regional premiers at the end of August to finalise the “back to school.”

He said, “We have to meet at the end of August to prepare or finalize, rather, the return to school of our sons and our daughters, I think that is also very important.” Education Minister Isabel Celáa put the whole responsibility on the regions, stating that they “must provide the measures and establish a provision of the spaces that allow the distances to be observed.”

At this stage, the only guidance the government has given for the reopening of schools this September was posted in June. The guidance even goes against the general COVID-19 precautions. Social distancing requirements have been reduced from 2 metres to 1.5 metres, while those aged 10 and younger will not be required to social distance or wear a mask in school. Older children will only need to wear masks when the 1.5-meter distance cannot be maintained.

Recommended class capacity has been set at 15, but could be a maximum as 20. However, due to the EU-backed austerity policies implemented by successive right-wing and Socialist Party-led governments, average class sizes are 25 in primary and 35 in secondary education in Spain.

Educators are also expected to use available areas throughout the school area to ensure the latest safety guidelines can be met, including cafeterias and gyms. Classes will supposedly be aired out after each use and windows in classrooms will need to remain open as long as possible throughout the day, even amid cold weather.

Directors of each school will also nominate one staff person responsible to establish a health protocol for each centre. How teaching staff without medical qualifications will be able to differentiate COVID symptoms from others like the flu is also unclear.

The recklessness reopening of schools is provoking growing opposition amongst parents, educators and working people.

Raimundo de los Reyes, director of a Murcian institute and president of Fedadi, the largest association of directors of secondary schools in Spain, told eldiario.es: “They tell us that there should be no meetings of more than 15 people, but they plan a return to class with 35 students in 50 square metres.”

In Galicia, protests have been taking place since last Wednesday, when hundreds of teachers surrounded the regional Education Ministry in a human chain.

In Andalusia, 150 centres have sent a letter to the Ministry of Education rejecting instructions that they write a protocol explaining that they cannot open their doors under current conditions and with the current means.

In Castilla y León, the León Teaching Personnel Board and the parents federation issued a statement criticising Ministry of Education officials for “washing their hands” of the pandemic and “turning over responsibilities to the schools.”

Teachers must be warned, moreover, that the unions do not oppose reopening the schools. They aim to isolate teachers region by region and channel their opposition into empty protests. Just as the unions were the chief enforcers of the reckless back-to-work policy implemented by the PSOE-Podemos government that provoked the resurgence of the virus, now they are also key implementers of the back-to-school policy.

Education workers and parents must act independently by forming action committees to ensure the safety and well-being of children, staff, families and communities. Rank-and-file action committees must do everything possible to ensure the maximum safety and well-being of children.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality parties throughout Europe propose the following demands as a basis for waging such a fight:

· • Schools must remain closed for all pupils to prevent the spread of COVID-19 until scientific advice establishes that it is safe to reopen. Any teacher refusing to work for health reasons, related to themselves or their family, must be provided a full wage and protected from victimisation.

· • Adequate personal protective equipment must be provided, regular deep cleaning carried out and all activities risk-assessed to protect staff and children from cross infection, and maintain social distancing. Staff must be involved in the drawing up of these measures through elected representatives.

· • All cases of COVID-19 must be immediately reported to staff and families and affected schools closed until testing and contact tracing establishes that it is safe to reopen.

· • Vulnerable staff must have the right not to return to work without any loss of pay or disciplinary action.

· • Casual staff who could not to work and did not receive income during the lockdown must receive full back pay. They must be defended against schools’ demands that they cover for teachers who refuse to work in unsafe conditions.

· • Free, high-quality computer and internet access must be guaranteed to every family, to ensure that accessibility to online learning is not dependent on wealth.

· • A massive increase in government funding must be advanced to overcome the gutting of educational services.

