C.L.R. James on Abolition and the International Proletariat

From its very beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, the Negro struggle for freedom and equality has been an international question. It would seem that the irrationality of the prejudice against Negroes breeds in revolutionary periods a corresponding intensity of loathing for its practitioners among the great masses of the people.

By C. L. R. James, the pioneering Trinidadian socialist historian and writer. 

Originally published in New International, Vol. IX No. 11, December 1943, pp. 338–341.

An indispensable contribution to the understanding of the role of the Negro in American history is a study of the period between 1830 and 1865. In this article we treat the subject up to 1860.  

The basic economic and social antagonisms of the period embraced the whole life of the country and were fairly clear then, far less today. The system of chattel slavery needed territorial expansion because of the soil exhaustion caused by the crude method of slave production. But as the North developed industrially and in population, the South found it ever more difficult to maintain its political domination. Finally the struggle centered, economically, around who would control the newly-opened territories, and, politically, around the regional domination of Congress.  

The regime in the South was by 1830 a dreadful tyranny, in startling contrast to the vigorous political democracy of the North. The need to suppress the slaves, who rebelled continuously, necessitated a regime of naked violence. The need to suppress the hostility to slavery of the free laborers and independent farmers led to the gradual abrogation of all popular democracy in the Southern states.  Previous to 1830 there had been anti-slavery societies in the South itself, but by 1830 cotton was king and, instead of arguing for and against slavery, the Southern oligarchy gradually developed a theory of Negro slavery as a heaven-ordained dispensation. Of necessity they sought to impose it upon the whole country. Such a propaganda can be opposed only actively. Not to oppose it is to succumb to it.  

The impending revolution is to be led by the Northern bourgeoisie. But that is the last thing that it wants to do. In 1776 the revolutionary struggle was between the rising American bourgeoisie and a foreign enemy. The bourgeoisie needs little prodding to undertake its task. By 1830 the conflict was between two sections of the ruling class based on different economies but tied together by powerful economic links. Therefore, one outstanding feature of the new conflict is the determination of the Northern bourgeois to make every concession and every sacrifice to prevent the precipitation of the break. They will not lead. They will have to be forced to lead. The first standard-bearers of the struggle are the petty bourgeois democracy, organized in the Abolition movement, stimulated and sustained by the independent mass action of the Negro people.

The Petty Bourgeoisie and the Negroes

The petty bourgeoisie, having the rights of universal suffrage, had entered upon a period of agitation which has been well summarized in the title of a modern volume, The Rise of the Common Man. Lacking the economic demands of an organized proletariat, this agitation found vent in ever-increasing waves of humanitarianism and enthusiasm for social progress. Women’s rights, temperance reform, public education, abolition of privilege, universal peace, the brotherhood of man — middle class intellectual America was in ferment. And to this pulsating movement the rebellious Negroes brought the struggle for the abolition of slavery. The agreement among historians is general that all these diverse trends were finally dominated by the Abolition movement.  

The Negro struggle for Abolition follows a pattern not dissimilar to the movement for emancipation before 1776. There are, first of all, the same continuous revolts among the masses of the slaves themselves which marked the pre-1776 period. In the decade 1820–30 devoted white men begin the publication of periodicals which preach Abolition on principles grounds. The chief of these was Benjamin Lundy. No sooner does Lundy give the signal than the free Negroes take it up and become the driving force of the movement.  

Garrison, directly inspired by Lundy, began early, in 1831. But before that, Negro Abolitionists, not only in speeches and meetings, but in books, periodicals and pamphlets, posed the question squarely before the crusading petty bourgeois democracy. Freedom’s Journal was published in New York City by two Negroes as early as 1827. David Walker’s Appeal, published in 1829, created a sensation. It was a direct call for revolution. Free Negroes organized conventions and mass meetings. And before the movement was taken over by such figures as Wendell Phillips and other distinguished men of the time, the free Negroes remained the great supporters of the Liberator. In 1831, out of four hundred and fifty subscribers, fully four hundred were Negroes. In 1834, of 2,300 subscribers, nearly two thousand were Negroes.  

After the free Negroes came the masses. When Garrison published the Liberator in 1831, the new Abolition movement, as contrasted with the old anti-slavery societies, amount to little. Within less than a year its fame was nation-wide. What caused this was the rebellion of Nat Turner in 1831. It is useless to speculate whether Walker’s Appeal or the Liberator directly inspired Turner. What is decisive is the effect on the Abolition movement of this, the greatest Negro revolt in the history of the United States.  

The Turner revolt not only lifted Garrison’s paper and stimulated the organization of his movement. The South responded with such terror that the Negroes, discouraged by the failures of the revolts between 1800 and 1831, began to take another road to freedom. Slowly but steadily grew that steady flight out of the South which lasted for thirty years and injected the struggle against slavery into the North itself. As early as 1827 the escaping Negroes had already achieved some rudimentary form of organization. It was during the eventful year of 1831 that the Underground Railroad took more definite shape. In time thousands of whites and Negroes risked life, liberty and often wealth to assist the rebel slaves.  

The great body of escaping slaves, of course, had no political aims in mind. For years rebellious slaves had formed bands of maroons, living a free life in inaccessible spots. Thousands had joined the Indians. Now they sought freedom in civilization and they set forth on that heroic journey of many hundreds of miles, forced to travel mainly by night, through forest and across rivers, often with nothing to guide them but the North Star and the fact that moss grows only on the north side of trees.  

The industrial bourgeoisie in America wanted none of this Abolition. It organized mobs who were not unwilling to break up meetings and to lynch agitators. Many ordinary citizens were hostile to Negroes because of competition in industry and the traditional racial prejudice. At one period in the early ’forties, the Abolition movement slumped and Negro historians assert that it was the escaping slaves who kept the problem alive and revived the movement. But we do not need the deductions of modern historians. What the escaping slaves meant to the movement leaps to the eye of the Marxian investigator from every contemporary page.  

By degrees the leadership of the movement passed into the hands of and was supported by some of the most gifted white poets, writers and publicists of their time. The free Negroes, in collaboration with the Abolitionist movement, sometimes by themselves, carried on a powerful agitation. But a very special role was played by the ablest and most energetic of the escaping slaves themselves. These men could write and speak from first-hand experience. They were a dramatic witness of the falseness and iniquity of the whole thesis upon which the Southern case was built. Greatest of them all and one of the greatest men of his time was Frederick Douglass, a figure today strangely neglected. In profundity and brilliance, Douglass, the orator, was not the equal of Wendell Phillips. As a political agitator, he did not attain the fire and scope of Garrison nor the latter’s dynamic power in organization. But he was their equal in courage, devotion and tenacity of purpose, and in sheer political skill and sagacity he was definitely their superior. He broke with them early, evolving his own policy of maintenance of the Union as opposed to their policy of disunion. He advocated the use of all means, including the political, to attain Abolition. It was only after many years that the Garrisonians followed his example. Greatest of the activists was another escaped slave, Harriet Tubman. Very close to these ex-slaves was John Brown. These three were the nearest to what we would call today the revolutionary propagandists and agitators.  

They drove the South to infuriation. Toward the middle of the century the Abolitionists and the escaping slaves had created a situation that made compromise impossible.  

The Anti-Fugitive Slave Law

In 1848 there occurred an extraordinary incident, a harbinger of the great international movement which was to play so great a part in the Civil War itself. When the news of the 1848 revolution in France reached Washington, the capital, from the White House to the crowds in the streets, broke out into illuminations and uproarious celebration. Three nights afterward, seventy-eight slaves, taking this enthusiasm for liberty literally, boarded a ship that was waiting for them and tried to escape down the Potomac.

They were recaptured and were led back to jail, with a crowd of several thousands waiting in the streets to see them, and members of Congress in the House almost coming to blows in the excitement. The patience of the South and of the Northern bourgeoisie was becoming exhausted. Two years later, the ruling classes, South and North, tried one more compromise. One of the elements of this compromise was a strong Anti-Fugitive Slave Law. The Southerners were determine to stop this continual drain upon their property and the continuous excitation of the North by fugitive slaves.  

It was the impossibility of enforcing the Anti-Fugitive Slave Law which wrecked the scheme. Not only did the slaves continue to leave. Many insurrectionary tremors shook the Southern structure in 1850 and again in 1854. The South now feared a genuine slave insurrection. They had either to secede or force their political demands upon the federal government.