Zimbabwe: Government repression as social unrest mounts

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/zimb-a05.html





By Stephan McCoy
5 August 2020

The ZANU-PF government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa has deployed the police and military to shut down the capital Harare, having ordered people to stay indoors ahead of rallies planned for July 31.

In Bulawayo, the streets were equally deserted with only security forces seen roaming the city centre.

The security forces have arrested dozens of opposition critics, including one involved in organising the rallies, and journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, investigating corruption allegations involving Health Minister Obadiah Moyo. More than a dozen others were forced into hiding.

The pro-imperialist Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-A) and smaller opposition parties had called the rallies opposing the deteriorating economic situation, the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, rampant corruption, and the wave of arrests and abductions over the last few months.

While the main rally could not go ahead, the security forces arrested dozens of people participating in smaller protests, including Fadzayi Mahere, spokeswoman of the MDC-Tsvangirai, and the prominent author Tsitsi Dangarembga, whose new book This Mournable Body has been long-listed for the Booker Prize.

Security forces also kidnapped Tawanda Muchehiwa, a 22-year-old student and nephew of Mduduzi Mathuthu, editor of the newspaper Zim Live, and two other relatives, after a raid by armed men—believed to be Zimbabwe Police—did not find Mathuthu at home.

While Muchehiwa’s relatives were released without charge, Tawanda was later dumped near his home after being severely tortured. Doctors who treated him said they were “alarmed” by the extent of his injuries that included deep cuts and severe kidney damage.

This follows a spate of arrests and kidnappings by plainclothes government thugs that began in May, giving the lie to the claims that Mnangagwa, one of long-time ruler Robert Mugabe’s closest political associates who succeeded him in 2017 after a military coup, would bring an end to tyranny, corruption, and social misery.

The Mnangagwa government’s assault on democratic rights has given rise to mounting opposition, to the extent that it has been necessary to deny that the military that brought it to power was plotting a second coup. Last month, security forces in the Joint Operations Command (JOC) made up of heads and senior personnel of the military, police, and secret services sidelined the government and shut down mobile money transactions and the stock exchange, amid charges they were being used for black-market activities, collapsing an already falling currency.

Mnangagwa, speaking on television Tuesday, threatened opposition figures and human rights campaigners, condemning the planned protests as the “machinations of destructive, terrorist opposition groupings.” He pledged that “security services will continue to carry out their duties with appropriate astuteness and resolve.”

Officials from his ruling ZANU-PF party, which has encouraged greater investment and trade with China, have portrayed the planned rallies as a Western plot, calling US Ambassador Brian Nichols a “thug” and suggesting that he might be expelled for criticising the government’s response to the protests.

With the ongoing collapse of the currency against the dollar, foreign currency reserves are vanishing. According to Bloomberg, following the removal of Old Mutual from the stock market, which paved the way for the reopening of the stock market on August 3, the main index tumbled 4.5 percent.

The annual rate of inflation has shot up to 800 percent, devaluing already paltry wages and making basic commodities unaffordable. The price of fuel has gone up 150 percent and there are severe shortages of basic household goods. Some 90 percent of Zimbabweans work as day labourers in the informal sector that has been devastated by the lockdowns and curfews.

The economic situation has been exacerbated by US and European Union sanctions, maintained since 2003. The sanctions and restrictions target specific individuals, including Mnangagwa, and some 56 companies and organisations, making it difficult for Zimbabwe to obtain loans.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the economy will contract by 10 percent this year. The World Food Programme (WFP) is appealing to donors for $250 million to prevent 8.6 million people—a staggering 60 percent of the population—becoming food-insecure this year due to the pandemic, drought, and the dire economic situation.

WFP Regional Director for Southern Africa Lola Castro said, “Many Zimbabwean families are suffering the ravages of acute hunger, and their plight will get worse before it gets better.”

So far, the country has recorded more than 4,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 80 deaths, both likely to be a vast underestimate. Parliament was forced to suspend sessions recently after two legislators and a driver and journalist travelling with them tested positive.

A leading secret service official and the agriculture minister, former Air Marshal Perrance Shiri, have both died of the coronavirus. Shiri played a major role in the planning of the Gukurahundi massacres, carried out by Mugabe’s ZANU forces against his ZAPU opponents in Matabeleland, that killed 20,000, commanding the Fifth Brigade responsible for widespread torture and mass executions.

Health care conditions are atrocious. There are serious shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect medical staff, and a lack of key drugs and blood supplies.

Last week, pictures released by Dr. Peter Magombeyi, the former head of the doctors’ union, showing the bodies of seven stillborn babies at Harare Central Hospital caused widespread horror. He tweeted, “We have been robbed of our future, including our unborn babies. Please stop the looting.” One doctor told the BBC the deaths were just “the tip of the iceberg.”

Mnangagwa was forced to sack Health Minister Obadiah Moyo following his involvement in a corruption scandal—revealed by detained journalist Hopewell Chi’nono. Moyo had awarded a $60 million contract to an unknown company that had overcharged the government for COVID-19 medical supplies. Moyo is to be replaced with a military doctor, Air Commodore Jasper Chimedza.

At Mpilo Central Hospital in Bulawayo, a further 32 nurses have tested positive for COVID-19, while across the city 115 nurses have tested positive, as have 300 nurses nationwide. Nurses have been on strike for 46 days, demanding PPE and calling for their salaries to be paid in US dollars. They have vowed to continue their strike until their demands are met.

While the Health Services Board maintains that the nurses’ month-long strike is illegal, the government is trying to recruit more nurses to break the strike. Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said, “More nurses will be urgently recruited from the available pool of qualified nurses, while processes to resolve those on industrial action continue.”

Doctors have also downed tools, demanding their salaries be paid in US dollars, which the government derided as “insane.” Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights Secretary-General Norman Matara responded with fury to Mnangagwa’s demand that they return to work and sacrifice their lives for the “national interest.” He said, “Health workers cannot work on empty stomachs and without protective clothing simply because they save lives.”

The ZANU-PF government has caused outrage for signing an agreement with white farmers, whose lands were seized by Mugabe’s government, awarding them $3.5 billion in compensation even as the health care system is in complete collapse with nurses being paid as little as US$30 a month and the country is in the midst of a dire economic crisis. Mnangagwa said of the signing, “This momentous event is historic. It brings closure and a new beginning.”

Indian PM Modi to lay cornerstone for Hindu temple at site of razed Ayodhya mosque

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/ayod-a05.html





By Deepal Jayasekera
5 August 2020

In a nationally-televised event, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to lay the foundation stone today for a temple devoted to the mythical Hindu god Ram on the site of the former Babri Masjid (mosque) in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.

The razing of the 475-year-old Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 was an historic crime, perpetrated by Hindu fanatics incited and organised by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and allied Hindu supremacist groups. It precipitated weeks of communal violence across much of northern and western India that resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people, most of them poor Muslims.

Today’s ceremony has been timed to coincide with the first anniversary of another monstrous political crime. One year ago today, Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, working in close concert with the high command of the military-security apparatus, carried out a constitutional coup, illegally rewriting India’s constitution by executive fiat to abrogate the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. They then divided Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories, effectively placing the region under permanent central government control.

To suppress mass popular opposition to these dictatorial actions, the Modi government imposed a months-long state-of-siege on the Kashmir Valley, with blanket curfews, mass detentions without charge, and the suspension of cell phone and internet service. Fearing an explosion of popular anger, many of these measures have been re-imposed in the run-up to today’s anniversary.

The building of a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Majid and the assertion of unfettered Indian central government control over the disputed Kashmir region have been central to the communalist agenda of the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, for decades. Modi intends to use the coincidence of the official inauguration of the Ram temple’s construction and the anniversary of Jammu and Kashmir’s “full integration” into the Indian Union to trumpet a supposed new era of Indian “assertion,” and otherwise advance the BJP-RSS agenda to transform India into a Hindu state, where Muslims and other minorities live in sufferance.