The Northern bourgeoisie was willing to discipline the petty bourgeois democracy. But before long, in addition to their humanitarian drive, the petty bourgeois democrats began to understand that not only the liberty of the slaves but their own precious democratic liberties were at stake. To break the desire of the slaves to escape, and to stifle the nation-wide agitation, the South tried to impose restrictions upon public meetings in the North and upon the use of the mails. They demanded the right to use the civil authorities of the North to capture escaping slaves. Under their pressure, Congress even reached so far as to side-track the right of petition. The Declaration of Independence, when presented as a petition in favor of Abolition, was laid upon the table. Negroes who had lived peaceably in the North for years were now threatened, and thousands fled to Canada. Douglass and Harriet Tubman, people of nation-wide fame (Douglass was an international figure) were in danger. There was no settling this question at all. The petty bourgeois democrats defied the South. The escaping slaves continued to come. There were arrests and there were spectacular rescues by pro-Abolition crowds. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery crowds fought in the streets and with the Northern police. Scarcely a month passed but some escaping slave or ex-slave, avoiding arrest, created a local and sometimes a national agitation.  

Slaves on ships revolted against slave-traders and took their ships into port, creating international incidents. Congress was powerless. Ten Northern states legalized their rebelliousness by passing Personal Liberty Laws which protected state officers from arresting fugitive slaves, gave arrested Negroes the right of habeas corpus and of trial by jury, and prohibited the use of the jails for runaway Negroes. Long before the basic forces of the nation moved into action for the inevitable show-down the petty bourgeois democrats and revolting slaves had plowed up the ground and made the nation irrevocably conscious of the great issues at stake.

The Free Farmers and the Proletariat

Yet neither Negroes nor petty bourgeois democracy were the main force of the second American revolution, and a more extended treatment of American history would make that abundantly clear if that were needed by any serious intelligence. The great battle was over the control of the public doman! Who was to get the land — free farmers or slave-owners? The Republican Party, as Commons has said, was not an anti-slavery party. It was a Homestead party. The bloody struggle over Kansas accelerated the strictly political development. Yet it was out of the Abolition movement that flowered the broader political organizations of the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party, which in the middle of the decade finally coalesced into the Republican Party.  

It was Marx who pointed out very early (The Civil War in the United States, p. 226. Letter to Engels, July 1, 1861) that what finally broke down the bourgeois timidity was the great development of the population of free farmers in the Northwest Territory in the decade 1850–60. These free farmers were not prepared to stand any nonsense from the South because they were not going to have the mouth of the Mississippi in the hands of any hostile power. By 1860 the great forces which were finally allied were the democratic petty bourgeoisie, the free farmers in the Northwest, and certain sections of the proletariat. These were the classes that, contrary to 1776, compelled the unwilling bourgeois to lead them. They were the basic forces in the period which led to the revolution. They had to come into action before the battle could be joined. They were the backbone of the struggle.  

In all this agitation the proletariat did not play a very prominent role. In New England the working masses were staunch supporters of the movement and the writer has little doubt that when the proletariat comes into its own, further research will reveal, as it always does, that the workers played a greater role than is accredited to them. Yet the old question of unemployment, rivalry between the Negroes in the North and the Irish, the latest of the immigrant groups, disrupted one wing of the proletariat. Furthermore, organized labor, while endorsing the Abolitionist movement, was often in conflict with Garrison, who, like Wilberforce in England, was no lover of the labor movement. Organized labor insisted that there was wage slavery as well as Negro slavery, and at times was apt to treat both of them as being on the same level — a monumental and crippling error.  

Nevertheless, on the whole, the evidence seems to point to the fact that in many areas the organized proletarian movement, though not in the vanguard, supported the movement for Abolition. Finally, we must guard against one illusion. The Abolition movement dominated the political consciousness of the time. Most Northerners were in sympathy. But few wanted war or a revolution. When people want a revolution, they make one. They usually want anything else except a revolution. It was only when the war began that the abolitionists reaped their full reward. Despite all this Abolition sentiment in the North, and particularly in the Northwest areas, the masses of the people on the whole were not anxious to fraternize with the free Negroes, and over large areas there was distinct hostility. But the free Negroes in the North never allowed this to demoralize them, and the masses of the revolting slaves kept on coming. Between 1830 and 186o, sixty to a hundred thousand slaves came to the North. When they could find no welcome or resting place in the North, some of them went on to Canada. But they never ceased to come. With the Civil War they will come in tens and then in hundreds of thousands.

Abolition and the International Proletariat

From its very beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, the Negro struggle for freedom and equality has been an international question. More than that, it seems to be able to exercise an effect, out of all proportion to reasonable expectation, upon people not directly connected with it. In this respect, the Abolition movement in America has curious affinities with the Abolition movement a generation earlier in Britain.  

In Britain, before the emancipation in 1832, the industrial bourgeoisie was actively in favor of abolition. It was industrially more mature than the American bourgeoisie in 1850; the West Indian planters were weak, and the slaves were thousands of miles away. But there, too, the earlier Abolition movement assumed a magnitude and importance out of all proportion to the direct interests of the masses who supported it. Earlier, during the French Revolution, the mass revolts of the Negroes brought home to the French people the reality of the conditions which had existed for over a hundred and fifty years. A kind of collective “madness” on the Negro question seemed to seize the population all over France, and no aristocrats were so much hated as the “aristocrats of the skin.”  

The Abolitionist movement in America found not only a ready audience at home but an overwhelming welcome abroad. Not only did Garrison, Wendell Phillips and others lecture in Britain. Frederick Douglass and other Negro Abolitionists traveled over Europe and enrolled many hundreds of thousands in Abolitionist societies. One inspired Negro won seventy thousand signed adherents to the cause in Germany alone. In the decade preceding the Civil War, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was read by millions in Britain and on the continent, and even as far afield as Italy. And masses of workers and radicals in France, Spain and Germany took an active interest in the question. Their sentiments will bear wonderful fruit during the Civil War itself.

It is not enough to say merely that these workers loved the great American Republic and looked forward to the possibility of emigrating there themselves one day. There are aspects to this question which would repay modern investigation and analysis by Marxists. Beard, who has some insight into social movements in America, is baffled by certain aspects of the Abolition movement. [1] Thoroughly superficial are the self-satisfied pratings of English historians about the “idealism” of the English as an explanation of the equally baffling Abolition movement in Britain. It would seem that the irrationality of the prejudice against Negroes breeds in revolutionary periods a corresponding intensity of loathing for its practitioners among the great masses of the people. [2]  

“The Signal Has Now Been Given”

The slaves played their part to the end. After Lincoln’s election and the violent reaction of the South, the North, not for the first time, drew back from Civil War. Congress and the political leaders frantically sought compromise. Frederick Douglass in his autobiography gives an account of the shameful attempts on the part of the North to appease the South. Most of the Northern Legislatures repealed their Personal Liberty Laws. And Douglass concludes his bitter chapter by saying:

“Those who may wish to see to what depths of humility and self-abasement a noble people can be brought under the sentiment of fear, will find no chapter of history more instructive than that which treats of the events in official circles in Washington during the space between the months of November, 1859, and March, 1860.” (Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Pathway Press, 1941, pp. 362–366.)  

For a long time even Lincoln’s stand was doubtful. On December 20, 1860, the very day on which South Carolina seceded, Lincoln made a statement which seemed to exclude compromise. However, in a series of speeches which he delivered on his eleven-day journey to Washington, he confused the nation and demoralized his supporters. Even after the inaugural, on March 4, the North as a whole did not know what to expect from him. Marx, as we have seen, had no doubt that the decisive influence was played by the North-west farmers, who supplied sixty-six votes or 36.6 per cent of the votes in the college which elected Lincoln.  

But there was refusal to compromise from the South also. Says Douglass:

“Happily for the cause of human freedom, and for the final unity of the American nation, the South was mad and would listen to no concessions. It would neither accept the terms offered, nor offer others to be accepted.”  

Why wouldn’t they? One reason we can now give with confidence. Wherever the masses moved, there Marx and Engels had their eyes glued like hawks and pens quick to record. On January 11, 1860, in the midst of the critical period described by Douglass, Marx wrote to Engels:

“In my opinion, the biggest things that are happening in the world today are, on the one hand, the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown, and, on the other, the movement of the serfs in Russia ... I have just seen in the Tribune there has been a fresh rising of slaves in Missouri, naturally suppressed. But the signal has now been given.”  

Fifteen days later, Engels replied:

“Your opinion of the significance of the slave movement in America and Russia is now confirmed. The Harper’s Ferry affair with its aftermath in Missouri bears its fruits ... the planters have hurried their cotton on to the ports in order to guard against any probable consequence arising out of the Harper’s Ferry affair.”  

A year later Engels writes to Marx:  

“Things in North America are also becoming exciting. Matters must be going very badly for them with the slaves if the Southerners dare to play so risky a game.”  