The Modi government is ratcheting up communalism in response to its apprehensions that its ruinous response to the COVID-19 pandemic is fueling mass anger and opposition among India’s workers and toilers. The government’s ill-conceived, hastily imposed ten-week COVID-19 lockdown and its subsequent back-to-work drive have produced a health and socio-economic disaster. Tens of millions have lost their jobs and hundreds of millions have seen their meagre incomes slashed.

Meanwhile, the pandemic is surging across India. When Modi’s “unlockdown” officially began on June 8, India had just over 250,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 7,200 deaths. Today, less than two months later, the official cases have almost quadrupled to 1.85 million and the deaths have increased by more than five times to 38,938.

Facing popular anger over the spread of the pandemic and its attempts to “kick start” the economy by implementing a new wave of “pro-investor” measures and by forcing workers back on the job in unsafe conditions, the Modi government is doubling down on its Hindus supremacist agenda. Its aim is to confuse and split the working class, and mobilize its fascistic base to intimidate and threaten its opponents.

Today’s ceremony is the direct outcome of a ruling by India’s Supreme Court last November that validated the Babri Masjid’s destruction, rewarding those who had orchestrated it—in defiance of the Court’s own express orders—with effective sole ownership of the disputed sited. Indeed, the court, in what it provocatively proclaimed an act of “national reconciliation,” officially “ordered” the BJP to oversee the construction of a Ram temple on the ruins of the Babri Masjid.

This shameful ruling underscores the extent to which all the institutions of the still nominally secular Indian state have become infused with Hindu communalism.

No less reactionary and revealing is the response of the BJP’s ostensible establishment political opponents.

The Congress Party, the only all-India rival to the BJP and until 2014 the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of national government, has furiously attacked the Ram Mandir Trust, the body officially charged with the temple’s construction, for not inviting its party leadership for the temple’s bhoomi pujan (ground-breaking) program and turning it into an “exclusive BJP-RSS ceremony.”

One Congress leader after another has accused the BJP of stealing “credit” for the Ram temple, citing their own party’s despicable record of conniving with the Hindu chauvinist campaign to raze the Babri Masjid. Most notoriously, in December 1992 the Narasimha Rao-led national Congress government stood by and allowed the historic Ayodhya mosque to be destroyed, although it was forewarned of the BJP-RSS conspiracy to raze it to the ground.

Senior Congress leader and former External Affairs Minster Salman Khurshid complained, “People from across the political spectrum should have been invited just as a courtesy to Lord Ram.” For her part, Priyanka Gandhi, a senior Congress leader in her own right and the daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughter of Congress Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, declared, “By Lord Ram’s grace, let this ceremony promote national unity, brotherhood, and cultural confluence.”

Kamal Nath, the former Congress Chief Minster in Madhya Pradesh, boosted the BJP-RSS claim that the campaign to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya enjoys mass support. “People of the country were expecting and wishing for this since long,” said Kamal Nath. “The construction of the temple is being carried out with the consent of every Indian.”

Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh was eager to tout Rajiv Gandhi’s support for the Ram temple movement. He tweeted: “The centre of our faith is Lord Ram!. . . That’s why we all wish that a grand temple should be built at the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya. Rajiv Gandhi also wanted the same.”

Continuing in this reactionary obscurantist vein, Singh went on to claim that the reason Home Minister Shah recently tested positive for COIVID-19 is because BJP leaders have defied the warnings of a Hindu fundamentalist priest that August 5 is not an “auspicious day” to inaugurate the Ram temple.

The Congress’ response to today’s vile Hindu supremacist celebration flows from its decades of conniving with the Hindu right and instrumentalization of caste and communal divisions. Renouncing its own democratic program for a united secular India, the Congress of Nehru and M.K. Gandhi implemented, in collaboration with South Asia’s departing British colonial overlords, the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent into a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim Pakistan.