Eighty years after Marx, a modern student has given details which testify to that unfailing insight into the fundamental processes of historical development, so characteristic of our great predecessors. In Arkansas, in Mississippi, in Virginia, in Kentucky, in Illinois, in Texas, in Alabama, in Northwest Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina – rebellion and conspiracy swept the South between 1859 and 1860. Writes a contemporary after the John Brown raid:  

“A most terrible panic, in the meantime, seizes not only the village, the vicinity and all parts of the state, but every slave state in the Union ... rumors of insurrection, apprehensions of invasions, whether well founded or ill founded, alter not the proof of the inherent and incurable weakness and insecurity of society, organized upon a slave-holding basis” (Ibid., p. 352).  

The struggle of the Negro masses derives its peculiar intensity from the simple fact that what they are struggling for is not abstract but is always perfectly visible around them. In their instinctive revolutionary efforts for freedom, the escaping slaves had helped powerfully to begin and now those who remained behind had helped powerfully to conclude, the self-destructive course of the slave power.

Footnotes

1. Rise of American Civilization (p. 898): “The sources of this remarkable movement are difficult to discover.” Much the same can be said of the movement in Britain, which embraced literally millions of people.  

2. It is something for revolutionists to observe in the past and to count on in the future. Already in England, a country where race prejudice is still very strong, the presence of American Negro soldiers, the prejudice against them of white American soldiers, and the reports of Negro upheaval in America have awakened a strong interest among the English masses.

FROM VERSO BLOG

HE WAS MY FAVORITE LENINIST, 

FORMER SECRETARY TO TROTSKY

DURING THE FOUNDATIONAL YEARS OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL 

WITH RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA CREATED A THEORY OF STATE CAPITALISM TO EXPLAIN THE STALINIST SOVIET UNION POLITICAL ECONOMY PRIOR TO AND AFTER WWII 

I HEARD HIM SPEAK AT THE U OF ALBERTA THREE TIMES

DURING THE SEVENTIES.

#WW3.0 
TWO NUCLEAR IMPERIALIST POWERS 
CHINA AND INDIA 
USE IRON RODS WITH SPIKES TO BATTLE IN THE HIMALAYAS OVER A BORDER DISPUTE 

BARBARISM NOT SOCIALISM 


China claims valley where Indian, Chinese soldiers brawled 

EMILY SCHMALL Associated Press•June 19, 2020

India Tibet China Protest
Exile Tibetans and local Indians participate in a protest against the Chinese government in Dharmsala, India, Friday, June 19, 2020. India said Thursday it was using diplomatic channels with China to de-escalate a military standoff in a remote Himalayan border region where 20 Indian soldiers were killed this week. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

NEW DELHI (AP) — China said the Galwan Valley high up in the Himalayan border region where Chinese and Indian troops engaged in a deadly brawl this week falls entirely within China, boldly renewing claims on the disputed area as the Asian giants continued using military and diplomatic channels to try to reduce tensions on Saturday.

The confrontation in the Galwan Valley, part of the disputed Ladakh region along the Himalayan frontier, was the deadliest between the two countries in 45 years. India blames China for instigating the fight by developing infrastructure in the valley, which it said was a breach of the agreement of what area remained in dispute.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a statement Friday that “the Galwan Valley is located on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control in the west section of the China-India boundary.”

He blamed incursions by Indian troops in the area from early May for a midnight clash on Monday that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. China has not said whether it suffered any casualties.

Soldiers brawled with clubs, rocks and their fists in the thin air at 4,270 meters (14,000 feet) above sea level, but no shots were fired, Indian officials have said. The soldiers carry firearms but are not allowed to use them under a previous agreement in the border dispute.

Indian security officials have said the fatalities were caused by severe injuries and exposure to subfreezing temperatures.

The valley falls within a remote stretch of the 3,380-kilometer (2,100-mile) Line of Actual Control — the border established following a war between India and China in 1962 that resulted in an uneasy truce.

Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava repeated on Saturday that China's claims to the valley were “exaggerated and untenable.”

“They are not in accordance with China’s own position in the past. Indian troops are fully familiar with the alignment of the (Line of Actual Control) in all sectors of the India-China border areas, including in the Galwan Valley. They abide by it scrupulously here, as they do elsewhere,” Srivastava said in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a meeting with political opposition leaders on Friday that no one "has intruded into our territory, nor taken over any post.”

Modi said India was “hurt and angry” about the deaths of its troops. He said India wanted peace and friendship, but had the "capability that no one can even dare look toward an inch of our land.”

Also on Friday, Zhao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said that China was not holding any Indian soldiers, without addressing media reports that China had released 10 of them late Thursday.

“My information is that at present there are no Indian personnel detained on the Chinese side,” Zhao said, according to an English version of his daily briefing posted on the ministry's website.

Indian officials have denied that any soldiers were in Chinese custody.

An Indian army convoy moves on the Srinagar- Ladakh highway at Gagangeer, northeast of Srinagar, India, Wednesday, June 17, 2020. Indian security forces said neither side fired any shots in the clash in the Ladakh region Monday that was the first deadly confrontation on the disputed border between India and China since 1975. China said Wednesday that it is seeking a peaceful resolution to its Himalayan border dispute with India following the death of 20 Indian soldiers in the most violent confrontation in decades. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

China India
This June 18, 2020, satellite photo released by Planet Labs, shows the reported site of a fatal clash between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan River Valley in the Ladakh region near the Line of Actual Control, BKalong their disputed border high in the Himalayas. (Planet Labs via AP)

India Tibet China Protest
Exile Tibetans and local Indians participate in a protest against the Chinese government, in Dharmsala, India, Friday, June 19, 2020. India said Thursday it was using diplomatic channels with China to de-escalate a military standoff in a remote Himalayan border region where 20 Indian soldiers were killed this week. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

India Tibet China Protest
Exile Tibetans and local Indians burn a Chinese national flag during a protest in Dharmsala, India, Friday, June 19, 2020. India said Thursday it was using diplomatic channels with China to de-escalate a military standoff in a remote Himalayan border region where 20 Indian soldiers were killed this week. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

India, China accuse each other of violating de facto border 

Reuters•June 20, 2020

Border Clash Between India and China Turns Deadly

NEW DELHI/BEIJING (Reuters) - India and China on Saturday each traded accusations that the other had violated their shared de facto border, an area that this week became the site of the deadliest clash in half a century between the two nuclear-armed giants.

A day after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to downplay Monday's clash, which killed at least 20 Indian soldiers and injured more than 70, his government blamed the Chinese side for seeking to erect structures "just across the Line of Actual Control," as the demarcation is known, and refusing India's request to stop.

India will not allow any unilateral changes to the disputed border, it said in a statement.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused Indian troops of a "deliberate provocation" in the tense Himalayan area.

In a series of tweets, Zhao said the Galwan Valley was on the Chinese side of the line and that Indians had since April unilaterally built roads, bridges and other facilities in the region.

The Indian troops "crossed the Line of Actual Control" and attacked Chinese officers and soldiers who were there for negotiation, triggering "fierce physical conflicts", Zhao said. China has not released any casualty figures for its troops.

Modi on Friday appeared to downplay the clash with Chinese troops, saying, "Nobody has intruded into our border, neither is anybody there now, nor have our posts been captured."

Troops remain locked in a face-off at several locations along the poorly defined Line of Action Control, despite talks between local commanders to de-escalate.

(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed in New Delhi and Tom Daly in Beijing; Editing by William Mallard)

POST MODERN PRIMITIVES 


Galwan Valley: Image appears to show nail-studded rods used in India-China brawl 

BBC•June 18, 2020


An image has emerged showing a crude weapon purportedly used by Chinese forces in the fatal brawl along China's disputed border with India on Monday.

The fight in the Galwan Valley left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead and raised tensions between the two powers.

China did not acknowledge any casualties among its forces. Both sides accused the other of an incursion.

The border between the two nations in the region is poorly demarcated and can shift with topographical changes.

The image that emerged on Thursday showed crude weapons that appeared to be made from iron rods studded with nails. It was passed to the BBC by a senior Indian military official on the India-China border, who said the weapons had been used by the Chinese.

 An image passed to the BBC by an Indian military official shows crude weapons purportedly used in the fight

Defence analyst Ajai Shukla, who first tweeted the image, described the use of such weapons as "barbarism". The absence of firearms in the clash dates back to a 1996 agreement between the two sides that guns and explosives be prohibited along the disputed stretch of the border, to deter escalation.

The image was widely shared on Twitter in India, prompting outrage from many social media users. Neither Chinese or Indian officials commented on it.

Media reports said troops clashed on ridges at a height of nearly 4,267m (14,000 ft) along a steep terrain, with some soldiers falling into the fast-flowing Galwan river in sub-zero temperatures.


First deaths in four decades

The two sides have brawled along the disputed border in recent weeks, but Monday's clash was the first to lead to fatalities in at least 45 years. Unconfirmed reports in Indian media said at least 40 Chinese soldiers died, but China is yet to issue any information about casualties.Indian officials said all of their soldiers involved in the clash have been accounted for, following reports some were missing.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said India had crossed the border twice, "provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides", the AFP news agency reported.

China on Wednesday claimed "sovereignty over the Galwan Valley region" - a claim rebutted by India as "exaggerated and untenable".

 
Indian army trucks move along a highway leading to Ladakh on Wednesday

Members of the public in both nations have since staged protests over the clashes in the disputed Himalayan border area, while officials have spoken cautiously and moved towards a diplomatic resolution.

Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said the foreign ministers of both countries had shared a phone conversation on Wednesday on the developments and "agreed that the overall situation should be handled in a responsible manner".

"Making exaggerated and untenable claims is contrary to this understanding," Mr Srivastava was quoted as saying by Press Trust of India news agency.

An Indian government statement after Subrahmanyam Jaishankar's conversation with China's Wang Yi said Chinese forces tried to erect a structure on the Indian side of the de facto border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The statement accused the Chinese of a "premeditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties" and urged China to "take corrective steps".

Meanwhile, a Chinese statement quoted Mr Wang as saying: "China again expresses strong protest to India and demands the Indian side launches a thorough investigation... and stop all provocative actions to ensure the same things do not happen again."

 
Kashmir map

Why were there no guns?

The Galwan river valley in Ladakh, with its harsh climate and high-altitude terrain, lies along the western sector of the LAC and close to Aksai Chin, a disputed area claimed by India but controlled by China.

This is not the first time the two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought without conventional firearms on the border. India and China have a history of face-offs and overlapping territorial claims along the more than 3,440km (2,100 mile), poorly drawn LAC separating the two sides.

The last firing on the border happened in 1975 when four Indian soldiers were killed in a remote pass in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. The clash was variously described by former diplomats as an ambush and an accident. But no bullets have been fired since.

At the root of this is a 1996 bilateral agreement that says "neither side shall open fire... conduct blast operations or hunt with guns or explosives within two kilometres of the Line of Actual Control".

But there have been other tense confrontations along the border in recent weeks. In May Indian and Chinese soldiers exchanged physical blows on the border at Pangong Lake, also in Ladakh, and in the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim hundreds of miles to the east.

India has accused China of sending thousands of troops into Ladakh's Galwan Valley and says China occupies 38,000 sq km (14,700 sq miles) of its territory. Several rounds of talks in the last three decades have failed to resolve the boundary disputes.

Nuclear powers, a disputed border and an uneasy truce: Explaining the India-China conflict 

Saphora Smith and Adela Suliman and Vivi Wu and Ed Flanagan and The Associated Press
NBC News•June 20, 2020

High up in the Himalayas, Indian and Chinese armed forces warily eye each other across a disputed border region that has become the scene of a tense standoff between the two nuclear powers.

The conflict in the remote Galwan Valley that spans their shared border sparked into life Monday with the killing of 20 Indian soldiers, the first reported deaths in 45 years. China has not disclosed whether its forces suffered any casualties, according to a report in its state-run newspaper, the Global Times.

The deaths have drawn the world’s gaze to a region that the two most populous countries have been contesting for decades. The implications go far beyond the lonely snowcapped mountains of this geopolitically complex region.

 
Burning posters of Chinese President Xi Jinping (Diptendu Dutta / AFP - Getty Images)

Chinese and Indian forces clashed along the 2,100-mile-long Line of Actual Control, a demarcation line established after a war between the two nations in 1962 that resulted in an uneasy truce.

No shots are reported to have been fired since 1975, according to the Indian press, but troops occasionally engage in hand-to-hand scuffles and throwing rocks.
So what happened this week?

The details of exactly what happened Monday remain in short supply.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a phone call with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, on Wednesday that Indian troops had crossed the line of control to “deliberately provoke and even violently attack” Chinese officers and soldiers, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

Meanwhile, on the same call Jaishankar accused China of seeking to erect “a structure” in the Galwan Valley on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control, the de facto border.

“The Chinese side took premeditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement. “It reflected an intent to change the facts on ground in violation of all our agreements to not change the status quo.”

Why is this happening now?

Thousands of troops have been camped either side of the Galwan Valley, in the mountainous region of Ladakh, for weeks.

The tense standoff started in early May, when Indian officials said Chinese soldiers crossed the boundary in Ladakh at three different points, erecting tents and guard posts and ignoring verbal warnings to leave, according to The Associated Press. That triggered shouting matches, stone-throwing and even fistfights between the two sides, much of it replayed on television news channels and social media, the news agency reported.
What are the possible motivations behind the clashes?

Under India’s Hindu-nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, the country wants to be seen as strong, according to Gareth Price, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London.

“The one country that doesn’t respect India to the degree India would like is China,” he said. “India wants to be seen as an equal to China and talks about a multipolar Asia, but then it sees China as wanting dominance in Asia.”

However, Price said he thought it was unlikely that India would want to provoke China potentially to war particularly in the midst of a pandemic.

“It also knows China is bigger,” he said.

China on the other hand may have possible reasons to provoke a confrontation with India, Price said, although he cautioned that an overriding motivation there also remained unclear.

Among the reasons raised by analysts include China’s objection to India’s construction of a road through the Galwan Valley connecting the region to an airstrip, New Delhi’s increasing close alliance with Washington, and Beijing’s support for Pakistan in its dispute with India over the Kashmir region.

 
Image: An Indian army convoy (Mukhtar Khan / AP)

Others also pointed to China’s increasing assertiveness in the region as a potential broader explanation.

Walter Ladwig III, a senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, pointed to its more forceful conduct in the South China Sea and Hong Kong in recent months.

“There definitely is a clear sense that China is much more forceful at the moment than it has been in the past,” he said.

“They’re throwing their weight around a lot more in all theaters, both domestically and in terms of their foreign relations,” said Nick Reynolds, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London.

How dangerous is the clash?

India has said both sides had agreed not to “escalate matters and instead, ensure peace and tranquility.”

Modi echoed this but also underlined that India would give a “befitting reply” to any provocation. “India will firmly protect every inch of the country's land and its self-respect,” he said.

The Chinese foreign ministry also said both sides agreed after Monday’s clash to “cool the current situation” as soon as possible and “safeguard peace and tranquility in the border areas.”

The stakes are high. In the past year, China has increased its nuclear arsenal from 290 to 320 warheads, and India from 130-140 to 150 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI.

Experts say the broader dispute itself is not going away any time soon and Price points out that an agreement between New Delhi and Beijing after clashes in 2017 did nothing to stop this week’s deaths.

“No troops have died on this border since 1975, so this is kind of new territory,” he said.

Both Price and Reynolds said it would be difficult for either government to be seen to back down, considering their domestic politics. But Reynolds said international pressure may help and Price said there may be a way for both countries to claim victory but at the same time mutually back away.

“The elevation and terrain of this area means it’s highly unlikely this could escalate large scale,” Ladwig said. “But there’s plenty of opportunity for small-scale mistakes, skirmishes, accidents.”

Fighting the elements, not the enemy, on India's China border 


Aishwarya KUMAR AFP•June 20, 2020

The terrain is so high that soldiers need time to acclimatise to their new posting or they run the risk of serious altitude sickness that can kill even a healthy young person in hours (AFP Photo/STR) 

Death is a real and constant danger for the soldiers serving on India's Himalayan border with China, but until a deadly brawl on June 15 the only killers since 1975 have been the topography and the elements.

"We get more than 100 casualties every year just due to terrain, weather conditions, avalanches... There is constant danger," said retired Lt. General DS Hooda, who until 2016 headed India's Northern Command.

"You're talking about 14-15,000 feet (4,300-4,600 metres). It takes a huge toll on your physical and mental condition," Hooda told AFP after Monday's brutal hand-to-hand battle with fists, rocks and clubs which saw the first Indian combat deaths with China in over four decades.

In the "cold desert" of the Galwan river valley in the Ladakh region where the fighting took place, winter temperatures can plunge below minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), cracking gun barrels and seizing up machinery.

There are few roads so troops -- who are fed a special high-protein diet -- must slog through the thin air themselves, carrying their own equipment as they navigate treacherous terrain.