Despite this record, the twin Stalinist parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—have long promoted the big business Congress Party as a “secular bulwark” against the BJP.

In response to today’s inaugural ceremony, the CPM Politburo has issued a statement reiterating its support for the Supreme Court’s reactionary verdict of last November in what it calls the “Ayodhya dispute.” It then goes on to echo the Congress’ complaint that the bhumi pujan ceremony at Ayodhya has been taken over by the BJP, thus implying that if Modi and Shah were not trying to take sole “credit” for the successful campaign to build a Ram temple, there would be nothing objectionable in consecrating and completing the communalist crime of Dec. 6, 1992.

The Stalinists bear central political responsibility for the rise of the BJP and the Hindu right. For decades, they have justified their systematic subordination of the working class to the Congress Party, various reactionary caste-based regional bourgeois parties, and the putrefied state institutions of the “democratic” Indian Republic in the name of “blocking the fascist BJP” from power. From 1989 through 2008, the Stalinists played a pivotal role in the formation of a succession of governments, most of them Congress Party led, that implemented the Indian ruling elite’s neo-liberal “reform” agenda and pursued closer ties with US imperialism. Moreover, in those states where they have formed the government the CPM and CPI have similarly pursued pro-investor polices. This opened the door for the BJP to cynically exploit growing popular anger over mass poverty, ever widening social inequality, and endemic corruption.

There is mass opposition to Modi and the BJP government and to the Indian ruling elite’s class war agenda and incendiary strategic partnership with US imperialism. But this opposition must find a new political road. This requires the mobilization of the working class as an independent political force, in opposition to all the parties of the capitalist establishment, including the Stalinist CPM and CPI, and the fight to rally the rural toilers and all sections of the oppressed behind it in the struggle for a workers and peasant’s government and international socialism.

“A lot of people really don’t think we should be working right now”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/05/fair-a05.html





GM Fairfax worker speaks out on spread of COVID-19
By James Tatsch
5 August 2020

The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with a worker at the General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kansas, about conditions at the facility that are leading to the spread of the deadly COVID-19 disease.

Last week saw the highest number of new recorded cases for the Kansas City metro area since the start of the pandemic. The ever-increasing level of confirmed cases takes place as infection levels are soaring across both Kansas and Missouri, which have been recording record-breaking highs on a near-daily basis.

The GM Fairfax Assembly Plant is a sprawling 4,900,000-square-foot facility located in the Fairfax Industrial District along the Missouri River. Beginning production in 1988, on the grounds of the former Fairfax Airport, the plant now employees 2,385 workers in the production of the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac XT4 models.

Following the two-month shutdown of the auto industry forced by workers through a series of wildcat strikes earlier this year, production at the Fairfax Plant officially resumed on June 1, with the reinstitution of two full-time shifts. A third shift at the plant was previously cut and roughly 1,000 laid off in 2017, with the company’s move encountering no opposition from the United Auto Workers.
Prior to restarting production this summer, GM and the UAW trumpeted safety protocols such as hand washing, sanitizing, temperature screening and physical distancing, claiming they were adequate to protect workers from infection. All of these would-be preventative measures have amounted to little more than empty talk as demonstrated by the expanding outbreaks of infections across the auto industry since its reopening.

Following the June 1 restart of the Fairfax plant, a GM spokesman was forced to release a statement acknowledging that an employee at the plant had tested positive for COVID-19 on June 11. In the statement, GM claimed that the employee was infected outside work, while providing no evidence to support this claim.

“They always say it’s outside of work,” commented Sam, a Fairfax worker, in response to the GM statement (Sam’s real name has not been used as protection against retaliation). Asked if he thought that was the only case at the plant since reopening, he said, “I have a hard time buying that. I’ve heard of a lot more than one person who had COVID.”