For those who get injured or fall sick "evacuation becomes an enormous challenge," Hooda said. Getting them to a helipad "can take hours", and as soon as night falls, it's too dangerous for helicopters to fly.

This may be why the initial death toll of three shot up to 20 late on Tuesday.

Seventeen other troops critically injured in the clashes, which lasted until after midnight, were "exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain" and succumbed to their injuries, the army said.

- Cold and confused -

The terrain is so high that soldiers need time to acclimatise to their new posting or they run the risk of serious altitude sickness that can kill even a healthy young person in hours.

"For an average human being who is not a resident of that place, survival in itself is a huge challenge," said Colonel S Dinny, who until 2017 commanded an Indian battalion in the region, told AFP.

"It is one of the toughest places to serve as a soldier," he said.

Normally soldiers do a two-year posting there, broken up by periods of leave. Those who smoke quickly kick the habit.

"With such low oxygen plus the weather plus the smoking, the chances of getting a heart attack shoot up," Dinny added.

The cold and the high altitude affects eyesight, adding to troops' disorientation. Weather, which can change quickly with little warning, and the hilly terrain can impair radio communication.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the "Line of Actual Control" (LAC) isn't properly demarcated, meaning that Indian and Chinese troops can bump into each other and believe the other side has trespassed.

"The maps have not even been exchanged so that the other person knows what someone is claiming. There are no boundary markers," said Dinny.

To avoid escalations, both sides have over the years developed detailed protocols on the procedures to follow -- while also agreeing that neither side shall open fire.

If rival patrols bump into each other, they keep their distance and unfurl banners warning each other they have left their territory and should turn back.

Apart from occasional flare-ups, when they meet, the troops conduct themselves like "professional soldiers serving their respective countries, they treat each other with that courtesy," Dinny said.

- Punch-ups -

But in recent months confrontations have increased with both sides building up troops and infrastructure. China appears to have been particularly irked by India building a new road.

China, according to New Delhi, is encroaching further into new areas, including some of the northern shore of the Pangong Tso lake and the Galwan valley which China now lays claim to in its entirety.

In May there were two punch-ups before the deadly clash in June which reportedly saw Chinese troops attack the Indians with nail-studded batons, rocks and fists.

"It is time we revisit our protocol and our rules of engagement so that any disagreements can be handled in a more military fashion rather than fighting it out like goons on the street," Hooda said.




Weather, which can change quickly with little warning, and the hilly terrain can impair radio communication (AFP Photo/Tauseef MUSTAFA)


In the 'cold desert' of the Galwan river valley where Indian and Chinese troops fought a brutal hand-to-hand battle, winter temperatures can plunge below minus 30 Celsius (minus 20 Fahrenheit) (AFP Photo/-)


India-China Himalayan standoff deadly for cashmere herds 


AIJAZ HUSSAIN Associated PressJune 19, 2020

India Kashmir China Himalayan Standoff
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members shout slogans as they burn an effigy of Chinese President Xi Jinping during a protest against China in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, June 19, 2020. India's prime minister is meeting top opposition leaders Friday as the government tries to lower tensions with China after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash in a Himalayan border region. India and China accuse each other of instigating the fight in the Galwan Valley, part of the disputed Ladakh region along the Himalayan frontier. It was the deadliest conflict between the sides in 45 years. China has not said whether it suffered any casualties. (AP Photo/ Dar Yasin)


 In this July 21, 2007, file photo, an elderly man belonging to the Changpa, the nomadic herders who rear the Pashmina goats, holds his Himalayan goat as his son cuts its horn that was hurting the animal's eye in Kharnak, some 185 kilometers (116 miles) from Leh, India. A months-long military standoff between India and China in 2020 has taken a dire toll on local communities as tens of thousands of Himalayan goat kids die because they couldn't reach traditional winter grazing lands, officials and residents said. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File) 

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Antagonisms between Indian and Chinese troops high in the Himalayas are taking a dire toll on traditional goat herds that supply the world’s finest, most expensive cashmere.

This week, a deadly brawl between Indian and Chinese soldiers caused the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley, an achingly beautiful landscape that is part of a border region that has been disputed for decades because of its strategic importance as the world's highest landing ground.

The months-long military standoff between the Asian giants is hurting local communities due to the loss of tens of thousands of Himalayan goat kids died because they couldn't reach traditional winter grazing lands, officials and residents said.

Nomads have roamed these lands atop the roof of the world, around the undemarcated borders with China and Tibet, for centuries, herding the famed and hardy goats that produce the ultrasoft wool known as Pashmina, the finest of cashmeres.

ashmere takes its name from the disputed Kashmir valley, where artisans weave the wool into fine yarn and exquisite shawls that cost up to $1,000 apiece in world fashion capitals in a major handicraft export industry that employs thousands.

This latest bout of friction between the rival nuclear powers is adding to pressures from climate change and longer-term losses of grazing land for the Changpa, the nomadic herders who rear the Pashmina goats.

With access to the usual breeding and birthing grounds blocked by militaries on either side, newborn goats are perishing in the extreme cold of higher elevations, herders say.

“Denial of pastureland has led to high mortality of goat babies. It’s so scary, it has never been like this,” said Sonam Tsering, the general secretary of All Changtang Pashmina Growers Cooperative Marketing Society.

He said thousands of newborns died this year because most of the 300,000-strong herd of goats, which yields around 45 tons of fine feather-like wool each year, remained trapped in the extreme cold.

uthorities in Leh, the capital of Indian-controlled Ladakh, would not give any information, saying they were still collecting data.

But two officials with Ladakh’s animal husbandry department said that according to field staff, the deaths were much higher than the usual 5 to 10% mortality rate among some 60,000 to 80,000 kids each year. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they said the Ladakh administration has barred them from speaking to reporters.

Demand for the cashmere, which is painstakingly combed from the goats, sorted, cleaned and hand woven, has always outstripped supply, so shortages are a certainty, said several people working in the trade.

“It’s going to be catastrophic for wool production,” said Namgyal Durbuk, a village official in the region.

India and China fought a border war in 1962 that also spilled into Ladakh. The two countries have been trying to settle their border dispute since the early 1990s without success, as their soldiers face off along a thousands-of-miles-long, undemarcated frontier that stretches from Ladakh in the north to the Indian state of Sikkim in the northeast.

For most of the year the Changpa raise their herds in the vast cold desert of the Changtang plateau of Ladakh, which straddles Tibet at over 5,000 meters (16,404 feet) above sea level.

The harsh, windy climate is what causes the goats to grow their super-soft wool. But the Abecomes inhospitable from December to February, when temperatures can fall to minus 50 Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit).

That's when the Changpas bring their livestock to slightly lower elevations and warmer grazing lands in the Demchok, Hanle, Korzok, Chumar and Chushul areas near the disputed border with China.

This year, Indian authorities barred their passage for months, several people involved with herding said.

The two sides blame each other for Monday night's clash, their deadliest conflict in 45 years.

Tensions have surged since August, when India unilaterally declared the region a federal territory while separating it from disputed Kashmir. China is among a handful of countries that strongly condemned the move, raising it at international forums including the U.N. Security Council.

Indian officials have kept a near-total silence on issues related to the confrontation with China. However, a security official in Ladakh, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with government regulations, said the grazing lands are close to the contested frontier and the restrictions in place in the area are to protect herders from Chinese soldiers.

Around 1,200 Changpa families have lost access to grazing lands even in the areas that are controlled by the Indian military due to the confrontation, Tsering said.

But the Chinese side also is interfering, he and other herders said.

Our nomads in recent years have increasingly faced difficulty in accessing pastures in these places. Chinese soldiers have blocked them while bringing herders from Tibet into our lands,” said Tsering.

Phuntsog, a local farmer who uses only one name, said local elders have been complaining to the Indian government about Chinese incursions for years.

“They would ignore every time. Now see where the Chinese are. Worst, these hapless, beautiful creatures which sustain our livelihood are becoming victim of this political and military game,” he said.

China's foreign ministry said Thursday that such allegations are “sheer fiction.” “Chinese border troops have always only patrolled Chinese territories,” the ministry said.

Tsering said herders began losing terrain years ago, when Chinese began “snatching our pasturelands in a concerted way over the years, like inch by inch.” He cited an example of a vast winter pastureland known as Kakjung, close to the Indus river.

“For the past four years it’s a no-go-zone for us. They (Chinese) have taken full control of it,” he said.

___

Associated Press reporters in Beijing contributed to this report.



Galwan Valley: The fake news about India and China's border clash 

Reality Check team - BBC News BBC•June 19, 2020
 
Feelings run high at an anti-China protest in Delhi

Following the deadly clash between Chinese and Indian forces in a disputed Himalayan border area this week, misleading images and videos have been widely shared by social media users.

We've found examples of images and video posted online claiming to be of the latest clash, but which are in fact completely unrelated.

1. A video claiming to show soldiers in combat

Screen grab of video labelled three years old

Our first example is a video on YouTube claiming to show the "real fight" between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Galwan river valley, where the recent clash took place.

It's had more than 21,000 views, and also been widely viewed on Twitter, where some posts talk of the Indian army "kicking out" Chinese forces.

However, the video is shot in daylight, whereas the latest clash in the Ladakh region took place at night.

We've also found this same video posted both in August 2017 and September 2019, on both occasions claiming to show previous skirmishes between Indian and Chinese troops.

The freezing battlefield where India and China clashed

The soldiers killed in the India-China border clash 


2. Indian soldiers mourning casualties is not what it appears

A video depicting an emotional scene with Indian soldiers crying and hugging, as others carry what appears to be a body bag, is doing the rounds on social media.

 

Screen grab of video labelled wrong location

It's been tagged by some users as related to the Galwan valley clash this week.

However, the video is from an incident more than a year ago in the Kashmir region, when Indian forces sustained a number of casualties in a confrontation with armed militants.

It's not connected at all to the current incident between Indian and Chinese troops in a disputed border area.


3. An old argument between military officers

 Twitter post showing a video of soldiers from China and India arguing has had thousands of views.

 

Screen grab of video labelled old
The Chinese troops are scolding an Indian soldier, and demanding that he leaves.

The video has been posted on TikTok's Chinese-language site, and has got more than 33,000 likes and has also been shared by the spokesperson of India's opposition party, the Indian National Congress.

However, the same video had also appeared on social media platforms in May, so it predates this week's clash. And a search reveals that the video was uploaded to YouTube in January this year.

Apart from that, it's pretty clear from the terrain depicted that the video is not from a mountainside in Ladakh.

Although we can't establish the exact location, a report by one fact-checking site suggests that it was from a border area in Arunachal Pradesh state, at least 1,000 miles away.
4. A funeral for a fallen Indian soldier

Another widely-shared video shows the funeral ceremony for an Indian army man, with his fellow-soldiers shouting out and chanting.

 

Screen grab of video labelled wrong incident

The video - viewed about 40,000 times - refers to the Galwan valley clash and praises Indian soldiers.

The video, however, has nothing to do with the soldiers who died on 16 June.

A reverse image search shows that a similar video was posted on YouTube in May.

Listening to the video, you can just make out the name of the soldier, and a keyword search on Google shows that the soldier in the video died in an accident in the Leh-Ladakh region in May.

The soldier's funeral took place in his home town in the state of Maharashtra, where he was given full state honours.

5. Images of dead bodies and coffins are the wrong continent

A Chinese-language article on the recent India-China violence contains images purportedly showing the dead bodies of Indian soldiers from the clash.

 

Screen grab of video labelled wrong country

The article has been read more than 100,000 times, and an image from it has also been used on a Pakistani news website called Baaghitv.

The same image has also cropped up on social media.

A simple reverse image search showed that it's actually from Nigeria. It depicts the aftermath of an incident in 2015, when Nigerian soldiers were killed by Boko Haram militants.

And another image in the same article showing several army coffins with wreaths is the same as an image posted on social media in February 2019 after a major attack on Indian forces in the Pulwama district of Indian-administered Kashmir.


So again, this is completely unrelated to the current clash.

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India-China clash: An extraordinary escalation 'with rocks and clubs'



Soutik Biswas India correspondent
16 June 2020
Related Topics
China-India border dispute

 
REUTERS
The two nuclear armed neighbours have a chequered history of face-offs

"It is looking bad, very bad," says security analyst Vipin Narang, of the deadly clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh on Monday night.

The most serious face-off on the world's longest unsettled land border in nearly half a century left 20 Indian soldiers dead. India says both sides suffered casualties.

"Once fatalities are sustained, keeping everything quiet becomes hard on both sides. Now public pressure becomes a variable," Dr Narang, a security studies professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told me.

"The scale, scope and swathe of the pressure across the border is seemingly unprecedented."

The two nuclear armed neighbours have a chequered history of face-offs and overlapping territorial claims along the more than 3,440km (2,100 mile), poorly drawn Line of Actual Control (LAC) separating the two sides. Border patrols have often bumped into each other, resulting in occasional scuffles. But no bullets have been fired in four decades.

That is why the latest clash, following months of roiling tension, has taken many by surprise.

"It is an extraordinary escalation," Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist magazine, told me. "No shots fired for 45 years, and then at least 20 soldiers dead in one evening in rock-throwing and bludgeoning." The clash comes amid fresh tensions between the two powers, which have brawled along the border in recent weeks but not exchanged any gunfire.


PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU
The area has become a hotspot in part because of a road India has built

Reports say in early May, Chinese forces put up tents, dug trenches and moved heavy equipment several kilometres inside what had been regarded by India as its territory in Galwan valley in Ladakh. Ajai Shukla, a leading Indian defence analyst, has claimed that China had captured 60 sq km of Indian-patrolled territory in the area in the past one month. India claims China already occupies 38,000sq km (about 14,700sq miles) of its territory.

The move came after India built a road several hundred kilometres long connecting to a high-altitude forward air base which it reactivated in 2008.
'One of the most serious crises in years'

The details of how Monday's skirmish unfolded remain fuzzy.

India and China are accusing each other of violating the consensus to respect the Line of Actual Control that separates the both sides in the Galwan Valley.

India says the two sides have been exploring military and diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation and that senior commanders had a "productive meeting" on 6 June. They agreed "on a process of de-escalation" and subsequently, the ground commanders had a series of meetings to implement the consensus, India's foreign ministry said.

India said both sides suffered casualties after the Chinese "unilaterally tried to change the status quo." And China accuses India troops of "violating" the consensus, crossing the border twice and carrying out provocative attacks on Chinese personnel".

Ankit Panda, a senior editor at The Diplomat magazine, says the ongoing crisis was "already among the most serious between the two countries - certainly since the 2017 Doklam standoff and possibly much longer". Road construction by the Chinese triggered a 73-day standoff in 2017 at a junction of India, China and Bhutan.


GETTY IMAGES An Indian soldier at the border in Ladakh

But Chinese behaviour this time has "been very different from what we have seen in the past," Shivshankar Menon, a China expert and a former national security advisor, says.

"What we have seen is multiple incidents, multiple moves forward and China occupying spaces which it never occupied before along the LAC. This is a worrying sign because it's different from Chinese behaviour in the past," Mr Menon told interviewer Karan Thapar in The Wire, an independent online news portal.

Theories abound on the reasons behind China's actions in the area.

In a tactical sense, Delhi's beefing up of the border infrastructure may have triggered the Chinese army into action in Ladakh. The pandemic may have provided the cover for China to act, particularly as the Indian army had delayed exercises in Ladakh in March. "But I doubt it was the only cause," says Mr Joshi.

"Is it about the road? Is it about Article 370 [India's action of unilaterally changing the status quo of Kashmir in August last year] Is it broader aggressiveness? We don't know," says Dr Narang. "But it is tense and it is not over."

Mr Menon, who served as India's ambassador to China, believes that China is resorting to strident nationalism, due to "domestic and economic stresses" at home. "You can see it in their behaviour in Yellow Sea, towards Taiwan, passing laws without consulting Hong Kong, more assertive on India's border, a tariff war with Australia."


On Tuesday evening, India said the troops had disengaged from the clash site. Early reports suggest that established military channels were being used and both sides were not escalating. "That's good news for India, which has few credible retaliatory options in the current environment," says Mr Panda.

Mr Joshi believes the most important consequences of Monday's clashes will be the "wider and long-term diplomatic one".

"For 10 years, Sino-Indian rivalry has steadily intensified, but remained largely stable," he said. India and China have also been more engaged. Bilateral trade increased 67 times between 1998 and 2012, and China is India's largest trading partner in goods. Indian students have flocked to Chinese universities. Both sides have held joint military exercises.

"Now we may be entering a new period of heightened mistrust and antagonism washing away much of the bonhomie on display at the Wuhan summit in 2018," says Mr Joshi.
India-China clash: 20 Indian troops killed in Ladakh fighting

16 June 2020
Related Topics
China-India border dispute


GETTY IMAGES 
India and China have been locked in a border dispute for decades

At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese forces in a disputed Himalayan border area, Indian officials say.