The worker continued, “I heard someone had the COVID who works near the main door, the main entrance. Someone who was in the cleaning room. Someone else on the Tech Team, and they’re all over, they go to several areas in the plant throughout the day.” He noted the high volume of workers calling off work every day. “What happens to those that were around that person? If they were exposed why weren’t they quarantined?”

“I think they’re trying to hide as much as they can, and the true impact on the plant. I believe the UAW and GM are in cahoots with each other. There’s no doubt in my mind. Both sides are withholding the truth.”

The cleaning and safety protocols that GM has outlined publicly have largely been ignored inside the plant. “The only thing I know of is that they’re cleaning the bathrooms more frequently. Cleaning ladies wiping down the rails. But that’s about all I see.” He added, “We’re given an additional five minutes to disinfect our work area before the line starts. They give us a spray bottle of something, we don’t know what it is. But now management is starting to complain that it’s damaging the tiles we’re walking on.”

“People are wearing masks, social distancing, but it’s getting worse because you really can’t distance, there’s a lot of jobs side-by-side where it’s impossible to control. People on the line are working two to three feet from each other, you’re right on top of each other sometimes.”

Commenting on the temperature in the plant, he recalled, “Prior to the July shutdown, they did cool some areas down. But since we returned it’s been hot. It was hot enough I was glazing in sweat.” He added, “One of the complaints for me is when you wear safety glasses and the mask, it causes the glasses to fog up, and makes it a lot harder to see. They said to rub some Joy [dish soap] on it, which helped a little bit, but not that much and you end up with soap on your face.”

Another factor he found seriously concerning was the potential for the transmission through the environmental system. “I think no matter what you do, whether manufacturing or in the schools, the heating and ventilation systems are going to spread it. If the virus gets in that system, it’s going to blow it right on you.”



Prior to the pandemic, GM laid off a number of temporary workers before they were to become full-time, Sam said. Such actions render all but meaningless the so-called “pathway” to full-time employment touted by the UAW in the 2019 national contract. “They had a lot of temp workers who were waiting to become permanent, and GM let them all go.” Since then, many of the temps hired to fill in the gaps from absenteeism have quit. “I was told there were about 170 people hired, and after a few days, there were just about 50 people left. It’s very demanding work. The turnaround is huge.”

There is an immense danger that workers may be unknowingly infected on the job and not yet showing symptoms. “A lot of people are very concerned for their families, or their children—afraid of giving it to their grandpas or grandmas, bringing the COVID home and infecting their loved ones.” He added, “We know there is no cure for it, and without a cure, that puts a lot of lives in jeopardy. That’s a lot of lives to put at risk. At what point do lives matter?”

Voicing concerns to management or the UAW or raising safety issues have time and again proved to be a dead end for workers at the plant. The UAW safety reps “don’t do anything,” he said. “They always have some kind of stupid story to help GM out.

“I see retaliation in this plant, I see the union working together with management and people are recognizing that.”

Faced with the intransigent refusal of management and the union to ensure safety, workers at Detroit-area Fiat Chrysler plants and the Ford Dearborn Truck plant have established rank-and-file safety committees independent of the UAW and management to fight for a healthy and safe workplace. These committees have demanded full disclosure of COVID-19 cases; for production to be halted for cleaning when infections occur; and regular, universal testing.

Asked what he thought about workers organizing independently, Sam responded, “We don’t feel like the UAW protects us anymore. We feel like we’re sold out. A lot of people are very angry. The world is changing, and we need to change too.

“We’re starting to break down and get tired of it. It’s just a matter of time before we organize and go after what’s right. That’s where our power is, in numbers.”

For help starting a rank-and-file safety committee at your factory, email the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter at autoworkers@wsws.org.



The author also recommends:

Workers describe unsafe conditions at the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant
[4 August 2020]

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Build rank-and-file safety committees at every workplace to save lives!
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