The incident follows rising tensions, and is the first deadly clash in the border area in at least 45 years.

The Indian army initially said three of its soldiers had been killed, adding that both sides suffered casualties.

But later on Tuesday, officials said a number of critically injured soldiers had died of their wounds.

India's external affairs ministry accused China of breaking an agreement struck the previous week to respect the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Galwan Valley.

BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says violence between two armies high up in the Himalayas is very serious, and pressure will grow on the two nuclear powers not to allow a slide into full-scale conflict.

What have both sides said about the incident?

Early on Tuesday the Indian army said three of its soldiers, including an officer, had died in a clash in Ladakh, in the disputed Kashmir region.

Later in the day, it released a statement saying the two sides had disengaged.

It added that "17 Indian troops who were critically injured in the line of duty" and died from their injuries, taking the "total that were killed in action to 20".

China did not confirm any casualties, but accused India in turn of crossing the border onto the Chinese side.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said India had crossed the border twice on Monday, "provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides", AFP news agency reported.



Both sides insist no bullet has been fired in four decades, and the Indian army said on Tuesday that "no shots were fired" in this latest skirmish.

How a clash that did not involve an exchange of fire could prove so lethal is unclear. There are reports that it was fought with rocks and clubs

Local media outlets reported that the Indian soldiers had been "beaten to death".
How tense is the area?


The LAC is poorly demarcated. The presence of rivers, lakes and snowcaps means the line can shift. The soldiers either side - representing two of the world's largest armies - come face to face at many points. 

But there have been tense confrontations along the border in recent weeks

India has accused China of sending thousands of troops into Ladakh's Galwan valley and says China occupies 38,000sq km (14,700sq miles) of its territory. Several rounds of talks in the last three decades have failed to resolve the boundary disputes.

The two countries have fought only one war so far, in 1962, when India suffered a humiliating defeat.

In May, dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers exchanged physical blows on the border in the north-eastern state of Sikkim. And in 2017, the two countries clashed in the region after China tried to extend a border road through a disputed plateau.
There are several reasons why tensions are rising now - but competing strategic goals lie at the root, and both sides blame each other.

India has built a new road in what experts say is the most remote and vulnerable area along the LAC in Ladakh. And India's decision to ramp up infrastructure seems to have infuriated Beijing.

The road could boost Delhi's capability to move men and materiel rapidly in case of a conflict.

India also disputes part of Kashmir - an ethnically diverse Himalayan region covering about 140,000sq km - with Pakistan. 


Kashmir: Why India and Pakistan fight over it 



The two nuclear armed neighbours have a chequered history of face-offs and overlapping territorial claims along the more than 3,440km (2,100 mile), poorly drawn Line of Actual Control separating the two sides.

Border patrols have often bumped into each other, resulting in occasional scuffles. But no bullets have been fired in four decades.

That is why Sunday's night's clash following months of roiling tension has taken many by surprise.
Whatever the result, the latest incident is likely to trigger a fresh wave of anti-China sentiments in India.

It will also present daunting foreign policy and security challenges to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, which is struggling to contain a surge of Covid-19 infections and revive an economy which looks headed for recession.

Ten captured Indian soldiers released by China as evidence grows Beijing planned Ladakh ambush 





Joe Wallen The Telegraph•June 19, 2020
 
At least 76 Indian soldiers remain injured after the clash between the two superpowers in Galwan Valley - Tauseef Mustafa/AFP

Ten Indian soldiers captured by China in Ladakh on Monday evening have been released, as evidence grows Beijing “meticulously planned” the ambush.

The Indian Army has said no further troops are being held prisoner but 76 Indian soldiers remain injured, after Chinese troops attacked Indian forces with brutal weapons including nail-embedded rods.

Indian intelligence agencies flagged the unusual movement of Chinese soldiers to bases on the Tibetan side of the Line of Actual Control, which separates the two superpowers, as early as February.

Yet, Indian troops were slow to reinforce after the Himalayan spring snow due to the coronavirus and members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) crossed the LAC and annexed 60 square kilometres of Indian territory at four locations - Pangong Tso Lake, Galwan River and Valley, Hot Springs and Demchok.

Former leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, tweeted today that it was “crystal clear” that the government was “fast asleep”.

The Indian Army has officially declared that 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes but on condition of anonymity, sources told the Telegraph this figure was 23, as three bodies were unidentifiable due to the injuries inflicted by the Chinese weapons.

The Deccan Chronicle quoted intelligence sources today, saying the actual number of fatalities on the Indian side is as high as 40, as bodies fell in the Galwan River or are buried in deep snow on the mountainside.

 

Indian Army sources shared a photo of a nail-studded rod used by Chinese troops

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Beijing was not privy to any Indian prisoners: "As far as I know China has not detained any Indian personnel," said Zhao Lijian.

Official Indian sources say China suffered 35 casualties during the clash, quoting U.S intelligence material, a development Beijing said it also wasn’t aware of.

In the days leading up to Monday’s clash, satellite footage obtained by Earth-imaging company Planet Labs shows China brought in machinery, cut grooves into the mountainside and may have damned the Galwan River to change its flow.

A senior Indian government official told the Hindu newspaper that the PLA “meticulously planned” the ambush on an Indian patrol, which had set off to ascertain whether Chinese troops had withdrawn from the Galwan Valley, as per an agreement between senior army officers from the two nations.

The source said China was able to release freezing water at a high speed having blocked small rivulets, which made the Indian soldiers lose their balance.

The armed Chinese troops then charged and many Indian soldiers were either beaten to death or fell into the Galwan River below.

“It was pre-planned by China and Indian forces will give a befitting reply,” cautioned Indian Union Minister, Shripad Naik.

Bilateral talks are continuing today and both sides have expressed a desire to reach a peaceful resolution but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under increasing pressure from some MPs to respond with force.

Galwan Valley: India and China downplay reports of soldier release 
BBC•June 19, 2020

A cremation ceremony for one of the Indian soldiers killed took place on Thursday

China has denied having any Indian soldiers currently in custody, as both sides try to lower the temperature following a fatal clash along their disputed border in the Galwan Valley.

Indian media had reported that China detained 10 Indian soldiers in the fight, releasing them on Thursday.

Chinese government spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday that no Indian soldiers were "currently" being held.

The Indian government said only that none of its soldiers were missing.

The careful wording of the statements did little to clarify whether Chinese forces in the contested area had taken Indian soldiers into custody and subsequently released them.

Indian media reports suggested that a lieutenant-colonel and three majors were among 10 held by the Chinese, and that their release was the top priority in military and diplomatic talks between the nuclear powers on Wednesday.

Asked at a press conference about the reports, Mr Zhao said: "As far as I know, currently, China has not detained any Indian personnel".

The conflicting reports were the latest round of confusion over what exactly happened in the Galwan Valley on Monday.

At least 20 Indian soldiers died in the clash, which was fought without any firearms because of a 1996 agreement barring guns and explosives from the area, and at least 76 Indian soldiers were injured.

China has not released any information about casualties, though India said both sides suffered losses.

The two nations have accused the other of crossing the poorly demarcated border and provoking the fight.

Shiv Aroor, a senior editor at India Today, tweeted on Thursday with what he said were details of the release of the Indian troops.

To those asking, (and since it’s been reported now) — that’s what my tweet below 6 hours ago was meant to convey. And since the story will be in tomorrow’s papers, if you’re interested in hearing about it from me, here you go: https://t.co/xsMJtUWdaW pic.twitter.com/lxfQKb608N
Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) June 18, 2020

In his press conference Mr Zhao, acknowldged that the two nations were in communication over diplomatic and military channels. "We hope India can work with China to maintain the long-term development of bilateral relations," he said.

Brazil surpasses one million coronavirus cases

BRAZIL RUN BY TRUMP MINI-ME
AFP•June 19, 2020

Supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro protest on June 14, 2020 outside army headquarters against a decision by Brasilia's Governor Ibaneis Rocha preventing crowds from attending rallies (AFP Photo/Sergio LIMA)More
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazil passed the bleak milestone of one million coronavirus cases Friday, reporting a new one-day record number of infections as the pandemic continues to surge in Latin America's largest country.

The health ministry said it had recorded 54,771 new infections, a jump it said was largely due to "instability" in its reporting system, which meant some states were reporting figures from multiple days.

That brought the total number of infections in Brazil to 1,032,913, with 48,954 deaths -- second only to the United States worldwide.

Experts say under-testing means the real numbers are probably much higher.

Despite the grim figures, the infection curve in Brazil is finally showing signs of flattening.

But the country of 212 million people is one of the most worrying hotspots in the pandemic.

Since the start of June, it has registered the most new infections and deaths of any country in the world, according to an AFP count based on official figures -- more than 518,000 and 19,000, respectively.

It has recorded daily death tolls of more than 1,000 on each of the past four days.

Brazil has struggled to set a strategy for dealing with the pandemic.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who has famously compared the virus to a "little flu," has clashed with state and local authorities over their use of stay-at-home measures and business closures to contain it.

The far-right leader argues the economic impact of such measures risks being worse than the virus itself, and has instead pushed his health ministry to recommend chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments, despite uncertainty about the anti-malaria drugs' effectiveness against COVID-19.

Bolsonaro threatened this month to quit the World Health Organization, accusing it of "ideological bias" against the drugs, and has ditched two health ministers since the start of the pandemic after clashing over policy differences.

The health minister he fired in April, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, told AFP Brazilians have suffered because of mixed messages from the government.

"The health ministry and state governors are telling people to stay home and practice social distancing, and the president is saying and doing the opposite," he said.

A year and a half into his term, Bolsonaro has been weakened by the pandemic, as well as a series of investigations targeting him and his inner circle and spiraling clashes with Congress and the Supreme Court.

The World Bank meanwhile forecasts Latin America's biggest economy will shrink by a record eight percent this year.


Brazil minister quits as Supreme Court sends message to Bolsonaro

Reuters•June 18, 2020

Brazil's Education Minister Abraham Weintraub attends a session at the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's firebrand education minister resigned on Thursday, following blunders that aggravated tense relations between the right-wing president and the country's Supreme Court.

Education Minister Abraham Weintraub has been one of the loudest ideological voices in the government. His aggressive style made trouble for the president, including racist remarks about China, Brazil's top trading partner, and a comment that Supreme Court judges should be locked up.

"If it were up to me, I'd stick all those bums in jail," the minister said in a videotaped cabinet meeting.

The court included Weintraub in its investigation of an alleged libel and disinformation network run by Bolsonaro's supporters after that recording became public in May.

Speaking on Thursday after justices voted 10-1 in favor of moving ahead with the "fake news" probe, Chief Justice Dias Toffoli warned that the gradual destabilization of institutions can lead to authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

"We cannot trivialize attacks and threats to the Supreme Court, guardian of the constitution," he said.

Bolsonaro has ramped up tensions with the Brazil's top court in recent months, participating in demonstrations calling for it to be disbanded after it authorized an investigation of his alleged interference in law enforcement.

In a bid to calm tensions with the court, Bolsonaro publicly rebuked Weintraub when he participated on Sunday in the latest protest, feeding speculation about the minister's departure.

In a video on social media, Weintraub said he would not discuss why he was leaving the government to take a role at the World Bank. He read from a statement to the stone-faced president and then gave him a hug.

Weintraub's departure came the same day Brazilian police arrested a former aide to Bolsonaro's eldest son in a graft investigation, threatening to ratchet up his battle with the judiciary.


(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Brad Haynes and Dan Grebler)

Pause in fieldwork hurts scientists' plans for research, futures

By Anne Snabes JUNE 11, 2020 

U.S. NEWS

Sophia Horigan was supposed to study gypsy moths in a southwestern Michigan forest this spring and summer.

Instead, the University of Chicago PhD student is studying in her apartment, where she rotates between a wooden table and a grey armchair.

With her field research in Michigan shut down because of the pandemic, she has foregone conducting experiments on the gypsy moths and substituted using mathematical models to learn about diseases that kill the moths.

"It'll be helpful in the end, and I feel lucky that I am not at a total standstill, even though my fieldwork got canceled," she said.

Scientists in ecology, geochemistry and other fields often conduct field research in the spring or summer, but many of these research trips have been prohibited now due to the coronavirus pandemic. While the pause in field research has allowed scientists to spend more time on data analysis and reading academic papers, experts say that fieldwork is an important part of research in some fields, and the cancellation of this research could delay some students' completion of their PhD programs.

Diarmaid O'Foighil, chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, said a large part of his department's work takes place in the field.

"And it happens worldwide," he said. "So we have people working on ecosystems all over the planet. Every summer, there's a major exodus of faculty, postdocs, grad students and undergrads working in the field, and they can't do that."

In March, fieldwork at the University of Michigan was stopped, but starting May 8, researchers were allowed to return to the field in southeastern Michigan. On June 1, they could start conducting field research anywhere in the state.

But, O'Foighil said, only a small fraction of the department's workforce does field research in the state.

On Wednesday, the university allowed researchers to start doing fieldwork anywhere in the United States. They have to receive permission from their college to do so, though.

To fill their time away from the field, some scientists have turned to their computers. Horigan is learning the programming language in which her model is written and grasping how to run the model.

Horigan said the gypsy moth populations grow rapidly and crash once every nine or 10 years. A virus and a fungus both contribute to the demise of the insects. Mathematical models allow researchers to see how a parameter, like precipitation, affects another variable, like the number of moths. Horigan said the parameter she is studying is a moth's susceptibility to the fungus if it has already been infected by the virus. She uses her model to inform her field research.

"You can see what values of different parameters actually have an impact that is interesting, and then you can take those numbers and put them into your fieldwork," she said.

Greg Dwyer, Horigan's adviser, said that normally his graduate students collect data in the field and then incorporate it into a model. Now, his students are running their models before they gather data in the field, he said.

Allie Balter, a geochemistry PhD student at Columbia University, was supposed to go to Alaska for two weeks in July to participate in the Juneau Icefield Program.

Balter would have skied on the icefield, collecting rocks with undergraduate students. She said the rocks were once in or beneath glaciers, and scientists determine the age that the rocks became exposed to air so they can find out when the glacier left that area. She also would have taught classes to the students. She said she's "really bummed" that her field research trip was canceled.

"I feel like, for me, fieldwork is a big reason why I got into the field I got into, like I really love doing fieldwork," she said.

Balter added that she makes interpretations in the field. She observes the sequence of glacial retreat events when she's in the field, she said.

Instead of doing research on the icefield, she will take her qualifying exam, required for all PhD students, in early July, three months later than the original test date, which was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

During the pandemic, she said she has been writing, analyzing data and reading papers. She said she skims abstracts of papers in her field or similar fields.

"I think it just gives me a better breadth of knowledge of both my field and like surrounding fields so that I can make connections and inferences from my data better," she said.

Balter added that it also allows her to have more in-depth conversations with scientists who do not study the same subject as hers.

Virginia Edgcomb, an associate scientist with tenure at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, also has spent time this spring writing papers and editing as well as writing grant applications.

Edgcomb's field research has "come to a complete stop for the time being." She planned to go on a field research trip on a boat in August, which will probably be pushed back to spring 2020. She said she also she studies denitrification -- a process that removes nitrogen -- in sediments beneath oyster aquaculture farms, but the town where the research takes place, Falmouth, Mass., canceled its aquaculture operations this summer.

"Every single project is set back," Edgcomb said.

The University of Michigan's O'Foighil said the halt in field research "impacts in particular graduate students who need to finish their work to finish their thesis projects" as well as post-doctoral students who are funded by grants.

Katie Dixon, an ecology and evolution PhD student at the University of Chicago, said she was supposed to go to Missoula, Mont., in the spring and summer to study a virus that infects Douglas-fir tussock moths. The third-year PhD student had been planning on conducting field research for two more summers. If she continues with that plan, she will have to stay in her PhD program for a sixth year.

"And that was not in my plan before," she said. "And then funding is always an issue. ... But I'm hoping people will be flexible, like this happened to a lot of people."

John Freudenstein, the chair of Ohio State University's Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, also said some PhD students in his department think they may need additional time to finish their PhDs.

The pause in field research also affects assistant professors, who are trying to earn tenure. To compensate, the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and other academic institutions have given these professors an additional year to earn tenure.

Not all field research was canceled this spring and summer, though. Douglas Buhler, Michigan State University's assistant vice president of research and innovation and the university's director of AgBioResearch, said some agricultural research at Michigan State has been allowed since the start of the pandemic.

Stephen Hsu, the university's senior vice president for research and innovation, sent a letter to faculty on March 23 saying that essential research activities could continue, including "seasonally dependent agricultural and environmental field research with critical implications for human and animal health, as well as food security."

Horigan said that field researchers are used to their plans changing.

"I think that ecologists and field researchers in particular are fairly used to the fact that nature is dynamic, and nothing will ever go to plan, really," she said. "So, hopefully, I think a lot of us are a lot more flexible and creative about what to do when that happens, and so I think it's kind of built some resilience for things like this."